2016 and "squawk box" begins right now. ♪ ♪ right now i'm stronger than yesterday ♪ >> announcer: live from new york where business never sleeps this is "squawk box". ♪ good morning. welcome back to box right here on cnbc. happy holidays everybody. merry christmas. happy hanukkah. i'm andrew ross sorkin along with john kerry and michelle caruso-cabrera. we're back in the saddle. take a look as it's equity futures. the market looks like it will open down just marginally. the dow will open down 16 and a half points. the nasdaq down slightly. overnight in asia hang seng was closed today. the shanghai composite was slightly lower. south korean kospi was marginally higher. in europe london's ftse closed. we should say it's at -- boxing

day and other markets as well. you're seeing a little bit of a mixed picture. finally take a quick look at crude. it's getting warm here. i don't know what that's going to mean. 5319. >> here are the stories we're watching today. brittany spears is alive and well despite some tweets to the contrary. so any's music twitter account was hacked yesterday. posting several tweet that the pop star had died. bob dillon's official twitter sent out a tweet saying rest in peace brittany spears. dillon and spears are sony artists. the fake tweets were soon removed. sony said its twitter feed was compromised and apologized. jack dorsey's twitter page was hacked. last week netflix and marvel

were hacked. nation's retailers deal with returns, post-holiday sales and gift card redemption. about 10% of holiday purchases are returned. rate is higher for online purchases. majority of those items are returned to brick-and-mortar locations. on today's economic agenda the monthly kay schiller price home index is occupant at 9:00 a.m. eastern time. prices hit their highest levels in more than a decade. look for consumer price confidence. the boxing thing, it's come to mean putting things back in boxes. but that's not -- >> boxing day was yesterday. >> was yesterday. >> i just goggled it. >> it's good to know those averages are close so we don't start talking about them. because sometimes we do that when they are close. but there's different, the

entimiology of where that came from. >> has nothing to do with boxing. >> has to do with boxes. in the middle ages there are different, european tradition is in south africa which was a british colony had a different meaning and in britain. i want all had something to do -- >> did you do any boxing? >> to return things. >> put all the boxes in the garbage. what happened? >> you know empty everything. >> the box i was dealing with was about that big. >> packed a lot of punch. >> packed a lot of punch. >> you got some socks? >> yes. i'm keeping those. i got some shoes that came in a box. shoe box. there you go. hence the term. they are a little bit small. you know what? i don't know. can't fit my big toe in these 10 1/2. as you get older everything

spread out and falls. spreads out and falls. >> you can look forward to it. >> spreads out and fall. >> my shoes will continue to get smaller. >> no your shoes get bigger. although you don't -- you're not as tall when you get older. >> stocks to watch today. iran says that it sealed the deal to buy 80 boeing jets for about half the announced price of $16.6 billion. boeing and airbus signed contract this month to supply commercial fleens iran. first such deal since those sanctions, the international sanctions were lifted under the agreement to curb tehran's nuclear program. bp is in talks with grocery partners to add convenience stores to its gas stations in three new countries. the uk's at the lie graph says the company is pushing that model as a global strategy as it aims to boost earnings from its 17,000 stations worldwide. like the front end of a pharmacy

you go get gas and then you buy those six-week-old weaners. then you need go to the pharmacy. bind you up a little bit. you can eat guacamole and chicken at 6:00 in the morning i can -- >> i didn't see the tweet. >> i was privy to it. i was hanging out on social media. >> what time did that happen because i was up until like 9:30 last night. >> it happened way earlier. >> did it? >> the news cycle these days is 20 minutes long. >> it might have happened on sunday night. >> kacht before noon. >> was it on breitbart? >> drudge. >> i was on drudge. definitely on drudge. >> no it wasn't. >> i go to drudge. >> it was not on drudge. >> the news cycle is 20 minutes long, gentlemen. you got to check drudge three times a day.

>> she was okay. then they took it off? >> i assume they got rid of the tweet. you can do that. >> barron's. >> you read barron's. >> i watch c-span instead. barron's is positive on hd supply. shares were up about $10 since election day and the paper predicts that they could rise another 16% in the next year. hd spli could benefit from an expected increase under a trump administration as it sells building supplies used in nonresidential construction. big story today, andrew, someone -- >> what's the big story. >> -- came to the conclusion that maybe a strong dollar -- not good but that it might present a hurdle. >> yes. >> that's all we've been talking about. every person that comes on that's the concern. but it's after a holiday, i think. got figure out something. >> you're going give them a

pass? >> give who -- it's okay. >> remember when they announce it -- >> that's right. the market -- that was on like thursday of last week. the market is up. this one, we've been talking about it. i'm going to read some of the details. maybe there's a nuance that's interesting. i got the journal that benefit the dow more than some other washington -- >> wonderful paper. "new york times" wonderful paper. let's head to some other news. toshiba is considering booking a loss of several billion dollars on usa nuclear power acquisition made by ilgts westinghouse division. shares dropping sharply on that news. toshiba will be forced to drop its capital base which has been weakened. ecb is telling monte dei paschi that it needs to raise 9.2 billion dollars significantly higher than the 5.2 capital

short fall previously estimated by the banks. the bank's cost jumped as it experienced large outfloss of deposits. it comes after the all the okinawa government approved plans last week to bail out the troubled lender. half a billion a week it went up. it just never ends for monte dei paschi. music icon george michael died of heart failure on sunday at his home in england. he sold more than 100 million albums over a career that spanned four dieds. his smash album faith sold 25 million copies and earned him a grammy. he became the voice of social reform. elton john calling george michael the kindest most generous soul and a brilliant artist. george michael was 53 years old. let's get -- i'm looking on drudge. i don't see anything on here. >> about brittany. >> yeah. >> back to the markets.

now this week, this last week of the year's typically positive tore stocks and we still call it the santa claus rally if it does go positive although christmas is over. joining us now head of investment strategy at pro shares and kathy woods. i bet both of you considered the dollar in trying to figure out what 2017 looks like. is that fair to say? >> i've been looking at the outperformer since trump won. and energy, industrials, materials, they are all technically hurt by a strong dollar. but we got huge offsets potentially, tax rates dropping dramatically, deregulation and so forth. i think the markets are going to try to figure this one out over the next few weeks. i think the one thing that i'm concerned about is that there are going to be delays in tax

reform, so that there will be delays in economic activity. >> not in deregulation. >> maybe not. maybe not. but i think we have to remember what happened way back in the reagan years. he phased in tax cuts. we ended up in a recession. so that was a head fake for the markets because what he was doing was very positive. it's just everybody waited for the lowest tax rate. >> dealing with some crazy stuff from the prior administration. we had to break the fever of hyper inflation and 18% interest rates and oil, there were oil spikes. i don't know if it was the tax cuts phasing them in. >> definitely was. >> it was the tax cuts that caused the recession? >> a delay >> the delay. and everybody postponed -- >> i thought it was volume kesh and the short rate and it went up to 18.5%. >> you had monetary ease judging. >> people forget we have a

substantial interest rate difference. it implies you're theo has to appreciate if nothing changes. so we still need over and over again some surprising relative strength out of the u.s. beyond the extra be expectations of the have if you months to see the dollar don't is to to strengthen. i'm just reminding people how exchange markets work. >> i would have thought if we had much higher rates here that euro would weaken. >> covered interest rate parity. if nothing else changes -- >> talk about a parody like a "saturday night live" parody or parity. don't mess with us. >> the only way to get the same returns is for you're theo to appreciate a couple of percent. not saying it will but just that we need to hatch continued relative surprise of strength in the u.s. >> in order to achieve what, earnings? >> just for the dollar to don't strengthen. just like any other market

expectations have been set. so for the dollar to don't strengthen we need this stuff to show up. we need the infrastructure spending to show up. we need the tax cuts to show up. we need that stuff to show up if the dollar don't strengthen beyond the expectations we've seen set over the last six months sore. >> interesting the dollar going up ultimately should help keep interest rates down because the dollar is such a massive anti-inflationary force. as well the productivity gains if we do get a big cycle. so i think this whole net interest margin that's powered financial service sector, that it's right but may have gone a little too far. >> then i wonder how just consumer attitudes and corporate attitudes and spending and capital investment, really does -- i was around for reagan too. i don't try come to pair the two

periods or people at all, but i do feel sort of, you know, we went from a more cautious sort of viewpoint on our prospect. >> cap ex has lagged for many years. if there's more confidence in the economy -- >> confidence, optimism, hope. >> valuations are not that stretched 22 times roughly on the s&p. it's a little expensive but not crazy. >> what does that include, charge offs? >> positives. >> so we hit -- guy last week said 17. >> i'm looking at trailing. >> trailing. so on forward looking you can get about a 17. none of these are particularly extremely high. remember we still only have 2.5% interest rates on the ten year. 2% or 3% earnings growth can justify those valuations. >> so we are in an extended period of low interest rates or that's coming to an end?

what do you think? >> i think we're at the end of extremely low interest rates but we ought to be in a continued reasonably long period of modestly low interest rates. there's nothing on the horizon that should spike hyper inflation at this point. >> the dollar productivity will help and be surprised at what happens to the volcker. if there's not a delay in tax reform and holding the economy down, probably going to have the surprises on the short end of the curve and the long end not responding as much because of the dollar and productivity growth. >> okay. all right. thank you. talk a little bit more politic physician we haven't been already. president-elect trump announcing influenza shut down his foundation before the inauguration but the new york attorney general's office says not so fast. john harwood joins us this morning with more on that story and perhaps some other things that took place on twitter over the weekend.

