break out your rally caps. the dow is pointing towards a triple digit gain. we'll talk about what's fueling that jump. in the dark. a major power outage that brings the world's busiest airport to a stand still. bitcoin makes another big debut. futures trading on the cme we'll check on the crypto currency's latest moves. it's monday, december 18th, 2017 "worldwide exchange" begins right now. ♪ ♪ good morning very warm welcome to "worldwide exchange" on cnbc. i'm wilfred frost. >> i'm morgan brennan in for

sara eisen. >> good morning. happy holidays. >> happy holidays indeed getting closer to christmas morning. that's trading on the markets. we'll come in in a moment. travel alert things slowly starting to come back online at atlanta's heartsville jackson. more than 1,000 flights were delayed or canceled. the timing couldn't be worse we'll have more on that in just a moment first, let's get a check on the global markets this morning. we've got green arrows really across the board as u.s. equity futures point to a higher open dow futures are up by triple digits right now indicating an open at 138 points higher. s&p 500 futures poised to open 14 points higher the nasdaq poised to open 51 points higher. this, of course, after record closes for all three of those indexes on friday as everybody is sort of focusing on tax reform and whether lawmakers

will pass that through before christmas this week. >> absolutely right. friday's section slightly flat on the week as a whole up over 1% the s&p is up less than 1% so that friday performance certainly a big factor in the week's performance. >> so we turn now as well to the ten year and what's going on in the treasury market right now. the ten year is yielding 2.371%. this story has continued to play out there that we have a flattening in the yield curve as those shorter term notes, the yields have increased in the last couple of weeks and the longer term yield fell flat. >> it continues. let's have a look at markets around the world asian equities, positive sessions shanghai is only fractionally high japan very much higher 1.5% europe higher across the board a decent session there where you can see over a percent gains for both germany and frans

ftse 100 a slight laggard. slightly higher on the week last week -- slightly down for the week, slightly higher on friday. gold prices up 0.7% last week. slightly higher this morning by 2 tenths of a percent, 1260. if we look at the dollar board, it was essentially flat and got a boost on friday. for a week that saw a fed rate hike, would he would have expected a slightly stronger boost. today it is weaker against the euro and pound, slightly higher against the yen. bitcoin futures began trading on the cme. the futures price for the cme is fractionally lower ultimately this was a big liquidity event. we haven't seen a meaningful decline in what could be framed as a positive reaction

19330, the price of bitcoin. joining me is brian calesium brian, we spoke about this last week, of course, after the cbo features began trading was this a bigger potential liquidity event and bigger potential threat to bitcoin? therefore we're not seeing significant declines >> i don't know if it was a bigger threat. certainly a bigger event cme trades a lot more futures and there's a lot more players in that area the contract is a bigger contract it's five bitcoins per contract versus one on the cboe one could presume it's much more of an institutional customer that could be coming in here threats potentially. there are a lot of people saying they want to short this because they think it's the biggest bubble out there it seems like perhaps that's a lot of talk and there was a lot of action. but i would call it, the cme a

resounding success bitcoin functions very well. and there was decent volume. i would expect over the next couple of weeks as more players come online we'll get a lot more liquidity. >> the performance we've seen in these futures contracts over the past week as each one has debuted have been somewhat of a success. where would you put your money right now looking at either the cboe or the cme? >> well, i think it depends what you're looking to do if you are perhaps somebody who has a portfolio and wants to hedge a smaller amount of bitcoin, you might want to go cboe if you're an institutional player, cme might be a better contract the difference is cme is based off of a bunch of different exchanges. you have the ticker up there bitcoin and different exchanges. this market is fairly diverse.

