welcome back to "squawk on the street." markets starting the trading day strong with the dow and s&p surging to all-time highs. energy the best performing sector, up about 1% as they get things going there devin, apache, hess among the leading stocks, all trading about 2% higher. that does it for "squawk on the street." let's send it to the start of "squawk alley. back to you. >> dom, thank you very much. good morning, it's 8:00 a.m. at amazon headquarters in seattle, 11:00 a.m. on wall street, and "squawk alley" is live ♪ ♪

good thursday morning, welcome to "squawk alley." i'm carl quintanilla with john fortt. julia boorstin joins us for the hour at post 9 sara eisen is off. a lot to watch today the dow breaking through 24,000, now up, intraday record and strong day for the nasdaq, too getting news john mccain is on board regarding the senate tax bill of course, it is the last trading day of the month joining us, dan morgan, senior portfolio manager. before that, elon with more on mccain >> senator john mccain is a yes on the tax reform bill

he had been one of the key undecided votes on the republican tax plan, but he said in a statement today that though this is not perfect legislation, he does believe that it will grow the economy and add more money to the pockets of middle class families this is key for republicans. they also got a boost when lisa murkowski of alaska said she would support the bill, as well, so the only two vocal holdouts appear to be senator ron johnson and senator susan collins, so it looks like at this point they are very close, if not at 50 already, in order to pass this bill with only republican votes. but we will see how the rest of the day plays out. senator mitch mcconnell expects to see a vote by late tonight or early tomorrow morning, and again, senator john mccain is a yes on the tax reform bill back to you guys >> thank you very much for that. getting into position quickly in

washington, d.c. as we said, dan morgan joins us, seen your portfolio manager and mike santoli is here at post 9 what a day, mike, as deutsche said a few moments ago, nearing a big event for investors, one of the biggest of the year we had conflicting sentiment between lock it in and let it ride let it ride is winning out you have the consumer confidence surge, gdp revised up and tax reform on top of it. i think it's your answer to tax reform priced in the interesting question from here is going to be the passage of the bill, not just going to be a sell on the news event, but will it be more of a rotation in terms of winners versus losers in the market as opposed to a broad increase >> speaking of winners and losers, yesterday we saw the tech stocks have been on such a

run, really take a hold and some of them really move back, while media stocks saw a big rise. how do you see that shift. >> media is part of the somewhat beaten down, cheaper value stocks, also domestically oriented people don't recognize disney has a high tax rate, over 30%, for example, so i think there are beneficiaries on that front, and it's a rethinking of every three months or so fang comes under pressure because they say we've taken them too far and there's not really an immediate catalyst, if there is one it might be a negative one, not a positive one >> looks like the dow is taking a nice leg higher. perhaps on this mccain news. seems to have happened around 10:56 when the headlines were crossing about mccain's vote in favor of the tax bill. does that in any way seem to indicate the market perhaps didn't have this fully priced in, you think, or might this be short lived? >> well, john, i think you had a

couple dissenters that worried would not get the bill passed. it's huge if it does go through. you've talked about the impact of s&p 500 earnings. for every 1% decrease in the corporate tax rate is $1.34 in s&p profits, so you could do the math on an effective rate around 27%. so any drop in the tax rate we could be looking at $1.50 next year in terms of s&p, so all of a sudden you have a revision on multiples and across the board on all stocks. this coming through is huge and, you know, hope it does go through to be a great push for the market going in 2018 >> does it -- what happens to your model for s&p earnings, and then as a corollary, what happens to the multiple on that? >> well, in terms of, you know, right now you're trading, what, 21 times earnings on the s&p 500, so, you know, if we ratchet

up the growth, obviously, projected growth next year is about 7% to 10%, so now you're affecting even more growth just because of the tax change. so i think you have to kind of revise, you know, what your thoughts are in terms of market multiples going forward on all stocks so it's a positive across the board. you know, made a big thing yesterday about the technology having a lower effective tax rate than other sectors. energy is very low and kind of discounting certain sectors based on their effective tax rates, but it's still going to be a huge flush for profits and dividends and so forth going forward for everyone >> kind of reminds me, mike, of the charts we saw right after the election dreamli dreamlike hockey charts if the tax reform happens >> it's coming at a time, too, when 2018 was going to be a challenge because comparisons were going to be hard and when you get a mid cycle earnings recessions like a year and a half ago, usually that lasts