>> reporter: donald trump has changed american politics, continued to grow including how we make news over the holiday period. donald trump remained active on twitter. he announced on christmas eve that he'll shut down his foundation which has drawn some criticism. the new york attorney general asked him not to shut it down because of the ongoing investigation that he has. that was only one of the controversies we saw. secondly, the united nations passed a resolution criticizing israel for settlements without a united states veto. that drew very sharp criticism from benjamin netanyahu, the israeli prime minister and donald trump joined him, criticized the united nations, benjamin netanyahu said he was going to put forward evidence to the new trump team that the obama administration had engineered this resolution which the obama administration denied. you also had donald trump

engaging with president obama on the issue of who would have won a race between those two in an interview with david axelrod his former aide, president obama was making the argument that his vision still could command a majority support if he were articulating it as opposed to hillary clinton in the election just passed. donald trump responded on twitter no way given what's happening with isis and obamacare, jobs leaving that president obama could not have beaten him. one other piece of news that developed over the weekend and that's jason miller who was a spokesman for ted cruz in the primaries and then donald trump in the general election announced that he was reversing himself and not accepting the white house communication job. he said he wanted to spend more time with his family after a couple of years of an intense campaign. there were tweets from another donald trump aide, a.j. delgaudio which indicated there

was some personal drama behind that reversal. john spicer will perform the functions of strategic communications planning which is what the communications director usually does. >> will we not explain what that was all about. it seemed uglier than that. there was stuff going on behind-the-scenes. >> we don't know what stuff was. the suggestion is a.j. delgaudio tweeted that jason miller was the john edwards of 2016. who knows what that means, whether -- exactly what she was suggesting and whether what she was suggesting was true. don't know about that. >> wasn't suggesting he got a $500 hair cut. i've seen jason's hair cut. >> reporter: he doesn't have a $500 hair cut. i can guarantee you on that. >> john edwards is known for other things. >> yeah because of the national

inquirer. >> if you read the tabloids. "new york post" has it. >> reporter: it's silly in that john edwards was a candidate for president of the united states, vice presidential nominee. jason mill certificate an aide and i don't know. >> you criticize -- >> reporter: i'm just saying like piling on aides on what happens in their personal life. >> let's talk substantively about israel and this settlement issue both what's happening in reality over there and the tweets in regard to that and the united nations and what it means. >> reporter: well, you know, the issue of settlements has been one that has put the state of israel in tension with the united states for some time. across multiple administrations. and this is one where at the end of president obama's tenure they let this go.

samantha power the u.n. ambassador didn't veto that resolution. that angered netanyahu who really lashed out in a very strong way and donald trump who has cast himself as a superior friend of israel to president obama who has said he's going to have his ambassador work from jerusalem rather than tel aviv -- >> john, john, come on. obama doesn't need the jewish vote any more and as a parting shot, you know, he didn't have a good relationship with netanyahu, and then trump also intervened with the egyptians and it was like -- it looked like a personal spiteful move on both accounts. number one say trump you're not president yet i'm still running the show and number two netanyahu, we've had our moments and how does this feel. i thought that was unbelievable. for people that think that was a weak low move, john, this is

just -- i'm not going to say any more but that was like -- to me that was unbelievable to see after 40 or 50 years of always protecting our oldest ally in the middle east to pull the rug out from under them at this point was just horrific for most people remember john, if you have that viewpoint. in just think, fine, that's obama. we'll see you. it's over january 20th. >> reporter: that's true. it is over on january 20th. >> unreal. okay. john harwood, happy holiday season my friend. >> obama said he would have won the election. in other words -- >> he might not have won the last election if trump ran. >> what's interesting obama finally, somebody is finally blaming hillary. you're the reason we lost. >> that's also low. >> that's what i thought. why that's a total slam against hillary clinton. >> obama's two favorite years over the last two words is i and if. i, i, i and if, if, if.

>> you don't think it was a low blow to hillary clinton. >> i, i, i, if, if. >> andrew ross sorkin listened to the interview. if you listen to it it comes across quite differently. it comes out quite differently than some of the quotes. >> coming up, crude prices foin cuss. we'll look ahead at the planned production cuts and how oil could trade in the new year. take a look at the top performing sectors of s&p for 2016. energy leading the way. it's up 25% year-to-date.

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you can't download on-the-go, there's no dvr, yada yada yada. stream some stuff! somewhere! sometimes! you totally nailed that buddy. simple. don't let directv now limit your entertainment. only xfinity gives you more to stream to any screen. crude trading well above $50 per barrel near the highest level since mid-2015. joining us now with a look ahead on what the expect, matt smith. 2016 a lot happened with oil. opec threw in the to well. iran came back to the market. u.s. production increased. what happens in 2017? >> i think what we'll see next year is really this goldilocks versus the three bears scenario. essentially the goldilocks

scenario for the bulls is we see a high degree of compliance from opec and non-opec members in terms of a production cut. in terms of the three bears we have three bearish scenarios coming from emerging market demand. opec production and non-opec production. emerging market demand and specifically from china has been really strong in 2016. however, they've been on these bouts of bargain hunting and opportunist purchases to fill their stockpiles their strategic reserves. as prices rise and as they have risen recently we're likely to see less of that bargain hunting next year. >> 0 protect production and nonnon non-opec production you think they won't comply. >> in terms of opec production, libya and nigeria are not part of this deal. the national oil company from

library contact saying production is 620,000 barrels day. that's essentially double what it averaged in q3 of this year. that's a bearish influence. nigeria coming back potentially. in terms of non-opec production, brazil will increase production by a couple hundred thousand, kazakhstan coming back in the market. that will add a couple hundred thousand barrels a day. we're not talking what the price increase will do to the u.s. production. >> to me what i find so interesting is opec finally throws in the towel, say there will be a production cut and the very thing they were frightened of and what the saudis didn't want -- the reason the saudis didn't want to do a production cut once the price rises -- they damned if they do and damned if they don't when it comes to poke. i'm not sure i would have bothered at this point.

>> they are not trying to crush u.s. sales. you say 2016 was really the year that opec threw in the towel in terms of trying to crush that. really just trying to reduce inventories, global inventories are strong across the world, 3 billion barrels a day. i'm sorry, 3 billion barrels. so what they are trying to do is normalize those inventories. >> what do you think about the price of oil over the next year on average? >> i think if we finish next year around a similar level that we are now, it will be relatively confident in the fundamentals will be pretty much the same, i think. >> okay. got it. matt, thanks for joining us from louisville. >> thanks, michele. coming up when we return, bringing a business mindset to the oval office. a closer look at president-elect leadership style and how could

it change the american presidency perhaps forever. jeff sonnenfeld will joining us after the break. take a look at last week's winners and losers.

♪ e ya next year. isson, stt new traditi. experienhe power of finiti, with leases starting at $319 a month. infiti. power the ive. welcome back. welcome back to "squawk box". u.s. equity futures among many

other things, andrew, down now. they pare their loss. s&p turned positive and nasdaq is now positive. treasury yields modestly up a little earlier. they are about 255 now. they've been above 26. we'll see if this is the end of the trading range between one five and two five. we'll see if we stay above. euro goes parity. is that a parody? and the price of gold was up. that was a little confounding. up $10. >> even though the dollar is strong. >> dollar is strong. most people think that maybe that's not necessarily where you want to put all your money at this point, given the other stuff that's going to be happening. i don't know. maybe it is place to go. i don't know. maybe part. you should always have 5%, 10%

in. >> meantime let's talk about the trump presidency. it's getting closer and closer to inauguration day. president-elect donald trump will take over at the white house. president-elect has made it already pretty clear that he's not your average u.s. president, but how will his ceo style if we call it that mix with his commander-in-chief style. to discuss that is dean jeffrey. son is also a cnbc contributor. good morning to you. we describe it as a ceo style. i don't know a lot of ceos who practice it this way at least on twitter and so the big question is how should the public and how should even -- how do you think all these negotiations are going to go? >> i'll join you in saying that neither one of us is exactly volunteered to title the segment. there's a little nuance on it. his own ceo cycle. >> by the way we should say you know him pretty well. >> i actually was one of the first to take him on.

we've become friends since. achallenged him on some of the preseptembers of the apprentice several years ago. >> you've been on both sides. you were on the other side during the campaign. >> during the campaign, i actually was the first immodestly to say even before your friend joe scarborough on brand x thought there was a credible campaign i wrote a piece, 18 months ago in fortune that talked about how the dump trump strategy will fail and even at larry kudlow's house, a prominent post who stood up in the room and got active and said no republican woman will ever vote for him. nobody in that salon style deep posted republicans was willing to stand up for him. i pointed out to him a week ago friday i talked to trump if you take out his family members practically nobody in that transition committee was him at the beginning. i think he has a lot of virtues

to this. he has a ronald reagan chairman of the board style. ronald reagan had nancy, course. they did protect him. ollie north got around him for the iran/contra deal. he doesn't delegate too much. >> how much delegation is going to go on? he's now picked all sorts of people. will rex tillerson have his own hand to do what he wants to do. will gary cohen who is a very credible person do what he wants to do. can these -- always a lot of spotlight on donald trump. how does it work? >> none much these people are shrinking violets. these are very strong people he's putting in the cabinet. some of them aren't all that popular. some are very popular choice. none of them are shrink violets and none are deceptive. he said he would bring in these

people. he got elected. these are folks he's bringing in. however 65 puerto rico of the business community we surveyed just last week have said they like rex tillerson although amazingly 60% of them voted for hillary and only a third of them were democrats. so there was a lot of cross over votes and 80% said they are surprised by the outcomes and worried about how it's being interpreted by our allies. at one of our ceo summits ten years ago we brought trump in. as he walked into the room very prominence ceos who are now his advisers said if he walks in we are walking out. now they are racing over to his coattails. >> as i look at this cabinet versus other cabinets a lot of people in this cabinet have had to achieve something. had to put money at risk, would have lost a lot of money if they failed. think achieved outcomes. >> you're pointing to business

leaders he's appointsed but even some others you wouldn't characterize that way are a fantastic choice. like secretary of transportation. >> my question is when you are in that position, when you're the boss and you can achieve certain outcomes because you are the boss, can you make decisions and now you're in a very, very different structure in washington, d.c. where congress is in some ways your boss. the president is your boss. it's not as easy. >> that was the old admonish that truman had for eisenhower making fun of him as general he'll pound his fist and demand results and nothing will happen. most of these people are good at framing problems. good at using metrics. these are the virtues you point to. negotiation is not their strong suit. you hope they understand how they can find points of compromise. >> i'm laughing about this billionaire criticism.

