barrack and said they're going to have to go after wolff as well. >> not to be boring and go after the markets, watch oil oil's 61.70 a barrel. >> welcome s&p has passed 2700 for the first time, the nasdaq remains comfortably above 7,000 which it appears the dow and the russell are also moving higher in record territory right now. >> but the big story once again does come out of washington with a bomb shell battle involving the president. let's get right to john harewood

with a set up of a fiery press briefing >> a lot for sarah sanders to talk about in a few minutes. all of washington inside the white house and beyond has been talking about the revelations in this new book by michael wolff about the first year of the trump presidency. he describes that meeting as having been treasonous and said the fbi should have been called immediately rather than having that meeting in trump tower. he also said he thought the chances were zero that donald jr. did not take those russians to see his father. now all of that raises

potentially serious problems for the president himself in terms of his knowledge of what was going on during the probe that bob mueller and the special counsel was not continuing on. the white house responded sharply with a statement from president trump in which he said steve bannon has nothing to do with my presidency, he said that when he lost his job, was fired last summer, he lost his mind. he's been peddling false information to the news media, all of that is going to provide a lot of foughter for reporters in talking to sarah sanders about the white house that is in crisis and administration that is in crisis, and in a broader sense as we begin the 2018 midterm elections, this has placed the republican party in crisis because republican candidates are going to have to answer for the behavior of the president, his administration, and the picture that's being painted in this michael wolff book is not pretty at all, guys. >> we should point out we're waiting for the press briefing

to begin which is now scheduled for about 3:15 and sarah sanders goes to that podium and you can imagine, john, that with the release of this book coming up next week that paul ryan and mitch mcconnell are breathing a sigh of relief that they got that tax bill through when they did, huh >> no question about it. one other development i should mention is that paul manafort, who is one of the people whose been indicted by robert mueller and the special counsel is suing robert mueller and rob rosenstein, suing the justice department, questioning their authority for the investigation that they're ongoing and continuing, but that investigation has plainly touched a nerve in the white house and steve bannon deals with that as well. you're right, bill, the tax bill was the one thing that republicans really thought they could get legislatively from president trump, especially after the failure on obamacare

it is not clear whether anything significant legislatively will happen this year and the fallout from these revelations is going to continue. >> you know, john, the one thing that jumps out is this is what a lot of the president's critics have been pushing for. you've got to cut this steve bannon guy loose republicans especially who think that bannon doesn't represent the best interest of the party were furious about what happened in alabama where bannon's hand picked candidate lost to doug jones who is about to begin in the senate must be actually quite pleased with this turn of events where you have the president discrediting one of the people who they thought he should have discredited a long time ago. >> yeah, but i think the more significant affect of this book, kelly, is to discredit the president himself. the description of the president in this book for the people very close to him including gary kohn, steve mnuchin, reince

priebus, with all of them referring to the president as not very smart, not able to continue -- execute rir rational conversation, not somebody who was willing to read even short briefing memos this is a deeply, deeply troubling picture of a president. now of course we don't know the veracity of all the information, but, this is altogether unhelpful to the white house >> kelly and i have been talking about this, i read more excerpts on my way down here that are excerpted in new york magazine this is not just about steve bannon by any means, this is about -- >> oh no >> the whole campaign and the presidency and it really points to how unprepared or at least it portrays it that way, unprepared the trump administration was because they realistically, according to michael wolff's book didn't expect to win the election. >> that's right. they didn't expect to win the

election that they were as a unit, as a team, completely unprepared. there is a description of a conversation six weeks into the administration when a deputy chief of staff whose since left the white house says to jared kushner what are the top three priorities for the white house and the response according to to the book was i guess we should have that conversation so you have that kind of lack of preparation, and this depiction of the president as someone, almost child like in his attention span, in his interest in facts, in his petulance, this is as i say, we've been having a conversation the last few days about whether the president, the president's operating under delusions about whether or not there's a problem with his state of mind. you saw the tweet yesterday about north korea where he's talking about nuclear war and a capital of fashion all of that kind of talk is going to be accelerated by the way he is portrayed in this

book >> and let me point out no doubt this will be topic number one. it'll get under way around 3:15 eastern time >> i'm curious if there's a possibility the president himself comes tout address some of these -- >> you never know. >> this is the kind of stuff people have been saying about trump since day one. >> well, yes, that's true, but the question is, have people absorbed thesignificance of those facts? people have blown off those characterizations, certainly people who were trying to get legislation out of him like republicans in congress, but if somebody with those qualities is the president of the united states at a time of, for

example, nuclear danger with north korea, that's something that everybody ought to be concerned about. it's not a question of whether, oh, i didn't know this before about him, it's the question of what is the caliber of the person who is commander and chief of the armed forces and the president of the united states that's the issue >> all right while we wait for the news briefing to get under way here, let's focus for a moment on the markets which really continue the record run that they had in 2017 and with us here at the new york stock exchange, we have keith bliss. keith, with all of these revelations out today -- here we go again, taking it very, very well and i wonder if to some degree it has to do with the fact that the tax bill that they really had great hopes for last year is now reality and they don't have

to worry about that happening or not. >> well, i think that's part of the story, bill, like you and i have spoken about many times, you needed to get that legislation through to perhaps give another leg to this market. we were bumping up against some pretty hard resistance levels if you look at the technicals and we see broken field running when it comes to that, but you're right, also mentioning what we saw throughout 2017, there were enough slings and arrows thrown at this administration as president and the market continued to go higher to record breaking levels seemingly on a daily basis. so, listen, steve bannon's book, the press conference we're about to hear, whatever kind of retort there is, whatever kind of sound bytes we're probably going to get out of the president's haters and congress and other enemies, i don't think it's going to do anything to derail the market market participants have learned to just ignore it and move on and trade on the fundamentals of what they see in the global economy, fiscal policy and monetary policy, and that's precisely what you're seeing today. >> handlen to right now. >> wow wow.

we don't see that often. >> no, we don't. >> rick, let me bring you in here i'm curious what you think the significance about the ft. si are and also the fact that global markets do appear to have shrugged off even the latest skirmish between the president and the north korean leader over news >> i think it's all ma knew that angst exaggerated hyperbole, third person source scene, book written about being an insider and activities in the white house by a person who i never see in any of the photos i think it's really simple, okay what's good about the economy and the markets, isn't about what's going on in d.c it's not about the hundred senators, really it's about the american people and whether d.c. is an impediment to the activities at american people have always shown they could accomplish or they're not in theway. and i think this administration has a lot of flaws, but they're

not in the way and i think that's dynamic that the markets and investors focus on, and we could let the general media focus on all the rest because the markets keep going up, unemployment keeps going down, and people seem to feel better as today's data attested to >> guys, stay right there for a minute we'll come back to this. we have a news alert on intel already been in the news a lot today. let's get to josh lipton, what's happening, josh? >> well kelly, as you mentioned, intel's in the news today and under pressure from these reports, kelly, that we saw about a flaw in processors that it had produced over the past ten years. reportedly which would have allowed bad actors or back door into what's called a computer's kernel and if hackers got into that, they would have access to a lot of information you don't want them to have access to, security keys and pass words intel's out now with a statement saying, recent reports that these exploits are caused by a bug or a flaw and are unique to

intel products are incorrect based on the analysis to date, many types of computing devices with many different venders, processors, and operating systems are us is september to believe these exploits so in effect, intel saying it's not just us, they go on to say they're actually working with other companies, they mention amd and armed holdings to develop an approach to resolve this issue they say properly and constructively they say they've already been providing software and firmware updates to help mitigate these potential exploits and they say that any performance impacts from these patches they're putting out to the average computer user they say should not be significant and will be mitigated over time. we're going to certainly stick on this, bring you more news as it comes, guys, back to you. >> thank you, josh intel shares are off the lows still down 4%. curious to see if amd and arms now by soft bank have a larger reaction rivals rallying in response to

this development earlier today brent, anything you'd add about the risks to intel or i guess -- >> semiconductors overall. >> yeah. one of the best performers lately >> from the semiconductor perspective, no, i don't have anything on individual stocks. in general, but i agree with what rick and keith said about the economy doing very well, inflation is low and you have a federal reserve that came out today that wants to do no harm against that backdrop with bond yields being so low, the stock market continues to move high per. >> keith, anything there you'd say about the chips before we move on? >> i'm sorry. >> anything about the chip space, the risks to the semiconductors. >> listen, any time you're dealing with technology the way you have and it's widely dispersed and disseminated around the world, there's always the risk there's going to be a flaw and the design which is going to allow bad actors to come in. i think the investors have been running the chip space up and the semiconductors up well over the last year are going to take -- they're going to taking a pause and a good, hard look. you're going to find that with a lot of tech companies throughout the entire ecosystem, not the

