much as you talk about farmer bankruptcies, no doubt the chinese have to be feeling it worse. there's still an export-driven economic model so i am wondering if it's all working and bringing china to their knees where they're actually going to have to compromise on some major issues important long term for u.s. business. >> so, let me explain and first of all let me also say there is one area i agree with president trump on i do think we have to be tough on them. i do think we have to be willing to break some eggs because you're right, there are structuralissues on technology transfers and other issues where we need to make major progress, so i actually do believe -- i do actually support a strong view on china i'm not in the piece at all cost view at all and actually support doing that what i'm saying by a pause, you decide to have a more serious negotiation on those issues and you give yourself some time to do that so, again, i don't think

this means that you don't go for a major deal in the future i'm just saying the idea that they're going to just carve that out while they're carving their stak steaks at dinner seems unrealistic, you're buying a pause to give you more room to negotiate or deciding you're just going to keep the pressure up, go to 25% tariffs and try to get it that way, so i mean those are really i think the two options. >> yeah, well, gene, final question i've never gotten a full sense and curious as to what exactly would satisfy the administration, whether they know that and whether they're in a position to truly execute on whatever those end goals are do you think they are? >> you know, this is why i say there's a pause now. they're trying to get a pause. i don't think they know what they want. i don't think they've communicated it well these are complicated issues and can't be figured out overnight you would need alonger negotiation. secondly, i don't know that

president trump politically wants a big deal or wants this issue to go away remember, right now, the trade deficit with china, which he said was a major issue is longer under his watch than president obama. that's a political vulnerability for him. he won't be able to get as much done through congress. i think he wants to still be the general of some type of a trade war with china the issue is, can that be unrelenting or does he need to take small wins and negotiate as they go on so, no, i don't think they have it figured out and i think the real question as i've said is whether they're just going to as the hard-liners want, you know, keep the ultimate pressure, let the tariffs go up, just keep squeezing them till they get this kind of bigger structural wins on technology transfer or whether they take a small victory, get some sales and give themselves a few months to try to work on something with trump

having the option of still putting the 25% tariffs on if he doesn't get what they want >> okay. gene, thank you for your time. appreciate it. >> my pleasure >> gene sperling, former national economic council director under president obama and clinton. good morning, stocks near session lows moving lower after the president's comments just moments ago. bob is on the floor with today's action bob. >> i want to show you the s&p 500. we were drifting lower the president made a comment and said he's close to doing something on china blip up five, six points but said maybe he won't do something, sort of indeterminan and it started drifting lower. a lot want a truce that would move the market up, but most people are expecting no change in concessions. the street is all over the

place. evercore, probability of a pause on further tariff action was less than 50%. people on either side. there's an indeterminate day, the ten-year below 3%. consumer discretionary, tech not doing much, energy modestly positive technical talk are we breaking out? are we above the trend line? take a look at the s&p 500 in the last three months, you can see we have broken a down trend but not in any up trend to get out of there 27.50 or 27.26 right now orange line there, you need to break above the orange line then you're in an up trend. not a lot of ways to say it's positive sort of in the middle of everything 50% are above their 250-day moving average there's a few breakouts. health care is doing well and insurance, amex up 10%

finally on whether the market overshot powell, powell did not change his position at all on the economy or inflation here's what he said, my colleagues and i are forecast to continue solid growth, low unemployment and inflation near 2% reiterate that, he said that many times he may not have changed his position but the per sense of how many rate hikes there would be and argue there is a difference there but it's that change perception that really mattered yesterday guys, back to you. >> bob pisani, thank you let's bring in samantha and jana i'll start with you, samantha. the point bob made, the comments from fed chairman powell, is trade really the biggest thing in focus. >> i think it is i think that the market can rest easy that the fed is not going to do anything to surprise them and always said the fed is a beacon of certainty whereas