>> we've had plenty of billionaires on the democrat side going back very far or at least very wealthy people. long history of people from both parties. top salary is $160,000 if you're paying for kids in school and things like that to live in washington, d.c. it's pretty hard if you're not a wealthy person. so i think those are some really tough issues. what the business community is worried about right now is that they are seeing 80% see they will have improved relations with russia but they don't care about that because the same 80% are worried about deteriorated relations with china. if you're choosing which market you want to play in the 1.5 billion people in china means more to them. peter navarro have many anxious. peter has taken uniquely strong positions at one of our ceo caucuses he started to name

names of people who were soft on china. so i said are you saying john engler is soft on china he said no he is china. >> how much do you think policies that trump is talking about and the people that he's put in place to put those policies in place are going to translate to the people that effectively voted for him? you said a lot of the ceos didn't vote for him but clearly he talked to a large swath of middle class about bringing jobs back, to places like the rust belt and other places like that. the stock market is up. ceos are happy. the investor class is hope. do you think the rest of the country is ultimately going to be happy? >> i think that there are some tough trade offs in health care and environmental protection that will be hard to please the majority of the country. in terms of who voted for him, in terms of tax relief we'll see trade issues addressed an tax

issues relief and regulatory relief. when we start to see 20 million people hard to get coverage to get hearth going forward how we pay for it and some of the roll backs is basically the approach to regulation that the trump administration is talking about is listed all the regulations you have by agency and let's figure out which ones are the least harmful to people's health and see if they are job killing repeal them. that will thread a lot of anger. but -- >> you don't think that's smart to look at each regulation? >> we never do it. >> why is that not valuable? >> we don't do it in university level. nothing ever gets sunseted. every new department has a new department reporting to it. there's a proliferation of agency and we don't see a proper adjustment. getting rid of some that are popular in environmental and health care areas will be a big concern. you know as groucho marx said

these are my principles if you don't like them. you don't come firing back at him with anger, come back prepared with facts and we've seen recently that the aerospace industry and ford are coming back with grassroots legitimacy. also don't attack him with cliches over economic dogma. he's a pragmatist. >> we got toi inbe pragmatists ourselves. >> a big clue about some of the best selling items this season from the apple app store. we'll tell you about two apps that got a christmas bump in the rankings. here's a quick check on what's happening in the european markets right now. ♪ ani r get tid it. are you enre preped to re? plan your netiring retiring retired tires rerement

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time now for the executive edge and it looks like fit bit device and amazon echo were popular gifts. the fit bit app rising to claim number one spot. amazon's alexis app coming in at number four. one of our producers just got an echo in their house. we talked to alexis all the time. we talk to google. google, alexis. >> we have family members with alexis. i like to ask it things like is there a god. >> can't wait for your "access hollywood" moment. yeah. >> the kids are really in trouble. if you heard all of the -- >> my son got a go pro. so now i'm not paying attention and he's telling me everything.

let me know when that thing is on. let me know out in the car, when i'm driving and you know saying things about other drivers and, you know, you don't need to see that. you don't drive so you don't have road rage. you got a vr thing too. >> back seat driver. >> i take it back about go pro. the way those things are constructed are pretty amazing. >> amazing device. the question is whether -- >> should it have gone public over that one product. >> materially better than the others at the moment. >> all right. in new york today the famous -- you be careful. yes. i don't want to hear what you say about me. right? >> yeah. forgot about that. >> the famous waterford crystal

triangles will be installed. millions of americans -- jeffrey sonnenfeld say 5 billion people in china? 1.4. >> 1.4 billion. millions much americans watch as the ball descend for the final seconds of the year. the ball is covered with a little more than 2,600 crystal triangles. might be 2,500 or 2700. i think this is right. >> you can leave them up all year long. new york city you have to be worried about crystal. >> how quickly did 2016 go? >> are you kid meding me. one of the slowest years. >> it was a tough year for you. i'll be a lot nicer to you. >> is that your resolution. >> terrible 2016. >> 2016 was a tough year for the whole, everybody.

all the people who passed away. >> it happens every year. >> the middle finger to 2016 because it's such a -- >> for him it's because of the election. >> coming when you we come back we have more to tell you about. latest "star wars" movie topping the box office -- hold on. this movie is unbelievable. and let me say the last 20 minutes of this movie is the best 20 minutes of an animated film i've seen in forever. universal "sing" bringing in $56 million over the holiday weekend. sorkin family helping that number. we'll talk to the manager of n fandango next. this c is traviner 200 miles r ur. to wevery millecond matters. both on the track and thousands mil away.

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it's a battle at the holiday box office. "rogue one" holding the top spot. but the animated musical "sing" dominated all newcomers debuting to $56 million. right now joining us from fandango. owned by our parent company nbc universal. $56 million is a good number

given that "rogue one" is out there. >> it's a great number. i think it's up to $70 million for non-sequel in terms of opening up after december 20th. one of the best ever. >> why is it so great? >> i think because it's got a lot of music in it. if you look at three of the top six sellers right now on fandango are driven by the music. i think people want music back in their animated movies. if you look at the classic disney animated movies -- >> "sorcerer's apprentice" even had music in it. >> i think people are starting to wake up to the fact that kids want music back. >> these are songs you know though. >> so you sing along. >> you sing along. people are clapping going crazy. >> is i won't sing and i won't dance. now illumination is a tough come. pet tor to pixar and everything

else. how do they make quality animation and it costs much less than pixar? >> it does. >> how do they do that? >> they keep the cost down. you don't really see the -- i think pixar visually maybe you see it a little bit. what i like about illumination, they make animated movies for kids. these aren't movies that have deep rich messaging like "zootopia" where you're talking about social injustice with your kids. with "sing" you're walking out singing the humpty dance. >> you cried at "sing" you said. >> i cried, i laughed. the kids loved it. >> but you cried at "finding dory." i did too because i paid $12 to see that. >> my apologies to you. >> i cried i sat through that.

>> the last 20 minutes and you said it better than i did. when kids normally get jittery and want to leave. the opposite happens. >> it's a concert. and with all the characters you've been nsted in the whole time. they finally get their moment to sing. it's got nice messages about putting yourself out is there, following your dreams. >> is there going to be a "sing 2"? >> i imagine. i mean, illumination is going to take harness of their brands. we have a "despicable me 3." they've got the minions. they're only seven titles in. the last three have grossed over $850 million. >> you said $76 million for production costs on these films. pixar spending -- >> like $175 million. "finding dory" maybe $200 million. >> not those kind of films -- the "la la land" and others with

are they doing well? >> i think they're doing pretty well. >> films for adults were not doing as well last year. remember that? last fall that was the story. >> well, some of these bigger oscar contenders. "manchester by the sea" is doing very well. "fences" had an amazing christmas day opening. >> i enjoyed it. what about "silence"? >> it just came out. it's doing okay. not that great. >> give us the dark horse. the one nobody's talking about that we should be. >> in terms of awards? >> film for us to go watch. >> i like "fences." i'm a fan. maybe it's a dark horse, but i like it. >> thank you. the dow has just four trading sessions to hit 20,000 before the end of the year. we're going to talk strategy after the break. "squawk box" will be right back.

the final trading week of the year. with the dow just 66 points away from 20,000, can the markets end this year with a bang? we'll talk strategy straight ahead. global market risks. we'll open up cnbc's 2017 play book, find what challenges can lie ahead, and what it might mean for businesses abroad. plus the season of giving back. omni hotels is taking on hunger one booking at a time. we check in as the second hour of "squawk box" begins right now. ♪ live from the beating heart of business, new york city, this is "squawk box." >> welcome back to "squawk box" right here on cnbc. i'm andrew ross sorkin with joe

kernen and michelle caruso-cabrera. our guest host is jurrien timmer. we're going to hear from him in just a bit. meantime, we're going to get a check on futures this morning. the dow looking like it might open a little off. about four points. but it was opening off by much more just an hour ago. take a quick look in europe right now. london's ftse is closed, we should tell you, no trading going on there. but pretty much marginal green arrows across the board. there's some sort of elevator music taking place in the studio here. i don't know if everybody's hearing that. >> i hear it a little bit. >> i'm not sure where it's coming from. we will check to see -- >> is it here? >> i'm not sure what's going on. i'm hearing something. anyone have a phone on them, by any chance? it's lovely music. among top stories for today, we're going to get the latest read on home prices later this

morning. the shiller report has been showing year over year increases of 5% or more in recent months. the october report is at 9:00 a.m. eastern time. an hour later we're going to get the conference board's consumer confidence index. it's expected to show a month over month improvement. and the european central bank has told montei depaschi it needs to raise billions of dollars. will likely have to contribute with the rest of coming from institutional investors who likely get bailed in. it's a mess see story. is that your phone? >> well, he had an alarm on which is befuddling because you're here. were you planning waking up at 7:00. >> yes. let's get back to the broader markets.

participation for dow 20,000. it says here continues to build. joining us now jurrien timmer. any reason you're in just for the here and now, last week and this week, tough to do much, isn't it? it's a lot of people that the players aren't wl around. >> during the last two weeks of the year, nothing happens. you remember last year the fed raised rates. really the sky is not falling. then january 1st, the sky did fall. i'm not expecting this to happen during this round. but the market's sort of in a suspended animation mode. i won't read too much into anything right here, right now. >> we close around here, it's 15% for the year, isn't it? >> 8% for the s&p. >> what sit for the average stock? >> for the russell, it's more, yes. >> it's not 15%? i thought it was 8% on the s&p since the election and we were

already up a little. >> i don't think so, but i could check. i think it's 7% or 8%. >> i'm going to check. >> i'll look right now while you guys are chatting. >> how about next year? >> so for me it's all about the intersection of price and earnings. clearly earnings are on an upswing. and by all means that is expected to continue. so prices out-performed earnings. will we go back to a more valued environment of maybe 17 or 18 times instead of 19 or 20. >> s&p for the year to date is 10.76%. >> add some dividends in, and you're getting there. and find out the dow too. that's a better year than anyone expected. >> yes. >> i wonder whether we -- is it your view we're playing it forward?

>> not necessarily. just everyone got used to and got resigned to this notion of secular stagnation. we're not going to have any growth forever. the election was going to be the status quo outcome where there was really no change. and everyone was resigned to the fact we're going to have low yields and growth and easy fed and low single digit earnings growth for the s&p. and then the whole system got shaken up, of course, during -- with the election. and everyone has now had to reprice themselves for a more inflationary growth regime. that means higher interest rates and higher inflation. a tighter fed. but also means apparently a return to animal spirits. and that's what we're seeing. so investors were on the wrong side. $150 billion had flown from -- had rotated from equities into bonds over the last couple of years. already about $60 billion of it had come back in. it's a repricing based on a new

reality. >> you confident with that number? >> i got it from google finance. >> dow's up 14%. are you -- did you do only 8 pr8%? is that why you're telling your clients that? >> our client who is have a good plan whether dow is at 20,000 or 19,000 -- >> think we're in a 7% world and we've doubled that. you should feel much happier right now than you were feeling a minute and a half ago. the dow's up 14%. we were supposed to be stuck at 5%, 6% average annual returns. >> and that was the regime shift that happened on november 8th. so we're going to have more growth, maybe more uncertainty, more inflation. it brings the fed more into the fold than it had been. >> wouldn't we like a little inflation somewhere? can't we export it to people that need it? countries that need it? >> i think for the fed this is a possible path back to conventional orthodox monetary policy. you know, we were going down a road of increasingly more

unconventional policy. and with all the distortions that came with it, both in the bond market and the stock market and i think this does give the fed possibly an escape route back to something more old school, more normal in terms of policy. >> without having to pay the piper. they might have gotten bailed out by trump a little bit. >> exactly. it comes down to growth. ask the chinese they know all about this. if we get a return to growth, then things can normalize. >> if you were going to look for a january effect, it's different every year. what will people be doing after what happened in 2016? plus we've got tax changes. >> we've got people that might be selling. >> i don't know how to game that. anybody that sells, you remember what i said andrew. you're late. you miss it. >> you're late. >> you can get to philly to get on it if you try.

