sale difficult or even impossible it's monday, august 31st, squawk box begins right now hey, i don't know if you were up at 5:30 but frank holland referred to you as big poppa. first of all, was i up i am up at 3:30. i don't mind it. you name it. i got it let's take a look at the u.s.

equity futures at this hour. and it's been a very strong month for august that's the best august in 36 years. the s&p is up by better than 7% and at a record high dow futures up by 63 points. s&p futures up by 9. the nasdaq up by 43 and then take a look at pressure ri yields this morning. it's around 0.721% it is a trading day to remember. a new look and amgen, sales force and honey well becoming new members of the dow 30. and two other stocks you won't

want to watch today and apple and tesla, both companies carrying out stock splits. apple at 4 for 5 tesla up 5 for 1 the stock prices reflect the splits and apple split changes it's way in the dow. as a matter of fact, apple split seemed to be what precipitated this round of changes in the dow, he ten sapple once it spli fun way around that. so we'll have more in the big moves. >> all right thank you very much. well, all right. >> stock giving us news. tiktok's china based parent company says a new chinese law makes a sale of assets more complicated or impossible. at new, a new rule only last friday that banned the export of certain technologies

the big question still out there would china block any sale we don't know. it's still not clear it had not updated the tech export band list since 2008. until of course friday well, in other words news on tik tok the company tells cnbc it's not in talks to sell the american asset to rival video sharing app triller but the executive chairman says aed by was submitted. the saga continues to ramp up with a big twist thrown in by the chinese government only on friday amazing timing >> yeah.

this is its way of going back in it's role as the u.s. government the big question is does this leave it in the position where it's not going to be able to operate in the united states because china won't let them sell it and the u.s. won't let them operate without an american owner. that could be it as well or maybe there's certain technologies and one would wonder what might be the laws. china is good at trying to protect it's own intellectual property asset but not quite as good as protecting ours there.

>> yeah, that's an understatement this saga has so much going on you can't keep up with this because there's going to be three new pieces in a different direction. when i heard walmart was involved i thought that was a joke trying to keep up with this is not easy but ultimately it's going to be the two governments that have the most say. >> the fascinating part of it too is that every new potential bidder or confirmed bidder for tik tok in the u.s. seemed to have the stock price go up it does show you that this would be considered a wind fall of an asset that four months ago nobody thought they would be able to own. >> i think that we learned who is in charge here. stepping down on friday after three months of the job.

and we learned who is in charge of american assets and that's probably also the chinese government. >> we'll see guys let's bring up another story too. warren buffet making news over the weekend announcing that berkshire hathaway acquired a stake of more than 5% in each of the 5 leading japanese trading companies. those companies are itochu corporation, marubeni, mitsubishi, mitsui and sumitomo. he acquired them over a 12 month period through regular purchases on the stock exchange. berkshire intends to hold the investments for the long-term and that it may increase the holdings to a maximum of 9.9%. however buffet said that he would not go above the threshold

unless given specific approval by the trading companies boards of directors this is a big one. a 5% stake would be valued at about $6.25 billion. and collectively that puts the bet on japan at about his 7th largest holding just above wells fargo based on the most recent regulatory filings he unloaded 25% of the holdings that he had in that company and of course his largest holding is apple. that company has now valued at about $90 billion and this all happened on his 90 birthday. he's constantly changing the way he thinks and the way he invests. he did say this is a bet and the five major trazing companies by the way are very

cruci crucial. they import everything from food and textiles and energy into a country scarce in resources so they play a key role in a lot of the imports for this he says that the five major trading companies have lots of joint ventures throughout the world and they're likely to have more of the partnerships and he says i hope that in the future there may be more opportunities of mutual benefit. he had long said that he wouldn't invest in technology companies because he didn't understand technology companies. he bought his first shares of apple just over four years ago in may of 2016 so it just goes to show that when you think you know what he's going to do he will change and dodge and this is a pretty different take a different move though. a lot of people would not have expected >> going where the opportunities are, also a bet not just on japan but global trade and

continued importance it reminds me a little bit in the early 2000s he bought a big steak and it's a very good trade in 2007 or 6 and it's a new wrinkle. >> i used to work mitsubishi trading. i used to work for mitsubishi trading but it's a hard business the profit margins can be low. that was a long time ago guys and maybe he's putting this bet on global growth what's more interesting is what he is not doing which is putting more money back into u.s. companies. instead he's going to japan and getting out of wells fargo in weakness it's maybe the most important stock in america

down to 54% over the last year biggest mortgage holder and yet getting out of it into weakness that speaks volumes to what he's not doing. >> i thought the same thing. they do play a big role in the financial side of things so it would be selling a wells fargo at the same time that you're loading up on this i thought was noticeable too in the most recent filings they came in at number 7. it was around $6 billion in the holding but that was as of june 30th and this is a combined 6 and a quarter billion. that's the value right now if you would take a 5% stake in each of the companies. we also mentioned that this was announced on buffet's 90th birthday we weren't the only ones that noticed that bill gates wrote a blog post about his friendship of warren noting the two share a lot in common including their love of

math he threw out numbers like 10,649 that's the number of days since the two first met on july 5th 1991 and two, that's the number of people that bill gates has on his speed dial in his office the first is his wife and then there's warren buffet. gates also posted this birthday message showing gates baking an oreo cake and a message saying happy 90th birthday warren the best part was the music in the background so listen in anyway, when we come back, a vaccine could be fast tracked even before phase 3 trials are complete we'll get reaction from the predecessor dr. scott gotlieb coming up next u.s. equity futures are higher the dow futures up by 41 points.

the nasdaq indicated up by 38 and squawk box will be right back pnc bank believes that if you can get a pair of goggles that helps you master your backhand... ...then you should be able to get a bank account that helps you master your budget. virtual wallet® for digital banking from pnc. it's time to get more from your bank.

virtual wallet® for digital banking from pnc. as amy first jober, is to care for derek. everything i do is for him. when i moved to this apartment after six months, we need to connect with the world. i use the internet to keep him in the language, because that's the way to connect to my family's traditions. he has to know where he comes from. we need internet essentials. there's no excuse to not get connected. welcome back, everybody. fda commissioner saying he is prepared to bypass the full federal approval process in order to make covid vaccine available as soon as possible.

he said that an emergency authorization could be appropriate before phase 3 clinical trials are completed if the benefits outweigh the risk he said it's up to the vaccine developers to apply for authorization or approval and if they do that before the end of phase 3 the fda may find that appropriate. he said the decision would be based on science, medicine and data and politics wouldn't factor in. joining us now is his predecessor at the fda as commissioner there and he's a cnbc commissioner and serves on the boards of alumni and pfizer. he writes sweden shouldn't be america's pandemic model and herd immunity is too far away to depend on it saying we need to try to continue to try to limit the spread as much as possible thank you for being with us. it's good to see you today. >> thanks. >> after talking with you for many, many months, we have had this conversation before about

how important phase 3 trials are. why you think it would be a mistake to not have the trials what do you think of the fda commissioner now saying that he would consider giving approval without those phase 3 trials >> well, we're going to have the trials i'm not sure what the statement actually meant they each enrolled more than 15,000 subjects and they'll be enrolled in a matter of weeks. so these trials are going to read out a top line answer on whether or not the vaccines are effective when enough are reached and those events are how many people in the clinical trials actually get covid disease or get infected with coronavirus and show outward signs of infection on diagnostic tests. now it's possible that what he was referring to was issuing an emergency use authorization

before the trials are fully complete and these are two year trials and there will be a two year period of safety follow up on the clinical trials and it's likely to be the case if they're otherwise safe and effective elderly patients at nursing homes at higher risk of a bad outcome. that might be what you meant by saying they might issue an emergency use authorization before the trials are quote, unquote, complete but i highly doubt they'll issue any kind of regulatory decision until the t trials are out and there's a pretty good indication that they're safe that would be good if that were what was actually

happening. so one principle investigator of the phase three trials said that the trial is on pause because the fda is looking at whether the trial can be bypassed all together and the vaccine approved using emergency use authorization based on the u.s. trial. what do you think of that? >> i don't think the report was accurate i read the same article. it did make a lot of sense and it's one investigator who looks like they're surmising from something that may or may not have happened in trial so i wouldn't put too much credence in that they're going to allow the professional staff at the fda to allow the trials to read out and want a firm look at the safety database before they make a regulatory decision even to issue an emergency use authorization. the process itself has a lot of integrity to it and if they trust the process and let that process unfold, you're going to get a sound decision out of the agency this is a process. we have multiple layers of scientific review. you have objective criteria and what the end points are for the

clinical trials and what kind of safety they want to make a lead on whether or not the vaccines are safe and people would have confidence of what is unfolding inside the agency >> you have been a voice of reason for us. you're an incredibly diplomatic person but i get the sense that you're a little bit frustrated and let me read for people that haven't seen it yet. the trump administration's covid response seems increasingly a policy reference from among some conservatives. this assumes that herd immunity will slow the pandemic

but then you go on to say that you don't think that it's a sound philosophy >> right i don't necessarily agree with that i mean, there's aspects of it that make sense. we should be protecting the elderly and trying to get resources in to make sure that infection doesn't get in there but if you have a lot of community spread inevitably it's going to seep into the populations that are more vulnerable but what i said in the op-ed is that there is a philosophy around the activities that the administration is following. i think some people say that they're disorganized and it's just a series of reactive steps that the administration is taking and i think that doesn't give enough justice to the fact that there is a philosophy that's guiding at least some of the decisions. you can agree with that philosophy or disagree with it as i did to some extent in that op-ed article but there's a guiding principle and you should push resources into nursing

homes and protect the elderly patients at risk of dying of this infection second, you have a population that if it does get into a younger population, eventually if you have a lot of community spread it's going to get into the more vulnerable populations and the third basis for the argument that we should sort of let everyone get to herd immunity is a presumption that a lot of people already have immunity against coronavirus when you look at people's t-cells about 50% of people, upwards of 50% of people have reactive t-cells gens covid.

we know nothing about whether or not the t-cells are protective there's no evidence to suggest that they are. but people having immunity against coronavirus will reach herd immunity. we don't have enough information to base that kind of conclusion on. >> no, we don't. but you're approaching from the medical side which is certainly the way that we need to do it. we have been doing it now for the better part of six months but there is a conversation that you or others are having, the administration on the other side which is that there's a lot of other effects to this, right we know that number one it's highly survivable if you're under the age of 65. what about mental illness? financial -- i'm not saying that we should go to the model but i'm saying there has to at least be another side.

