welcome to "squawk alley," deirdra bosa with us this morning. that has all time highs on the s&p and the nasdaq thedown dow green for the firsm since late february, and a prospect of more testing the retailers, the travel companies, live nation is up 8%.

the best performing s&p at the moment >> i have my eye on a few techish stocks this morning for different reasons. first box is up better than 5% 6%, actually, after earnings an echo of what we saw from sails force. and then, tesla. that stock now well higher than 400 billion dollars in market cap. so you wonder where that one goes it has certainly been a storied stock of the market so far and then along the lines of the idea of reopening disney, trading now where it was about a month ago. the rise of skywalker came out 135 her share, dei rrrdre >> still down about 6.5%

let's begin with a big tech story of the day tiktok ceo kevin mayer leaving the company. he said "in recent weeks as a political environment has sharply changed, i have done significant reflection on what the corporate structural changes will require and what it means for the global role i signed up for. against this backdrop, and as we expect to reach a resolution very soon, it is with a heavy heart that i want today let you all know that i have decided to leave the company. we are joinedwith the editor i chief of "the verge" now we have mayer's pending resignation as a possible indication that the deal may go through soon with microsoft. do you think we'll get something soon is there more twists and turns

to be seen, particularly from president trump or beijing >> absolutely. i think the original date was september 20th he extended that no tof 12th i think if you're kevin meyer, you thought you were going to be the ceo of disney. you leave to become the ceo of tiktok, coo of a global korb rati corporation, and now a fire sale that requires you to stay on as a lieutenant to them for a number of years -- i don't mean to get too existential here, and you think do i want to be this for two years? i think he really wants a ceo job. >> i heard john say earlier,

life comes at you pretty fast. i'm really curious about the idea he was left out of talks with manufacture and oracle and part of that had to do with bitedance's founder, but the company's main argument is american leadership. it didn't bring mayi ieer in ina substantial way for it's talks does that show it's control. >> the question that bitedance always had to deal with it is how independent is tiktok in the yies they made some showings and efforts. mayer came in as the new guy

the owner of tiktok wants to sell it. there are obviously some ties. the question is when it actually gets sold, which it will have to happen, what is the new american owner going to do to extricate it from china? from the algorithm that has been engineered by a chinese company. the data services that it uses those are huge questions that are collaging questions. they limit the scope of buyers, and the answers will have to be very, very transnarnt a way t t transparent in a way that big tech companies don't like doing. >> is tiktok worth less without kevin moayer disney plus has been a huge success. people thought he would be ceo

of disney. you don't have a huge consumer digital business outside of gaming if you're microsoft or if you're oracle. the whole -- a big part of it, was to put this competent american face on this business and now he is gone if you're oracle who will run this thing if you're microsoft, who will run this thing >> yeah, she is very well regarded people inside of tiktok like her. she doesn't have that pro file that kevin mayer brought to the company. when you think about how you might grow tiktok, it looks like a lot of content deals it looks like expanding the universe beyond the one app to be the force and culture and multiple mediums and it seemed destined to be they are trying to get into

content left and right trying to make that impact left and right, and most of them are not doing so great apple has not done so great without apple tv plus. amazon had fits and starts they will need to hire someone to come in as a lieutenant and run a media company inside one of these big tech companies. just looking at the landscape companies are not going to be looking at this. will it shift to monotization. >> that is a great question. their user base is growing their very popular with a very valuable core of young people. you bring it into a company like

microsoft and you have an existing advertising business to build against to bolt on to this company. tiktok is doing their creative spin that integration is tricky microsoft has tricky integrations in their past we'll see how it goes. for a company like oracle what you're looking at is like a massive data analysis play that is oracle's core company ten competence play. how you turn that into something else, it looks like tiktok has to do it on it's own microsoft has the infrastructure to quickly ramp up that side of things >> is there already damage done to the tiktok brand in the last few weeks. so much has been playing out in the public we have some of the top fl influencers only on there.

i'm seeing a lot of rossovcross, do you think the brand is less valuable >> you know it is so hard to judge what the brand of a social network and what it is worth compared to the people that use it compared to the network graph of it's users all of the people say if a brand is trashed people will still look at it do advertisers want to be near it and if paid products for consumers work i don't the reels is that good i don't think the influence on tiktok at the top end of the scale, there might be some options to move on we have seen influencers start podcasts or youtube channel. the value is the long list of users. they're not going to find a similar network on reels yet there might be a bump in the road here, but if and when it gets old, and it looks like it

will have to be done, the new owner will have to very quickly reassure all of those people that this will have to stay the same if they can do that i think the brand damage will repair itself because users won't fwloe to go. >> and a lot of that will depend on who will take it over there we don't know how they may or may not make changes nilay, thank you for being with us this morning. from competition in social to competition in wearables. amazon unveiling halo taking on apple and fitbit for the wearables. we have more on the latest move. >> hey, jon, i got to spend time with the amazon team yesterday to talk through this new much anticipated wearable product it is similar to other things you have seen on the market.