>> you can. >> but you don't want to do that because you missed it. better to get on in philly than to get on in delaware or than to get on at bwi. >> is it the regional or? >> you get on one stop later, it's better than waiting until it gets to -- >> i think people who were on the train already and seen sharp gains and they know their taxes are going to be lower next year, why wouldn't they sell? >> because they're still going to d.c. >> because it's still going higher. >> you don't want to get out in baltimore unless you're nuts. >> this is where the whole dow 20,000 comes in. to me it's like new year's eve. it's a milestone. it's a time to take stock, but it's really another day. and people should be invested based on where they should be invested. not because we are reaching an arbitrary number. >> don't do anything based on taxes, right? don't do that, andrew. don't do it based on taxes.

besides, you should want to pay your taxes. >> i love to pay my taxes as you know. >> you should pay more. >> i don't want to pay more than i have to. >> you should. you should just double it. i would. jurrien, i think we should just change that "j" to a "y" and there wouldn't be confusion. >> just call me joe. >> we've got enough joes. jurrien will be with us for the rest of the show. >> a lot ahead of "squawk box." up next, we're going to open our 2017 plai book. what to expect in international business next year. plus forget dow 20,000, why one market historian is feeling optimistic about dow 38,000. that may happen in less than ten years from now. and later, we're celebrating the share kindness campaign. find out how one hotel is taking on world hunger one booking at a time. "squawk" returns in a moment. what's the value of capital?

what's critical thinking like? a basketball costs $14. wh's team spirit worth? (cheers) what's it worth to talk to your mom? what's the value of a walk in the woods? the value of capital l to create, not just wealth, but things that matter. morgan stanley

as we kick off the final week of 2016, cnbc is bringing you the 2017 playbook. looking at ways you can make money in the coming year. here's a look at what to expect. these are my predictions, let's put it that way.

in international business. 2016 was the year of political revolt. double down on that for 2017. predictions aren't worth making unless they're bold, so here's number one. eu disintegration. there's going to be a new vote in the spring. that could spell the end to the currency, the euro. my second prediction, lots since donald trump won that means maureen la penn will win. she's not that radical when it comes to her economic policies. far more radical, francois. he's going to win. prediction number three, guess who's coming to dinner. president-elect donald trump will host state dinners for the leaders of russia and mexico. maybe at the same time.

i wanted to be on camera for the at the same time i did a funny thing with my hand. joining us is ian bremmer. good to see you. >> sure. >> i don't know if you saw this interview with the clumist. and he was very interesting. he voted for hillary clinton even hope he makes it clear he despises her. what's great about the trump election and he doesn't use the word great. he says things about brexit and trump election, the good story is these will all be warnings to the elites that you can't go on like this. i'm not sure the elites have seen it that way thus far. >> i don't think. i mean, i think the elites still feel pretty comfortable in terms of their personal lives. it would be useful if the populist growth would force

issues of what happens to bothitis. not clear to me that we're going to have that wholesale change. >> i mean, all the talk i heard out of europe to me sounds like they're still on the same old train they've been on forever. even angela merkel deciding to run for office and people encouraging her because she's the beacon of stability over there when a lot of people think she's been the cause of instability. >> in the sense that all the european leaders have gotten weaker as a consequence of this. certainly your point that the eu feels like it could be disintegrating is much more real in 2017. merkel's the exception. merkel is the one no matter what you think of populist pulls, it's less of a hit. that's because of the economics of the eu work for the germans that they don't work for the eu. but the identity of politics in germany, people saying, look, we

don't want these refugees. you just saw the truck in berlin. merkel may say i'll take as many as you want. she's all by herself. >> you used the phrase identity politics. i think the germans would call it security issues. the wording itself betrays a way of -- the way certain people look at things versus maybe the way the voerts look. >> no question. they view it as security. they also view it as they're taking jobs. you look at a lot of the earlier immigrants from turkey, they're some of the strongest that are against bringing in the syrians. and that's not because they're concerned about security. that's because they're like, these are the bad immigrants that are going to make people think worse about us. so it's identity politics for them. what she thought she could do to lead that country. now she's going to have a much harder time.

>> what do you think? >> i was going to ask you do you think the political system will prevent a brexit we saw here because in holland he's that person that you see in other countries. >> bigger skeptic. >> and the other parties have said they're not going to work with them. that way you can never get to the point where the whole government switches over. >> it's harder to see that in the uk. and the people that are leading anti-brexit right now it's tony blair, gordon brown. it's not leaders in sitting positions because they understand that's the best way to get a backlash from your constituents. but how brexit proceeds and what ends up happening in the role of parliament and whether they're

going to lead to constraints on a harder brexit that theresa may has been pushing for, that remains open for question. >> when it comes to the issue of elites even here in the united states when i hear obama say over the weekend that he could have won if he were winning, it was a failure of the articulation of his policies. it's a denial that his policies contributed to the election. right? >> a complete denial. at the end of the day, of course obama was much more powerful and popular than hillary was in the polls. but the idea that you're not going to take any responsibility when you were out there stumping for when obamacare was the biggest part of your platform and ended up not working out the way you wanted. you should not be doing that. >> you're on the record hard that the dollar will lose value.

when will that start to happen? give me an idea so i can test your -- if i put my money on what you tell me to do, when will the dollar start to lose value -- >> if you look at -- we always put our risks for the whole year on our home page and keep it there the entire year so people go back. it's not the dollar was negative on the back of a trump win. it was over the longer term. >> so from here on out, what do you see happening? so do you think the dollar loses its reserve status? >> structurally long-term, i do think the dollar is going to get -- >> you do. more quickly because of a trump presidency? >> because of the view of the united states in terms of our -- for example, china. for me that would be structural. >> we're going to have to go. but i want your thoughts on israel and the trump tweets over the weekend and what you think that means. >> i think clearly for obama with four weeks left to go in

his presidency to decide who's going to make a big play over the last eight years is incredibly weak. it does really nothing. you know, netanyahu is responding hard because he has a one seat majority and he's losing popularity right now. this is a gift for him. but the headlines around it in the u.s. in five weeks' time when trump is president, we're not going to be talking about this much. >> i look at this and think, okay. he's basically calling bluff on the one china policy. and calling a bluff on the two state solution. right? does anybody believe in a two-state solution. >> it's what netanyahu is. it's nowhere close to reality. 18 months pushing on that went nowhere. >> okay. thank you. when we come back, we're going to talk about the space race. we have more details on that after the break. meantime, take a look at u.s. equity futures after this hour.

things are getting a little bit better. let's call it across the board. we're back in a moment.

messaging app snapchat is

buying augmented start-up cimagine. they developed technology that allows users to virtually place furniture and appliances in their homes using mobile devices. the team is the main reason for the acquisition. ran the technology alone. snapchat expects to go public as early as march with a valuation of around $25 billion. if you guys have ever played with the little faces and masks that you can -- >> on snapchat, uh-huh. >> this is a little bit more of that in a -- the dog faces. >> yeah, i've seen it. >> this is augmented reality, it takes it even further. >> i noticed you can do it on facebook mess enger too now. >> they have something called masks. what is it on snapchat? there's a word for us. our millennial viewers will know the answer. >> i'm not allowed on snapchat

because my daughter's on there. >> putting dog ears and a dog nose, what's the point? >> it's funny. it's cute. it's clever. it's -- i don't know. >> it's a way to chat with your kids. >> it doesn't seem like a huge advance in society to just be able to easily -- >> i'm not claiming it's a huge advance in society. but then the technology behind it is, actually. >> when do you decide all this is spending all that time doing all this frivolous useless stuff is counterproductive to reading or something. or just being -- i don't know. i worry. i do. >> you worry? >> their minds are getting pickled. >> oh, please. >> you don't have kids watching what they do all day long. >> i can't remember if it was plato or aristotle talked about the weakness of the young. people have talked about the young forever. >> saying i like the smell of green play-doh. >> my kids used to like to eat

it. >> that's all they know about play-doh. china's planning to amp up its space program in the next few years. country laying out plans in a government report saying it will launch its first mars probe by 2020 and bring back simples from the red planet. russia and the u.s. have more in planned space travel. its military backed program conducted its first crude space mission in 2003. crewed. and also planned to land a probe on the far side of the moon in 2018. it's just cold over there. don't you think? >> it was a great album. >> it was. >> 10:00. last dance of junior high. >> yeah? >> yeah. it was a super long song. >> slow dance. >> exactly. coming up, just four trading sessions left in 2016. can the dow finally make it to 20,000? we're going to talk to two

strategists. maybe they'll know the answer right after the break. later, 'tis the season for kindness. we're going to check in with omni hotels. find out how they're donating meals for the hungry. we'll be right back. e ll vue yo. the y says you picked the wrong insurance an. with liberty mutual nec™ because you' get the full vaa inudinpreciation. you alify r a multi-pocy discount, ving you m m oyo car anhome coverage. call for a free quote today. berty stands with you™

♪ i ran to that song yesterday. among the stories front and center, the latest "star wars" movie "rogue one" topped the hollywood weekend box office. over its first nine days of release, the movie has taken in about $260 million in north american ticket sales alone. universal's animated comedy "sing" came in second and gets a rave review from andrew. >> yes. incoming trump administration has an unexpected vacancy to fill. jason miller had been announced last week as white house communications director, but he's decided against taking that job saying he wanted to spend more time with his family. discount store operator fred's has adopted a shareholder rights plan. that followed news last week that hedge fund had taken a nearly 25% stake and called the

stock undervalued. earlier in the week, fred's announced it was purchasing 865 stores from rite aid. the day that deal was announced, fred's stock jumped 81%. quick update because we were talking about s.n.a.napchasnapc. they're called lenses. the ones with the dog tongue and things. >> and they say everything's already been invented. >> come on. >> yes. wall street still hoping to end the year with a bang. dow 20,000. joining us now is jeff hurst and jack alapin. good morning to both of you gentlemen. we had the hats ready to go last week. what happened here? >> i'm going to refer to jack. hee knows when it's going to hit 20,000. >> stop it, jeff. jeff is a student of history and certainly this is unprecedented, i suppose. but keep those hats away.