about a year the big question is going to be for 2018 if we get these tax changes and you talk about the multiple, carl, that's a one time step function thing it doesn't help 2019 growth one bit. that's your new baseline that's going to be potentially an issue >> are there sectors that haven't seen the stocks move up as much as they might now that we know it has a higher chance of passing >> what's fascinating is what's happening in retail. it's similar to media. media gets sold off hard because everybody believes it's going to be the giants of tech that take over that market similarly, amazon versus retail. retail is not that far from a 52-week high as a group, but so far below the norm they probably have head room if they are going to get back to anything like they used to trade in terms of valuation. >> speaking of retail names, gap is up 40% in three months, citi, which admittedly wasn't on board for the ride takes it to sell today. what is the downside of ringing the register, as cramer would

say, on some of these names? >> well, retail, you know, a sector as you know, carl, traditionally does very well as you go into the holidays that's when most of their sales are conducted, so i'm not an expert, carl, in the retail sector >> in general, though. >> generally speaking, typically you would ride out the group until christmas and then, you know, sell on the earnings that come out in the first quarter. you know, to me it's still a viable group i don't know if the, you know, concerns about amazon taking over on everything are really warranted. so, you know, i would expect the group to do well going into the close of the holidays. >> speaking of retail, mike, i've been watching stitch fix, just went public about a couple of weeks ago now one of the weirdest post ipo trades we've seen in a long time it was priced at 15, was down below that for a bit, now it's above 20, but it's been up, it's

been down. now it's trading around $21.63 a share, but down almost 3% for the day. is that bullish on retail because it's been so high, or schizophrenic because there's been so much volatility? >> i think that company came public at the very moment where you could obsess over whether it was going to be a massive cyber monday play, whether getting all this ink at the perfect moment for the holiday season, and right in time for the argument over whether it was just the blue apron of clothes or something entirely different and certainly something that has legs as a concept. i think that's what the back and forth is all about you definitely have a little more of a willingness to believe at work in this market right now. obviously, more speculative action happening in the lower tier, so i think it's all kind of swirling around >> any thoughts on why overall bonds haven't been moving? >> it's a great question right now those are the markets -- that and the dollar

have not been saying that we're going to be seeing some kind of a major acceleration in growth in the u.s. next year based on these tax changes. almost as if the stock market is saying, yep, we're sliding a bunch of capital in the direction of the owners of capital and investors and otherwise it's really just not a net addition at least not immediately >> right we're going to keep our eye on that, absolutely dan, mike, thank you guys. talk to you soon >> thank you, carl apple, meanwhile, making a big announcement on its push into the health space. cnbc's christina farr spoke with apple chief operating officer jeff williams and joins us now christina, good morning. >> good morning. we've got some big news today from apple they just launched the first-ever heart study app anyone over the age of 22 can sign up on the apple store, and here's how it works. so this apple watch, if you have one, you'll know it already has a heart rate sensor, but apple's wondering whether or not this sensor can pick up on a specific

problem with the heart's rhythm called an atrial fibrillation as jeff williams told me yesterday, this was more of an organic process, where they decided to do this it wasn't, hey, we conquered the iphone, then did ipads and now we're going to do health care. it was more something they heard from users that this watch was already beneficial from a health care standpoint and this came out of that and they said what can we do next >> how's this going to work? going to have to be self reported where they'll have the data if you opt in and say, yeah, i went to see my doctor and there was, indeed, a problem and they'll log it >> they've been very thoughtful and talked to people in the medical community. you can bring your ekg into your

family physician, but they also have a partnership with a telemedicine company called american well, and the idea behind that is you'll get a phone call from a doctor and they'll say, hey, let me ask you some more questions. are you experiencing shortness of breath, do we need to get you into the emergency room right now, or can we send you additional hardware, maybe a patch for your heart and track whether or not you're having this problem with your heart so that's the idea behind it it's really apple saying, you know, we think telemedicine is big, we want to be involved with the future of health care, and we wonder whether this apple watch can do more than just wellness and fitness >> christina, just a quick question on what this means for the tech giants' competition to own this health tech space you've been reporting how amazon and google have also tried to be the leaders here does this mean that apple really has a stronghold now >> yeah, i see this as a pretty

