sounds like my ride's ready. don't get stuck on hold. reach an expert fast. comcast business. built for business. good morning. it's 8:00 am at netflix headquarters in los gatos, california. it's 11:00 am on wall street and "squawk alley" is live. ♪ welcome to "squawk alley." john forte and myself and kayla

tausche and from our nation's capital, ceo walter isaacson. good morning to you. >> good morning. thanks for having me back. >> our top story is the shrinking media landscape. at&t's bid to buy time warner getting push back from the street. likely to face headwinds in washington. $148 billion in telecom deals have been withdrawn since 2015. a lot of that, of course, is due to regulatory scrutiny. walter, we spent the last 24 hours talking about the economics and sense of the deal versus the tenor of our times, as kramer put it. what's going to win? >> absolutely. you've got real headwinds in washington. whether it's bernie sanders or donald trump, this notion of more consolidation, more vertically integrated control

will really hit some resistance. i just don't think people see the need to have more c consolidation in an industry that needs more diversity. >> what is the legal rationale, though, denying this? it's hard to argue it takes away choice given that it isn't two content players combining. it's not as if you've got a regional dominant service provider trying to swallow up more real estate. >> right. >> aside from just not liking big companies what's the legal argument, do you think, against this? >> that's a very good question, john. especially since the fcc will probably not be involved. it's mainly going to be a department of justice matter. you have to show some anti-trust things. vertical integrated companies, including comcast/nbc have often gone through because you're not eliminating the horizontal competition. that said, there's a long tradition starting with things like stopping the movie studios

from owning the movie theaters, six or seven decades ago. if you can show that a vertical integration will decrease consumer choice and decrease competition, you can make such a case. but, as you point out, it's not clear in the law that a vertical integration meets the anti-trust standards. i'm just saying given the politics of this time you'll probably have a justice department that challenges it. that will tie it up in court for a very long time. and that might make it very difficult for this merger to happen. >> meanwhile, rivals are weighing in. julia bornsten caught up with reed hastings. take a look at this. >> it's hard to tell. it's early. we didn't know anything about it or we're just sorting through it. we want to make it to require that at&t customers that hbo and

netflix are treated the same. now that they own hbo, any special treatment for hbo data would be inappropriate. i think that's pretty basic. >> will it be a negative for netfli xhchlt in terms of having more competition, and at&t having more ammunition? >> could have a lot more at&t investment rather than content. that could make things tougher. it will get easier to recruit time warner executives, which are a talented bunch. >> walter, i'm curious what you make of that response. we had a discussion earlier this morning about how many policy victories hastings has had. >> exactly. one good side of this potential merger is that it really opens up a landscape for unbundling. it's hard on the cable industry because you would have a lot more over-the-top services. 5g cell phone type delivered services.

that could break things up a bit. however, i do think that you are going to end up, in this town at least, to not want quite as much consolidation in the media industry. the more players the merrier. >> i'm curious what your outlook is. what are the implications if this does get locked and we end in this climate where vertical integration is a mathema? do you call for the likes of facebook to get broken up? >> no, i don't think that you can break up companies that grew organically. >> what's the difference, though? >> there's a higher bar when you're approving a merger than trying to break up a company. facebooks or others, google in particular, could face scrutiny if it's levering -- if they leverage dominance in one field in order to vertically integrate and favor content in another segment. but i do think that this notion

of vertical integration in this day and age will receive more scrutiny than it has, say, when the comcast/nbc deal went through. if the distributors also own the content that could distort the market some. it's very hard to have consent decr decrees. >> apple is the model of vertical integration. >> but not through acquisition. >> that wasn't done through acquisition. secondly, the justice department went after microsoft for a very long time when it tried to leverage its dominance in the desktop operating system in order to gain advantage in other

