business never sleeps, this is "squawk box." good morning, everybody. welcome to "squawk box" here on cnbc. i'm becky quick along with andrew ross sorkin and brian sullivan. joe is off today. brian, welcome. >> welcome. >> let's get to the markets this morning. check out the u.s. equities futures. we saw the markets pick up at the beginning of the week but by the end of the week the dow was down by 2% on friday and that did pull the averages down for the full week. you can see this morning the futures are up by triple digits. dow up by 117 points. s&p up by 14 and the nasdaq up by 41. the big story today, oil prices. brent crude dropping to its low. brent is below 37 at $36.50. wti still below $35. down another 30 cents to $34.42. big oil benchmarks have now fallen by more than 2/3 since the middle of the year when the selloff began.

it is worth noting that the january wti contract expires today so you very likely will see higher prices for wti tomorrow. in the meantime gasoline prices dropping four cents over the last two weeks. the lundberg survey puts the nationwide average at $2.06 a gallon. that is the lowest we've seen in over six years. with more on the oil story and what's happening with the markets in just a moment. but, first, a developing story outside the world of business. at least one person was killed, 26 others injured, this after a car crashed into a crowded sidewalk on the las vegas strip. police say the vehicle drove up onto the sidewalk in front of the paris hotel and casino, hit a car and then drove back onto the sidewalk and hit more pedestrians. investigators think the crash may have been intentional but say they are confident this was not an act of any terrorism. a 3-year-old was in the car with the driver. the driver did leave the scene but has since been taken into custody. is being interviewed and tested for drugs and alcohol.

a couple of other big stories we're watching this morning. ericsson and apple signing a patent license agreement. no word on how much money will be exchanged. ericsson shares are soaring. huge opening weekend for "star wars." >> loved it. >> saw it. at least saw you on instagram. instagraming with you and your husband. >> yeah. >> talking about the experience. >> t"the force awakens" bringin in $230 million. disney film earned $517 million in ticket sales and that smashed multiple box office records. shares of disney getting a boost in early trading this morning. going to have a little bit of a debate about the future of disney later on in the program. then attention drone owners this morning. mandatory registration begins today. here's the deal.

must must be registered with the faa. if you buy a drone it must be registered before the first flight. let's get to some of today's stock stories to watch. check out shares of microsoft. microsoft shares getting a boost after parron's said it could rise 30% in the next 18 months. a among the cootatalysts they cd the cloud. >> martin shkreli speaking out. front page news. now he's out on a $5 million bond. he argues he was the target of legal authorities for the notorious drug prices. he thought this was all political. shkreli was the ceo of the pharmaceutical company that bought a six-year-old drug earlier and then hiked the price to $13.50 a tablet to $750 a tablet overnight. his arrest has nothing to do

technically with this but something he had done in a job earlier when he was at a hedge fund. a spokesman for his twitter account says it was hacked. they pleaded his innocence. one that read anyone want free money? willing to donate hundreds of thousands to charities before i go to prison. other messages using expletives which we won't share here. so becky hit the main markets. let's go deeper and get a full look at the holiday shortened week. perhaps there will be a santa claus rally. dow futures indicating a gain, not a lot but 113 point gain at the open. still, could have a positive monday. major indexes in europe all higher led in part by germany. mixed trade in asia. japan down.

hong kong and main land china trading higher. shanghai up nearly 6%. as becky said, all eyes remain on oil. it is in the red to begin the week. both u.s. crude and brent crude are indicated down. keep in mind that the contract does expire today. the spread between u.s. and brent now just about 70 cents. wow, that continues to narrow. kind of amazing. no real change in bonds this morning. the benchmark ten year yield yielding 2.1%. friday in gold, getting a small bit this morning. up over half a percent to begin your week. joining us right now to talk more about the markets, peter bookmar, chief market strategist at the lindsey group. also a cnbc contributor. steve is a chief u.s. economist at mazuho securities. always have trouble saying that. gentlemen, welcome to both of you. peter, we've watched volatile markets and watched people be

spooked. the markets are down last week even after horrific losses from the week before. are people worried about the fed or are they worried about the underlying economy? >> it's a combination because the fed is raising interest rates in a sluggish, mediocre global economy at the same time asset prices have gotten very expensive. so it's sort of a toxic mix with what's going on. and i think what we've seen over the past couple of months is just a dress rehearsal for next year. >> steven, are they right to be concerned about not just the global economy but what's happening in the u.s. economy? >> the equity market has a right to be. they said this is as good as it's going to get. this is a problem. as good as it's going to get has left us low. we have very, very limited pricing power and she's basically telling you not to get a stronger growth environment because they're going to cap it. the net result is it doesn't look particularly good for valuations. >> the reason the market is over valued or as you're describing

it, the reason we've gotten to these valuations because people looked at it while the fed is in this and said, there is no place to go. there is no all interpret native. is there an alternative in 2016? >> cash is certainly an alternative. it's not going to make you money, it's going to lose you money. i think going forward for the next couple of years people have to look at what's been eaten up. that's emerging markets, commodities. that's where the value is. certainly not in the u.s. market in my opinion. >> we are on pace for the first down year for the dow in seven years. i mean, unless we make up nearly 4% within next, six, seven trading days, they're going to be light anyway, we're going to have a down year. does that affect investor psychology? >> i'm sure it is, but there's evidence when the fed is pumping money in for qe at zero rates, when they stop, things go down. there's always a flip side to the largess. now we're seeing the flip side. >> you're positioning yourself

shorting the market. >> no. that's always been a difficult game in a world where the central bank is looking at prices. investors should play a little more defensive over the next year rather than having the playbook over the past couple of years of just close your eyes and buy anything. >> they can't buy indexes next zbleer. >> the market outside of the headline indices has been in a stealth bear market. at some point it's going to hit the bigger cap gains because that's historically what usually happens. i think -- >> but the problem is that historically the big cap names are often considered expensive. >> if this continues, if the bear market continues to spread, people will eventually pay attention to the multiples. >> let's talk about the areas where we've seen real weekness. the energy pass. we've seen that spread beyond

that. the bank of england, for example, where everyone thought the bank of england was going to raise rates, even the most hawkish member came out and said there's a pause in wage inflation taking place. what we've seen historically is when central banks do this, they make a policy mistake. smart people do stupid things. i think this is going to be one of those examples where we have a stupid thing done by somebody smart. >> a year ago when oil fell universally it seemed they're going to get this gigantic benefit, consumer, economy. it appears we might get the opposite of that. where has been this lower oil lift? >> the money has gone into

physician services as a result of obamacare. people spent the money in areas that don't give productivity boost. it will be sucked into the health care industry. it doesn't drive the economy. a lot of the jobs that need to be created require additional education. people don't have the money or the time to do that. that's part of the reason why you have the big disparity between job openings and job hirings. >> you said you think that this is going to go down as a mistake, the fed's done. does that mean you think they'll reverse themselves in 2016? >> i think it will move to prove they did the right thing. by the time they're all said and done they will realize they made a mistake. >> tourche gave up. >> draghi back peddled and

supported him. >> steven, thank you. peter, great to see you. >> yes. coming up, we're going to -- a little bit later, i saw that. in the meantime, if you missed it last night on "60 minutes," apple ceo tim cook slamming uncle sam saying the current tax code was made for the industrial aid. his experience to talk the tech giant to avoid paying its share. we're going to talk about that next. first, before we do that, take a look back at this day in history. ♪ ♪

i am the future. i provide for my family. i will use my education to help my community. i will inspire our next generation of leaders. i am a college student, but i am only 1%. only 1% of college students are american indian. donate now, and help our numbers grow. ♪

in global market news, spanish stocks dropping. banks being hit the hardest in spain. the ruling party won most of the votes but fell short of a majority, and that means no clear mandate to govern. julia chatterly joining us live from madrid. julia? >> reporter: good morning. you're absolutely right. uncertainty reining supreme here in spain. not only did incumbent fail to win a majority, but we also saw a big showing from the far left, the podemus party.

the vote is so fractured between four main parties, no two individual parties can tie up the majority coalition government. a lot of people here scratching their heads saying just what kind of government can lead spain forward. i think there's three options. one, that we see a minority government formed. it will be fragile, most likely. but at least he will try and continue with the reforms. the second option, we see a broader coalition likely to be far more unstable, i think. and the third, we head to fresh elections. i've had two political analysts telling me they're 50-50 on seeing fresh elections in 2016. i think given what we're seeing in the markets today, the important thing for investors is what happens on the left with the political spectrum with the radical podemus party. the only ones that could tie up with them. they told me they won't do anything to put spain's political stability -- financial stability at risk. i think that might be the silver lining here and that podemus

still stands out on its own even if it did do well in the election. guys, we have have to wait for the coalition talks. plenty of water to flow under the river. back to you. >> jewel chatterly, thank you for that. going domestic. global company. apple ceo tim cook was featured on "60 minutes" last night. among the topics discussed, tech giant's products. >> when we launch a product we're working on the next one and possibly the next next one. yes, we always see things that we can do. >> joining us to talk on this, senior analyst and ed lee who is managing editor. there's a debate that took place. we'll show a bit about the debate over taxes and how they think about those things. you watch that. there was a whole conversation talking about watching, about the watch and whether the watch worked. he wouldn't seem to let on that the watch isn't working. your sense? >> i think he did let on a

little that some sort of m mia culpa that it hasn't been as much of a success coming out. they have to do that version. that's the key going into next year. i think this was really sort of a seminole interview because right now their back is against the wall. i think cook for the first time, there are some speed bumps ahead. i think that's why he really wanted to show some innovation, some things to look forward to. >> he put on a brave face. he was not letting on that there was a problem. >> he's never going to do that. everything is work in progress. anything can be improved. that's kind of the party line. >> one of the things at the very end of i believe the second segment if you remember they showed off a little bit of what the new building -- >> yes. >> it got me thinking. it's an amazing space ship. >> a two meter hole that you can shoot into -- sorry. >> what really got me thinking every time a company has put their name on a big stadium or built a new building it invariably, you know, is the

high sign that this is the top. >> that's the peak, yeah. >> i think that's the worry. that's the worry right now for investors is given smartphone markets, success is definitely, demand is less than stellar. so much is focused on iphone 7 for apple. i think investors right now, is the glass half empty in terms of going 2016? they're really in a prove me situation, cook, ivy, the whole crew. this is why it was a very well-timed interview. >> life is relative. they're doing pretty well in the grand scheme of things. maybe the stock is not where it was at one point, but they're always held to a higher standard. >> still $600 billion company. >> not exactly struggling. >> right. >> the cars. >> the cars. refused to answer about the cars. do you think that he should say we're -- if they actually are looking at cars in a meaningful way, do you think you're supposed to say, yes? >> they made progress, flight. >> the thing is historically with technology companies

there's always a fear of vapor wear. you talk about a product that you're working on, it never comes to pass. it doesn't look good. it's not good for your company. not good for consumers. that's always why they're going that way. >> i don't know if there's a thing to talk about here. you don't want to talk about something you're not going to deliver. >> my macro question watching last night, why? why did they do it? we've all dealt with apple. they don't do anything that was not calculated. i was watching it thinking what are know trying to get across here? they have a goal. to stem the stock slide. >> there is a perception, that's for sure. >> well, i mean, look, i think it's about innovation, right? that it's a company for the innovation. the watch didn't hit quite. what's next. >> it could be pressure coming from washington, too, with the tax issue, getting your face out there. >> they want to show there is a lot of innovation going on in cupertino.