big muay fove for apple. they told me they are working with the fda on this, making sure regulators are aware of what they are doing, and it's kind of an approach i think takes them into the medical records space and they are saying, you know, apple's jeff williams told me we want to make sure consumers are empowered, and that is a big statement. they want consumers to have their own health information and start using the apple watch and the iphone and all these apple devices to make sure that it's there and all in one place i think that definitely pits them against your amazon and google that are also fascinated by the opportunities in the health sector. >> christina, we're going to watch that, obviously. stocks started the day in the red, but moved into the green. thank you very much. still ahead, amazon is eyeing your office more on the push to bring alexa into the enterprise. apple announcing another investment in health on the same day the fda approves a different company's device for heart monitoring we'll talk to the ceo behind that product and the crypto currency craze

making its way into real estate when "squawkll" merit ck aeycos gh

amazon is making a push to bring alexa into your office we'll see how comfortable people are with this. the idea is to let alexa book conference rooms, set up meetings, perform other work functions. details will be announced today

at reinvent. that's amazon's annual conference for its cloud unit. of course, there's a lot of corporate information that would end up getting sent to amazon servers in this scenario, so we'll see what adoption is like. but it's not just the office amazon also has a new product. this is a hardware product specifically designed for developers it's a camera called deeplens. it's got artificial intelligence computing built into the camera. amazon wants developers to use this to code up new services with amazon's cloud. i spoke to aws ceo andy jasy earlier this week about it in las vegas. take a listen. >> you could imagine setting it up so that you open your garage door any time you see your license plate that you've trained the model to recognize, or you can imagine it sending a text any time your dog gets on the couch so it has a bunch of a

go rhythms built into the camera it has a bunch of tutorials built in so you can learn how to use computer vision models, and it's really designed to allow developers, everyday developers, to get experience doing machine learning and deep learning >> guys, he was saying that there aren't enough actual practical applications yet where developers can test out coding skills in this that's part of the reason they are putting the camera out there. not so much as a mass market product yet, but as a home science project so developers cantinker and build a communit so they can later come out with more products. >> it's not just about reading signs or license plates or texts, right you could ostensibly say if your pet is misbehaving >> tell alexa to tell your dog to get off the couch >> or refill the dog food or cat food >> what about the security concerns about this? you maengsed about alexa at work

and now a whole level of data collected inside your home how do you think people are going to feel about this >> we already had the discussion of amazon's service that lets people into your house >> i would not sign up for that. >> now you can have developers coding to recognize faces and do it without your input if you want if you're that comfortable i'm not. >> do you think this is going to be widely on the adopted or that's going to be a barrier for growth >> far be it for me to say what's not going to be widely adopted that amazon comes up with >> never want to bet against amazon >> maybe occasionally, but bezos and company certainly have a knack for this andy jassy also had interesting insight into the early days of aws, how it got started when he moved from being jeff bezos' chief of staff to getting this whole cloud movement started take a listen. >> jeff never flinched he always believed it was a great idea he didn't know, like none of us knew it would be as successful

as it's been and how fast it would be successful, but made a lot of sense, because amazon, which is a really strong technology company, was experiencing all the problems that the cloud had a chance to solve. we were, you know, spending way too long building the projects we were building, because we were reinventing the infrastructure in every part of the company and it was costly and we were spending our scarce resource, engineers, on the undifferentiated heavy lifting of infrastructure, so we had that problem inside of amazon, and we're a really strong technology company, so we felt if we had that problem, there's a chance other companies did, too. >> jassy believes he's still running hard enough and his team, oracle, google, et cetera, microsoft, not going to be able to catch up. i will point out he did say that the aws cloud team is not moving to hq2 not like they are moving out of seattle. might be some teams placed in wherever that new location is,

but if you're wondering who's going to be in the new city, it's not him >> it's amazing just thinking about how much they've accomplished by looking at trying to fix their own problems >> yeah. >> amazing stuff >> let that be a lesson to all of us. >> exactly, exactly. coming up, the crypto currency craze is spreading. why the real estate space is the next target and a quick programming note, carl icahn will sit down exclusively on the "halftime report" at noon eastern. you won't want to miss it. quk le wl rht back don't go away. . >>yeah. lot of tech companies are reporting today. and, how's it looking? >>i don't know. there's so many opinions out there, it's hard to make sense of it all. well, victor, do you have something for him? >>check this out. td ameritrade aggregates thousands of earnings estimates into a single data point. that way you can keep your eyes on the big picture. >>huh. feel better? >>much better. yeah, me too. wow, you really did a number on this thing. >>sorry about that. that's alright. i got a box of 'em. thousands of opinions. one estimate. the earnings tool from td ameritrade.