you read stories about 20-year-olds, 20% or so google suicide or thought about it. mental health issues marriages breaking up. what is the proper balance in the conversation. >> there's a lot of consequences of the restrictions and stay at home orders. that's why we're not likely to go back. even if the virus spreads more widely heading into the fall and the winter i think there's a risk that it would. i don't think that we're going to reach back to stay at home orders and lock downs again. we're past that phase of this epidemic response. remember we implemented that when new york was really undersiege with the infection and we were worried that the health care system would become overrun and it almost did and we also didn't know how many we were going to have

i don't think people are going to go back there we might have cut it by 50%. we're going to do a better job of preserving life we know how to use other mitigation steps that are less sbusive that aren't as disruptive to the economic behavior and economic activity short of stay at home orders things like wearing masks and using contact tracing and trying to use diagnostic tests and getting people diagnosed so you can get them isolated when they're actively infected but you also have this cohort of people that say we really shouldn't be worried enough to wear masks and there's a number of people in the population that say it's going to be hard to keep this under some level of control heading into the fall

the vaccine is very effective. you could get a read out at some point in october a sort of top line read out but it's more likely to even get a read out of the trials in november unless we had a very dense epidemic and those vaccines end up being very effective. that's the only circumstance in which you'd get a read out in october but that probably wouldn't leave enough time by november regardless. it's very unlikely it's more likely that you'll get a top line result at some point in november and emergency use authorization after that. >> thank you and again, he has an oped in the wall street journal today. check it out we'll see you soon. >> thanks a lot.

>> coming up, a big change in the way you plan air travel. we'll talk to airlines after the break and speaking of airlines, they are one of the biggest premarket gainers in the s&p 500. you can see them right there all of them up more than 2% and in fact, 2 mth0%on to date squawk box will be right back. at leaf blowers. you should be mad your neighbor always wants to hang out. and you should be mad your smart fridge is unnecessarily complicated. make ice. making ice. but you're not mad because you have e*trade which isn't complicated. their tools make trading quicker and simpler so you can take on the markets with confidence. don't get mad get e*trade and start trading commission free today. don't get mad get e*trade and start trading our retirement plan with voya gives us confidence. they help us with achievable steps along the way... ...so we can spend a bit today, knowing we're prepared for tomorrow. wow dad, do you think you overdid it maybe? i don't think so... what do you think, peanut?

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scrapping it's $200 fee to change domestic flights. airlines made tough decisions to survive, sometimes at the expense of customer service. customers economy tickets or premium tickets won't have to pay a fee but they'll have to pay a difference in the fares. and $2.8 billion in change and cancellati cancellation. >> all right we'll stick with the airlines. american airlines is planning to drop it's flying capacity by 55%. according to reports the airline is trimming operations during the slowest period

earlier this month they revealed it will end service to 15 cities in early october that stock is higher all right. coming up, meet the new class. we'll take a closer look at the three stocks becoming part of the dow jones industrial average today. what the change might mean for your money plus what tesla stock split means for elon musk. squawk box will be right back. as business moves forward, we're all changing the way things get done. like how we redefine collaboration... how we come up with new ways to serve our customers... and deliver our products. but no matter how things change, one thing never will... you can rely on the people and the network of at&t...

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jump out in 1984 was that the answer? >> yeah. it was called 1984 that's why >> the album is called 1984. we are looking at the u.s. equity futures on this last day of august. and here's the time. and since you got it august of 1984 that's how long it has been. you are looking this month and it's not to shabby either. and dow jones up 43 points dow jones industrial average

the s&p is up by 7.5 points and the nasdaq indicated up by 43, brian. yeah a little bit. we could debate that. >> definitely not. >> when joe got his flat tire last week, it made me think about the line he says i don't feel tardy anyway, tesla shares begin trading today. phil joining us now with more. rescue us. looking to tell us about the tesla split and elon musk. >> let's talk about something other than van halen shall we? let's take a look at shares of tesla. wow they're trading at $21.33. oh no, the split adjustment has gone through and starting today they'll trade on a split adjustment level.

okay you had a heck of a run up before they announced the 5 for 1 split. they were really three that were going to come out over the next month and a half a lot of people focused on whether or not elon musk announced such a major advancement that people will say it further enhances the advantage that tesla has when it comes to batteries over other electric vehicles. october 1st through the third is when we get deliveries and see if they're on track to make their goal of a half million deliveries this year and late october, early november, that's when we get the q-3 financials being reported take a look at tesla versus the s&p 500 and i'm showing you this since august 11th. that is -- and you know what the s&p 500 has done since then. it started moving a little bit

higher oh but tesla up 60 61% since they announced the stock split on august 11th finally, i'd have to show you the video. if you didn't see it on friday night, it's kind of interesting, this is what people love about elon musk. he has been talking about it for sometime they demonstrated the progress that they made so far. elon musk will say this is early on still a lot of things that need to be worked out but they showed a demonstration where they had the device implanted they say that this will help with memory loss and this is one example of what the future might hold guys, there's no shortage of fun topics when it comes to elon musk nothing came out of this and people would say that is it. that is definitely happening in the near future but it is the possibility and that's what elon musk is doing. >> wow, so basically controlling hogs telling hogs what to do

using just their brain is basically that what we witnessed? just do that >> they haven't done it in a human trial yet. so they wanted to show some of the possibilities with the technology they're not inventing this so they can tell them what to do. >> i can think of one really good use for this. on a show like this when he doesn't move on or listen to production queues or time queues or whatever it is, he just hits a button and they suddenly move on. >> it's technology too. >> yeah, yeah. >> we get selectively hard of hearing sometimes with time queues. >> open my mike or we could just use a cattle prod. >> i like that. >> we have to be on set all

together again to do that. it will happen thank you very much. more on the other big split of the day and the changes that it sparked in the dow jones industrial average of course that is apple. >> something like that compareson that phil had with apple. i compare it here to 3 other very high share price tech stocks that have also done very well and a higher share price than apple before it split. and we all keep talking about these splits acknowledging and emphasizing that they're cosmetic and whatever psychological effect it is

and the same day that tesla announced its split. we have a different type of market here guys and it's a status symbol share price. and you're getting a flat rate on a commission to trade any number of shares and a new type of market is driven by more public crowd psychology and excitement over the big stocks to do something like just make the share price a little cheaper and the options by the way, cheaper to trade that's one practical benefit to the stocks >> what is the implication of getting watered down in the dow, though, does that matter in terms of indexing or any impact on apple for that >> it doesn't matter for real dollars behind the indexes it's the vast majority of what it is.

and a little bit of apple when the share price goes down and had to do it today it's much more bragging rights and really what drives the dow as opposed to driving the share price at this point. >> right okay thanks, mike and we'll see you back over at the table in just a minute when we come back the latest news on tik tok as the deadline to sell the approaches we'll have the newest details next and later don't miss our interview with wall street legend lee kcooperman for his take on the market rebound you can watch or listen to us live any time on the cnbc app. we'll be right back. it's easy to get lost in the economic uncertainty. the volatility. the ambiguity. the moment calls for more. and northern trust delivers more. with specialized expertise. proven strategies rooted in data and analytics... and insights borne from over 130 years of successfully navigating economic turbulence.

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welcome back topped the weekend box office with $7 million in ticket sales.

it's one of the first that caused theaters to close in march. it's what you might consider an opening weekend number in normal times. and it's obviously a much bigger movie. and coming up, china, updating it's latest technology export restrictions list oh by the way for the first time since 2008, tik tok's special sauce algorithm is likely to fall under the new rules. and even the future of the app next t-mobile and sprint have merged.

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bytedance says it will strictly abide by china's new law of banning exports from certain technology which means the sale to any company would need the explicit blessing of the chinese government and puts the deal at risk and maybe signals the end of tik tok for u.s obviously kind of a really surprised move of the chinese government late in the day on friday and their first update by the way to that banned export technology list in 12 years. surprising timing, right does that reduce the chances of any deal ever happening. >> that's the direct answer. i think that you know the answer of that question too and this is going to get more complicated and you have two groups of

suitors and an asset now the level of restrictions really on both sides is going to make this an extremely complicated deal so we assume it still goes forward but it's hard to -- there's factors here that are almost impossible to handicap. >> yeah, you're basically going to need a license for bytedance. and wants something from the american government. they're probably going to use that as leverage over any possible deal or afraid of what technology might be found out by the united states buyer and ban that deal. what is the most likely of those two outcomes >> i think it's more likely the first that there will be some trading required here and if i step back a little bit, it's the reason that we're involved in this in the first place. and it's gained an enormous amount of momentum and and close

to snapchat. and there's a really dynamic great use. great user interface asset and a lot of buying more than just those two that have been listed a couple other maybe more natural suitors, but i don't think regulations would allow those companies to step in and buy this it's a fascinating asset if microsoft or oracle consortium could it at a reasonable price, would be good for them. >> understand it a little. you've made sense of it, others, too. daters on users, potentialers shoppers, get it oracle basically a back-end database companies with some erp software on the front side i don't understand can you help us make sense of

that >> i'm not sure i can either enterprise first companies looking to buy a clearly consumer pretty much only company. question whether natural suitors because of that. a's point you made that is fascinating. woi word of inflection point because of coronavirus, growth in retail and dramatic acceleration in social media growth company right up in these alleys amazons and facebooks have show accelerated growth coming out of this is a great opportunity for social commerce. you're seeing great experiments from facebook and instagram right now pinteresting the space. interesting new element that makes the walmart part of the microsoft consortium so interesting. >> could you have ever imagined that tiktok would have become

this type of asset one year ago, mark novel and interesting, used to be called music, my kids singing along to it, basically like, i think of mtv in certain ways another tiktok triller mentioned. no really know who that is is there somebody coming down the pike might be the next big thing? >> yes. >> they come fairly quickly up and gain market share fast >> hey, that's a great thing it shows that if people can come up with innovative products that can gain a tremendous amount of momentum and a lot of users. kind of what we all want, market participants, great for a lot of consumers who enjoyed or wasted their time as they have on some parts of other social media assets there's another product on the market instagram reels far as we can tell from testing