i think that's probably part of the problem. >> it is fueling some resistance. >> dow 10,000 i think we were donning these hats on and off for 16 time ifs i recall. >> one of the questions we've been asking around the table this morning has been the tax issue come january 1st. will there be a moment of selling? people who have held on hoping the tax rate is going to go down in a trump administration and therefore have been waiting to take profits? >> that january break has been pronounced recent years. i would suspect that not everyone is suspected it or expecting it, it will be more than a year. >> i've had that conversation with clients. i think that certainly clients inclined to take a gain are more likely to push it into next year than certainly take it this year now. but i think the fact that there could be although keep in mind that trump proposal is 20%. it's no change. however, the ryan proposal does

call for 15%. so perhaps there's a chance it could come down. either way, i think there could be some selling pressure next year. >> that's the question though. do we think this is going to be a pullback? talking about whether the train has left the station. whether you need to get on. whether it's going to be a moment in which the train -- sometimes the backs up -- >> i think we'll have opportunities to get back in there. i think everyone is going to be waiting as i am to sigh what mr. trump and his administration can accomplish. no one's going to have an idea of anything. >> so you're not going to know on january 20th either? >> not at all. >> this is going to be a march/april conversation? >> yes. which scares me in a post-election year. >> if you look at the presidential cycle, and the seasonal pattern, it tends to be strong from november to april. and so april/may i think would be the window where if you're

going to get a serious correction, it's going to happen at that point. >> get that man an almanac for 2017. >> that's it. yeah. may through october, i think. but i think there's a lot of cash on the sidelines particularly overseas. they're going to keep continue buying our bond market. they're going to support our dollar higher than it ought to be. that should be positive for stocks. i think through the lens of revenue and earnings, however, it is a bit of a stretch. i think analysts are anticipating a 13% earnings growth on 9% growth. it's that growth is expected year to year. >> a whole new round of revisions in terms of estimates that come in january and whether

those are up or down or just flat. >> the april/may time when the first results come in. what we've seen is newly elected republicans see a breakoff around june and july. so that's one of the separations we're seeing in the post election year full year election cycle. >> with such big tax changes coming, why would the january effect -- wouldn't you want to know whether it was going to be 2017 that they come before? if they're coming down but you don't know if it's going to be 2017, i would think maybe this is a different year for what people do with taxes. >> not necessarily. i think they're going to wait to see what comes through. i think we won't start to see that until after the first hundred days what gets through congress and enacts or regulations that get taken down. >> it may not be until the third quarter when we have any sense. >> it might not be a normal

january then. >> isn't there a headline risk that something happens one way or the other? >> most definitely. that's the big risk. >> this whole thing is a headline story right now. >> but the consensus was on the wrong side of a regime shift. i think they're still catching up. so you may get some headline risk. you may see some volatility. this thing has been a meltup. and there's going to be plenty of under -- >> and how much of this is going to be driven by -- because i'm sorry using the word ultimate, joseph. the question that i was going to ask is how much of this is new money that's going to get put to work by people who have been out of the market, who've been watching -- this is the train story. >> it's a reversal of the $150 billion that went into bonds over the last two years. >> yeah. we're already seeing that transfer or this is actually money that's sitting there? >> it's a rotation back. >> but i want to know whether there's a generation of people

who are going to see this market, think to themselves i got to actually be involved in this? >> no. they're putting dog ears on all their friends. they're not -- >> once snapchat goes public, maybe. >> one at a time, jeff? >> go ahead, jack. >> yeah. within the u.s. i see rotation out of bonds in the stock. but i think overseas i think that money's flowing out of local bond markets into our bond markets. so it's going to be an interesting take given just a huge defusion of strategy. now we're tightening an our rates have gone substantially higher over the last couple of months. and german two-year continues to climb. >> still historically low. we've already taken some in the financials which was stalled. and looking in materials that

are working well. seasonally strong and betting on the infrastructure move. just a lot of places that they can move back to. has been a bit weaker since the election. >> jeff and jack, we respect your time. thank you. coming up, nbc universal celebrating acts of kindness large and small this season. omni hotels is taking a philanthropic approach against booking. how the company is taking on world hunger. that's next. stay tuned. "squawk box" will be right back.

it's a big january. and cnbc delivers like nobody else. >> the auto industry is rolling again. >> what's next from big pharma? >> trump has said he'd repeal and replace the affordable care

act. what impact would that have on your business? >> smart ideas and opportunities for invests. plus the biggest names in retail. global business and government leaders convene at the swiss alps power summit. >> a tremendous conversation to have this morning with a tremendous group of people. >> and the donald trump era officially begins. >> we will begin the urgent task of renewing the american dream. >> follow the leader wherever you are. all january long. cnbc first in business worldwide. all right. welcome back to "squawk box." futures right now, take a quick look. they had been down but not out. now i'd say that's about the same. down five on the dow jones. the s&p turned positive up a point and a half. the nasdaq over five points this morning. the nbc universal family celebrating acts of kindness large and small this season. inspiring others to give back. joining us now is chief human resources officer with omni

hotel and resorts. for every direct booking on omni hotels.com, they will provide feeding america with a donation which will feed a family of four dinner for an entire week. we welcome joy to the table. thank you for coming. i should say separately and apart from this, you are the granddaughter of who started camp cedar where i went in maine. one of the great camps of all time with henry hacker who changed my life. i never got to meet your grandfather, but it was one of the most remarkable places. i know other people at cnbc whose sons have gone there. you always say if i ever had a job. i was a waiter and waiter of the year at camp cedar. i used to get great tips because i chose to -- i used to go to the doctors table -- >> not the private sector. you never -- >> i convinced the -- >> no. it's not -- >> the rotating cast of doctors

who would come every week and convince them they should tip me. >> you were a camper waiting -- >> i was an entrepreneur. this is capitalism at a very young age. >> your first job was "the new york times." >> but we need to talk about charity. >> change the subject. >> why she's here. >> the other side of capitalism which is charity. once you actually make some money, you can give it back. and joy is doing just that. tell us about what you're doing. >> okay. so for every direct booking on omni hotels.com, we are partnering with feeding america. and we donate for each booking money to feed a family of four dinner for a week. >> how much money is that per family, do you know? >> i don't know how much money it is per family. i know we've done 5.7 million meals since we launched it in june and we're on target to do 18 million. >> what was the drive to do this? >> we are trying to drive booking to our website. we are trying to engage

millennial employee who is want to work for a company that's for a greater good. we're trying to engage guests. our cmo heard on npr someone talking about hunger in america. that 42 million americans are hungry or food insecure. literally within two days, his idea of this partnership went into launching it. >> can we talk about doing good and making profit at the same time. you just spoke something that's very interesting talking about millennials. a lot of people think that charity oftentimes from a corporate context is really just marketing. but one of the things i think happened is you talk about the employees that oftentimes get behind these projects. and we've had neil blumen thal and others on. they give away a pair of glasses. they say we're able to attract a

whole different group of people to work at the company because we have this sort of giving back piece of the culture. so how much of it is that? >> a big part of it is that. 40% of omni hotels employees are millennials. and we're learning about them as it evolves. but 60% of millennials want to work for a company with a social purpose. so we have really used this to market to college graduates and other millennials to work for omni. we've also used it as a rallying cry. we already had a core value of market leadership. so we expected our hotels to give back to their communities. but this is on the grandest scale we've ever done. it's created immense employee pride in a company where i didn't think the pride could get bigger than it was. >> is mt. washington home hotel. cnbc viewers know it because of brenton woods. every door has a brass plaque to say which representative from

which country was there for negotiating. >> yes. and it's also our first -- we're hotel operators, but we also run the brenton woods ski area. that's a great property. we're developing it now to make it bigger and better. >> does this attract on the marketing end, do you think there are more people who look at this not just the employee internal piece of it. saying i'm going to stay at this hotel over this hotel because of this component of it. or do they just go on kayak and look for the cheapest price? >> no, our sales force and it's a large sales force, they are telling us that customers are making booking decisions with omni because of say good night to hunger. it's a way for customers to feel good about where they're staying too. so it had -- it originally started out as an act of kindness, but it's customer

facing, business facing. it's really hit on a number of cylinders. we couldn't be more proud of it. >> we appreciate you being here. we wish you well with this project. it's a great project. she's also friends with sue haker who runs camp cedar. we e-mailed all about this yesterday. sue's going to be upset to know i was asking they are doctors for tips, by the way. >> that's taboo, yes. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> great to see you. coming up, this morning's biggest mix. and cheetahs could be on the brink of extinction. that story next. >> not only give back to giving something to charity. but if you have the opportunity to work with young children, read stories to them in children's hospital, go to ronald mcdonald house, i mean, there's lots of things one can do. ♪

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couple of stocks to watch this morning. the shares of biogen and ionis pharmaceuticals are higher in premarket trading. approved a drug called spinraza. >> it's not spineraza. >> maybe it is. because it's for spinal muscular atrophy. it's made up. you have to when you make up the drugs. come up with new names. yeah. it freedoms what we said.

spinal muscular atrophy. it's the first drug to treat the rare and fatal disease. ionis developed the drug. biogen will be marketing it. and chip maker nvidia also adding to its yearly gain. it's tripled in the year. it's the best performing stock in the nasdaq for the year. pretty interesting they do it now. you never know. >> they're get on the train in baltimore. >> exactly. they're going to d.c. >> philly. they're getting on in philly? >> no. they're getting on in baltimore going to d.c. the fastest land animal could be sprinting towards extinction. a little more than 7,000 cheetahs are left in the wild on earth. most of the decline has been in the past hundred years. current number is down from 100,000 at the end of the 19th

century. besides habitat loss, attacks from villagers, getting hit by speeding vehicles, and trafficking of cheetah skins so they're killed by poachers. let's get back to our guest host jurrien timmer from fid fidelity. we talked about during the break, that the dollar is the most important to talk about. why? >> the dollar has gained a lot and the 10-year treasury has gone up a lot. they're two sides of the same coin. in the past couple of years, whenever the fed got too aggressive for where the economy was, we'd run into a taper tantrum. 10-year treasury would go up. this time we haven't had that. which is good because growth is returning. but i do think that one of the bigger calls for next year for investors to make is where do you want to be globally? because obviously the u.s. is the obvious place right now because that's where the growth is leading. but, you know, the u.s. economy is about a quarter of global gdp. but the u.s. stock market is

over 50% of the global stock market. so i think there's a little bit of a disconnect where the dollar may actually be peaking and that would create opportunities for overseas -- >> you implied this but i want to make it explicit. in the past dollars had started to rise and the stock market had a tantrum because of it. now we see the dollar and interest rates rising and the stock market is going along just fine because the expectation is the reason it's happening is there's going to be greater growth. >> yes. it's the intersection between growth and financial conditions. growth is returning so it allows for the dollar to go up more. >> but at some point, it derails the stock market. at what point? soon? later? >> my guess is that if the 10-year goes to 3% or above, that's going to be a problem. because that's too much too soon. because we really don't know how much of that growth is going to materialize. we don't know once we get to the sausage making process in congress what is going to emerge.

