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tv   Squawk Alley  CNBC  December 5, 2017 11:00am-12:00pm EST

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and nvidia all lifting that sector higher, trading more than 2% higher in early trading that does it for this hour of "squawk on the street. let's send it back downtown for the start of "squawk alley." guys, back over to you >> dom, thank you very much. good morning, it is 8:00 a.m. at facebook headquarters in menlo park, california, 11:00 a.m. on wall street, and "squawk alley" is live. ♪ ♪ goods tuesday morning, welcome to "squawk alley." sara eisen is off today. busy morning as the rotations
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continue in the markets, but a big story involves disney and 21st century fox, a story faber broke at the top of the nine and joins us once again. >> about one month after we reported on the talks between disney and fox, designed for disney to buy largely all the entertainment assets of 21st century fox, we can tell you now they are closing in on a deal that could be announced as soon as next week, according to people familiar with the situation. that is not to say it is done, but it is to say they have made a great deal of progress talking about a deal for which the consideration will be all disney stock and when you take in the assumption of debt and the equity that will be exchanged for the assets in question, it will amount to more than $60 billion, again according to people familiar with those negotiations. an exact price could not be determined at this point the assets in question include fox's studio, it's fx and nat geo cable networks, regional
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sports networks, my first reporting on november 6th that was not thought to be included, but it is part of this currently contemplated transaction also includes the ownership stakes in sky, in hulu, and the ownership of star, as well important and significant distribution assets internationally that also attracted the interests of comcast and i'm told talks there do still continue, but are at a low burn and not expected to lead to a deal, unlike what may be a deal we see as soon as next week, which would transform not just fox, but disney, as well, giving it a lot more robust group of programming for its direct to consumer entertainment service that it's rolling out in 2019, and its direct to consumer sports service, given the presence of those regional sports networks. fox for its part will be keeping, as we have said many times, the fox broadcast network, fox news network, fox business, and as well it will be
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keeping, did i say them all? oh, fox sports also. so fox sports and the regional sports networks do get divided in the deal. that will be more akin to what cbs is right now with very strong cash flow producing characteristics and leverage will be an important component, as well. structure will be, if you're a fox holder right now, you'll get one share of the spin co, that is what will be the remaining fox assets that i just referenced and disney will then exchange in a fixed ratio its shares for the remaining company. so you'll get shares based on how much you own of 21st century fox. we'll see if they get there, guys, but they are certainly working feverishly towards that end, which could come as soon as next week. if they don't get there, we may see an end to the talks, so they are getting to that end game
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>>. >> what kind of influence will this give the murdoch family pixar ended up with, i believe, the largest individual shareholder in disney, could be looking at a ceo transition in disney in the not too distant future wondering how much influence the murdochs would have over that. >> important point also a significant holder, remember it's the economic interest of the murdochs we would be talking about here. fox itself is not taking in as much as 25% of the overall equity of disney that they'd be issuing here, but their economic interests in 21st century fox was significant. they would be significant individual holders in the company, john, but wouldn't be clear they'd have more influence than a perlmutter or jobs. >> also interesting the degree it would change disney's ability to go direct guess whose birthday it would have been today, walt disney would have turned 116 on this
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date amazing evolution in this company. >> it is this will be a very significant moment for them. not to mention, of course, on the financial side, simple synergies they will be able to realize and the reason why they may be able to pay a fairly high price and one that fox is willing to meet, conceivably, even with what we call tax leakage. this is not a tax efficient deal they'll be paying taxes. it is taxable, the spin is, but they are willing to go down that road because the price is high enough >> all right, david, thanks. >> sure thing. now let's send it out to wilfred frost live at goldman sachs' financial services conference here in new york with a special guest. will >> hey, john, thanks very much yes, indeed, joined now by the chairman and ceo of bank of america brian moynihan good morning to you. >> good to be here again >> let's talk about tax reform first of all monday saw a really big intraday market rally, in particular for areas like smaller mid caps and also for banks based on hopes of
