headquarters, a special edition of bloomberg's this week live from our new york studios. i'm carol massar. jason: i'm jason kelly. we are excited to be here in our brand-new studio. on.l: we've got a lot going we saw stocks selling off big time on monday. christmas eve a bit of a different tone on this wednesday the day after christmas. jason: a totally different tone. a big run in equities. jay kevin hassett saying powell totally safe, 100% safe. stocks started to rally. that has continued. very much in the green right now. flow out ofews washington has continued. a lot of concern within the markets and we see the folks out of d.c. trying to calm investors at this point. government shutdown

is obviously affecting things. that played through to some of the commentary through the treasury secretary. let's not forget everybody out there shopping. retail helping out the markets. time for a check on trading and your top is this headlines. online sales growth for department stores growing more than 10% between november 1 and december 24 from last year according to mastercard spending. total retail spending in the u.s. increasing 5.1% to more than $850 million during the same period last year. lasttrongest growth in the six years. investors are bailing out of mutual funds at the fastest pace in a decade. mutual funds suffering at redemptions of more than $56 billion in the week ending december 19. that represents the biggest outflows since the week ending on october 15, 2008. adding morest week than $25 billion to exchange traded funds.

the nation's crown jewel energy company. reportedlyofficials left jpmorgan off a list of preliminary advisors. the fund had raise questions about the pricing of the first ipo's handled for the state uranium miner. that's your bloomberg business flash update. jason: but get a quick check of the markets right now. trump said by the depth and a lot of participants did that .xactly s&p 500 matching those gains and the nasdaq up about three .8%. let's take a look at some of the sectors that are moving here. we can see that 10 of the 11 s&p sectors are higher on the day. the only one that down right now is utilities.

higherr discretionary leading the gains by 4.3% and quick check on some of the defense stocks actually way down over the concerns of the departure of defense secretary mattis. carol: you are caught up on your market day and some of your top business headlines. jason: we need to understand what is actually happening. it has been a wild ride. us andsenthal here with elaine up a peanut from the equity markets team. how do you make sense of a day like today? you and i just came back from vacation. what are people telling you on the desk? >> it feels like one of those things where it was so relentless every day. hundreds of points off the dow. newly 2% -- nearly 2% off the

s&p. i don't think you can read that much into it because it's not like the news flow has changed in some meaningful way. all the things that people were concerned about their still concerned about pretty clearly. at some level you can't just have days like that forever. it gets too easy. sometimes you get in these period were markets go 1% or 2% every day and everyone thinks it's getting really easy and then they tank. i love the conversations where we are getting back to a normal market environment away from the quantitative easing. the economy seems like it can deal with it to talk about the internals of the trade. we have every major industry group in the s&p higher today. >> at some point the s&p was lower for the session. i wouldn't read too much into this 2.6% advance. comes after four

sessions of losses of at least 1.5%. the fifth session the s&p was up 0.1%. less than that. a small bounce after days and days of uncertainty. is a bounce. on monday we came in with expectations that we would be ok and the market came undone. we had a lot of volume in terms of selling on monday. >> we finished monday really close to the 20% correction so investors are uncertain about whether they want to push this market into this 20% decline because that would probably cause a different route of selloffs and uncertainty. up 3.6% atnasdaq is this moment. bloomberg, still down 7% year to date. a huge rally outpacing the s&p and the dow.

is this amazon? what's going on? >> amazon is up 6.7%. retail is things doing really good today because the data suggests that consumers despite the volatility really did open up their pocketbooks for the holiday. the board is doing extremely well. facebook of over 6%. square which was just so hard over the nine months of the year and then lost 50% of its market value. nvidia is only up 2%. some of these red-hot stocks got so crushed and it feels like today people are like maybe some of this was overdone. >> also the stocks like dollar tree. as part of the reason they are rallying so much. jason: looking at the s&p kohl's

and dollar general some of the biggest gainers. is interesting that those are discount retailers. el-erian is the chief economic advisor at allianz and he put out some in recentnd said weeks the u.s. economy has become more vulnerable to the possibility of policy mistakes and market accidents. haveelf-inflicted wounds become more of a threat to economic and corporate fundamentals, rendering both more susceptible to the slowing global economy. been pounding the table about this. i cannot wait to hear from ceos during the earnings season about what they're holding back on because of all the instability out there. >> there's no magic formula for growth. a lot of it is just confidence that feeds on confidence. it will make investments because

they expect those to do well. when you have a situation in which it feels like perhaps mistakes are being made at multiple levels where you have markets targeting -- tightening , you can conditions see how that would manifest itself in a real slow down and you would never want to read too much into one data point. jason: we would have no show. >> one of the regional fed manufacturing industries, biggest plunge in history. you start to wonder are we going to see more data that is ugly for december? >> we also have a bunch of insider buying surging to an eight year high. that can provide momentum here. >> some of the traders and talking to today, these could

cost today's rally. there is also a point where the close to theg levels seen in 2014. so that's pretty cheap. fundamentals are still very strong. we have a lot of headwinds, concerns the the fourth-quarter earnings season show there was a little bit of uncertainty around next year's guidance. carol: we will have to keep an eye on it. >> two weeks earnings season starts mid-december. stocks just got near their highs of the session. let's get a check on top is this headlines. first --mobil had its headed for its worst annual performance. even worse inet 2019. we are joined by jessica summers live in houston.

when i look at the s&p 500 and all of the energy stocks i think all of them are down on the year. exxon really stands out. what's going on? performance byg the s&p 500 energy index. all of them in the red in terms of an annual performance this .ear in terms of exxon that's a really interesting story. company gong the through this $200 billion push into oil and south america. investors are just sort of concern right now. they are asking the question what can exxon do for us while it's going through all of this restructuring? that sounds to me like a company that is sort of diversifying itself trying to set itself up in a better position should oil prices

remain at these lower levels that we have had over the past few weeks. do investors not really buy into that? >> essentially right now investors especially in the energy sector want to see shareholder returns so i think that's causing them when it comes to exxon. when it comes to other rivals in the industry. on thes focusing long-term so that should give theytors some these if think long-term and one interesting thing to point out about exxon is is now the most active trailer in the permian basin. come out and said that even if oil prices dropped it is still going to be able to make double-digit returns so we are seeing some positives out of exxon that investors should keep an eye on. jason: we haven't seen that many buybacks from exxon.

>> not especially compared to its peers. investors are really happy with conoco. it's going to be giving them a -- oftowing into the head the year. don't get an increase in buybacks do you think this pain for exxon is going to last? >> that's an interesting question. we have seen the ceo reveal more information on investor calls that makes investors happy. if they keep disclosing information as you make these decisions i think that will alleviate some of those investor concerns. that's jessica summers in houston. onon mobil down about 19.5% the year. a lot of its peers are down a lot worse than that.

valero energy down 22%. williams down 31%. some of the biggest competitors like chevron still doing better. 16% on the year. conoco up about 19% on the year. now time for the headlines. let's get to the bloomberg first word news. here's what's happening. kristen nielsen will be traveling to the u.s. border with mexico to personally review her departments care of migrant children. this comes after a quite a volatile boy died on christmas eve in the custody of u.s. customs and border protection with his father. the 8-year-old was the second young migrant to die in agency custody this month. homeland security officials telling reporters it had been more than a decade of the child has died and border patrol custody. -- etnant athlon volcano triggering an earthquake that has injured 10 people.

villagers forced to flee their homes as the ongoing corruption created a 4.8 magnitude quake. etna has also opened a crack's on a local highway which was closed for inspection. russian military today criticizing an israeli airstrike near the syrian capital damascus. the actions of six israeli f-16 jets endangered does coast civilian airliners that were preparing to land in damascus and beirut. would be israel's first strike on syria since the u.s. announced plans to withdraw troops from that country last week. north and south korea staging a symbolic groundbreaking ceremony to upgrade a severed rail link between the long stalled plans to restore connecting airways severed by the korean war. they were revived earlier this year. the un security council granting exemption to allow the ceremony to proceed despite sanctions on the north. global news 24 hours a day on

air and at tictoc on twitter powered by more than 2700 journalists and analysts in over 120 countries. up next, more on today's market rally. from new york, this is bloomberg.

jason: welcome back to a special edition of bloomberg businessweek simulcast live on bloomberg radio and television. i'm jason kelly along with carol massar. 6% today.more than carol: quite a rally. jason: people are joining prime and buying a lot of stuff on amazon. thea big surprise but amount may be surprising to investors and analysts and maybe helping we this market.

for global business here in new york with us. what do you make of all this? really good day for amazon. >> everything has been beaten up for the past few days. a reason for optimism today that there wasn't last week and amazon came out with these numbers that show records across pretty much everything they do which you would expect for amazon to do that every year. there's been a rally across consumer discretionary stocks. i loveof the things that about the reporting here is your name check some of the things that people are dying. some things that i don't know about. seriesprise glam glitter dolls? >> i keep seeing their name pop up. apparently they are very important. >> just wait. it will come. these are some of the popular toys.