heart rate sensors, basic sleep tracking, things like that that we have come to expect there are also some things that are kind of different that might freak some users out there is emotion tracking. it takes snippets of your voice, have you been anxious, hesitant, elated, trying to walk you through various points in the day. also a crazy feature that takes a 3 d body can by a app and gives you a sense of your body fat percentage they want to bring that to the mainstream for that first wearable product. >> is amazon saying anything

about how they will mingle this data with other data my concern is will they check my emotional state for if i'm opening to shopping? will they take my body scan and start recommending clothes or diet shakes to me based on how it looks >> john, i had that same fear when they shared the news with me i said will this be used for any kind of targeted advertising if you find out i'm in a good mood will you sell me a product? they said absolutely not, it is sleeted immediately, it's not stored in the cloud. so they were very clear that this is not going to be tied into any of their e commerce products they also said there is no integration with the amazon alexa. it is meant to be very, very

separate they have the computer privacy pick ups and cost. >> you hit on one of the most interesting things, no integration with alexa and no integration with prime i wonder is that to try to address the crossover or privacy concerns and does amazon miss out on selling this to 100 million prime house holds by separating it >> i thought so, too, but prooi si seemed to be very top of mind for them they wanted to not raise any questions about how they do this this is really sensitive information and can you imagine if they were trying to sell you

something, it would be very creepy, so i think they need to be very, very careful about how they approach this it seems like they have been i just don't know how consumers will react to this amazon is up there on the list of companies that i think has abused user data in the past >> thank you for that. joining on us on a bunch of innovations in tech. the nba and the board of governors meeting to face the fate of the season we'll talk about that with the sacramento kings co-owner and former facebook exec chris kelly. the s&p hit 3500 for the first time ever today. we'll be back in just a moment

inflation can have longer term imflanflation expectations. >> that issed fed chairman jerome powell resources ago

announcing the central bank's major new policy sheaf resulting in another record setting day for stocks intraday so far and paul mccully joins us now paolo, good morning. >> good morning. >> i want to get to what does this mean for bonds and bond funds? rates are not going up any time soon, but the fed wants room to lower them if there is a people. what does this mean? >> bonds don't have any intrinsic value in this new world. doesn't mean they're bad investments. they're anchoring people's portfolios but the fed passio passionately wants inflation to go up. i think the big class is the risk area and equities that are being reflected in the marketplace today. the fed wants this economy to

run hot nap is good for equities versus bonds full stop >> what if you're worried that the market is running a little too hot. >> i think the market is incredibly hot it is the only game in town and there is no catalyst to keep it from going even higher marks, bull markets don't tend to stop because they're fully valued they tend to stop when you get to an extreme and also there is a catalyst going the other direction. so the object in motion most likely will stay in motion. >> what is the message today to americans that don't have a lot of assets, don't own a home, and might be structurally unemployed for a long time. >> i think it is entirely away from the impact of what jay had to say on wall street.

the big issue is the fed really wants to nurture a strong recovery for main street they are putting in place the apparatus of wall street to understand that. the big thing is that the fed is fully on board in a all of government effort to improve conditions particularly post pandemic i think if there is one message that i had to deliver to main street it is that the fed will be incredibly cooperative with congress in doing whatever is necessary to get relief and stimulus to main street that we're living in a fiscal policy dominated world and that is good news for main street >> we're getting promising news on treatment

promising news on tests and vaccine timing do the vig lilantes take that a run? >> the bond market vigilantes? >> yes >> we could see steepenning of the yield curve. i think that will happen, but that will be a great outcome for the economy at large it means that we're getting traction in recovery so the bond market vigilantes are from 40 years ago and they have no meaning from the sa standpoint of the flexibility that the government has to nurture a robust recovery. >> if you're on the local government side of this, and i'm saying state and local here, and you're trying to manage through

this pandemic, maybe you're thinking about bonds thinking about what kind of spending you can do to help small businesses to help schools, all sorts of institutions survive, what message should you take away from what the fed just said? >> i think the fed's message is that congress should give as much money as possible to state and local governments. if i were sitting there as a treasurer of a state, my call would not be to j. powell on the interra interest rates, it would be all about the notion of physical transfers to states nap is the key issue going forward. because states don't really need be issuing a pot load of bonds

they need outright physical transfers, grants, from the physical authority at the federal level that as access, indirectly, to the printing mess for money. the big call for the treasurer is to congress, not to the fed >> but the trump administration seems to be resistant to doing that, at least in the issues and cases where we're talking about blue states which they say have been miss managing funds and all kinds of things. so given that, what sorts of rhetoric do you expect to hear during this election season and what should investors and citizens do with that? >> i certainly think that is the case, but that will not continue for very long. we're caught in the suspended animation right now between here and the election i think there is a broad consensus and our democracy.