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tax reform arriving. let's talk about the banks first. is that rally legitimate will this help banks like yourself >> if you start with small to mid cap companies are going to have more money to spend, be more aggressive on capital expenditures, that's going to help us because we are the transmission of them to the economy whether capital markets or we lend to them, but if you start back to the broader thing, america needed a couple things one is a more competitive corporate tax rate that's in the bill secondly, territorial systems so people could operate in a global economy and not have the vagaries versus all the other systems and that's good for corporate america, good for middle market companies, small companies, and that's the enthusiasm you see >> the corporate clients you mentioned, are they going to spend that next year if this bill comes through >> you're starting to hear people announce it they will adjust and drive it and i think uniformly, and i talked to them, they are saying two things one is, this is good for america
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and my company, but also it shows that a pro business environment exists, which is what they are really going to invest into. >> in terms of your own bottom line, clearly, there's a benefit. you pay close to 30% at the moment what's that go on to, does it get competed away quickly between the other banks? >> i don't know if it gets competed away fairly quickly, but we spend money on branches and we spend a lot of money on teammates, and we'll look to increase things that make sense, because if we can spend a little faster on branch buildouts in the cities we're not in, we'll spend that that employs people to rebuild and takes up real estate, employs people in local communities, so i think we're like everybody else. there will be adjustments that may have more money to spend and do it, but by and large, we pay a lot of taxes and we'll get a benefit, but that's really the real benefit will be an american society and broader economy. >> let's touch on the consumer what are your views in terms of
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how the holiday quarter and consumer spending is going so far? >> so far, so good it's been strong year to date, all 11 months now, consumers are moving cash about 6% over last year, credit and debit card 6.5% over last year the year before those numbers have been five on credit and debit and about 3 on general cash, that's cash out of the atms, teller, payments >> so that's doubled >> it's doubled. that's 2.4 trillion dollars in spending so that doubling means that things are going on in the economy, which is good and so consumers are in good shape. so over the, you know, black friday, cyber monday, all the things we talk about, we saw about 6%, 6.5% over last year. >> middle america bouncing back with a bang? >> unemployment is low, people are employed labor conditions continue to tighten. when i talk to our companies, you know, they love tax reform our client companies
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they are concerned about getting workers, and they just need to keep training people for the jobs they have, but that need of training people means their wages are rising companies like ours, the people -- the salaries and wages have risen every year for the broad teammate base, that's what you're seeing. >> here at the goldman sachs conference, are you threatened by that space, pushing into it with marcus and gsbank.com >> i think there's a lot of business models out there and i'll let the team figure out what they are going to do, but the reality is, from the third quarter of 2016 to the third quarter of 2017, grew deposits by around $50 billion, which in and of itself is the 20 something largest bank in the country. team is doing an excellent job, both high touch and high-tech
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and we continue to improve those. so we'll have lots of competitors and goldman and other people will be those, and we hope to do a great job for consumers and win. >> would you like to have their starting point, though, which is not having a branch base because you happen to close branches slowly but surely and that's a cost base you have to take out does their starting point look more attractive snapshot of today? >> i don't think it does, because we have a million people coming to our branches every day because they need us to serve them i think to think you're only going to deal with online, it's a business model difficult to expand, whether it's in securities or in branch-based retail banking so our branches have changed over time, they are bigger than they used to be, more sales people, doubled the amount of sales relationships we'vehad over the last five to seven years. we believe in that business model, but takes managing both carefully. take the cost down for the transaction side and raise the cost up for the relations side >> you announced this morning an extra $5 billion of buybacks by
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june next year that goes on top of $18 billion already in terms of dividend plus existing buybacks by my calculations, equates to 20% payout ratio for earnings for the coming year. can we take from that that you and the fed, because they had to approve this, are very confident that you're overcapitalized right now? >> i think the math proves that. we had $20-odd billion last year, then these activities weren't included in that because the converted stock and stuff, so this is all new capital, which we said we have to get it out fast, because it was never counted on we have capital ratio about 11.9%, requirement is 9.5%, and you put a cushion on 9.5%, any way you cut it, we have extra capital and our job is to move that out, because we don't need to serve the clients we can do from lending, capital markets, wealth management without that >> overcapitalization, not a