>> exactly. this is going on in the absence of toys "r" us. see target, walmart, amazon and a bunch of others benefit from that. amazon has taught me well. anything i go to buy even here at my house my husband will be like, check on amazon first. we just went the amazon route because it was easier. trump and thent first lady visiting the u.s. troops in iraq. but we just coming out from sarah sanders. president trump and the first lady travel to a rock late on christmas night to visit with our troops and senior military to thank them for their service and wish them a merry christmas. kevin cirilli is at the white house. abouts a little bit more

what the significance is of this trip. and firstnt trump lady melania trump traveling to iraq. this is the first time this president has been to a war zone while he has been in office. there was speculation today that the president was not at the white house. guard who stands outside of the oval office was not standing there and the president has not tweeted in more than 17 hours. this also comes at a time in which there is a partial government shutdown. also departures from defense secretary matta's who will be departing by january 1. the president had received some criticism last year for not visiting war zone. for his part traveling largely unnoticed to iraq in order to meet with the troops to celebrate the christmas holiday.

they had landed at the all assad airbase in iraq according to photos released by reuters. this comes at a time in which there was intense scrutiny and conversation around the president's foreign policy particularly with his decision last week to withdraw troops from the middle east and 2000 of those troops from syria. the president making his first trips to meet with senior military officials in a war zone. sanders putting this out in a tweet. unexpected. what do we know? was this a planned trip considering all of the news flow and the chaos created by the president over the weekend in the financial markets was this a last-minute decision? >> the president and the white house has signaled for the last year that the president would be and as isrip overseas

the case in any administration the utmost concern for the military as well as for the president and his family is very especially in these dangerous types of circumstances. the president for his part and his team keeping this close to wraps as to be expected in this type of trip. due to national security interests. the president again making this troops tosit for the meet with of the troops. a lot is going on here in washington obviously with the negotiation of a partial government shutdown and again that foreign-policy decision to remove troops from the middle east and the departure secretary mattis. the president as you see from with thetos all smiles first lady melania trump as they meet with members of the military on late christmas evening. and for this holiday this week.

we heard from lindsey graham. he said this on friday that the president needs to go to afghanistan. he hasn't visited our troops. he needs to do that. this is his first visit to the middle east. washingtonback in thursday. the first time the president has traveled to a war zone to meet with troops and now the president returns home where on thatresume talks partial government shutdown which now is in day five. .arol: kevin cirilli joining us this is his first trip to the war zone in his administration. and amidst lots of things going on. let's not forget some commentary from steve mnuchin. that was meant to calm the markets.

ended up doing the exact opposite. some criticism of jay powell. the president advising investors to buy the dip. maybe the investors are listening to the president. we know the president has talked a lot about the financial markets. we are going to take a deep dive into tsg investing assets have really tripled over the past few years. what's left for 2019? that when we come back. ♪

>> hello, everybody. your bloomberg business flash headlines. amazon is calling a record-breaking holiday season. more items have been ordered worldwide than ever before and

tens of millions of people started free trials or paid amazon prime number ships. membershipst prime -- amazon prime memberships. more than one million items shipped for free with amazon prime. $500 million may sound high but those numbers are down significantly from the previous three years. 2018, 8 of the top 10 sales were heavily discounted from their original list prices. one apartment on west 57th street taking a $17 million price to before it finally found a buyer. the shutdown has caused the byron economic analysts to suspend operations. the agency will not publish any economic data reports until congress appropriate funding for the fiscal year. that is a quick look at your business flash update. thanks for let's follow

the money now in bonds etf's with rachel evans. this has been the year of passive investing for a lot reasons, specifically though, the inflows and outflows on the barn side look interesting. >> yeah. you struggled to discern a theme. this year is not one of those years. we are incredibly clear where we have seen the money. we have seen short-term treasury debt really faring incredible y well. 1121 year -- one month to one year, $12 billion. another short-term treasury. looking at the short-term sarcoma it is just taking into consideration the rates environment. we are seeing rates rising and volatility. romaine: were the inflows spread over the year or concentrated in

a certain section of the year? rachel: it has been steady. we have seen an uptick in the last quarter from september onwards. a steady influx. the volatility in the market has come back into focus. started to see that picture of. -- started to see that pick up short-term. where we are releasing the outflows is more of the risk side of things. debt, investment-grade not the most risky but it was a lot of people have money, $7 billion this year. high-yield is on track for its first outflow ever for a year. outng $12 billion coming high-yield funds. seeing this i version away from risk away from corporate and into the shorter treasury. romaine: so when we talk about the high-yield etf, talking

about corporate bonds that is a discrepancy between what we are seeing on the corporate loan side, right? rachel: yes. the loans tend to be more risky than the high-yield debt. seeing a big move into passive, but we see actively managed etf's being launched. they have a very interesting way of dealing with all of this volatility. cash,re able to go into which means they get out of some of the leverage loans and into safer short-term interests. loanf the largest active etf has 15% of earnings in short-term debt, whereas the largest loan etf is passive with 3% in the money market. romaine: short-term seems to be the theme for the year and we expect that to continue into 2019? rachel: i think we do. given that we have the rates environment and uncertainty about where the fed is going more than we haven't any point in the last few years. pause,eyause -- do they

continue hiking? romaine: all right. thank you. that is rachel evans with us here in new york. from new york, this is bloomberg. ♪ carol: and you are watching and listening to a special edition of bloomberg businessweek from our multimedia studios in new york. carol massar along with jason kelly. we talked about president trump.a bit of a surprise visit . he and the first lady traveling light on christmas night to visit the troops and senior military leadership in iraq and also making comments about some of the things going on right now out of washington. jason: a few comments coming up from the president addressing the government shutdown, saying when asked about the duration, he says his administration will do "whatever it takes" presumably to get the funding for that order will that he has been asking for and that has been the main point of contention. also, another topic at hand, the

secretary of defense job. carol: right. jason: mr. trump telling reporters that many people want that job, but also at the same time saying shanahan could be in the job for a long time. we have another acting member of the administration, mick mulvaney, as the acting chief of staff. the president not shy about that. also, we have an acting attorney general at the moment, even though he has named a new person to that job. carol: all of the news on this wednesday putting a different tone to the financial markets. we have stopped pretty much at their highest of the day. one of the things we talked about a lot in 2018 was esg investing. it came up in many of our investment interviews. jason: there seems to be a marked shift between esg as we have thought about it to impact investing and the people at bloomberg who watches this is an

esg analyst. great to be with you. thanks for joining us. as we go to 2019, etf's are a is coming to the floor. tell us how. >> what is interesting is increased pressure and competition are set to confront esg. they have been going from a small base, and that is due to 80 for lower cost strategies when it comes to esg. this increased pressure and competition is driven by the large asset managers at relatively low cost structures. vanguard entered the market this year. blackrock continued to increase its dominance. blackrock now controls about 20% of esg etf's. carol: which is dramatic. jason and i talked with one of our own reporters at the magazine, rachel evans, and she

talked about the growth in assets. it has surged more than three years.n past investors want this. a younger generation. a lot of investors are you looking for esg, environmental, social, and governance. they care about these issues in terms of their investments. shaheen: definitely. it is increased demand and increase in this -- disclosure. entersu.k., disclosure second year so increased transparency, which is propelling approval of new funds -- accrual of new funds. assets have doubled this year. more transparency and more disclosure will increase for companies but also propelled the strategies going forward. jason: one of the things we heard from people is some of the esg investments and some of the

strategies are hard to measure. gender seems to be one of the easier things, obviously, because you can look at the numbers. of course, pay, you mentioned. and hiring from a diversity perspective. what else are people measuring that are going into these etf's? shaheen: i think one of the problems when it comes to esg is it is hard to define, hard to quantify, very hard to measure what actually goes into esg. what is interesting is we are seeing more strategies come out like low carbon and gender. i think this is because of a push towards that because of the competition we see out there. asset managers are starting to look to these things like low carbon and gender. this is something more quantifiable. low carbon will engender -- low carbon and gender. carol: performance.

how have they done? some people in to do it because they think it is the right thing to do in terms of esg investing but talk to us about performance. shaheen: esg indices actually outperformed this year. historically, the, these indices -- though, these indices have failed. skepticism going forward. one interesting aspect -- carol: 10 seconds. shaheen: emerging markets has consistently outperformed. this could be due to added efficiencies. carol: certainly something we will be talking about in 2019. thank you so much. time for your top business stories in today's trading session. >> thanks. let's get to bloomberg first word news this afternoon. a surprise for troops with president and mrs. trump now in iraq. making it clear he

has no plans to remove american troops from the country. he wants to get u.s. soldiers home from syria and iraq can be used as a base for attacks on the stomachs they -- on islamic state militants if needed. jerome powell's job is 100% safe. those marks coming from kevin hazlett. he is the latest government official trying to calm the markets. to getnt trump's bid other countries to attribute to the u.n. is coming up short. washington has refused to pay any more than a quarter of the u.n.'s peacekeeping budget. it is creating a $220 billion shortfall. the u.s. pays more than $10 billion a year. vladimir putin is saying today finalnessed the test for a series of a new

weapon. deployment of the vehicle will begin next year. according to russian officials, the vehicle can carry conventional or nuclear weapons and is launched from intercontinental ballistic missiles. global news 24 hours a day on air and on tictoc on twitter powered by more than 2700 journalists and analysts in over 120 countries. this is bloomberg. romaine: thank you. china's government is marking the 40th anniversary of its economic reform. with fred fordown an exclusive interview. pressures,nation of challenges we are facing now on the economic front domestically and also the challenges we are and businessally

confidence, investor confidence, or the broader public confidence now has been weakening. even patients is reticent right now because people have been expecting stronger, deeper reforms. how would you categorize this recentin the context of modern chinese history? fred: i would compare this to 1989 to 1992. filleds also a period with tremendous uncertainty, concerns, and worries whether china would continue to reform or stop or reverse.

endkfully, that came to an with the now famous southern tour. really jumpstarted the reforms. >> what is their take on the period nowfrom this going forward? fred: i believe the chinese leaders, economy leaders continue to have a commitment to thebeen the -- to deepen economic reform. in time, he may change -- in time, the parity may change. transparency and a level playing field.

