emily: i'm emily chang in san francisco. this is "bloomberg technology." coming up in the next hour, the two senate runoff elections are drawing to a close in georgia. we will have the latest. plus, how social media is policing misinformation about the races. chips off the old block.

qualcomm says president will take over when the ceo retires. we will talk about the company's strategy going forward. the chip under she -- industry is going through changes. apple upsetting the card and making more chips of its own. and going long on amazon. a 155% gain on a short seller's big bets in 2020. what does he have his eye on this year? we will ask him. u.s. stocks rising today amid those key elections happening right now in georgia. ed ludlow has a look at how that shaped the day in trading even though volume was thinned. ed: the s&p 500 closing up 0.7%. we have seen oil rising on tuesday. but also, technology stocks. the nasdaq up by 0.8%.

the biggest driver in terms of points being apple at 1.25%, also rebounding. apple in points terms was one of the biggest point decliner's on monday. bitcoin, at one point near $34,000. jp morgan analysts out with a note today, saying that bitcoin could rise in the long term as it makes gold as investors look at bitcoin as an asset class in comparison to gold. bloomberg news reporting that the ev startup riffing in raising. a potential rival to tesla. they say they will bring their electric pickup to market by june of this year to u.s. customers. we know that tesla hopes to have its cyber truck on u.s. roads by the end of this year.

backed by big names like blackrock, t. rowe price, amazon, and ford. the new york stock exchange is reconsidering its decision to halt the delisting of three major telecom companies. they u-turned after consulting with regulatory bodies but they are now reconsidering to go back to their original decision. emily: of course, that was on the back of an executive order by president trump. treasury secretary steve mnuchin told them today that he disagreed with their reversal earlier. i want to talk about chips. qualcomm ending the day up 2.5%,

announcing that the president will be taking over for steve mollenkopf as he retires as ceo. that was a fairly unexpected move. what kind of reaction did we see in the market? ed: a longtime engineer. steve mollenkopf said that he knew his decision to retire would be seen as early in any event. and he said that the company is in a good place. elsewhere, we got news from micron, raised from a cell to a buy. lots of confidence that sales will rebound and micron will be a big beneficiary of that. on the whole, the philadelphia semiconductor index is continuing on in 2021 very much as it left off last year, which is to outperform major indices including the s&p 500 index. emily: thanks so much for that update. we will talk more about the chip sector later in the show. polls close in georgia in just

under two hours. election observers reporting that voting is going smoothly in today's senate runoff. we already know there have been a record number of early voters. like the general election, it will take a while to learn the results. talk about how the day has gone, emily wilkins on the ground for us in atlanta. from all accounts, it seems like it has been a smooth day despite the controversy leading up to this. what is the latest from your point of view? >> it has been a smooth day but that does not mean we will know who the winner is tonight. there are a ton of absentee ballots to be counted and that counting cannot begin until polls close at 7:00 p.m. remember, it took 10 days for us to figure out the votes in the general election.

we don't expect it to take quite that long but we are not expecting to know tonight which two senators will be going onto the u.s. senate. emily: what about the backdrop, trump versus biden. a judge has once again taken down the president's bid to decertify the election results. >> news like this kind of feels like groundhog day. lawsuit after lawsuit, case after case. democrat and republican judges have dismissed them and debunked them. it really does not change the fact that president trump is alleging that there was fraud in the election. talking to george and republicans on the ground, a lot of them do believe that there was fraud. they do agree with the president on this. the fact that the lawsuit got dismissed today, it is really unclear at this point how much it will factor in to the election.

emily: talk to us about the process for the rest of the night. as we have talked about the presidential election, the counting of days. have they reformed the process. is there anyway to make it go any faster knowing that a huge chunk of those votes have come in early and yet they will not stop counting them until polls are closed? >> we are thinking that most of the 3 million votes that arrived early are probably from democrats. it is sort of this weird thing but if the turnout is low today, it bodes well for democrats. if a ton of people voted today without actually bodes well for

republicans. i am here at an event for republicans in georgia for kelly leffler and david perdue. although we are not expecting david perdue tonight, he has been in quarantine for several days since he was in contact with someone who tested positive for covid. democrats are not holding a big event tonight probably because of the coronavirus and the fact that we probably will not know a winner tonight. emily: what are you hearing from the biden campaign about their level of confidence tonight? >> biden gave a big rally yesterday. several hundred cars showed up. lots of honking, lots of enthusiasm. biden's message is that this was about control of the senate. he brought up the $2000 individual stimulus checks. he said that if georgians wanted to see those checks, they had to make sure they elected democrats to the senate today. emily: emily wilkins on the ground in atlanta. we are all anxiously awaiting those results. thanks for your reporting. coming up, longtime qualcomm ceo steve mollenkopf announces he is stepping down from the chipmaker