♪ ♪ >> welcome back to "squawk alley. the price of bitcoin has been on a wild ride. the applications for crypto currencies are still being discovered, and it turns out the real estate industry is leveraging its uses.

diana olick joins us from washington to explain. >> well, julia, last month we told you how you could buy a home with bitcoin. well, now you can pay your rent with one, too. it's a new offering being launched earlier next year by managego, a brooklyn-based company providing landlords and tenants with payment, repair, and other services online and through the mobile app now they are adding bitcoin. they admit there's not a lot of demand for this it so far, but they expect it any minute now from a very specific kind of renter >> somebody that maybe is in technology, somebody that's in finance, somebody that just sees this very exciting, they got in, and this is -- makes it real they could pay their rent with bitcoin. >> pay online or on the app with bitcoin, then managego converts that to dollars through coin base, which is a broker. then the landlord gets the payment in dollars bitcoin is, obviously, extremely

volatile, so you lock in the value at the time of the payment. is there huge demand for this? other developers and ceos said they have not seen any demand, but they are not exactly closing the idea off either. back to you guys >> thanks so much, diana >> let's get back to dominic chu at hq with the european close. >> as the u.s. markets are hitting record highs, european stocks are wrapping up november with a relatively mixed session. the ftse among today's big decliners, following its worst daily performance in about a month. that currency continued to climb on optimism over progress in the brexit talks uk reportedly close to a deal regarding the northern irish border moving on now to the financials, credit sweeps a fresh high after announcing new cost cutting plans at its investor day, also

planning to distribute half its net profits in 2019 through dividends and stock buybacks meantime, royal bank of scotland after the financial crisis, the bad bank had racked up operating losses exceeding 50 billion pounds and as we wrap up november, the broader market stock 600 index hosting its worst monthly performance since june, as strength in the euro weighed on shares of exporters, and there are a lot in continental europe. back to you, john. >> thank you, dom. when we come back, sexual harassment in the workplace is front and center you can add google to the number of company whose culture is being called into question "squk le bk tethawaly"acafr is

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and not being in debt for it for the rest of our lives. but we're only as strong as our community. who inspires and pushes us to go further than we could ever go alone. sofi. get there sooner. half past the hour, let's get a news update with sue herera back at hq. sue? >> good morning, everyone. here's what's happening at this hour matt lauer making his first public response to the allegations against him. he released a statement that his former co-host savannah guthrie read on the "today" show this morning. >> there are no words to express my sorrow and regret for the pain i have caused others by words and actions. to the people i have hurt, i am truly sorry. repairing the damage will take a lot of time and soul searching, and i am committed to beginning that effort. it is now my full-time job." >> russell simmons is stepping

down from his company after being accused of sexual assault. in a statement, simmons said that he had a different recollection of their encounter, but said her feelings of fear and intimidation are real. russia has approved a draft agreement with egypt for russian war planes to use egyptian military bases, allowing moscow to further increase its military footprint in the middle east russia's defense minister visited cairo on wednesday you are up to date that's the news update at this hour back downtown to you, carl >> all right, sue, thank you very much. getting some more news out of washington, d.c., today, as rex tillerson's potential fate may be on the line eam eamon javers is at the white house today. good morning >> good morning. the president here at the white house, the first opportunity reporters had had to ask him questions about that "new york times" report that suggested the white house has a plan to replace secretary of state rex tillerson with cia director mike

pompeii poe in as soon as a few weeks. the president was asked about rex tillerson, whether he wants him to stay on the job and simply responded, rex is here, he's here, meaning physically the secretary of state is here at the white house on campus, but not giving any indication from the president of whether or not he wants rex tillerson to remain in that job so sort of a nondenial here of that "new york times" reporting. also i can tell you senator bob corker was on capitol hill this morning talking to reporters and giving some indication he had talked to rex tillerson and rex tillerson was not suggesting he was going to leave any time soon finally, i can tell you that i've spoken to an official here at the white house who is not expecting a big announcement any time soon. all of that creates a bit of a murky picture, carl, as to what exactly rex tillerson's fate will be and what the president intends to do here it will be up to the president to decide all of this and the timing, of course, will be up to him, as well carl, back to you.