so much going on. simple. the people in power have to much power. checks and balances. that is why the liberation is so important. -- deliberation is so important. romaine: now checking in on the markets right now, we are seeing nasdaq, and as having one of their best week's here. the nasdaq up 3.6%. yen losing ground against the dollar. let's look at commodities here because we saw a lot of equity. up almoste point was as much as 1% before falling. silverback about $15 for the first time since august. copper rising 1%. crude having a monster day. wti futures trading on the day. they rallied 7% earlier in the

session. percent.6/10 of a over the past four days, we had a big selloff on monday the day before christmas,. crude falling 6.7% on that particular day. now some reassurances for the market that opec may do good on the cuts. getting that rally today up about 7%.that is a look at the markets . from new york, this is bloomberg. ♪

carol: welcome to a special edition. we are back here in our multimedia studio in new york city. carol massar along with jason kelly, bloomberg businessweek on this wednesday right after christmas. the markets, we definitely have a very different tone here. wrist on again because we have a stock rally underway after a lot of selling on christmas eve. guest.ring in our you have seen a lot of rallies.

he joins us now from his offices in how many. great to have you here. happy holidays. talk to me about today. what is calmin investors downg? >> maybe in part i congratulate the president on his call, but really i think when you look at it very carefully, and i think i have done that, you rarely get a configuration likely have seen after the decline we saw on monday. ast i'm saying is sometimes an investor, a strategist, you look for emotional extremes. they have two parts. the market becomes very undervalued. i would argue based on the way i look at things that the market has not been this undervalued since the crash of 1987. it is significantly undervalued. the second thing you look for is you look for widespread pessimism. and you look at something as objective as the percentage of individual investors that are bearish or not bullish.

that is a very low number. so essentially, we have widespread pessimism and a market that is extremely undervalued. professional investors know that. they saw it. they started buying. it is a rare configuration of events. i think that is really what touched everything off. jason: talk to us about what you do as an investor in a case like this. what do you pare back? what do you add given this amount of volatility? what have you been doing, and what do you do in the short term? hugh: that is a good question, jason. it is because i'm somewhat optimistic. i still think this is just a correction. it is not a bear market. you cannot make the case for a recession. so what do you do when you are optimistic in a market is declining as it was until monday? the answer to that is you don't ignore. the one mistake you can make as an investor is to ignore trends that are unfolding in the markets. so what we did is we first of

all reduced our equity positions, not a lot, but we reduced our equity positions gradually since october. particularly in the so-called economically sensitive sectors of the market like technology. and we moved into some of the more, let's call it, safer sectors. they are more stable, like consumer staples, a little bit of health care, and certainly utilities. we got our defenses to response to trends in the markets but we did not reduce our equity exposure. overall equity exposure, asset allocation, all of that significant. we cap a fairly meaningful location but build our defenses by moving from economically sensitive sectors into defensive sectors. we get that and it has worked out well despite the fact i still think this is just simply a correction. carol: but with that outlook and that optimism that you say this is just a quick correction, why wouldn't you be getting into

some of those more economically connected stocks? the specially when you can buy them now kind of on a discount whether it is apple or amazon, take your pick? hugh: you asked a great question, when i'm very troubled by.the answer is , you probably wouldn't do that if you have a little more coverage than i do. let me just say that first of all when the trends in the markets were as bad as they were for the month of december, i have to respond to those trends.why ? wrong.because i could be it could be the start of a bear market accompanied by a recession. the case against that is a very strong case but i could be wrong.secondly , you see the performance of the markets themselves.not just that the market was going down , but the internal market variables like sector performance, the defensive sectors were doing well. you saw a performance of large small-cap, aming

clear sign investors are playing it safe. interest rates went down and you saw the yield curve tighten that some and quality spreads open up. all of these signs from the market say you better play it on the safe side because you could be wrong. it bothers me because you are right, some of these technology stocks industrial are really cheap now. jason: are there specific names you are looking at? i was reading some of your research. walmart is a name you like. we go into more of a cautious consumer environment. hugh: yes. that is a good example. it is walmart, cvs. i mentioned detroit edison. those are three names. why do we like them? defensive. are they work well if the market were to continue to decline if this was a bear market to be accompanied by a recession. they offer a pretty darn good 2%

plus well over 2% dividend yield. so you have the question. not a bad -- so you have that cushion. not a bad idea. if you cannot sleep at night or you are really scared about the current market environment, you should not be, but if you are, in a way to build defenses, get into the defensive sector and get into stocks with good dividend yields. they worked really well for us over the last three months. carol: you have seen a lot of up-and-down cycles. i don't want to aid you. we have talked many times over the years. it is a market getting back to normal. you have the fed getting off their unprecedented move during the financial crisis. we are seeing more normal volatility in the financial markets. is this more normal what we are seeing and this is where we want to be as investors ultimately? hugh: again, you hit the nail on the head. jason: you are killing it,

carol. carol: i had a good breakfast this morning. hugh: must have been wonderful. it is really simple. a great observation. we move from very low volatility, unusually low volatility, in 2016 and 2017. 2018, volatility has gotten to be much more normal. federal reserve policy leaning to restraint, raising interest rates, very normal stuff. we are getting back to something that looks a lot more normal. we are getting away from the emotional extreme, which was set on monday. 2019 might just turn out to be a far more normal economic and equity market environment, and people might prosper. not great, but they might prosper ok in 2019. this might be normal. good observation. carol: i think everybody would love normal in 2019. great to get some time with you. he is chairman and the chief

investment officer at hugh johnson advisors. that is a good point. jason: i think that a good point what a genius you are, because clearly he is turning to you for your market insight. carol: once in a while, you get it right. jason: i don't know what you ate for breakfast, but i need to get some of that. carol: watching the markets, retail moving ahead, which shows the strength of the consumer. that has been an interesting trend we have been following .we talk about how important the consumer is to the economy. jason: the collision of tech and retail is amazon. carol: coming up next, the latest from washington as the partial shutdown continues.in the next hour, or special edition of bloomberg businessweek continues. -- our special edition of bloomberg businessweek continues. ♪

carol: back in bloomberg headquarters in new york city.

i'm carol massar. we're doing a special edition of bloomberg businessweek. jason: i'm jason kelly. great to be with you. merry christmas. carol: merry christmas. jason: have not seen you in a few days. i was down south. one of the things we were talking about was shopping because it is christmas time, and i felt like as we unpacked things under the tree, so much amazon. carol: there was so much amazon. i keep saying to everyone that our default is "have you checked if it is on amazon? can you get it on amazon?" it will be important to see. we have strong numbers and we are seeing it play out in terms of the retail equity names, and we will see how much longer the consumer can keep spending. jason: i keep looking at what the most read stories are. beardom. the bank of carol: exactly. amazing how close we came to a

bear market for real very different tone in the trade in today's session because monday, we saw investors heading for the exit doors in every asset class and every industry. jason: it is a very busy day in the market and in the world of business so let's get a bloomberg business flash right now. thank you. here is your latest bloomberg business flash. exxon mobil is headed for its worst annual performance since 1981 even though shares were higher today. the oil giant is down 20% for the year and things can get even worse in 2019. the decline comes as exxon looks for one of its biggest restructuring in its history. the numbers signal waning demand as mortgage rates climb higher property values remain elevated. overall sales and building over showing recent signs of weakness. for the first time in 30 years, japan will resume commercial whale hunting.

japan announcing today it is leaving the international whaling commission but says it will no longer go to the antarctic for its heavily criticized annual killing. the country switching to so-called research whaling after a moratorium was imposed in the 1980's on commercial whaling. they say stocks are high enough to resume the hunt. how are things looking in the markets right now? romaine: thanks. right now, checking the market, things are pretty good. if you look at the dow, s&p, and nasdaq, 3%. this is the biggest gain we have seen since the summer of 2015. should these percentage gains hold on the day. the dow and s&p and nasdaq moving higher. we are seeing alphabet, facebook, amazon, all of the big heavyweight names led this market higher during the bull market. amazon about 7.4%.

the main index that tracks them was down on the year prior to today. most of those names still down on the year but at least for today, getting a little bit of a reprieve. the index about 5%. that is a look at the markets. carol: you are up-to-date on the world of business and a look at today's trading session. now let's look into the bond and treasury trade. bloomberg news global up in our editor with us along with our senior u.s. economist from bloomberg economics. kathleen, let's kick it off with you. interesting to watch the market action on monday. tell me about the treasury trade today. >> what is interesting about the treasury trade today is that to a certain extent, it is all about the stock market because now you have stocks roaring back. surprised when you fall off a cliff, you did something to balance on, of course. futures in chicago.

we have the 10-year note, the benchmark now down a full house point. 2.795. it is not just the fact that stocks have rebounded. a five-year option today, and it did not do so well, but the reason why it did not do well at all, there was a big tail from where the highest bid to the lowest bid was. bidd more but a lot people down for me. that is part of it. to cover was the lowest since 2009. if i'm buying bonds right now, why be aggressive? you have a rally. you don't know where you are or if the fed is going to signal when we get to january, do we really have pause? carol: is that volume because of the holiday week? >> that has to be part of it, but it is not like a five-year

option comes out of nowhere. i think when you see these , it is a small measure it mayufacturing, but not just be the recession but are tariffs starting to hit? trump's self-inflicted economic damage can cause the fed to pause. this damage has to do with him criticizing jay powell, saying the fed does not know what it is doing because more than one person has been quoted saying you may not agree with the fed and what they are doing, but what would bother you even more is a loss of the independence. jason: come in here because i feel like a lot of us are just getting back to work after christmas. maybe i'm speaking for myself. >> some people were here. jason: carol has been working hard.

i'm still digesting, literally and figuratively, but i think all of the commentary over the weekend, steve mnuchin coming up, the president leading, as you and the team take stock of this as it were, i know we are talking about bonds, but what does it tell you about the economy, if anything, and maybe the divergence of perception and the real data that you guys study? >> i don't think it tells us much about the economy really. the comments, basically these people came out trying to save the markets i guess from the previous comments. the previous comments were really damaging. you look at it and see how much impact the president's comments have the market. carol: let's dig a little bit into this because the president saying the things he is saying, uncertainty can certainly cause ceos to slow down on capital

expenditures and hiring more people. lower in terms of corporate earnings and slower growth so in other words, this could ultimately happen. you vote this getting to start raining in your forecasts for 2019? yelena: uncertainty is a powerful force. if it is prolonged and starting to impact the sentiment, this could be damaging for sure. especially if you see business investment is already slowing. we saw a slowdown in business investment. are we going to see the same thing in the fourth quarter? what happens going into the next year? will companies continue to invest? that is the big question. the problem is economic growth now is concentrated. in theoncentrated consumer sector. it is not broad-based. think another issue here is trying to figure out what this bear market stock means.

we have alluded to it again today, but the nasdaq is still down 20%. peak atake it from the little bit earlier in the beginning of the quarter, you are closer to that. >> we are still up since president trump came to office. -- bsolutely, 70%. 17%. say justill look and because what we see now is not a signal that things are going to get worse next year, they look at that and say to themselves, is the market telling us something? that is the most basic question of all. the problem with the mnuchin step people -- stuff, people are saying, why? no need to do that. we will see how we had. -- we end. carol: we have 40 seconds left. some economic news.