in june. how does his replacement stack up? that is next. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: a change is coming at the top of qualcomm. steve mollenkopf will retire in june after more than seven years as ceo of one of the world's largest chipmakers that powers of smartphones. he spoke to reporters about the timing of the move. >> no matter when i retire, it

is going to seem early to people. so, what is the right way to do it? in my view, the right way was do it when the company was in a very strong position and a natural stopping point. the mistake would be to go too long. emily: the president cristiano amon will become the company's next ceo. joining us to discuss, reporter ian king. it certainly does seem early but if it had been in a few more years time, maybe people would not be talking about how early it is. why do you think he is stepping down now? ian: that is the question i think everybody had. he has 52 years old, not particularly agent for a ceo, as you obviously know. he seems sincere. he said, look, i have been through this tumultuous period. i have brought the company to where i think it needs to be. i want to go and do other things

with my life, things i have not been able to do as a 24/7 ceo. he says he does not have other plans. you have to take what he says at face value, that he wants to live his own life a bit more fully, free of the burden of being a top guy at a tech company. emily: let's talk about the big picture, which you know so well. obviously, other companies are making big moves in chips. apple is making more of its own chips. qualcomm has been a huge apple customer. do you think there is any truth to the idea that perhaps they just want fresh blood or a new strategy? >> to be fair to mollenkopf, a strategy to get them out of all the legal problems, all of the

customer relationship difficulties they had was, let's just run faster than anybody else can, let's make our chips better than anybody else can make them for themselves so that they have to come to us. that has played out at least in the initial stages. what his successor is saying is, we need to take that strategy and go beyond smartphones. we cannot just rely on them. we need to get into networking, iot. where he is going to take on intel. that is the strategy there. we will see whether qualcomm becomes more than just a company doing really well and smartphones and lives and dies according to the smartphone cycle.

emily: cristiano amon has been on the show several times. tell us a little bit more about what he is like and how his leadership style may differ from his predecessor. ian: having spoken with him yourself several times, he is clearly at least externally very different than his predecessor. mollenkopf was criticized amid all of the problems that qualcomm had. cristiano is very much part on his sleeve, very passionate, very expressive. how that plays internally, who can say? obviously, he has done well at the company and they have good faith in him. emily: what are some key

potential milestones or changes in strategy that you will be looking for after he takes over to sort of figure out how he is going to leave this company? ian: that is a very good question. i asked him how we should judge them. he said, my mandate is not to screw up. this year will be a very good year growth wise. 5g, qualcomm is doing very well there. after that, growth is scheduled to sort of cool off considerably according to analyst estimates. i think what people would like to see from qualcomm is that period of sustained growth that comes from other markets. to prove that technology has a play in these other markets and it becomes more than that smart

phone dependent company. emily: there you hear more of cristiano's expressive style and his answers to your question about not screwing up. of course, we will be following, as will you. thank you. in other company leadership news, ibm has named gary cohn, a former top advisor to president trump, as vice chair. he will work with the chief executive officer on a wide range of initiatives including areas of business development, client services, advocacy, and client relationship management. he was announced ceo as the former ceo announced she would step down. we will hear from her in a special edition of studio 1.0 next friday on bloomberg television, her last interview as chair. coming up, a booming market for u.s. ipos showing no sign of slowing down after the blockbuster debuts of airbnb and doordash last month.

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emily: bloomberg has learned that the new york stock exchange is reconsidering its decision to halt the delisting of three major chinese telecom firms after treasury secretary steve mnuchin said he opposed the decision to grant them a reprieve. they first announced they would delist those companies on new year's eve to comply with president trump's executive order.

the exchange that changed course on monday when it became unclear that they were being banned. treasury and stock exchange spokespeople have declined to comment. affirm and bumble are among the tech companies in preparation to make a long-awaited market debuts. in 2020, with companies going public in the u.s., companies are looking forward to the next leg, but will it look anything like last year? mark will it look like last year, this year?

mark: it is rare to see two years look exactly alike. i think they will be equally robust. a little bit different. it will be an interesting time. having a strong 2020 is a good backdrop for 2021. the market shook off yesterday already and the vix came down a little bit today. watch how those get received. if they get received well, i think you will have a terrific 2021. emily: looking for a firm for example to raise potentially what they are targeting in their ipo. that one was scheduled for the end of last year but got pushed. talk to us about the companies that you are watching, presumably it sounds like you think the ipo window is still wide open. mark: we saw a great year last year in tech and health care. we saw a lot on the ipo side and on the spac side. i would expect that to be similar in 2021. i think success of tech ipos probably has some companies thinking about accessing sooner. the spac recent activity is probably a good sign for 2021. they also need to buy companies. those are almost like free ipos.