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lack of growth opportunities to invest in? >> loan growth has been consistent, core business has been single digit, which reflects the economy we still have $100 billion in loans we could replace with loans we want coming out of the crisis, so we have plenty of capacity to serve the clients. >> we just heard from the marian lake and her presentation, one rate hike in december, three or four next year what's bank of america's base case >> i think we're one in december and three next year, i think, is what our research team has out there, if i got it right we take the consensus around that range and we'll see it's all good news the world economies are growing, it synchronizes, the realities are growing, which is good news compared to what we saw three, four years ago when the united states was growing so that's all good news and you're seeing it's fundamental you see it and drive around these countries, you know, it's just driving forward and things
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are getting better >> in terms of what that means for deposit pricing, quite a bit of questions about pricing and wealth management, where you have had to put up prices more than expected. with that in mind are you pleased you have this retail deposit base, which is more sticky so even if we do see percents worth of rate hikes, you don't have to pass that on to consumers >> without getting into the ins and outs, we price every product by every market and every type of customer. if you think about it broadly, two things to think about, cash, which is transactional, and cash which is investment. as rates rise, we'll find alternatives, but the transactional cash is what drives it. whether it's a company's transactional cash or consumer's that's what drives the value of a deposit franchise and those continue to grow strongly at bank of america. when you get in the pricing, it will be what it is to be competitive and continue to grow our deposits at a decent rate.
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>> great stuff, pleasure as always, thanks for joining us. brian moynihan, bank of america chairman and ceo back to you guys >> wilfred, our thanks to you. optimistic message from moynihan this morning if you're just tuning in, talked about labor conditions continuing to tighten, consistent loan growth, and as pertains to the tax bill, real benefit will be an american society and broad economy. >> headline to me, spending. more spending. consumers spending more, but also from everything he's hearing in terms of early readings from corporate clients, that they would potentially spend more on capital, on cap x, and the company itself would consider spending more, as well. >> banks, of course, tend to benefit among the most in terms of types of companies from this tax bill, so no surprise that he says that this bill would send the message that it's a pro business environment the stock market seems to have liked the business environment for quite a few years now. interesting what he said also about bank branches and the idea
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that you can't do away with them entirely kind of echoing what we're seeing with bricks and mortar retail >> took the thought out of my head we heard this from alibaba this morning in terms of retail here he was saying it in terms of bank locations. the two have to exist together >> all right we're going to watch that. stocks up 22 points on the dow when we return, tim wu is one of the most outspoken advocates for an open internet he's going to join us and make the case for why the at&t and time warner merger should be blocked on the same day we're getting details of a disney/21st century fox deal from faber. thaly"onnu aeresft is inger...a worm! like, a dagger? a tiny sword? bread...breadstick? a matchstick! a lamppost! coin slot! no? uhhh... 10 seconds. a stick! a walking stick! eiffel tower, mount kilimanjaro! (ding) time! sorry, it's a tandem bicycle.
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the business round table putting on a survey. kayla tausche joins us with the findings what are ceos saying >> the outlook remains optimistic, inching up in the last three months to a six-year high that's according to a survey of 150 ceos taken in the first two weeks of november. this morning the index climbed 2.3 points and has remained elevated following president trump's inauguration jamie dimon praised the u.s. economy, but noted, "this business confidence rests on the pro growth economic agenda of policy makers. the group was more bullish on their companies' sales rising over the next six months, but
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less so on capital spending and employment the capital spending read rose because more companies said they'd keep cap x the same instead of cutting it, but a greater number of ceos said they expected to higher fewer people in that time frame to that end, a third of respondents ranked labor costs as the biggest pressure on business that's the first time the business round table said regulation didn't get the top complaint in just about six years' time. so while this read remains elevated, optimistic, morgan, it is clear that there remains some pressure from other areas and there is a lot riding on tax reform >> kayla, thanks labor costs, that's certainly something to be discussed further, so let's get more on the market reaction to that. joining us at post 9, mike santoli. mike, what do you make of the latest business round table results? >> it's interesting. i think it's another area where the story of the market and the economy is no longer climbing the wall of worry.