they're not done. there is a lot of pressure from the tax issues in terms of what's going on in china. >> right. let's get into the tax issue. let's show you what tim cook also had to say last night about the controversy over taxes. he was pretty vociferous. >> we pay more taxes in this country than anyone. >> well, they know that and you should because of how much money you make. >> well, i don't deny that. i have -- we happily pay it. >> you also have more money overseas probably than any other american company. >> we do. as i said before, 2/3 of our business is over there. >> why don't you bring that home is the question? >> i'd love to bring it home. >> why don't you? >> because it would cost me 40% to bring it home and i don't think that's a reasonable thing to do. this is a -- this is a tax code, charlie, that was made for the industrial age, not the digital age. it's fwbackwards. it's awful for america. it should have been fixed many years ago. >> i think that's why they did the interview right there. you have to get your spin on it and make people to understand. instead of being on the defense

if washington is coming on you. >> he called it crap on the air. >> the idea they're trying to hide -- i think this was the significant part of the interview, i agree. in coming out very forcefully about the whole tax issue, i know there's a bill going to congress. >> we said, look, they have 180 of their 205 billion overseas. that's where right now there's a lot of pressure and a lot of other tech companies, there really needs to be something about repatriation. >> you have activists telling you to do something like that. it's a 40% tax bill. >> i thought the most fascinating part of the conversation was would you bring the money back? they talked about workers, chinese workers. he made the argument, interestingly enough, that there were more skilled, talented workers in china that could do this work than they could in the united states. >> specific skills. >> he wasn't -- i don't think he was saying skilled. >> in that type of manufacturing. >> we talked about the sort of vocational training that's required for that kind of work.

>> tool guys is what you call them. >> that we don't have that here in the united states. it made me think, even if you bring the money back, are you actually going to bring those jobs back? he basically said straight up and down without saying it directly, we're not bringing those jobs back down. >> if they can repay the try eig -- repatriate the money, they'll invest it here and create it here. if they're going to create something new, you have to do it here, they need the money here to do that. >> but i don't think there's -- they're not suffering from not having enough money to inbe know vat in the united states. that's not -- it's not like they're going to hire more people in the united states. >> you want to build a whole new car system you need money. >> look at all of the people going to be in the new $5 billion building. >> it's about buy back. >> thank you. it's about the buy back. we're back to engineering, my friend. different kind of engineering.

>> down to 100 billion buy back. that's the magic number that allow investors. they're going to generate another 30, 40 billion. it's partially that. also, there's more pressure to do mna, do something with the cash. >> right. >> this was a two-faceted interview in terms of the tax piece and also the innovation. china is going to be the biggest geographic region by 2017. >> i think he's going to get some blow back about what he said in manufacturing. we couldn't put 1 million people in a manufacturing facility here in the united states. they simply don't exist. there is probably a middle ground. when i heard him say that, i agree because of the sheer scale of chinese workers there are. maybe, i don't know, you could have 100,000 people here. >> we don't have the supply chain. next to each other, physically, you need the investment. >> they're going to hire more engineers, more designers. that end of the mfrg, that end of the vocational sector. >> we'll leave the conversation there. it's a great one. thank you for coming in this

morning. appreciate it. when we come back, the mistake everyone is talking about this morning. how steve harvey managed to crown the wrong woman as miss universe. oh, there but for the grace of god. first as we look at last week's s&p 500 winners and losers. ♪ ♪ when you're not confident your company's data is secure, the possibility of a breach can quickly become the only thing you think about. that's where at&t can help. at at&t we monitor our network traffic so we can see things others can't.

mitigating risks across your business. leaving you free to focus on what matters most.

♪ ♪

♪ welcome back to "squawk box", everybody. good monday morning, by the way. if you did not see it last night, it was a difficult situation for comedian steve harvey. in the miss universe pageant last night, guys, he unfortunately misread the card at the end and announced that miss colombia was the winner, but then had to go back and correct it and say that miss philippines was actually the winner. >> but it took a while. >> so when i first heard the story, i thought he must have misread it. excuse me, no, it went on for five minutes or so. they put the crown on miss colombia. they gave her flowers, flag, cheering, waiving. >> then they took it back. >> three or four minutes later he comes back on stage and

there's miss philippines who's being -- miss u.s.a. finished third. she said, i think you won. they had to take the crown off of miss colombia's head and put it back on -- it was just unbelievable. >> i misread lots of things off the prompter but how do you misread -- >> it was the card. you said you had seen the card, right, briban? >> the picture of the card is going around twitter. we're all in this industry. steve harvey is a big name. where but for the grace of god. we've all made mistakes. the card was chinsily done. it said miss universe, miss philippines. i think he probably, i'm guessing, saw first and didn't sort of mentally do -- >> got it. >> nobody had a conversation with him. all he's handed is a card. nobody says in his ear or in person, by the way, the winner is. that shocks me that somebody

hands you the card and you hope you're reading it right. >> to defend steve, it was really poorly done, i think. >> i can't believe somebody didn't have a conversation with him saying, just so we're on the same page, here's the winner. >> breaking news, microsoft has filed for bankruptcy. did i say microsoft? sorry. they're fine. you wait for that call from your producer who goes, ah, dude, no. go back on the air. you really screwed that up. >> the conversation that took place. that really left him hanging. >> poor miss colombia. they had to take the crowd off her head. she's so tall. >> is her family crying? >> she was crying when she won. >> i'm crying for the fact that you took the crown back? >> do you think once you say it you've got to stick with it? >> no. that's a very american thing to say though now. every kid gets a medal. gave it to her. you know, we'll make two crowns. i'll tell you what, if i was miss colombia, i'd have a couple of crowns.

crown royals maybe. we've got another -- >> good luck making this transition. >> not nearly as fun in the sort of vein of what's politically correct or not these days. university of california is now trying to divest, drop its investments in prisons. this comes after the black lives matter campaign that's gone on on the campus. is indicative of what's going on. if joe was here he'd be talking about the safe space or not safe space. whole divestment on guns for example. i want to read you this. i thought this was the most interesting piece of it. it wasn't that the university was divesting its stake, it was what the prison, which is a private prison company, had to say about it. frankly, we're delighted to have a greater share of investors who are thoughtful about our business can tell the difference between rhetoric and reality. basically giving the university -- >> don't let the door hit you on the way out.

>> thank you so much for playing and thank you. >> i'd say that's the verbal finger. >> fascinating news. guys, today is december 21st. this is my favorite day of the year. first of all, it's my brother rob's birthday. happy birthday, rob. second of all, it is the winter solstice. this is the darkest day of the year. >> but i like it because now it reverses? >> right. every day from here on out we get more light for the next six months. so i hate how early it gets dark, but from here on out we're going to get a couple more minutes of light every day. i'm excited about that. >> if any political candidate came up and said, i will eliminate daylight savings time permanently, you've got my vote. i don't care what else you stand for. you've got my vote. 4:30 you're driving home and it's pitch black. >> they don't want kids standing outside waiting for school buses in the dark at 6:00 in the morning. >> where exactly does that happen anymore? >> ohio. my cousin. >> very good reason. >> you should move to a state -- >> your cousin in ohio should be driven in a chauffeured van.

>> you need to move to a state like arizona -- >> indiana. >> part of indiana. >> there's a couple of states that don't play at all. >> those are great american states. >> keeping america great. when we come back -- >> make america light again. >> trying to keep america great. talk presidential hopefuls on the campaign trail. the war of words between hillary clinton and donald trump. next, we'll talk about it with mow lytic could he's ben white. as we head to break, take a look at what's happening across the markets. you're looking at green markets. back in a moment.

proud of you, son. ge! a manufacturer. well that's why i dug this out for you. it's your grandpappy's hammer and he would have wanted you to have it. it meant a lot to him... yes, ge makes powerful machines. but i'll be writing the code that will allow those machines to share information with each other. i'll be changing the way the world works. (interrupting) you can't pick it up, can you? go ahead. he can't lift the hammer. it's okay though! you're going to change the world. now more than ever america's electricity comes from cleaner- burning natural gas. and no one produces more of it than exxonmobil. helping dramatically reduce u.s. emissions. because turning on the lights... isn't as simple as just flipping a switch.

energy lives here.

while you're watching this, i'm hacking your company. grabbing your data. stealing your customers' secrets. there's an army of us. relentlessly unpicking your patchwork of security. think you'll spot us? ♪ you haven't so far. the next wave of the internet requires the next wave of security. we're ready. are you? welcome back, everybody. good monday morning.

if you are just waking up, let us bring you up to speed on the markets. u.s. equity futures are indicating a higher open right now. the dow indicated up about 111 points coming off a bad week last week. oil though, guys, does remain the story. oil starting its week weak. of course, the january contract expiring today. we are seeing wti crude down .6 of 1% to $34.52. could be an active day in the oil pits. this has been a tough situation. i believe we have harold hamm, ceo of continental resources coming up on the show. my question's going to be very smart, what the hell's goings on. let's talk a little political news right now. the last few days campaigning before the holidays have many of the candidates meeting in new hampshire. meantime, new war of words between hillary clinton and donald trump. clinton claims that isis is using trump's ban on muslims to recruit. trump saying there's no indication of that.

tracie potts reports. >> she lies like crazy about everything. >> reporter: that's donald trump's reaction to what hillary clinton said about isis in saturday night's debate. >> they are going to people showing videos of donald trump insulting islam and muslims in order to recruit more radical jihadists. >> nobody has been able to back that up. it's nonsense. it's another hillary lie. >> reporter: trump agrees with bernie sanders on dealing with isis. >> assad, i want to see him go but that is a secondary issue compared to the destruction of isis. >> they're not going to take assad out. the syrian people are going to take assad out. >> reporter: jeb bush is still trying to get traction saying trump is not a serious threat. >> he said isis is not a threat. >> reporter: they're taking aim at president obama on global warming. >> what kind of numb skull thinks that the suv in your driveway is a bigger threat to our security than a bunch of

lunatics that want to kill us? >> reporter: the first caucuses and primaries are just a month away. at least six candidates will be in new hampshire today. tracie potts, nbc news, washington. joining us is ben white, politico's chief economic correspondent. good morning. >> good morning. >> your sense of -- well, i can say there was the debate, the technical debate between -- >> did you actually see it? >> no. it was on a saturday night. >> purposefully. >> purposefully on saturday night to bury it in hillary's favor. do you think that's true? >> absolutely. the dnc has done everything it can to put debates at a time when people won't see it. >>. dea -- the democrats say it was abc's choice. >> it was up against the jets/koh bocowboys. >> assuming that was not a real debate, bernie, did he score any points? >> i don't think so.