i expect health care amtek to dominate in early 21 and you will see some of those examples in the first month or two. a harbinger for outperformance like we saw last year in that marketplace. emily: do you think these outperformance as well keep up? companies like airbnb and doordash nearly doubled on their first day of trading. do you think they will be able to keep up that momentum? mark: i think there is a asteria in the ipo market because people think they missed peloton, they missed a zoom i could name a dozen. carvana, cloudflare. those companies now have to perform. we saw companies that were very well received the year before like lyft and uber who had a

hard time getting back to those first-day prices. it does not mean they will be great public companies. let's watch those names. i think those sectors are still the hottest sectors. the explosive market and health care where we saw a vaccine being created in less than a year.

we have an ipo market that will be receptive. we also have a conference next week where it will not look like the historical jp morgan conference. but next week is health care week for a lot of wall street. there are some great private companies that will access the public markets and access capital this year. that is where i would be paying attention. emily: the jp morgan health care conference is one we will definitely be following as well. i want to get your take on this new york stock exchange controversy, saying they will de-list chinese telecoms, then saying they are reconsidering. of course, we are in the waning days of the trump administration. does the uncertainty stop when he leaves office or do you see continued tension and possibly confusion? mark: yes to everything. we have two weeks left in the trump administration. january 20 will be a momentous day for the country, the future of the country and the markets. i think there will be determined is pressure on china. i think trump did open up a dialogue on what china has done for our markets and what they have done for cyber and some other things globally. there is certainly concerned about the chinese and what they are doing and that will not abate on january 21.

in fact, i think it will accelerate. a lot of what we have been paying attention to has been deemphasized. i think the last chapter has not been written. i think you pay attention to what the trump administration leaves and what the aydin administration starts. there will be renewed focus around the relationship between the two countries. emily: will be watching to see if your predictions ring true. thank you so much. coming up amazon came out on top. can they momentum continue? one investor bet big on the e-commerce giant in march. this is bloomberg. ♪

♪ >> this is bloomberg technology. i'm mark crumpton in new york. emily chang will be with us in just a few moments. we will take a look at some of the stock market activity for

the day. he top story affecting the markets and leading the news today, the special elections held in georgia. two u.s. senate seats are up there. wall street is looking at goldman sachs. an interview with the ceo david solomon is urging government aid for small businesses across the united states. he spoke with my colleague in washington. >> small businesses are such a vitally important part of our economy and are so important in terms of how they take care of families and communities that we live and operate in. they were so badly affected by the pandemic and they need help. some help has come, but more is needed. what we are doing by picketing is letting congress know there are a number of things that small businesses need help and support on to get to the other

side. they can see a light at the end of the tunnel, but they need help getting to the other side. >> a lot of this is about stimulus. joe biden has called this package a down payment. what does david solomon think we need? david: one of the things that we have done over the last few months given that we have gone out and surveyed them. we have talked to them. we created 10,000 small business voices which is an advocacy group. we asked them what you need help with. if you look at the placards on the lawn, they raise issues that they need help with. i will highlight three that i think are very important. the first is they need access to capital. they need capital to bridge them through this. something like the restart act. second, they talk about the need to support the people around them, particularly health care. health care costs are so prohibitive that they are not in a position to take care of the health care issue that their employees have. they need added health care support. because people are working harder, they need more help with childcare. just basic support to make sure children are taken care of.

>> all of this is happening as unemployment remains elevated. it is worse for black americans, hispanic americans, and asian americans. on day one, what will be joe biden's toughest task? david: the toughest task is marching forward to get vaccines distributed so we can get to the other side of the virus. there will be a lot of discussion about what additional stimulus is needed. we are trying to get people focused on things that we think needs to be included on additional stimulus. we have to get people vaccinated. we have to get to the other side. >> markets have been reacting to the vaccine, but the rollout has been so slow.

there have been a lot of concerns. how does that impact your own plans and the plans of your clients? david: there is still a lot of uncertainty. there is no question the supply of vaccine is growing. we have to find more flexible, nimble, more efficient ways to get that vaccine distributed. in addition to the action taken around the country i hope will allow the private sector to make plans to get the vaccine distributed. we need to increase need and efficiency, getting the vaccine to people. >> will you be able to bring goldman sachs employees back by the end of the year? david: i would expect a lot of them back in full by the end of the year. over the next six months, we will see real improvement, but there is still work to be done. once we deal with the vaccine and the virus, we still have to deal with the economic consequence of the shutdowns and the impact on our economy that the pandemic has had.