have a lot of features, user experiences very similar to tiktok a good, fun experience probably a check in the positive camp for instagram facebook increasing engagement on that site whether long-term have a negative impact on tiktok, i don't know if we'll ever find out because of other issues now impacting tiktok, but tiktok came in, saw this great market opportunity for ai generated userlgorithm and took the opportunity others missed it youtube, facebook, instagram, although facebook and instagram seem to be quickly catching up. >> you talked about the value of the business and why microsoft might be able to exploit it in certain ways i've asked everybody as this has gone along why microsoft would need partners? even before the walmart story,

maybe private equity is it, a., seems strategic drift, or, perhaps, b., some element of their interest which is based on principle. like if this company will be shut down we have the means to actually rescue it and let's do that so as not to have a precedent set a big players goes out of business? >> well, i want to be a little careful here whether the valuation ends up being reasonable or not, there's the suitors that have access to numbers that other market participants don't or at least the company's forecasts. numbers thrown around about $6 billion in revenue strikes me a little aggressive given only about $1 billion last year haven't seen that kind of growth before, but it's possible. i want to be careful making a strong valleyation one way or another. few could make that without real access to the numbers. in terms of the walmart angle. tiktok is a very different

animal, largely from a microsoft, i understand microsoft has strong consumer assets my colleague covers that company. i don't. xbox, a history of consumer talent at microsoft, but much more leans enterprise first. bring in that consumer talent. i think walmart maybe helps somewhat in that certainly in terms of fulfillment part of the social commerce opportunity, but it's not a perfect thing. thare oth they're are other companies googling, facebooks, not allowed lie w l by regulators and that's kind of the missing piece here. >> mark, thanks very much. leave it there and talk to you soon. >> thank you. and coming up, we have a big interview with lee cooperman his thoughts on the market after the best summer in a long time is there more run to run now first, you can't afford tos miss our squawk newsmaker of the morning on the fed's big change

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read it carefully.

in august in the dow, should more affordable stock prices make you an investors? "squawk on the street" today watch and listen live on the cnbc app. good morning green arrows on the final trading day of the month

best for stocks in more than 30 years. legendary investor david rubenstein our special guest and five leading trading companies, and apple and tesla completing stocks list outlook of the popular names as the second hour of "squawk box" begins right now. good morning, everyone and welcome back or welcome to "squawk box" right hoare on cnbc. i am not joe kernen. i an brian sullivan. that is of course becky quick and my santelli and andrew and joe are off today. and u.s. equity futures, juggernaut may continue on not huge gains not making march of it, guys, but in the green at least

overall. 36 points in the dow keep in mind, the s&p 500 is up seven sessions in a row. today we find out if they can make that eight and as you might have heard becky tell you earlier on in the program, we are possibly on pace from one of our, if not "the" best august ever right now our best august since 1984 not only a great album, but a pretty good and scary book as well from what i understand. >> yeah pap strong market. >> see if that rallies today with a new look dow. >> right worth noting futures gains moderated recently after that strong talk. maybe rebalancing out of equities into bonds, because of the strength in stocks in august see if that actually takes hold today. making headlines, by the way, brian referenced, dow jones industrial average takes on a new look beginning today and gen force and honeywell new members. replacing exxon pfizer andand h

raytheon and bikedance will follow china's newly tightened laws making a sale of u.s. tiktok operations harder. china updated its list that must get government approval before they can be exported berkshire hathaway acquired a stake in each of the five leading japanese trading companies. warren buffett's firm acquired holdings over a roughly 12-month period through regular purchases on the tokyo stock exchange. it may increase holdings of any of the companies to a maximum of 9.9% becky. >> mike, thanks. now to our newsmaker of the hour david rubenstein he is the carlisle group co-executive chairman. new book called "how to lead:

wisdom from the world's greatest ceos, founders and game changers" comes out tomorrow the perfect person to have written that book because he has spoken with all of these many leaders and is a leader himself in private equity and following markets for decades. david, great to see you here today. >> my pleasure to be here. thank you very much for having me. >> we're looking forward to the book and i want to talk with you more about that, but before we do, hoping we can get thoughts on the markets and a few other things maybe as we're watching just heard brian talk how this has been the strongest august we've seen in more than 30 years. 36 years so far. just wonder how you feel about things i know that in july you were a little nervous how high the markets had been especially given what's happening in the economy. what do you think now? only gone up since then. >> i'm still a little nervous. obviously the fed's action or the statement recently last week made it clear that the fed is going to be very accommodating for a while and that might fuel markets for a while.

right now i think neither party is saying things that is scaring the market neither the democratic or republican party is saying things that will scare the market i think the market has somewhere more to go on the other hand, i don't think it can keep going up forever at this pace. i think a pause at some point. >> you think neither party is saying anything that would scare the markets. you think if there are things they should be saying that would maybe be a reflection that would cause concern in the markets >> well, at some point after the election, whoever wins, i think realitily set in we'll have to deal with the deficit and the debt and probably the need for some taxes somewhere to pay for some of the debt and deficit that we have. nobody wants to focus on that now. if i were a candidate i wouldn't focus on it either at some point we can't keep having half of our budget come from borrows money at some point we have to pay it down and pay for it with greater taxes. >> the thing the fed said last

week that caught me the most is just this idea that they're going to be looking for inflation that's greater than they've been looking for in the past when that happens your money is worth less, unless you do something like invest in the market seems like a difficult time to not put money to work in stocks if you realize if it's sitting in the bank it's worth less every day. >> i work in the prior white house and know a lot about inflation. very high double-digit inflation and we're not likely to have that again because world economy's changed dramatically the fed would love to have 3% and 4% inflation very hard to do. markets are convinced the fed is doing everything to accommodate the markets. remember, the central banks' purpose in life, generally, make currenoccurrenccurrencies work d inflation. taking on additional job of worries about unemployment, the banks. in our law as well under the laws pas the in the late 1970s the fed is supposed to worry about unemployment as well

another factor and inflation isn't the only factor they worry about. it's clear they would like more inflation just don't know how to really get it right now. >> david, in terms of private equity, when you see the markets at these incredibly high levels, my guess, more complicated for anybody in private equity to get out there say, buy this company, turn it around, fix it up and able to sell it for more down the road what does this do for private equity over all? bring your businesses already in your portfolio back into the market difficult to find new companies you want to jump into? >> obviously a good time to sell and a lot of things sold at reasonably good prices old days buy things seven, eight, nine times cash flow. now if you buy things pay 10, 11, 12, 13 or more do so in part because interest rates are so low and borrow cheaply, but no doubt the markets are buoyant and people aren't afraid of paying higher

prices when the mark goes down people will be more afraid. we have fair amount of capital to employ and investors looking for good returns private equity the last 10, 15, 20 years produced greater return and the asset class and will continue to do so. a pretty good bet even though returns came down slightly from where they were a few years ago. >> certain sectors or geographies where there are better opportunities than you might see in some of the main things that we continue to look at >> well, of course, technology is everybody's favorite thing today and everybody wants to make every deal, a technology deal and maybe it is in some respect. health care another very important area you see a lot of money go into. biotech, related to biotech and health care and health care services generally people are looking for things that are post-covid you can see the world is changing nrds, post-covid, opportunities because people will change their

lifestyles, change the way they work and live. people are trying to make guess what is going to happen after we kind of get a vaccine and go back to work we are going to change our life. remember, just in one year we've changed our life dramatically. more so in any 10, 20 or 30-year period before because of covid making people work at home and remotely private equity will look for ways to invest in those areas. >> talk about your book. calmed "how to lead again" and it's out tomorrow. you've spoken on your program, on your interview show, with so many of these leaders. everyone from oprah winfrey to bill gates, jeff bezos, warren buffett, richard branson so many different leaders you've had an opportunity to speak with i wonder what you find in common with all of these leaders, if any of them? >> well, all leaders have a number of things in common one, had some luck all recognize that two, they failed at something, because you have to fail before

you succeed. everybody's failed at something. three, learned to focus. didn't try to do 1,000 things at once learned to do one thing very well you persuade people to follow you, orally speaking well, writing well, leading by example and they learned how to be ethical. i think the best leaders of ethical and have a great deal of humility to them, recognizing a lot of luck is involved and the left leaders rise to the occasion when a crisis occurs something really happens that's important, when a lot of the people i've written about in the book have really made their mark so some of the people that you know quite well, you've interviewed many as well, they have had opportunity to rise on occasion when there's a real crisis the great leaders, that's the difference, between the average leaders. my view is -- >> and you -- go ahead. >> go ahead. well, i was going to say -- >> go ahead finish your thought

>> why do we care about lead jers because these are the people that actually are guiding us and other people how to do certain things in certain areas. political leaders, business leaders, cultural leaders we want to follow them because we think they know something where we should go and we should follow their lead. that's generally what leaders are about. everybody will be inspired to read the book and learn how they can be a leader. inspiring younger people to read about people who are older, a little more experienced. what these people did and how they, the younger people, could say i could do this as well. the world is better off with good leaders the world is not good when we don't have good leaders. >> you were hugely popular yourself before you sat down and wrote the book is it there a story that caught you by surprise, something you learned and maybe even incorporated yourself? >> interviewing jeff bezos i realized he doesn't make

decisions before 10:00 a.m. or after 3:00 p.m. and gets eight hours sleep every night. i should try that. i'd be more successful maybe worth a lot of money if i tried that i didn't know that was the secret to life i'm trying to figure out how to can do that. there are a lot of secrets people and have a lot of people when you get down to it think they're not great leaders. think they got lucky and may have had lucky break here or there. truth is all of them had some distinctive characteristics. the point about leaders, that's what makes the world go round and makes the world really successful having very good leaders at times of war, great leaders in our country political leaders, at times health care crises, good leaders. we need good leaders and want to continue to foster good leaders and that's what i'm trying to do foster people to read about leaders, hopefully be inspired and maybe we'll get even greater leaders down the road in all the areas i've written about. >> turn the tables on you just a little bit you mentioned when it comes to