there will be relief downloaded through the state and local jurisdictions. so what i said stands from the standpoint of who the treasure of a state should call is, call his legislature. and this season that we're going through, right now, with not having a follow up to the cares package will come to an end. hopefully sooner rather than label. but the real answer will come on november 3rd and this is a business show and i will be careful about voicing political opinions but live will change for the better >> we have a couple months, and silly season or not, a lot of action from now and then thank you for being with us.

>> thank you >> later this hour, shares of box getting better than expected earnings we'll discuss with aaron levie don't go away. then currency came along. they made it out of copper, gold, silver, wampum. soon people decided to put all that value into a piece of paper, then proceeded to wave goodbye to value, printing unlimited amounts of money as they passed the buck to the future. that's why it's time for digital currency and your investment in the grayscale funds. go digital. go grayscale.

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welcome back, everyone i'm sue herera here is your cnbc news update at this hour. sweeping damage around lake charles. buildings that were not flooded separated from heavy winds hurricane laura still has sustained winds of 75 miles per hour in minneapolis protests turn violence following false social media posts. the national guard was mobilized and a curfew was in place until early this morning meanwhile protests were peaceful after nights of violence, a local curfew was largely ignored. >> delta airlines has 240 people on their no fly list now because of refusal to wear a face covering you are up to date, that is the news at this hour, carl, back to

you. sue, thank you very much coming up, the sacramento kings co-owner and former ceokfabo exec with what to expect for the rest of the season, coming up. (music) anncr: give customers access to precisely what they want,

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nba players meeting to discuss the future of the season chris kelly joining us now appreciate your time on such a fast moving story, thank you >> really good to be here. >> your thoughts on last night and next steps what do you think the owner response will be today >> i think our response was very positive and understanding, i think the calls for social change that but

have been working on them quite actively the bucks ownership and ownership around the league responded quickly last night saying we're supportive of this movement and this understanding that things have to change faster than they are right now the players are meeting to talk about how that means about going on with the season we're ready to do more >> the collective action is driven, it's not a classic labor dispute where they're looking for remedies for ownership they're looking for remedies for attorney's general and societies at large what needs to happen to identify the players when it is largely out of ownership control

>> i think you seen a lot of the leadership and the ability to move forward together. when we agree to open up in orlando, having a social justice platform is part of that we think we can do that in partnership with the players you have seen the norge floz protestpr jorge flo george floyd and other names added to the list. >> good morning, it is jon fortt. i want your take on something when i see this action in the nba from the players, it reminds

me of a decade ago when the defense department started paying the nfl for the patriotic displays with players on the field. and that combined with post 9/11, there was an idea of honoring the military and first responders at these games that includes police and maybe optically that sent the idea that these players are in support of military and police action not just the country in general. so maybe to some extent this is a response to that maybe the support got tied to those ideas over the past decade maybe sport in general got tied to it. what do you think? >> i think you have to ask the nfl folks about that and the choices they made there. we came into the league, and brought by my good friend, we watched adam silver's new

leadership at that point and to deal with the very forthrightly as players got more tied to demanding change in the way that policing is done in america, we have been broadly supportive and we want to continue to be pr broadly supportive and you know it is time for a change when black motorists are being killed by police and there is broad agreement among ownership about that, too. >> there has been reports that some of the players, including lebron james, want owners to

become more involvemented and take more action >> there is always a position to do more. the work that we have done with the bucks and almost ten other teams incruding a number of wnba teams, coming out of some of the earlier actions, and the harassment of some players from the bucks lead us to start to take that action two years ago we're opening up in our arena here in sacramento and in the upcoming election we're all excited to see lebron's work in expanding voting access in african-american communities and i think that there is always always nor be done >> if a solution is harder to come by than we think, lost

product means lost revenue is there riskt to collecti to ce bargaining agreements? >> i think the discussion has been very positive at this point. there has been a couple extenses extensions on the changing on going. i think that adam silver, michelle roberts, and the crew are having very productive conversations on that. given that we're aligned i think about how we want to go forward. >> it is an interesting twist, i would argument, i'm sure you agree, on a bubble and a frame work for sports that was probably the best we have seen in professional sports this year silver really put together an amazing frame work in a tough environment. >> the way the league has run