that will be a bumpier, longer period of time. emily: goldman sachs chair and ceo there. and just a note, bloomberg founder is a cochair of the 10,000 businesses advisory council. as the pandemic hit the united states, many saw doomsday as imminent. the stock market tanked as lockdowns hit businesses across the country. but the founder of the famed short seller research bet big on e-commerce giant amazon saying that if we continue to stay-at-home, amazon is a huge winner. if everything goes back to normal, amazon will still be a big winner. joining me is andrew left himself. thank you for joining us.

your firm returned more than 200% growth last year, including that big bet on amazon. what did you get right? andrew: the stay-at-home. what i looked for, first of all, with amazon -- we forget how it was back in march. everyone was sitting at home and it was armageddon on television. at the time, even though there were plenty of stocks integrate values, if the end of the world is coming, i figure amazon seemed something safe. just logistically if we had to get drugs to people, that is where i wanted to be. and if we got back in two or three weeks, i still wanted to be in amazon. the reaction, what do i buy, amazon seems safe to me. in hindsight, i could've gotten a higher return on etsy. i wasn't thinking face masks.

emily: etsy did have a remarkable year. what about some of the other stay-at-home names? there are other names that you say weren't getting enough attention. andrew: we bought peloton when everyone bought wayfair. but you could've bought nautilus with a higher return. those actions benefited from the stay-at-home and the urbanization movement. in the summer lockdown, rh is the leader of outdoor furniture. i looked around my house, what can i buy? sonos. netflix, people are watching more netflix. there were great offerings that came out. if you paid attention and looked around, there was more than the obvious zoom, peloton stay-at-home stories.

emily: ok, so amazon. will you be continuing to ride that wave this year? they had a fairly high-profile failure closing down their venture with jp morgan and berkshire hathaway. andrew: the company still has so much runway to go. that is no doubt. the only thing that can hurt them is them or the government, actually. so why not? there is a long way to go and maybe someday they will split the stock and we will get an extra 10% that day. maybe. amazon is one that i am comfortable with. emily: so let's talk about where you will be placing your bets for this year and what kind of a

year you think it will be. what do you have your money on? andrew: i am pretty balanced right now. i am probably more short exposure. more in the last few weeks then the last few months just because you see the complete saturation of the names. without specific names, i will give facts. some will be zeros. not all ipo's are the same. just because you miss out on the ipo, it will be a stock ticker's market. look at those that didn't get carried away, they have these unnatural artificial bumps from 2020. i want to be short those names.

i want to be long names that are defensible names. emily: what about bitcoin? i believe you are bullish. it is moving on gold. i had a guest saying that he thinks it will get to 45,000 in less than a month. andrew: why not? i bought microstrategy at around 210. publicly i recommended 400 something. that was a month ago. it is not like a stock. they can't do a secondary. who knows? every person with a high net worth put a little bit of their net worth in bitcoin and decided to sit on it. i have limited my exposure in bitcoin because anything that goes up so fast, it is a natural

instinct to take some off. you don't see that in bitcoin. i will be exposed to it because i think it is going higher, but it matters the perception. forget about the underlying fiat currency, the value or not value. it is an alternative asset. but just on the perceived value, it seems to go higher. 100,000 to 200,000, that is guessing. that is pure speculation because there is no intrinsic value. emily: what are your boldest predictions for the year? do you think there could be a big tech crash? andrew: you know, there could be. tech doesn't grow as fast. i think some retail investors will spook out. they are junkies for that quick, fast movement. bigger tech funds can wait a

year. understand there may be some stagnation in the market. think very heavily retail owned. i am short peloton. you were short earlier and you were wrong. that's true. apple is an amazing product. tim cook can't stop raving about what apple has in the pipeline in fitness. you can't look at peleton at 145 the way you looked at it at 45. emily: andrew left, thank you so much for your time. we will see how much it will pay off this year. andrew talked about the importance of e-commerce and amazon during the pandemic. what can we expect in 2021? we will hear from a retail veteran next. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: experts have said the shift to e-commerce and 2020 is here to stay, but it is impossible to see what truly lies over the horizon. despite optimism of the vaccine, the resurgence of covid and the spread of a new strain of the virus means the future of retail and 2021 is difficult to predict yet again. cofounder of reagent n.y.c., a retail consultancy, mary, you have worked in places like macy's, sachs, and has spent many years looking at the retail industry. mary: the modern consumer has changed how we look at retail. we don't look at department