leadership it's being tested, having difficult times and coming through it. that's what makes leaders better leaders. what's a difficult time that you've been through? something you've had to struggle with and that you came out the other side on? >> well i worked in the carter white house. thought i was going to be a superstar in the second carter administration and would be a more powerful person and then we lost the election to ronald reagan and i had to start my life over again and realized i wasn't a very good lawyer. practiced law and the clients didn't think i was so great and i didn't think i was so great either had to do something else start add private equity firm. starting any private equity firm in 1987 when i did it wasn't easy we struggled a while and had ups and downs but now it's a very successful firm. i've learned through the difficult election of 1980 that, you know, you can pick yourself up off the ground, but it's not easy to do and you know, anybody that has been through any kind of experience in life probably has failed at something and i failed

at many things, and i got lucky in life. so now what i'm trying to do is essentially give away my money and thank the country for my good fortune, and one of the ways i give back, let other people know how others are successful, more successful than me by far and let people know about these people and ultimately maybe people can see them as role models and can maybe follow the way of some of these people. >> use the election as a jumping off point. coming up against another election's to this point the market doesn't seem to think there's going to be anything wrong no matter which party wins as you mentioned, tough truths either party has to deal with come november. what are you doing just as a businessman, as a private equity leader, in terms of trying to position yourself depending which party wins is there a big up side or down side >> well, you really can't predict who's going to win and plan for that. you just have to make certain you make reasonably good

investments, no over levered, know what you're doing focused on getting good rates in returns for your investors in the end whoever wins will probably be okay for the investment world i do think whoever becomes next president of the united states will have to deal with economic and financial realities which probably people don't want to talk about in campaigns. i've been in campaigns in campaigns you generally don't want to salem tell you how bad things will be in the future you don't like to say that walter mondale said in 1984 i'm going to give awe big tax increase when elected president. already told you that, and he didn't win too many states people don't tend to say a lot of negative things how things will be once they campaign and they tend to deal with the realities once elected the market recognizes that in all private equity firms, positioned, whoever is elected, do reasonably well because of a fair amount of capital and technical expertise but not easy to get rates of return we're trying to get and therefore have to work hard to do it. >> so there's nothing you're

doing one way or the other that you figure that things will be relatively the same? or -- i mean, the two administrations do have pretty different ideas. >> yes, and i think you have to assume that whoever is elected will probably have to do some similar things i suspect there will be some tax increases, whoever is elected, just to pay for some of the deficits we now have, and i suspect at some point, at some point down the road, interest rates will go up probably not for a while, and i do think at some point we have to recognize the dollar may not be at strong always as it has been. dollar is under pressure now some and people should recognize that the trade deficit's going on for quite some time. >> you don't worry about high inflation against? that's interesting you lived through it in the carter administration and you don't think anything near that is on the horizon? >> well, if the fed wants to know that inflation issue, give me a call. i know a lot about it and how to

create a lot of inflation. so far they haven't called me. wish we could get higher inflation to help pay down some debt to be very serious i think inflation, 3%, 4% would not be bad for the economy probably good for the economy. right now we haven't had innation over 2% for quite some time while that's the fed's target, a little more than 2%, hard to achieve. japanese have been trying to get 2% or more inflation for decades and haven't been able to do this it's a much more complicated thick to get when you want it than you think used to think deflation is a big problem. inflation is a bigger problem in terms of getting it. can't get enough inflation to get the economy to grow as much as i think it should. >> david, thank you for being with us today. it's always a pleasure talking to you and, again, new book calm called "how to lead" hits book shelves tomorrow and looking forward to seeing it. thanks for your time, david. >> thank you.

all right. coming up this morning, stocks to watch including a little bit of news and 8:00 eastern, another legendary investors leon cooperman joins us live. as we head to a break check out some of the biggest s&p movers in the pre-market stay tuned you're watching "squawk box" on cnbc.

welcome back breaking news on mcdonald's. kate rogers joins us with that hi, kate. >> hi, good morning. mcdonald's firing back at former ceo steve easterbrook. when mcdonald's investigated him live he violated the company's policies disrespected its values and abused trust of his co-workers, board, chfranchisee and she should not be responsible for more bad acts fails under the law. mcdonald's the suing him for fraud destroying evidence and

immoral turpitude regarding this firing last year fired without cause and severage estimated in tens of millions of dollars. the suit claims that back firing him with cause mcdonald's accusing him of having multiple sexual experiences with employees which he hid he did not hide his own misconduct enough and investigators should have uncovered it the files closing easterbrook's lies notwithstanding mcdonald's got a good deal ridding itself of him has no legal merit. we'll reach out to mr. easterbrook's attorney and bring you whatever we get. back to you. >> wow. >> quickly becoming a -- good morning or good evening, by the way. quickly becoming a soap opera that looks like it could get even uglier. no impact now on mcdonald's stock or shareholders but this could uncover a lot of are

things neither side will probably want public. >> yeah. right, brian the "wall street journal report"ing the company is looking into the former hr chief left the company shortly after easterbrook. last year asked for comment. no comment at this time. look likes the new hr is widening the investigation potentially into other executives and what may be uncovered moving forward. >> all right kate rogers on the mcdonald's/easterbrook challenge. on deck, speaking of food. call it a snack spat the ceo of potato and presentsal king utz ending their private/public company. and markets remain red hot as we head for one of our best augusts ever dow and nasdaq futures all

higher back with more "squawk box" right after this.

after nearly 100 years as a family owned company, utz is going public through a spat. the snack brand company perhaps best known for its potato chips listed on the new york stock exchange following a merger with collier creek holdings $1.5 billion and will be traded under the ticker utz joining now first on cnbc is utz ceo dylan laset. congrats good to have you this morning. >> thanks for having me. pleasure to be here. >> now, first question obviously, just as suggested by that info, around a century. clearly a lot of opportunities over that period to go public

through a regular ipo i'm sure over the years, opportunities to sell the business to a bigger player why was this the preferable option merging in with one of these list the spat companies? >> sure. kind of funny. the whole spat craze ignited in the last couple of months, but we started talking to collier creek maybe july of last year, kind of before this became such a craze and what we loved about collier and the combination with them and creation of this new public company called utz was the governance and team from collier that had a ton of experience in cpg and running businesses and when we started talking about strategy and what we thought utz could become into the future, we met a lot with roger darameanie, and the other folks at collier and collaborated on what that strategy would be going forward and everything click and it made sense and decided to go public

via this spat which has been a great experience thus far. >> and the people you would be essentially teaming up with through this structure as opposed to a reluctance for some reason to consider a traditional ipo? >> yeah. just the team itself and when we met with them and really looked at their background and what they'd be able to do in the past with our cpg companies, made a lot of sense it is a different process through a spac and we spent a lot of time building out what that would look like over the last 12-plus months we're excited about it, but, yes. the people 100% is a big part of it. >> dylan, brian sullivan obviously you're raising money for something. what do you want to buy? what's out there to be bought? >> well, i mean, that's a great -- over the last ten years, brian, we've done a lot of mergers and m & a activity,

bought a lot of companies and really created a national plat for. so platform and did take on debt to do it influx of the capital from the combination of the spac going public we're going to clean up our balance sheet to a really great position, and as we go forward we think we have a ton of organic opportunity just to grow geographically, or into some of the subcategories we're not as robust in and should be more robust in, but to your point, the m & a pipeline is huge and we think a ton of opportunity to continue to expand across the country as we've done really for the last almost 99-plus years. >> what pandemic trends have you spotted? how have we changed our snacking habits in the last five to six months, david? >> yeah. i assume you're asking me, this is dylan. >> sorry, dylan. it's early.

>> same here the eat at home, work at home, school at home trends have really done well for snacking. snacking itself is a great category throws 3% to 4% a year grows in good and bad times. it's recession-proof very resilient we've seen over the last couple of months through the covid, lockdown periods and reopenings is just a really strong consumer going into mainly into grocery food, going into masks, going into club and buying a lot of snacks area we've seen a little slowness in and don't have as much exposure is food service. and some of the c store business that doesn't have as many travellers are food traffic going into it. we've soon a double-dump it increase in amount of pounds producing, and a very strong increase in the amount of sales that we're generating. >> thanks for running it through

with us and good luck as a listed company. >> thanks very much for having us. >> from utz. still to come this morning on "squawk box," former white house chief of staff mick mulvaney is starting a hedge fund and will join us live next. first, as we go to break, don't forget to subscribe and listen to our podcast. get the best parts of our daily conversations all in one place squawk pod, available whenever you get your podcasts. stay tuned we'll be right back. at massmutual, we know that traditions matter more if they're celebrated with the ones you love. that's why we're proud to partner with the kentucky derby. ♪ at cdw we get you're always yeah. i'm just not sure with the kentucky derby.

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welcome back to "squawk box. take a look at the futures right now. they had been to the upside all

morning. dow indicated open about 57 points up above 100 points earlier. s&p 500 ahead by a little more than a quarter of a percent right now and nasdaq up 41 points at this hour. brian? >> all right thanks, mike. now to washington and the big topic that may be both wall street and main street care about. fate of another potential relief are and stimulus package for american families and workers. joining us with the latest, is there a very latest? >> reporter: well, brian, democrats and republicans have moved fractionally off their last offers, but there is still $1 trillion gulf between them. house speaker nancy pelosi indicated that democrats are willing to go down from $2.4 trillion to $2.2 trillion. meanwhile, white house chief of staff mark meadows is willing to go up from $1 trillion to $1.3 trillion now, these changes do represent billions of dollars, but they are still just rounding errors in the broader negotiations, and

there is no sign that substantive talks will restart anytime soon instead, the trump administration is moving forward with its executive action on the employee side of the payroll tax that takes effect starting tomorrow the irs just released guidance that says that companies that defer the tax for their workers now will have to start collecting it again starting january 1. and that means that bigger paychecks starting tomorrow could result in much smaller paychecks next year. this is the inherent problem with executive actions, guys there is a limited scope of power. business groups would much rather see congress come out with a comprehensive relief package. something that the president could sign, but, of course, we are still on square one when it comes to that. back over to you. >> is there any hint that the two sides of inching towards each other billion by billion >> yeah. well, there is that billion

dollar, these days billion dollars is an incremental movement right, brian >> yes. >> still so much of a gap between them, there is a difference in values as house speaker nancy pelosi has put it, and that is having the two sides just talk past each other throughout these negotiations. >> all right with the latest on that. thank you very much. good to see you, outside by the way. nice. former white house chief of staff mick mulvaney is jumping into the hedge fund game the former white house staffer and omb's director is starting a long short fund betting on financial services stocks. he joins us now to talk about that and talk about what's happening in washington. we just mentioned with stimulus and mick, good morning good to see you. >> thank you thanks for having me back. >> i want to talk about the hedge fund but let's start talking about the report and where things stand everybody has been scratching their heads. a lot of us thought there would be a deal that got passed sooner