areas. >> as a backdrop to all of this, walter, is this new invention of trump tv, which soft launched, of course, this week on facebook live, politics a big theme at the vanity fair summit. you talked to jeff bezos last week. >> threaten retribution, retaliation, which he has done in a number of cases for people involved in the media. it just isn't appropriate. we have freedom of speech in this country. it's written into the constitution. >> walter, not only did you talk to bezos you, yourself, ran cnn. i'm curious to know whether you would be for this deal if you were still in that job. >> for the at&t/time warner deal or for trump tv to launch? >> no, at&t/time warner. >> no, i'm still a bit scarred

at that vanity fair conference. i did a conversation with steve case, integrating companies like we tried to do with aol and time warner. i'm just not a big believer that rea reaggragation makes for a better company. but i am interested in trump tv launching. i have to be consistent. for more diversity. bring it on. bring it on. >> walter isaacson in washington, good to take your temperature on this. thavengs, walter. >> thank you, carl. thank you very much. >> from the aspen institute. kayla? carl, as whoa talk about media consolidation, one of the names that's being kicked around is what apple will do. here at money 2020 we caught up with former apple ceo john scully, here in a financial services role. for the last several years, he

has been -- basically going to provide artificial intelligence in data backdrop for big banks to be making smarter lending decisions. when we sat down with him to talk about his role in financial services he couldn't pass up the opportunity to ask him about apple, company that was a purely pc company when he ran it about whether it could actually become a content company. here is what he said. >> tim cook is one of the greatest leaders of running a big complex public company. great handoff from steve jobs. is tim cook capable of leading something that is as big in content as apple is in its mobile devices and other services? absolutely. now, will apple decide to get into that business? i don't know. years ago, you remember, even when steve jobs was alive, he said i think i figured out apple tv. we haven't quite seen the

results of what that might have been. so who knows. we'll have to wait and see. >> i asked tim whether potentially buying netflix is what the future looked like. he did suggest that perhaps apple could buy up assets that time warner would sell in order to get its at&t deal through. that's a big question mark. what apple do in this space. it clearly has ambitions and content. doing it itself, organically, as you were discussing, or making a big acquisition in order to do that. >> we'll be busy tonight. we know that, kayla. smart watch sales apparently in freefall according to a new report. what does that mean for the watch? gene munster will join us. now alipay making moves into the united states, how it plans to take on square, pay pal and others and then kayla caught up

with jack dorsey. how he is balancing his roles at twitter and square when we come back. there are many things you don't want in industrial strength- like cologne. morning! but there's one thing you do. (gags) it's called predix from ge.

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and the phones are free. comcast business. built for business. sales have declined across the board. apple is no exception. between the apple watch and iphone 7 sales, what kind of

earnings should we expect from the tech giant? gene munster has an overweight rating on the stock. good to see you. >> hello. >> my question first has to do with the mix in the iphone. apple's chief competitor, samsung, has this huge debacle, had to pull the galaxy note 7. what do you expect the effect to be, if any, on mix toward the high end for apple in terms of demand. are they going to be able to shift production in order to take advantage of that? >> apple 40 million of these phones are being affected. apple will catch about 10% of them. timing couldn't have been better for google's pixel. think about this as a 4 million impact that will have a positive impact on the high end iphone 7 plus. those are in tight supply. analyst team that basically on a

daily basis checks the inventory. it's 4% in the u.s., 12% in china. apple is having a tough time keeping up with the demand. >> could it be water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink given that tim cook said they would sell every iphone they could make, not giving opening weekend sales figures for the iphone? are they going to be able to do some kind of adjustment to take advantage of this or are their hands tied? >> their hands are tied. it's how much more they can make. they'll probably reach equilibrium by the end of december. we've seen that by looking at what's in the inventory. supply is tight. they'll probably reach supply/demand equilibrium by the end of the quarter. that probably will not have a big impact on the december guidance which will be a slight positive. >> gene, how worried should we be about watches, bearing in

mind how material they are to the overall picture? >> i mean, you said it right there. it's 3% of total revenue. it's going to be down this quarter. next quarter will probably return to growth. just under 30% growth. not a big deal. bigger focus is obviously iphone and services. >> are we going to see resurgence of the mac? apple's units in pcs and macs suffered more than the industry overall. they have macs that haven't been refreshed. could that be a factor in the holiday quarter that perhaps might not show up in guidance? >> it will kind of place the theme where apple typically guides below where the street is at. the mid point will be where the high end of the street is at. samsung issue adds a couple of percent. when you start adding these up, it does look good.