the cme smooths that out a bit. >> brian, we always have the debate about whether people should be spread across various crypto currencies or just go the bitcoin. does the fact that bitcoin where others haven't, the fact that bitcoin is on these big exchanges, cme and cboe, does that give it further endorsement that it could be the single biggest winner of the crypto currency going forward >> well, potentially i'm not in the camp that bitcoin is the one and only end all and be all currency. we're going to have 10 to 20 major currencies facebook exists for a reason that's a social network and twitter exists for a certain reason they have slightly different functions. that being said, this whole game, particularly bitcoin and digital currencies is about network effect anything that increases the network effect and cboe and cme increases that network effect and adds value to the

underlying. >> turning to the broader markets, it looks like dow futures are poised for another rally, up by triple digits right now. is this a sell the news event? >> i don't think so. no i mean, certainly not before the end of the year i don't think so you have very strong seasonal y seasonality. two weeks are left in the year it will be very difficult to get any type of meaningful selloff here going into the end of the year addition additionally, you're starting to see and you're continuing to see the global economy pick up so i think you're going to start to see coming to q 1, analysts will revise their stimates that will add a boost. you mentioned at the top of the show you still have a relatively to stable weak dollar, that will help the u.s. stock market i think right now it's just hold on to your positions and get ready for 2018. >> brian, overall you're long equities in the u.s. for 2018

still? >> yeah, for 2018. i mean, listen, i'm hard wired to be a contrarian it's very difficult for me to say that when they're at an all-time high. until proven differently, you have to stay long the market. >> brian, great stuff. thanks for joining us. brian kelly, cnbc "fast money" contributor. >> my pleasure. power has been restored at the world's busiest airport after a massive outage caused a travel nightmare yesterday contessa brewer joins us with the latest what is going on in atlanta? >> that's a big question nearly everything came to a stand still for more than eight hours yesterday. power restored just before midnight some passengers had to deplane using emergency slides and use flashlights. the control tower was operational but a loss of power in the terminals meant essential equipment was out of service flight aware shows 1200 flights in atlanta canceled. 2600 planes take off or land

there every day. georgia power says a fire underground caused extensive damage to an electrical facility and the substation serving the airport. o southwest airlines plans to operate a regular shelter and delta warns there still could be delays atlanta, of course, is a key hub for some of the domestic and international flights. it's been the world's busiest passenger airport since 1959 with 104 million people passing through last year. clearly, when the power goes out, something that's very rare at airports because of the redundant systems, it just causes a stand still. >> absolutely right. contessa, thank you very much for that. some stocks to watch, oracle has struck a deal with aconex for 1.19 billion it makes software that's been

used for projects including the panama canal hue than is in talks to buy kindred. humana would get kindred's home and hospice business they would get the hospitals and rehab centers. sources tell cnbc hershey is near a deal to buy amplify snack brands it would boost amplify to $12. amplify makes healthier snack brands such as skinnier popcorn. >> such a trend. all of these sort of iconic packaged good food companies moving into these healthier, newer upstart brands. >> poppopcorn, i want to enjoy . do you know what i mean? >> not a daily snack you don't like the heavy duty fake butter with some race

sonettes. >> i don't put the butter on but extra salt. >> okay. other stocks to watch, procter & gamble is adding nelson peltz to the board. p&g said peltz fell just short of a majority. he will be given a seat. the shares are up almost 1% in pre-market teva coming under pressure from israel's national trade union. they held a nationwide strike in protest of the company's decision to layoff 1/4 of its work force the shares are down 2% right now. china's tencent and j.d..com are investing $863 million in vipshop. a busy week ahead on wall street for economic data look for the monthly home builder statement today. tomorrow november housing starts and wednesday existing home

sales, wednesday, the philly fed survey there are a few notable names reporting earnings this week including darden restaurants, micron, general mills, bed, bath and beyond and nike. still ahead on "worldwide exchange," president trump expecting to call out our major trading partner. more of that massive wildfire burning out of ntcorol in southern california full details when "worldwide exchange" returns. this is not a cloud. this is a tomato tracked from farm to table on a blockchain, helping keep shoppers safe. this is a financial transaction secure from hacks and threats others can't see. this is a skyscraper whose elevators use iot data and ai to help thousands get to work safely and efficiently. this is not the cloud you know. this is the ibm cloud.