big names that are ripping the nasdaq higher as we speak right now, but people are going to have to start looking at this technology with a bit of a jaw design, really examining what are the risks not only to the overall economy, but to their own business lines as well as do their own investments. so the news that we have here is a little unsettling, but i don't think it'll really collapse the market, but something that investors will certainly look at >> we're very close now. we believe, to the news conference getting under way there at the white house scheduled now for 3:15 eastern time so, rick, we may have to interrupt you here, but i'm curious, we had the fed minutes out, they seem to be a little more hawkish as they revise their thoughts and the economy in light of tax reform and yields went up as a result of the two year note just keeps going higher your thoughts on what role fed policy's going to play as the tax bill seeps throughout the economy this year. >> how many tightening and exactly the timing of them whether it's two, whether it's

three, some believe four, that's what it's all about, my opinion, and i think the market can give us some proof of that. two year note yields made a new high on a day on the minutes threes, fives, exactly what the previous high yield was earlier in the session hardly notice, they yawn through it the dollar index went up that's interesting i think with respect to the market and the fed and the minutes today, it's the same old story, but it's tur bo charged because jay powell come income puts more question marks in the timing, maybe pushes the tightening further into the year than normally they would have been if janet yellenremained a the helm >> brent, what do you think about that especially i think you guys still like commodities here they're going to suffer it all as they head into the tightening and. >> every economic cycle and every market cycle in the u.s. ends with three things happening. and three in the fed russias to tighten and stop it out to moderate the booms and, inflation hasn't arrived

yet, i think it's a 2018 story that people are ignoring right now, but i guess longer term i don't think the fed wants to do any harm and i don't think jay powell wants his act to fall the market or cause a recession. i think the fed is going to remain on the size of being cautioned. they want to threat run hot, i think they'll do so. >> okay. we are juggling plates in the air here as we wait for sarah sanders to come to the podium there from the daily press briefing which should be vsh interesting. have everybody stay right there. let's go to phil with the latest data on auto sales and how they look for the month of december, phil >> a strong month overall in terms of the total number of vehicles sold until december when you look at the pace of sales, bill were for the month of december, we'll get that number probably in the next 45 minutes or so, but the expectation is that it'll come in at about 17.7 million vehicles trucks and suvs continue to be the story, that's what people are buying, fewer people buying cars, especially small cars, and we should also know, we talk about the big three and

deservedly so because they dominate this u.s. market, but when you take a look at the overall pace of sales, you've got to look at honda and nissan having the best years ever, we are expecting sales for the year when they are announced within the next hour or so. coming in about 17.2 million they think about this guys, since 2012, 98 million vehicles sold, couple of stocks we want to highlight here, fiat chrysler, stock is at an -- yeah, an all-time high as the of today. not just a one year high, and also, toyota, it's stock is at a one year high despite the fact that it reported a decline in december again guys, we get the sales rate for the month, probably within the next 45 minutes or so >> i'm surprised that fiat and toyota were as weak as they were, phil >> well, they were down with a lot of other automakers when you go back 12 to 15 months, but they've had really nice move over the last year

>> all right phil, thank you and again, reminder, we're waiting for sarah huckabee sanders to come to the podium for the daily press briefing at the white house where topic number one is expected to be this new book by michael wolff about the first year of the trump administration which has been less than flattering, especially those words attributed to steve bannon we'll get to that momentarily and bob is here with us on the floor of the new york stock exchange we've been talking about how well the markets are taking this in stride as we sit here with all four of the major averages in record territories. >> stuff that wasn't working well last year isn't working this year. broad rally, what was the leadership groups for good part of the year last year? semiconductors leadership group today, semiconductors health care, another group, utilities lagging, steel stocks, materials also doing well. the street is remaining bullish, why? global economic growth central banks still relatively accommodative and then we talk now about infrastructure plans,

maybe wage growth picks up a little bit in 2018, and also gdp picks up, all of that's relatively bullish talk. the beryls are arguing, well, maybe, but we'll see what goes on, valuations are high. that's not enough to drop stocks so oil's picked up now oil stocks have now been up strongly this week, that's a mean reversion trade didn't do well last year, people are picking them up and finally, talk about a mean reverse, come over here. look what's back general electric's up almost 4% this year. that was the biggest laggard on the dow last year. everybody gave it up for dead, there's the classic trade. buy a stock that's been badly beaten up in the dow, long, long policy for a lot of people going on for many, many years. guys, back to you. >> bob, you mentioned gdp, i saw the atlanta fed numbers up 3% after that figure this morning how much stock do traders put into that number the headline, the new orders i think was the strongest in 14 years, it's a small part of the economy, but is it a leading sign for the market?

>> yes, the economic surprise indexes, there are people who track how much above the economic estimates of the numbers coming, and the economic surprise index has been much better in the last several months so the numbers generally are beating expectations, including that ism number, like i said, it's a small group, but it's noticeable you know the last time we had gdp growth 3%, i think it was 2005, probably i'll check that, but i think it was probably at least 10, 12 years ago. >> wow, for the full year. >> yeah. >> bob, we'll see you at the close. again, just a quick reminder, we are awaiting for the white house presds briefing to get under way with sarah huckabee sanders. supposed to happen about five minutes ago, but hey, we all live in the white house's world. don chu, let's bring you in here we all are wondering the impact that this incredible cold weather and this storm that's making it's way up the east coast and the impact that's having on certain stocks and businesses out there >> yeah, if we take a look about

the winter weather and whether it has an impact there's a lot of things that go into a stock's value, price and what the view is going forward, but we took a look at some of the stocks that may be impacted more by winter months. so we asked our data partners to look at performance during the winter months and redefined that as november 30th and the end of march every year for the last ten years and we took a look at average returns and how many times those trades have been positive this is interesting because there's story lines here home depot, home improvement, that sort of thing, other winter gear is an average 11% gain for that winter month span it's a positive trait eight of the last ten times we've had a winter netflix shares, we talk about that cabin fever, people binge watching, settling in, hunkering down for the cold weather. 35% gain, it's a positive trade 80% of the time as well. auto zone, buying new batteries, scrapers for your windshield, anti-freeze, that sort of thing, that's up 11%. it's a positive trade.

nine out of the last ten winters that we have had dominos pizza, ordering out because of the cold weather, don't to want go outside and have somebody deliver it to you, 24% gain on average for the winter months, positive trade, 90% of the time as well. then vf corps, if you're looking for outdoor gear, timberland boots, northface jackets, it's been a positive trade ten out of the last ten winters it's not to say these are going to hold true going forward, but they could be something that investors look at when it comes time to honker down for the cold weather, back to you >> sometimes past is prolonging. >> dom, thank you. might be good for netflix and dominos, couldn't come at a worse time for florida low temperatures come during the busiest tourist season how that's impacting the amusement park industry and so much more, eric. >> that's right, kelly it's about 45 degrees high here in orlando, 32 degrees cold, so it's freezing temperatures every night, behind me it's the water park it's owned by seaworld, they are not open for several days this

week, but you can go across the street to the regular seaworld, that's still open if you want to keep your shirt on and not get wet in the water park slides same story all around orlando. water parks owned by disney and universal, those are closed. orlando sees about 65 million visitors a year, about $65 billion in annual revenue from there. it's a big industry. it defines this city and we talked to a resident who's going to stay at home and watch netflix. >> i'm not really prepared if there was snow i guess if there is, i just stay put, netflix, you know, we have fun. >> and as dom said, netflix shares makes sense, we talked to the manager of a local home depot, they are all sold out of space heaters and they have a little bit of fire -- >> as we speak -- >> sarah huckabee sanders. >> participating in ongoing budget negotiations with

congressional leaders. the president urges democrats to adhere to the so-called schumer rule and not hold the government hostage in an attempt to advance a radical political agenda we must fully fund our military and ensure our brave men and women in uniform have the resources they need. they're always there for our country, and we must not let partisan bickering get in the way of the government taking care of them the president wants a clean funding bill in a fulfills our obligations, takes care of our military, and keeps our people safe and with that, i'll take your questions. >> sarah, the president said that when steve bannon was fired he not only lost his job, he lost his mind. does he feel betrayed by steve bannon does he regret hiring him? >> i think the president's statement is extremely clear what his position on mr. bannon is it was pretty lengthy and detailed and there's not really much to clarify or to add. >> he said a lot in this book, and they did have a long and close working relationship so is there a sense of betrayal?

