welcome back to "squawk on the street." i'm dominic chu. markets are trading slightly high tore start the week energy up about a percent or so. you have chesapeake, range resources, apache among the names leading that sector. another standout performer, vallero. that does it for "squawk on the street." back downtown for the exchange for the start of "squawk alley." guys, back to you. >> thanks, dom good morning, it is 10:00 a.m. at the cboe, the chicago board options exchange 11:00 a.m. here on wall street, and "squawk alley" is live ♪ ♪

good monday morning. welcome to "squawk alley" here with me at post 9, michelle caruso-cabrera, mike santoli carl and sara have the morning off. first up, bitcoin open for trading yesterday on an exchange run by the cboe. heavy traffic causing outages on the cboe website, while the exchange also halted trading temporarily due to extreme volatility what to expect from bitcoin futures after what a wild week for that digital currency. a lot of people thought once this opened up we're going to see it fall because people would be shorting it, but that's not stopped the rise >> it hasn't happened, but it's only been a few hours, so let's see what happens take a look where we are, it's important to point out we're trading at a nice premium to the underlying spot price here 18,000 now over that cash price is 16,700, it's been

fluctuating, but you have a good $1,200 premium or so this is what's called the cost of money, the carry, that's tying up money for a month, so it's usually a bit of a premium. whether that's worth the 8% or so, we'll find out two trading halts, but they were part of the product design it's important to emphasize that this is a very small numbers of trading that we're doing about 3,000 contracts traded and the notional value of that is $50 million. we're talking about very small numbers right now. compare this to gold, for example. gold could trade up to 400,000 contracts a day. gold contract is about $125,000. maybe some bitcoin effect for gold so the point is the contracts are starting small, but everyone still seems to feel that it was orderly. if you take a look overall, it's still a very small market. it's important to realize despite all this hoopla just how big this is. roughly $300 billion for all the value of bitcoin, maybe higher

right now, but gold is a $6 trillion market, the u.s. stock market is a $25 trillion market. the bond market's a $38 trillion market so, perspective is very important. i know everybody wants to talk about it, but understand some are hoping this is going to be a trillion dollar market. we had seema mody caught up with camer cameron inklevoss and he think this is a multitrillion dollar asset. we'll see. it will take a while for that to get there. what's next? well, we've got to build some open interest. they've got to get more volume in this thing. we have to see more people long and short. the contract, we'll get some kind of notions in the next week or two about how many people are shorting that. they should have weekly numbers. need a more narrow bid it's been wide overnight and most importantly another futures contract starting on december 18th we'll see how that goes from there. overall, it's an orderly open, but very, very small numbers

keep in mind >> interesting features of bitcoin as an underlying market, bob, relatively small number of people estimates are like 1,000 people own 40% of outstanding bitcoin these are early adopters and the question was were they going to take the opportunity to maybe hedge or take some off the table and that's impossible to see right now, but it's unlike, for example, gold or any other commodity where you have such kons at concentrated ownership >> 50%, 60% of the market is japanese, taiwan, and those people, you know, they are all net long it's all retail people that are out there. what i want to see is, what happens when some hedge funds that have very strong directional ideas about bitcoin, i.e. they think it's a bubble or inflated, want to get in for dollars now. they are, obviously, not getting -- people are sitting around waiting to see how this thing opens. so far it's been fine, but i don't see a lot of people -- i wouldn't expect a lot of people to short the market the first day of trading