>> eamon javers, between that and mccain as a yes on the tax bill, a lot of news coming out of washington. we'll come back to you later on. also some news regarding the energy complex opec members gathering in vienna to discuss the extension of the output cuts. steve sedgwick joins us now. good morning >> good morning. look, interesting situation at the moment the non-opec opec meeting has run over somewhat, so people are thinking is there a breaking in the ranks, because earlier on we had the opec meeting which went very much to plan as far as the saudis are concerned looks like everyone within the opec grouping, iraqis, iranians, others, as well, have gone along with the saudi idea they want a full nine-month extension, which takes us to the end of 2018. that's quite a bullish scenario and why we're seeing the price rising this morning. i want to show you where i'm at. this is the opec press conference room where the secretary-general is going to be, novak is going to sit here, and the president, boss of aramco will be, as well.

basically, we think we're going to get news. everyone is signed up for the deal but let's listen to what the saudi minister said about the deal there's some subtle words in there. >> consensus is almost, you know, complete there will be a decision we will announce it after the conference, but as we've always said, there are 24 participants and each one of them has an equal vote, but in terms of where the market is, that is 100% agreement that the market is on its way to full recovery >> so the big contention here is was or is there going to be any russian dissent, are they going to say, look, what we don't want is to give a carte blanche to the shale producers and say produce as much as you want, regardless of price and what's happening in the rest of the market so the russians, we understand, want reviews built in, as well we don't think at the moment we're going to get an official

review built in at, say, a three month or six-month stage, but here's where it gets interesting, the reviews are already there. they have this committee, jmmc, joint ministerial monitoring committee. saudis are on it, russians are on it. any opportunity they can have a meeting saying we think enough is enough, time to take some of these cuts off the table and put more oil back on the market. let me hand it back to you guys. >> steve, we know how crazy some of those meetings can get. we'll be relying on you to be our eyes and ears. steve sedgwick is with opec today. big day for the dow, crossing 24,000 for the first time nasdaq also trying to recover from its worst day since the middle of august bitcoin continuing wild swings, up and down $1,000 joining us to discuss, joining us here at post 9 and frank calderon good to have you with us no lack of news to discuss the rotation in tech, did it strike you as unusual and do you

think it's about taxes or something else >> it didn't strike me as unusual. there's going to be fluctuations up and down, a lot of uncertainty. it's going to happen you can't expect things to go up forever. >> do you think there's impact in terms of net neutrality and expectation the rules will be overhauled some time in the next month? >> that certainly leads into the uncertainty, but time will tell. >> frank, your company does business planning and with the potential tax changes that we see on capitol hill, i imagine there are a lot of people who have questions about that. are you seeing that show up in your business and the demand for either features or usage, and how hard a time are your customers having planning their business >> i think, john, great question, because companies are seeing a tremendous amount of volatility, whether it's on tax law changes, currency, changes in the business environment, and so forth we provide a platform that allows our companies to plan more effectively, make better

decisions with their business, and have it be across the enterprise and, therefore, as changes come about, they are able to make those changes by making quicker decisions within their organization and i think that's becoming much more prevalent we're seeing more and more of that with the enterprise customers that we sell to. >> and how much change are you expecting in terms of impact of the tax changes? are your clients starting to take them into account in planning i think it's early, but clients are starting to think about the tax law changes and what it's going to do, especially on an international basis, dealing with cash and the balance sheet and how they model that and what investments they need to make. having a planning platform to be able to do that gives them ability to model different scenarios and be able to take those different scenarios and implement that within their business very effectively. >> how is bitcoin being talked about in the valley right now? >> constantly. i mean, it seems that everyone checks coin base for the first three hours of every day

it was a bit problematic when it went down yesterday, but, obviously, it's an ongoing discussion people are very interested and also starting to understand beyond bitcoin what are the cases of distributed lender technologies >> is the general narrative block chain valuable, bitcoin uncertain and overpriced, or more complex than that >> i think you distilled it well i think there's a lot of people who are bitcoin bulls, though, who would dispute that certainly, i think there's a ton of interest in block chain, you've heard it from the fed and others obviously, that carries a lot of weight so there's going to be a lot there. >> frank, you were a cfo for a long time, most recently at cisco, although maybe i'm missing one. >> red hat >> okay. as a cfo, do you look at bitcoin and crypto currencies as an opportunity to provide stability or security within a business, or do you just run as far away as you can from it >> i think it's very early when you think about enterprise