than this. you were one of those. what do you think at this point jt on the last day of august and it still looks like a huge gulf is there between the two sides >> it does on the show three, four times saying for sure there would be something by now and there hasn't been. that look s a little foolish review from where we are now yes, not much motion on either side i read the same press you did between nancy pelosi and mark meadows. let's look what happens in the next couple of weeks a lot of payments to folks stop. some of the supplemental paints coming in, end in the next couple of weeks, and let's not discount this at all it's hurricane season. which means what we call emergency funding season in washington, d.c. so there's actually a couple different bites at the apple bills that have to pass. the government must be funded by end of september that means that bill has to pass typically a continuing funding resolution, and my guess is there will be an emergency funding bill as well to deal with the hurricanes and the

wildfires and those type of things a bunch of legislation that will move in a flurry here moving into the end of the fiscal year. each become as possible carrier for another stimulus package. >> interesting if it's a carrier first system ls package thinking a stringed down version of something maybe both sides agree on or does one side have the advantage moving bills like that? >> no rule one way or the other. a carrier bill can be a very small bill and sometimes it's much larger than the underlying package. given the more likely reason to have a smaller bill sounds like they're still fairly far apart they might do that it doesn't make a difference how big that underlying bill is. make as difference how big the bill is agreed to. >> just reading the tea leaves though, nick, which side has advantage in terms of, i think at points both sides have

overplayed their hands here. you hear elon talking about the problem with the executive order for this pay roll tax cut or pay roll tax deferral i think it really is. sounds incredibly problematic if you ask companies to take twice as much tax out or making up for the back payments you got back seems like a mess that probably nobody wants to get into leaves you wondering -- which side is going to be under pressure where there is any common ground, if any you know this inherently from being there so many years. >> been through it a couple times. legislation is always better because it's more permanent. whether or not you like it or not it's more permanent. not likely to change and the markets love stability right. you're right i think nancy probably overreached walking away from the table to begin with and gave the president the opportunity to do things lie executive action, which is why i think right now the balance is slightly in favor of the administration, but the point you reporter just made is

absolutely correct corporations are struggling how to put this in play and i don't think guidance on friday actually helps in fact, i think the guidance on friday probably sheds light on the weakness of the executive order. if the administration can fix this they get the upper hand again. if they can't figure how to fix it, one idea i think was floating around making the federal government do it the president has a lot more ability a lot more authority within the realm of the executive branch than outside. if he can make the federal government go back to work, make them deliver withholding to employees, that sort of changes the analysis your point well made and it's a coin toss who has initiative, but again it's the end of the year a lot of those benefits are running out. a lot of pressure returning up to the election to do something. what it looks like is anybody's guess at this point. >> talk about your hedge fund. really interesting you will be looking at financial services stocks, and the experience you had at the cfp budget is what people are

saying, okay, your advantage here you know the rules and regulations, you know what's coming what is coming >> yeah. i mean i guess there's a reason y'all talk about washington as much on the show as you do rightly so what's happening in washington more and more impacts what happens on wall street and on main street. as we sit and have conversations, look towards what's happening on this piece are legislation or that regulation, clearly it has a direct impact or markets and folk whose understand how legislation and regulation work will have a slight, slight advantage over those who don't i suggest it's probably malpractice not for money managers to be working in washington, that's there are business not mine. andrew and i decided to do the business, he's been in it 20 years. blackrock, sterling capital, jpmorgan he called, one of are the guys early to call the downturn of 2007, and then i got my cfpb experience, house financial services, joint economic economy. all the way back to time in the

state government we're just going to do what we think rational investors would do at this point look at fundamentals, andrew's job, and what's happening at the macro level at washington, d.c. and we think that gives us an advantage. >> let me ask you where you think things stand right now, justterms of regulation for financial stocks an interesting time and right before an election a lot of thing koss move one direction or the other. what do you say overall in terms how much regulation is on the firms and how much is likely to come >> i don't think you see a lot of regulatory action between now and the election and then the outcome of the election determines what happens next critical 60, 90 days between the election and beginning of the biden administration or second term of the trump administration a flurry of activity if trump wins you'll see a lot more of the same i think sort of laid down the mark bargers to what his attitudes are about regs if joe biden wins you'll see an

absolute avalanche in reg in a very short period of time. talk about that another time much easier to regulate than deregulate and we'll take that into consideration. >> if joe biden wins and all of these things you just described come to pass, would you basically tell people not to invest in financials if there's going to be that much new regulation that comes on >> yeah. i'm not going to be the business of telling folks over television what they should or shouldn't do but i think it's fair to say that there's a good chance that elizabeth warren is treasury secretary. how does that bear out for the financial services sector? keep in mind that supreme court decision kathy cranicker cfpb is subject to be removed by the president means she will not be staying if joe biden is president. say what you want about the parties and sometimes they sound a lot alike, there are places

where there are marked differences between the two and regulation is one. a democrat wins looking at heavy regulation across the board. traditionally focused heavily on the financial services sector. we know how that would go into play based and mine and andrew's experience yeah, a rough couple of years for financial services sector if democrats win. >> mick, let me ask you. you threw out maybe elizabeth warren would be treasury secretary. you know, there is this whole line of thinking that they can't take and put her in the administration if they win because they would be giving up a seat in the senate depending how close things go there, if she left her senate seat, up to the republican governor there to appoint the new senator to take over at least until there was another election what do you think about that just how you know politics, how things go? >> yeah. if it's a 50/50 senate, 51-49, could be a problem republican rees tain the senate that issue goes away if the democrats somehow end up with 53 or 54 seats, that

argument goes out the window you're right a bunch of variables to that equation and i don't, i'm not suggesting here it's a shoo-in elizabeth warren will be treasury secretary face it. democrats will be more inclined towards heavy regulation regardless who is over at treasury i offer that as a potential suggestion there's a bunch of other democrats who would love the regulate the industry as heavily as she would and a visa dodd/frank passed, the reason cfpb is structured the way it is. an attitude about banking that differs strongly between the parties. a lot of democrats think it should be illegal to lend money for interest they want the government in that business or the old japanese model go to the post office for your loans and so forth marked distinctions between the parties. we'll keep a close eye on it because we know how those different philosophies would be put into action. and, again, we think politics is going to continue to affect markets as they probably should. >> mick good to see you.

thank you for being with us this morning. >> thanks, becky. tawhen we come back this morning's biggest stock movers. coming up top of the hour, don't miss legendary investors lee cooperman. talk to him about what he sees happening in the markets right now. whapt wha also what he worry answer and maybe what he's looking at for potential opportunities. watch us live on the cnbc app. stay tuned you are watching "squawk box" on cnbc. apps are used everywhere...

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shares of dish trading higher this morning. on friday reports came out after the close i believe that at&t is

exploring options for directv unit dish shares likely up on the idea perhaps the two companies might be finally able to get together. of course, massive anti-trust concerns prevented a combination in previous iterations unclear if potential buyers of a stake or 50% more stake in directv. seems the market is taking dish higher on some of that chatter brian. >> mike, thank you. coming up here on "squawk box," if you show them, will they come? no, not baseball movie theaters would you go to the movies right now? many around the world are. we're going to speak with the ceo of imax about stju that. dow futures up 40, and we're back on "squawk box" right after this.

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all right. beautiful shot of the u.s. capitol. cranes, construction going on in the background good morning, by the way 7:50 on the east coast warner brothers "tenet" bringing in $53 million in 41 international markets its opening weekend that according to comscore. director christopher nolan's spy movie opens in america this weekend. imax says the movie oeched to a $5 million weekend, 248 of its

international theaters grossings $20,000 per screen on average. joining us now is richard gelfond. ceo of imax. congratulations, richard put those numbers in context how does that number, 20k a theater, whatever it might be, relate to pre-pandemic >> it was surprising i mean obviously capacity was limited. people sat every other seat and every other row. so it was about 50% what it typically is, but if you look at it in 11 markets internationally, we had a higher average than we had for "interstellar" amazing looked at our oh projections for the movie, blew them away. the movie forecast to do abouts 25ds million and it did $53 million. so it just -- it's another piece in the puzzle. which is proven on a worldwide basis that where it's safe to go to the movies, people want to go

back to the movies surprising. >> well, if feels like it's proven, richard, not only that they want to go back to the movies, that at least they will go back to the movies, at least a certain percentage of the population, because sold-out theaters in countries that have sort of similar data and statistics to us, like a denmark, like a sweden even saudi arabia. >> we can get even closer to home which was canada canada obviously shares our border and our culture in so many ways, limited shows in almost all the provinces to only 50 people, and we did 10,000 a screen with only 50 people shows running 24 hours a day and one interesting phenomenon came up, which we were hoping for, weren't sure, that people spread out during the day the capacity limitations only

really count on saturday evenings and friday evenings when the places are really crowded and the one thing we waited to see, would people go mornings, and a lot of the theaters rean 24-hour shows that was an encouraging sign. >> so are you saying, richard, that if -- if -- able human beings will act in a fairly intelligent self-interested manner without having to be dictated to in some cases? sounds like the population, movie theatergoers, shocking, acted in a responsible manner? of course, i'm being a little tongue and cheek because i believed if you look at a sweden model, whatever it is, people spaced themselves out. not because they're told to by the government, but because they feel like it's the right and safest thing to do in many cases. >> you can see me smiling a little bit that's because in some cases, yes, in some cases, no but you know, my guess is that the millennials and people are anxious to see the movie on opening night, that would be the

least likely to spread themselves out, but as you go to people who are a little bit older, families, things like that bringing kids. those would be most likely to spread themselves out. that was the big question for us going in which is -- typically a very successful theater clayne does about 20%, 25% capacity last year, which is a regard year for imax we did an 10% of capacity again, it's concentrated on those weekends we had hoped to see the behavior, we are seeing, which is this spreading out phenomena and i think it's encouraging going forward. >> what's the next big movie we could look forward to, richard so much hope and not just optimism but, like, your crystal ball placed on how "tenet" does, because the first big-named picture toe come o coup out, ma assumptions as we are now, richard. what's the next big thing? >> you have to remember we're a global company

we're in 81 countries. so for us the first big thing was in china last weekend. where the movie did $116 million, and imax did a healthy percentage of the box office so that proved out that it's not just the one-off, that other movies in koreaopened a movie called "peninsula" opened at $20 million. you have to look at it territory by territory for remainder of the year this year in north america there are a lot of big films on the docket, including "black widow" including the next installment of bond. "wonder woman. going into '21, because this year lost a lot of blockbusters, because of the pandemic, you have movies that were moved there, including "fast & furious," "a mission: impossible" next year. a bunch of marvel movies, some of which were moved. the slate looks pretty good going into next year.