>> once again, i think the president's statement fully addresses what his position and what his relationship with mr. bannon is, april >> sarah, when is the last time the president talked to steve bannon and this is a serious question, is the president now blocking steve bannon from calling his cell phone >> i'm not aware he was calling his cell phone, but i believe the last conversation took place at the first part of december. >> that these two power houses are fighting, the republican party -- what does this do to the president's base >> i don't think it does anything to the president's base the base and the people that supported this president, supported the president and supported his agenda those things haven't changed the president still exactly who he was yesterday as he was two years ago when he started out on the campaign trail his agenda hasn't changed. and he's continuing to fight for and push for that agenda and i think the base is extremely excited and happy with the job that this president has done in his first year in

office look at all he's accomplished. i think they're pretty happy with where he is peter. >> steve bannon has a distinct following, the alt-right, some people who may not be for the other, people who are magazine phobic, what happens there >> i think that's a question you're going to have to ask steve bannon the president's second base very solid. it hasn't changed because the president hasn't changed and his agenda hasn't changed and we're continuing to accomplish a lot of the things that were on the president's agenda as we did last year, and we're going to do a lot more this year as we move into the beginning of 2018 peter. >> you don't think i can handle the hard ones? >> did the president's son, donald trump jr. commit treason? >> i think that is a ridiculous accusation and one that i'm pretty sure we addressed many times from here before, if that's in reference to comments made be mr. bannon, i'd refer you back to the ones he made previously on 60 minutes where he called the collusion

with russia about this president a total farce. so i think i would look back at that, if anybody's been inconsistent, it's been him. certainly hasn't been the president or this administration >> followup on that, does the president meet any of donald trump's guests on that day >> as the president has stated many times no, and he wasn't part or aware of that. john decker. >> the tweet about nuclear threats. the nuclear button tweet should americans be concerned about the president's mental fitness that he appears to be speaking so lightly about threats regarding the nuclear button >> i think the president and the people of this country should be concerned about the mental fitness of the leader of north korea. he's made repeated threats, he's tested missiles time and time again for years. and this is a president who's not going to cower down and not going to be weak and make sure he does what he's promised to do and that's stand up and protect the american people. sorry, peter, i'm going to keep moving, john

>> is it possible he could misinterpret that? couldn't he misinterpret a tweet like that? >> i didn't say that i think it's extremely clear when the president's position is and our position on north korea hasn't changed since the beginning. this is a president who has committed to protecting americans and protecting the people of this country and he's not going to back down from there, john. >> that's a hard statement that the president put out today and it's not the first time that steve bannon has been toupic a t the briefing, and during that briefing on september 11th, whether a series of questions were asked of you, you were hands off in terms of going after steve bannon the president didn't really respond in any particular way to the 60 minutes interview, what's changed? what's changed between then and now after the interview that he

apparently did with michael wolff's book >> once again, i think the president and his feelings toward mr. bannon are clear in his statement and there's not much else to add beyond i don't think there's much gray area in what his feelings are. >> thank you, sarah, to pick up on that, this is a dramatic falling out between the president and someone who worked on his campaign, and also worked in this white house very close to him every day and so i think everyone is wondering, what led to this quite dramatic falling out and was it the loss of roy moore in that senate race that was mentioned in the statement you mentioned that they had last talked in early december is this a direct response to steve bannon calling the president's son unpatriotic and saying he committed treason? >> there are a number of factors that played in i would certainly think that going after the president's son in an absolutely outrageous and unprecedented way is probably not the best way to curry favor with anybody ashley

>> sarah, you mentioned the statement the president said is harsh and says the entire book is fiction, that said, a note explaining how the book came to be said that the author's conducted interviews for 18 months including when the president spoke to 200 people. many of the president's top aids -- >> he never sat down with the president to be clear. >> did -- >> since the president -- there was one brief conversation that had nothing to do originally with the book. it was i think around five to seven minutes in total since the president's taken office, and that's the only interaction he's had. >> the president's statement with the author's statement about how the book came to be. >> i'm not sure what the author's statement is on how the book came to be. i know that the book has a lot of things, so far what we seen that are completely untrue, you have many people that have

quotes that are sourced to them that are now coming out publicly and saying that those things are not true and so, i can't speak to what the author's comments were i can only speak for the white house. >> does the white house have a copy of the book now >> i believe there may be some individuals that do. jim. >> sarah, the statement, the president's statement suggests that steve bannon had very little influence in the white house, but the president himself elevated him to the same level as the chief of staff and put him on the national security counsel, how do you reconcile that >> i wouldn't say he elevated him to the same level as the chief of staff and i think that in the actions that steve took, the president was clear that it didn't have a lot of influence on him or the decision-making process throughout his time here at the white house margaret >> can you clarify, many of us here have seen michael wolff at the white house on multiple occasions. we've seen him firsthand we know who was here who gave him access to the white house, what was he here for? can you explain any of that

since we don't have access to the logs >> so far of what i can tell of the roughly just over a dozen interactions that he had with officials at the white house, i think close to 95% were all done so at the request of mr. bannon. >> so the compliance really you would just say came from steve bannon, other white house officials were not working with him and helping to -- >> any that did so far, as far as we can tell did so at the request of mr. bannon. debora >> the president tweeted that he'll be announcing the most dishonest and corrupt media award year monday at 5:00 p.m., can we get details on that will it be televised, how many awards will he present >> will there be an audience >> i certainly don't want to spoil anything, but my guess is that there are quite a few individuals that could be up for those awards and beyond that, i think we'll have to see what happens on monday.

>> will the press corps be in the room for that? >> we'll keep you posted, might be hard to present trophies if you guys aren't there, we'll have to wait and see what happens on monday. justin >> two policy ones, the first one is there was talk about letter from the department of transportation, the administration doesn't support the split of the framework for the gateway rail tunnel connecting new york and new jersey since it's infrastructure week, i'm wondering if the president -- >> is it infrastructure week when is it then? >> and principle supports at least a 50/50 split on that, and if not, what's changed from when he met with the delegation earlier last year? >> no new policy announcements on that front at this point, but as we get further into the year and further into the conversations on infrastructure, we'll be rolling out more details on what we want to do, what we hope to accomplish, and what the plan is to do that. >> the questions yesterday about

the sort of shorter lists of demands on immigration, wondering if that's something that nick mul vany brought up to capitol hill today >> it's possible that it comes up, we're certainly open to having conversations on that the conversation today, the primary focus is on the budget once again, we'd like a clean budget bill and so that's not what our focus is going into today's meeting. but our priorities on what we would hope to have in any immigration bill and any daca deal haven't changed they would include securing the border with a wall, ensuring interior enforcement, eliminating the visa lottery program and ending chain migration. all of those things are still the same >> you nail down data points with respect to steve bannon you said that the last time the president spoke with him was in the early part of december, was that before or after the special election in alabama? >> i'd have to look back at the exact date and circle that

>> did he write it in his own hand, did he dictate it? >> these are the president's words, i think they're very clear and there's not much to add beyond that. >> it's important that he was furious when these reports came out, is that an accurate depiction? >> i think furious, disgusted would fit when you make such outrageous claims and completely false claims against the president, his administration, and his family >> riptsed to ask you personally how surprised were you when you read these excerpts? did that surprise you in any way and if so how? >> certainly surprising, i for one was somebody who very much believed that the president could and would win, otherwise, i wouldn't have dedicated so much time to that. but not only that, i worked in

the white house since the very first day and a lot of the characterization that i saw that he was pushing out was the opposite of what i saw take place every day that i've been here >> very quickly on north korea, there's been some folks in town who've said listen, it doesn't help, despite the idea being we're going to be forceful, we're going to push back, some have said it doesn't help when the tweets come out the way they do, and yet we know that the president made clear, i am who i am, i'm going to tweet the way i want to tweet, has there been any consideration that tweets like the one on north korea actually don't advance the agenda, meaning working with other partners in the region >> i think what didn't help was the come play san si and the silence of previous administration this is a president who leads through strength and he's going to do that and he's going to focus on everything he can do in order to keep americans safe and he's not going to be pushed

around by the leader of north korea, our policy with north korea has not changed, we're fully committed to continuing to apply maximum pressure in working with all of our partners in the region including south korea kbho we have a better relationship now than ever before, we're going to keep working with them and keep pushing forward and hopefully north korea will start making better decisions >> thank you >> you just said that people should question the mental fitness of kim jong-un, so then isn't it dangerous for the president to be taunting him on twitter? >> i don't think that it's taunting to stand up for the people of this country i think what's dangerous is to ignore the continued threats if the previous administration had done anything and dealt with north korea, dealt with iran, instead of sitting by and doing nothing, we wouldn't have to clean up their mess now. >> you acknowledge -- >> sorry, i did call on her. >> it's a taunting tweet to say he has a larger nuclear button >> i think it's just a fact.