companies. we sell a lot to enterprise companies. we haven't seen that much attention from a bitcoin standpoint when you get underneath and look at the block chain technology, that's going to allow for a tremendous amount of capability in the future, but i think it's very early right now and that's why we're seeing a lot of the volatility with bitcoin in particular >> we're going to, obviously, follow that for years if it lasts. our other story today involves, obviously, gender. sally crawcheck joined us earlier, we asked her to weigh in on harassment in the workplace. >> you draw that, you know, parallel between wall street, tech, i'd say the venture capital businesses both businesses think about it, they control massive sums of money, pick winners and losers, are controlled by white men, right? where's the fairness in that >> harassment in tech in focus, as well. the information writes an article about interoffice romance by top executives at google the article makes the point several top employees have had

relationships with subordinates, hurting the perception of women within the valleys, ellie, had to deal with gender inequality for years. how's this complicate it for people >> i think it continues the conversation, which is good to see. shining sunlight on an issue that's pervasive and hopefully what we get to next is solutions and tools and different things that organizations can actually do to have a plan going forward and really work to address it. >> seems like this issue elevated with the ellen powell lawsuit. even though she didn't win, there's been talk about the ellen powell effect and now these are topics that are pervasive. this issue of sexual harassment is just all over hollywood and media and the news business. do you think things are going to start to change in tech now that it's sort of perceived as going beyond tech? >> i hope so i think these things take a long time i mean, this is kind of inherent in the culture and how do you change that, you know, step by step

it's going to take time. i hope that it continues to be a conversation and continues to be elevated so that hopefully change does come out of it >> frank, you've been at a number of different large companies with all kinds of challenges when it comes to managing these workforce issues. what do you do, given all these headlines coming out about various different industries everybody's got their sexual harassment training already and they are very rigorous companies are about covering their own behinds, but what do you do to change the culture >> i think first of all very serious topic for companies all over it goes down to the corporate culture and how you establish a good strong values within the culture, you know, respect to the individual, making sure you have a level of diversity, and allowing individuals within the company to have a voice. and it could be in various forms like surveys, hotlines and things like that, to allow for an open environment. many companies that i've worked with, i've been fortunate over the years to work with those

companies that do have those strong values and culture. i know in the ten months i've been a part i've come in and made that a cornerstone of what we do and how we do it and we are going to continue to expand upon that. i think that provides a good foundation that allows for better diversity and also people feeling that respect and willingness to open up to raise their hand and know when they do raise their hand, there's going to be actions taken. >> you're right about it being a serious story and one we'll cover no matter what the industry ellie, frank, thank you guys good to see you both >> thank you harassment in the workplace also a major topic of conversation at the business insider ignition conference, where i was reporting yesterday. the issue was in the spotlight following the termination of nbc news' matt lauer take a listen. >> it's important for us to take perspective from the outside looking in around any allegation or investigation that a company has. and certainly we've lived through this for the last year and a half, is that the fact set

of these allegations and whether there's been harassment or not can be very different and very different cases, which the headlines don't always show. >> it's not a hollywood problem, it's an all industry problem, including the u.s. government. not a u.s. problem, it's a global problem i was in london a couple weeks ago and the topic of the conversation was not the u.s., it was other countries >> i think it's a moment that's very important it goes to the basic issue of every person deserves a chance to have their best life, and it's not a question of a business issue that people are more effective or productive when treated respectfully, and they feel comfortable. it's a societal issue. >> there seems to be a consensus this is a turning point in how companies handle these issues and try to prevent them. carl >> interesting, the way this placed so many other topics this week, especially at ignition fascinating. take a look at shares at

juniper. the stock is slipping on reports nokia can preparing a bid for the firm nokia denied that move before break, rick santelli, what are you watching today? >> i'm watching some key technical levels in so many markets. break outs or break downs? all after the break. at fidelity, trades are now just $4.95. we cut the price of trades to give investors even more value. and at $4.95, you can trade with a clear advantage. fidelity, where smarter investors will always be.