mac will be a slight positive. it's been as long as since i've covered the stock. this is the longest drought for updates with the mac. it should have a positive impact on december. >> we talk about services. mcquarry has an interesting metric of the top 50 apps. the more you move beyond gaming, the more widespread services are useful and you really are relying on innovation that is not in cupertino, right? it could be in anyone's home who is writing an app. >> apple can benefit from that. if you can remember this five years from now, we think that the services piece will be probably the biggest change in terms of how investors think about this. 13% of revenue. just 25% of profits. they announce since september that app downloads grew 106%

year over year. that's up from 50% because of pokemon. at the end of the day, this is a shift in terms of how people are spending their money on these devices. yes, they have to be dependent on innovation from other people to create these. ultimately, they'll benefit. and so i think it will be one of the bright spots of the night. >> i have to tell you, gene, i don't like the way they're mixing in revenue where they happen to get a cut from retail with recurring revenue for icloud, apple care, things you're specifically signing up for. one is sort of coincidentally and the other is deliberate. should that be a concern longer term? >> we struggled with that when we originally work on the services a month ago. there are parts of it that are, as you mentioned. but the vast majority of this app revenue where they get that 30% retail cut. the way we got more comfortable

with it is given the hundreds of millions of people that are using these, behavior ends up being more subscription like. even though they are dependent upon people purchasing things quarter on quarter it ends up having a pretty smooth and dependable vector. >> it will be interesting to watch those numbers come in. >> definitely. thank you. inside look at alipay's push to become the dominant payment processor in china and now around the world. exclusive one on one from the money 2020 conference in vegas. plus much more from julie's interview with netflix chief reed hastings. we'll hear his take on the rising cost of original content as they issue debt to pay for that. e on. ♪[ singing ]♪ sorry, ariana you gotta go. seriously? verizon limits me and i gotta get home.

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let's get over to las vegas where kayla tausche is live at

the money 2020 conference with a special guest. hey, kayla. >> hey, we are joined by doug feagan, newly installed head of n financial who does everything from issuing marriage licenses but we tend to think of it as the pay pal or power behind alibaba commerce engine. what are you trying to bring to the u.s.? what parts of it can be globalized? >> we think of ourselves as a tech company focused on a digital lifestyle for our consumers. we're much broader than payments. we started as a payments company, as you mentioned, supporting the main e-commerce platform, alibaba, but expanded much beyond that to serve our consumers. we have 450 million consumers in china. many of them are traveling to the united states. over 120 million chinese consumers who travel abroad

every year. and right now we're looking to serve them as they come to the u.s. so, we're working very closely with many u.s. merchants to expand the array of options they can purchase when they're here. we can serve them in purchasing airline tickets, hotels, shopping, dining, everything they want to do here. we want them to be able to pay with alipay when they pay on their mobile phone. in the united states. >> where will we see them at mercha merchants? you have a new partnership with first data and veriphone. what will that give you access to? >> we're looking to expand our network of merchants across the united states. today, we're accepted online, in macy's, bloomingdale's, saks fifth avenue and online companies like uber, airbnb and look to expand those across the u.s., many travel destinations for the chinese tourists, new

york, san francisco, l.a. and we want to expand that merchant network there with many of the leading retailers. >> as you look outward, visa and mastercard are applying for licenses. paypal has a new partnership with alibaba. how much competition is rising there for you? >> we face competition in every market, every day. we recognize that. what we try to focus on is serving our customers and giving them a better product. we really do serve everything about their whole lifestyle. we think that that provides them with a much greater experience with our product. for example, when they come to the united states, they can plan their trip on ali pay from china, select delta, united today and pick a hotel. we're working with ihg and marriott in the united states to choose that. when they land in the united states, they can then use alipay to go and buy things. even when they return home, they can -- if they bought something in a store here, they can then