: the government shutdown is delaying a look at the economic release so we will not get new home sales. we are going to see some delays going forward, but i think today was an interesting one, and that tells you something. we should continue to watch indicators like that to see if this this uncertainty is building. jason: thank you both for bringing us up-to-date on another part of a very volatile market. time now for a check on the headlines. uma: thank you. i have a bloomberg first word news. a surprise for the troops with president trump now in iraq in a visit to say merry christmas to the armed forces. the president taking it clear he has no plans to remove the troops from the country but he wants to get u.s. soldiers home from syria.

basecan still be used as a for attacks against islamic state bulletins. in other news, martial law now lifted into regions around the ukraine. president announcing his decision today, saying the ukrainian army has strengthened its differences, but he cautioned that the eastern border remains tense. they introduced martial law following the naval clash last year with their soviet neighbor. testifying in the retrial of charges related to prison breaks at the height of the 2011 uprising. mubarak ruledd egypt for nearly two decades and could be seen walking into the courtroom with a cane along with his two sons. but wasrose to power toppled a year later after army to to the

remove him. a volcano trickling an respect this morning that injured at least 10 people. villagers were forced to flee their homes as the eruption created a 4.2 magnitude quake. the highway was closed for inspection. global news 24 hours a day on air and on tictoc on twitter powered by more than 2700 journalists and analysts in over 120 countries. this is bloomberg. romaine: thank you. the lastity of financial meltdown proving to be one of the best places to hide this downturn. we are joined now by the bloomberg news credit reporter in our washington bureau. we have been talking a lot today about amazon and all the holiday shopping and just the strength of the consumer, but i was reading one of your stories, and it appears that the strength of the consumer is something the debt market figured out a wireless. >> yes.

to many of the investors i speak to will look at things like mortgages and ability to pay back student debt. this is kind of old news. they have seen a lot strength in consumers in the past couple of years now. the past decade of really low interest rates have been really good news to consumers. because they were able to refinance their debt and make their interest payments a lot were manageable. how does that compare with what we are seeing on the corporate debt side because that seems to fall in our favor? >> we have seen a tale of two markets. takenate companies have the opportunity to load up on that and in many cases are maybe lower rated now we're having more trouble sort of servicing their debt loads, and that is in contrast to the consumer that remains a lot more stable and sort of cautious. i think the recession scared consumers, and they are really cognizant of what their debt loads are and what they are able to pay. romaine: that is interesting.

we have a graphic on the screen showing returns and places investors have sought out. 11 percent is nonagency mortgage-backed securities, which strikes me as kind of odd that would be one of the best returning assets across all asset classes, right? : right. it is a surprise. these are the ones that got beat down the last crisis. a couple of things going on here. higher housing prices have been good for homeowners. that passes on to investors. the bonds from 2005 2007, we are not making any more of those so as they pay down, the get scarcer and investors know they buy so that supply and demand story and a really good for the investors i talked to. romaine: not only are performing this year, but we go back past thee or four years, you see

stuff that is not backed by the government outperforming again the broader equity market and a lot of other asset classes, so this is kind of the secret that some folks figured out a while ago. definitely. it has been four or five years of strong performance ever since the economy started to come back. it has been a good place to hide out. the investors i speak to save there is some education -- say there is education they have to do. they are saying the consumer is really healthy and they can pay their mortgage and that is why we really like these bonds right now. romaine: talk to me going back to corporate approximately spreads we are seeing on high-yield bonds versus investment-grade bonds and sort of what that means. e: we have seen spread widening in recent days. i think that has been a bit of investor caution about the credit corporate landscape, wondering, are these companies going to continue to from tax reform

and fears about global growth playing out. we will see those. a strong day in the equity markets today. a lot of times that means a strong day for high heels. romaine: that a certain -- a strong day for high yields. romaine: that is certain. thank you for giving us more insight into what is going on in the high-yield bond market. it is a look at the markets. from new york, this is bloomberg . ♪

up in our are caught top business headlines in our trading session. this is a special edition of bloomberg businessweek from our multimedia studio in new york. carol massar with jason kelly live. let's talk more about the market because we have to. it is such a different trade from what we had on christmas eve on monday. we are pretty much a request levels of the day so take a look at your major equity averages. we are of 2% on the dow. we are up about 3.2% as well on

the s&p 500. the nasdaq, those tech names really leading the charge up about 4.1%. if you drill a little deeper into the s&p and the major industry groups, you can see every major industry in the average is higher in today's session. consumer discretionary, energy, and information technology, those groups are each up more than 4% in today's session in leading the charge today. bign: i was looking at a leaders in the s&p and they are exactly the mix you talk about. the number one gainer is up 10%. .ut also kohl's that is the third biggest gainer up 9%. we have to say that part of what has been driving the markets backwards and forwards is politics. carol: comments out of washington. jason: comments out of washington, whether that is for president trump himself or from his treasury secretary or from

his chief economic advisor. so let's dig into that with alix. he joins us from washington, helping lead all of our coverage down here. great to see you. >> great to see you again. jason: what is the big headline contributing to this run, in your estimation? >> the president advised investors to buy the dip yesterday. that and have something to do with it. he literally set it is the fall in the stock market on monday presented a buying opportunity so i guess people are listening to him. carol: really, it is kind of fascinating. we know the president has been watching the equity markets. we heard it over the last year or year-and-a-half saying look at how great things are. aremarket is up and things going well, and we did not here to much about it on monday when the stocks were selling off. tell me what is going on in washington because it has been a very interesting week here in terms of the president tweeting actively and often whether it is about jay powell, whether it is

about the outlook and what is going on. what is going on internally within the white house? the president considered the stock market to be a barometer of his performance and is rightly concerned that any stumble in the economy could doom whatever chance of reelection he's got. rabidolitical base is but not a majority of voters so he needs a strong economy to power him into reelection in two years. carol: who got into his ear? was a cap hassett, steve mnuchin? we heard from steve mnuchin and his future but we got confirmation he seems to be ok in terms of the news coming out of the white house, but who is the president listening to? hassett has some influence. he was out this morning reassuring investors that jerome powell will not be fired

and there is no liquidity crisis at the treasury secretary suggested on sunday, but the president spent a lot of time on the phone with rich friends. about whatever, politics, the economy, what is going on in the world. i would just assume those people are giving him some advice on whether he's got the right people in the right jobs. jason: one of the things the investors do not seem that concerned about at least at the moment is this partial government shutdown, which we are president say on this unannounced visit to iraq is going to keep going as long as he does not get what he wants in terms of border funding. bring us up to speed on the shutdown negotiations, if there are any at this moment. investors areod not concerned about it because there is not much concern in washington either. there is nothing going on today. the president flew to iraq about one hour or two ago.

a surprise visit unannounced until he had gotten there. he is not negotiating on the shutdown right now. in iraq to our reporters the shutdown will last as long as it takes. he is going to insist on getting money for his border wall. he did not say if he came down from his $5 billion ask, but the democrats are countering with zero. the two sides are a long way to our. carol: how is it change in the new year?a split congress . alex: democrats have more leverage in the new year. the democrats will almost certainly pass legislation from a probably the first thing they do, to reopen the government with no money for the border wall. they will send that to the senate, and the senate have to do something with it. the senate has passed legislation to give the government running without changing current funding levels, what we call a continuing resolution around here. he has refused to take up under paul ryan but it might under nancy pelosi. jason: speaking briefly about

the administration and its personnel, the president saying he would keep an acting secretary of different skin place, replacing james mattis, at least on a temporary basis. of course, james mattis being excused earlier that he planned to leave by the president. any other personnel things we need to be concerned about how worrying about? carol alluded to this earlier. others under threat by some reports. what are you hearing? alex: it has died down for now. a couple of people said to be on the chopping block are supposed to go to davos with the president next month, including wilbur ross and steve mnuchin, so those two guys seem to be safe. i think kristen nielsen is going to dock was with them, the secretary.curity they seem to be sent in their jobs for now, but this is donald trump. things can change in a heartbeat. carol: that's for sure.

thank you so much. our bloomberg white house team leader from our studios in d.c. financial markets, we have stocks taking another leg higher. 3.4% higher on the s&p and dow. now looking at a gain of 4.3% higher on the nasdaq. the s&p rallying for the most since august of 2015. definitely seeing some broad-based buying in today's section. -- session. coming up, more about the market. this is bloomberg businessweek. ♪

this is bloomberg business flash. nissan updating its corporate governance code. two companies holds stakes in each other.

they will examine whether the purchase of -- purpose of each holding is appropriate and whether the benefits and risks cover the cost of capital. nissan is holding a 50% stake in run out. ceo says the -- speaking to reporters in moscow. he is discussing his industry stuck -- struggles. he says that under a conservative scenario, he sees oil prices hovering between $50 and $53 per barrel. .old is rallying bullion climbing is much tenths of a percent today. that extends at week's gained. havengs in gold etf's expanded by more than 100 tons.