>> one more, what does it say about the president's priorities that he unleashed a four paragraph statement about steve bannon and one tweet on north korea? >> the president has issued a number of statements, as have i, as have the administration, ambassador haley, secretary of state, jim mattis, secretary of defense have all talked extensively about north korea to try to limit it down to one tweet. it's just disingenuous >> the president knows there is know actually one nuclear button is -- >> president's very well aware of how the process works and what the capacity of the united states is. and i can tell you that it's greater than that of north korea. >> two foreign policy questions, one yesterday you said there'd be more details on pakistan in the next 24 to 48 hours. reports that the president announces wednesday and thursday that it plans to cut off security assistance, is that accurate >> we'll keep you posted as those decisions are finalized.

>> regarding jerusalem and israel, the president tweeted last night that we have taken jerusalem the toughest part of the negotiation off the table, but israel for that would have to pay more, first, taking it off the table, when the president announced that jerusalem was the capital of israel, if the administration policy was stated as that the borders were not being decided, this doesn't affect negotiations, this tweet seems to contradict that >> i don't think so. it doesn't affect the negotiations we still want to continue to have conversations and continue the peace process. we're still very much committed to that. and hope it can continue to push forward in that point. >> he said that israel would have had to pay more >> i'd have to check on the details, i'm not sure. jordan. >> thanks sarah. in light of the book and the

access michael wolff he had to the white house, will you release visitor logs to the public >> i don't anticipate any changes to that policy at this point, but if it happens, i'll certainly make sure you guys are aware. john >> thank you, sarah. two questions, first, during the campaign the president said entitlements were off the table and he would preserve, social security, medicare, medicaid, medicare part d as they were, now with the passage of the tax reform legislation attendant recent statements of house speaker paul ryan that entitlements should be considered as the president changed his position from the campaign >> the president hasn't changed his position at this point again, as conversations go on if that does change, we'll let you know, trey sorry. >> yeah, is it safe to say steve bannon is off the list of social

invitations for the white house? >> probably so trey since those are controlled by the first lady, i think her statement's pretty clear on her position as well, trey >> thank you, sarah. questions on steve bannon and one on north korea, how would you describe steve bannon's role in the white house when he was serving in this administration >> i think the president addressed what he feels it was and to me, that's the most important voice in this process and he's spoken very clearly on that front >> if i could followup, is the president looking for an apology? what is he looking forward in the future from steve bannon >> i don't think anything. >> north korea, discussing earlier the idea that kim jong-un would be the one who is mentally ill, is the president concerned that tweeting about nuclear war could cause someone like kim jong-un to act with military force >> again, i've addressed this, i think the president is concerned about the continued threats that this individual has made towards the united states and others, and he's not going to allow him

to continue doing that without saying something and standing up for the people of the country. >> three former secretaries have said that the deadline for daca really is this month, that there's not enough time to put a new program in place by march. if it's not done this month. do you all agree with that i mean, does that make you, you know, feel like you have to get this done any sooner i know there's been talk here about not worrying about it until march. >> we'd like to get something done, but again, we want to make sure that we have complete and responsible immigration reform and we're not just dealing with one piece of it and we've laid out what our priorities are and what it would take to make a deal on that we look forward to the conversations and getting that done >> i'm sorry >> does it have to be done this month as they are saying >> i don't know that it necessarily has to be done this month, look, we'd like to make a deal on securing funding for the border wall as well as ending

chain migration, ending the visa lottery program, interior enforcements, we'd like to do that right away. if the democrats are willing to sit down and make that deal, i think we'd be happy to get that done by the end of the month andrew >> steve bannon left in the summer, late summer, if the president says he lost his mind when he left, why did he continue to talk to him for so many month kps. >> look, the president couldn'ted to have conversations with him -- continued to have conversations with him, often asked for by mr. bannon, the president spoke with him, that doesn't mean that he can't hold that position, andrew. >> thank you, sarah. what do you base -- okay she just called me comments about kim jong-un's mental disability, is that based on psychological assessment or is that -- >> i'm not going to get into any further details on that front. go ahead andrew.

sorry, i'll come back, andrew, go ahead >> the president own joyed a slight bump in popularity when he was in florida golfing, is it possible that americans like him more when he's out of the news and not tweeting >> i think americans like the fact that he got the largest tax cut in history done, they're going to see more of their paycheck, they like the fact that american companies are investing back in this country and not other ones i think they like the fact that american companies are now giving out maximum bonuses across the board we're seeing every single day, more and more companies announce decisions like that. i think that's what most americans certainly were very happy about, particularly as they went into the holiday season and they had a little bit more money too consider spending as they celebrated christmas with their family. one last question, hunter, go ahead. >> the past day or so we've soon president trump attack the press, the justice department and now his former ally steve bannon, but attacking critics and key institutions, isn't the president engaged in

aauthoritarian behavior? >> the president is simply responding too often news of the day. i think if the president can't respond aggressively to an individual like the leader of north korea that continues to threaten americans, then that's a dangerous place that we don't to want go down. >> sorry, go ahead >> to be fired from their jobs, that's not the president of north korea -- >> i'm sorry >> we've seen you and the president call for critics to be fired from their jobs. >> i don't think it's necessarily critics, we're certainly happy for people that have different opinions, but there's a difference between a different opinions and different facts. and people are entitled to an opinion, but they're not entitled to their own facts and we have a problem with people putting out misleading information. those are different things thanks so much, guys >> all right sarah huckabee sanders, performing her daily duties as the white house press secretary. the toughest job on earth as far

as i'm concerned >> we knew there was going to be a lot about this she defended the president in a pretty fiery way, let's bring in john harwood for more reaction >> sarah sanders took a minimalist approach to responding to the allegations in the book she repeatedly referred to the president, the statement the president put out earlier today, saying that steve bannon had lost his mind. she didn't to want engage on specifics, she said the president had continued to talk to steve bannon after he left the white house, said that last conversation occurred in december, but she didn't want to get into the back and forth on particular portrayals in the book she did say as you heard at the end of the briefing that what americans care about is the tax cut that was just passed and the bonuses that are being handed out by american corporations and on one piece of news, separate from the new michael wolff book today, she declined to comment on the report that's come out this afternoon that the

administrationplans later this week to eliminate security aid for pakistan which has been one of the targets of the president on twitter over the last couple of days. said, stay tuned, keep watching for that and one final thing on the issue of entitlement reform, the president promised during the campaign over and over, he would not touch medicare and social security, paul ryan, the house speaker in the wake of the tax reform victory has said the thing that we need to do next is entitlement reform, sarah sanders was asked does the president's promise still stand? she said well it does now, as conversations go on, if that changes, we'll let you know. that was an interesting way she responded to that statement. >> and as we talk, as sarah was talking, the market continues to go higher. the dow setting highs for the day right now up 115 points and if kbrour just joining us, all four are in record territory remarkable feat here

>> where we see the volatility index, in fact how rare is it? >> vix is below nine for only the sixth time ever. >> wow >> write that down >> in pencil >> right now we'll keep an eye on all of this, of course, and john, meanwhile, you know, this afternoon we had -- ryan meeting with chuck and nancy and everybody trying to figure out as they that funding deadline looms how to keep the government open and how much of a distraction this will be >> well, we know the outlines where have they're going to end up on spending, which is the administration wants a significant amount, about $100 billion of higher spending on defense, the administration, the democrats are insisting on a comparable amount of increased spending from the current caps that exist on domestic program they were close to a deal when they broke for the holidays. the big hang-up at the moment is on what are they going to do on immigration? the fate of the dreamers, those young people who were brought

here of no fault of their own, are they going to get legal status and if so, what concessions can the president extract from democrats on either a border wall, border security measures, the hiring of additional agents on the border, that's the big hang-up at this moment >> all right, john, thank you. john harwood at our bureau there in washington d.c. so a lot going on today in washington and on wall street as we close you down to the countdown here >> suddenly we only have ten left to go in the session today. s&p closing above 2700 for the first time closed about 7,000 today well into that territory the dow at 24926, just 74 points away from 25,000 russell, i don't know if there's any good ground levels nrbeay, it's 50/50, closing bell is back in two ones that make it fast and easy to analyze and take action? how about some of the lowest options fees?