>> let's find out more about exactly that, how people who watch the broader market are going to look at bitcoin, figure how this plays into tech and the market joining us right now, dan niles, founder at alphaone capital partners you have thoughts on bitcoin, dan. you say it's not a currency, but, hey, it's a new asset class that people are trading. how are you going to play it how much money are you going to put into this, long or short >> so, the way we kind of think about it is, you think back to the gold rush, right there was a famous saying of you don't go out and mine for gold, you go ahead and sell the picks and the shovels. so for us, the way we're sort of playing this is, we don't think it's a real currency, as you said, but we think it's going to continue to grow, especially the underlying blockchain technology and if there's going to be a shake out, but the people that will benefit are the exchanges you know, we've talked about some of those on air, cboe, nasdaq, et cetera, which is planning to launch

that's how we're playing it and we're also playing the underlying blockchain technology, i'm sure we'll talk about it, but we have an investment in ibm, and they have a deal with walmart and costco and dole to use the blockchain technology to work on food safety, because we have about 420,000 people that die each year from contaminated food. so, that's how we're looking at it right now we think we're in a bubble the thing with bubbles, we lived through the late '90s, they can always go a lot higher than you anticipated. then you get a shakeout, and then things start to grow. even amazon went from 107 at its peak in 1999 to $6 at its low point. we, obviously, know that's a real company, but didn't stop the stock from going down 95%, when 50% of the companies that weren't real went out of business so i think we've got a shakeout coming at some point, but that's how we think about it from a short and long-term perspective. >> dan, akin to your whole comparison to the gold rush in san francisco, a lot of people talk about the burger wars

between burger king and mcdonald's don't buy one of those, buy the people who make the ketchup, et cetera >> exactly >> what degree are you encouraging people to buy the chip makers, where you need powerful, powerful chips in order to mine bitcoin? is that played out within the chip sector, or do you look at that for consolidation plays >> yeah, the chip sector, you're completely right you've had both amd and nvidia both move up quite dramatically because of their association with bitcoin they provide the graphics cards to help with that. we're not looking at those companies because we think they've already run up a lot, and we do worry about there's other portions of their business, obviously, that are affected, so that's not a space that at least currently that we're as excited in, because we do think there's a lot of hype built into some of those names and as we're seeing with the trading, stocks can't go up forever, neither can bitcoin, so

that's not where we're playing we're playing more to the exchanges. if we do get a pull back in the names, that's where we'd look. on a general basis, the one space in technology that we're not bullish on is semiconductors, and so that keeps us away from those stocks more than anything else. >> and with that, dan, i want to get to your 2018 outlook the market has been throwing you off. i mean, like it has many people. i think you were skeptical of apple two years ago when it was about $100 a share it's up 70% since then the s&p is up 10% since may, when you said a correction was long overdue what do you think is going to happen in 2018, and have you assessed why you were off about things so far? >> yeah, i mean, when you look at the markets, several things number one, the worldwide economies are growing very rapidly, so that's certainly the case inflation is really low, and most importantly you have central bank buying about $100 billion in assets every month, so that continues to push the market higher and higher, and

especially the central bank buying, that probably doesn't get back to neutral until late next year, early 2019. so i think for right now, you know, you're seeing a lot of easy money out there that's continuing to push all asset classes up you've got $10 trillion government bonds trading at a negative yield that's probably the biggest bubble out there you've got paintings with questionable origin selling at $450 billion you've got bitcoin but these things can continue until something stops it and for right now, i think, those factors together will continue to push the markets up and we'll see how long that lasts, but we're definitely playing things on a more defensive basis in terms of when we look at 2018. we think the markets could go higher, but when the music stops can get pretty ugly. >> dan, wondering if you could flesh out semiconductors right now. is that a recent thing given how much the sector has run up, or is there something else structurally you don't like about the industry right now >> i think the main problem

there, you think about the underlying markets they sell to, pc units still down year over year, you look at things like ipad units down year over year even smartphones you've got units up maybe 3%, 4% year over year, but you've got the semiconductor industry revenue up about 20% and inventories up a lot. apple, for example, their inventories are up 20%, their inventories have more than doubled. so, you know, there's some disconnect between the underlying growth of the markets that they serve versus the growth rate and revenues for those companies. and the multiples have gone up a lot. that's true for the entire market, obviously, but especially for some of those companies. it's one of the few areas we're not bullish on internet, 3d sensing, security, that's the area we wouldn't be spending as much money on. >> bob, it's interesting dan says picks and shovels is