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the worry has basically given way to optimism and i think a lot of that is probably okay i think we've only been six or eight months where everyone agreed the world is growing and the rest of it another relevant i think you've seen the beginnings of, which is deals. that's a good correlation historically between m & a volumes, bigger strategic deals, and ceo confidence we'll see if that holds true >> mike, how do you square what i interpreted, tell me what you think, as a concern about a drag from labor costs with the idea that this tax package is going to lead companies to voluntarily raise wages and hire more people at the same time hire new people and pay them more if they are concerned about labor costs? >> the links between those two things are probably loose and unquantity fiable, right
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between your statutory tax rate and how many people you hire and how much you pay them, i think we're in a mode of either labor shortage, or kind of an engineered shortage, because people hold the line on what they want to pay and they'll basically replace labor with capital to the extent that they can. so, maybe we're lucky that we're at that point in the employment cycle where we're not looking for a massive jobs boost, but would be nice to get more wage gains. >> going to draw more attention to the wage cost number on friday as we get the jobs number earlier in the morning said somewhere, maybe 2.7 year on year >> yeah, it's kind of been grudgingly inching higher into an upper range i don't know that we're keying off it as much for fed policy as we were, because it seems the fed seems to have momentum for one or two more and wait and see, but that's all part of the story, i think, going into 2018 of looking at these late cycle factors that seem to be popping up with some frequency
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>> although every core is out with a target for the s&p next year, one of the put to put a three on their target. >> so every year this time of year you have this kind of range of projections i think at the upper end you're going to get to the 15% or something like that, the consensus sort of gathers in the high single digits to 10%, so 15% on top of, you know, 26.50 or something like that, that's going to get you toward 3,000. so i think it makes sense that you're going to see the predictions. again, it's still the same question how much are we going to see of people kind of extrapolate too far with the good story and i think even if we do kind of stretch the upside, it's not going to be as smooth and gentle and uneventful as this year was. if you look at the tape, not in terms of the headlines and, you know, this rotation is kind of interesting, too everyone keeps talking about growth, into value, big into small, and low tax rates all that stuff is the same thing. the question is, do you kind of
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fumble something in the exchange at some point? can't be seamless in the whole market stays together, because we have a stock market built on high multiple companies with low tax rates driving the index higher not as if the rest can pick up the full slack >> in light of that, what do you make of the rally we see today in some of these tech stocks pulled back enough people see this as a buying opportunity >> almost hitting the pause button on the violent movements that we had. we had three trading days in a row when the dow is up or down 300 points, which i think for this kind of a market means we need a rest, but yeah, at this point it's a wait and see as to whether this rotation was going to get a momentum of its own the way it did after the election or if it's just kind of, you know, sort of repositioning on a shorter term basis >> great mike santoli, thank you. and the justice department suing to block at&t's planned merger with time warner, arguing that the deal would violent antitrust laws our next guest thinks that's the
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right move joining us now, tim wu, author of the recent book "the attention merchants," which i've had the pleasure talking to him about in the not too distant past welcome. >> how's it going? >> good. i want to talk potential m & a with you, but i want to start with net neutrality, because that's been in the headlines quite a bit. it's come to be conflated with net neutrality, and i've personally got an issue with that, so i want your take. didn't the wireless and smartphone revolution teach us if nothing else that competition is what tends to drive innovation and lower prices, not necessarily regulation >> well, yeah, i think that's true, although i think regulation can create competition. that's maybe where we differ, but i don't think it's conflated with title 2 the bush administration is the one that started title ii enforcement -- sorry, title ii
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and net neutrality enforcement based on the idea they didn't want the cable and phone industry to kill all the starting companies, and i think it's been a big success. that's my view of it >> so, talk to me about the time warner/at&t potential merger and the trouble it faces why is that an issue for you it's vertical, based on a lot of antitrust law, not all of it what's the problem here? >> so, the justice department, not just me, it's the justice department's view, is that they are just going to use the acquired content to exclude a foreclosed dish and some of their other competitors to try and raise their costs, so i think justice department thinks it's going to cost consumers more, i think that was their basic trade idea >> i just want to go back. so in 2014 i was out in the west coast covering net neutrality as those laws or rules were starting to get put together and