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intel's ceo will join us coming up shortly. the stock of course selling off today. >> yeah, it's quite a day to have him as that stock was crushed, but recovered somewhat and it's main competitor amd is what's helping to power the nasdaq higher. it's up about 8% right now

this after a report that intel's chips and security flaws that would be very difficult to fix we'll be hearing from him next hour, stay tuned

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averages bob is here with me we're picking up where we left off in 2017, bob >> yep >> the dow, the s&p, the nasdaq, the russell all in record territory right now. >> and you can make an argument, why shouldn't we the elements for the rally remain in place, the global economic growth, very low rates. and a fed that's still relatively accommodative, they've been clear about their slow glide path as we like to call it. now this talk of an infrastructure spending bill, that may be a little bit of help there is talk we might -- there's people that have 3% gdp growth >> atlanta feds instant gdp number is above 3% right now >> i just checked. last time we had 3% in a full year was 2005. it's been a long time. >> meanwhile another trend from last year that's continuing so far. the vix now back above 9, brief live bloi 9. >> that's a new record there

>> we're about to dip below eight. so and remember omething, the vix measures expectations for the next 30 days how much they think the s&p is going to move around in the next 30 years 30 days. so it's a very short term indicator, but they're not expecting things to move a lot >> we had a failed rally in oil yesterday, responding initially to the unrest in iran, but today that rally continued and didn't fail and kept going higher a two and a third percent gain for wti crude to almost $62 a barrel >> nobody wanted to moving up for the last quarter towards $60

and guess what's moving, the first couple of days in the new year, they have the xop which is the oil and gas exploration. you had the oil services not only do you have the old guard playing in, but now you've got energy stocks playing in as well and then look what you've got. you've got 100 points in the dow as a result. few stocks hit new highs chevron last week, eog hitting new highs. we're going to see if this keeps up some breakouts in other energy >> 2:00 eastern, we had to release of the feds minutes of the most recent meeting from last month and, you know, the fed discussed the members in the fomc, if we get tax reform, you can probably have to readjust your growth estimates for the economy and that suggests they're going to be more hawkish this year than earlier anticipated and yields went up.

we're at roughly a nine year high >> and of course the inflation debate rages on. the phillips curve is dead that you could have some growth in the economy now, and not necessarily have inflation, that's what the phillips curve talks about. and that's really the harder the debate can you traditionally -- overheated economy and inflation moved up and the fed got aggressive now there's a debate about whether to have that whether that even matters anymore. the fed seems perplexed. it may be the most relevant question he was right about that in 2017. >> didn't show you gold, but it's down. now it's turning positive just now. but 1316 is where we stand right now to a multimonth high as the dollar continued lower, but even the dollar index came back a little bit there was that dip in gold that we saw and now we've come back

positive. >> and remember everybody who said a month ago, they're going to sell gold and buy bitcoin but they didn't sell cold. we have records all around for the major average, more on that coming up now on the second hour of the closing bell when kelly evans and company. see you in label the, kelly. >> thank you bill and welcome to the closing bell everybody, and where to begin with the records that are falling again today on wall street? how about the dow up nearly 100 points on the bell today 24,921, we are just about 79 points away from crossing a 25,000 mark for the blue chips up a little more than a third of 1% today and actually the weakest performer compared with the other averages the s&p up two-thirds of 1% and 2712 is the first time the

market has closed above the 2700 mark the nasdaq closed above 7,000. today up .84% closing at 7065. ending at record highs closing in at 25 k the big gainer was ibm today while intel lagged, we're going to have much more why intel is down

harley davidson down nearly 4% today. michael, extraordinary day >> it was. and i think for a couple of reasons. one obviously there was no pent-up selling apparently coming in to 2018. a lot of people thought that might be the case after a strong year last year the muscle memory of buying those leaders remains in place, at the same time, you have really good economic data that's emboldening people to say hey, the stocks, the industrials look good too the reinflammation stories versus the deflation their tax so i think the market's reflecting a lot of this happy stuff. i think the thing that we have to worry about is embracing this upbeat story a little bit too tightly. that's not a moment in time you can identify it's a process and i don't think we're quite there yet. >> dennis, are people going to throw around terms like frothy this all comes after the minutes tightening and no one appeared the least bit phased by that

>> if the underlying economic conditions encouraged the tightening, it's obviously a -- largely a positive, kelly. we've been talking frothy for a year it's a moment if i may turn to something that big thinker about behavioral psychology, he says don't be surprised by the surprise. and i would love to squeeze mr. santulli and say what is the surprise that will break the fever? it is not going to stay that way forever. what is the thing theoharis going to break that streak >> so you want me to tell you what the unexpected thing is that the market should be expecting? >> at least as a hypothetical. >> i think right now the fed minutes were interesting, but so

far the markets and the fed are not really on vastly different pages. i do think you'd have to say some kind of acceleration with a more hawkish make-up maybe that does it, but on the other hand, that's like risk factor number one or two from everybody's outlook. it's hard to see that coming truly from left field to be honest with you. >> we're off to a rip roaring start, what do you make of it. >> yeah, so i think it's a little bit more of the corporate tax cuts rippling their way through. any time you get, you know, 35 to 21%, that's going to add 12 to $15 of s&p $500 earnings. that's going to be a very positive thing i think they could push to 2850 higher by the end of this year when i'm looking at certain things, i'm fishing in a pond that's more value-oriented where

the russell ,000 was up 134% last year with russell 1,000 growth i like to stay in the cheaper areas of the market. it's fun twhiel lasts. >> sandy, because of that, so you're looking for the undervalued parts of the market right now, there are people who say none exist anymore, anyone who's going to call markets frothy, are you able to find places in the market that are still a good value as far as you're concerned >> yeah, i think it really is the more value-oriented sector of the markets, but i look at a company like the semiconductor companies are trading at 17 or 18 times earnings. it's the third cheapest company in the s&p 500 there's plenty of value there if you can look for it. >> you own a fund there, you're still finding some opportunities, the dow over

25,000 today, with that over the horizon, i should say, we're not there yet -- >> don't go that far, kelly. >> not going to get ahead of myself dom is here >> 78 points we got 78 points to go maybe we'll get there pretty soon, again, we're knocking on the door so it just underlies this huge rally that we've seen in the stock market ever since the election last year as we take down these thousand point milestones about 1,000 point milestones so where is the momentum coming from with regard to who's contributing the most to the dow's gains? we took a look and said hey, what about in 2017, it was about a 5,000 point gain generally, just shy of that for the dow overall. these three stocks accounted for more than a third of those gains, boeing contributing 959 points to the dow's overall gain of nearly 5,000. caterpillar, and then united health, 416, these three stocks, the bulk of the gains in the dow industrials last year.

so which ones could push the level over that 25,000 mark? well, boeing, goldman sachs, 3m, and united health care these stocks are the highest price stocks in the dow jones industrial average and of course, kelly, the dow is a price weighted index, these stocks are going to have the most weight. if you look at some of these names, boeing 3m, united health, caterpillar, part of part of the iq 100 and if you want to look -- >> not to mention where we've come, we had the gauge below nine today i rarely -- i mean i think it's happened a half a dozen times ever and this comes after people were saying, the president was irresponsible tweeting about nuclear war with north korea, this is not a market, you know, talk about the risks that may be ahead, that's one that everybody

talks about, and one that we completely glazed over >> market cuts to the bottom line when it is, what exactly would options prices be trying to capture in reacting to a presidential tweet or some kind of slight move in the probability of some kind of cattily mic conflict and they never really did that the vix mostly responds to what's the rhythm and behavior of the market recently so, the vi skprks telling you the character of this market and until that -- it sounds like you're deferring to what the tape is doing. >> i've got to be honest, kelly. they're ready to go.

even though the market's pretty much been the same for the last year >> see the lead from tomorrow already. as per usual, phil has those, big question is how much of a moderation did we see? >> we saw label the of moderation, overall the sales rate was better than expected, kelly, it hit almost 18 million vehicles the sales pace, for december was

17.9 million vehicles. but when you take all of the sales and put them together, the total sales for 2017 came in at 17.23 million vehicles, couple of data points for you, one, that's the fourth best sales ever in the u.s., not as robust as 2016 and about 17.56 million, but still, extremely strong and also, this is the first time ever that we have seen autosales in the u.s. top 17 million vehicles for three consecutive years, kelly, back to you. >> all right, phil, thank you. sandy, what do you think about what's happening in the auto space? we go back to the great recession and people said you know what the automakers are going to get profitability again. are the best days passed though? >> i think it's been absolutely incredible it shows the rebustness of the economy as i look forward towards the rest of the year

that i get label the nervous with oil over 61 for the first time since summer of 2015 and looking forward to a couple of interest rate hikes in 2018, that may put up a little bit of damper on that as we look to battle some potential inflation. >> true, that could be head wind mike for the auto sector >> it's true, i think it's remarkable we were talking about this cycle rolling over a couple of times i think in the last few years. even used car prices, we thought that was going to be the scary omen, they've even rebounded to some degree. obviously it's a global story, but definitely showing up in the north american numbers so it's again, it's really hard to punch a lot of holes in the fundamental story and how it's being me tablized by the market right here as much as we'd like to look for that thing as a trip wire. >> the question is if we go back and say the sales pace last year still good, off the highs i of the year before, are these going to be like, you know, sales and real estate and so forth where that's a leading indicator that, you know, the economy overall,