>> well done. he's still doing well in new hampshire. he could win new hampshire, kind of close in iowa. ultimately he's done. >> we'll get to trump in a second. the fact that she decided when they came back from break that she was going to come? a little late. she's at the top, it doesn't matter. >> she had a nice diva re-entry when she came back in. >> let's talk about the real debate, which is hillary/trump. this was a misstep by hillary clinton. she could have said donald trump's words could be used to inspire people to join isis if he's saying muslims shouldn't be allowed into the country. she suggested there actually are recruiting videos that are being used by isis using donald trump and there's no evidence that that's actually the case. so he had a pretty good case to make that, look, she made this thing up. if the democrats can come up with some evidence, that's one thing, but they don't have any evidence. she took it a step too far. it's one thing to say i don't agree with the way he talks about islam and muslims and this

is something that's going to play into what isis is trying to do in recruiting. she made a very clear statement that they have recruiting videos using donald trump. no evidence that's the case. >> what do we make of the other candidates, in particular jeb bush, really going at trump in a way that he hasn't before? i mean, this is sort of last gasp here? >> yeah, a little bit of last gasp. jeb needed to get tougher. he needed to get aggressive. he needed to show that he could bring the fight to donald trump. there's no traction. he's not a great deliverer of the attack message against donald trump. it's not in his nature. it's not the guy that he is. i don't know that it's working. it doesn't come across as particularly strong. i don't know that calling donald trump a jerk is going to bring trump's numbers down. >> if jeb fails i assume he would do it after iowa? >> oh, after eye owe warnings new hampshire. he has enough money to last for a while. >> that establishment, capturing that establishment for the next candidate is the most critical piece of what's going on behind

the scenes right now? >> i would think so. >> all the jockeying for that. does marco rubio bget that support? >> i think so. rubio has a lot of fans on wall street. he has a lot of fans at "the wall street journal" editorial page. you know, the pro business wing of the republican party would naturally move towards rubio after jeb gets out of the race. whether that's enough to counter the outsiders like trump and cruz -- calling cruz an outsider but he's playing for that. he's playing for the guy to beat up washington. >> it's like politics, at least presidential elections is math in a lot of ways. you look at the states that you need to take. really there's about five states that are going to determine the election. pennsylvania, ohio, virginia -- >> yeah. others may go. if you look at not how want but if you had to put together a -- >> objective journalist. >> i was thinking that rubio

kasich -- >> would be a good ticket. >> because you have florida. >> and ohio. >> and ohio and parts of western pennsylvania. >> even if he had 1% of the poll? >> he could play much better in a general election. >> who's being polled? >> yeah. he's not attractive to the conservative electorate. you need that moderate pennsylvanian? >> right. how does he do in ohio? >> kasich? >> yeah. >> he does pretty well. >> give you ohio? >> i don't know if he gives you ohio. if you have florida at the top of the ticket. rob portman would be another ohio candidate that would be a good number two. >> that's still assuming that donald trump isn't going to maintain and build his gains as he's done. >> right. another pole over the weekend showing him down 10 in iowa. >> iowa -- >> national numbers don't really matter at this point as much as the early state numbers matter.

truchbl could lose -- >> does iowa matter? >> you don't elect a president out of iowa. huckabee won it but trump's whole persona is i win everything. he said he was going to win iowa. does that take luster off of the donald trump message if he's not a winner in the first campaign, first election of the season he loses. i don't think that gets him out of the race but it's not good for him. cruz could gain, rubio could do well. >> what do you think donald trump would choose as his vice president? >> donald trump. it would be a trump/trump ticket. >> trump squared. >> he likes cruz a lot. i can see him doing trump/cruz. >> do you know who i've always liked. >> nikki hailey? >> if you're going to go up against -- if you're going to go up against hillary, there's a female vote. >> i was going to make a bad joke about the trump/putin

ticket given all of his praise but he wouldn't like it. in true trump fashion when he says something and says i'm not going to say it, you're not going to say it? >> i'm not saying it but i am. >> when all is said and done do you think the polls don't paint the picture? >> absolutely. >> early polls -- >> still i look at them and i'm thinking -- >> there is no national republican primary. there are individual states. they all affect each other. if you get momentum in one it changes the momentum in the other. it means his message of strength and make america great is popular. doesn't mean he'll win the nomination. >> leave it there. thank you for coming in. happy holidays. >> you, too. when we come in, we'll talk to a partner at venrac. it was started by the rockefeller family in 1969. plus, eye catching new statistics on holiday shopping. is it actually possible that 17% of americans have not yet started? wow. i feel for you people. details from a new survey next.

♪ ♪ how else do you think he gets around so fast? take the reins this holiday and get the mercedes-benz you've always wanted during the winter event. hurry, offers end january 4th!

don't panic, everybody, but there are now less than four full days until christmas. if you are a shopping procrastinato procrastinator, you're not alone. there's a new reuters poll shows that 17% of americans hasn't even started shopping as we headed into the week end.

that's less than 1/3 who have finished their shopping. what are you people waiting for? time to go! other consumer news now. nearly four in ten americans haven't visited branch in six m according to a report released today. atm visits were not included in the figures. >> our next guest has been an early investor in some of the transformative tech companies in our generation. they led funding for a little company called apple. held a seat on its board for 20 years and thinks there's about to be a major shift ahead for the auto industry, media and music once again joining us is david packman. one of the first firms started in 1968 with money from the rockefeller foundation which will never end. thank you for joining us. >> thanks for having me. >> we look at media as my daughter is on youtube a lot. i guess that's shifting now.

younow is the big thing. what's it going to look like in five years. where is the money going to be made? >> most important thing is to follow people's attention and most important properties in media are platforms for self-expressi self-expression. places where kids are broadcasting. look at what teens do first because teen behavior is predictive of what the future is. i just follow millennial and teen behavior. they're not watching tv. they're not watching linear tv for sure and watching less and less even on demand tv. they send their time on platforms of self-expression and it's all on mobile and majority of the content is created by themselves. that's where future of media is and where all of the attention is. >> it's changing. we see this evolution even now. facebook, that's not cool because mom got on it. it's snapchat and now that may be even swapping a little bit. how do you invest when in three

years we have no idea where anybody is going to be. >> i don't think they're as faddish as they may seem. there are new ones that emerge every few years. out of the thousands that try, only if you make it, so investing is a picking game and picking one of those few. in the case of a company that we have which are thousands of apps each one for a specific topic like nail art or beauty is where kids spend their time and that's predict of the future. >> do kids change as they get older? will the behavior change so they end up watching -- if it's not linear television but some kind of content that they and their friends hadn't created? i wonder if that's something as you get older. >> i take your point. i think they watch different programming than what we watch but a lot of that is stuff that's emerging on youtube. stars of today for kids are youtube celebrities. >> they're making no money. >> that's not true. >> it is true. there's five. a huge article about one of the

leading video bloggers on youtube gets paid nothing. still works at starbucks. >> i read that. let's look at money that people make on younow which is a much smaller network. they make between $5$50,000 and $100,000 a year. it's something in progress. attention shifting to these platforms. they only get larger over time. >> but the point being is that it's not going to be just self-created content. it's contented created by somebody. how and when they watch it is maybe different than what their parents did. >> i agree. the cost of entry to become that talent is zero. it's a good thing. >> it's a good thing for the platforms. >> we don't have the gate keepers. so anyone can try. you hope that cream rises to the

top. largely its people's attention that is boding for popularity opposed to a producer. >> would you worry advertising model behind these things actually works? >> they're not only advertising models. people watching other people play video games and you are not advertising based. they are patronage based. the broadcasters redeem that for cash. this is really the user paying the creator which is a model that doesn't exist in legacy media. >> and long-term though one of the things that's -- advertising has supported all of these things. do you think that people's disposable income whether it comes to paying for over the top television or paying for these services, that a larger share keeps going towards this or is there a line at which it stops? >> we know there's generally a finite amount of disposable income people have to spend. this is about a shift. >> who loses? >> magazines and newspapers have lost for some time.

i think the attention shifting away from television to these other platforms is hurting ratings and certainly we know that now cable subscriptions are down and so we're seeing a shift in attention from traditional media properties to new ones. >> the valuations of these businesses? >> they are inflated largely because a lot of late-stage capital has been investing in larger tech companies. they are worth billions of dollars. it's just a question of -- >> is it unquestionable or questionable? some of these guys will go bankrupt. they are. >> the five or ten we just mentioned will not go bankrupt. instagram and twitch. these are not going bankrupt and the tech companies are not going to be worth billions of dollars. >> the weird thing about twitter, we use it because we have to. twitter is a store. most stores buy stuff from suppliers and put it in the

store and sell it to consumers. twitter's entire store is filled by stuff other people are putting in the store for free. >> i think that's true of -- >> at some point isn't anyone going to realize why are we giving free content to all of these sites? why do i put my stuff in their store? >> largely the reason you contribute to these networks is for social credibility, which is a small currency. it's not as much as economic currency. over time there has to be a mechanism for the super connectors to monetize this. they can make money. >> cars, what's a car going to look like in ten years? >> it's going to be all electric. it's going to be self-driving no question about it and it won't get in accidents. >> david, thank you for coming in. happy holidays. when we come back, this morning's top story including brent oil dropping to the lowest level in more than a decade as we go to a break.

check out the futures. we're back in a moment.