i'm scott walker coming up today top of the hour, carl icahn joins us as the dow powers through 24,000. we'll see where he thinks stocks

go now and why his first activist position of the entire year has quickly turned into a boardroom brawl. plus, is one of the rare stars of retail about to fall? we'll debate it in our call of the day. and a "shark tank" stunner kevin o'leary joins us today with the founder of a new company reimagining security with a touch of a finger you won't believe what happens next find out today on "halftime report" starting noon eastern. >> look forward to that, thanks. let's get the santelli exchange in the meantime over at the cme. good morning, rick >> good morning, carl. you know, so many markets are at really, really important levels. fixed income markets very close to where they settled the end of last year, many of the fx markets on areas that have been important for one to four years, both comes down towards current level or coming up from lower levels to current level, but one in particular this week that's really captured my imagination and i'll tell you one of the reasons, because i see the

charts all over the floor. i like to pay attention to what traders are looking at most closely and seems this week it's all about the uk, brexit, the pound, and the other european currency, the euro let's go to the board, shall we? this is a pound versus euro for one year, and in this one year it encompasses so much important technically. i like when things are somewhat symmetric around big levels, and that big level happens to be 114. so, as you look basically in the first half of the year, it was bottom then we crisscrossed and had a congestion area. boy, these are like -- this is textbook asterisk important. then below it, knocking on the door, now at 113.40 we're coming from above now granted what many times happens is you'll slice through, you'll do the same congestion on the other side and slowly work your way higher, but it could fail here, as well so break out or break down that's the key, isn't it and it isn't only this if you're looking into dollar index, draw your dotted red line

at 94, if you're looking at the euro versus the dollar most likely you want to put your red dotted line at 120 now, it isn't only fx, and i mentioned earlier, when i look at the fixed income sovereign markets, it's going to be an exciting december in my opinion. doesn't mean you're going to have crazy ranges, big jumps in option volatility. what it means to me is, you could argue why the boons, for example, closed at 21. they are higher on year at 37. 21 was one of those levels towards the end of last year the buying maybe distorted that, but doesn't matter closing yields for the year are important, and they affect investors' strategy. so as we look, we settle our ten to 244 we're getting very close you know, about two and a half months ago i gave you three levels to look at for the close of the year. 227, right where it closed out at 2015. 2016 at 245 or the high for the year, 263, and i still think it's going to be one of those

three. 244 unchanged is a pretty good bet. the guilt, there's a lot of talk about how after june 23rd, 2016 everything changed and never going to be the same all i know is their yield on their guilt is higher than they settle and that's usually a positive economic.jgbs, it almo doesn't pay to look at them. you know what the ten-year range, 11 basis point to minus 1 basis point. jgb, japanese government bonds trade by appointment oh, yeah, you think that's going to end well? i don't think so "squawk alley" gang, back to you. >> rick santelli, thank you very much we've got news here, house speaker paul ryan revealing some details on the tax plan. kayla tausche has the details for us. >> reporter: good morning. paul ryan wrapping up his weekly press conference here on capitol hill, and he expressed some confidence about tax reform but he stopped just short of a

guarantee that the plan would be finished by the end of the year. he echoed what we've heard from many republicans that they wan to go to conference and hash this out as quickly as possible. when he was asked about the specific demands that certain republican senators are making in exchange for their votes, he said he wasn't going to negotiate publicly about how they get to the end game here so we'll wait and see how this plays out. speaker ryan was confident this morning. as tax reform takes the spotlight, there's this fight going on in the background over keeping the government open. the deadline to approve funding for the government is a week from tomorrow. speaker ryan said there will in fact need to be a short-term stopgap measure to keep the lights on and keep the government open and avoid a shutdown he said it's now on the democrats to put their votes up to support that. otherwise any potential shutdown is on their watch. john, back to you. >> kayla, i'll take it thank you very much. a busy day in our nation's capital. the dow is sitting at the highs of the day, up almost 200 on the

news about the tax bill. mccain is in "squawk alley" continues in just a moment [vo] when it comes to investing, looking from a fresh perspective can make all the difference. it can provide what we call an unlock: a realization that often reveals a better path forward. at wells fargo, it's our expertise in finding this kind of insight that has lead us to become one of the largest investment and wealth management firms in the country. discover how we can help find your unlock.