continue that relationship online through their mobile phone and through alipay to buy goods. we think that what we provide is a much more comprehensible service for our customers. >> give us growth stats. ecommerce and the business you do in china is a power proxy. we're left parsing the official gdp data. >> we do benefit from continued growth and china at the gdp level. we're expanding rapidly our customer base there. and so today we have 450 million consumers. we have a pretty good footprint in china already. that's expanding quickly. importantly, the number of consumers traveling overseas has expanded at an even faster clip. it was 17% growth year over year in terms of the chinese travelers who are going abroad. that feeds into our growth within the country. we also benefit a lot from growth of new products and new services in china that we offer

to the customer. so, that helps our growth and top line. >> earlier this year before you arrived at ant financial, the company raised $4.5 billion at a $60 billion valuation. how long will that last? >> we benefit from being more of a technology company than financial services company. unlike a big bank or insurance company that requires a lot of equity capital, we really only require capital to build our products and capabilities. and so $4.5 billion is a good amount to fuel growth for some time here. and we're really investing in technology, in new capabilities for our consumers. i don't have a specific timeline on how long that lasts. we're in good position now as to how we're expanding. it will really depend -- we are entering into certain partnerships with companies around the world. as we do that, that can require capital and determine if we need

additional capital. >> alibaba is the for growth. running international efforts for alibaba even though the two companies are separate, how closely linked are your strategies and how much will alibaba play in getting to your goal? >> we work very close with alibaba. as they expand, as you mentioned, mike is very focused on building the international footprint for alibaba, increasing the footprint of customers who are able to offer on their format. as they continue their expansion, indeed, we're expanding our footprint accordingly. so, we benefit very much from the affiliation with alibaba. it creates revenue for us. we've expanded much beyond that.

online payment relationships are much broader. as i mentioned in the united states, macy's, bloomingdale's, et cetera and other players like uber. there's opportunity for us to expand internationally in the digital lenses landscape and financial landscape. >> we'll be seeing a lot moraleipay and hopefully we'll be seeing more of you. doug feagin. >> absolutely. >> from ant financial. >> thank you for that great interview. coming up, netflix ceo reed hastings and netflix acquisition target. >> broadcast for new shows and amazon is one of those bidders. they're not even the biggest of those bidders. your 3 o'clock is here. but there's one thing you do. it's called predix from ge.

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good morning once again, everybody. i'm sue herrera. british airways being the lastest airlines to ban samsung galaxy note 7 from its flights. the smart phone is already prohibited from all flights in five countries, including the u.s. no spreading your ashes. that's according to new guidelines released by the vatican today. the church wants catholics who choose cremation to keep their

ashes together in a sacred place. workers have been making bats for the chicago cubs and the cleveland indians to use in tonight's first world series game. maple is the wood of choice with 75% of players choosing it over birch. firefighters battling this two-alarm blaze in washington state had to think fast after a large blast sent smoke and flames high into the air. luckily, nobody was injured. that's the news update this hour. i'll see you in one hour. let's get back down to "squawk alley." carl? >> sue, thank you very much. let's get over to seema mody at hq. seema? >> thank you, carl. german dax touched a fresh 2016 high. the broader market has come off its lows in europe but still down 6% year to date. in terms of the winners today, miners, as copper prices rebound. we'll see an infrastructure

boost in europe in the fourth quarter. china growth concerns seem to be dissipating. angloamerican up 4%. shares have been a big standout this year, up 270% this year, making it the top performing stock in britain's ftse 100 index in 2016. we're keeping an eye on the pound as the bank of england governor is currently addressing the house of lords committee and addressing the consequences of the brexit vote. banks in focus. at the heart of europe's banking index, italy controls one-third of the total nonperforming loans for the entire eurozone. italy's weakest bank not to mention the world's oldest bank. mark o'mechlt ara unveiling a restructuring plan, cutting 10% of its staff, selling off bad debt. but there are still questions as to how the bank is going to raise capital in the coming