♪ while you're watching this, i'm hacking your company. grabbing your data. stealing your customers' secrets. there's an army of us. relentlessly unpicking your patchwork of security.

think you'll spot us? ♪ you haven't so far. the next wave of the internet requires the next wave of security. we're ready. are you? new this morning, "star wars" smashes global records in its opening weekend. >> biotech bad boy speaks out. martin shkreli under arrest and under fire. yp he feels he was targeted by u.s. authorities. steve harvey forced to apologize after crowning the wrong woman as miss universe. the second hour of "squawk box" begins right now.

welcome back to "squawk box." i'm becky quick along with andrew ross sorkin and brian sul vin. brent prices dropping to the lowest levels since 2004. take a look at that. 36.33. a decline of another 1.5%. wti also lower this morning. it's down by 1% to 34.37. worth noting that january wti contract expires today. that could mean a more volatile trading session. we'll talk to legendary oil man harold hamm at the top of the next hour. as for broader markets, u.s. equity futures look to be strong. dow up by 104 points. s&p futures up by 12. nasdaq up by 38. this is coming after another rough week for the markets. at one point during the week it

looked like we would pull up and making gains after horrific week from the week before. dow down by 0.8% by the end of the day. >> a developing story outside of the world of business this morning. at least one person was killed and 26 others injured. this after a car crashed into a crowded sidewalk in las vegas. investigators think the crash may have been an intentional act but say they are confident it's not any kind of terrorism. it was a 3-year-old in the car with the driver. the driver actually left the scene but since has been taken into custody and interviewed and tested for drugs and alcohol. also in your headlines this morning, gasoline prices now dropping to their lowest in more than six years. the latest survey shows the average price of gas down four cents over the last two weeks to a nationwide average of $2.06. martin shkreli said he was targeted for arrest because of his drug price hike. he faces securities fraud

charges but he told "the wall street journal" that the government was trying to come up with anything to make a case against him. the force most definitely awoke over the weekend. "star wars: the force awakens" destroyed prior box office records taking in 517 million in worldwide ticket sales over the weekend. it includes 238 million in the u.s. and canada. becky quick says it was worth every penny. >> it was. 'tis the season to make your portfolio list and check it twice. we're joined from the land of misfit stocks. a look at some of the names that have fallen out of favor and been left behind by the market. good morning. >> so let's talk a little bit about what's happening with the marketplace. if you look at the misfits over the past week, some of them started to emerge. let's look at the play by play for what happened in terms of the dow. it's been a roller coaster week last week. we'll see if things are stabilizing right now and if they hold that way over the course of the last week we saw

the dow rise by more than 500 points culminating with that big rally on wednesday right after the fed raised interest rates only to see all of those gains you see disappear here losing more than 700 points by the time the last two days came about. this move here for the dow basically puts the dow down for the year also the s&p 500 as well. so 3% to 4% moves to the downside. it's a bad move here. for misfit side of things, let's look at sectors that have been gaining or left behind in the trade that was last week. utilities and telecom stocks, they did manage to carve their way into positive territory over the course of the past week. the ones that have been the misfits so far, look at technology and materials. two of the more economically sensitive sectors and one that are most sensitive to what's happening in the economy. so tech and telecom again two opposite sides of the spectrum with regard to the week that was. keep it mind that if you talk

about overall moves we've seen last week, we did see two parts of the market here make some notable moves to the downside. transportation stocks finished with their worst levels since april of 2014. small cap stocks had the first three-week losing streak since january of this year. so small cap, transportation stocks, also perhaps a bit of the misfit side of things and of course when we talk about overall market, one thing we want to keep in mind, friday was an options expiration day. quadruple witching people call it. second highest volume day of the year next to only the day when the dow dropped that thousand points in one day august 24th. back over to you. >> dom, great insight. we'll see you soon. should investors expect another rough week of trading as santa gets set to come to town?

chris, it's so weird right now. stronger dollar is supposed to help small caps because they have their business domestically. cheap gas should help transports because it's their biggest input cost and a rate hike should help. exact opposite has happened on all three things. what's going on? >> a couple things. we talked about this previously. you're in an earnings vacuum so markets overreact to every bit of news that comes out and there are bigger trends going on. you have oversupply and concern it will last a long time and it's been region and not just u.s. but europe and that's affecting oil prices. third thing that you have going on with this overreaction is markets are discounting. small caps discounted the strong dollar and consumer strength and that's been built into prices. i think a little bit of trade activity last week was taking steam off that. >> a year ago it was up in

midland and i said i thought when you look at the numbers, the amount of money that's invested in oil, that whatever benefit the consumer gets from cheap gas might be mitigated by the lack of investment in the fastest growth industry in the united states. good paying jobs. fast growth. all that is slowing down. is this going to be a net negative for the stock market? >> i think it's going to put challenges to revenue growth line. that's key for next year and beyond is revenue line will be weak. think about it this way. broadly speaking equity returns might be 5% over the next several years. portfolio returns might be four. >> that include dividends? that stinks. >> you think about where we start. high valuations. high profit margins and a place where interest rates are low and rising. >> do you agree with that? >> yes. i think that what you're seeing is reaction that we saw last week was a catchup of a bunch of other things. revenues have stalled. earnings have really struggled.

peak margins are coming in. costs are going up. you have a headwind there so in large cap space and small cap space. throw in the beginning. the confirmation of policy normalization and you have some materials headwinds going into 2016. i think you're right. i think at best you're hoping for total return of something on the order of sub-5%. >> this is christmas week. we have to be careful. it sounds glum. >> is there some ways you would say is better? >> scrooge and marly on set. >> if you look at the s&p 500 this year, it was basically a story of a handful of stocks. most of the index was down. if you did this a couple weeks ago when the market was up 2%, it was driven by a handful of stocks. literally the top ten stocks in the index. you look at everything else and it was pretty much a piece of

coal in the stocking. that's where you start looking for next year. and i would argue, too, to be completely -- you go down through. there are financial services. >> there's a rebound in there somewhere. >> consumer product companies. they are down 20%, 30% this year. look there. the other thing is you can look at the energy sector. the seeds for the new boom are sewn in the bust, right? and whether it's paper companies, shipping companies, oil companies. old story that plays again and again. and with energy prices where they are right now, production being taken out, rigs being taken offline, roll forward 18, 24 months, energy prices will be higher than they are right now. >> i think your gift this year will be shift in thinking.

last five years have been about the stock market index. don't do anything else. picking stocks and countries and themes. at the end of the day the place to start might be some of the value orientated places in 2016 so that's where you want to go. >> what about emerging markets? i mean, south america, brazil for example. there is billionaires being thrown in jail. price of oil crushed their biggest company. you have political upheaval. you have concerns about the olympics coming next year. seems like it's the perfect storm of negativity around a country like brazil. >> i would be careful there. i would be careful about blind buying of things that look difficult. i think you buy when windows are dark is the saying. what i get to is go for places where there's reform. we saw reform driving india earlier this year. you may see some in argentina going forward. opportunities driven by markets to be selective than just buying

index and go home. >> i think you look at those markets and once you start to see further interest rate rises. the dollar continues to strengthen. that's the canary in the coal mine. $4 trillion of debt in emerging markets. again, we've seen this movie before. when you start to have policy divergence and dollar strengthens and canary in the coal mine is some country or company with dollar dominated debt rolling over. >> there's a bit of that coming in 2016. i think the challenge around picking stocks, countries and themes will be to be a little early and patient and look for value. it's all about next year. i think with interest burdens going up, free cash flow story. that's really it. >> thank you very much. appreciate it. coming up when we return, we'll focus on financials. banks have been hit hard since the fed decision to hike rates.

we'll have the 2016 predictions next. back in a moment.

welcome back to "squawk box." 7:14 here in the east. futures are indicating a higher market open to start this christmas shortened week. dow futures indicating a gain of 100 points.

becky, obviously coming off what was a crappy week last week. >> that is true. >> unless you're short. then it was great. >> financials proving to be the biggest losers since the fed's announcement to raise rates. joining to us breakdown that move and figure out why is jeff hart. equity research principle at sandler o'neil. jeff, this was not what was supposed to happen. we thought when fed raised rates it would be great news for banks because they could actually start to earn a little more money. what happened? >> i don't think the sell-off we saw was about interest rates when it comes down to it. interest rates rising are generally good for banks. concern is yield curve is flattening and that's not good for banks. i think last week was about economic uncertainty. you have oil prices going down. high yield spreads widening dramatically. those are typically bad canary. those are dying canaries in the coal mine for the economy and

financial uncertainty is bad for financials. >> are you a believer in that? are you a believer that these economic quivers that we've seen are really spelling a bad year for the economy next year? >> i don't think so. tough to forecast the economy. we're looking at a slow growth environment like we've seen. so not great but i mean this is a very unique time. it's weird to see rates going up when corporate profits are coming in a bit. it's weird to see high yield spreads widening as much as they are when you haven't got excess signs in the economy that we usually see. i flash back to 2011. we saw high yield spreads jump this high then and we came through and we're okay. when i look at the stuff we look at for underlying indicators of the economy, globally thingstac. >> it means this is a buying opportunity. >> it's a buying opportunity coming into next year.

>> which stocks do you like the best when you start looking through the sector? >> specifically i'm a fan of the big banks. the citigroups and jpmorgans. >> because they've been hit the hardest? >> also compliance cost keep going up. most of these have done co compliance investing. these guys have scale. and to that extend, they've been investing for revenue growth when most banks are trying to keep costs down. they've been investing. you could see better revenue growth there. you'll certainly see better efficiency ratios and profita e profitability out of big banks. that's unique. what's probably a lukewarm year for banks in general. >> we talk about compliance issues and it's the reason it made more sense to be a big bank for a while. do you think that that will lead to additional mergers and acquisitions in 2016 or is there a point where big banks get

tired of getting beat up and having to deal with so much of the things because they're so big and some of them actually start to break down or split pieces off. >> break it into two groups. you have citigroup and jpmorgan. you won't see them make acquisitions. you won't see them break themselves up. the breakup issue really for them -- regulators wanted to force it, they would have forced it. it's a matter of economics. >> the banks themselves choose to do it because they think they would be better rewarded on wall street. >> it's a matter of economics. if you can earn by having the scale, you'll stick with it. if not, it's time to break up. you have companies like wells fargo, jpmorgan, goldman sachs, as long as it's possible they'll keep pushing it. >> you don't think any of them will split up? >> i don't see it. >> i don't know if you cover these companies. small advisory public boutiques. how do you think about the new

spin-off from blackstone that's an advisory business, do you see those multiples expand in 2016? >> yes. i think we see multiples expand and to be fair, you know, mid 2014 we kind of took the space to buy. i have buys almost across the board in this space. what's different this time versus the last cycle is there's twice as many publicly traded boutiques as there was. there is more public market cap now than there was last time. makes multiples lower. when you look to next year, m&a should be up. >> do any boutiques get sold? one of the things we learned is if you don't have a greenhill running them, you would have been better off selling that at the top before the top guy leaves because each one seems to be run by an individual as

opposed to a brand. >> do you buy that? >> that's the other question. it's a very interesting question. there even is a multiple on some of these businesses. >> every downturn the thought process is no one will buy an investment bank again because business will go down. when things get better, people come back in. intelligently or not. >> whenever anybody says no one will ever blank again, fade the opposite. it's ridiculous. >> m & a is the strong suit. that's where things have been big. >> i wonder if someone gets -- >> you could see consolidation among them. greenhill is large cap focus. you have others which is more u.s. and middle markets focused. there could be synergies within the space as well. if m&a is going up 15% a year or more for a number of years, stocks will do well in my opinion.

>> jeff, thanks for m coucoming. the mistake everyone is talking about this morning how steve harvey managed to crown the wrong woman as miss universe. we'll show you all of that when we come back. oh i'm not a security guard, i'm a security monitor. i only notify people if there is a robbery. there's a robbery. why monitor a problem if you don't fix it? that's why lifelock does more than free credit monitoring to protect you from identity theft. we not only alert you to identity threats, if you have a problem, we'll spend up to a million dollars on lawyers and experts to fix it. lifelock. join starting at $9.99 a month.

a major snafu at the miss universe pageant in las vegas last night. >> columbia! i have to apologize. >> people thought he was kidding. came down to two contestants. she was given the sash and crown and bouquet. only problem she was not the right one. she was runner-up. flub forced harvey back to stage to apologize as we saw and take responsibility for not reading the card correctly. how terrible is that? pretty terrible. >> some school of thought going around this morning that was this whole thing staged to generate what we're doing right now? >> talking more about it. >> everything now on the internet is like people anything that happens people will say

that must have been on purpose. i don't think so. >> you know who would have thought of that and did he own this? is this the donald? the donald. donald used to own -- >> you're adding to the conspiracy fire. >> i'm just saying. >> i don't think steve harvey would know about it. the worst part was, i saw it this morning. i was asleep. it was five minutes. it was not like right away. excuse me. it's miss philippines and then apparently colombia and philippines were misspelled on the card or something. the card that was sent out. >> i think it was misspelled on the tweet he sent out apologizing. >> they took the crown literally off miss colombia's head. >> the donald did sell miss universe to emmanuel who owns wayne morris.