the bubble has been exceptional. a guiding light, i think, for a number of the other sports we have seen some other sports be able to open up over time and hopefully we'll get to that point here in america some time so soon. >> i'm sure you have a lot going on today i'm sure you all appreciate the insight into the story thank you for being here >> thank you for having me guys at the start of the show i said it was a fast moving news morning for tiktok and that continues. let's get to our alex sherman for the latest >> yeah, earlier this morning we reported here, broke the news, that walmart has expressed interest in buying tiktok on being part of a consortium

now statements with walmart with more detail on this confirming our news and going a step forward saying they're teaming up with micro soft which has been very public about being in talks to buy tiktok. we believe a potential relationship with tiktok could provide this exceptionality. it is a way to reach omnichannel customers. that would meet both of these expectations so earlier this morning, it seemed unlikely because there

was no part of that deal it is so important for this deal because the reason the government is forcing bitedance to sell tiktok in the first place is over data security. it would allow that government concern to be better met and at the same time wal mart could take advantage of the e-commerce element that has so much potential. >> i wonder how besos and amazon would feel about that move a competitor getting even more techy. i wonder if it was walmart and softbank why does walmart and microsoft, why does there have to be any kind of joint deal

it complicated matters even further. >> we don't know fully yet we have to find out why they find it necessary to invite in a partner here the discussions were very late in the game here we also reported that tic knock is likely to announce a buyer here in the coming days. if there was a rationale that they were going towards the oracle business, they have been in talks with current investors including dc firms as a rival bid, if walmart and microsoft teaming up together could skew the bid in they favor simply because the two companies, norm companies, two of the largest in the world, certainly if this is a bidding issue you have to imagine the two companies would

have no problem bidding up oracle's bid we're expecting it to be about -- >> looks like we're losing alex a bit. alex, i don't know if we're getting you back, if you're still with us, but the thing that strikes me about this is i don't know if this really does make sense i think of walmart i think of voodoo, microsoft, mixer are we trying to get all of the big rich companies that failed at streaming video together to buy this meanwhile one of the few guys that has mounded a successful challenger in streaming video, he goes for the door that is just a little weird. >> i mean this whole thing, john, has been absurd. you have a company that doesn't want to sell tiktok. you have huge value

expectations, growth expectations for tiktok. it could be a $200 billion company and you're now breaking this company up forcing a sale of the u.s. operations, and you have international operations as a separately owned company now that will crimp the future valuation of these companies it has been unorthodox now they're in a situation where the two buyers at the end here -- this entire process has been unorthodox and not what bite dance would have wanted >> but, investors still excited. walmart up about 4% on that news alex sherman, thank you. >> coming up, box ceo aaron vigog to join on us on the

other side of this break stay with us ♪ ♪ tools, cattle, grain, traded goods. even shells represented value. then currency came along. they made it out of copper, gold, silver, wampum. soon people decided to put all that value into a piece of paper, then proceeded to wave goodbye to value, printing unlimited amounts of money as they passed the buck to the future. that's why it's time for digital currency and your investment in the grayscale funds. go digital. go grayscale.

it has been a busy morning let's get now to josh lipton josh, other ver to you >> thank you for taking the time to chat today. >> thank you for being here. >> your stock was up about 120% from it's march lows you're surging higher again here today. one big reason, investors are computed about what they see here and it is an improved profitability. it is about 16% in the quarter what explains that trend and is it sustainable here? >> we were very happy about the quarter that we just put up. stabilizing the growth rates 11% revenue growth, over 15% operating margin

16% operating margin nap is something we have been driving for the last year or so. driving a better balance between growth and profitability it was 12% or 13% operating margin for the year. so we think these are susz tanble and we want to continue to drive them going forward. we are happy with the efficiency and the ability to empower kmirs in the dynamic landscape >> some of the headwinds, like every other tech company you're dealing with a very unusual challenging environment and economy that is having an impact softness across your small business segment how are you dealing with the

challenges >> yeah, the first couple quarters of the year we had to step back and figure out in this economy and market what could we best do to serve our customer base in some segments we had to lean in other segments we saw more growth spaces like financial services, life services, we had to do a little reset in some of our services, and we're seeing more in the second half of the year we saw very strong enterprise growth we grew our number of big deals as we grew with deals above 100,000 and transaction value. we grew that by 60% from q 1 to q 2 of this year we're happy about the momentum we're seeingin the business an we expect that we're going to continue to drive growth into the second half of the year. right now we're all hands on