months. take a look at the stocks. just move over here. shares were initially up 20% on the day on this restructuring plan but then fell by around 15% to end the day lower. monte paschi not the only italian bank ending lower. netflix shares have been on a tear up 25% since reporting earnings earlier this month. the company is raising another billion dollars through another debt offering through original content. will the streaming giant face big competition? julia bornsten sat down with reed hastings and she joins us now. hey, julia. >> hey, carl. hastings has a lot at stake. i asked him whether he will oppose at&t's acquisition of time warner. >> it's hard to tell. it's very early. we didn't know anything about

it. we're just sorting through it. for sure we want to make it so that we want to require that for at&t customers that hbo and netflix are treated the same. now that they're going to own hbo, any special treatment for hbo data would be inappropriate. but i think that's pretty basic. >> is this going to be a negative for netflix in terms of more competition, at&t having more ammunition for its over the top services? >> could be a lot of that. lot of at&t investment than in content. that could make things tougher. on the other hand it could get easier for us to recruit time warner executives, a very talented bunch. >> at what price would you sell netflix to apple? >> that's a question i wouldn't wa want to speculate on. >> what about dizzy ssnedisney?

>> we focus on how we do great shows, how we do great business. we've done no m & a, stayed out of all those discussions. we're very old school that way. let's just build the greatest service on earth. it's done well for our shareholders. >> i also asked reed hastings about concerns over rising content costs as well as growing competition. >> well, i think everybody looks at business like ours and says are they going to be able to finance all those great investments? we have a market cap of $50 billion and $3 or $4 billion of debt. it's like having a million dollar house and having $50,000 of debt on it. it's not that scary on a million dollar house. >> in terms of competition on the call of analysts you said repeatedly you're not concerned about amazon. there were a number of specific questions about amazon. there's no doubt that amazon is spending a lot of money on content. aren't they even just driving up

your content costs by competing with you for shows? >> we compete with fx, amc, hbo, so many networks. even the broadcast networks of new shows. amazon is one of those bidders. they're not even the biggest. it's one morbider. they're doing great work. there's some other shows that, you know, are still working out. we can't get obsessed about any one company. >> what about hulu? now that hulu is owned partially by time warner, now that they're working on their own streaming service, what kind of threat do they pose? >> if they do great shows, people will watch them. i think they know that. they're starting to do more and more on the original side. and, again, that's one more channel. >> you can find more from our interview with reed hastings, including his favorite show that's not on netflix on cnbc.com. carl back over to you. >> julia, great stuff as always.

will the company's growth strategy pay off? is it proof that content is king? joining us, general partner with foundation capital, which you may know was an early backer of netflix. good to have you, paul. >> if you're hastings, you have the whole world coming to you. why not be more outspoken about opposition to the deal. does that make sense? >> have you to look at the way say reed and the rest of the management team operate there. they're very careful, very skilled, very competent. they're not going to blurt something out within 12 hours of an announcement being made or new merger. you have to take him at his word. as long as the treatment of the data is there across the board i think this is ultimately going to end up being good news for netflix. >> are you concerned at all about this vertical integration between distribution and content? a lot of voices being raised saying uh-oh, this is bad, without a lot of detail of why

exactly it's bad, given that neither end of this deal has monopoly power. >> right. think about it, it's the whole neutrality discussion that's been going on for a number of years now. i'm sure you've chronicled that well. every piece of data should be the same as it's coming through the internet. if you end up with a vertical integrated company if, they choose to discriminate then you're going to pick winners and losers and that will happen in a noncompetitive environment. >> once you legally stipulate that you can't do that, why would you keep imposing certain penalties to hamper somebody's business? >> i don't think it's a function to impose penalties to hamper the business but keeping the playing field fair. >> it's like saying you might shoplift so you can't leave the house. arrest them if they shoplift. why keep them from leaving the house? >> i don't think that analogy will play, john. >> hbo's chief is speaking at the journal digital conference.