too much too soon would be a problem. >> economists believe that if you change the corporate tax structure which is the gop house plan, go to this border adjustment tax. don't roll your eyes. it is religion. the dollar will get 20% stronger. >> yeah. >> is that part of your calculation? are you thinking about that? >> no. on paper the dollar becomes a mechanism and if you take in over a trillion dollars of taxes from this border adjustment tax, it's going to get -- going to be -- it'll be dollar strong. it comes down to capital flows. i think it's much more complicated. so my sense is that if the u.s. gains at the expense of other countries. like, if the global economic pie doesn't get bigger, then it's a strong dollar environment. but, you know, china is firing on all cylinders flight. the global growth story is

actually improving beyond just the u.s. so -- >> so differential won't be as big. >> in that sense the dollar can stop rising or start to level off here. that would be bullish for u.s. equities, especially markets. >> yurnen, thanks so much. >> people don't get to see the pink pocket square. >> it's so pale pink it's almost white on camera. coming up next, the gifts are wrapped and now retailers gearing up for returns. what that means for companies like u.p.s. and fedex. and later 0s perlman is here. that's coming up at 8:40 a.m. time. he always blows our mind. back in a moment. lirtmual stood with me when was too by with the ki to get a reir estime. liberty did what? yeah, with liber mutual all i needed to do to gean estime was ap a photo of the damage and voila! ila!

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scade ♪ you got it what do u think? if you're g to wish,shig ate get up to $20 cuomerash on remember sal event lect 2016 and 17 lslsor these t the final countdown. the bulls on parade running toward the end of 2016. four trading days left and dow 20,000 just points away. the trump rally. tech hasn't really taken part so far. but will that change in the new year? the sector's 2017 playbook is straight ahead. plus wall street's magician puts a spell on "squawk."

oz pearlman joins us with an interactive stock picking performance you've got to see it to believe it as the final hour of "squawk box" begins right now. ♪ live from new york this is "squawk box." >> it's great. >> i know who it is. john sebastian. thanks. welcome back to "squawk box" here on cnbc. i'm joe kernen along with andrew ross sorkin and michelle caruso-cabrera. futures at this hour, two of the indexes were higher. one was down, it's still like that. nasdaq up five. up 1.3 on the s&p 500. treasury yields, 2.55% or so. don't watch the 30-year as much. once we do the hundred year, maybe we'll look at that. do it all at hundred year. >> i like how it goes to the third decimal.

>> he can do pi too. on today's top stories, two economic reports. the home price index comes out at 9:00 eastern time. hit their highest level in more than a decade. then at 10:00 a.m., december consumer confidence is due to hit the tape. as the nation's retailers, they've been dealing with a bevy of returns post holiday sales. and gift card redemptions. reports about 10% of holiday purchases are return. not in our house this year. we did pretty well. and in corporate news, the ecb is telling montei de paschi it will need $9.2 billion. more than before. >> it's a huge increase. yeah. >> it's like a run. >> it's a perfect example if you wait too long it gets worse and worse and the hole gets deeper and deeper. other stocks to watch this morning, discount store operator fred's has adopted a shareholder

rights plan. that follows news last week that aldon capital had taken a 25% stake and called the stock undervalued. earlier in the week fred's announced it was purchasing stores from rite aid. fred's stock jumped that day 81%. tesla motors striking a deal. iranian officials say that the country paid only the half price tag for the new boeing jets. boeing has not issued a comment on that story. there's often a difference between list price and what's paid. but it's a pretty big differential. hd supply holdings says the industrial products distributor could benefit from spending and tax cuts. toshiba is considering booking a loss on several billion dollars on an acquisition on its -- name from the past -- westinghouse

division. shares dropping sharply on the news. will be likely to boost its capital base in the wake of a $1.3 billion accounting scandal that you may recall from last year. bp is reportedly in talks with grocery partners to add convenience stores to its gas stations in three new countries. the uk's telegraph says the company is pushing the model as a global strategy as aiming to boost from 17,000 stations worldwide. you know, it's a certainty here in the united states that there's going to be convenience store items at your gas station. it is not a certainty in a lot of parts of the world. >> not all of them, but many of them. >> there's a lot of places in the world where they could add a convenience store for sure. i would like that. >> it's where the margin is. >> if you like paying top dollar. that's where you can do it. right? >> yes. when i was in monterrey, mexico, the big huge news was that 7-eleven was actually going to partner with a gas station in

monterrey and they were going to be able to buy their gas from somebody besides the national oil company. it was a huge moment of progress for them. >> you're not going to get a bunch of groceries at a gas station, believe me. >> sweets though. pastry. >> but it's $8 for a bottle of milk. and butter, is like -- if you need it, you pay for the convenience. you do. >> we have that. >> like coca-cola if you're thirsty when you're on the road. and a snack. >> but neighborhood gas stations aren't necessarily, but most of the other places like on the road or if you're -- >> they are quick though. if you have to walk into a supermarket and go deep into the back and get a dairy product and you're in a rush to get home -- >> where are you going to charge a tesla? they're going to need these places. >> especially because it takes a long time. >> shopping malls and stuff. a half hour. john harwood joins us from d.c. he's got the latest on the trump transition and the tweet stream

over the weekend. john? >> reporter: andrew, no tweets from donald trump this morning. but the day is young. he made a lot of news through that medium over the weekend. first of all, donald trump criticized or -- excuse me, announced on christmas eve that he is going to close his foundation, that he hadn't fairly covered. said he did not want donald trump to close down that foundation until he concluded his investigation of it. we'll see where that goes. donald trump also jumped on the controversy over the u.n. resolution that criticized israel for settlements. the united states did not veto that resolution. that angered israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu. donald trump was on that as well. and responded to president obama who said in an interview with his former strategic adviser david axelrod that he could have won again. donald trump responded in all

caps, no way. because of isis, because of obamacare, because of jobs leaving. now, while donald trump made news on his own in that way, he also lost someone who was going to help him manage the news in his new administration. jason miller who had been named communications director backed out under some cloud of controversy after another donald trump aid called him out on twitter. called him needing to resign. don't know all the details there. don't really care. but it means that shawn spicer is going to do double duty. press secretary and communications director. >> john, i've seen it said that the -- you look at governorships or state legislatures for the house. or the senate. just look at the state of the current democratic party. and it's in as dire a state as a hundred years as a century. i understand what president obama is saying about hillary

clinton and at least he's not saying it's the russians and the, i don't know, white people. i don't know. whatever the old excuse was. at least he's saying that it was hillary and maybe it was a bad message. but do you really think he has nothing to do with the state of the current democratic party? or his progressive policies were kind of rejected and maybe you can't legislate down? you need it to rise up from the public to really embrace those things. he really thinks that the country would want four more years of progressive policy? >> reporter: look, i think it is complicated. progressive policies had something to do it. reaction to president obama personally had something to do with it. reaction to his race had something to do with it. there's a whole range of factors. remember, ronald reagan left office with the control of the democrats. left with both houses in control of the republicans. it is not uncommon in a two-term

presidency. in the hands of republicans. it's not uncommon that in reaction to be president, presidents the pivot point for the american politics. so he is the focus point of discontent. even if he is able to win re-election for himself, mid-term elections are a fertile area for the opposition party to make headway. that has happened to president obama. there were some particular dynamics around the great recession which may have exacerbated those. and some of the policies have as well. so the feeling among some blue collar white voters that because of cultural and economic they're under siege and headed to a majority minority country. all of those things go into play. democratic party obviously is in a very much reduced position of power. it has, however, won the popular vote in six out of seven presidential elections.

>> yeah. but if you take out california and new york, and they lost by -- >> reporter: why would you take out california and new york? >> if you win the popular vote in pennsylvania, michigan, north carolina, florida, ohio, wisconsin that's where you won the popular vote where democrats haven't lost is some of those in 30 or 40 years. >> reporter: hey, look. credit to donald trump. he was elected. he's going to be the president. >> i know. >> reporter: if you talk about the reduced circumstances of the democratic party, you've got to note that the plurality of voters have been embracing. >> in the states, in the governorships there has been a pushback. i was wondering whether he really believes it or whether he's just -- >> reporter: i think he believes it. >> -- surrounded by yes men or delusions. i don't know. anyway, we can't answer that. >> reporter: i wouldn't call it delusion but people look at the same facts differently. obviously if you're president

and you're interpreting your own legacy, you're going to look at parts that are most positive. and people who criticized him are going to look to the negative part. >> if you told me a year ago that we would elect donald trump, he would have said -- >> reporter: if you told him two months ago he wouldn't have believed it. >> he would have been like, oh, my god. what did i do? >> reporter: he wouldn't have believed it two months before. joe, i got a question for you. santa claus treat you right? >> he did. what do we get people like us, though, john? i got some socks. >> reporter: socks are good. >> socks are good. i got some boxers. which no longer are sized by waist, andrew. they're sized by small, medium, and large. >> reporter: best thing is time with your kids. that's the gift. >> that's true. definitely. >> reporter: merry christmas, joe. >> better to give than to receive, john.