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put into place, and one of the things that kept coming up was the fact that youtube and netflix at the time made up about 50% of all the web traffic. so just to play devil's advocate here, why shouldn't they be paying more if they are taking up that much space on the internet >> i want to focus attention, however, that what ajit pi has done, not only gotten rid of 2015, he's gotten rid of the 2005 rules, originally no blocking rules, but when a cable company should be allowed to block certain sites. i think that goes way too far and why they are going to have trouble in court with these things >> so unless you said in your original paper, i think, what, almost 15 years now, unless they can show a reason, a good reason for that blocking or throttling, maybe someone is trying to do something that's causing a problem for others, we see that happen on occasion what should be the mechanism for
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carriers being able to make the argument that they should be able to block certain applications >> i think they can block things that are clearly illegal, you know, distributing child pornography or national security risks, those sort of things. otherwise, i actually trust the market to make the decision about what applications should succeed or fail, not the carriers i think when they've had too much control, too much control in the network actually stifles innovation, so i'd say let the best application win and get the carriers out of it >> what about the situation we saw on at&t's network when the iphone had first come out and nobody was really prepared, carrierwise, for the amount of data that was going to flood over wireless networks and they blocked facetime for a period of time and said we're not going to let you do video conferencing because their network couldn't handle it. is that legitimate in your eyes? because it sounds like you said it wouldn't be >> that's a tough question
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i think in the very early days of wireless they deserve room while they were getting ready and the rules were looser in the early days, but now that they are up to 4g and part of the internet, i think after a sort of period of infancy they should start following the normal rules and let the application market -- i mean, the basic idea is to try and perfect the innovators at the ends of the network from being blocked or corrupted by the people in the middle, and the track record, you know, the tech sector, you follow stock valuations, has been amazing some of it, not all of it, but a lot has to do with protection from the carriers. >> right and, of course, we have to mention in this conversation cnbc part of nbc universal, which is owned by comcast, which certainly has a dog in the fight, a whole kennel of dogs in this fight, i would say. thank you, tim wu, father of net neutrality, for weighing in on all of that. >> yeah, pleasure. when we come back this morning, why facebook's courting of children is a, quote,
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watershed moment for families and the social network as we go to break, bitcoin, another day, another milestone 11,829 overnight and not far below that right now we'll watch that when "squawk alley" comes back. well, it's earnings season once again. >>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.
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>>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.
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with a quick check of your weather. so, giant blue line. pointy, pointy triangles moving south. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 sunshines. not on this planet. um, shadows. big shadows. high. hello. working down to the south. low. another shadow. lovely, lovely. stripes. lots of stripes rhode island. back to you danielle. ♪ are we live? ♪
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good morning once again, everybody, i'm sue herera. here's your cnbc news update at this hour. a spokesman for palestinian's president says president trump called abbas to say that he intends to move the u.s. embassy to jerusalem earlier the chief of the arab league warning the united states not to take any measures that would change jerusalem's current legal and political status representative john conyers says he is retiring today and that he would endorse his son to replace him. this after several women accused conyers of sexual misconduct the 88-year-old conyers is the longest serving u.s. congressman. the supreme court taking up
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the highly anticipated case of a colorado baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. protesters from both sides rallying outside the court the clash pits the baker's first amendment claims of artistic freedom against antidiscrimination charges and a new british study suggests weight loss can reverse type 2 diabetes. the program began with a low-calorie diet, followed by nutritional education and exercise, and after one year nearly half of the patients went into remission without medication that is a big story. that's the news update this hour back downtown to "squawk alley." john, back to you. >> all right, thank you, sue meanwhile, let's get to seema mody, who's got the european close >> hello, john european stocks rebounding after their lows of the session after posting their best one-day performance in more than a month. take a look at currencies. the uk pound remains under pressure after yesterday's brexit talks in brussels failed to result in any breakthrough.