he said it would be diseconomic for at&t and time warner to squeeze out other content. is everyone else just assuming it's in their best interest to do what swron says they shouldn't do? >> i think people are assuming that the regulators and the media world -- you know them firsthand. they're pretty sharp. they're paying attention to what's going on in these markets. they're just looking for, is this going to be efficient for the customer? is this going to be efficient for the marketplace? is this going to be fair? if those tests are met we will end up carrying forward. you were on other topic around the notion of the political wins are really coming into the face of these kind of things. i think that's fairly significant, something to keep your eyes on. but in terms of the basics of how this kind of thing will work, there have been hundreds if not thousands of media mergers. it's just part of the phenomenon of what's going on, right? newspapers have really, really struggled. they had to move into other things. linear tv networks have

struggled and had to move into other things. big, big beneficiary of that so far has been netflix. i think that's yet another sign of it. in my mind it's not necessarily a signal of strength. it's a signal of people that need to come together, because they're being beaten pretty badly by competition. >> we used to see it at the local level on tv stations. they weren't allowed to come together because they have a lot of power. do you think this trend toward vertical integration or toward opposing vertical integration could start to affect other industries? apple model is becoming dominant. google wants to make phones. microsoft wants to make pcs. will we see a day when people look at that and say you're too powerful. you shouldn't be able to do both things. you make the chip or machine. >> if you're operating in american-only context, the argument you make would hold very well. every one of those examples you

cited have massive overseas competitors, soom from china, some from india. on a global level there's no way for those guys to practice truly monopolist monopolistic. there are three elements of it that will happen here. number one, first, nothing. they'll lock up all the people they want to keep. >> as they already tried to do. >> they'll try to freeze those guys, men and women that are talented people working there. second thing that will happen, reed alluded to, it will become a big tal nt place. they need the best people. you'll see people going after it. third point, which is the inverse of the point you were making a minute ago, john, you're going to see a bunch of new things that will happen. you'll see maybe new netflix and new hulus as these guys explode out and create more and more content. >> if you want to start a show,

let us know. >> you would be my first two hire. >> thank you. >> thank you guys. >> as we've been talking we got a big buy back out of big blue. let's get to dominic chu. >> in the first three quarters of this year, ibm has put $12 billion invested into the company for future growth but remain committed to buy backs. so there you go $3 billion for ibm's buyback program. twitter under pressure this morning. we'll talk about why after a short break. speaking of twitter, jack dorsey is sounding off on everything from the competition to his future with both twitter and square. kayla has that when "squawk alley" returns. value of capita? what's critical thinking like? a basketball costs $14. what's team spirit worth?

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coming up today on "the half time report," jim chanos on why one of the top performing stocks will drop. is this a good time to buy the dip? and why tony saganaki is getting more bullish. more on the "half time report" at the top of the hour. see you in 15 minutes or so. >> looking forward to it, scott. the company is planning to cut up to 8% of its workforce, about 300 jobs. the announcement could come as

early as thursday when twitter reports quarterly results. carl, the idea is that perhaps some of the potential suitors passed on twitter because it's top heavy or just a little loaded with employees, given the slowing subscriber growth and now slowing revenue growth as well. >> that is the key. at what point do stagnant numbers start to affect what had been its silver lining? mashables got a piece up today saying basically it's time to admit twitter -- not that it needs to be saved but that is a possibility. there's no too big to fail on the internet today. >> no. you could end up with a big company, lot of people know a lot about that just isn't healthy as a business as far as growth is concerned and doesn't command a mass evaluation. we'll have to see which way twitter goes. jack dorsey still in this fight.

>> some calling these layoff reports plans c after plans a and b os tenhaven't ostensably out. >> are we only on c? i don't know.