politics and trade are uncertainty that the market has to deal with going into 2019. >> your thoughts on this >> i think investors are looking for leadership and if you look at the leaderboard today it tips to be the same, growth continues to lead the market interestingly enough, while we're focused on the market overall there is a lot of value to be had if you look at the spread between sectors best and worth, 25% on an industry basis over 30% and on individual stocks, it's over 100% that means that fundamentals and stocks move on those fundamentals and that's what we're looking for irrespective of what the headline risk is. >> we haven't gotten that much in the past. the stocks cheap have remained cheap, haven't they? >> absolutely and i think the point that was made earlier, obviously trade policy and monetary policy are the biggest anchors to the market which is why you had the most economically sensitive areas of the market hit the hardest

if you look at the multiple sort of compression/depression, whatever you want to call it, it's been the hardest there but overall the market is selling at a discount to its long-term average if you look at ford multiple, if you look at 2019 earnings and the value i spoke of actually resides in big areas of the market. look at health care versus staples and utilities that is leading today and leading year to date relative to technology technology is selling at a skaupts to utilities while having top line and earnings growth in excess of that and the market so going back to trying to sift through the rubble and identify value opportunities that we think are going to stay not just for the end of the year but as we enter 2019. >> samantha. have we at least for the near term peaked in terms of rates? >> not necessarily it's in the realm of possibility that rates go lower. i just think it speaks to the fact the fed controls the short

end of the yield curve and have a little say and sway on the long end but it seems to be doing its own thing but the ten-year thing is still a moving target. >> i wonder how you think we should read, for example, a couple of pretty high growth tech stocks and their movement over the past several days, salesforce had pretty strong earnings they're up 13% let's see, for the week. then look at amd which was having a rough time. it's up 12% for the week 25% for the month after having a rough time are some of these tech growth stocks coming back into vogue or is this just kind of a bounce-off of where they had been before? >> i think they've always been in vogue i think, you know, listen, i think we as investors perhaps have gotten a little lazy. what i mean by that we've tried to mimic exposure to a lot of different areas by investing in stocks or etf and you have to do

your homework. the names you spoke of and what you saw was salesforce which happens to be one of our holdings that moved on very good earnings results and not only earnings results but also projections and guidance in the opportunity going forward. so, again, it's going back to basics and going back to fundamentals and it's trying to figure out where the dislocation as it relates to the sentiment and the fears we all are trying to get through with fundamentals and underlying top line and earnings growth opportunity and that's what we're trying to balance and long term that's what we've always had to do which is face shortt untemperature an try to position for the long term and identify opportunities that are going to be here for the long term. >> samantha, i'll put the same question to you. where should investors put their money? >> i don't think it's a given that values start to outperform.

there's nothing to suggest that the momentum behind growth stocks is going to stop now. in fact, the macro environment suggests that value shouldbe doing better, but we know it's not. we say trim a little profits off growth and reallocate to value but still like that growth over weight >> thank you for joining us. and coming up, this is "squawk alley," a bunch of big interviews as we follow the action it's ten minutes past the hour "quock alley" is live. place, the xfinity xfi gateway.

and it's strengthened by xfi pods, which plug in to extend the wifi even farther, past anything that stands in its way. ...well almost anything. leave no room behind with xfi pods. simple. easy. awesome. click or visit a retail store today. welcome back the tech sector coming off its best day since march on pace for its best week since 2011 after salesforce's blow-out quarter and that statement yesterday it closed up 7%. the stock up 47% over the last year joining us now to talk growth as well as cloud is service now ceo

john donahoe great to have you here >> so, in your earnings just a few weeks ago you talked about growth in the government sector. that was leading up 20 -- it was i believe 20% of the additional annual contract value that you guys added of course, we have amazon's reinvent conference happening right now. lots of talk about innovation and the cloud. how much running room is there and have you seen any slowdown in demand? stocks like service now have turned volatile as people wonder how much growth is left. >> quite the contrary, i think we're still in the very early days of adoption of cloud and the interprierns enterprise ande u.s. government but governments all over the world just like in our consumer lives where cloud gave us better