peaked or maybe 2018 ll surprise us and climb to a new high >> there's a certain replacement cycle for vehicle and vehicle age, and so after the great recession, the car fleet was at it's oldest period for a long time that's been refreshed. i think there's sort of a natural rhythm to it as maybe mr. santulli would say i think one difference in housing is that there is sort of a relatively fixed supply even though there are obviously houses being built every year, it's not as flexible obviously as an auto number and what we're seeing right now of course in real estate kelly is there is a relative basis a shortage of homes and housing for america at large. and so, i think there's more room to go on the housing front, of course, depend ogen the tax implications, there's more room to go on housing >> and quickly, it's funny you bring this up, but again in the trend of reasserting the winners from last year, the home builders index was up strong today, top performer, and that was coming off of a good 2016

and a half let's talk about intel for a second though. we mentioned it was the big decliner in the dow today. it's security flaw becomes amds gain the shares were climbing after intel revealed this design flaw. let's get to josh lipton with the latest on all of this, josh. >> well, it's not just us, kelly. that's what intel is now saying in response to these reports of that big chip bug. intel as you pointed out all day long here. and that's after the reports surfaced that there was a flaw that could allow bad actors and back door into a commuters's kernel, the worries is if hackers can get access to the kernel then they can access security keys, pass words, log-in details, intel is now saying that this doesn't in fact just involve it's products, saying in a statement, recent reports at these exploits are caused by a bug or a flaw and are unique to intel products are incorrect. based on the analysis to date, many types of computing devices

with many different venders, processors, and operating systems are susceptible to these exploits intels, rivals, you point out, amd, sharply higher in today's trade. intel is now saying it's working with amd as well as arm holdings to resolve this issue properly so the issue appears more widespread than initially thought, answer could be here that big tech companies that rely on intel processors such as microsoft, apple, as you patches to address the problem, intel saying it's already offering software to help address this exploit and it's all saying contrary to press reports that any performance impact from the software shouldn't be significant for the average consumer, amd, apple, microsoft did not respond to request for comment, kelly, back to you. >> all right josh, thank you and coming up in just a few minutes, intel's ceo, brian will join us for a cnbc exclusive interview from much more on that situation. now the white house holding a press briefing last hour after president trump blasted former chief strategist steve bannon's

comments in a new tell-all book about the administration let's get to to those highlights >> hi kelly, it was a dramatic press briefing until the white house just in the past hour. sarah huckabee sanders going out of her way to say that it was simply ridiculous to suggest that donald trump jr. had committed treason by meeting with the russians in trump tower during the 2016 presidential campaign she also said that the president was furious when informed of some of the comments by his former aid, steve bannon in a new book buy michael wolff that's been interpreted today. this has been a dramatic political moment for this white house today. former top aid here, accusing the president of all sorts of things we see the president responding dramatically in a statement, and we also see sarah huckabee sanders asked if that rift between the two men would cause a problem in the president's political base here's what she had to say on that front >> i don't think it does anything to the president's base the base and the people that supported this president supported the president and

supported his agenda, those things haven't changed the president's still exactly who he was yesterday as he was two years ago when he started out on the campaign trail. his agenda hasn't changed. and he's continuing to fight for and push for that agenda >> so here's the statement from the president today, i've never seen anything like this really in terms of a president denouncing one of his own former white house white house advisors steve bannon has nothing to do with me or my presidency when he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind. steve was a staffer who worked for me after i had already won the nomination by defeating 17 candidates often described as the most talented field ever assembled in the republican party now that he's on his own, steve is learning that winning isn't as easy as i make it look. steve had very little to do with our historic victory which was delivered by the forgotten men and women of this country. yet steve had everything to do with the loss of a senate seat in alabama held for more than 30 years by republicans steve doesn't represent my base, he's only in it for himself.

we also saw a statement here from the communication's director for the first lady who denied a report in that michael wolff book is that suggested that the first lady was upset when the president won the book is clearly sold in the bargain fiction section. this is trump supported her husband's decision to run for president and in fact, encouraged him to do so. she was confident he would win and was very happy when he did needless to say kelly, a lot of political fires here to put out at the white house today they've been responding to this all through the afternoon. we can expect that to continue now. for several days as all of the different pieces of this are pulled together. back over to you >> thank you before we go, dennis today we also had word that american airlines southwest, they're giving out $1,000 bonuses. people continue to talk about the benefits from the tax cut for both themselves and for their -- we're not talking about any of that, we're talking about the bannon book. what do you think the ultimate significance of all of this is >> hey, you know, i was trying to think what have i wanted to say to that, and i'm going to be honest with you, kelly, i have

nothing to add because the words speak for themselves from both sides. so, it's just -- it's beyond words. for the market >> yeah. from an investing point of view, that's why i was going back to tax reform, huge theme for 2018 still trying to figure out what the benefit might be for -- and what the companies are going to do with all the cash >> oh, okay, okay. >> i was just wondering from an investor's point of view, does today's drama, does the ousting of steve bannon suggest the president's going to move less in a protectionist direction, for example? are there any takeaways? >> i'll point you to this, i'll point you to the i have ises you, the company, the money gram, holdings deal relatively small deal, but basically china was told, you're not welcome here in the united states. from my perspective, and where we sit at the wall street journal, the protectionist walls are continuing to be built up, particularly on inbound acquisitions into the u.s.

so i don't think we've seen the start of it on the protectionist question and bannon is somewhat incidental it's robert who matter's most on those issues yeah >> all right fair point >> as far as politic goes, i'll let them speak for themselves. >> dennis, stanley, appreciate your time. >> thank you >> thank you for joining us today. a lot more ahead on the second hour of the closing bell. you always pay

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welcome back market flash on zoomies. let's begin with jackie deangelis. >> look at shares of zoomies up 9% in the after hours session. that's because the company reported comp sales increasing 7.9% 3.4% is the number that we saw last year at this time

the guidance was even better and that's what investors are really sinking into here. growth of 7% versus and estimate of 4.4% for the fourth quarter and eps, 88 to 90 cents, company raising it's own previous forecast and consensus at 80 cents. these shares are on the move, kelly. >> the fourth quarter was a sending flush and benefitting those left for dead in the fall and then had a little bit of comeback >> yeah, even the chain store sales number were strong this morning. zoomies now up nearly 12%. with prices as high as manhattan's buildings here lately, the sky was the limit for new york real estate plus the tax changes have pushed by a one-time resident of trump tower, made having an impact i think i know who that is robert frank is here with me, robert. >> yeah, little bit of an irony there. did take a big tumble in the fourth quarter and experts say

2018 could get even worse, especially for the most expensive new condos now the fourth quarter was actually the worst in six years for sales. average prices for a manhattan apartment fell below $2 million for the first time in two years. that's according to a report from douglas and miller samuel this was a one off quarter as buyers wait for clarification of all the detail us of the tax plan the problem is that those details are bad for manhattan real estate. especially with the elimination of state and local tax deductions that's expected to put pressure on manhattan property prices now the high end is going to be especially hard hit as it was in the fourth quarter sale prices for luxury apartments, that's the top 10% of the market, they fell 21% in the quarter. there is now a 17 month supply of inventory that's up from ten months just a year ago we did have big one off sales last year. the expensive sale was a $91 million purchase of three

penthouses that went to a chinese buyer the second most expensive was an $80 million townhouse on the upper east side, sold by vince who bought it for 20 million in 2006 kelly, the problem is not just the salt deduction problem even before that, we have a lot of new inventory coming on the market as anyone who just takes a drive through manhattan can tell you, all these giant new towers going up 5,000 new apartments coming on the market in the next two years. that's the challenge >> it's like london. thank you very much, robert, from real estate to cars we've got some breaking news on tesla. what's happening >> kelly, we have the fourth quarter delivery numbers and we're going to get the overall numbers in just a little bit but the one number that's going to get the most attention which is not going to be a huge surprise, but it is short of what many people were expecting, model three deliveries for the fourth quarter many people thought they would come in between 2,000 and 2500 even those estimates were

brought down of close to 5,000 they came in at 1,550 model 3s delivered in the fourth quarter. again, that is shy of expectations total deliveries, topping 101,000, a little bit more than what the company's previous guidance was, but it's the guidance for the first quarter for the model 3 that will also get a fair a. attention. remember, previously tesla said by the end of the first quarter, it expected to be building 5,000 model 3s perweek now the company says, that it's going to be a slightly more gradual ramp in the first quarter. it'll be 2,500 model 3s per week by the end of the first quarter and then 5,000 per week by the end of the second quarter. essentially kelly, they're stretching out the rain book in production of the model 3 from the first quarter being 5,000 to now not happening until the end of the second quarter. delivered in the fourth quarter.

kelly, back to you >> that's the headline the shares are down 1% there was a lot of concern about this coming into the market and lately, thank you, we'll keep an eye on tesla which is falling on that report. another breaking story now, shares of intel plunging today on reports of a security flaw in the company's chips. that could offer a back door to bad actors our john fort has an exclusive interview with intel's ceo brian now. john >> kelly, thanks thanks for joining us at sbrel's headquarters i understand you've got details on this that you want to clear up about exactly what the scope of this issue is how many different companies and devices in the industry are affected you say it's not just intel, can you explain what the problem is and when you discover it >> sure john, thanks for fitting me in today. we were made aware of this issue a while back from research for google as they were doing research and what's called

speculative memory access or basically all modern processers across all applications used an access memory. what they learned is bad actors could exploit that and we're constantly learning new ways to exploit architectures. then patching and fixing that. that's what this is. we were working with all the industry partners, armed, amd, the os venders, and the oems of the various hardware systems to patch this you believe that all modern computing devices are equally affected by this, so my phone your echo in your house, your pc all equally susceptible to this kind of attack >> it's not going to be all, it's going to be the higher level.