>> christopher aleman says he does not see a recession coming. he spoke to caroline hyde last week and talked about the signs he sees in the economy. i cannot predict with the latter half of 2019 will do. gdp to a go from a 3% negative that quickly. it is all about the u.s. consumer. the government shutdown, all of these things, the tweets going on. what i am watching is how it affects the consumer on the ground. the retail sales numbers are going to show that it is pretty positive. maybe a 2% growth rate which should hold us through. the wintertime is always tough. we will have to see. ofewhere in the latter part 2019 or 2020, maybe. it doesn't mean we have to have

a recession. >> i know it is semantics. saying orangeare lights are flashing. >> we see a rainbow of lights. we put out an economic stamp from our desk. it was green, yellow, and red. we sent that to the board. we have seen that since september. although the economy was producing numbers of 3%, we saw caution flags showing up. we are at full employment. caution flags are there. the economy is not going to go through the roof, but it is still strong. >> that was christopher aleman. let's get another check on the markets. s&p are allsdaq and up over 3%. sincee for the next day 2016. the russell 2000 is up more than 4%.

since 2011. them a lot of that is being led by energy shares. was500 energy index, that up several percent today. a lot of gains in exxon mobil, conoco as well as other major oil companies. let's take a look at those names. chesapeake energy, and exxon mobil are up. the others are also moving higher. this is one of the worst performing sectors on the year in the s&p 500 but today, the second-best performing sector. we are seeing crude oil rise today and that has a lot to do with it. again, a good day across the markets as we head towards the close.

wee of the best gains that have seen since 2015. the dow, s&p, and nasdaq are all up over 4% right now. >> markets rallying this wednesday. welcome back to bloomberg businessweek. joining us also is our editor. repeating the markets because we have seen a rally today. have 26 minutes today in the trading session. the s&p 500 is up 3.8%. oft's the most since august 2015. the dow is also moving ahead 807 points. the nasdaq a gain of 4.6%.

that's the best day since august of 2011. about the metals and mining industries. looking, gold is soaring. it is set for the biggest monthly gain in two years. providing momentum there. remind us what 2018 look like. >> 2018 has been a rough year when you are looking at the mining stocks. u.s. steel down more than 40% this year. alcoa is also having a lot of trouble. there is a lot of uncertainty. it is uncertainty that we have all been talking about for well over a month. thatonfluence of things

have happened has really left the stocks, especially the ones who should have benefited from tariffs, wondering if there is real worry about demand destruction coming in the u.s. economy and even abroad. >> i want to ask more about the steel stocks. about them shortly after the tariffs were in place. u.s. steel has been clobbered this year. they were underperforming even since then peaking in march and sliding nonstop. why haven't the tariffs and more of a benefit to this company? >> this is something we have talked about before. analyst put this simply. said, it was a buy the rumor sell the fact thing. -- that willget

hit in a positive way for all of the steelmakers. once that is priced in, you can figure that out over the long term. then, everybody in the market comes back to judging the fundamentals of the companies. you will see u.s. steel taking a hit this year. getting hitation is a lot less. they are still having a tough year, but they are getting hit less. when you were talking about this, it was core fundamentals. when you get out, there are these questions coming into the economy. is there real concern that instead of 24 months of growth, we will only have 18 months of growth?

that is something that starts hitting these guys that you see in the stocks. >> joe i have to ask you, i am not sure everyone expected the rally to accelerate like it did. what do you owe that to? >> we started off green and quickly went red. everyone had the same feeling. here we go again. i don't think there is any fundamental news that makes today any different than monday was. other than, at some point you get days like this even in the downturn. one thing i will see people say today is even the rally feels like a bear market. if you think of past bear

markets, you had days like this interspersed in there. it was a 6% update. that was in 2008. it doesn't feel like the kind of thing that is going to sustain itself. , but it feels like the kind of thing that happens in the context of a down day. >> we have also had some significant corrections and rallied again. post to a, we came bear market. >> we will continue this conversation focusing on the markets and continuing to track the trade in today's session. it is time now for a check on the business headlines. >> president trump vowing to stand firm telling reporters that he will do whatever it takes to get funding for border security.

he declined to say what amount of funding he would accept in a deal to end the shutdown. the president and missus troop -- trump surprised american troops today. talks with the taliban to address afghanistan security challenges. aat is according to representative of the ayatollah. afghanistan's presidential election will be postponed for several months. officials say they need more time to fix technical problems. afghanistan's election commission wants to verify voter lists and train staff on an identification system designed to reduce fraud. forvote was initially set april. ofoutback of -- of brief ebola in the congo will push back an election there.

hundreds of people have been infected. the vote has already been put off for more than two years. parties are saying they will not accept any further delays. global news 24 hours a day and at tictoc on twitter powered by more than 2700 journalists and analysts in more than 120 countries. this is bloomberg. >> checking on the markets. afterafter the selloff we had on christmas eve, we are having a good day today. all of the major averages are up 4%. the nasdaq is having its best day since august of 2011. for more to talk about what is going on in the markets including the surge, let's bring

in our guest. is a pretty astonishing day. i wonder what do you think are the main catalyst sparked this rally? >> if you are looking for a catalyst, some people are pointing to the assurance that jerome powell's job is safe. others are pointing to instances of president trump saying value and says are attractive. for the most part, people are saying if you look at the stoxx , itthrough christmas eve was the worst christmas eve session ever. oversold andmely very do for a bounce. this clearly counts as a bounce. is thisuestion is, bounce going to hold? we did see the president come out and say to america to buy

the dip. time thatt the first we have had a president wade into the waters of stock market performance and offer his outlook on where he thinks the market should be. onpresident obama came out march 3 just before the march 9 bottom in 2009 and said the same type of thing. valuations look attractive. then, the market rallied. if investors had bought, they would have experienced a gain. they be it is to just coincidence today. is this rally sustainable? many investors say probably not. on the s&p 500, that is not common. is, wet of the matter

are in a volatile market. >> thought it was interesting that when you go back to obama's comments in 2009, that was in the middle of a bear market. here, we have trump's comments. the circumstances are different. i wonder how much investor sentiment and psychology can be government we have a that is willing to rally the market. >> this could also be seen as two different scenarios. when obama said it, it was at the beginning stage of a new bull market. you also have two different scenarios with that president obama did not comment on the stock market too much. not nearly as much as president trump has. president trump also comes out on twitter. he says it in interviews and

almost as a barometer of his success. you have to think about it in that way as well. some investors have said in the past that we have learned to ignore the tweets. ist makes you also question this the market listening to him this time around? >> thank you. coverage of the market rally is coming up next from new york. this is bloomberg. ♪

>> we have seen the s&p jump for its best rally since 2015. the averages are hovering since -- four our best level since the session. the dow is up 4.3%. same percentage game for the s&p 500. you have the nasdaq, again a

5.1%. -- can see the dow definitely the risk on trade. >> an amazing run especially when it comes to tech. continues. now, it is driving the day again. >> tech is having a really strong day. the other thing i will note, i don't know if it's good or bad. if it tells you about the vibe that we are seeing in the market. say this is,to there are some less than quality names having huge days. groupon, blue apron. i am not saying they are bad but these are stocks that have been disliked by the market. they are having huge bounces today. this goes back to what i was

saying earlier about a bull rally. when you are seeing huge surges in these names that you forgot a long time ago, is this going to be sustainable? it is something to take note of. >> what do you make of today's trade? some of these random names that are really bouncing back in today's session. >> it was an interesting day. a lot of things turned. year or so, a lot of investors have been giving policymakers in general the benefit of the doubt. now, there is the burden of doubt.

no, things have shifted. i think that around the g20 meeting when president trump started tweeting about the trade deal but then later on, administration officials talking about there was not a deal or they didn't know what it was, i think that installed a lot of skepticism and a lot of people. there is the burden of doubt. it sounds to me like joe has made up his mind. because iallenge that think a lot of the action over the last few weeks was just driven by some of the shift in sentiment. the skepticism -- skepticism. 2019, my friends are forecasting a share growth next year for the s&p 500 companies. on thats here based number look attractive. for longer-term positioning, i am not sure that the bull market is completely over. i would not write it off.