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conference. i had the opportunity to host one of the keynote conversations here at this conference. sitting down with jack dorsey in front of an intimate gathering of some 11,000 payments executives, engineers, and entrepreneurs. we talked about square and its goals for financial empowerment. its forthcoming international expansion and what the company will look like in five years. hence, block chain is a big part of that. i asked him about twitter. he declined to comment on the timing of the earnings call, the prospect of a sale of the company, or even what the future of the company is. on stage i did get to ask him about the last year in his life, and here's what he said. >> first, i'm very proud of the company. i think we've done a good job of transitioning from private to a public stage, and it's really hard. you know, i think we've been very mature about it. i think we've kept our core and our soul and who we are in our

values, says and i have -- i also think we've kept our sense of thinking about longer term and really building a company that endures. i guess that's my feedback is making sure that, you know, as we look for new vehicles to continue to grow the company, which going public is just another vehicle. it's an investment vehicle to allow us to move faster and to go broader, that we maintain what's truly important and why we're here and what our purpose is. losing sight of that or going public being made a goal i think is the wrong approach i think going public is to be an enabler to help you go faster or to help you serve more people. that was just validated every month after going public. i'm sure it's hard and you get

more scrutiny and you have to at least in the united states you have to report every three months about how you're doing, but that also has a potential to give you a greater discipline. as long as you can connect those dots in terms of the long-term view and really where you came from. >> is it hard to take off your in depth payments hat and put on a social media hat when you have to? is it easy to toggle between the two topics? >> commerce, trading, money. selling goods and services is foundational. i think we've complicated them and, you know, i think our goal is to make it a whole lot easier, and that's what we're focused on. i don't really consider a shift. i want to work on things that

people interact with every day and that empower them in particular ways and finance and commerce is one communication and the other is another such. that's not a big contact shift. >> well, elan musk solved the problem by just deciding to merge his two companies. would there ever be synergies between square and twitter? >> the companies have worked together so, yes, we have had partnerships. >> always very curt and polite when talking about one company in the presence of the other. his strategy has been not to refer to his first wife or his first company by name in those instances. we got what we could, but it's a reality for him and the company, and it's coming into sharper focus about how these companies are operating, whether they're in tandem or they begin to diverge. what that means for dors why i and investors. we'll get more answers when the

company reports earnings, but there are a lot of lines that investors are trying to read between up until that point. >> we're going to learn a lot more later in the week when they do post as the stock is now down back below $17.50. the major averages are in the red on what's been a busy day for bluechip erjz. we'll get to some of that after a short break. ♪ approaching medicare eligibility? you may think you can put off checking out your

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>> got to love the corporate earnings. a lot of bluechips. peg, caterpillar, 3m, dupont, and under armor basically stole a lot of the news as it is now the worst s&p stock this morning. concerns about margin, on spend, on just general consumer appetite for shoes and athletic gear in general. >> yeah. lots of pessimism abounds in a sense. speaking of wireless, we are talking about at&t earlier. sprint reported it. stock is down even though overall it seechld to do okay. even the churn rate was down absolutely from a year before. they do seem to be picking up post-paid subscribers, which is the name of the game, but, you know, when you are discounting as much as they are, it's hard to get too excited. >> of course, apple tonight will be the big story along with

chipolte, panera, capital one. by the way, it's not just the losses to ed that are raising eyebrows. the vix is on track for its first daily gain in six days having been essentially comatosed for several sessions. we'll watch that closely. let's get over to headquarters. scott wapner and "the half." >> all right, guys. thanks so much. welcome to ""the halftime report."" the trade this hour, the under armor sell-off. that stock having one of its worst days in fears after the growth outlook comes in below expectations. our traders, as you know, have been mostly cautious on the name. we will find out today if they are buying on the dip. joe, stephanie link, the brothers najarian with us today, and also a special guest, famed short seller jim chanos is with us for the hour. it's great to he so you again. zroo good to he so you. been a long time. >> welcome back. >> good to be back. pete, let's start with you. under