the ibm cloud is the cloud for business. yours. ♪ ♪ trust #1 doctor recommended dulcolax. use dulcolax tablets for gentle dependable relief. suppositories for relief in minutes. and dulcoease for comfortable relief of hard stools. dulcolax. designed for dependable relief.

good morning welcome back to "worldwide exchange." let's give you a market update pointing higher to the point of 142. the nasdaq up 50 it comes after record closes of course on friday strong session on friday that slightly flatted the week's performance. up than less than a percent on the s&p. it was friday's performance that took us into that territory. gains fueling the gains this morning. treasury board, we did in fact see yields slip over the course of last week, the long end despite having the rate hike the ten year treasury note just rising a little bit this morning, 2.37 the yield on the ten year of course, we've continued to see that flattening of the yield

curve in recent weeks. >> we're following a developing story out of southern california fire crews are continuing to battle a massive wildfire spreading through santa barbara county the blaze which began nearly two weeks ago is now 40% contained it has consumed nearly 270,000 acres of land. at least two people have been killed since the fire first broke out. the cause is still under investigation. some sad news to report on the corporate front. csx president and ceo hunt harrison died unexpectedly over the weekend. he was just 73 csx announced he was taking medical leave. jim foote is serving as acting ceo. very abrupt and very sad news. >> it was very abrupt and there have been issues swirling about hunter harrison's health for a long time now. certainly when he took over as ceo it was something that came up and was sort of a big point of contention as he came in to

sort of be -- to turn around csx which would be the fourth railroad that he would turn around foote is a proto guy, he said friday when he took his leave most of the turn around is in place. it's a matter of continuing to push that along. his passing, he was considered a legendary railroader his passing is unexpected. if you take a look at shares of csx, they're down 2 1/2% after falling 8% friday. sadly another death to report as well long time m&t bank ceo robert wilmers died saturday night. m&t called wilmer a wonderful banker and friend. they named robert brady while three others were oversee the bank's day-to-day operations. here's what else is

happening in the news at this hour the owner of the carolina panthers has announced he will sell the team after the nfl season the move comes after jerry richardson has been accused of sexual misconduct and using racist words forbes estimates the panthers as $2.4 million senator john mccain returns to his home in arizona his trip back home means he will miss a final vote on the gop tax bill but the bill is still expected to pass without mccain's vote. president trump is expected to target china and russia this is part of the excerpts they're seeking to challenge u.s. power and erode security and prosperity the president will demand that they step up pressure on north korea.

still ahead here on "worldwide exchange," the force was strong with disney at the box office new numbers on a massive opening weekend for "star wars" the last jedi >> first, as we head to break, here's the national forecast from nbc's bill cairkarins. good monday morning. today, watch out a lot of fog and rain down along the gulf coast that will cause a lot of problems on the roads and airport delays as well then we'll track the storm coming into the northwest today and tuesday and wednesday pretty good snow areas for the inner mountain west. looks perfect. showers and heavy rain on wednesday going through the mid-atlantic and into areas right on into the carolinas. by friday we take thestorm through the great lakes. rain down from tennessee to the deep south we could have travel issues with that and that storm on the east coast by saturday. it's also very mild across the country. thankfully we're not dealing with too much snow and ice mostly just dealing with rain or

foggy conditions out there for travel that's your business travel forecast more "worldwide exchange" when we come back i've been thinking. about thinking. i mean, think of all the things that think these days. thinking planes. thinking cars. thinking phones. businesses are thinking. factories are thinking. distribution plants are thinking. plant plants are thinking. even your toaster is thinking. honey, clive owen's in our kitchen. i'm leaving. oh never mind, he's leaving. there's so much thinking. even this thing is thinking. is this thing thinking? this thing is thinking! businesses are up to their necks in knowledge.