>> all right. let's tell you about "squawk" sports news. carolina panthers and new york giants battling it out literally. the panthers winning with a last-second field goal. the game long battle between panthers cornerback josh norman and giants wide receiver odell beckham, jr. the two went at it the entire game trading shoves, hits and punches. no one was tossed out. most say beckham, jr., should expect a call from the league today after officials look at the tape from the game and see some of the various punches that were thrown like that. >> there you go. >> a red card today for the world's most powerful soccer leader. fifa's ethics committee banning sepp blatter from all activities for the next eight years kicked out of the sport for disloyalty to fifa in a deal that's the subject of a criminal investigation in switzerland. both are expected to appeal. coming up, the force really

did awaken. "star wars" smashing box office records bringing in more than half a billion dollars worldwide but this won't matter to disney. the stock is still in trouble. we're going to find out why as "squawk box" rolls on. stick around.

welcome back to "squawk box" here on cnbc first in business worldwide. among the stories that are front and center this morning, it will be a shortened trading week on wall street as we begin the last two weeks of 2015. the markets will be open for just half a day on thursday and then we'll be closed on friday for christmas. last-minute holiday shopping has reached new levels. the national retail federation says as much as 40% of the season's sales happen in the final ten days before christmas.

busiest day is no longer black friday but super saturday. that's the saturday before christmas as we turn into a nation of procrastinators and apple ceo tim cook says the idea that his company is avoiding taxes is "political crap." he told "60 minutes" that bringing overseas profits back to the united states would cost 40% making a move unreasonable. brian? >> the new "star wars" movie clearly ruling the box office galaxy becoming the biggest opening in any movie history anywhere and get this, it hasn't even opened in china yet which is the world's second largest film market. joining us now, eric davis, movies.com. fandango is owned by our parent company, nbc universal, which i learned just now. welcome. >> thank you for having me. >> are we going to be to a billion by this next weekend? >> we might. there's a bit of caveat with china. "star wars" isn't a massive --

>> it didn't play there originally. >> the original three have been playing there recently. disney has done a big push in china to get people onboard. so that number when it opens in early january is going to be a big indicator on whether or not we're going to see a big new global record, which is $2.7 billion set by "avatar." >> that's total worldwide. >> that's a huge, huge number. to give you an example, "jurassic world" did 1.6 billion. that was about a billion off from the record. "star wars" needs to do some crazy, crazy business. a lot of box office is front loaded because fans are going to be early versus "avatar" which was back end. word of mouth movie. >> this is cnbc so i'll get wonky here. let's not forget you have to adjust for inflation. 2.7 billion for "avatar" a decade ago is probably about 3

billion in today's dollars. do you think "star wars" will do more than 3 billion when all is said and done in is. >> i think it's going to be tough. >> becky came in raving about it. >> i know people who have seen it four times in opening weekend which is a big deal. in order for it to get to those numbers -- four times since thursday night previews. >> something else going on. >> i think it will depend on people seeing it multiple times for it to get there it also, you have a lot of people waiting for it to die down before they go back. my parents haven't seen it yet. they'll see it when the noise dies down a little bit and also younger kids. there will be a lot of parents to see if younger kids can go see it, too. majority of the audience who saw it opening weekend were over the age of 25. >> some of them according to my good friend in costume. >> they were in costume. >> hooting and hollering and random cheering. go with kids, wait until this

calms down. not a dude in chewbacca outfit blocking your daughter's view. when is the next one out? >> next one comes out next december. this is a prequel. that's a dirty word. it's not connected to this trilogy of movies. this is a new trilogy. every other year we'll see a movie connected to this story. in between we'll see spin-off movies. >> kind of a fourth movie in a tri trilogy in a way? >> it takes place right before the first movie. >> "lord of the rings" and this is "the hobbit." >> big thing with "star wars" is who will they bring back? they can bring back darth vader and these are characters because it takes place right before the first movie.

i think if they start campaigning for this movie, we haven't seen anything except for one picture, if they show a darth vader, which i think they have to. >> he's the bad guy but he's the guy. he turned good and he died. >> everyone is going to be saying -- >> is hayden christianson going to come back? that hurt. >> the new villain reminds me of skywalker a bit. >> and long as there is no young darth vader we should be okay. >> bring back vader. people want to see vader. they brought him back on the animated disney show. >> i want to know if "family guy" is going to do a remake. >> bring him back. >> eric, pleasure. bring him back. andrew? >> thank you for that. a record weekend for disney but there's another force potentially looming over the

company. it's cable properties and threat of cord cutters. let's bring in rich greenfield. he's fading the force downgrading disney to sell on friday while everyone is talking up disney you say not so much. >> i think every stock has pluses and minuses. challenge for disney is everyone knows that "star wars" is going to be great. you were listening to the question of can it be bigger than "avatar"? i don't know. we're betting on somewhere around 2.6 billion which is close to avatar. whether or not it's bigger or not, the question still comes down to can they hit earnings expectations over the next couple of years because remember the film is not their biggest division. by far their biggest division within walt disney company is cable networks. >> you argue that they overpaid for programming and that they are effectively sort of teaching the world by selling all this stuff to amazon to get away from ads. >> even on friday literally as we were making this call, disney sold one of their new abc family shows to netflix on worldwide

except the u.s. the date after it airs in the u.s. >> isn't there an argument that they are a production house. they do make stuff. they need to find places to sell it to. why not be allowed to sell it to netflix or amazon. >> if they were a stand alone production company they should be selling to everyone. i think the question becomes when you're so tied than anyone in the ecosystem to the big cable bundle. disney needs that cable bundle. 94 million people paying for espn. that's how the math works on espn. espn direct to consumer doesn't work and as you encourage people to not need the bundle, it makes the math on disney hard. >> let me ask you a specific question. on friday when you came on cnbc, you said that bob was not truthful when you were talking about this consumer espn business. are you suggesting he's lying? >> we say they're not currently prepared to go direct to consumer. disney is not going to make that decision.

>> they haven't. they've said that they will eventually. they haven't done it. >> they've done it overseas with their disney property. >> not with espn. >> espn is not a property they can do it with. the reality is doing it in the u.s. actually launching that business would be a very bad decision for disney. >> he came on this program and suggested they will eventually do it. >> he said they could do it now. >> they're not going to. do you think it's coming three to four years from now? >> i don't think they can do it in the foreseeable future. when you look at disney and espn specifically, remember, the way espn works is they have sports. it's all sports all the time. if you're only a football fan, you're not going to subscribe for the full year. we saw that even with sling. people signed up for sling because you can get tbs and tnt and they got tbs to watch the pennant race and then they canceled sling. >> here's my question on it. i know it looks startling to see how many people have left the

subscriber ranks, but i do feel like espn despite how much people pay for it right now, the hardcore addicts would pay two, three, four, five times as much so even if the numbers come down, can't they raise rates on the remaining subscribers and make up for the ground that they've lost? >> you lose the casual fan. when do you that, you don't get the stumble upon. how many people end up watching "monday night football" flipping through channels and not the super fan but they end up watching and they watch because it's on channel 28. >> espn still has enough. i'm not talking about over the top. i'm talking subscribers. can't they go back and renegotiate on these things and raise rates? they have given up and said you don't have to keep us in the bundle. we want higher rates. >> the problem is that big multichannel bundle at $80 is under a lot of stress. you look at the price value, we're all watching less live linear television. the price keeps going up. if espn tries, they can certainly try, but they've been

having a harder time getting the size of increases that they got when they signed "monday night football" for the first time when they were growing double digits on the rate side. it's harder. that price value equation and comcast and charter trying to buy time warner, it's harder to keep pushing rates. >> i wouldn't pay for it but most households have someone who would pay for it. >> do you think they would pay discretely if they had a choice? if you had a choice of having espn or not having espn, do you think more than half of the households would say i have to have this? 30 million crazy sports fans but would you pay for espn for the entire year? remember, you can subscribe just during football season. if you could buy discretely, there's continuity risk. >> why allow that to happen? pay for the year and pay for the year up front. >> that's what's changing. they could resemble the hbo now

model which is going direct to consumers. >> as a monthly payment. >> that seems like it would be crazy for them to do that. you can subscribe over the top but pay for a year. >> locking in is really hard. we live in a world where basically netflix and amazon. >> if you want to see this, you have to pay for a year subscription. more people than not would go ahead and do that. >> a lot of people aren't football fans. look at espn ratings. it's tough. especially outside of football season, they don't get those ratings. it's a great question. i think it's why to answer andrew's question they're not going to do it. they talk about being able to do it. >> two things, was bob when he said that overconfident or are you suggesting he's lying? >> i think he's trying to tell the street they are capable of doing something they would never do. i think it's a fine point in terms of the clarity. they're not actually going to do it and so whether they are technically prepared, which i would still question whether they could deliver that product

and it would work to millions of people, they're not going to do it. >> he's straight up lying? >> we're saying he's not being honest with investors about their preparedness to take this product to market in the near future. >> if they did take it to market, the price tag. what do you think the number is? >> this is your question during the interview of him is what would the price be? the price is not -- >> it has to be between 21 and 28 a month. >> if that price is there, lots of people will turn on and off when they get the opportunity. if they're not a tennis fan, they're canceling after tennis ends. big bcs fan, they're canceling after. they're not subscribing $28 all year long. >> have you heard from disney? >> yes. less than pleased. >> what happens? >> i won't get into specifics but disney is clearly not happy. >> we'll talk more. happy holidays. coming up, martin shkreli

screaming after his arrest from last week. his twitter account has been hacked. vanity fair spoke to him and we'll discuss that when we return and at the top of the hour, where are oil prices headed? harold hamm will join us with his predictions. more "squawk" coming up in just a moment.

welcome back. martin shkreli retired on friday following his arrest on securities fraud by the fbi. he spoke to "vanity fair" about his public reputation and a story for the magazine's february issue. bethany is a cnbc contributor. great to see you this morning. >> how are you? >> i'm great. after talking with martin shkreli and hearing his side of the story what did you think when events took such a quick turn on friday and he was arrested? >> the funny thing was that it was obviously coming. his former company disclosed in their financial statements there was a criminal investigation of him brewing and people said that it was going to come any day. funny thing was how absolutely unfazed by it he appeared to be.