experiences and hit the complexity and greater efficiency the same thing is happening in enterprise and government where they need to deliver better experiences for their customers and need productivity and cloud can deliver all three. >> tell me about the broader implications of this move that s.a.p. made. wry it's relevant. you both deal with internal data how employees are communicating with each other to keep the business running efficiently also how they're communicating with customers it's s.a.p.'s thesis, need to bring all of these data sets together to run the business better are you seeing that and is that part of the value that servicenow is trying to drive? >> absolutely. what i hear from customers is they want to adopt four to six core strategic platforms, sort of modern tech step of the future, a sales force, a work

day, maybe an office 365 and s.a.p. and put as much on them and consolidate their -- and adobe as well. and take all that data together and deliver better experiences for their customers and better experiences for their employees. and with servicenow, we help build some of the connective tissue across the different platforms so let's take a small example like employee onboarding that's a classic bad experience you -- the early employees need to go to security to get their badge and go to facilities to get their desk and i.t. to get their laptop and another part to get their email and the same information in the hr and payroll system but servicenow, what they do is one simple mobile application makes that happen all in one mobile app it ties into all those systems

and ties into workday and ties into s.a.p. and all the systems but hides the complexity from the employee so the employee has a better experience so i think all of these platforms together to make transformative change and how work is done in the future. >> i don't hear you saying ibm's name when you talk about cloud i know you may not want to take a shot i'm curious about the acquisition of red app and/or make them part of the conversation. >> cloud is like mobile. mobile is a huge phenomenon happening and there's been plenty of growth the same thing is happening with cloud and the enterprise and as companies shift toward cloud, they will have platforms and many are migrating to cloud and this acquisition help ibm help

them get to the cloud. >> government opportunities for a minute how big are those opportunities? because i go to the irs website, for example, they are not in the 21st century and i'm not so sure investors are paying attention to possible contracts out there. >> so, this -- i see a shift here two, three years ago, governments were suspicious of cloud. they were worried about security and that has changed and that changed in a powerful way and governments are under pressure to deliver better services to their citizens whether it's the irs or any other sector and drive efficiency and productivity so you see very large government entities embracing cloud you saw the contract yesterday with microsoft we're seeing it both in the federal government, federal governments around the world and many state and local governments because servicenow provide better experiences. >> i want to talk about microsoft versus amazon.

we got amazon coming up in just a couple of minutes and had andy yesterday. today aws announced outposts where they have hardware in people's datacenters i know you have them you're not entirely running servicenow's business in the public cloud how is that competition? amazon is trying to project they're far ahead and not really even a two-horse race between them and microsoft how does it look from where you sit? >> early innings there is enormous growth left with cloud at the infrastructure level and software level and infrastructure level or azure and google cloud play you see that around the world. there will be a lot of growth for both and if you talk to customers, customers don't want to be sole-sourced but have choice so even in the public cloud they're often embracing one or two or three different

public cloud providers to make sure that they're mitt -- mitigating risk. >> i can't help be reminded of your days when you were the ceo of ebay and the question was split or not split what would you tell ceos given the split of paypal and ebay and conceivably what it has done thinking about that as a possibility when they look at their businesses >> one of these have been struck by it's just the value and power of focus so ebay and paypal had a lot of synergy over time but as paypal grew more off ebay and ebay was 20% or less of paypal's business it was time to separate the value of focus has been extraordinary. and by the way, dan is doing a terrific job leading paypal but the value of focus and so that leadership team feels accountable and it's just different than you're a division of a larger company so i would say it's been a very positive

thing for both organizations ebay and palpay and shareholders have done well. >> yes, they have done -- you, i guess, have done well, indeed. thank you, john donahoe, ceo of servicenow. coming up, back and forth. back and forth microsoft battling out with apple to be the most valuable company in the world by market cap. microsoft's head of cloud sits down with us next. don't go anywhere.