deck supporting our customers and their strategies and enabling them to have a more secure and seam leless way to wk in this environment. >> i'm sure you want tochekeep your momentum going. some of the same concepts could apply to the enterprise cloud. you have microsoft, amazon, google, sales force, they all have a lot of sway over how partners get included or excluded do the platforms have too much power? do they need oversight >> it is a great question coming off of the anti-trust hearings and a lot of that focus was on the world. more energy from congress. in the enterprise segment,

dealing with a similar question, how do we ensure there is care in the interon oversight, that's a big question for the government across the industry we need to work on better standards we need to drive better inoperable technologies. there's still a long way to go to really create a seamless experience for the broader customer base out there. >> good to see you i'm a fan of your twitter feed i couldn't help but notice just minutes before you came on air to talk to us, you noted the

walmart, tiktok, microsoft news. you tweeted i don't understand business anymore but this is fun to watch tell us what do you not understand about it? >> i just had a couple of s seconds during the last break and seeing the news. the last conversation about this being an unorthodox process was aptly put. this is a strange environment. i don't think there's been a precedent for this type of acquisition playing out ever and especially in the back of the antitrust element. you don't have the logical acquires of this type of social media technology at play all you really have are these interesting configurations of maybe the not classic acquirers of a social tool which is causing a lot of questions what is the long term strategic

nature it might not have some of the same demographic within their customer base. that being said, all players, these are all incredibly smart and savvy business people. i'm sure behind the scenes, there's quite a deal of strategy going on it's fun to watch play out >> let's stick with microsoft. i'm interested in a different question the competitive landscape and dynamic with micrmicrosoft. how much of a risk is that for you? how much of a competitive threa is that? >> when we talk to our customers and cross 100,000 customers. what they looking for is being able to move off the legacy

system, legacy stores, legacy systems. be able to move that data to the cloud and access the data from any application thai woey're wo in microsoft is one of many places where people want to do their work from. they want to be able to do their work from microsoft teams but sales force and oracle or zoom or slack our job is to be a back end platform that earthquaconnects e business applications. as a part of that we have a strong partnership with microsoft. i think they have done a in incredible job make sure customers work with different vendors >> what about dropbox as well? an analyst said he looked to him

it was going back from the higher education segment and maybe drop box and was capitalizing is that true are you pulling back a bit from that vertical? >> not at all. we have a fantastic community of over 100,000 higher ed institutions globally. i think when you look at kind of top 50 or so schools by size, we end up being in large portion of them it's a segment that we're continuing to double down in and support our customer base there. occasionally, you'll lose a few customers or maybe won't win a new deal overall it's a healthy segment for us we're focused on the enterprise market which includes higher education but financial services, health care, technology sector, professional services i think you'll see us have a balanced portfolio of growth across many industries

>> what did you make of the ceo letter slamming silicon valley on the way to wall street? >> i always enjoy the different flavors of technology companies out there. it's interesting to see the different approaches the companies take i think there's probably some areas we agree with them we think the government having good technologies have really good thing for a country and for our democracy broadly. we don't share the same political opinions on the other technology but overall, i think it was a strong as one, obviously putting up strong revenue growth and it's an organization that is doing important work >> thank you for your time today. we always appreciate it. john, back to you guys >> all right thank you.

some of the badly battered travel leisure and entertainment stocks are making big moves today. you can see them there higher. we will tell you why, next

espn reporting that the nba players have decided to resume the playoffs today's games, espn says will be postponed but discussions under way on when those games will resume.closely the action on travel, leisure, entertainment stocks getting a big boost this morning. this comes on the heels of the

news of this abbott blab tests that will be used by health professionals in medical labs. it can deliver results in 15 minutes. it really has opened up a new trade on the continued reopening of the economy and they are shooting for scale here. some of the targets for delivery in october, some 50 million units. we are hoping this abbott news does come to pass. s >> you'd really like to see that especially as you look at schools on the local public school level and institutions of higher learning. colleges and universities trying to open back up. as they do the in-person component and in some cases having to step back because of spikes in so many places you need contact tracing you need to be able to keep these spikes from exploding. >> perhaps, one major piece could be in place now.

take a look at the megacaps was briefly positive tesla got a note it's up more than 5% today 10% this week alone, carl. >> yeah. amazing. between the fed, walmart and microsoft, abbott, hurricane laura. what a day let's get to sully thank you very much. it is a very busy day, everybody. welcome to "the halftime report." as you just heard carl say it's a jam packed thursday. there's three major stories. buyers keep coming into stocks the ped givie in fed giving the. unveiling a new approach that will keep rates lower for longer, maybe for ever hurricane laura downgraded t