>> i have not made up my mind about everything. i am just a neutral journalist. one thing that caught my eye today was the richmond fed number taking. you worry about spillover from market volatility tightening financial conditions feeding through to the real economy and ultimately those earnings forecast for next year? >> i don't worry about it at this point. having these sporadic episodes of volatility can get on your radar. has it affected lending conditions? maybe that is one of the reasons why steve mnuchin had contacted the number of banking executives. i have no insight about those conversations but it would make sense markets are going down, what is going on with the credit spread? i am not sure if the evidence is

there that there is any spillover from wall street to main street this point. as long as banks are still increasing lending to small and medium-size enterprises into the household sector which it looks like they are prone to doing, i don't think there is going to be much spillover. >> we were talking with the head of our white -- white house coverage earlier. he was saying that the shutdown is not a topic of interest in washington the moment. it doesn't seem to be concerning investors. what do you make of it? the government is partially shut down in the united states with the president saying he will keep it closed until he gets -- gets what he wants. >> that is something i noticed early in his administration. willingness to take things to the break. to shut down the government. it isn't a case that we haven't really had.

surprise me too much. very little should surprise us. if they don't get a deal for the new congress is sworn into session, what does that mean for the duration of the next shut down? this when they have not paid attention to because it is a partial shutdown. also, it is not associated with the debt ceiling debate. aink about 2011, that was shut down plus the debt ceiling issue. that issue is not there yet. it might get there, especially if you think about the dynamics between the house and the senate and the white house as it relates to september when more spending bills will be expiring and we might have to deal with the debt situation. >> i wanted to mention some headlines. the u.s. and china are said to

schedule mid-level trade talks in january. one representative will lead the delegation to beijing. this is a good point. talked a lot about trade. if we see a resolution in terms of u.s. and china, this is a big deal for investors. this would calm the uncertainty in the marketplace. >> i think it would calm some of the uncertainty but not all of it. the latest piece of uncertainty is whether or not trump will continue to attack the federal reserve. trade was one of the biggest issues but now we have another one. what would that mean if there is more pressure put on chairman powell to resign? who would take his place? maybe someone else would be more sympathetic with trump when it

comes to setting policy. --irman powell will reserve defend the reserve. it would probably help the emerging markets most. if the fed comes under attack, that will be bearish for the dollar. >> we should point out that americans -- that dollar takes up another leg on that news. thank you for joining us. we have much more ahead on the market rally. you are listening to a special edition of bloomberg businessweek. ♪

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romaine: three of the major averages and had to be heading to their biggest point gain and are having their best day since 2009. march 2009 was the same month this bull market started. all 30 stocks in the dow jones industrial average are higher on the day. if you take a look at the s&p 500, one stock is closing down. of the other stocks in the index are higher. if we moved to some of the sectors, we can see that every sector in the green. energy is leading the charge, up about 6%. alsomer discretionary is up about 6%. we see information technology, communication sector, up more than 5%. dow is adding more than 500 points.

amazon shares, one of the big gainers on the day, we see them rise about 9.5% at the close. back above the 1400 level. a lot of this has to do with some of the enthusiasm with regards to some of the online sales numbers we are getting. then we take a look at other kholesers like coals -- and macy's up. nike got to rally after starting last week. the buy, one of brick-and-mortar retailers that's really appears to be hanging in there, up about 6.9% on the day. ups, fedex, having wonderful days here. if you are a payment processor, this is the time of year you want to do well. these up 7% and mastercard up 6%. anyone who is doubting the rally, we had about 9 billion shares trade across u.s. exchanges on the day that

typically is one of the lowest volume days of the year. that's well above the year-to-date average, which is normally about 7 billion shares. that is look at the market. >> live in new york city, this is a special edition a bloomberg bateson quake -- businessweek. let's get on today's market. we had quite a rally. definitely the risk trade on. we take a look at the s&p 500, almost every name in the index is higher. 504 to be exact. we definitely saw a broad-based rally. when you look at the trade today in contrast to what we got on monday -- joe: we got the headline late in the day that we dreaded about the scheduling for mid-level talks. you wonder if there is a trump put in this market. people talk about the fed or

powell put, but we know this president cares a lot about the stock market. each week about it and talks about it -- he tweeted about it and talks about it a lot. tother that spurs him release good news about mnuchin and powell, to dial back the rhetoric, this is a big deal for him. even though we don't get the feedback that some traders might like from powell and the rest of the fed, we kind of get it from this white house, given the sensitivity of the administration from day-to-day. carol: does that mean we can make the jump that president trump will back off on his tweets about the fed? joe: no. it's a one-day thing and we are back to where we were on most indices. huge, but, it's not can you get some sort of short term tone change out of the white house? >> one thing i do think about,

and i go back to a conversation you and i had with a number of people talking about sentiment around holidays. it was the context last year about bitcoin. people are altogether, -- joe: they're all talking stocks this year. >> right. wife down it at lante, my and i met with our financial advisor and talked about college savings and retirement. these are the conversations people are having and they do wonderful for people working today. i have beenng thinking about a lot is that we know the modern passive investor -- people don't think they can beat the market anymore. very few people by individual stocks. don't thinkpeople they can time the market either, and they have been conditioned to think every dip -- the sensible thing to be would be to sell the dip and not by the dip. people get nervous, but everyone

wants to be the wise long-term thinking. we have hammered it into people's mines that every dip is a buying opportunity. >> absolutely. we talk to our kids about this idea of in it for the long haul. carol: for decades. atthe meantime, i'm looking some of these stories out of the bloomberg. we talk about insider buying surging to an eight year high. going back to these interesting metrics from 2008. i think we got confirmation, and you will have to help me out, but i think the dow, s&p, and nasdaq, we have seen the biggest move going back to march of 09. that is when we saw the equity market bottom out. the beginning of the bull run, that is 10 years and counting. >> we should talk about some of the names driving this, being amazon the one i have been obsessed -- been obsessed with.

it does not caps on late what people are talking about. it goes to people's habits and captures the tech side and retail side as well. amazonr a company like and a company like salesforce, which is up today, the stories, maybe the bloom has come off of the rose little bit since this year.s we're -- but the stories about the growing dominance don't seem busted. has there been anything with amazon that come out to make them less likely to dominate retail in the future or that the cloud -- has there been anything about salesforce making things people think they will not move more enterprise software to the cloud? carol: amazon is growing the revenues 31% year-over-year. joe: so the stock has gotten clobbered and you have to respect that, but for some of these stories, it's interesting

8% facebook, who did well up today. people are buying everything today. carol: jason mentioned amazon. closing near nine and a half percent. netflix is up 8.5%. we can even take a look at google. that stock was up 6.5%. investors were buying in even if they were concerned about the last earnings where they said maybe growth was different. joe: i was talking to one investor who said you have to kind of buy. either this is a great opportunity, or you are going down with the ship like everyone else. if you don't buy now, when will you buy? whereght get to a time you are buying and you are a hero, we crash, and capitalism ends, but when it's not, this is what you are supposed to buy. jason: i keep going back to something that you say carol, corporate earnings.

of weeks fromuple now that we start to get the actual color of the actual companies about how their sales are, whether terex and trade worries are playing through, or whether they are continuing to see the strong consumer spending. all of those things, that feels like it will be the test. carol: that is crucial in terms of hearing corporate executives and whether they will do with either capital expenditures -- jason: you are right. i totally agree with what i was saying. carol: [laughter] and we start to see revolution -- resolution on the trade war. joe: mid-level talks, i doubt this is where they will solve the huge questions over tech transfer and all of the really thorny topics, but if they can make some progress, if they can take the tail risk off of the table, if the increased tariffs can be kicked out for another 90 or 180 days, these are headlines

that trump would like to see happen, investors would like to see happen. if the criticism of the federal reserve could come off a little bit, then, it's easy to see where people can imagine the same thing where stocks are cheaper right now. carol: certainly something we will keep tracking. the key thing will be, once everybody comes back to washington, whether or not what happens in terms of the government shutdown and whether or not we see resolution on that, which has been another key issue. another rally on this wednesday. let's get a check on your business headlines and the trading numbers. 5% higher on the dow, s&p, and nasdaq. hello everybody. i have your first word news. bloomberg has learned united states will be holding trade talks with china next month. sources telling bloomberg that the deputy u.s. trading official will lead that in beijing.

the meeting will be the first face-to-face scotch and two sides have held between xi jinping and president trump agreeing to a temporary truce in argentina. is asking his judge for permission to travel between washington dc and rhode island where he has a home. the judge ordered flint to stay within 50 miles of washington, beginning january 4. that was imposed after flint and his lawyers requested a delay in his sentencing hearing so he could continue cooperating with prosecutors. the white house said's jerome --ell -- said's drum hous jerome powell's job is safe. north and south korea is staging its groundbreaking ceremony today to upgrade several railings between the two nations.

long installed plans to restore connecting wall planes -- railways severed by the korean war happened earlier this year. global news, 24 hours a day on air and on tictoc on twitter, powered by more than 2700 journalists and analysts in more than 120 countries. pemmaraju and this is bloomberg. dudley spoke to bloomberg in an exclusive interview one day after the fed decision. our local -- kathleen hays asked dudley if conditions are at the correct level right now. >> financial conditions until october, hadn't tightened at all , even as the fed was raising short-term interest rates. the dollar was not doing much, the monetaryf policy tightening, that's only work by tightening financial conditions.

that was not getting traction at all until october 1. the fact that the fed to seeing tightening of financial conditions, i don't think that is a problem. that will only be a problem if it become so severe that it has too big of an effect. >> let's talk about the neutral rate because that has faded from major focus it had. it was not even brought about the press conference with jay powell following the meeting. the viewne were of that the neutral rate should be overshot a bit because unemployment is so low. do you still feel that? >> i think i'm pretty much where the fo key -- foc consensus is where inflation could creep 2%, and the fed will move to a slightly restrictive monetary policy in response. short-termnk interest rates will rise above what is neutral. the problem is, we don't know neutral. you saw the story yesterday that

people lowered their estimate of what they thought the long-term federal funds rate was. people's view of neutral changes as financial conditions changes. he tighten financial conditions and you will have a different view of what is neutral in terms of short-term rates. kathleen: do think the market mixed -- missed some of those dovish things the fed said? himself was at the bottom of the range of neutral rate estimates. bill: i thought the fed definitely moved in a dovish direction. what the fed did not give the markets was a sense they would definitely pause on this timetable, number one. that becausenot do they don't know when they will pause. it depends on how the economic data unfolds. any reliefidn't give on the balance sheet. for some reason, people thought because of some of the things

that were written in editorials about the balance sheet, that the fed would pull back from the balance sheet. the fed is very far away from doing anything to balance sheet policy. said, the economy would have to we can to the point where the fed was playing short-term rate cuts or enacting short-term rate cuts to put the public balance sheet on hold. romaine: that was the former new york fed president speaking exclusively to bloomberg. day in the huge markets. 48 hours ago, a lot of folks were declaring the beginning of a bear market. ofcks today are posting one their biggest percentage gains in the bull market since march of 2009. the dow, nasdaq, and s&p all up about 5%. take a look at some of the sectors. consumer discretionary is up 6% on the day, and even names like health care, financials, they managed to finish up the day about 4.6%.