theres is no preset position >> the president's rhetoric is influential. >> he'll make sure everyone knows he's independent >> sure feels like happy holidays courtesy of the fed welcome back to "squawk alley. twitter shares plunging now down 7%, down as much as 8% the worst day for the stock bringing it down to levels not seen since late october. now, there is no fundamental news out about the company today but yesterday twitter suspended a fake account impersonating vladimir putin that had gone undetected for six years and had over a million followers and a political -- politico

article note that fox news has not tweeted since november 8th when they said the callout of this silent boycott, quote, would spook some investors guys, back over to you >> thank you, julia. i was wondering why it was so weak now we know. well, stocks are near session lows here's a snapshot of the s&p 500. the u.s. ten-year treasury yield and the price of crude oil over the last month and amazingly they're all on the same chart. you can see the clear weakness across all of those asset classes. with the president en route to argentina where do they end the year we have two people with us to talk about it. kevin, let me start with you there's been some remarks about the fact that there's been nowhere to hide at least recently in terms of asset classes performing well. do you anticipate that will continue or is there one area you're focused on as providing perhaps outperformance

>> yeah, we think the leadership will come from more quality kind of names, consistency is probably the place to go with this late in the cycle as opposed to growth or looking for other areas where you might look to torque up growth through leverage or something else so places like health care, consumers, names, those things make a lot of sense. if we were looking for modest returns given what we were seeing in our data we're pretty much on track to achieve that this year. >> caesar, a lot are focused as they should be on what is going to happen or not happen in argentine nachl the president saying not long ago in terms of a deal with china we're close but i don't know if i want to do it frankly, i like the deal we have now. how does that figure into sort of your view overall of the markets and of the world economy? >> right, so our main view is we will have understanding on trade. what this means it basically a framework for having further

trade talks down the way, it should not be -- just an agreement to have perhaps quarterly reviews for some agreements and some reviews of some implementation of these changes. what we think is it should be posted before markets -- if we get a positive signal out of these g20 summit >> kevin, what would a positive signal look like any reason to believe that 10% tariffs on chinese imports is not going to increase to 25% on january 1st? >> well, i think -- positive signal would be anything that comes out of, let's say this -- the g20 meeting that would indicate that things are thawing a little bit when we went through this with mexico and canada there was a lot of noise around it but ultimately came through with a deal that was kind of palatable so the market has been circumspect about a deal coming

through. and if you got -- if you got something that broke in a positive direction that could really do a -- that could significantly increase the outlook for growth and investment enthusiasm and look for markets to begin to respond with tighter credit spreads and a better performance by equities if the market began to sniff out something positive was coming out of the g20. >> we're short on time and have to end it there. our thanks to caesar and kevin >> thank you european markets closing hey, seema. >> european markets closing mostly higher after uk banks passed the stress test but fears of euro's own slowdown is not easing. fresh warnings from the central bank saying in the latest edition of its financial stability review the eurosoboroff is increasingly vulnerable to financial shocks

and cited resurgence in protectionism and turbulence in single currency and trading 1.13 against the u.s. dollar but down 3% from its recent highs among the individual names in focus. german health buyer announcing it will cut 12,000 jobs and exit its animal health unit they will sell its sunscreen brand coppertone and dr. scholl's those layoffs equal to 10% of its workforce. deutsche bank moving lower after the company's headquarters was raided by german police. investigators are looking into allegations that bank staffers helped clients set up offshore accounts and tax havens. deutsche bank celling cnbc they provided authorities with all relevant information regarding the accounts in question remember, these developments come one day after the bank

confirmed it was involved in laundering upon from a danish bank that moved 200 billion in illicit funds in its estonia branch that stock down 3.5% back to you. >> i will take it. thank you. head over to headquarters and sue herera who has a news update. >> thank you here's what's happening. before departing for argentina for the g20 summit, president trump denied working on a trump organization real estate project in moscow which his former lawyer, michael cohen, said he had pursued until june of 2016 >> he's a weak person and by being weak, unlike other people that you watch, he's a weak person and what he's trying to do is get a reduced sentence so he's lying about a project that everybody knew about >> former pennsylvania attorney general kathleen cane is behind

bars after reporting to a suburbening philadelphia county jail she will begin a 10 to 23-month sentence for leaking grand jury material and lying about it. a new government report reveals the average life expectancy dropped to 78.6 in 2017 that's in years. down slightly from 2016. drug overdose deaths reached a high of 70,000, a rise of almost 10% but heart disease is still the number one killer of americans. you're up to date. that's the news update back downtown to you john, i'll send it to you. >> thank you when we return, microsoft's ahead of the commercial business and with us for an exclusive but a check on the markets after yesterday's rally. down s&p both coming off their second best day of the year, but currently down about half a percent each stay with us interesting clock.