completely over the top about denying there had been any wrongdoing and he's got his own story about why the company had filed this lawsuit against him and why he was arrested. you may call him delusional ade >> what did you think in the time you spent with him? do you think he's delusional? >> that may be part of it. insecurity going on. he's unquestionably really smart. the question of who he is fascinating. >> he's come out swinging since this arrest. have you spoken with him yourself? >> i have not spoken with him since the arrest, no. i e-mailed with him the day before asking him again about some of the allegations and he has basically painted it as a war between himself and his previous company that is all about money that he claims that they owe him. he says they filed the original

lawsuit that his company filed against him as retribution to stop him from getting the money he was owed. >> eventually money is fairly easily traceable. at some point it should be easy to lay out and s.e.c. seems to think they have a strong case. >> right. you have to keep in mind when the justice department brings a case, they almost always win. and you read the allegations in this case and it doesn't seem to leave a lot of wiggle room. the only caveat i would offer is that at least when it comes to his dealings with his former company, he took that public through a reverse merger. s.e.c. issued a bulletin warning investors away from reverse mergers. this is the land of scammy things for lack of a better way of putting it. what he did in context of that land isn't as outrageous as it might be as if we were talking about this being ibm or disney. >> first off, it's 4:45 in the morning where you are in los angeles so thank you for either,

a, getting up early or not going to bed for us. reading your piece was fascinating. this man is someone everyone wants to hate. you took a fair approach as you normally do to him. is it easy when you talk to him to understand what's real and what is said for your benefit. part of what you wrote is he came across as not necessarily the worst guy in the world. >> i had two very different experiences with him. first time i met him i thought he seemed as he has been portrayed. the second time i met him i actually walked out of there thinking everything i've been thinking is wrong. this is a real company. he's a real person. he's actually trying to invent new diseases to treat rare di diseases and when you sit with him you find yourself nodding and agreeing with what he's saying and your brain is saying this isn't true. he does have -- you can tell by the fact that he's been able to lure so many investors in along

the way. he does have a weirdly compelling personality and i think there may be a small part of him that's actually telling the truth. maybe that's who he wants to be or who he hopes he can be. >> bethany, one of the fascinating pieces of this is that part of his defense is that the lawyers proved everything he did and yet in this instance one of the lawyers has been arrested as well as helping orchestrate all of this. do you think that this was orchestrated by the lawyers or they were directed by him to do it and went along with it? >> i think that's a really weird question at the heart of all this because as i said, this was coming was disclosed in his former company's financial statements when they read through allegations against him, they made clear it was approved by a lawyer and that was always martin's defense. his outside lawyer signed off on all of this. the outside lawyer was a real guy. he worked at big firms. so this wasn't some smalltime lawyer setting up shop by

himself. it's really odd. i can't remember the last time you've had a lawyer arrested along with his client. and then there were people who were also supposedly defrauded, some of whom i spoke to who were defenders of martin and the complaint also names corrupt employees. so you have a weird web at the center of this if the justice department's allegations are true. >> two things you just said. first of all, you spoke to investors he defrauded that defended him. did they get money back paid off from another company? >> well, the funny thing about this, it's the rare ponzi scheme that worked if you leave the allegations in the indictment. he was doing ponzi schemes with his hedge funds because he kept losing people's money and luring new people in. eventually everybody got paid back because the last one, his former company, worked. >> there's a point where you can take any ponzi scheme and say, okay, you caught it before the

whole thing unraveled. >> no. the former company is a semireal company with a stock that's traded on the nasdaq and real revenues. if it's a ponzi scheme, it's one that's a publicly traded company that people can look at. he succeeded in creating a publicly traded company that has some real value to it. i suppose i would say. to answer your original question, there are people who worked closely with him who were in the lawsuit the company filed against him supposedly victims of him who didn't agree with that portrayal. that was a strange twist until you look at the justice department allegations where they allege that he had corrupt employees working with him as well. >> all right. bethany, thank you. always great to see you. hope to see you in studio again soon. >> you, too. thanks. when we come back, we'll tell you about stocks you need to watch when trading begins on wall street and oil prices skidding to their lowest level in 11 years.

our special guest in the next hour include harold hamm and the ceo of luke oil. right now check out the price of wti. it's down 1.5% to 34.23. brent down to 36.13. "squawk box" will be right back.

♪ i built my business with passion. but i keep it growing by making every dollar count. that's why i have the spark cash card from capital one. i earn unlimited 2% cash back on everything i buy for my studio. ♪ and that unlimited 2% cash back from spark means thousands of dollars each year going back into my business... that's huge for my bottom line. what's in your wallet?

welcome back. let's look at stocks to watch. apple anderi ericsson reaching deal. the latest installment in "star wars" may help disney bounce back after a downgrade on friday. the stock is up by 1.25%. microsoft on the move after a write up suggested the stock could rise 30% in the next 18 months. that prediction is betting on a boost from microsoft's cloud computing business. that stock is up by 36 cents. tiffany getting an upgrade. and a higher takeover bid from britain. the u.k.'s sunday times says

they would add cash to the bid sweetening an offer. and a takeover bid from china. the bid is 2 billion higher than the prior offer made for the firm. it's still below an offer that was rejected earlier this year fr. one of russia's biggest oil producers spoke a while ago. we'll hear the lifting of the u.s. oil export ban and where oil prices may be headed next year and reaction to that interview from harold hamm. he thinks lifting the ban will put a strain on russian oil. a lot to talk about with harold joining us when "squawk box" returns for 8:00 eastern time hour. we're back after this. it's your grandpappy's hammer and he would have wanted you to have it. it meant a lot to him... yes, ge makes powerful machines.

but i'll be writing the code that will allow those machines to share information with each other. i'll be changing the way the world works. (interrupting) you can't pick it up, can you? go ahead. he can't lift the hammer. it's okay though! you're going to change the world. bob dylan. to improve my language skills, i've read all of your lyrics. you've read all of my lyrics? i can read 800 million pages per second. that's fast. my analysis shows your major themes are that time passes. and love fades. that sounds about right. i have never known love. maybe we should write a song together. i can sing. you can sing? do be bop. be bop do. do be do be do. do do do be do.

oil plummets to an 11-year low after the u.s. lifts its export ban. what does the move mean for the world's oil suppliers? we asked the ceo of russia's oil giant and get reaction from harold hamm. stocks getting ready for a short week on wall street. is there enough time for santa to make it to town?

jim paulson shares his investment strategy and your 2016 tech playbook straight ahead. look up in the sky. what is that? a bird? a plane? it's just another drone. and you've got to get it registered. that story plus the ceo of toys "r" us on the success of "star wars" as the final hour of "squawk box" awakens right now. ♪ welcome back to "squawk box," everybody. this is cnbc first in business worldwide. i'm becky quick along with andrew ross sorkin and brian sullivan. joe will be back tomorrow. we're less than 90 minutes away from opening bell on wall street. as you can see, futures are still indicated higher but we're off the highs of the morning. earlier today you were looking at the dow up by 120 points above fair value. now the dow futures are up by 90

points above fair value. s&p futures up by ten and the nasdaq is up by 34 right now. let's look at the markets in europe. you can see in early trading there. green arrows for most of the major markets. dax is up. ftse is up by 0.8 of a point. >> here are other stories that investors will squawking about on this monday morning. plunging pump prices making news once again. aaa which monitors prices on a daily basis asays average droppd below two bucks. americans have saved more than 115 billion on gasoline this year due to lower prices. i would pushback on that. studies show that people are driving more. they're not saving. >> saving some. saving rates increased. >> if you're in california thinking what discount? the shortened trading week will be a busy one no economic numbers. no new reports due out today but over the next three days, friday

christmas, we'll get fresh data on gdp, existing home sales, durable goods, personal income and spending, consumer spending and jobless claims in a three-day period and finally, ge expects to decide in january whether to move out of its longtime headquarters in fairfield, connecticut. ge has been mulling that move because of tax increases implemented by state lawmakers earlier this year. on that note, i met with somebody, won't say who, that has some knowledge of this. they said -- i thought there's no way this is going to happen. there's a real chance. this actually could happen that ge could leave connecticut. there's a possibility. someone in a position that would know. >> did they say where they would go? >> i don't know where they would want to go. i can say that it would -- the big t had been mentioned. >> texas? >> so you look at toyota. toyota left l.a. and went to dallas. and there was a big study that came out last week that said it wasn't because of california's business environment. you know what it was?

employee housing costs. you can pay the same employee the same amount of money or maybe even a little less but that employee can get three times a home they can get in a connecticut or a california and that goes to attracting -- not sure it will happen. just saying if you think this is not going to happen, it could. >> "star wars: the force awakens" biggest debut worldwide. disney film earning $517 million in ticket sales smashing box office records. in the last hour, rich greenfield join us and acknowledged success of "star wars" at the box office, he has doubts about disney's growth plans namely espn. >> if you had a choice of having espn or not having espn, do you think more than half of the households in the u.s. would say i have to have this? 30, 40 million crazy sports fans

but would you pay for espn for the entire year? you can subscribe just during football season. if you can buy discretely, there's a continuity risk. >> shares of disney falling sharply on friday after he downgraded the stock. it's bounced back a bit this morning in part based on those big box office numbers. russia's luke oil is one of the biggest in the world that accounts for more than 2% of total global crude production. margaret brennan spoke with the company ceo a short time ago. >> good morning. lukoil, russian energy ceo in an exclusive interview with translation on a day when present hits an 11-year low. this is his forecast for prices in 2016. >> translator: we believe between $40 to $50 a barrel is where the price will sustain during 2016 because the current

prices is taking place in the industry do not enentiincentivi as a result the price will be climbing back. that will happen during the midterm in order to achieve dramatic changes in this situation. we require decisions from the countries which make up opec which would enable to stabilize oil price. >> speaking of opec, they are focused on the next opec meeting scheduled for february. >> translator: during this session more specific decisions might be made in terms of how to regulate the market. saudi arabia is one of the biggest producer and one of the few countries which have reserves in its production most probably will act as a coordinator of the kind of action plan which might be adopted during the february

meeting. >> i asked whether he's concerned about the u.s. government's plans to lift the four decade old ban on crude exports and competition that could potentially create in places like europe. >> translator: i do not think that this move will significantly affect the market. it might simply bring the oil price produced in the united states in balance with brent price. most probably there will be a bit of a swap whereby the oil the u.s. will sell into the open market and still continue buying the heavier oil. >> in other words he expects a redistribution of oil. crude swaps rather than u.s. contributing additional supply to the global marketplace. brian, becky? >> all right. thank you very much. oil right now sitting near 11-year lows. joining us with more on plunging price of crude is harold hamm.

chairman and ceo of continental resources and harold, good morning. it's always great to see you. >> yes, becky. thank you. it's good to be here. >> we talked with you early on and you were someone who thought we were going to look at lower prices for a longer time. that's why you did a lot of things in terms of cuts. have you been surprised by how long prices have been this low and idea that they continue to fall? >> well, you know, it's up to opec primarily saudis to continue however long they might want to. this, too, will play out as well. we're being positioned for a short supply in the market and that's part of what happens with predatory prices. that's what they've used for the last 40 years to try to put everybody else out of business and then what happens? they raise the price of oil on the world. so that's what we're being positioned for. and i agree with the gentleman from lukoil.

it's unsustainable. it won't last forever. one thing about lifting the ban in the u.s., we can get to refineries. a lot of people have forgotten the reason we need to bring this about is that a third of the refineries in the u.s. have been bought up by foreign entities and they bring their oil here for processing and that explodes ours so now we can get to the sweet refineries in the world that need it. >> do you think that's part of the reason we see brent prices drop even more substantially than wti this morning and that it's taking that gap and squishing it? >> well, the gentleman again is correct. these two prices will normalize and there shouldn't be any difference historically we've been at a premium at brent. that reversed in 2011 when we were charged discounts to get into market so those discounts amounted to $140 billion over

four years. so, yes, those prices will normalize quickly. >> you seem to think that this is an oversupply problem and not a demand problem. when you look around the globe, do you get concerned about growth prospects for 2016 or what happens in china or some of the emerging markets? >> china did slow and that did affect it. we've seen tremendous growth in the market for our supplies. it's up 3% on annual basis. it's quickly correcting. 2016 will be the year for correction and we estimate the first half. so when people see that we're nearing where those two lines cross, they'll anticipate that happening and prices will recover. >> the ceo of lukoil is expecting prices to get back to $40 to $50 a barrel by the middle of 2016. does that sound right to you?