kind of his play in a way similar to the dot com boom, but even in the dot com boom, some microsystems were selling picks and shovels and got taken down how does the current market look to you, and are we at the point yet where you think bitcoin will have any level of contagion to anything else, whether it's up or down? >> i think the important thing about bitcoin is the market is still small. i think that if this gets really massive we're talking about 100 times bigger, i think the federal reserve is going to step in i can't imagine a national government allowing a cryptocurrency to corral its own currency look, 300 billion dollars is small, but the u.s. market is $30 trillion the u.s. stock market is $30 trillion i don't think it will ever get to that level. my point is, the fed, central governments around the world will step in and do something at some point to regulate it and

make sure it doesn't get out of hand the stock market next year, look, global economy is growing 2.5% a year. u.s. economy is growing record earnings we don't talk about earnings in europe, but they are also really strong this year and are continuing into next year. asian economies also improving that's what moves the stock market ultimately. >> right we don't know who owns bitcoin, but somebody is doing it bob, dan, thank you both for joining us >> thank you all right, at least one person in custody this morning following an explosion near the port authority building in times square bertha coombs is on the scene with the latest. bertha >> thanks very much, michelle. it happened this morning police are calling it an attempted terrorist attack it was around 7:20 this morning, they say a man with an improvised explosive device strapped to his body with velcro and zip ties set that device off in a tunnel that connects one subway line to another

underneath times square. the suspect akayed ullah is in custody. he was one of a handful of people who suffered injuries, nonlife threatening. he is being treated for those injuries police say he suffered burns and other nonlife threatening. he is currently hospitalized and in custody here's what we know. he is a 27-year-old man whose last known address was here in brooklyn, new york the event was actually captured on transit system video. police say he did make comments when asked about whether he actually did make comments as he set off the device with regard to isis. they would only say that he made some comments. ironically, police had just conducted a drill to deal with such a situation just a month ago. according to authorities here in new york, they've had 24 attempted events that they've managed to prevent since 9/11,

and as a result, because new york is such a target, they are always on alert here >> the reality is that we are a target by many who would like to make a statement against democracy, against freedom we are the statue of liberty in our harbor, and that makes us an international target >> much of times square was shut down in terms of transportation. some of that has resumed one line remains closed at this point as the investigation continues. back to you. >> all right, thanks very much, bertha live in times square for us. when we return, apple close to acquiring shazam. recode editor, executive editor, kara swisher, will join us next. stay with us they came out of no! how many of 'em?

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apple close to buying app shazam for an estimated $400 million in an effort to boost subscriptions to its music streaming service, perhaps boost its efforts in augmented reality and compete with the likes of spotify and the rest of the players out there in this space. joining us now for more is recode executive editor kara

swisher. kara, good morning always good to talk to you so, 400 million, first of all, less than the valuation shazam enjoyed some months ago, but that seems to be par for the course these days. apple normally doesn't pay this much for anything, so is this significant? >> i think they recognize they are trying to push out their music service, it's not getting as much traction, so this is a way to improve their subscription efforts, obviously, competing with spotify, which is still doing very well, despite all kinds of issues around monetization of music, which is a problem for all of them. i think they need to jump start and shazam is a very good technology it's, obviously, a huge discount, and so, you know, it's technology in a lot of ways that apple can integrate into its own service. so it makes a lot of sense >> hi, kara, it's michelle how will they integrate it, as a consumer of itunes, shazam will do what in terms of applications or user --