>> yeah. almost maybe a traffic jam of big-named titles richard gelfond, encouraging numbers from around the world. a pleasure thanks for coming on "squawk" again. appreciate >> thank you so much appreciate it. coming up, last trading day of the month with lee cooperman. why we're dealing with three markets now and what it might mean for your money. futures positive all morning, waned a little. s&p 500 up just about six points right now. about 1/6% and dow jones industrial eaby 3ers holdings and nasdaq ahd 0 points at this point. stay tuned you're watching "squawk box" on cnbc. to thousands of contestants. and i thought, what if we paid the contestants their winnings in gold instead of cash and prizes? back in 1976, we had a wonderful contestant named lee

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good morning it is a memorable day for markets and your money apple and tesla split and there are three new stocks in the dow. reaction from investors lee cooperman straight ahead. happy birthday mr. buffett the oracle of omaha making a big bet on japan we'll bring you that story as well. plus a new twist in a tiktok stock. china just made it a lot more complicated to sell to a foreign company. final hour of "squawk box" begins right now. good morning, everybody. welcome back to "squawk box" here on cnbc i'm becky quick along with brian sullivan and mike santoli. joe and andrew are both off today. the last trading day of the month and u.s. equity futures higher all morning

look take a look looking at green arrows. dow futures indicated up about 38 points after a phenomenal run this index has seen through the course of the month. month of august so far dow up by about 8% putting it on track for its best performance in 36 years. s&p 500 also up sharply this month up better than 7% and indicated up by another seven points and the nasdaq this morning indicated up by 31 treasury market, also watching closely, and lately looks like the ten year is sitting at just about 0.7.3.4%. >> strong summer so far. >> wow. >> a trading day too remember. apple and tesla carrying out a stock split. apple's a four for one and tesla five for one apple split changes its weight in the dow that's the reason for the other big change becoming new members of the dow

30 replacing exxon pfizer and raytheon apple's waiting in the dow with the split and rejiggering radically lower. about 3% i guess of the overall dow at this point. brian? >> mike, thanks. breaking news now. monday morning, fight against coronavirus. for that meg tirrell joins us with more. meg? >> reporter: hey, brian. another drug moving into clinical trials designed specifically for covid-19 from glax so smi glaxosmithkline. an antibody drug that fights the coronavirus and this one actually fights both sars co-v 1 and 2 and using to try to be prevent hospitalization due to covid-19 so they dosed the first patient in the trial which they call a phase ii iii, usually means later phase in studies this is actually the first in human test as well starting a safety trial in about

20 patients, participants, in the united states. and if all looks good, they're going to extend that to as many as 1,300 people toal see if this andy body drug can prevent severe disease in covid-19 early cases. followed eli lilly testing their drug in treatment and kpreechprn of the disease could have initial data by end of the year. if it, woulds, potentially could be available soon as first half of next year a lot of shots on goal here, because even if they all work, the supply might be constrained at the beginning watching these closely and we'll have the head of research and the ceo here on us at 9:45. brian? >> yeah. to be clear that is a treatment not a vaccine? >> reporter: that's right. this is a treatment that essentially is designed to do, aims to do what vaccines are designed to do

generate antibodies to stop the virus. this is delivering the antibodies themselves as a treatment. >> all right meg tirrell, thank you very much, meg. joining us right now is wall street legend lee cooperman. he is the chairman and ceo of omega family office and lee, great to see you been a while since we've spoken. >> thank you nice to be with you. >> lee, let's talk about what this summer has been mike just pointed out months of july and august, you were looking at the s&p up by 13% this was not a sell in may and go away summer there have been a lot of people who have been awfully concerned about what we see in the economy. what is likely to come down the road i know you've been concerned, too, and in fact most of the long-term investors and people doing this for a very long time have been concerned, but you look at the last couple of months what do you think after watching what's happening in the markets right now? how do you re-assess

>> very obvious what's going on. miracle of free money. zero commissions and a lot of people at home getting checks that exceed what they would get if the they went to work, and with sporting events closed down, sporting around in the stock market. you know mr. powell, chairman federal reserve board basically, and the president i might add wanted to fire on more than one occasion has given the investors a long-term put trying to keep rates at zero for a dramatic ped of time. led to marked valuations and frankly the president should kiss the chairman on all four cheeks in my opinion and also -- >> four cheeks >> all four cheeks i won't go beyond that also we have a president that will say and do anything to get re-elected and he's watching the stock market. and so all of that is positive, but i understand what's going

on, but frankly i'm uncomfortable at the present time not because of the virus and it's not because of the economy. i've been on this show repeatedly i've said i'm optimistic they'll find a cure for the virus. taking longer than i thought but i'm sure they'll find a cure i'm optimistic the economy recovers but focused on who pays for the party when the party is over this nation just sell drat brated its 244th birthday. took us that long to go to a $21 trillion debt. this year end $25 trillion, $26 trillion thereabouts growth rate in debt far in excess of the growth rate of the economy. that means to me more of our nation's income will have to be devoted to debt service. which will retard economic growth you know and i think both fiscal monetary policies are pulling demand forward, which should work against future returns what i have observed over many years doing this, price earnings

ratios are a function of confidence, of growth rates and interest rates it's hard for me to argue or imagine that confidence is higher today than on average given what's going on in the world between the virus, the economy, the election uncertainty and the tremendous amount of violence regretly going on in the country. social unrest. confidence lower growth rates i mention add moment ago i think lower because of the freed to servineed to set wee driving. interest rates fed pursuing zero interest rate policy not because things are good in the policy, because things are bad in the economy. you know, i would say i have a conservative view. the fed is forcing everybody out of the risk curve. bonds offer return-free risk you know the idea of buying a bond where you get 70 basis points for ten years when you can buy plenty

of, find plenty of good companies nearly 2%, 3% or more, makes no sense to me so what it all comes down to, i'm a numbers person s&p is roughly 3,500 telling 23 times normalized earnings okay that multiple is high versus history. not particularly high relative to interest rates. okay but i would argue that the stock market and the economy to some degree has been unsome form of life support since 2008. we never made it out of qe and now zero interest rate policy. this should work against pes and the government supporting the economy and market, take it out of price racers in my opinion. everybody's, you know -- >> lee -- >> i'm sorry go ahead >> just on that point, you've got a lot of things i'd like to circle back to but on that point, the idea that you think that the market's been on life support since 2008 we're 12 years out

you've said that, it's a fair question to ask, who's going to pay for the party when the party's over isn't it true the party could last a lot longer than anybody thinks >> true. but you have to do what you're comfortable doing. in other words, i retired from active money management end of 2018 and i tell people with a smile on my face, always try to smile, you know, i feel like i'm seeing "godfather ii" seen 100 times. a great movie. right before he shot him, i'm a retired executive living on a pension. i say i'm retired money manager living on investment income. bad news, no active income good news, no pressure i do live comfortable doing it i'm concerned about the long-term implications what's going on i find plenty of things to do in the market in the introduction i believe mr. santoli basically made a comment three markets out there. i think that is the case we'll get to that in a little bit i'm sure, but i find things

to do. overall market i think we've been pulling a lot of demand forward. and i would expect future returns will be relatively unimpressive for a long time i remember, you know, i graduated columbia business school january 31, 1967. six months old son, had no money in the bank. basically broke. couldn't afford to take a vacation the very next day i went to work for goldman sachs. february 1 of '67, spent close to 25 years, very enjoyable years there. okay when i joined goldman the dow was 1,000. 14 years later 1982, dow was 1,000. not that i'm making 14-year forecasts, but just observed i think we're pulling demand forward. we came into 2020 with a fully employed economy yet we were running a $1 trillion deficit and now apiling a lot of debt on top of that i would have to say, i have a conservative view. everybody's cheering on for

negative interest rates. i point out negative real interest rates in japan and europe for quite some time and their price earnings ratios are lower than the united states interesting. oracle, who i have enormous respect for, showed up buying a bunch of stocks in japan what he's basically sayingis, since doing very little in the united states, he finds valuations in united states unattractive and looking outside the united states for opportunities. so -- you know -- >> would you do the same, lee? if you're concerned about stock prices where do you put your money? >> well, i've been putting some money in credit. where i'm getting high returns idiosyncratic, things like bonds, trade in 88 with 88 were-ower 3/8 coupon put a for sale sign on the company. something happens i could pick

it up. title max. big et credit position, biggest position in my family office something called logado, a ton of 5g spectrum approved for use by the fcc by vote of 5-0. worth substantially more than the debt a veryied yo sin crat-of--o-- a idiosyncratic situation. and suppression, and i'm watching closely for change the pace of economic growth. the dollar exchange rate, inflation and fed speak. and you know i will just say, i think the market has no margin of safety in it. and for years i've quoted the great sir john templeton where he said, bull markets are born in pessimism grow in skepticism and maturity

opt plimri optimism and die in euphoria ipo is one craziness in many stocks la s le on to. kodak numbers changes in a short period of time and we all make mistakes sells position 72 cents a share. three weeks later trading at $5. look into it, taking it up, look at tesla and apple everybody understand that splits don't create value my dad once told me if he gave me five singles, five dollar bills i'm no better off. okay tesla up 54% since the day announces a split. s&p up less than 4%. apple's up 30% s&p up 6%. everybody's talking about the split. the splits don't create value. also investment advisers more