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progress has been stalled on differences regarding the irish border with the northern ireland being part of the uk pound at 1,34 right now. speaking of, the ftse on a bullish note from goldman sachs. the firm believes easing, upgrading test kuo to buy from the green, as you can see right here on the flip side, more problems for provident financial, the british sub prime lender says investigators are looking at how they assess car buyers for loans. card union is already a subject for a regulatory probe the stock is down more than 70% so far this year let's finish with m & a. cine world acquiring regal sin malls and gives cineworld access
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to the u.s back to you. >> thank you very much, seema mody when we return, facebook reportedly ready to drop a few billion dollars on sports streaming. what would be a big bet when "squawk alley" continues after this i just finished months of chemo. but i don't want to talk about months. i want to talk about years. treatments have gotten better, so... i'm hoping for good years ahead. that's thanks to research funded by the american cancer society. the same folks giving me free rides to treatment,
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facebook under fire for its latest product, a new stand alone messaging app designed for kids the new app called messenger kids is for those under 13 and too young for facebook, it allows parents to approve who the kids can message and video chat with and there's also a report out today that facebook wants to spend a few billion for streaming sports rights. joining us this morning, roger mcnamee, and mike isaac, who writes, mike, facebook immediately reignited a furious debate about how young is too young. is it? >> well, facebook would say -- there's a few ways to look at this facebook would say right now kids are already getting on devices and adopting technology earlier and earlier, so why not introduce these parental controls and then probably the more skeptical way of looking at it, i think a lot of people that i
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talked to yesterday was, look, you're trying to get to our kids earlier down the line so we can quickly onboard them to facebook when they actually get to 13, which is when they are legally allowed to do it and i think a lot of folks are really skeptical that this is just a quick pipeline to get their kids on to facebook sooner >> and, mike, certainly that's been one of the big debates here and the reason why this is soliciting really strong opinions, including from me, to be honest, as a mother and consumer of facebook, but seems to me the other piece is the potentially holy grail of data that is children under the age of 13. a very untapped market in terms of what we know about behaviors and patterns and just sort of information about that demographic. how much does this play into that >> yeah, absolutely. i think -- so they made it very clear up front that they are not going to serve ads to kids, they are not going to directly monetize this right away it's only going to be in the messaging app, so that means
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that they are not on the facebook news feed, but that said, as you noted, the most valuable thing to facebook is how people interact with each other and what sort of ways they want to message each other and what types of things they send each other so even if you're not directly making money off of the kids right away, there's still tons of information they can glean from just how families communicate with one another so it's really valuable in that sense and i imagine, you know, as time goes on they are going to follow that and see how kids essentially develop and use devices and this technology over time >> roger, you there on the phone? maybe not. mike isaac, why do we need this, though i guess that's the question i have on the one hand i can imagine facebook gathering information about what filters the kids like
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to use with parents monitoring oh, there's roger. so, i'll ask you you've been skeptical of facebook's motives, its determination to police its social network recently. are you even more concerned about messenger for kids >> well, i think the fundamental problem, carl, is that facebook's business model is based on capturing people's attention and getting them addicted to their products and we've seen the consequences through the election, we've seen the consequences through people misbehaving on the platform, and it seems to me that it is reasonable to ask facebook to stop extending its platform reach until people have had a chance to really understand and discuss the implications of this addiction. i think taking it to children under 13 is an inherently dangerous thing to do, and i think no matter what safeguards
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you put in place relative to bad actors, relative to advertising, you are still getting kids addicted younger and younger, and i think we just need to have a national discussion about whether that is appropriate. facebook is doing it for profit, and i'd like to have somebody explain to me what's in it for the children >> we're actually going to talk about this for a while, guys, and see how it develops and see how parents use it we'll come back to this topic in a bit. we did get interesting insight, roger, on the state of venture capital to discuss this is according to data by pitch book d.c. funding is focusing heavily on late stage companies. andrew ross sorkin writes about this, fred wilson writes about this, roger. have we peaked at least on the seed part of this business >> well, carl, i think the real issue is the seed business