stores as a driver anymore. that is something of the past. covid was the accelerator of the behavior change, not necessarily the pillar. but we think the changes are mostly to stay. we saw there was a dynamic relationship among the consumer, the content he or she was seeking, and the trends they were sharing coupled with what the market had to offer. some changes adhering to e-commerce and a further stray from the type of retail department stores. emily: we were just talking to andrew left, a short seller that made a lot of money betting big on amazon last year. is that the right call? mary: it is absolutely the right call. we partner with an ai firm that provides a lot of data,

real-time data looking forward versus backward. and we were able to note a lot of trends before they happened and before a lot of people saw them. and so one of the things that we saw was that amazon is really the new department store. it's not macy's, it's not jcpenney. as soon as we realize amazon is the new department store, etsy is one of them, wayfair is one of them, and arguably ebay is one of them. it's not the ones we grew up with. i think it will continue to change and evolve. he is absolutely right on. there are risks down the road depending on what happens this year, but i don't see amazon going away anytime soon. one thing i would say is that walmart really created their market place compete with

amazon. they got that, they understood it. that is why walmart and target could really adapt to this covid time and make it really big. they understood that even in advance. they just flourished. a lot of other stores have not. emily: what are the risks down the road that you see? mary: number one is the new administration coming in. there may be new regulation on the tech industry with facebook, google, and so on. we see that is a risk. we don't know what it will be, but there could be an impact on the digital players. and there will be a rebound of interest in shopping. a be the consumer doesn't want to buy everything online. we don't think for a lot of the basics and sundries, that people will go back to buying toothpaste at the store. but for all age ranges, we saw that they shifted how they will do their shopping. so we will see may be a rebound of going back to the store. this would be reminiscent of

what happened in the roaring 20's after the flu was cured. everybody wanted to get a little more outrageous. and it could be that value-driven shoppers -- excuse me. emily: i had one last question about the future of physical retail. it is easy to say, going forward, there will be some combination of online and off-line retail. that said, is this the beginning of the death of physical retail stores? i did get out once over the holidays and got into physical stores. it was nice to be there, but they were empty given what is happening. and i wonder, what is the future of brick and mortar? mary: i think if we keep brick-and-mortar going the way

it has been, no. it has to mirror more of what the customers have found in an amazon experience or wayfair experience. we can't go back to the way that macy's has always done it. they may have to change. if you don't offer them something new, i don't think they will come back. there is a lot of interest in stores, for example. it was with collaborations and different designers. there is excitement. there is something new and different. but is it the same old same old? not at all. emily: fascinating to see what will be to come. reagent n.y.c. co-founder mary epner. thank you for sharing your insights with us. still ahead, from the general election in november to today's senate runoff in georgia, how facebook and twitter are

combating disinformation on their platforms. this is bloomberg. ♪

emily: american depository receipts for alibaba are moving, falling to 2% just now. president trump signed an executive order banning transactions with chinese software apps citing a senior administration official. the commerce department is tasked with defining which transactions will be banned. we will follow the story and bring you updates as we have them. back to the top story of the day, control of the senate at stake. twitter and facebook are saying that they have been preparing

for today's closely watched race in georgia. i will bring in rebecca kearns. obviously, there have been local misinformation campaigns being waged around these elections happening. how have facebook and twitter been handling it? rebecca: facebook and twitter have been really going after these misinformation campaigns and labeling tweets and facebook posts that spread information that is false, claiming a variety of false claims. president trump has shared a lot. for example, saying that he won georgia. those claims are labeled by twitter. they are doubling down on efforts. this is a continuation of efforts that they started before the november 3 election and are continuing.

they are trying to limit the spread of false information that would dissuade voters from even voting and lead to voter suppression as well. emily: and it's not just what's happening in georgia at stake. there is a trend in local outlets suffering. can facebook and twitter monitor this not just in the u.s. but around the world? rebecca: it is a big task that they have to tackle. they tell me they have hired hundreds of employees to help with elections management and with fact-checking on their sites this year. i don't know if it is possible to solve everything. they are certainly putting in renewed efforts. we will see how successful they are at stopping disinformation based on the outcome of

tonight's election. the polls are closing around 7:00. they seem to continue to be labeling the president and campaigns that are spreading false claims. emily: and we are waiting for those polls to close. bloomberg's rebecca kern, thank you for your reporting. you can tune in tonight for special coverage of the election results starting at 7:00 p.m. eastern on bloomberg television and radio. that does it for this edition of "bloomberg technology." i'm emily chang. bloomberg daybreak: asia coming up next. this is bloomberg. ♪

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