let me illustrate that for you. scratch that, terrible idea. but what if a business could turn all that thinking... thinking... thinking... endless thinking... into doing? to make better decisions. make a difference. make the future. make all this make sense. not tomorrow. not next week while you think about it a little more. but right now. this moment. this second. is there a company that can help you do all that? ♪ i can think of one. ♪ trust #1 doctor recommended dulcolax. use dulcolax tablets for gentle dependable relief. suppositories for relief in minutes. and dulcoease for comfortable relief of hard stools. dulcolax. designed for dependable relief.

welcome back to "worldwide exchange." i'm morgan brennan let's get you up to speed on the market acts. u.s. equities futures is pointing to a higher open. dow poised at 4% higher.

dow at 14 and nasdaq 52 points higher this is after a record on friday all eyes on tax reform as lawmakers move to vote and push that forward before we get into the christmas holiday. we'll take a look at crude oil as well. we're seeing green arrows for crude as well. wti up .7% ice brent up .8% north sea pipeline outage continues and in the u.s. the rig count number which declined last week. will >> time for top trending stories. power outage causing pandemonium on the runway and social media frustrated travelers in the dark cell service hasn't been working for at least three hours in the airport. meanwhile, chick-fil-a is making headlines for the quick response the company is not usually open on sundays provided meals

many travelers taking to social media to lend its thanks to the country. >> they never are open on sundays. it's never open. christmas miracle. >> i wonder whether it was much of an upset to being stuck on the ground in the dark. >> terrible. awful. i'm sure perhaps people were upset. >> it's better to be angry than hangry. >> disney lucas films "star wars the last jedi" opening with a stellar $220 million domestically that's the second highest opening weekend of all time trailing only the $248 million launch of the 2015 "star wars" film "the force awakens. >> i love this big, big hype. done well. opening weekend always key for a big "star wars" movie. >> absolutely. >> fills me with dread that i have to wait until it's less busy or do a classic monday

afternoon slot. >> given the fact that everybody is doing last-minute holiday shopping, the fact that it can pull in speaks to the "star wars" brand. >> switching focus ed sheeran planning his debut. he wrote a bond theme just in case he's ever asked to write a song he wouldn't reveal the title of the song but assured fans it is very good, indeed. i mean, i love that he's done this as a big bond fan myself, he's attaching himself to the hope of releasing the song one day. surely the sopping has to get writ then. >> i feel like with musicians, there's always a song looking to escape whatever it is i'm not surprised he has one in his back pocket. >> i think he would be a good choice to choose him which must be starting filming soon i hope it is. >> i don't know the answer to

that we'll turn now to snap chat. still on top with teens according to rbc's latest social media survey snap chat still dominating among teenagers. nearly 80% of u.s. teenagers 13 to 18 say they have a snap chat account. that's more than both instagram and facebook it's very popular with the toddler set as well and all of those filter screens. >> there's been some great data. our latest one and other surveys, facebook is already pretty mature in that sense. >> yes. >> if not forinstagram, it would be lagging >> yeah. still ahead on "worldwide exchange," a roundup on the morning headlines and check in on the global markets. crunch time for the shippers one week to go until christmas, we'll tell you who's set to really deliver this christmas season stick around, "worldwide exchange" will be right back

you can't predict the market. but through good times and bad... ...at t. rowe price... ...we've helped our investors stay confident for over 75 years. call us or your advisor. t. rowe price. invest with confidence.

rally on the dow as the open hopes for tax reform boosts. and in the dark. a major power outage brings the world's busiest airport to a stand still. we have the latest on this developing story. it's crunch time for the shippers with just seven days left until christmas we'll find out who's winning and who's losing it's monday, december 18th, 2017 you're watching "worldwide exchange" on cnbc. ♪ ♪

good morning very warm welcome back to "worldwide exchange" on cnbc i'm wilfred frost. >> i'm morgan brennan in for sara eisen. >> morgan, great to have you with us. let's get to the market picture. very pretty picture it is as well up 151 points as well on the dow. decent gains coming after friday's gains for a week as a whole up a percent and a half and nasdaq 0.9% for the s&p we've slipped a little bit the dow is up 134 points s&p 13 ten year treasury notes sitting at 2.37 last week. that rate hike having the effect again of flattening the yield cover a bit. the short end of the curve rising, the middle and longer end not doing much 2.37 the zbleeld asian companies, largely higher session there. the real standout was the japanese anythinikkei