oh, there weren't enough hours in the day to maintain are old data center. so we made a twelve a fifteen.

three extra hours. but that really doesn't add hours to the day. yeah it does, look. i'm not sure it works that way, but at cdw we get that time is precious. so we'd access your needs then design a nutanix enterprise cloud. to give you more time to grow your business. yeah that's better. hey we still on for lunch at 15 o'clock? you bet. for private cloud solutions you need nutanix and it orchestration by cdw. welcome to emirates mr. jones. just sit back, relax and let us entertain you... ...with over 3,500 channels of entertainment, including the latest movies and box sets from around the world. ( ♪ ) we even have live sports and news channels. ( ♪ ) and your free wi-fi will start shortly.

enjoy your flight mr. jones. world's best inflight entertainment. fly emirates. fly better. the dow is having its best week in two years. lower this morning is a year end rally ahead? or did the market react? we have a closer look on the levels that investors are keeping an eye on. dom. >> sure, david as we talk about why the markets

have stalled it has to do with trend lines in the overall markets. after that big upside move that we saw yesterday, we are now kind of coming up on the downside trend line here which is why this area 2750 is a key focal point for a lot. assuming this does somehow get taken out to the upside a lot of traders will watch these areas here because they represent the last attempts we try to make at record highs after the october lows those levels stand just at around 2815 as well and keeping a close eye on what's happening elsewhere. if you take a look at what's happening with the crude oil trade we lost 30% of the value of some of these crude oil prices 33 at this point right now if we are in these statistically rare oversold situations we will keep an eye on whether crude can bounce, of course, december 6th and 7th, opec plus meeting will be a key focus there russia may be indicating some

signs it could be looking to participate in production cuts also looking in the macro side of things, as well checking out what's happening with ten-year treasury note yields, early october, 3.25% was the last trade we saw there on the high end remember, we dipped briefly below that 3% mark earlier so have seen this recent downtrend. whether that continues will be key and one more place we're watching is in the home construction stocks. one of the etfs, u.s. home construction, itb, the ticker, is lower on the day and snaps a five-day winning streak but as you can see here from the highs earlier this year, this particular etf has lost, again, around a third of its value, 30%. it has been rising a little bit up about 10% since its lows most recently but still this home construction etf will be key especially given, guys, in light of what happened with the decline in pending home sales that we got earlier this morning, some key parts to watch and key levels to focus on

send it back over to you, guys. >> thank you, dom. with all eyes on the g-20 and argentina and president trump, we're getting a tweet just a moment ago saying, quote, based on the fact that the ships and sailors have not been returned to ukraine from russia i decided it would be best for all parties concerned to cancel my previously scheduled meeting in argentina with president vladimir putin i look forward to a meaningful summit again as soon as this situation is resolved. obviously, guy, there's a lot of focus on the meeting between president trump and president xi of china another one to keep an eye on given everything we've seen in terms of crude oil prices and expectations around production and a lot of talk. the nato summit and a lot of talk about the u.s. potentially pulling out of that inf nuclear treaty with russia so this is yet another meeting that now is on hold.

we'll see what happens next especially given the situation with ukraine and these sailors. >> yes, indeed >> microsoft and apple still neck and neck in the fight to be the world's most valuable company with microsoft briefly overtaking the iphone maker earlier this week. a big part is their enterprise business and cloud growth in azure securing contracts with walmart, bmw and honeywell joining us is judson althoff good morning >> good morning. >> big week for the cloud. your neighbors in seattle have a difference going on right now. talking in part about hybrid cloud, amazon announcing aws outposts which is a datacenter -- you guys have had servers for awhile, window servers. how much is hybrid and not being all in on one particular angle of the cloud strategy part of what is driving growth right