>> well, presumably, help you identify and find music that you like i think a lot of the -- what's interesting about these music services is, i don't know what you listen to, but i was looking for chanting music the other day, so it was like putting me together with things you might like, on spotify i was using spotify at the time. and it's just a way to improve the technologies of what people like and what people consume, and if you consume more, presumably you like it more and will subscribe more, but these services are sort of need better features essentially, so instead of building it, apple buys it and i don't know if they'll keep the name shazam, maybe as a feature name, but probably will integrate it into its services would be my guess. >> yeah, i guess one of the questions, kara, that would pop up is could siri not be trained to do this in some respect, or i guess more broadly, will the shazam technology be more broadly useful internally at apple for whatever other, you

know, kinds of a.i. uses or other devices that they might launch >> yeah. if you use shazam, it's fun. you -- it's kind of like what was that music, this is a way to do this automatically and if it integrates with the iphone i think it had deals with snapchat, snapchat had been talking to them a little bit also they had integrated deals with a bunch of partners, so that will be interesting to see if those unwind or if apple continues to provide that technology once the deal is complete >> is this really about music, or is this like beats, where the big product was the headphones, but it was really about streaming? shazam is moving into video, trying to do things you can use the camera to scan stuff in augmented reality. apple seems to be more focused in that direction lately than people trying to identify songs off the radio. >> no, no, absolutely. no, i think it's more about the functionality of these services and which services provides the most functional services in the

things you want to do. one of the things apple is much more into is augmented reality it's the direction i think they are going in heavily, and the case use for these phones is the more useful they are in a variety of things that you use every day like music, the more you'll hold on to your phone i think it's like the camera, there's a couple things that you use a phone for that are utilities in a lot of ways and music, certainly, is one of them you know, it's a use case of something where the phone becomes indispensable to you and the more features the service has, the better. >> let's move on, kara, i want to get your take the latest on disney's potential deal to purchase assets from 21st century fox our david faber reporting a deal could be reached as early as this week. kara, everybody wants access to this programming apple, google, amazon, et cetera if disney ends up with this, how does that change the game? >> well, it's starting a streaming service and it needs

stuff for it this gives it an enormous trove of content to have access to, obviously. it's reactive to the success of netflix, puts a lot of pressure on netflix also shows you how difficult it is to remain in the content business unless you have scale, you know, a lot of this stuff is not -- is being put over streaming services or on demand, and so you really do have to bulk up. it also says probably bob eiger is not running for president this is a big deal and big degrad integration, but the more assets that people want to use, again, subscription services or being part of a disney universe is really important it will be interesting to see what happens to the rest of the fox assets if they reintegrate with news corp., that would be interesting. >> is this good for big tech companies that want access to this content or is it bad because now the

content provider has more leverage in any negotiations >> well, that's the second part. i think that's definitely true the question is, what does a media company anymore and what is a tech company? i've been saying for years, i think i've said it before, i think tech companies will start buying content they have not yet. they relied on the services they provide and buying the content, but it definitely creates a situation where a media company isn't just a maker of content, but a distributor of content, because they can do it themselves on their own services it will be interesting what happens to hulu, and there's a lot of efforts underway to do hulu competitors and things like that, but i think you have to really marry distribution with content, especially online distribution this, you know, is indicative, also buys them an enormous trove of content, especially around super heroes and things like that that they will dominate again, popular content that people want to stream and use in an online, on demand fashion

>> quickly, which music service has the best chanting muse snick. >> all kinds of chants i'm very calm in this holiday season i need to be calmer, obviously, but i like spotify >> i don't think of calm all the time when i think of you, kara >> i am, i'm truly very peaceful person, john, i don't know if you know that. >> i know now. kara, thanks happy holidays >> thanks, you too when we come back, more on bitcoin as the first futures contracts began trading on sunday digital currency rising more than 11% within the first six minutes. more on what it means for the markets. that's next. the dow up modestly, about 15 points right now all three major averages above the flat line. [lance] monica, it is absolute chaos out here!