our next guest joins us now as apple announces that they'll be pushing further into health technology with a heart health study. a live course cardio band has just been cleared by the fda as a medical device it lets users take their ekg right on their wrist

vic, good morning. it's good to see you. >> good morning. thank you for having me on again, john. >> now, vic, since we started talking about alivecor, i bought the cardio mobile, take my ekg now people will be able to do this direct lly from their appl watches. this clearance from the fda gives you a little mote around your technology. how do you expect it to be used? do you have any medical organizations or doctor organizations backing you? >> yes, john, you're right this is a monumental day for alivecor and frankly the industry this is the first and only fda-cleared accessory ever for the apple watch. so it's kind of an extraordinary day that you can now take an ekg right on your apple watch and you can take that in 30 seconds anywhere you are and so obviously we've had a lot of support from many, many physicians in helping us build the clinical evidence that we needed to get that fda

clearance. and so we're super excited about it. >> now, vic, how big do you think the market is for your product? and do you think it's more for people with medical problems that want to stay on top of them or more for fitness freaks, like john >> so the data shows that one out of every four americans is going to end up with atrial fibrillation in their lifetime and heart disease is the number one killer of americans. it kills more people than all forms of cancer combined so i know of no better gift this christmas for a parent or a loved one than giving them an fda-cleared band for the apple watch that could save their life the apple watch has been a game changer. paired with the cardio band, it can be a live saver for many, many people. >> vic, how far are we away from insurance companies giving lower premiums to those who actually wear one one >> i think we're getting closer to that day. the data is pretty clear that

stroke is the most expensive long-term disability the leading cause of stroke is atrial fibrillation. i think insurance companies are beginning to realize that it's less expensive to catch it early than having to do with a catastrophic event like a stroke >> vic, what else can you do with the technology either through miniaturization or perhaps not having to touch it in order to get that read from the watch, maybe just get it off the wrist. i know there are some limitations there biologically to how small you can make it. >> john, that's a great question i think the second big headline of the day is that we're launching smart rhythm monitoring on the apple watch. that's a technology that runs a deep neural network all the time on your watch looking at your heart rate when your heart rate does not match the prediction from the artificial intelligence, it will encourage you to take an ekg an artificial intelligence agent that guards your parents' heart all the time

that's kind of a breakthrough. i think you'll see further evolution being used to generate signals and alert you when it's the appropriate time to get a medical grade fda cleared ekg. >> it seems like the sort of thing that some people might want to buy together but apple is not having a lot of other people sell the watch. are they going to offer this at the store with an explanation? how do you market it >> as of 7:30 this morning we just set the all-time record in the company's history in sales so clearly there's a huge demand for people who are coming to our website or going to amazon and buying cardio band for their apple watch. our research shows almost 20% of our existing customers own an apple watch. so i think the market is there people care about their heart, they care about their loved one's heart and pairing it with the apple watch is just an extraordinarily great combination. >> are you working with doctors to get them to prescribe this or recommend this for their patients obviously you don't need a doctor's recommendation, but is

your target to get the doctors on board >> no, that's exactly right. you don't need a doctor's recommendation because of our fda clearance, but about 50% of our sales when we ask why did you buy this product they say my cardiologist recommended it so we are incredibly grateful to the cardiologists who recognize the value of an ecg and encourage their patients to get one. >> you've got billboards getting that message out as well, the first fda-cleared accessory for the apple watch. it's a big deal. vic, thanks for joining us on "squawk alley. >> thank you it's been a heck of a market day. dow is up 200 points s&p is adding on another 17 almost to 2642 the day is not over by a long shot we'll watch to see how the debate proceeds in the senate regarding the tax bill we know senator mccain says he now supports we're going to get ulta after the bell, john, and mvm wear

even though it's earnings season, you can't really rest. >> we'll see how the earnings turn out and what kind of a conversation it's going to be. >> and then we'll watch these media names after what a week. >> what a week also this m & a talk which is continuing obviously there are a number of companies interested in the fox entertainment assets. >> let's get to the judge back at hq. welcome to "the halftime report." i'm scott wapner our top trade, the runaway rally and your money the dow smashing through 24,000 today now pacing for eight straight months of gains what, if anything, can stop stocks with us for the hour today, joe terranova, josh brown, steve weiss, and kevin o'leary is with us we do want to begin with the markets and the cnbc exclusive interview this hour, carl icahn joining us liv