take a look at what we saw in currencies. this was an interesting move. the dollar gained about 3/10 of 1%. look at the yen-dollar trade. the yen weakened against the dollar for the first time in about eight sessions. these are the two big haven currencies. on a day like today when you have equities rising as much as they do, we see the havens fall out of favor. that's a look at the markets. from new york, this is bloomberg. ♪ ♪

specialelcome back to a edition of "bloomberg businessweek" live on bloomberg radio and bloomberg tv in new york city. let's recap what we saw in the markets. the s&p 500 up 5%, the highest level since -- in at least a year. it follows previous sessions decreasing 2.7%. a different tone in the market.

let's remind everyone that we are still down for the year. joe: and this extraordinary rally gets us to where we were last friday or last thursday. it is not to diminish it, but more to put it in the context of you get such steep selloffs after day. that is what characterized the market. it was not like we had a crazy volatility spike like february, it was moderates volatility, but unrelenting selloff. eventually, you get a snap. we have seen it with stocks rallying in the last 10 days, and then we have a down day. today was the reverse. jason: volatility is nowhere to be found today. carol: down about 15.7%. see volatility move around a lot depending on the sentiment of the day. joe: it is elevated, no doubt. today, it felt like panic buying. maybe people are feeling like i missed the bottom.

we got the stats about the biggest mutual fund outflows. we are seeing extreme behaviors in either direction, whether it is up or down, it is not like the good old days in 2016 where the fed muted gains. carol: i wonder about the mathematical formulas. they go into effect when you're moving up higher. we went to 2400 and whether or not something kicked in and you saw increased buying. jason: i will take a hard pivot here. carol: something we love to talk about. jason: except for the fact that people are talking about stocks, they have also been eating a lot and thinking about 19, getting fed, and we all love to talk this. paul o'reilly joins us now and ziamo.founder and ceo of we talk a lot of about fitness

here. lifestyleng into a where people are thinking about it all the time, including at work and companies are thinking more and more about it. as we get into a different economy, how does this play into what's consumers are thinking and what companies are thinking? paul: it's interesting because companies should be thinking about it. most of their assets and the companies are their employees. when you think about productivity, profitability, that is where you should be focus on. when you look at employers, what is the largest salary? -- largest cost? its salary. a healthy employee base, that's will help your bottom line, your employees, and all sorts of things. that scenario, which in many ways has been neglected, if you look at the workforce today, it is made above millennials and jen z different -- gen z.

today, what have you got on the fitness market? the big market is a club industry, which is the one that has not changed for corporate in the last 20 years. what has changed is the boutique market. jason, you know about that. joe: is there any risk of getting boutique gymed out? there are so many and new options all the time. i used to live in austin, and i was there over the weekend. ,here is all of these gyms, clubs, and classes. there was kickboxing over the weekend. do you ever worry we are reaching a point of saturation? paul: that's a good question. the boutique market has been growing quickly. what is a grocer quickly? you can set up basically your own studio in a relatively small space, and you have the backend of mind and body which just got taken out.

it's quite easy to do. for the club industry, members of gyms, that is a big part of the market, which is not changed much. very fragmented. and for an employer, how does that give access to your employees. you have to aggregate these jim gym contracts and give it to your employees. our ability is to bring more people into the fitness industry with employees offering access to clubs. carol: talk a little bit about your model. there's no memberships, contracts, joining fees. it is an app and you can axis gyms across the country. it's great if you travel because you don't have to have the membership to access the gym. paul: we have spent the last two years and continued to do show with negotiation with the club industry. is big on thetry model -- membership

model. that's a great model, but people want choice. they don't want to be stuck in one particular club. if you are traveling, you live , we havework in b created a platform in an industry highly fragmented. carol: talk about the growth fundamentals, and the number of people who let signed on in the metrics you are following. recently lost our corporate offering, but we have got some of the largest man amid -- management in the world, largest investment banks, and we are broadening. we are in the thousands, but not actually in the millions. we're looking to bring more people into the club. we are partnering with clubs and offering a very easy formula for corporate's. if you are a cfo, ceo, or human resources, it's a great way to make it easy. jason: there's a lot more to

come. this is something that is happening all over the country. we thought about this a lot in the big coastal areas, but to was in atlanta and there is a flywheel, soul cycle, various boot camps, and people are liking it. paul o'reilly, thank you very much for your time. more to calm as we get into this holiday week. from new york. this is bloomberg. ♪

>> we're having quite a day in the markets here in the u.s. we saw the nasdaq, the dow, and the s&p post some of the biggest gains they've had since the bull market, 48 hours after everyone was saying we were headed into a bear market. we will have to see if these gains last. onzon really led the charge

some strong consumer spending data, giving a list, of course asweigh fair -- wayfair well. we saw a lot of payment processors posting pretty strong gains again. mastercard has data out showing about a 5.1 increase in holiday spending year over year, and it was not just confined to retail. we saw facebook and a lot of big move higher. adobe systems, there were some pretty strong and bullish commentary about a lot of the .loud computing stocks basically these computing companies would be able to weather any sort of downturn in the economy, and you have to look at the energy names. we had a monster day here with regard to crude oil, reversing a lot of the losses we solve reversing -- reversing a lot of the losses we saw on monday. that's a look at the markets from new york. this is bloomberg. ♪

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>> hello, everybody. shares of kohl's climbing today, investors encouraged by more signs that consumers spend big during the holiday shopping season. amazon reporting a record-breaking holiday season. has apartment so chain partner with the online giant that lets amazon customers returned items at some holes stores, a program designed to return items at some kohl's stores. here in new york, the top 10

apartment sales for the year have combined to top $500 .illion that may sound high, but those numbers, believe it or not, are down significantly from the previous three years. in 2018, 8 of the top 10 sales were heavily discounted from their. that may sound high, but those numbers, believe original price. for more on amazon, let's welcome in bloomberg news managing editor crayton harrison. we had pretty strong industry data about consumer spending, and that seemed to spark a rally not only an amazon but a lot of retail stocks. i wonder, this holiday season, can we really trust these numbers? is it too early to celebrate? >> i don't think so. even when we looked at black friday data, it was pretty good, lower than expected, but that's partially because consumer spending is sort of spread out

throughout the holiday season. after thanksgiving, people a couple of days before christmas are still buying things. we are starting to see it is more even across the board, but as we have gone through recent numbers that have been consistently very good, i think that would continue. >> this is really the first holiday season where we have seen amazon have real competition online. walmart, target, big heavyweights really give a big push. >> that's exactly right. there has been a lot of money spent building infrastructure to deliver things in two days, to interface online, to make sure when people are searching a find what they are looking for. you heard about kohl's a couple of minutes ago. one of the things they've done is this program to have people return their amazon goods to kohl's stores.

there's a lot a strategic work that has been done the last couple of years that allows these companies to compete in this space where amazon rules. >> target had a promotion where you could order something online at 10:00 p.m. the day before christmas, the idea being that when you come in to pick up that item, you will pick up something else as well. >> it's interesting because one of the other things they've done is allow this curbside pickup. the terms -- it turns out when people get in the parking lot, they remember something they needed. there is this last-minute effect. >> do we have any sense that this surge in spending will continue once we get past the holidays? >> one of the things you always see after the holidays is returns. we talked to ups today. comingext biggest day is up, and it will be the beginning of january or whatever where they have another big day of packages, so more to come.

>> i'm not returning any of my gifts. bloomberg's's crayton harrison telling us more about sales and consumer spending this holiday season. >> you are listening to a special edition and watching a special edition of "bloomberg in oursweek" here bloomberg studios. we have been watching the markets quite intently today. we have also been watching financials all week, in part because of their stock performance but in part because they were brought to the fore by the treasury secretary steven mnuchin, who placed a call that everybody went, "wait, what?" at bloombergorter is here to help us break it all down so that financials -- what has been going on? they have then pretty beat up of

late. >> they have. they have been outpacing the downside of the broader equity market. that is mainly because people say banks are going to have record profits this quarter. it looks like they are going to's -- through $100 billion -- going to smash through $100 billion. people are wondering when things are going to be not as rosy with tax, so everyone is looking forward to see when that happens. >> the kbw bank index is down from its march high. they are already in a bear market, if you will. already, investors are thinking things do not look good. it is overdone based on what we're hearing from big financials. >> i think it is peaking or topping. is only way it is down borrowing, defaulting, so that stuff, everyone looking to win the cycle turns, if it's six months or a year, that is something investors are really concerned about.

>> let's talk about that mnuchin letter. when it came out the other day, the reaction was everyone's additional concerns about liquidity in the banks. what is the thinking of what was behind that? was it just an attempt to sound strong and sound like we are in control, or was someone actually concerned about something? >> carol and i were puzzling over this monday. the initial call might have been to reassure some of the bank the powell comment, trump's discussion of potentially firing jay powell at the fed, but it didn't visited to something no one was asking, and that since these concerns go out the market, so that kind of went down like a lead balloon. >> we know various government were often calling big banks on wall street asking how you guys are doing.

would have these periods where there were obvious concerns, and they would put out some sort of statement in a sunday afternoon, and we might get a rally, and it was a selloff, not expected to last long, but this is the first time i remember anything like this happening in which the moment it happened, people felt worse. we did not get that initial confidence pop. >> exactly, because it came out of nowhere and it was an issue nobody thought was a problem. everyone thinks that liquidity is fine. even if investors are saying there's no problem with liquidity, they look at the data, still, it's very disconcerting for the treasury secretary to potentially raise to suddenly raise this as a potential topic. to ask you. and the period of volatility, presumably this would be good or -- for trading desks.