export data, if you take a look at the hang seng also higher ending the session up .7%. shanghai closing largely flat to the up side. if we turn to europe, we've been seeing green arrows in the trading session there. of course, the sentiment which seems to be playing out across the world is the focus here state side on tax reform the german dax is up more than 1% as is the french cac and the ftse 100 is up .3 of a percent. >> broader markets, oil prices up about 0.7% friday slightly lower for the week. they were up 0.7% today. 57.7 dollar board on friday rose and therefore took it to slightly positive territory for the week is seeing weakness for the euro and pound that is flat against the yen. gold prices to wrap things up off 0.7% last week and fractionally higher. bitcoin future began trading on the cme. fractionally lower on this measure. essentially flat at 19.330

let's get more on the cme data dom chu joins us. >> things went off fairly without a hutch. we saw trading hauls for the cboe when they launched last week nothing so crazy this time around what we did see here is trading volumes that are about commensurate what we saw with the overall cboe launch. we talked about it throughout the course of the week, the cme bitcoin futures are a larger contract there are five bitcoins with the larger cme as for the one to one with the cboe. as of five minutes ago when i walked on set, 656 contracts have traded on the cme multiply by five, you run that a little over 3,000 odd mark if you look at the dollar value of it, it's about the same size as well. obviously higher in price but still talking around the 60 to $65 million in terms of total volume dollar mark which is about what we saw at this same time with the cboe side of

things what this shows you is that the people who are trafficking in bitcoin futures are doing so by dipping toes in water rather than kind of going full bore you'll expect to see that for a while until people get their sea legs, so to speak, until they see how it's going to evolve of. >> whether we're talking about the cboe and clearly they have opened up the asset class particularly the cme but not huge liquidity events so far. >> no. it's important to know that the liquidity events are driven in the futures market alone these are financial instruments, derivative instruments they are not like trading bitcoin. that's a plus and minus. people who want exposure to physical bitcoin, that's an actual digital currency. this is not in any way owning a bitcoin. this is purely a play on price for bitcoin futures, remember, unlike things like certain oil contracts, gold contracts,

physical commodity contracts, these are not settled in actual delivery of an item. at the end of the day at the end of settlement you're going to get a price and that price will tell you whether you're a winner or loser and you'll settle for cash it's not like in the oil market. this is very much an idea that you can get exposure to the price movements. you can take a view as an investor without some of the operational, logistical or settlement issues. you don't need a digital wallet or anything like that. just a brokerage account. >> in terms of the margins that the cme or cboe are making, pretty attractive? >> the margins are not attractive yet cboe is charging no fees it's their way of kind of -- the first taste is free, so to speak. >> right >> giving out samples to everybody. as we start to see these evolve, yes. you'll see the exchanges charge those fees as for the investor side of things, there's a cost of transaction for these things

the difference between bid and ask for some of these contracts is still relatively wide there is a difference between the cboe prices and the cme prices there might be a chance for people to arbitrage those in the future, but if you take a look at the transaction cost retail investors trading on coin base, bit stamp or other places are not only paying the spread between bid and ask, but they're paying commission fees on top of that with bitcoin futures you may see a little bit of af smoother operational side. >> it could be an expensive decision to see what is such a volatile market. >> if the differences in prices between spot markets and futures markets and different exchanges is still that wide, i would suspect where there's a will there's a way. some high frequency shop will come in and figure out how to do it. >> we haven't seen it. >> great stuff thanks very much we're following a developing story out of atlanta power has been restored at the world's busiest airport after a