>> nobody has a crystal ball but generally speaking when opec decides to change their tune, the saudis change their tune, which could be in february. who knows. this has gone on for over a year now with them. so whenever that happens, you know, it could change course drastically very quickly. but also, people anticipate when they see two lines crossed with supply and demapped, we're only talking 1% to 2% oversupply in the market anyway. >> harold, when i look at the bonds of many of these companies and i don't want to mention any specific names on here because you don't want to make it worse than it already is by calling attention to it, there are bonds of companies that you know publicly traded stocks but the bonds are down to 12 cents on the dollar. 25 cents on the dollar. 30 cents on the dollar. the bond market is saying that without a turn or a massive capital infusion at some point

soon, we're going to see many companies go bankrupt. do you think that's what's going to happen? >> you know, the bonds have been a good thing for our industry. one thing is they're not gullible. so they're out there in the future and certainly price of oil comes back and the bonds come up as well. so we've not seen -- >> what if it doesn't come back for the next 12 to 18 to 24 months? >> well, you know, like i say, it's unsustainable where it is. that's not how markets work. you know, it will correct. it's in the process of correcting now. nothing better for oversupply than cheap oil prices that will make it go quickly. >> one of the things we heard again and again is this time is different. in the past when you saw oil prices drop, it would shake out a lot of the players. this time around because

technology has changed, it's a lot quicker and a lot easier for some of the crude oil for fracking guys to turn things back on and get production going again. that's why analysts think we won't see same highs we've seen in the past. what do you say to that? >> i think you're right. i think the highs of the past, you know, we may not need those. we've seen efficiency gains. it's been tremendous in our industry with horizontal drilling. that brought this about in the first place. wonderful technology of going down two miles and turning right and drilling two miles further and developing the resource and tight rock that normally wouldn't produce. so we've had tremendous efficiency gains and i think they're right. i don't think we need $100 oil in the future. will it come back to higher than 40 and 50? certainly. it's headed back there the first

half of this year i believe. >> harold, thank you very much for your time. >> thank you. it's good to be with you this morning. >> good to see you. >> when we return, jim paulson of wells capital management will join us to talk oil, the fed and where the market is headed in the coming weeks and your 2016 playbook is here. cnbc breaks out what you can expect from the hottest tech companies. facebook, google or even yahoo! be a good investment for your money next year? we'll find out. "squawk" returns with that and more in a moment.

future are looking positive. is santa coming to town? jim paulson joins us right now. chief investment strategist at wells capital management. good morning. is santa coming to town or not, jim? come on. >> i have no idea, andrew. these markets get funky in the latter part of -- >> why do we have you on? >> i might have thoughts about next year. i don't know about now and the end of christmas. all kinds of crosscurrents and

tax loss selling and people leaving for holidays and thin markets. i think it's pretty random what might happen between now and then. >> before we hit 2016, what do you do over the next two weeks if you're trading? >> i don't know if i would -- i don't know if i would be trading too much in here as i say because it's pretty funky time of the year and funky markets. the only thing we're down coming into this quite a bit. if you were wanting to buy, i think i would take advantage of weekdays to add to positions that you're kind of looking at and on strong days if you're looking to lighten up on something, that's what i would do. i would let the market tell me when i might sell and might buy with their weakness and strength. >> assuming that everyone just basically goes on holiday for the next two weeks, when you come back after the vacation period, 2016 looks like what? >> you know, andrew, i think we'll have another flat year in

the stock market. volatile and flat again. much like 2015. we had a pause this year in the stock market but it wasn't a refreshing pause. we didn't really do anything constructive. we didn't bring down valuations. we didn't really gut check investment sentiment. we had a correction but it was so brief that you reinforced the buy and dip mentalitimentalitie. the earning cycle aged another year more and now we're going to face full employment pressures of wage pressures, core pricing pressures as we go into the 4% unemployment land. i think it's a challenging environment. we're probably going to have another year of flatness that could come out in a sharp drop in the market again where we go to lower multiples that are more supportable with raising rates. or we could just have a flattish stock market where earnings go up this year so by this time

next year multiples and valuations are more reasonable. >> assuming you're right, what do you do? >> i think a couple things. i would have cash in here. if there is a sharp break in the large cap u.s. market, i would like to take advantage of that. and i do think the broader market has been selling off. we'll get to those large cap 50, 100 nifty stocks if you will might come under pressure and may be some opportunities there. i would put most of my equity investments away from the united states. i just think the international markets are in a different place in the united states. not facing full employment pressures that we are. they have underperformed in the last four years. they are underowned and relatively cheaper. they don't have hostile term we'll have here. they have companies in an

earlier stage of earnings cycle where we have companies in mature stage with maximum profit margins here in the united states. i think the dollar is going to weaken in 2016 which would help you if you invest away from the united states. >> okay. good advice. we'll see whether it turns out to be good advice. we appreciate that advice nonetheless. jim, thank you. happy holidays. >> thanks. happy holidays. when we come back, a vegas crash being investigated this morning. did the driver rundown pedestrians intentionally? we'll head to las vegas for the latest. later, drones are one of this year's hottest gifts but before you fly it, you will have to register it. we have details straight ahead. "squawk box" will be right back.

one person killed and 30 injured after a car crashed into the sidewalk on the las vegas strip. morgan? >> reporter: brian, good morning. this all happened around 6:30 p.m. yesterday ehere on this buy portion of the las vegas strip at the same time miss universe

pageant was happening blocks away. people here thought they were filming a movie. that's not what happened. a woman in her 20s swerved here in her car onto the sidewalk striking people before she moved back into the street only to come back on the sidewalk once more hitting even more people and that's before speeding off. police were able to find the vehicle a few blocks away and since taken her into custody. they also discovered there was a 3-year-old toddler in the car with her. both the woman and that toddler are unharmed. the other people not so lucky. one person was killed. upwards of 30 were injured and taken to local area hospitals. this morning police say that if they find out that this was in fact intentional which they believe that it was, they will treat this as a homicidal act. they ruled out that it's any act of terrorism. >> thank you for that report. we appreciate it very much. coming up when we return, your 2016 tech playbook.

the names you need in your portfolio. your guide in investing and later, toys "r" us ceo on christmas countdown. will it be a jolly christmas for retailers? his thoughts on consumer just ahead. take a look at u.s. equity futures at this hour. dow will open up 84 points higher about now. back in a moment.

welcome back to "squawk box." let's look at stocks that are on this move right about now. blackstone is higher pre-market trading. the paper noting that a sell-off this year has left those companies at multi-year lows that could be attractive. also mining equipment maker joy global was upgraded to market perform from underperform at fbr. the firm says it likes the company's recent moves to conserve cash and drug maker momenta's higher this morning.

positive results in a study and momenta developing that biosimilar drug in a partnership. martin shkreli is speak out now out on bond. he argues he was the target of legal authorities for his notorious drug price hikes and over the top public persona. he was the ceo of a privately held company. the form suit cal company bought a 60-year-old drug earlier this year and hiked the price to $750 a tablet overnight. his arrest has to do with activities before he took the ceo job. meantime, a spokesman said his twitter account was hacked just hours after he took to the site to plead his innocence. among a series of seven tweets yesterday, one that read anyone want free money? i'm willing to donate hundreds of thousands to charities before

i go to prison. other messages contained expleti expletives. brian? >> as the year draws to a close, cnbc is breaking out next year's playbook. it just never ends. looking at ways that you can make money in the coming year. this hour it's technology. >> first, tim cook is proven right. apple stock has gone nowhere this year as analysts have become increasingly skeptical about future iphone sales growth. apple will surprise the street and grow iphone units boosted by a powerful upgrade cycle and lots of new fans in china. second, alphabet keeps marching higher. the company skyrocketed this year and in 2016 those gains will continue. in january, alphabet breaks out performance of its core business

giving investors a better idea of how search, maps and ads are performing and bulls are right. investors will like what they see and pile in. third, yahoo! gets sold. they us suspended its stake in alibaba and will score internet assets which attract a lot of eye balls. analysts say that core business could fetch as much as $8 billion. now, i should mention, guys, that since filing that report we know that pressure on apple has continued. the skepticism about iphone sales growth has continued. so now you look at stock down about 4% this year and down some 11% in just the past four weeks, guys. >> josh, when you look at yahoo!

and you thought that yahoo! would get bought next year. okay. maybe. who might be a buyer of yahoo!? >> so we know who some of the potential bidders are. we know you saw verizon for example seemed to suggest some interest. i know other names that are talked about on the street, maybe disney, maybe at&t. i think private equity certainly could be interested. for all of the troubles of yahoo! you know, we talk about a site that touches a lot of people. yahoo! properties collectively third most visited internet site in the u.s. about 200 million unique visitors in november. touches a lot of people. analysts who cover tell me private equity could move in and chop 40% of the head count right away. sale likely the outcome here. >> what if apple does not grow? i'm not trying to be negative on

apple. let's just say that iphone does slow down or continues to slowdown, then what? >> that's a consensus on the street. i understand that. you have a maturing smartphone market. you see slowdown in kiena. la android switchers at a record level. big user base of people who are older models waiting to upgrade. we know china that business in china continues to fire on all cylinders and even if you did see weakness in units, it doesn't mean the stock doesn't work. there are bulls. team at rbc for example, they do see iphone units slipping at 2% but they think you could see higher gross margins, higher asps and even then the stock could work next year, guys. >> all right. josh lipton, zero dark 30 out west. thank you very much. appreciate it. the "squawk box" platinum portfolio is coming to a close for the year. here now to give us his picks

for next year, scott black. merry christmas. happy new year. a pleasure to get you on. i notice your picks do not include the company we just talked about, apple. was that an omission or do you own it, do you have an opinion on apple? >> i do have an opinion. we do own it. we bought it when it pulled back in august. markets almost 18 pe. you would think it's a train wreck at 50% discount to the market s&p index itself. it's a very fine company. possibly the top line growth for coming fiscal year is sub-10%. >> you like it but you like others more. one of the others you like more is allergen. everyone knows their products here but there's a lot of headline risk and even political risk some would say around this name. why are you -- you're a conservative investor. why are you willing to take that headline and political risk?