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exploded because thousands of people who made money as entrepreneurs and employees of the social americaing companies all simultaneously decided to be venture capitalists, so a ton of money came in, and everyone seems to have forgotten that opportunity in venture capital doesn't happen on a continuous flow it comes in waves. and coming off the giant wave of smartphones, by definition we were going to go through a period of quiet opportunity, and the money just simply came in contradiction to that. i think in truth we're going to be in that difficult time for a while here it's not that there isn't a lot of opportunity it's that that opportunity is going to take a long time to build to scale, and so i would actually argue that the people who are investing in the later stage stuff are also kidding themselves, that, yes, there's some really compelling things there, but not enough to support all the money in the space
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today. >> i want to get mike isaac's take on this, as well. mike, from where you sit on the ground there, san francisco, silicon valley, has the early stage environment changed? is there less opportunity, or are people just as much after it as ever? both in the consumer space and the enterprise space >> i actually agree with roger i think the problem with these waves of capital just coming in so quickly is that, like we were saying, tons of facebook newly minted millionaires, they have this money, everyone wants to be vc, everyone wants to fund the next facebook, so they start pouring money into a bunch of stupid ideas and we get to see that wave of stupidity eventually fizzle out over time, which we've seen over the past two years, a lot of start-ups that really don't have the ability to compete on their own merits just because they are, you know, overfunded they fizzle out, the best ideas sort of flowed to the top and
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stick around, and then i think that wave sort of comes again. honestly, i think we're going to see it again when uber eventually goes public, which is supposed to happen, i think, in 2019 if they actually hit their targets. and then there's air bnb, as well i think it's cyclical in that matter, money gets flooded in, and they eventually retrench and that goes away over time >> speaking of stupid ideas. remember the app yo, where you would just -- >> yeah, say yo. >> say yo to somebody, they'd say yo back. >> that was the peak >> right >> i also just wonder if some of this money, and i know we have to go, but roger if you have thoughts on this quickly, some of this money is going to, you know, seeding companies that aren't technically tech, like space. we're seeing a lot of money going to space start-ups right now. >> i think that's a really good point. i think that you're seeing two things a move out of classic tech, and secondly, attempts to disrupt
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gigantic established markets like automotive, like energy, like health care, like space and some of that's going to work and i'm actually very excited about some of those deals individually i think the rule in venture capital is 95% of the businesses don't amount to anything, and so whenever you get a huge pile of money going in, the percentage lost is always going to be very, very high. >> guys, good to see you both, or at least hear from one of you and see the other. roger mcnamee, mike isaac, thanks, guys stocks basically flat this morning, dow is holding on to modest gains and the s&p up on a percentage basis "squawk alley" will continue after this feel that? that's the beat of global markets, the rhythm of the world. but to us, it's the pace of tomorrow. with ingenuity, technologies, and markets expertise we create the possible. and when you do that, you don't chase
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i'm scott walker coming up top of the hour on "halftime report." the truth about the tax plan and why one of our own traders says it's already threatening to ruin the santa claus rally. plus, an exclusive interview with steve schwartzman on how he thinks the tax plan will impact the markets and your money and famed energy trader mark fisher is with us exclusively today. we're talking oil, the markets, and even how he played bitcoin big hour ahead on half-time. we'll see you top of the hour, carl, about ten minutes away >> sounds good, scott, thank you. in the meantime let's get the santelli exchange. hey, rick. >> good morning, carl. you know, i had pat flynn on, portfolio manager, likes to really pay attention to the noninvestment grade high yield,