now? >> yeah, listen, first, we're encouraged that aws is finally endorsing hybrid strategies. we've been invested with customers for well over a decade on hybrid architectures in the cloud because we think it's where the future is headed we think we're fairly differentiated and azure is stack is doing well and our strategy goes far beyond just thinking of the notion of a stack within a customer's datacenter, it goes all the way out to the edge. as you think about the paradigm shifts and extending out to iot customers want to compute and do reasoning out at the edge so azure all the way to asuzure stk is a wave of the future in we heard from john donahoe, a lot

of different clouds are the future customers don't necessarily want lock-in. heard a different story from andy talking about contracts overall and that argue they have the best capabilities because they've been around the longest so customers can go all in with them how do we see how this plays out and what point do we start to see business acceleration one way or the other because either a multicloud strategy or a single cloud strategy is winning out? >> yeah, it's a great question generally speaking we see competition as being great, in fact, an open strategy is frankly the best way to go it's why we support linux on azure and windows so we actually think customers will embrace a multicloud strategy and also why we've invested in this open data initiative as you reported on earlier this year. we see huge momentum from customers, strong interest from

customers being able to want to take back their data in an open capacity so whether it's pulling together experience enshall data from adwoebby or s.a.p. and being able to reason over that in realtime and make realtime business decisions that make sense for our customers is where we want to be and see more multicloud approaches and think it's good for the industry. >> what is the role that machine learning and artificial intelligence is playing this this stage of the cloud because whether it's from you guys or from amazon or others, it seems like a lot of the software and capability related announcements are around that. does that get customers more engaged and invested in your particular cloud platform? is that an area where you think customer demand is going to be pushing in particular heading in 2019 >> yeah, absolutely. if you think about it, the last time i spoke to you i said we were maybe two minutes into the first quarter of this cloud game, if you will.

sort of understand the metaphor and probably eight minutes into the first quarter now and even earlier on relative to artificial intelligence but it is a huge driver for us so whether it's the work we're doing with chevron or bmw or volkswagen or starbucks or even kroger and walmart, from left to right all of the progress we're making with our customers in the cloud is sort of grounded on this notion of first getting your data in order so you can reason using artificial intelligence unless you have that in order all you'll do with ai is make mistakes but we are seeing strong uptick. bmw's announcement of their new intelligence aassista-- assistah car is taking off in the future. >> a potential customer, the department of defense, this jedi contract valued at as much as $10 billion, winner take all

a lot of folks out there that think this is amazon's competition to lose. how do you think about it? >> well, listen, we like what we have to offer. quite frankly because of the intelligent edge we have, we've been deeply invested in hybrid approaches we think that, frankly, the government ought to look at an open strategy here because competition is good. that stated at the end of the day our mission is about empowerment and make sure everybody has the best technology including our war fighters and so we hope to be able to participate in it and we're looking forward to having a fair shot to compete for it. >> big competition that investors are certainly watching in the cloud right now you and amazon in the lead and market capwise you and apple in the lead as well judson althoff from microsoft, thanks for being with us. >> thanks for having us. coming up, aaron levie sits

down with us there's a lot to love about medicare. there's also a lot to know. part a that's your hospital coverage, part b is all the doctor stuff... the most important thing to know? medicare doesn't pay for everything. and guess what that means... yep...you're on the hook for the rest. that's why it's important to consider an aarp medicare supplement insurance plan, insured by unitedhealthcare insurance company. a plan like this helps pay for some of what medicare doesn't. so you could end up paying less out of your own pocket. that's nice. and these are the only medicare supplement plans endorsed by aarp. selected for meeting their high standards of quality and service. it feels good to have someone looking out for you. want to find out more?

call unitedhealthcare insurance company now to request this free decision guide, with aarp medicare supplement plan options to fit your needs. and learn how this type of plan works together with a part d prescription drug plan. here's something else good to know. with a medicare supplement plan, you have freedom. freedom to go with any doctor or hospital that accepts medicare patients. you're not restricted to a network. ever. and if you need to visit a specialist, you'll have a choice there, too. your coverage goes with you, too, anywhere you travel in the country. we have grandkids out of state. they love our long visits. not sure about their parents, though. call unitedhealthcare now to learn more and ask for your free decision guide. want to apply? go ahead, apply. anytime's a good time. remember, the #1 important thing, medicare doesn't pay for everything. a med supp plan could help pay some of what's left.