>> unfortunately, they are not getting any joy from volatility so far. we have got a few of the big bank ceos, and i have to say this was earlier and this month, so maybe things have changed, but so far, we have guidance saying flat to lower on the guidance side. that's because banks are that this is a sudden episode of tweets, something they cannot really predict, and it randomly happens and goes away. it is not a trend of long-term sustainability. a lot of people are staying on the sidelines. when our team here at bloomberg news is talking to the banks, are they hearing any worries about the banking committee -- banking industry about what is to come? >> for now, ceo's all seen very bullish -- all seem very bullish. they are talking about the strength of the consumer. they are pretty positive at this stage.

we will see in january if they start to sound any cautiousness, but for now, they seem more bullish. >> we will see. these are big voices that .veryone listens to obviously, goldman has its own issues. been a longtime mantra on the streets that you cannot rally without the banks, so people are going to want to see more days like today where at least the banks are in line. they did not actually outperform, but they are at least in line where people feel more confident. carroll: thank you so much. really appreciate it. our finance reporter here at bloomberg news keeping an eye on those financials. technically in a bear market, but we will see what the future holds for them. let's get a check on your world and national news headlines. you are listening and watching bloomberg. >> i'm here with your bloomberg first word news. president trump vowing to stand hem, telling reporters that will do whatever it takes to get funding for border security. president declining to say what

amount of funding he would , stressing the need for border security. president trump surprising border troops today, his first visit to a war zone since taking office. will be nielsen traveling to the u.s. border to personally review her department's care of my grandchildren at the request of -- the department's care of migrant children after a guatemalan boy died on christmas eve. in sudan, the death toll from a week of demonstrations against rising inflation and food shortages is at least 37. embassy international says security forces are responsible for those fatalities. protesters demanding the sudanese president step down.

he blames the violence on foreign countries and, in his words, mercenaries. the u.s. warning against any effort to influence succession in saudi arabia. a scene -- senior u.s. lawmakers have lamed -- blamed the crown prince for the murder of jamal khashoggi in turkey. saudi arabia has repeatedly denied the prince's involvement. this is bloomberg. >> markets have struggled after setting a record high over three months ago. we asked top business leaders what risk they are looking for in 2019. >> we are not immune to geopolitical situations, so for

us to stay focused on the work we are doing is important. >> trade is the things that we worry about. i do think the stimulus in the u.s. economy is more powerful today than the potential big impacts of trade. >> we need to be prepared for a world that will be less global trade, more local. >> impacts are on the input price pressures, not so much on the labor side but really the material commodity side. >> the biggest headwind to our business is our ability to expand in other places. >> today with modern banks, everything is a risk. >> if it's geopolitical, trade wars, uncertainty, this -- where you have to watch is where that manifests in people, worried about the risk of a slowdown. it is always going to be in the u.s. and economics-driven thing. >> i guess the theme for 2019 be

risk, and of course, the pain for today with a little bit of risk on. we saw the s&p 500 moving up about 5%. major averages posting similar gains, having one of their best days since march 2009. we did see a little bit of risk in the market. about 16%d fall today, but it is still above 30. the vix has averaged a reading of about 16 on the year, so but evenuble that, with today's rally, volatility still remains a little bit elevated. you look at the 10-year yield and the japanese yen, two big havens did not get a lot of love. the 10-year prices pushing the yield of, -- pushing the yield yen losingapanese ground to the dollar for the first time in about 10 trading sessions. if you look at where fed rate hike expectations are, they are still pretty low. the market right now holding

pricing in less than one quarter-point hike. it's a little bit higher than what we had just two days ago, but it shows the market is not quite convinced that the fed is going to make good on its hikes inn for two rate 2019. let's take a look at oil because oil had a monster day. we saw the lead ti crude up crude up-- we saw wti about 1%. market is interpreting that opec will make good on some of those cuts and potentially get a boost to oil prices. this, of course, gave lift to a lot of the oil companies in the market today. we saw chesapeake, noble energy, as well as conoco exxon mobil, a lot of these beat down oil stocks that gained traction. the big theme of today is if this is just going to be a one-day bounce and we could revert back to our ways.

sharesalmost 10 billion traded hands across the u.s. equity market today, well above what we would normally expect on abovevolume day and well the average we get on the here, so maybe that could be an indicator of what is to come. that is a look at the markets for right now. from new york, this is bloomberg. ♪

carol: you are listening and watching a special episode of bloomberg businessweek." we find more and more investors are speaking about collectibles, things like art, and incorporating that into their wealth management. joe: collectibles makes it sound so cute. carol: it is cute when you are

talking hundreds of millions of dollars. we want to bring in every beard. this is certainly his world. nice to have you with us. seeing inat you are terms of investors incorporating art into their strategy. it is not a new strategy. >> it is not new. we have seen a going on since perhaps the renaissance. there's a group of mega collectors out there stockpiling works of art, building their legacy by building collections, and they are doing this interesting trade. they are putting credit facility against their art collection, unlocking capital, plowing it into their real estate, their private equity fund, their hedge fund, and this has ballooned into an industry in its own right. kevin: that is what i found so fascinating. all of us track these guys. some of the most read stories on leonloomberg are about

black or tom hill or henry kravitz buying this piece of art or collection or loaning a collection, and yet, this is sort of some next level stuff in terms of treating it as an asset and a piece of collateral. mr. beard: everyone loves the headline story of the big hitch or bought at auction for this extravagant price, but what we are actually seeing is this collectors, the art is an extension of their financial life. them become more of guard --- more of a more avant-garde, but you really collectors now to see an increase in the value of their collection.

joe: is the aspect of the appeal to have an asset that is not quoted every day? is such a shrewd comment. we found this segment of debt as interest rates have trickled up over the last year. leveraginglks may be their marketable securities that are priced every day. suddenly, they are taking that -- putting against their art putting it against their art because it is not priced daily. it is a strategy and an uncorrelated asset. carol: what is the risk element of that? if it is not priced daily, i do wonder about if you have to get out of it and you have tougher economic times, i'm not sure everybody is looking to pay these prices. payseard: the dividend it is the pleasure it gives you, so it is a non-interest-bearing asset. and people typically will not

sell art into a tough market, so liquidity sometimes completely dries up. it comes back, but if you look at 2009, the art market, the action boxes, they had very tight sales because liquidity completely dried up. it only happened for a season, but that is a huge risk. carol: do people tap their art as an asset to get a loan in a market environment that is getting tougher where banks might not be loaning to them? mr. beard: we have in the last year put banks as a lot of credit facilities as dry powder. i want to be able to draw against my art to go shopping, and that shopping is usually plots of land or companies or more art. ? e: how do people have edge in theory, you want to have art

that appreciates more than other .rt you want to buy mr. beard: there is dumb money in this space. people caught up in expect whatever hot artist they buy will be worth something, but then there's this group of connoisseurs that have been at this a long time and they know to go down and look at what artists are actually influencing culture. they are asking other artists who is influencing them, looking at museums, what they are buying, and building a collection of the long-term meant to represent the culture of our time. those who do it shrewdly take a lot of money doing it. tent. so give us a who is the next level hot artist? .- give us a tip mr. beard: we see female artists, african-american artists, very politically charged artists. i would say look back at the

canvas, lose the political identity. carol: who is buying? we have seen the identity change. mr. beard: the asian rich coming into this market. they are continuing to buy and a big way because they are rediscovering their cultural heritage that was wiped out, but you also have -- look, the u.s. is the core -- you look at the forbes 400, and the folks who are buying is private equity and real estate individuals. kevin: i said it before we came on air, you have a cool job. thanks so much for joining us. let's spend a little time before we wrap up talking about the markets. the dow up 1000 points, first

time that has happened. what do we make of this? come back tot you me in two or three weeks and i will tell you if this was the start of something or if it was just holiday season bear market craziness. we have more data coming. i would be interested in tomorrow's claim number. : the s&p is still down about 8% so far this year. if i pull up the nasdaq, is still showing a decline. as we check out the dow, it is still down about 7.5%. somebody tweeted to me, dead cat bounce? we will have to see if this is the beginning of a significant trend may be back to the upside. kevin: let's also keep in mind that beyond the markets, you have the president going overseas, the president candidly

not tweeting for about 17 hours, leaderwhite house team said. you had him reaffirming his support in a way for jay powell. you have the president saying by the dip, but we still have a government shutdown. we still have a trade war on even though there is a little bit of light about some ongoing negotiations between the chinese and u.s. carol: let's not ignore something like amazon which rallied the time today. -- rallied big-time today. let's remember a big jump in a big tech name can skew overall trade. joe: we can maybe ignore this week, kind of a holiday week, but it will come screaming at us in the face with a new democratic house next week. i would say get ready for some more executive time. carol: if you are a government worker, it is affecting you. kevin: i have to say i don't think any of us expected

december 26 would be this busy of a newsday, but it has been fun to go through it with both of you. we will be right back here tomorrow. you have been watching and listening to a very special edition of "bloomberg businessweek." live from new york, this is bloomberg. ♪

>> i'm brad stone in san francisco, in for emily chang. this is "bloomberg technology." who had the best holidays? apparently amazon. they are reporting a record-breaking season. apps wereions of downloaded in 2018. we will discuss what is fueling growth in the mobile market. we look back at one of the biggest stories of the year.