than 60% bullish normally a level associated with correction you know six months ago every day the market fluctuatesed wildly on news out of china and the united states. china relations have soured badly. the fiscal package expected by mid-august now is a late september expectation and this election uncertainty you know and i've not decided who i'm voting for but we have, you know, the risk of a sweep in either direction and you know, a you think we face great uncertainty in the election outcome my view is -- >> lee -- >> go ahead. i'm sorry? >> sorry go ahead go ahead go ahead >> you know, my view of the market if it doesn't go up much further from current levels rest of the year and frankly wouldn't be surprised in the market dropped next year. i don't have to make that bet now. >> let me ask you, if you're not putting a lot of money into

stocks, i know you sold san too too toosanteen? and why and have you sold other stocks as s as well? >> i'm reasonly fully invested with a lot of money in credit and i find things to do. a perfect example. like, i said there are three markets out there. market number one is the fang market phang market. google, microsoft, facebook, apple. better than gold they're not cheap. they're pricey, but they're not pricey relative to interest rates. okay i'm not adding to them, but sitting with them because those are great companies. i would only pound out that the fang stocks of today are like the nifty 50 of '72. i went back and looked 1972 dominating institutions

jpmorgan and u.s. trust. their philosophy was we don't care what multiple we pay for what we buy as long as we buy the world-class dominant company. okay back then avon was a nifty 60. 55 times earnings. eastman kodak, 48 times earnings ibm, 37 times earnings polaroid, 90 times earnings. revlon's 30 times, sear roebuck, 31 xerox 41 okay we don't have -- back then by the way, in 1972, the government was 6.5% today ten year government 70 basis points while expensive, not outlandishly expensive and pick your poison. i have a few there and what we have to understand in the nifty 50 of today, a certain failure rate as there was. polaroid no longer with us avon didn't turn out to be what people thought it was. ibm didn't turn out what we thought. sears gone, kmart gone

xerox taken over by the japanese same thing now identify nifty 50 of today and a certain percentage will not perform. they'll be disappointing you take the loss against the ones that work and expect return from that portfolio which wasn't particularly impressive. the robin hood market, i touched on it before i won't repeat it, a nuts market you know apparently from my read 13 million 30-year-olds that are trading the market and have to say when american airlines enterprise is higher today than pre-covid virus and i see what happened to hertz and kod kodak, in a market ends in tears. i said it a month ago. very next day, a young man regrettably committed suicide lost $700,000 day trading. things can you do. give a shout-out to my former partner sam martini. very, very good analyst.

he spent a lot of time analyzing mr. cooper he had a view very different in the consensus view they reported three weeks ago earnings in quarter. get this earnings in the quarter equal to 50% of the market cap of the company. in cash. in cash. stock trading, what, stock trading at 14 now trading at 18. everyone had a price objective 12, 13 or 14 price objective now is 25. things you can find. got to be, work hard and you can find them. i find things in that third category. >> yeah. i know mr. cooper is one of your big holding. lee, one last really quick question before we go. that is a beautiful backdrop behind you is that real or one of these zoom sort of fake backdrops we all use? >> no. i'm sitting in the basement of my home. you know -- computer -- i'm not computer sophisticated pressed a button on a machine background came up thought it was very fitting

i'm a florida rnesident. looks very attractive. no it's synthetic new technology, so many different things you can do. >> we're all trying in ynew things thank you for your time today and valuable market advice i think what i'm taking away from this you see signs of euphoria creeping into the market we will definitely come back to you soon and get more but thank you for your time today. >> all right i say i'm, you know, you had a great capitalist on the, in this morning at 7:00 hour i got up watched him david rubenstein i think selection is pivotal in the long-term outlook. you know david rubenstein is the son of a postal worker. okay he made a -- load of money and given all back in creative ways. my own little way, let zeros than him, okay similar figure son of a plumber i went to public school in the south bronx.

went to high school in the south bronx. public university in the west bronx. did very well because of hard work, luck and intuition at goldman made a lot of money and the pleasure of giving it all away nasty american dream and we have to make sure that we stay as a capitalist nation. everybody thinks biden's a socialist. i don't think so he's got to speak out loudly and clearly what he stands for when nancy pelosi says he shouldn't debate, greatest thing i heard. can't debate president trump, who the hell's going to vote for him? got to show what he's made of. declare his views of things. i'm a capitalist with a heart. made america great, compliment to capitalism, that should not change. >> pivotal election, but you say you still haven't decided who you're voting for. >> oh, you know -- >> 6a days. >> i have flot decihave not decd look, i don't want to get everybody aggravated bottom line, a man with limited

character who has good economic ideas, but he's very divisive in his dialogue we have a man of decent character who i'm not sure what he stands for. okay it's up to him to address the issue, up to him to address the issue of capitalism versus socialism. he is surrounded by socialists, you know i had a tangle with one i felt was, handled himself like a politician in the worst sense of the word i totally descend from the views of aoc that's somebody prepared to give away all of his money and prepared to pay his fair share of taxes i guess driven up a poll when politicians talk about paying your fair share. what do they have in mind? i'm willing to work six months of the year for the government and six months for myself. i think that's fair. you look around. california, new york, new jersey, connecticut, you're already well past 50%. it's destructive

not constructive government's got to get its spending under control yeah i want to hear vice president biden declare what he stands for. seems like a good man. we got to make sure he's strong and resolute in his views. >> lee, thank you for your time and we will talk to you again before election day. good to see you. >> okay. nice to be with you and thank you for inviting me. bye-bye. >> take care. all right. coming up, the pandemic decimated the travel industry but united is getting rid of one hated fee to try to make buying that plane ticket a little more palatable. details next. as we head to a break, look at the biggest pre-market gainers in the nasdaq docusign is on top "squawk box" will be right back.

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united airlines announcing eliminating the $200 fee to change flights, not just during the pandemic but permanently phil lebeau joins us. >> getting a lot of attention in part because people are looking at united saying, wow. are you really believes travel is so decimated now, levels so low you've got to take another step in terms of changes one of your businesses, and for a while, guys, for a long time, it was $200 if you wanted to change your ticket. no longer. they are changing their plan they are permanently waiving ticket change fees waived since the coronavirus pandemic started united and all the airlines said we'll get rid of it. no longer. permanently waiving change fees and also offering complementary standby travel for most of its passengers on the same ticket level, travel stand it by within those cities.

something in the past you could not do there was a fee attached to that so united is stepping up saying we have to do more to attract customers. scott kirby, ceo of united, at the company the hub here in chicago, o'hare airport last week walking around taking to um employees and make it tleclear,a long ways to go. employees they have to eliminate, likely 250 pilots likely job cuts totaling 36,000 employees, but he believes ending this change fee is the step in the right direction to improving how united is seen by customers. >> we know we're going to give up revenue of change fees and we're making the bet and i think it's the right one that doing the right thing for customers in the long term is going to pay off, and you know, we decided to use this moment in time, even though we're in the toughest

time in our history, you know, to prove to our customers and to prove to our employees and prove to ourselves we are committed to doing the right thing for customers. >> and this is a move that will cost united. last year, guys, united brought in $625 million in ticket change fees think about that $625 million, but now it's saying we started with in the coronavirus pandemic of waiving ticket change fees we're going to continue doing that remember right now passenger levels, down about 70% not just for united but the industry as a whole. not expected to change anytime soon. >> phil, it has to also signify that the balance of power swinging towards customers in this whole game? >> yes and it will be. >> and united gave that up in fees the whole industry marched in the same direction in administers these fees >> right southwest the only airline that has never charged for a ticket change you know a difference in the fare levels.

if you -- new fare was going to be higher than the previous fare, you had to pay the difference, but weren't slapping $200 on that puts pressure on american and democrat delta to see if they will match what united has done. >> thanks, phil, you bet. still to come, warren buffett turning 90 over the weekend. his friend bill gates helped celebrate by baking his oreo cake and celebrating by a massive investment in japan. and futures trading indicated up through the morning. dow turned down. up by 28 points earlier. down by about 7 points now s&p futures hanging in there up 1q int and a half and nasdaup by2. we'll be right back. ♪

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welcome back, everybody. warren buffett making news over the weekend. actually on his 90th birthday, that was yesterday the announcement came berkshire hathaway acquired a stake slightly more than 5% in each of the five leading japanese trading companies. those companies are the following -- berkshire acquired those over a roughly 12-month period through regular purchases on the tokyo stock exchange unbelievable in itself building up 5% in each and doing it quietly through the tokyo stock exchange berkshire plans to hold them for the long term and may increase holdings of any of those companies to a maximum of 9.9% pledged it wouldn't go above that threshold unless given specific approval by the trading companies board of directors it's big for berkshire hathaway. 5% stake in each company valued at about $6.25 billion and

collectively butting the bet by buffett on japan, seventh largest holding, just above wells fargo. run through the list of their biggest holdings, apple still top holding coming in at $90 billion. bank of america, two, coca-cola three, 17.9 billion dollars. american express number four at $14.4 billion and then kraft, heinz, moody's, wells fargo $6.1 billion based on filings from the most recent fcc filing doing june 30th of this year again, 6.25 billion dollars between moody's and wells fargo, for berkshire's overall holdings for more go to buffett watch dot cnbc brian? >> big news for warren buffett wants to be bigger in japan. coming up, tiktok's business may have gotten complicated. what china did late friday that

could point to a potential deal block. that's next. as we head to break, look at shares of general electric ge jpmorgan chase analyst removing price argument on the stock citing lack of forward visibilities terms remain at neutral, although the report says fair value for the stock is likely less than $5 per share stock's at $6.50 now tusa seeing a lot more down side ahead for ge removing that price target dow furetus up six same at ge we're back right after this. an army family who is always at the ready. so when they got a little surprise... two!? ...they didn't panic. they got a bigger car for their soon-to-be-bigger family. after shopping around for insurance, they called usaa - who helped find the right coverage for them and even some much-needed savings. that was the easy part. usaa insurance is made the way liz and mike need it- easy.