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and our conversation this morning was fascinating. nothing that you viewers haven't heard me talk about many times, that there's two huge opposing forces going on with respect to u.s. interest rates. one force is, of course, the fact that our economy is backing up a couple of quarters in a row. it's acting pretty well. today's data aside, even though non-manufacturing wasn't as powerful as it was last month with that 60 handle, 61 to be exact, it was still a good number, so there's a group of investors that lock at the improving economy and they lean towards the sell side. then you go to the international group, and they look around, and they see negative interest rates through much of europe, negative interest rates throughout much of japan they see central bankers, especially in japan, still pedal to the metal and they look at our interest rates and theirs, and it's an easy decision, isn't it they become buyers, so these two forces are very important, but something else is going on we have tax changes. we have end of the year. so really it now becomes a real
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estate issue location, location, location let's go to the board. so we know our high for the year is 260 and when i ask pat what level he could see that would be a resistance level, he said 270. we'll get to that in a minute. the low for the year is 240. we talked about all of this, not the low for the year these are the double bottom in 2012 and 2016. trying to show you mathematical relationships. obviously the middle of this is 2% what was the low this year, it 204? that's one thing we've also talked about if you just look at this year and take 263 which is the exact high, i'm rounding,able the low yield which is 204 that average is about 233. we spent a lot of time there so you can kind of see we're starting to consolidate, so if you have to check the boxes on how you want to invest for next year, it might be something that you don't want to look at until next year and i'll tell you why. because with all of this consolidation bumping against 240 from the bottom and from the
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top after we made the 2.63 high in march my guess is that the patient group in this equation are most likely going to be the international buyers because the sellers, more domestic sellers, are going to be triggered if we should see another pass for 25,000, for example, on the dow. they are going to be looking to sell this, especially, and to me the key is, if we get above 2.46, 2.46 was the high-yield close on the 26. if that happens, i think the 2.70 could be correct, because really the numbers 2.63 but as i said, the buyers will be patient. most likely waiting until next year so be very careful remember, fixed income might not be your first choice, but it's still a good part of a diversified portfolio. think cash flow. morgan, back to you. >> thanks, rick. certainly good to get your take on the bond market and also the handwritten charts i'm really impressed by them when we come back, why be a baba's jack mah says why amazon
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is struggling in china "squawk alley" back after this 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.
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watching shares of snap today. barclays takes it to overweight. the price target goes from 11 to 18 the stock is up almost 9%. "squawk alley" continues in just a moment ♪
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food has to be fresh. it's that simple. alibaba's jack mah speaking with our own andrew ross sorkin in shanghai earlier about the e-commerce competition in china. mah says amazon is struggling for a receipt. take a listen. >> amazon comes to china they have opinion here for almost 15, 20 years, but you do not see them here anywhere. >> because >> because i don't think they are properly here.
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it's the market niche, and maybe ten years amazon will become big again, china, but you should have patience, great people and good services. >> i mean, that's a diss you should have patience, good people, great services amazon would say they always have those things but apparently not enough in china where alibaba, j.d. and others have been on a roll. >> he was definitely in the patience thing americans should be patient with the president, he's trying, and on bitcoin, know very little about it very confused. even if it works, international rules and laws on trade are likely to change sort of punting a bit, but not exactly an endorsement by any means. >> well, certainly with the comments about amazon in china i wonder when and if ma decides to make a move with baba into the u.s. market. >> that's always been a question certainly they have got so much strength in exporting from china to china and to other places,
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and the growth in their stock certainly shows they have been having a good time of that. >> yeah. >> overall, guys, semis for once are the top performing sector. today the dow is looking for its seventh gain out of eight, and at this pace the nasdaq may outperform the other major averages for the first time since thanksgiving let's go over to the judge and "the half. and welcome to "the halftime report." i'm scott wapner our top trade, your money, your taxes and so many questions on the minds of investors as the year winds down. is it now better to sell stocks or simply wait into next year? with us for the hour today, joe terranova, stephanie link, josh brown, pete najarian and mark fisher is here he's the ceo of mbf trading. let's begin with the markets get a slight bounce for the beleaguered tech stocks today. as you see though, the dow has now gone into negative territory, all this am

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