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she's in atlanta, where a lot of the news is coming from. hey, meg >> that's right, michelle. how are you doing? we are looking at quite a few biotech movers out of the hematology conference in atlanta with a lot of updates happening in cancer and also in blood diseases on the positive side, positive moves from blueprint medicines bluebird bio and biomarin. on the flip side, quite a few significant decliners in spark therapeutics, juno, global blood therapeutics and seattle genetics starting with bluebird bio, they had an exciting update over the weekend in their program partnered with celgene, a new form of immunotherapy, which takes patients' immune cells out of their bodies and teaches them how to find cancer, then gives them back. giving potential hope to patients who tried a lot of different therapies. both stocks up and bluebird up quite significantly on that. and hemophilia, two stories on the same side of the coin.

biomarin having a positively received outlook here, kind of the flip side for spark therapeutics in its program for hemophilia, that stock down quite a bit on that update finally, we'll tell you about global blood therapeutics. that stock is down on two reports of patients who died while taking that company's drug for sickle cell disease. the company saying those deaths are not attributable to the drug, those patients were sick and not even on the clinical trial, they were receiving the drug outside the clinical trial. they expect the stock to recover, however, you are seeing investors selling that off today. many of the ceos coming up on cnbc, including spark, juno, and coming up on "halftime report," foundation medicine, that stock has tripled this year. back over to you, michelle >> great to have them on on such a newsy day from that space. thank you so much. dom chu has the european close. hey, dom >> michelle, a roller coaster

ride for european stocks today mixed session as you can see here after the broader markets posted their best weekly performance in about three months the ftse continuing that upward momentum, best week since october. today's gains helped in part by the mining stocks getting a lift on news of higher copper prices and upbeat trade report out of china, as well pretty strong moves. weaker pound also helping the ftse stocks, which starts on thursday in brussels as for the brexit side of things, uk prime minister theresa may says britain's promise to pay a financial settlement worth $35 to $39 billion pounds to the eu is conditional upon agreeing to a future partnership with the eu bloc a number of european financials on the rise today, hsbc. the u.s. department of justice has dismissed deferred criminal charges against the bank related to money laundering and

sanctions breaches about five years ago. ups and barclays also among the financials as you can see there in the green today a different story for the tech sector die dialogue semi, uber all lower today after an accounting irregularity, outside advisers, this is, of course, the parent company of the mattress firm companies in the united states, they are looking to shore up finances and, again, a lot of discussions with lenders, as well lots of stuff happening with steinhoff. back over to you >> yeah, we've been watching that for a week. pretty tough thank you, dom when we return, bitcoin continuing to surge this morning after the first bitcoin futures contracts began trading last night on the cboe. litecoin founder charlie lee is going to join us next with his take on the bitcoin bonanza. more "squawk alley" after this alerts -- wouldn't you like one from the market

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good morning, everyone, i'm sue herera here's your cnbc news update n has reopened its subways after a man with a homemade bomb strapped to him caused an explosion near times square this morning. the man happen identified as 27-year-old akayed ullah he reportedly told police he did it in the name of isis israeli prime minister

benjamin netanyahu defending president trump's recognition of jerusalem as israel's capital. >> jerusalem has been the capital of israel for the last 70 years i think what president trump has done is put facts squarely on the table. peace is based on reality. peace is based on recognizing reality. >> but palestinian president mahmoud abad arriving in cairo for talks with al sisi saying trump's recognition of jerusalem disqualifies the united states as continuing in its role as traditional mediator of peace talks. you are up to date this hour, back downtown to "squawk alley." guys, back to you. >> thank you, sue. and a news alert in the bond market right now three-year notes up for auction. rick, how's it look? >> you know, it looked pretty good, john as a matter of fact, it's a double header today. this first auction 11:30

eastern's three-year notes and we'll cover that right now, 24 billion, the interest rate, rate at the dutch auction, 1.932. kind of right where it's supposed to price the bid side of the market was 193 1/2. if i look at the bid to cover, it was powerful. 3.15, three times over subscribe to, best bid to cover since september 2015 59% indirects is well above the ten auction average of 55, but we have had some 60% plus handles in the last ten or 12 auctions finally directs on the light side only thing light, 7.4 versus 9%, ten auction average, dealers take 33.6% "b" as in boy, 24 billion. 20 billion tens reopen and i'll be covering that, as well. michelle, back to you. >> all right, thank you so much, rick santelli. the price of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies surging following the official launch of