massive outage caused a travel nightmare yesterday. contessa brewer has the latest. >> morgan, the good news is the power is back on the bad news, eight hour stand still is having residual effects this morning the control tower was operational, but the power outage put essential equipment out of service flight aware says nearly 1200 flights in atlanta were canceled including some this morning. on average, about 2600 planes take off or land there every day. you can imagine the crowd yesterday using their flashlights on their cell phones to get around and having to deplane using the emergency slides georgia power says a fire underground damaged an electrical facility. it affected substations serving the airport. this morning the utility is investigating what caused that fire in the first place. southwest plans to operate a full schedule. delta a near full schedule atlanta is a key hub for domestic and international

flights. it's been the world's busiest passenger airport since 1999 with some 104 million people passing through last year but, you know, morgan, the real problem here is that you have a full schedule, fully booked planes heading into christmas this week. when you're trying to move all the people that were on the 1200 flights on to new flights. i heard from a friend this morning, her 6:00 a.m. flight was canceled she may not get out till wednesday. >> thank you, contessa brewer. it speaks to issues around infrastructure and the fact that you have a secondary system that wouldn't get up and running. the fact that that has to be addressed but also how finally tuned and important it is for a transportation network to be operating on all cylinders otherwise it can cause huge delays we're going to stick with that frame. csx ceo hunter harrison died over the weekend he was 73. let's bring in transport analyst

donald bratton lots i want to talk to you about. >> i'm glad to be here, morgan. >> let's start with this news out of csx medical leave for hunter harrison thursday night that was announced. he passed over the weekend where does this leave csx in terms of its turn around right now? >> well, first of all, let me just say that hunter was one of the greatest railroad executives of the generation, and anyone who knew him is just saddened by his loss he was a tour de force i got to the point if you spent more than 24 hours with him you try to be objective as an analyst. if i spent more than 24 hours with him i would not write for more than 24 hours after being with him because he was that charismatic of a figure. our thoughts and prayers are with his family. csx, he brought in one of his

chief disciples from the cnn, canadian national days, jim foote. they understand his philosophy and his legacy will live on. truth be known, his leg dwa si lives on at the canadian national and canadian pacific. the bottom line is he wrote the book, rewrote the book on -- literally wrote several books on railroading and a testament to his life the railroads are all changed in the way they operate their businesses. >> it is a big loss for the industry as you so eloquently highlighted there. would you stick with the stock right now? >> yeah. continue to see positive things for the csx. many of the basic changes that he puts in place have already been made. i recall the days when he first took over the canadian pacific

he created $18 billion of an increase in the market cap of that stock it's a smaller railroad, the csx, in the fergs irst 18 months we had him for a luncheon. we've been able to create a billion dollars of shareholder wealth a month for the first 18 months i don't know if that's a pace that we can keep up but let me tell you what we'll do to try. that was classic hunter harrison so that's what he was doing for the csx shareholders many of the hard --of the hard decisions, many of the -- much of that had been done already and i'm sure that jim foote is more than capable of following through with the ideology and the principles of precision railroading. >> donald, just to shift now to the delivery companies ups, fed ex are in crunch time right now. expectation of previous years are any indicator, this is going to probably be the busiest time,

the final days as we come into christmas. where do you stand on fedex and ups and how are they doing so far? >> we continue to be positive about the shairgs of fed ex. companies like xpo, the last mile that do so without any severe service disruptions to continue to be more sanguine with ups, they have service problems they issue a service warning that they may not be able to get everything delivered on time isn't that interesting i'm sorry, mom and dad we're only going to get a c on this class before the semester starts we'll hear a lot from fed ex i'm sure in the next couple of days they release earnings shore sherry should react positively

bottom line is you have a bifurcation. they want to meet the service standards and the other strug l less to. the volume is over wheming we're seeing deliveries on sunday, not at chick-fil-a of most places, but seeing deliveries on sunday by all modes. and it's just necessary given the amount of volume that's being demanded. >> it is certainly a huge number of packages. more than 1 billion. donald broughton, thank you for joining us still to come, why big tech wants to keep the net neutral. today's must reads are ahead as we head to break, let's check in on the futures pointing to 150 point gain for the dow. back in a few minutes.