merry christmas to you as well. we are kicking off the final trading week -- what's your favorite? what did you get that was your favorite? >> i got a macbook pro 13 inch with the touch thing. >> okay. that's good. >> and it's cool. i'm very excited. my wife got it with my kids. they all -- >> you got some articles of clothing or no. i saw you got a belt for christmas. finally. i'm so excited -- >> joe thinks andrew never wears a belt. >> because we've talked about this. >> if your pants fit, you don't need it. >> i get some recently i had them put on belt loops. i got to wear it. joining us now, fixed income chief economist and brown brothers global head of currency strategy. our guest host is jurrien timmer. just because i'm interested in this, i want to talk to mark about the dollar and where we're

headed here. through all next year. i. >> regardless of who would have won the presidential election, we're looking at some stimulus in the u.s. with monetary policy. this is a good recipe for the dollar. i expect the dollar to continue to rally on a trend basis next year and into 2018. >> so lindsey, i guess you know what? they're related. the dollar and the 10-year and interest rates. but are we out of that range or there's still some people who test those lower yields again. are we off to the races now, you think? >> i think we could test those lower boundaries but i think it'll be much later in the year. we're seeing the optimism trade carry us through into the new year. which could last good months if not quarters. if we do see pro-growth policies

come to fru wish out of the trump administration. right now it's simply politics and promises. but if we do start to see those come to fruition, we could see this optimism and higher trend carry forward for several months. but even with these policies put into place, we need to see them trickle down into the actual reality of the data. so we're going to have to see a stronger growth. in order to support these types of yields going forward. otherwise we could test much lower boundaries in the second half of 2017. >> so the dollar index is one thing to look at. how about just looking at the individual -- the other currencies throughout the world. have you done some work on all of them? what would be the highlights of 2017? give us the forecast. >> the politics are going to be related to a dominant thing next year. we have the dutch elections in march where the far right party is ahead. then we go to france and

germany. in addition to the economic factors, i think tough include in the analysis the political turmoil that comes to europe next year. i think it's another positive for the dollar. the euro is finishing the year lowest level since 2003 or so. sterling's also at more than a 20-year low. dollaryen has been the rough one for us here in 2016. began the year on a rough note. up about 20% now since late september. so i think we should continue to see these friends but i'd be looking for them to suffer with the dollar block currency being held up a little bit more by their interest rates. >> okay. final word, lindsey. the fed moves how many times? 12 times next year? >> i don't know about that. i think the fed has increased the bar of expectation to about three. the economic reality was little

change prior to what it was. if we don't see improvements from here, the current economic state warrants one additional fed move next year. so we could see just one policy change as we saw in 2015, 2016 occur again in the calendar year. >> okay. all right. did you lose -- >> we all lost for a second. >> i'm sure she sounded great. >> read lips. i think i know where she was headed. anyway, thank you. coming up when we return, the 2017 playbook. we'll talk defense stocks. we'll do that after the break.

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anywhere, any... let's lose the 'anywhere, anytime' too. you can't download on-the-go, there's no dvr, yada yada yada. stream some stuff! somewhere! sometimes! you totally nailed that buddy. simple. don't let directv now limit your entertainment. only xfinity gives you more to stream to any screen. welcome back to "squawk box." we are opening up the 2017 playbook with a focus on defense stocks. here's morgan brennan. >> reporter: in 2016 serious civil war escalated. north korea tested more nukes. and u.s. agencies linked russia to election-related hacks. in 2017, tensions with russia will mount. the iranian nuclear deal will be questioned. and china will further flex its muscle in the south china sea. first, it's all about the budget. and the budget will increase. despite sequestration.

details will be key with more focus on cost efficiencies when president-elect trump releases the 2018 proposal this spring. second, the nuclear triad could become a diad. as they jockey for the contract, under the new administration, the fate of the land based leg of the nuclear arsenal could come into question. even as modernization moves forward for the navy's ohio class replacement subs and the air force's b-21 stealth bomber. third, the race to secure space will take off. call this the other infrastructure plan. as the pentagon fortifies a satellite system to be able to disable. expect more contract, more launches, and more for raytheon and others. one wild card? spac spacex. but on the heels of the falcon 9 rocket explosion, first it's got to get back into space.

so if president-elect trump's twitter account is any indicator, this will be a very dynamic year for defense. now, i mentioned the nuclear triad. in light of trump's recent tweet about the need to, quote, greatly strengthen and expand america's capableability, expect to see the arsenal move forward. and if you're not already, get familiar with terms like deterrent and long range standoff weapons which have been the question of fierce debate. the other thing to keep an eye on is the omb pick who might be one of the hawks who comes down on the increased defense spending that's expected. >> all right. good rundown there. thank you. let's bring in joseph denardi. good to see you. morgan did a great thing laying it all out for us. but very simply, he promises more defense spending and yet he

hassles lockheed martin and boeing. so ultimately, is it good or bad for the defense stocks, a trump presidency? >> i think it's going to be generally pretty good. i just think there's going to be some headline risk along the way as he makes it clear he wants to make sure the contracts are being awarded in a cost-effective way. i think ultimately what this is going to come down to is he lays out a lot of things he wants to do and it's what can you afford. he wants to rebuild the army back to 550,000 troops. but i think that's going to be expensive to do. our view is more of the money is going to be focused on the air force and navy. and that's going to be good for names like lockheed and northrup. probably the most army exposure out of the primes. they will probably see a benefit if the d.o.d. wants to accelerate. we see the primary winners out of this as lockheed and

raytheon. >> is a lot priced in or can they get more? >> yeah, i think what's getting priced into these stocks is still relatively reasonable. i think maybe prior to trump it was low single digit type growth in the defense budget. now you're looking at kind of mid-single digits. and we view that as generally pretty reasonable. >> and the very best name, you think? >> we still like lockheed. particularly these levels. i think the pullback relative to some of the f-35 headline news is a good buying opportunity. i think what president-elect trump will ultimately determine is that the f-35 is a superior aircraft and that within three or four years, the cost gap between the two aircraft is much narrower than it is now. so we see a lot of this noise right now as just headline risk. ultimately f-35 is going to

survive and be an important program. >> when he tweeted about saying the price out of comparable, there really isn't such a thing. right? the capabilities are so much -- it's like the f-18 is flip phone era. >> yeah. so one's fourth generation fighter jet which is the fa-18 and the other is fifth generation. one can take off and land vertically. you don't have that with the boeing counterpart. so the belief is that if you were actually to see the fa-18 updated, that process would take years and millions of dollars. >> all right. ladies and gentlemen, thanks so much. coming up, the state of start-ups. we'll talk to a venture capitalist from silicon valley. plus the wall street mentalist making a stop here. it's always amazing. and later 'tis the season for returns. and it's a big contributor to

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coming up, what brexit, business in the cloud, and artificial intelligence could mean for silicon valley in 2017. and later don't miss oz pearlman who will be here with a magical

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welcome back to "squawk box." here's what's making headlines this morning. the dow as you know hasn't closed above 20,000 yet, but it could accomplish something this week that it hasn't done in more than three years. the industrial average has risen for seven consecutive weeks since the election. as everyone predicted. the last time it rose for eight weeks in a row was in october and november of 2013. we'll get the shiller report on october home prices. that's come out in about half an hour. home prices have consistently posted year over year gains of 5% or more in recent years. economists are expecting the same this time around. and shares of biogen and ionis pharmaceuticals have developed a drug to treat a spinal disease. it's being marketed by biogen.

okay. turning to the tech sector and the outlook for 2017 would it strengthen or cool tech's run. managing director at insight partners. tech hated trump or supposedly hated trump before the campaign. now they may have a slightly different view. they've all started to hang out with trump or at least went to that meeting. i don't know if you thought the meeting was substantive or more of a piece of theater, but how do you think silicon valley is looking at all of this? >> silicon valley is a lot different than a lot of the country. there's a lot of people who didn't support trump who now elections have consequences. he is the president. so they have to figure out how they're going to best adopt within a trump administration. i think from a business standpoint, you talk about how the market has done well. i think the market has helped everybody. interestingly on technology, he didn't campaign a lot on technology as a platform issue.

there's a little around technology they talked about other than the regulatory framework around net neutrality. beyond that, there wasn't a lot of specificity with respect to the issues around. >> that should be great for cable companies like the parent company of this company comcast. what does it mean to something like a netflix or facebook? >> well, i think obviously what it means is that in theory there could be an increased cost of being able to have an equivalent experience. so as a subscriber right now, you have serious that looks as good as if you're watching this show. >> if you wanted to gamble on that, though, what is the cost differential in what the price of netflix is today -- >> i think it's hard to -- >> how much margin compression do you have under a net neutrality world? >> band width cost. there's offsetting costs of

video delivery is going down. so it's hard to know at which the rate is going to decrease versus the cost increase. it's going to take years to play out. >> does there have to be an explicit outlook on trump. the private money that went into these unicorns were yield seekers. people who were desperate for yields all over the world. and that desperation disappears. are they going to be forced to go public? are they going to die? >> i think some of the challenges with the unicorns happened prior to trump. you had to huge run-up particularly on the west coast. the ipo market -- >> was it because of the hunt for yield? >> i don't think it was for the hunt for yield. i mean, i think at the end of the day what you had was a view that the returns from the prior four years were going to sustain forever. >> and actually to that point, i think it's less a hunt for yield. when you're in a low growth

environment, you know, investors are starved for growth or yield. and so you go to the secular growers because there's no cyclical growth to be had. then you get into the bond proxies. and now that it's returning, there's just less of a need to go for high pes. >> fidelity has done some -- >> yeah, we have a platform in that. and also we like the secular growers. i think right now with that regime shift, there's a different focus. and that affects. >> to the extent we have a hot market stock right now. and you think that snapchat, for example, might go public in march, at least that's the speculation, what about all of the other silicon valley darlings that have tried to stay out of this. i'm thinking of the drop boxes of the world. i'm thinking of the airbnbs. this whole other set that has stayed private.

>> i think there's two separate sets of companies that have not gone public for a set of reasons. fundamentally their ceos haven't wanted to be public for all of the associations of the company. over the last ten years, we wanted to be a public company. that's no longer the case. what happens is they missed their earnings by a penny. their stock's down 25%. then you have another set of companies who are viewed without naming specific names that are viewed maybe in the same category. the revenue growth has slowed down. under assault from competitors. two separate categories of companies. i think what's going to be -- the interesting thing that's going to happen to the extent it's harder to raise money, they will be forced to go to the public market. i think in some ways snapchat's ipo is part of that. to raise at a price. >> what do you think that company is worth?

>> i'm not an investor so i know as much as you know. i think that company will be worth north of $20 billion in the public market. >> is that a company five years from now that is facebook-like? >> it has the potential. the big question is s.n.a.p. chot is there's some parallels to when twitter went public. you can say twitter went public earlier than they should have because their business model wasn't cemented. then they were forced to live within a public reality. and the question is is snapchat in that same place or not? i think there's a risk there is. if i use the kid test, my kids, you know, if identi've just fol what my kids did on their smartphones, that would be best. unfortunately i did not execute on that strategy. it certainly has that. >> thank you. great to see you. coming up, he's been called wall street's mentalist. oz pearlman joining us with an

interactive stock picking process. it involves a dart board. before break check out this year's winners and losers. caterpillar 38%. these are dow winners.