the first bitcoin futures contract on the cboe, possibly one of the first steps in giving this currency legitimacy in the mainstream let's bring in director of the digital currency initiative at the m.i.t. media lab, also joining us litecoin creator charlie lee, former director of engineering at coin base gentlemen, good to have you here mr. lee, can i start with you? >> sure. >> what is the difference between bitcoin and litecoin >> yeah, litecoin is very similar to bitcoin, except it has four times as many coins, also four times faster, so transactions are every two and a half minutes versus ten minutes for bitcoin. >> isn't it -- sounds like you think it's better. if it's better, why doesn't it have its own contract right now? >> well, bitcoin is here first, so it has first advantage and also has a larger market, more people know about it i think litecoin is targeted

more towards payments, faster transactions, and lower fees >> what do you think of the trading of bitcoin futures and what it means in terms of legitimacy here and how much of a milestone is this event? >> i think it's huge >> let's bring in naha for that. >> thanks. hi, michelle really happy to be here. i think this is a really important milestone. it's bringing bitcoin to a whole new market, and it's showing that this has legitimacy and that it's something that wall street really cares about. >> here's the thing, there's litecoin, there's going to be thousands of cryptocurrencies poor viewers have heard me ask this question to nearly every expert we have on. if there are going to be so many cryptocurrencies and some are better at bitcoin, why does bitcoin in and of itself have any value? >> i think that that is a great question, and really you have to

go back and think about money and why money has value and the answer is, because people think it does. bitcoin's valuable because people have decided that bitcoin is valuable. and that could be for many different reasons. maybe they think it's convenient that you can exchange it digitally, maybe they like the fact there's no company or country behind it, but really when we look at these things, you have to understand there is a community behind them. there are developers and there are people who are really passionate about them. >> i get it's a fiat currency like the u.s. dollar, i totally get that, but there's only one u.s. dollar and the supply is controlled by the federal reserve. cryptocurrencies seems to be thousands of them created by countries all over the world, so i don't understand how they retain value >> i think they retain value because some of them are more well known than others, just like websites or newspapers or anything like that and, you know, bitcoin isn't really a fiat currency it isn't controlled by any country and a lot of these things are controlled by people.

>> charlie, what is moving the price of bitcoin and litecoin? what's the fundamental that's underlying it, and is there any reason to believe that you believe it can't come down just as quickly as it's gone up charlie? maybe we lost charlie. neha, throw that one to you. is there anything in the way these cryptocurrencies are moving that tells you what's fundamentally driving them and if there's a reason they can't come down as quickly as they've come up? >> i think it's true they can come down as quickly as they've come up. to me bitcoin could be worth zero dollars in the future, could be worth a million in the future we just don't know what's really exciting here to me is the underlying technology. digital currencies are really powerful they change the way that we interact with money, with financial instruments, with the stock market it's really a fundamental change, just like the way the

internet changed the way that we trade, the way we consume news and information. i think this technology is going to change the way we deal with money. that's really, really powerful that's an incredibly powerful concept, and will it be bitcoin that does that that's a great question. as you pointed out, there are thousands of these things and they are all different and experimenting with different technologies >> charlie, just to kind of build on that question a little bit, is there a way in the future where we might just distinguish between the promise of the technologies underlying litecoin or bitcoin or others as a software protocol, new way of doing business, from the value of the coins themselves? are those two things linked in some very linear way, or may they not have much value as currencies, yet the technology could be successful? >> i think right now both bitcoin and litecoin, the value is linked very closely to the technology so as people believe cryptocurrency has value, they'll buy the coin and the