and this is the only plan of its kind endorsed by aarp. that's the icing on the cake... i love cake. finding the right aarp medicare supplement plan for you could be just a quick call away. so...call. i'm scott walker top of the hour. one day after the search, all eyes turn to the g-20. we'll debate what needs to happen to keep stocking climbing plus as mcdonald's shares hit a new high, one firm says it's still okay to jump in. we have the details in our call of the day john is watching the options market as usual. for unusual activity we'll tell you the stocks that

could be about to move and it is all coming up at noon. see you then >> sounds good, scott. looking forward to it. sticking with g-20 as we mentioned. the president tweeting he will not meet with vladimir putin in argentina. eamon javers has the story. >> he tweeted he won't meet with vladimir putin this coming just after he spoke to reporters before getting on board marine one and he said he probably would meet with vladimir putin the president said it was a very good time, he felt, to have that meeting but was going to be waiting to get a report, he said, on board air force one before he made the final decision now presumably the president has gotten that report about russian activity vis-a-vis the ukrainian navy and decided not to have that on the schedule when he arrives ten hours from now so an interesting diplomatic development here might be awkward for the president to meet with vladimir putin in the wake of this new

michael cohen guilty plea and now cooperation with the special counsel over this issue of allegedly lying about his involvement in a trump/russia deal during the 2016 presidential campaign. meanwhile, we've learned something else interesting that i wanted to bring you up to speed on peter navarro, hawkish china trade hawk in this administration will be attending the dinner with s-- watch for hw the chinese respond. they see peter as somebody who is working against their interests inside the trump administration very intriguing that the president would decide to include navarro in buenos ares, guys. >> thanks for bringing us that and that confirmation onna var row. he was supposed to be a keynote speaker at a forum i was going to we got word he was being

repositioned to buenos aires air levie is with us after the dot awhbrk. n'gonyere. i am a family man.

i am a techie dad. i believe the best technology should feel effortless. like magic. at comcast, it's my job to develop, apps and tools that simplify your experience. my name is mike, i'm in product development at comcast. we're working to make things simple, easy and awesome. the s&p, you know it started actually pretty nicely the president then said as for a deal, trade deal with china, close, but don't know if i want to do it frankly i like the deal we have now. that took us decidedly negative.

though we are up from the lows on the s&p 500 "squawk alley" back in a few minutes. open an account today. if you're turning 65, you're probably learning about medicare and supplemental insurance. medicare is great, but it doesn't cover everything - only about 80% of your part b medicare costs, which means you may have to pay for the rest. that's where medicare supplement insurance comes in: to help pay for some of what medicare doesn't. learn how an aarp medicare supplement insurance plan, insured by united healthcare insurance company might be the right choice for you. a free decision guide is a great place to start. call today to request yours. so what makes an aarp medicare supplement plan unique? well, these are the only medicare supplement plans endorsed by aarp and that's because they meet aarp's high standards

of quality and service. you're also getting the great features that any medicare supplement plan provides. for example, with any medicare supplement plan you may choose any doctor or hospital that accepts medicare patients. you can even visit a specialist. with this type of plan, there are no networks or referrals needed. also, a medicare supplement plan goes with you when you travel anywhere in the u.s. a free decision guide will provide a breakdown of aarp medicare supplement plans, and help you determine the plan that works best for your needs and budget. call today to request yours. let's recap. there are 3 key things you should keep in mind. one: if you're turning 65, you may be eligible for medicare - but it only covers about 80% of your medicare part b costs. a medicare supplement plan may help pay for some of the rest. two: this type of plan allows you to keep your doctor - as long as he or she accepts medicare patients.