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

the markets change... at t. rowe price... our disciplined approach remains. global markets may be uncertain... but you can feel confident in our investment experience around the world. call us or your advisor... t. rowe price. invest with confidence.

welcome back to "worldwide exchange." if you're just getting up, let's get you up to speed on the market action. the dow is up 150 points we're at the top end of that range as we speak. nasdaq up 51, s&p up 14. strong start it looks like it's going to be. >> clicking, i haven't heard that word in a while i like that. let's dig down a little deeper, shall we lockheed martin said it hit the target they expect -- 66 this year,

expect it to go up to 90 next year, 160 by 2023. they are defying the odds so far. >> there we go. >> twitter upgraded to overweight at jpmorgan with a $27 price target among the reasons, improving products, ad revenue growth and other financial metrics getting better that stock is up almost 4% in premarket. jpmorgan is calling it one of the top smid tax ideas for next year amazon is reportedly in talks to buy cyber security startup sqrrl. they use big data to hunt cyber threats. the purchase price is expected to top $40 million. time for our must reads. my picks in "the financial times. why big tech wants to keep net neutral. a number of critics would argue that the fangs themselves are a bigger risk to innovation than the telecoms companies in large

part because of the network effects that make them a natural monopoly, the currency of the digital age is data and the value grows exponentially. this allows it to grow ever more dominant and able to squash it in a myriad of ways. the test will be to decide if the consumer has been affected by the roll back of the net neutrality the u.s. is facing it and i guess one of the other tests will be the quality of network service in those two companies in a period of time. this is a defense of the roll back of net neutrality. >> when you think about how much band width and youtube, you'll see that the arg gaumt that they should be hanging more the author of this is somebody i used to intern for. >> my pick is in the wall street journal titled, another

escalation in the judicial war writing, quote, for many executive branch positions remain vacant because mr. trump has not put forth nominees not so with judges with 58 judicial nominations, mr. trump is second to george w. bush at this point instead the problem is that senate democrats have demanded cloture votes on all but one of the nominees. kato, libertarian think tank this he have their opinions. we talked about tax reform that's the big focus here this week with lawmakers voting on that we talk about deregulation and the impact that that has had on the market and on company's bottom lines one of the things we don't talk about is the judicial side of things and just how many nominees and how many appointments this administration has been able to make. something that perhaps should be focused on from the business standpoint. >> absolutely right. approaching the top of the

hour that means team is getting ready for "squawk box. becky joins us. >> hey, becky. >> good morning, guys. great to see you this morning on "squawk box" we're going to do a lot of talking about taxes. it's the cover of just about every paper this morning "the financial times" says they're set for a big profit windfall "the wall street journal", set up for years of challenge. there are the sun sets on a lot of tax cuts. in "the new york times" this morning the talk is in new jersey tooks boom grows. the last time it was reformed more than 30 years ago back in 1986 this is the week, we are very likely going to get a vote on this some of the no votes and some of the holdouts have said now that they are going to vote yes that includes bob corker and marco rubio. we'll see how things shape up and how this goes over we have a couple of guests to talk about this. we'll be joined by scott hodge who is the president of the tax foundation who will talk through all the numbers with us.

see what he thinks about all of this and rohit kumar with the tax policy services group. he'll talk about where he sees things for both individuals and businesses guys, we're talking a lot about all of the deals happening in the media landscape. disney, everything happening with that. our guest host for one hour, aryeh bourkoff he knows about just about everybody in the industry. he founded his own firm five years ago. we'll talk to him about what he sees playing out we can't talk disney without talking about what happened this weekend. "star wars," don't know if either of you guys saw it -- >> no, not yet i'll see it once the hype dies down. >> we have eric davis on the managing editor of fandango. he'll tell us about everything else >> becky, great stuff. we look forward to that. still ahead on "worldwide

exchange," dow futures up triple digits we'll tell you what's driving that when we come back

you can't predict the market. but through good times and bad... ...at t. rowe price... ...we've helped our investors stay confident for over 75 years. call us or your advisor. t. rowe price. invest with confidence.