>> okay. >> definitely some of the products in each one of the categories will have this and they won't all be equally. it's very workload dependent, john, depending on how it accesses the memory and right now what we've been doing is working on mitigation. so making sure we understand how to go fix this problem and resolve it so what we've been working on is the software patches we can deliver along with the partners and oss to the customers so that they can be mitigated. i can't tell you exactly on the other guys -- on the other products exactly which ones are affected, but definitely most of the modern high performance processors you're seeing in the leading edge products across that array that you talked about, phones been pcs, everything, are going to have some impact. but it'll vary product to product. >> now do you believe you have a

final fix that your partners are going to be able to put out this operating system update that i think we expect to see early next week or is it a series of fixes that are going to have to come across in order to protect people from this problem >> so, i can speak for intel and our answer is yes, we believe we have the right fixes in place. we've been testing those fixes and making sure that we understand how to implement those. and those are going to get distributed out to the oems and they start next week, early next week, i think they'll roll out to the oems schedule and whether for example you do automatic updates or whether you as a user have to go to the website and get the update yourself, they're going to roll out to people over time and i think the message to get across here, part of this, john, is, you know, we're constantly searching and working to find

these types of exploits and we're constantly doing updates, and we want people to keep this upgrade and software updates, realtime as much as possible, on a regular basis. >> i'm curious about your wording here in the statement from intel from just a few minutes ago, you say, recent reports that these exploits are caused by a bug or a flaw, and are unique to intel products are incorrect. i understand the part about not being unique to intel, why do you say it's not a bug or a flaw if a bad actor is capable of taking information they're not supposed to have by this method. >> so part of the reason -- there's two reasons i they, john, one is the system's operating exactly as it's supposed to. this is how the system was architected and designed another piece of data you need to have is we have found no instances of anybody actually executing this exploit so we've found no case where somebody's actually done this. but what we constantly are

learning and you see this from time to time across everyone's products we are finding things to patch and exploit. that's why we say it's not a flaw, it's working like it should we have learned that you can get access to that memory, but we have a mitigation. go ahead and patch this, we haven't seen any case of this actually being executed. and we have the fix. >> now you say you haven't seen a case of it being executed, and i know a number of devices report back to the manufacturer at various levels, on various time schedules these days, but how confident are you that you would know if this exploit had been used say by a nation state in some targeted cases >> you know, i think we are -- i'd put it on the relatively

confident. it's hard, we can't go out and check every system out there, but when you take a look at the difficulty it is to go and execute this exploit, you have to get access to the systems and then access mot memory and operating system we're pay itly confident given the checks bev done. we haven't been able to identify an exploit yet >> sounds like you're saying an attacker would need physical access to the system the last thing i want to ask is because students of intel and some long time investors will remember the floating point issues from a while back are you saying that this is an entirely different category and you believe investors should look at your road map as being basically safe, based on the work that you've done this and the fix you believe you have >> the floating point issue was an actual calculation flaw they had come out with the wrong number and it was many decimal points down the line, but it was still a wrong number at times.

this is not a case of that the system operates. the calculations are right, you cannot with this exploit make any changes or delete data you can't do anything through that data through the process. it's not a flaw from that perspective. we are starting to mitigate it and hardware or in software as we've talked about and we are already looking and starting to make mitigations into that hardware level to future products a z well but again, i want to remind you this is a continuous process, we're constantly working to improve the security of our parts. we're constantly working to find these. we're working with our partners like google and our other cpu partners or industry leaders to find these kinds of issues and then go out and resolve and mitigate them. >> google made you aware of this, why you believe that it's

become a headline now. so close to the time when you were about to release with partners this fix. >> sure, we were notified by google a while back ago. couple months allege >> couple months, okay. >> yeah, but our process is if we know that the process is difficult to go and exploit and we can come up with a fix, we think we're better off getting those fixes in place as an industry we made a decision, remember this was everybody working together this was not an intel decision this was, you know, all of those partners the os partners, amd, everybody working together to say, let's get the mitigation in place and then publish that data and so that's what was occurring. why did it leak ahead of time as somebody was doing some updates on a lennox kernel and they improperly posted that this was due to this flaw

so that's why we're responding to it today. >> i believe you have an analyst call in about 25 minutes that's going to address this issue for verss who are nervous about the whole industry perhaps and vulnerabilities around this time, after a 2017 where we saw a number of serious breaches, what do you say to them in terms of the level of cooperation that the industry has had about this issue and your competence that you'll be able to continue to address these kinds of potential vulnerabilities as they arise? >> yeah, john, i think this is a great example, right this is a case where the industry came together, all of the architectures are working very, very well together and the os venders and it's a case where we have identified this exploit ahead of any kind of security breach as

you just described we also understand you couldn't do anything to that memory so all of those things together, i think this is an example of the industry working well together to police itself. to go in and really manage itself around and make our industry more secure as we move forward >> brian, thanks for joining us. exclusively on that, ahead of that analyst call, certainly made a number of investors nervous today as we tried to get information about exactly what was going on thanks for bringing us up to date >> thank you, john >> and john, thanks to you as well our john fort there, very much appreciate it. mike, the shares of intel which are down about 3.5% on the close today, looks like they're selling off another nearly 1% afterhours >> it's valuable context in terms what have this means, it's not anl analysis to a big recall for a consumer product i do think though that i can

separate the reaction for the stock today from the fact that intel shares were up 30 something percent in five months it's so this is something where it was an excuse to take -- i don't think the market is saying this is going to cause radical market share shifts right away, but it's definitely something that seems like it's an ongoing process, it's not going to be cleared up in a moment >> especially based on how the competitors moved today. we an upward move. look forward to more information when intel does speak at 5:00 p.m. on that call and see if that changes people's minds about the rally. that they saw on some of the competitors today as well. complex issue, we'll keep an eye on it. bitcoin debate like you've never seen coming up and before the break, 11 s&p sectors on a record breaking day for the dow. nasd a s 5aqnd&p00

bitcoin futures dipped below 15,000 today depending on which one you watch. maybe all of them. anyway, close viewer of the show someone isn't the crypto currency's biggest fan >> am i being punished for something? >> because i'm here? >> no. >> because they're making me start with bitcoin >> oh yeah, you don't like it. tulips >> says here bitcoin is well off it's highs of the week good for bitcoin says here they want me to ask you about something called bitcoin. i'm not familiar with it >> you might be a little skeptical judging by your reaction >> i cannot wait for the michael lewis on this. >> bill's favorite topic,

bitcoin, fraud or for real >> oh, i think it could be somewhere in between i mean i think -- doesn't have to be a fraud, it's a bubble >> dennis, my friend, you and i often see eye to eye on things and i think we see eye to eye on this one, this is a bubble no matter how you look at it. >> well mr. griffith is back, he is on set here along with brian kelly who is founder and ceo of bbkmllc. >> i've been waiting to get to this conversation. also the offer of the bitcoin big bang >> if anyone can convince bill about bitcoin's merit. >> it's a tall task, i'm going to give it a shot. >> i'm not sure about the merit, would you admit it's in a bubble. >> listen, what we've seen recently, it's certainly a speculative type of frenzy, right? we're seeing people coin based adding 100,000 accounts a day. to me that doesn't necessarily take away from the revolutionary technology, but it's subject to market bubbles and fear and

greed like every market is >> that's why we need to clarify what we're talking about here. look, as kelly will tell you, i don't know block chain from any chain at this point. what i'm concerned about though is all the hallmarks of a bubble in place, and i think of the 1990s for example, when you had any company that would put dotcom at the end of their name and up went the stock. now you have dpaens like a little burger chain telling us they're going to take payments through block chain, and their stock goes up by 5,000% or whatever >> right, but that's not bitcoin. that's stocks and that's people being deceitful frankly. >> but the people who are investing in bitcoin who don't know what they're investing in, that's a problem you know, look at the price charts that have been -- >> but how many people, how many people, how many people buy google and know what the algorithm does >> google is already an established company. now i will tell you when it first came public, there was skepticism. >> okay. >> but they've proven themselves that's a big point to be made.