and three: these are the only medicare supplement plans endorsed by aarp. learn more about why you should choose an aarp medicare supplement plan. call today for a free guide. shares of box are in the green, the cloud storage provider reporting a

smaller-than-expected quarterly loss and better-than-expected full-year guidance with us, box co-founder and ceo aaron levy aaron, good morning. it sounds like q4 you expect to be good as well. you said you expect billings to be up in the mid 20% range they were up more like in the teens, for the quarter you just reported why the surge in q4? >> yeah so as our business gets more and more seasonally loaded to the back end of the year as we sell to larger and larger enterprises, that drives a higher billings outgrowth in q4, that's what we've been talking to the street throughout the year as we continue to move up-market, serving larger enter prizes like major top ten banks and pharmaceutical companies, as well as the federal government and global manufacturers, that's what's driving that surge in the

q4 billings and growth rate. >> amazon's cloud ceo andy jackson was telling us yesterday that outside of the u.s. cloud momentum has picked up there are only 12 to 36 months behind in the cloud which is actually better than before. you've also said that you would, is saw that 28% of your big deal, six-figure deals were coming from outside theu.s what's the shift you're seeing there and what are they buying >> i think we're seeing the same sort of time lag but ultimately what that means is we have a global opportunity where large enterprises, especially multinational enterprises want to be able to drive the same digital transformation within their organization that we've seen in the u.s. that means everything from changing their business processes to collaborating and working in new ways, which leads them to needing platforms like box and other technologies so we're seeing incredible growth in markets like japan,

canada, australia is emerging for us and then throughout europe, while there are some markets that we're working on growing faster and we're seeing a huge opportunity throughout europe, also >> i know an area where you guys are feeling, a bit of pressure is the cost of a sales force, there are companies in the cloud getting together trying to cut down on those costs, and have more power through scale, how are you attacking that through partnerships tlurks getting deeper into specific industry verticals and how do we gauge how well that's working for you >> yeah. so obviously we have invested in a healthy way no our go to market efforts, so we can reach and enable every large enterprise on the planet we're seeing incredible improvements in our efficiency, we saw a 10-point improvement year-over-year in terms of sales and marketing as a percentage of revenue, so we continue to drive more and more efficiency from our go to market channel

from 0 partnership standpoint, that's how we get incredible scale. we're working with major partners like ibm and other system integrators and work with microsoft, google, as well as a much broader ecosystem to insure that when customers want to be able to manage their modern i.t. environment, box is the system of record for the data and content they work with so partners are core to our strategy, from technology, to make sure they have an integrated experience with their information technology investments, as well as helping us reach those customers from a distribution from a sales standpoint as well so we think that our partner model is critical to our success and scaling and it's great to be able to work with folks like judson, who you just had on, microsoft and these much bigger technology companies that we marter in with >> speaking of which, i want to get this one in quick before we run out of time. people that are used to thinking of microsoft and google as threats to you

you are talking about them as partners as we move further into the hybrid and ai era, what's the one thing you want investors to think about to drive home that partner idea >> so our fundamental belief is that in the digital age, enterprises are going to need a platform to help them secure, manage, govern and drive the work flows around their core business information and that is what the platform is that we're building so wlits financial documents, whether it's digital assets, a pharmaceutical company with their kr their drug trial information or platform campaigns, we want to be the partner this helps them manage and secure that data. we want to work with microsoft, google and ibm and others to insure that the technology that they're investing in can link into the data that customers store within box so we're building a fundamentally open platform and whether that is linking up to the artificial intelligence or machine learning technology that ibm, microsoft, google and others are building or the common applications that we use ever are i day, like office 365

or google dots or slack, we want to make sure that box can connect to all of those applications so you can have one source of truth for your data, but integrated everywhere. >> they get the cloud now, you do, stir, aaron levy, thanks for now, let's toss it to the half i'm scott wopner, one down, one to go, after fed chair jay powell sends stocks surging, can g20 talks keep the market momentum going it's 1:00 noon, this is the "halftime report." the dow coming off its best day in eight months, the focus turns to the meeting of global leaders in argentina as trade worries recapture wall street's attention. and crude's wild swing sends oil below $50 for the first time in a year. putting oil on pace for its biggest monthly slide since 2008 plus, the super size