price will go up i think in the future, there will only be a handful of cryptocurrencies that are worth much value, i believe, and that will be used for daily transactions, because the currencies have network effect so there won't be able to support that many different currencies that have value but the technology itself is very powerful, so there will be tokens that use this technology that may not actually have real value, but it's providing value when people use it >> neha, seems to me that a lot of people are buying into bitcoin, litecoin, what have you, for the wrong reasons right now. because they believe the value they put into it is going to be increased by other people coming in and demand going up, when, in fact, if these are supposed to be used as stores of value or means of transacting more seamlessly, that's not why people are buying into them. is that fundamentally an issue

here, and is it a danger for the adoption of these for what they were meant to do >> yeah. you know, a lot of people in my communities are asking me how to buy bitcoin, and to be honest it worries me a little bit. these aren't people who necessarily evaluated the technology, who understand what's going on. that said, i am really excited about the potential of this technology so, in some sense i think it could be really, really powerful and it could change the way that we transact today, so a little of both, i'd have to say >> charlie, you've mentioned that litecoin is meant to help with the payment systems i'm trying to understand this technology if people start to use litecoin or blockchain a lot, who loses what companies would you avoid because you know that their product line is no longer going to be usable because people switch over to blockchain? >> i think the whole cryptocurrency will eventually be used as real money, so i

don't think any company will really be threatened by cryptocurrency, but more so like the dollar may eventually threatened by cryptocurrency that's my opinion. >> wow, that's a big believer. >> all right >> i think bitcoin and litecoin, their real power is that they are incensorable money, that gives them value and that's payments not able to be censored by a third party like a government or a company. >> right okay gone into the deep end here. neha and charlie, thank you so much appreciate it. >> thank you coming up, the nfl announcing a new multiyear partnership with verizon that

will allow verizon to stream the games across its mobile and digital platforms. deal kicks off in january 2018, in time to stream this year's playoffs and super bowl. more on that in just a bit first, though, a check on where the regular markets are. we keep showing you bitcoin, but how about the die, higher by 23 points, s&p by 4, nasdaq at 20 at 6,860 more "squawk alley" after is this the moment a fish is pulled out from the water, it's a race against time. and keeping it in the right conditions is the best way to get that fish to your plate safely. bacteria can multiply to high enough levels that even cooking it will not destroy all of them. it's definitely the most important thing in my business. how fresh is the fish? where it comes from? how it gets here.

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coming up today on "halftime report." will the fed meetings mark the beginning of the end of one of the greatest bull markets ever we'll discuss and debate that. plus, andrew left versus john nejarion on bitcoin. is the cryptocurrency worth your money? and the ten stocks baron says are best for 2018. the debate begins at high noon mike, see you then >> all right, scott, we'll be there. thank you very much. let's head back out to chicago now, the cme, rick santelli and his santelli exchange hi, rick >> hi and thanks, mike we just covered that "b," above average three-year note auction tentatively coming up on top of the one, that will be 20 billion. the number for october wasn't anything special, but it was it was a whisker under 6 million job openings i believe it was 5,996,000 the reason it's important is because it's a really lofty level. now look at the chart. this goes back this series of data points isn't that old, started in december of

2000, but the real point i want to go through is that last month also at a 6 million handle, but it was higher to 6,177,000, which means it is now the new all-time high. it's never been that high, and even though 5,996,000 received for october is the strongest going back just several months since may when it was 5.7 million, these are still terrific numbers, and i can go over separations and quids, but the point is the real number to watch for the next several years continues to be participation rates because i think job openings are going to continue to bring people back into the labor force. second, we know we're going to most likely see a rate increase in 48 hours with respect to the fed. what will most people be looking at i think it is built in despite some of the debate that seems to be going on and i think one of the reasons i would consider it baked in the cake is because it's basically the swan song of