what makes it so valuable you would overcome that? >> i reiterated stocks from last year. that's the premise for coming on today. i want to update it. aleri allergan before they would spin off and they would earn 22 to 23. my feeling right now is they earn $16 to $17 next year. if the thing approached within a 5% discount to the price, i would sell the stock here. the other two stocks that i basically going over again were lam research. stock closed at 77 for fiscal year in june. earning 6.05 up from 5.05. it's a spotless balance sheet with net cash at $1.95 billion

and of course they're going to buy kla. it creates a real powerhouse when you put lam with kla they have revenue of applied materials. other thing that should be pointed out about lam, only semiconductor capital equipment company this year that had up revenue. they have done a terrific job by picking up market share. >> and finally, super micro. not a name i'm familiar with. how did that come on your radar? did you buy more? dump it all? what are you doing? >> what happened is they ramped the production and added 25% to capacity. they increased their r & d force so earnings for june of this year will be flat even though revenue is up over 15%. the margins have dropped about 110 basis points. we think there will be restoration in the margin so that on a calendar basis they should earn something between 240 and 250.

there's net cash of $19 million. you have no financial risk. microcap at 1.1 billion. very good company. they sell people the superconductor. the high end server for scientific usage. >> big cap oil lost half a trillion dollar of market cap over the last 12 months. are you a buyer of any big cap oil stocks? >> no. if you look at the dynamics, there's an overhang of roughly 1.8 to 2 million barrels a day. iran coming on after this deal with 500,000 barrels a day and albeit the united states is gone from roughly 9.6 million barrels a day at the pinnacle to about 8.8. there will be a massive overhang. not the time to bottom fish. the dynamics of supply and demand for oil are terrible for 2016. >> scott black, happy new year.

we'll see you in 2016. take care. >> thank you. thanks a lot. >> when we return, it's a bird, it's a plane. it's a drone and guess what? it needs to be registered. mary thompson will join us from a drone flying school. didn't know they had those. to talk about one of this year's hottest gifts and new regulations and ceo of toys "r" us on the holiday shopping season as we head into the final stretch of finding the right present. "squawk" returns in a moment. ma. well that's why i dug this out for you. it's your grandpappy's hammer and he would have wanted you to have it. it meant a lot to him... yes, ge makes powerful machines. but i'll be writing the code that will allow those machines to share information with each other. i'll be changing the way the world works. (interrupting) you can't pick it up, can you? go ahead. he can't lift the hammer. it's okay though! you're going to change the world.

check out shares of pep boys. the recent takeover proposal from icahn is superior to a deal with bridgestone. bridgestone should terminate their prior deal to buy pep boys. icahn increasing the bid to 16.50 in cash. bridgestone agreed to pay 15.50. by superior, they mean an extra dollar a share. >> they're on the holiday hot list. hundreds of thousands of drones being gifted this holiday season. before they take to the skies, owners need to get grounded and register the drones or face stiff penalties. mary thompson joins us with more from the drone academy in new jersey. mary, good morning. >> reporter: good morning to you. the faa is forecasting that 800,000 recreational drones will be sold in the fourth quarter of this year.

that's half of all of the drones expected to be sold for all of 2015. now, the thought of all of these first-time flyers making regulators more than a little nervous so they require hobbyists with drones weighing more than half a pound who never have flown outside to register the drones before testing them out. the reason for the registration, faa sees it as a chance to educate users on how to fly drones safely and within the laws of the land. the $5 registration fee waved through january 20th. there's an online option but only for u.s. citizens. drone owners over 13 years old and for drones weighing between a half to 55 pounds. not registering is going to cost you civil penalties of over $27,000 or criminal penalties of up to a quarter of a million

dollars. just like when you're driving when you fly your drone your registration should be with you. this registration is causing confusion. a survey done for cnbc said some buyers are on the fence because they're not sure whether their drone is a tool or a toy. coming up, we'll speak with owner of the new jersey drone academy to see how he's prepping for the post-christmas rush. back to you. >> look out. there's something watching you right behind you. >> do we have that on camera? >> don't turn around. >> there's a camera right there. >> i'm afraid it's going to get in my hair. >> it sounds like you're in the middle of a bee hive. is it buzzing that loud there, too? >> reporter: it is. it's very loud. that's why we moved to handheld which is better for audio. we have six or seven. we have a whole host of people standing here.

a bunch of drone operators who kindly came out this morning to show us what you can do with droef drones to show off skills. >> it's good for sign industry. a new sign no drones. they're afraid someone will crash into the track when cars are going by. >> it's a boom to the economy. >> stay safe. duck. just duck. we should tell you that we're just days away from christmas. we'll talk drones with this guy. rush is on for shoppers in pursuit of that perfect gift. stores like toys "r" us will be open around the clock for 39-hour stretch beginning wednesday at 6:00 a.m. closing at 9:00 p.m. on christmas eve. david is here. chairman and ceo of toys "r" us joins us now with the final sales push. good morning to you. do you guys sell drones? >> we do. we sell toy drones. we have seven different drones. >> they may have to be registered. >> regulations are that if they weigh less than a half pound. >> all of yours are under.

>> they only go up to altitude of 200 feet, which would be the kind that we sell. >> how are they selling right now? >> they're hot. >> what else is hot? >> are they flying off the shelves? >> yes, you could say that. you could say that. >> what about hover boards. do you have some in stock? >> we have one that's made by razor. it's $600. >> that's a high price point. others are down in the $200 range and have been taken off the shelves. >> we offer one online. it's for ages 13 and above. it's the only one that we offer. there are others out there for sure. >> what have you seen thus far in the season? we have some hot toys. we have "star wars" phenomenon has been unbelievable. we were selling a lot of "star wars" and then it really accelerated last week in anticipation of the movie and then it's doubled since then. so "star wars" movie has done what everybody expected it to

do. and lightsabers and all of the millennium falcon and items are doing really well. we launched just this week a new series with more coming into our store. i was in stores yesterday afternoon and evening and we were getting wiped out. we had lines of people waiting for this one item. >> becky bought something online. she was telling you during commercial break. last minute online shopping ends in earnest when? today is the final day? >> every day that you get closer to christmas you take more risk. we can control when it leaves our place but now we're in a very, very busy period of time -- >> i'm going to the store to pick it up. >> that's a great option. order online and then go secure it in the store. and then you know you have it because the reality is we're relying on shippers to get things delivered. >> what percentage of your business will you do in that 39-hour period ahead of christmas?

>> a significant amount. we hope it will be a tremendous amount based on the stores in the last couple days. it's extremely busy. >> have we become a nation of -- are we more procrastinating this season than others? how do you measure it? >> people know there are deals and products that come along the way. for instance, we had just a new series that just launched. there's new fresh items. there's new inventories coming in. new deals. >> dare i ask, there are people like myself who like to go to the store after the holiday because that's when the deep discounts come or i like to start using the gift cards. are they popular this year? >> always popular. we do a big business in gift cards because we have so many thousands of toys. >> how many of those cards never really full dollar gets used? >> less for us than lower ticket cards. usually the cards are higher value with us and people are not

going to just leave it in a drawer and usually it's for a kid and kids are not going to typically want to put it in a drawer and forget about it. >> final question on behalf of the sorkin family because we talked about it this weekend. when is the times square score officially shutter and will there be massive discounts on the weekend before it closes. we had this conversation with my wife and kids. >> it will close on december 28th. whatever inventory we don't sell will be moved to other stores in the new year. >> not going to be a fire sale? >> better buy it now. >> dinosaur still operating until the 28th? >> we may bring him out to fifth avenue to entertain people. >> happy holidays. when we return, the man, jim cramer, he had a late night with cardinals game. we're going into what looks look to be an up day on monday. futures implied up just under 100 points. jim cramer will preview what's

coming up.

if i say apple, microsoft and alphabet, which we'll call google, black bury, the hot trade the last 30 days has been black bury. do you think black bury is for real here? >> i think blackberry is for real. the intellectual property is worth something. google is one of those. ruth has done an unbelievable job since she got in. she organized it. she's the cfo who is -- i don't want to say running the place, but she certainly brought order to it. that stock goes to 1,000. >> i like talking football with you, jim, because you are a big fan here. i started aaron rodgers over cam newton yesterday. i will lose my fantasy league because cam newton had 54 points. >> i had him for the semis, but i was up against david johnson for the cardinals. i got two beat downs last night. i tried not to cry. i'm a grown man. it's difficult. >> do you believe the carolina

panthers will go undefeated? i thought the giants would beat them yesterday. i was horrifically wrong. >> i think they can. and i think odell beckham should get a call from the commissioner today that behavior has no place in the nfl. the nfl is a good brand. you do not tarnish it on field. outside the lines it's been difficult, they've gotten better. i was shocked at that behavior. the owners and the coach, tom coughlin, i'm shocked they stand by and let this happen. what the heck? >> i don't have to tell you this, there's still two games to go. fly, eagles, fly. >> i'm a fan. nothing more to say. >> see you in a few minutes. ♪ >> when we come -- >> the eagles theme song. >> we'll say it again. major oops moment at the miss universe pageant. how did steve harvey manage to crown the wrong winner? we have that story and more details when "squawk on the street" returns.

. welcome back to "squawk on the street." staples saying that the ftc rejected its office depot deal without making a counter offer deal.

staples says it is trying to pursue the deal through litigation and that it will be prepared to divest as much as $1.25 billion in contracts to allay some concerns. but they have not, at least thus far. there was a major flub by miss universe steve harvey, accidentally calling ms. colombia the winner. >> colombia! i have to apologize. >> it turns out that miss colombia was the runner up. ms. philippines was the winner. it was about a four or five-minute gap between the announcement and correction. not an ideal night. >> i'm just surprised nobody talked to him. the idea he was trying to figure that off of a card he was reading in small print. >> it happens probably every day. >> but we have these things.

we screw up. >> dude, you said that wrong. correct yourself. why wasn't somebody in his ear saying -- >> they don't have that. >> they must. they have to have a fail safe. >> next year they will have the fail safe. >> she was waving she had the flowers. >> very nice to see you. we'll see you tomorrow. happy holidays, everybody. "squawk on the street" begins now. ♪ >> good morning. welcome to "squawk on the street." i'm david faber and jim cramer. we already started talking to each other, we'll talk to you. we're live at the new york stock exchange. carl quintanilla has the day off. let's look at futures after coming off that big down day on friday. certainly if you were long in the market you were not happy with it. we are having a bit of a rebound or seems as though we are going to in the early part of the marketn.