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what'seam spirit worth? (chewhwhat'she vue ofo taa walk in the woods? the value capital to create nmoan stanl but that matter. welcome back to "squawk box."

futures right now are suggesting we're going to have a positive open. not by a whole lot. dow would open lower by four points. but the s&p lower by 1.5. the dollar is stronger against the yen. and the pound will cost you 1.22 this morning. i am psyched for this segment. we are trying a new unorthodox stock picking strategy this morning. we're bringing in oz pearlman. he is the mentalist for the 2017 stock picks. you've come here before. >> let's do it. >> joe gets very -- >> joe gets angry. >> because he wants to know how the trick is done. >> no, i don't. >> three investment strategies. i'm spilling the beans the way a mentalist invests. look through these. i put every dow jones 30. i want you soo to see all these companies. these are all different companies. make sure, make sure. coca-cola, intel, travelers, dow jones, general electric. all to have them.

>> you think this is going to be a better strategy than the analysts. >> we'll see. hold onto this. make sure these are all different. are they all different? i want you to see these cards. we have merck. general electric. >> they're the same as these cards. >> all the same. put those in your left hand. you are going to be my passive investor. >> i like this. so clever, you are. >> does that make me the active investor? okay. >> spread about half into one hand. put them in one hand, put them in the other. you're active. you're watching "squawk box" every day going after that alpha. >> yeah. >> cut the deck. put half on the bottom so they're mixed. change the order. cut them. >> okay. >> take about half in one hand, half in the other. ready? spread them out. you decide. markets went up, through the roof. throw any half over your shoulder. throw it. bam. gone. throw those away. off the table. either one, throw them on the

ground. done. gone. >> all right. >> spread them between your hands. not like that. flip them over so you can't see. half in each hand. half in each hand. quick, throw either one of your shoulder. i like how michelle just owned it. michelle, look to where you're at. i want you to point to any one of these. you're the active investor. point to one. >> that one. >> are you sure? >> yeah. >> i'm going to ask you again? >> yeah. >> grab it out yourself. grab it out. spread yours. spread yours. >> yeah. >> put that against your body. point to one. grab it out yourself. grab it. pull it right out of there. don't look at it. put it against your body. joe, they say three -- do not look. the other way, pure luck. monkey throwing darts at a dart board could beat the market with the right instances.

>> right. >> come on over. >> all right. i'm going to throw? i'm going to be the monkey. >> you're the smart monkey. take aim. you don't know which stock is which. i calculated the odds before we did this based on the number of cards you had. that there are 941308 ways this could play out. >> what do you want me took? >> i want you to toss it. you could aim anywhere you want. >> let's be clear. that is not a pulse eye. can we zoom in. that is a 13. >> but close. >> real close. joe, come on over. i want to show everybody else what you got. before we show everyone, turn the board around. grab the board. flip it around. yes, please. let's flip that around. we'll put yours back where you got it and tell everybody. if you would have hit next to it, cisco, dupont. if you would have inched away,

chevron or cat. you saw that dart soaring through the air like a 747. can we zoom in? >> donald trump's favorite companying. boeing. >> boeing. and michelle turn over your card. one out of 30 any you wanted. boeing. >> andrew ross sorkin, turn your card around. show everybody. >> it's not fair. >> boeing. >> but wait, wait, wait. three different companies. i want everybody right now to take a look. don't trust me. go to@ozthementalist. >> it gets better. wait. >> go to my own phone. you'll see what i posted last night. you don't have to take my word for it. zoom in on that plane. that plane is tagged. that is boeing. and last but certainly not least, there aren't 941308 options.

there are millions. the whole time you were staring at it, it was boeing looking you right -- >> whoa. >> he does it again. >> can we just talk about this for a second? >> how many stocks do you think you've mentioned on air during the course of the year? >> it gets better. wait until you watch this one. >> i don't know which one. >> probably -- i bet we talk about 600. >> dozens a day times 365. right now don't think of boeing. pick a random stock. totally random right now. something small cap and change your mind to another stock that's pretty good. pretty good. slightly better, not the greatest. then finally another stock. just change your mind a third time. is that right? >> okay. yeah. >> and finally the golden stock of 2016. if you could go back to the future kind of like marty mcfly, biff. he hands himself an almanac. you would have mailed yourself a postcard to yourself.

now, right before you did this, you changed your mind a few times. you had one company in mind. but you had two goldens in mind, am i right? you were torn and like this one's not as good. don't do the second one. do the golden one right before that. >> okay. >> and tell us the name of that company. think of how many words it is. you're not going to have a ticker. look at you tap twice. is it two words. >> yeah. >> tell us all what is that golden stock. l brands. >> michelle is mailing this card to herself. i want you to zoom in on that. >> yeah. uh-huh. >> p.s. trump wins. she wouldn't have believed herself. i'm going to mail one for 2017, don't tell anyone my secret. >> i love the biff. >> there's a whole crew out here that doesn't even understand. >> three of the crew members fainted. we're going to do cpr in a

moment. joe's going to throw more darts in a second. you want to just throw them at me? you can throw them at me. >> i can't even get over it. i'm trying to think when you would -- on the cards -- >> that bullseye. winner picks. >> it still would have worked. >> would have been mcdonald's. i got a happy meal behind the counter. no way. >> that's pretty cool. >> happy new year guys. >> thank you. coming up, the nra, no not the nra. the nrf estimates return costs for retailers -- >> was that a trigger moment? >> need some crayons. we're going to tell you who's benefitting. stay tuned. nothg midatejanelle.

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welcome back to "squawk box." we're still getting over the mentalist. in the meantime a number of flights and disturbances blowing some people's minds causing chaos and shutting down several malls during the busy post-christmas shopping season. morgan radford joins us from

garden city, new york. hey. >> reporter: that's right, andrew. andrew, good morning. listen, dozens of shoppers were injured. this was as fights and even false reports of gun violence broke out all across the country at several malls in several different states. that caused chaos, panic, even mass evacuations at places like, this roosevelt mall here in new york. post-christmas mayhem, striking malls all across the country. in this new jersey mall, pandemonium when a person shouted "gun!" in response to a chair being slammed after a fight. >> we just started running, running, running. we took shelter in some kind of store. >> reporter: 5,000 shoppers tried to escape what they believed was a life-threatening ordeal, abandoning meals in the food court. in ohio, police responded to reports of shots fired at beechwood place mall. >> we had a sort of stampede.

>> reporter: officers used pepper spray to disperse a large crowd fighting, later confirming that there were no gunshots, a juvenile taken into custody for assaulting a police officer. on monday, disturbances in 15 malls across the country were reported in at least a dozen states. in tennessee, incidents were reported in three separate malls. in manchester, connecticut, several fights broke out all at once, investigators believing several hundred teens were involved. >> they just started yelling and started pushing each other. >> reporter: this video shows an officer trying to control the crowd. five other police departments responded to the scene. one officer assaulted with no life-threatening injuries. eight people were arrested, forcing the mall to close its doors two hours before scheduled. >> looked like people were throwing punches, fighting. it was just a huge mob of people. it was insane.

>> reporter: and despite this report, multiple gunshots and this did not happen. in fact police say there were no gunshots despite being able to find any weapons and they're not even sure that any of these incidents were connected. andrew. >> thank you for that. appreciate it very much. >> maybe you should shop online after all of that. u.p.s. is calling this week the second part of its peak shipping season. why? because of returns. morgan brennan rejoins us from noer new york's harold square. >> reporter: moving around li lickety split here in the city. before we get into the rise of returns, which is a big and growing business for these companies, let's take a little look at how these shipping companies fared heading into christmas and hannukah. u.p.s. telling me that the peak season has been, quote, very pucksful with the companies setting record volumes and meeting customers' needs effectively. no update from fedex.

coming into the holiday weekend, it did say it was handling a record number of packages with on-time delivery performance also at record levels. more packages shipped also means more returns. that's giving rise to what's referred to by shipping firms as the second part of peak shipping season. that is kicking off now as consumers send back those unwanted purchases, which can make up as much as a third of online sales. that's made services offered by reverse logistics firms that collect, process and often resell unwanted gifts sought after. that's the reason fedex bought janco and u.p.s. has invested in optoro. they include shipping 1 million returns on january 5th, which the company has dubbed national returns day. this is still a very tiny fraction of the hundreds of millions of packages that these companies handle each during the peak shipping season, but it is

one fast growing and represents double-digit percentage growth, these returns do, versus last year. guys? >> thank you for that. i can't believe how -- i guess there's no traffic at this time. a week ago you couldn't move in the city. >> that's true. blake passed her driving test. >> did she? >> yes. coming up, when we return, we'll talk about that driving test. >> maybe she's going to drive now. >> do they all know what's going on? >> she was 17 yesterday. she passed. >> congratulations, blake! very cool. >> your dad is now sleepless. >> coming up on 2017 predictions from our guest host. and later ron johnson will join "squawk alley" at 11:00 where i'm going to be joining the gang for the hour. i'm doing four hours of tv, my friend, today. >> you know what, i've told you that. you are so good. tr tde trade a trademaed trade plfo that has all the...

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our guest host this morning, urien timmer. you like the dow, the s&p, the russell, domestic, emerging markets, europe? what should we do?

>> well, i think the big opportunity said or the big decision is u.s. versus non-u.s. because the dollar is fully valued. the u.s. has outperformed for a number of years. the weight of the u.s. stock market is twice as high of the global market as the gdp is, so i do think that's a big decision, but that doesn't mean that one suffers at the expense of the other. i do think there's global momentum. certainly the election was a game-changer. if we get actual growth, even if it's very late in the cycle, it's going to create inflation but that growth is a possible escape hatch for the fed to return back to normal policy, which i think we would all be very happy with, because that unconventional monetary policy created a lot of distortions. >> will there come a day when there's a bunch of millennials sitting around starbucks and talking about the stock market? >> yes. >> it's coming? >> it's coming. >> how much more does the stock market have to move higher?

>> it's not a matter of the market moving, it's a matter of that generation generating an income, paying taxes, realizing that 401(k) plans and dollar cost averaging is a pretty good way to generate some wealth. >> the market can be exciting and compelling and rewarding and it hasn't felt that way. >> and for the last seven years the market, i think, people have mistrusted the rally because it was created by monetary policy. >> thanks. make sure you join us tomorrow. >> i'm here tomorrow. >> andrew is on "squawk alley." he's unbelievable. he's made for that show. make sure you join us tomorrow. "squawk on the street" is next. good morning and welcome to "squawk on the street." i'm david faber along with sara se