it's a timing issue, back in the '90s when a company was a dotcomer, you had a lot of the country that was not online yet or if they were, they were still doing the dial-up process. and the valuations assigned to those companies stocks could not be met by the growth of those companies because they were restrained by the infrastructure in place >> so let's -- >> the same is going on with bitcoin right now. >> no. >> there's a lot of promise in this, but you don't see the infrastructure in place to justify the valuation. >> first of all, you need to separate -- let's separate the stocks the crypto currency stocks or block chain stocks from bitcoin itself now bitcoin is a currency. currencies have a very different valuation scheme than stocks you can't look at them and say what the pe ratio is, the currency markets are trillions of dollars a day they capture as much value as they need to capture to transfer money around the world that's all that bitcoin is to talk about bitcoin valuation saying it's under or overvalued is like saying the u.s. dollar

or the euro is over or undervalued. we can come up with metrics, but it's not that useful it'll capture just like gold if people want to store no gold, they can expand the valuation to the point people want to store money in it. same is happening with bitcoin >> bitcoin's are in the hands, a good portion of them, you will acknowledge, in a few hands. >> uh-huh. >> and this is a matter of faith as long as there is faith in the future of this currency or whatever it is, the valuations will hold, but if they lose face, look out, everybody heads for the exits, right and that's exactly what happened in march of 2000 when people started heading for the exits. when the dotcom bubble burst >> okay. >> same thing happened in 2007 when the housing bubble burst, but these are human emotions this is fear and greed nothing to do with bitcoin, the technology >> i'm telling you, 20 years ago there was a lot of promise about the internet and look at it today. >> of course. >> it's huge okay. >> yeah, exactly so why wouldn't you want to be apart of that? >> because it's not there yet.

it's not cooked. it's not soup yet. >> that's new technology -- >> there are people invests who have no idea what they're doing. >> of course, that's always the case, in any market. in any market. >> exactly >> that's why we have this whole tv program to educate investors and tell them what's going on with stocks that they should buy. again, has nothing to do with bitcoin. now, if i'm looking at block chain -- >> one question, would you ever recommend somebody buy a currency based on it's value >> a currency like the u.s. dollar or the euro i mean, i trade currencies for a living, so yeah, i guess i would, sure. >> is that because you can assign it a fundamental value or identify trading ranges? >> i think i could do both there are period of times in currency markets where things are egregiously over or under valued. >> based on purchases rates. >> yeah, like purchasing power parody >> what are those fundamentals >> well the fundamentals really bitcoin is a network, right? so one of the fundamental things they use is the number of

transactions that are happening. and if you use something like met calf's law, when you start to see transactions go up, then that means that more people are using the network, therefore it's more valuable to people because more people are using it it's no different -- >> value currency the same way >> you could value a currency the same way why is the u.s. dollar more valuable than the swiss frank? >> has the fiat ever gone from 8,000 to 20,000 as people bought it by coin base on a credit card >> no, that doesn't. but yeah, i mean, we're also talking about in 1790 when the u.s. dollar came out, what was the price then, right? i mean, again, you're talking about speculation which happens in every single asset class, not -- this is not block chain technology and bitcoin this is a disruptive technology that people should, as an investment, have one one to 5% of their investment in this. they don't need to put100% of their net worth.

this is a fundamentally disruptive technology that is going to change the way that we send money around the world. >> bill, are you convinced >> of what >> you tell us >> i am convinced of my position, and i think brian agrees with me, we kept saying, you know, that it has all the hallmarks of a bubble, which disruptive markets tend to do as they are in their nascent period, which is that this is and you're going to have those people who get in to make a quick buck who lose their shirts because they didn't understand what they were investing in. and that's, i think, where we are in this process right now. >> possibly. possibly, but again, that happens every single day in every single stock people buy penny stocks because they want to be millionaires there's more so this and it's such a small market that there's so much more upside to this. >> i'm arm wrestling you from now on i'm taking you on. come on. >> this is the first part of

many of these discussions. >> we're not done yet. >> no, we're not >> brian, bill, thank you. it was a day packed with news, let's get to the biggest stories now in our rapid recap >> markets obviously the top story. the nasdaq closes bo 7,000 on tuesday for the first time ever to kick off the year. >> we have a set of favorable conditions that we haven't seen very often in our lifetime i think that this is going to be a good year. >> from the hot market to the brutal weather sweeping the country. arctic air will keep the eastern half shivering >> these water theme parks behind me, they're closed for the day. >> overall the sales rate for december was better than expected, kelly, hit almost 18 million vehicles the sales pace according to auto data, for december, was 17.9 million vehicles airlines are celebrating the gop tax plan southwest and american airlines announcing bonuses to employees following the tax overhaul

president trump signed into law last month >> scorching statement from the president of the united states towards steve bannon his former political advisor. the president saying steve bannon has nothing to do with me or my presidency when he was fired, not only lost his job, he lost his mind. >> dow up nearly 100 his mind. >> the dow, 24,921 s&p 500 up two-thirds of one percent. the nasdaq which yesterday closed above 7,000 for the first time, today up 8.4%, closing at 7,065. dow, nasdaq, s&p, russell. dow transports, even, all finishing in record territory today. tim seymour is getting ready for "fast money" at 5:00 but we want your thoughts now, tim. >> okay. >> if three is a trifecta, four is a quadfecta, all five is -- >> a quinilla.

>> what do you make of it? >> byron talked about how we're in goldilocks. if you look at where rates are, where we're going to string together a third plus 3% gdp, 45 countries have synchronized growth for the first time in ten years. you have a dynamic with a tax cut that not only is it probably not at all priced in by the street, estimates have only changed 3 or 4%, but i'm guessing corporate management will low key this and we'll have some surprises out the year. if we hadn't done 25% last year, we would all be saying this is fantastic. the problem is everybody is way too bullish. the level of euphoria and whether it's bitcoin or whether it's cannabis stocks, emerging markets that have gone parabolic in the last three days, people are grabbing for risk in a way that feels a little uncomfortable. >> strongest two-day start to the year for the nasdaq since 2006, that's another one we can throw in there tim, thanks for joining us >> my pleasure, see you soon

>> cornell is picking the first two horses who finish. i was kidding. >> i like it for a firefightver. spencer bogart says the bitcoin boom is far from over, at 5:00 now to josh lipton for more news on this breaking story. >> reporter: that's right, kelly, amd is out with its official response. amd saying, to be clear, the security research team identified three variants targeting speculative execution, and amd is not suck ssceptible o all three variants due to differences in amd's architecture we believe there is a zero risk from these at this time intel was commenting on the chip bug that made processors more

vulnerable to attackers. intel's ceo just spoke exclusively to our own john ford, pointing out that the industry in his words had come together, that intel had identified the exploit ahead of any actual breach, and was now offering software to help address the issue, kelly, back to you >> josh, thank you very much amd shares are moving nearly 2% up after hours today in the session they were posting a better than 5% gain, so further divergence there. intel is about to start a call in seven minutes we'll have more on that when we come back. at 5 o'clock. you like him. your mom says he's done really well for himself. he has stocks and bonds. your dad wants to go fishing with him. your dad doesn't even like fishing. you like your brother-in-law. but you'd like him better if you made more money than he does.

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more than 6% on the bell and nearly 9% on the session the companyannounced it would be launching its entertainment assistant this fall as part of a software upgrade

we mean a voice entertainment assistant. roku is not going to be making its own hardware it wants other manufacturers to use its software in their devices and speakers the idea is you would say to roku, hey, play music, do something with the tv. but the tv doesn't have to be on, it doesn't have to involve your tv. >> just to navigate your entertainment. that's been the bullish dream of roku, it would be the smart software inside, the way tivo was a device and then became software inside viewing devices. it's interesting, the stock has been on an amazing tear. >> oh, yeah. >> largely because there's a real shortage of way to play >> streaming >> exactly, outside of netflix $5 billion, which relative to its financial results is huge, but maybe relative to the overall opportunity if they're central to it, not so good >> the question is how good is their ai, artificial intelligence they'll be trying to insert

themselves where amazon, google, apple, their voice technology has gotten quite good. >> how much data does it have to work with to get that ai better. markets like it. >> up 6.5% today, another win for roku that does it for "closing bell," everybody. you can use your rokus right now to watch "fast money." see you next time. "fast money" starts right now. live from the nasdaq market site overlooking new york city's times square i'm melissa lee. tonight on "fast," it's been a wild year for bitcoin, started at about a thousand bucks, ended the year close to 15,000 you won't believe how high one crypto expert believes it's heading in 2018, spencer bogart will be here to explain. plus the bomb cyclone is coming, sounds scary, right? the east coast bracing for a monster storm this week. it's got some stocks catching on fire we'll tell you the names first, sto