janet yellen and i think she'd be doing a disservice to her replacement, jay powell, if she didn't keep to what is expected in the marketplace on this rate increase but the yield curve is what traders are going to look at and there you see we're basically at ten-year flats, whether it's the tens minus the its in the mid-50s or 30 minus 5s and toying with 60 basis points, because no matter what i tell anybody we have the discussion with that i do think there's huge distortions in the yield curve. you need to be careful what you think it means, and reality is that it falls on deaf ears because when you add in another 25 basis points on the short end, how much is priced in on this curve is anybody's guess. finally the last point in europe, if you get in front of whatever action the central bank does, meaning, hey, i think they are going to be buying less so i want to sell bunds, that mentality, especially in front of corporate purchases, was very

profitable, but not this time. it seems as though the sellers are in a bit of retreat. you see that chart there we're hovering at the close since basically mid-year the real key is how much different that chart may look when we start 2018 mike santoli, back to you. >> thank you very much, rick appreciate it. when we return, disney, facebook and amazon all looking to be big buyers of media rights in sports, and we've got a verizon deal in that area. why the value of that industry is set across $80 billion in the next five years. stay with us his advisor ran the numbers and showed that he wouldn't be able to retire until he was 68. the client realized, "i need to get back into the markets- i need to get back on track with my plan." the financial advisor was able to work with this client. he's now on track to retire when he's 65. having someone coach you through it is really the value of a financial advisor.

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the nfl and verizon expanding their partnership to expand mobile access to live games showing the growing value of sports despite the ratings declines we've been talking about. julia boorstin is in los angeles with more on this deal hey, julia. >> reporter: well, verizon is doubling down on football. verizon paying the nfl about-2.5 billion over the next five years, about double what it paid for its last deal. now this deal expands streaming from just phones to any mobile device and now subscribers to any mobile carrier, not just verizon, can access games in verizon's platforms including yahoo sports and aol, verizon foregoing exclusive access to draw more add dollars. >> we've been moving very heavily into digital through our oath properties, yahoo and aol, and -- and to go to yahoo sports now slya your mobile device and

be able to watch any game preseason, regular season, playoffs, super bowl is something nobody else offers >> and for the nfl which has been struggling with declining ratings for the second straight season, verizon helps it reach a broader audience >> we want to make sure that what wherever we do is complementary with the network partners we think that this is reaching consumers not actually watching on television. they are looking to watch on other devices, and we want to make sure that we're there that's part of the changing television landscape and the media landscape that we need to be in those places >> reporter: now the nfl's growing value to verizon is part of a larger media trend, and a new pwc report projects that the north american sports industry will grow over 3% annually to nearly $p 1 billion but the year 202 is media rites is by far the fastest growing part of the dis, far surpassing ticket sales and merchandise. what's driving that? not just verizon paying more

there's new buyers with deep pockets looking at the sports rights including amazon and facebook back over to you. >> all right li tnkou more "squawk alley" after this alerts -- wouldn't you like one from the market

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today marks the poth anniversary of the movie "wall street" so take a walk on the beach with the phone the size of your head. michael douglas winning an oscar for his role as gordon gekko in the oliver stone-directed film about the excess of capitalism in the 1980s gecko was later named to the top 100 villains in movies meant as a critique of the life-style taking place on wall street but oliver stone the movie inspired many to work in finance. of course, the movie's most famous quotes or misquotes is "greed is good." >> that's the paraphrase greed for the better good is good. >> less than two months after the crash of '87 and this whole movie was in production as the mania was cresting. >> you hear the quote all over

wall street. boiler room, "wolf of wall street," and "glen garry glen ross." >> charlie sheen was in this move, foo. >> i just feel old. >> yeah. >> all right michelle, mike, thanks as always. that's going to do it for "squawk alley. let's toss it back to headquarters and "the half." >> and welcome to "the halftime report." i'm scott wapner our top trade this hour. high interest with the fed expected to raise interest rates this week. your money and the markets are front and center this hour our question is this is janet yellen's last stand as fed chair and will it mark the beginning of the rend of up. greatest bull markets in memory? with us joe terranova, steve weiss and jim thabeetial and josh brown and also on set is economics reporter steve liesman. stocks are higher. all eyes now tuning to