welcome back to "worldwide exchange" with morgan brennan. futures at 140 points. joining us is the global equities minister. there's more gains to come if and when the president signs on the dotted line. >> certainly to a good extent priced in. if you think about it if the effective corporate tax rate goes 26, 27 where it is for most companies goes down to 21, that's about 5 to $10 earnings per share gain that's 5 tax points. we've covered half of that there's more it's well on its way to being priced in. >> certainly we've been focused

on equities and the impact of tax reform on equities and the possibility of that happening this week. why haven't we seen more activity in the bond market? what do you expect to happen there? >> yeah, it's interesting because the bond market has not really reacted, not even the front end which prices in the fed and i think the fed is a big moving part of this because if tax cuts, you know, generate productivity gains, that's great. the fed doesn't have to lean into that. if it doesn't, then we could get more inflation and over heating in the economic cycle as we approach late cycle with full employment and the fed probably would lean into that but that's not being priced in really at all. and even other parts of the market, let's say small caps relative to large caps, that is really a very good barometer for this fiscal legislation. right after the election a year ago small caps really moved and now they're just languishing so there is some -- there are some puzzling parts of this that

are not being acted upon it would seem. >> jurrien, were you surprised not to see the dollar not react to the fed last week >> i think that really comes down to real rates and real rates really comes down to the fed, right so the front end of the bond market is pricing in 2 1/2 more hikes over the next two years. they're saying six more hikes. that's a pretty big difference if the fed is right and the market is wrong, then my guess is that real rates will sort of elevate from here and the dollar would respond in kind. so far we haven't seen it, but i do think that is a risk for 2018 and beyond. >> certainly there's a lot of closings on tax reform, stronger economic growth both here and in

other parts of the world what do you see as the biggest risk coming into 2018 for the markets? >> i think one of the -- one of the risks is the fed, as i just described, because if the fed is going to raise rates more than the market expects, that should tight generally quit at this conditions if you look at the math of the market, you know, the p.u. ratio is driven by earnings, of course, but also by liquidity. the discount rate and discounted cash flow model. i think that liquidity angle has been an important factor this year because liquidity conditions actually eased even though the fed tightened if that were to reverse, that would become a head win for the market the other risk is china. china has been managing its latest credit reflation very well it seems. if that, you know, starts to become a different story, then could affect earnings globally. >> jurrien, thank you for

joining us and happy holidays. that's it for "worldwide exchange" this morning we're looking at a bigaiat gn the open 150 points or so for the dow "squawk box" comes up next across web and tablet? do you want $4.95 commissions for stocks, $0.50 options contracts? $1.50 futures contracts? what about a dedicated service team of trading specialists? did you say yes? good, then it's time for power e*trade. the platform, price and service that gives you the edge you need. looks like we have a couple seconds left. let's do some card twirling twirling cards e*trade. the original place to invest online.

good morning dow is pointing to a big triple digit gain at the open we'll find out what's fueling the jump traders once again thinking that synchronous global growth is happening. it's not the tax bill, not growth in this country, definitely not trump we are looking higher. travel alert a major power outage brings the world's busiest airport to a stand still. this sounded like a terrible situation to be in we have an update on the delays and cancellations in atlanta. the latest "star wars" movie

logging the second best debut weekend. we'll tell you how much the last jedi brought in home and abroad. monday, december 18th, 2017. "squawk box" begins right now. live from new york where business never sleeps, this is "squawk box. good morning, everybody. welcome to "squawk box" here on cnbc we are live from the nasdaq market site in times square. i'm becky quick along with joe kernen and andrew ross sorkin. we are looking at triple digit gains for the dow right now. gain of 136 points s&p up by 13.5 we heard more senators who used to be on the fence or voted no who have said they are on board with the tax cuts. primarily bob corker who says he will vote yes and marco rubio who says his concerns have bee