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good morning again, everybody and welcome back to "squawk box" here on cnbc. watching the u.s. equity futures. while we were in the green all morning saw the dow just turn negative scratch that changes. dow futures positive up by 14 points now s&p futures up by 3. nasdaq up by 22. brian? >> all right, becky, thank you. alex sherman cnbc technology reporter extraordinaire

reporting now that tiktok could be very close to a deal and a deal could come as soon as tomorrow he joins us now. cnbc technology reporter, alex, what are you reporting also joined by the way alfred jwong joining us as well first to you, alex. >> sounds to me based and conversations i had this morning the original plan to announce a tiktok deal as soon as today over the weekend tiktok has been looking at two different bids. one from oracle, one from a combination of microsoft and walmart. it is unclear to me still who the actual preferred buyer is. though i've been steered in the direction that there is, in fact, one, at this point however, obviously these deal talks have been complicated by the news that you alluded to on friday. late friday. that china now wants a say in who potentially can do a deal at

all. in other words, what china is saying it potentially needs to offer a license in order for tiktok to sell itself to a u.s. company. we don't really know what that means, and i think the buyers themselves are still trying to figure out what that means that said, it does sound like a deal could still be announced as soon as tomorrow. >> yeah. bring in alfred into this conversation here. alfr alfred, a last-minute game-changer if you will by the chinese government friday. vexing about this whole thing, talk about selling u.s. operations if i said i'll sell you half of google, you'd say, how do you do that everything is intereconnected. i imagine the chinese government is probably nervous about what assets that any u.s. buyer might gain, because i don't know how you split the thing in half completely correct? >> yes

brian, i mean, this is where this deal is very complex and also very confusing. so typically if you look at -- say oracle for example sold a company to them, sizable. typically buy to a channel knowing if this technology, you get in the channel, it will sell on top of it generally when we sell a company all the engineers and all the people, most of them, they go with the deal. there are people that man the software, continue to support the customer and grow. i think in this case we have a lot of unknowns. hopefully when we get announcement we'll find out. we're talking about selling the u.s. operations, well, u.s., canada, new zealand, australia, operations of ownership of tiktok so the question lies, then, is the crown jewel of tiktok is at 13 million lines of machine learning called the written job,

the language you write code for the end device that's a big, big code, plus it is a life. that means generally enhanced on a continuous basis and a lot of that asset is that database if the database is really in this case cleared as a sort of addictive, that the code being add on, code and data added on a daily basis, how would they cut and convert that and how much of that actually would be transferred over now the chinese are saying, well, that's going to be an export law the machine algorithm from bytedance subject to review. i almost feel like now we have really a bytedance here. >> yeah. certainly, alex, listen. one of two things could be going on chinese government doesn't want a u.s. buyer to have some of that code. specifically like an oracle, know is close to president trump, that may about real law or may be enacting this law.

first change to it in 12 years mysteriously, to shake something out of the deal or the u.s. government, to allow that to happen does the oracle bid suggest to you that it is all, indeed, about the database and not just about the videos >> there's no question in oracle sense it's all about the database exactly right, i think the microsoft/wm willialmart bi more mixed walmart already said it's interested in tiktok for ecommerce element. which is, of course, sorg t of a burgeoning business within the app that tiktok is today hasn't fully monetized itself. microsoft is sort of all over the place. of course, has the data play, maybe the backbone of the bid, but also dabbled in sort of broadly speaking social media apps and may seize consumer facing benefits to owning tiktok as well.

to your point, brian, why china is doing this is a good one and sort of unclear other than what is clear that you can just add tiktok to the growing number of technology companies that have been sort of caught in this broader, you know, economic, geopolitical war between the trump administration and the chinese government this is now yet another example of the two governments kind of flexing their muscles saying, i'm in charge. no i'm in charge. >> it's amazing, alfred, there's all of this attention on tiktok. i mean, was as a consumer-facing business, we see short, funny videos that go viral through their ai algorithms, et cetera maybe not even viral because ai picks what exactly you see could be exact opposite of viral. however, it feels like, given interest from oracle, given interest from microsoft, given the protection of the chinese government, there's something bigger about tiktok that we

don't fully understand yet is that a fair statement there's something in there that has a lot of value in a way besides that cute dog sliding down a slide >> well, brian, this is a very important deal the reason it's a very important deal, several reasons. one,shocked, western technologists, the people in silicon valley and definitely people in the u.s. the chinese can develop such an incredibly fast learning, machine learning, algorithm that could get people so addicted. look at tiktok number. on average, obviously, they're clientele, gen z, 16 to 22 years, spent up to seven hours algorithm in facebook and instagram and other technology but have nothing like that not even close shocked up they could develop such great technology. it's important on one thing. this sale is not very

significant, the bytedance they only have maybe 80 million to 100 million users in the u.s. they have a seven major aarps they were able to develop, all of them, in 200, 300 days and launch it and immediately, very rapidly reach a quarter billion use users. this is a very formidable player bigger thing to look at what do we do with this? what do we do with chinese application? the chinese put up a chinese wall a firewall and said, go, go facebook, slack, twitter, you can go in. are we going to do the same thick? but in a nut, by default is for globalization. if we do the same thing, that is -- we're just doing just as bad. this has got to be a test of -- by the way, if bytedance fails, they don't celtic tok, they get shut down, they can easily come back with another one in 200 days why do you do that the white house continues to act

as a sovereign investmenter and broker the deal or do we need policies saying this is allowed. what we wear about privacy of our citizens and the kind of software we need to write to govern the policy. that's super crucial. >> almost sounds like -- yeah. >> yeah, i mean -- >> sounds like you're saying there's actually national security, almost like this is going to be bizarrely, tiktok a litmus test for the future, and for national security issues between the twos wi companies w vis-a-vis intellectual property? >> and ways we can now resolve other issues like the fee average iasco to t. and maybe then chinese continue to manufacture this and we just

have a set policy and wait for 6g that's appealing. >> yeah. well, big news there and alex reporting that a deal looks like it could be imminent coming perhaps soon as tomorrow great stuff, alex and alfred, thanks very much appreciate it. >> thank you, brian. >> thanks, brian. still to come this morning, mcdonald's battle with former ceo steve easterbrook is heating up hard to believe they can be hotter than they were. details you have to hear get to those right after this break. first, though, check out shares of philips. the medical commitmentmaker cutting 2020 earnings outlook after the u.s. government canceled bulk of an order for 44,000 ventilators last month the congressional panel determined the government overpaid philips by at least aylf a billion dollars st tuned "squawk box" will be right back.

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welcome back to "squawk box," everybody. futures modestly higher through the morning. looking at them now. dow futures up by 23 points. s&p futures up by 3. remember, an incredibly strong month for both the dow and s&p dow up 8%. s&p better than 7% for the month. and as mike santoli pointed out for july and august, s&p actually up 13%. phenomenal nasdaq indicated up by about 26 points mcdonald's ceo responded to steve easterbrook with the proposal to dismiss the company's lawsuit against him. kate rogers has more details kate, thought this was a lot of details, but wait until you hear what the new story is. >> reporter: that's right, becky. good to see you again. this morning mcdonald's firing back at its former ceo steve easterbrook. mcdonald's telling cnbc in a statement, "when mcdonald's

invempt gated steve 50e6789erbrook lied violated the company's policies and abused trust of its co-workers, the board, franchisees and shareholders his thought he shouldn't be responsible for past acts, he was fired without cause. severage package estimated in tens of millions and this suit claws that back firing him with cause accusing him of having multiple sexual relations with employeeing he formerly hid from investigato investigators. using strong language saying the suit should be dismissed because he did not hide his own misconduct well enough and investigators should have unconquered it we have not heard back from mr. easterbrooks attorneys yet

we'll get back with you. >> you mentioned a new hr chief handling things differ than the old hr chief >> reporter: yes, right. she comes from boeing. started in april of 2020 the old hr chief david fairhearst ousted time as mr. easterbrook was last year. some reports that he harassed women and made them feel uncomfortable in "wall street journal" over the weekend. we did reach out to mcdonald's for comment and they are not commenting on that we can say the new hr chief is taking a really hard look at hiring and firing practices and also at the way that company complaints are handled by employees to that department so, we'll bring you any more news we get on that front, as well >> kate, thank you kate rogers. coming up, the best trades for the final days of summer but, first, as we head to break check out shares of tesla and apple. both begin trading on a

post-split basis and both are up a little bit in the premarket. stay tuned you're watching "squawk box" on cnbc stock slices.

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at $5 a slice, you could own ten companies for $50 instead of paying thousands. all commission free online. schwab stock slices: an easy way to start investing or to give the gift of stock ownership. schwab. own your tomorrow. checking the markets right now, looking at mild gains a half percent gains at the open indicated by the futures much less now. the dow up 30 and nasdaq looks to be up by a little more than 20 points at the open. the dow today has a new shape to it reconfigured as of this morning. three stocks going in and three stocks going out, obviously. salesforce, honeywell and

beamgen. and the dow lagged the s&p and "wall street journal" has a piece on that today. this is the spread the tech and faang stocks account for a lot of that spread you see more than eight percentage points. however, look over 20 years and over the very long periods of time, they tend to be very close. over 20 years in particular. the dow has a pretty significant advantage of more than 20 percentage points across 1% a year and that's because in bear markets, the dow tends to outperform and, of course, after the 2000 peak the s&p was much more tech weighted and that is your longer term scorecard set up for the markets today with sarat sethi and, of course, the cnbc contributor sarat, great to see you this morning. give us your sense here. just how much pay back, if any, should we expect from this great

rally we've seen in the summer yes, it's been driven by big tech stocks but also some more of the cyclicals coming around lately >> i think what you're going to see is some potential rebalancing, you know, the next couple months. the tech stocks have done really well we own them. but as a portfolio manager we have to look and see where are the opportunities for the next two to three years when you have stocks trading at 30, 40, 50 times earnings and you look at some of the sectors that have lagged for example, financials and some of the cyclicals and industrials, they just haven't performed like we've been expecting them to given where we think the economy is going to go so, for example, in financials you look at companies like blackstone and morgan stanley. well, you can play there is the wealth management business of the asset management business. those are doing really well and not being given the credit that they are due at this point and when things, interest rates start moving up and more mna activity and more interest

management, you want to be in a place like that. the dow. honeywell is coming back to the dow. that is a company we really like if you like where they're placed going forward in all their sectors, they're going to do really well. they're trading at a below market multiple. they've got a great balance sheet and a great management team and the other one we really like xpo logistics. if you want to play a company that is really going to win no matter whether it's amazon or shopify, et cetera, xpo is a great name so, there are plenty of other opportunities in the market. very narrow and to your point, the dow is representing that, even though it's 30 stocks even the s&p has become so narrow so, it would be wise for investors to look for other places i do think given where we are in the cycle, especially kind of going into year end, we're going to have some bumps along the road we don't know when the stimulus is going to come and we don't

know what the trade issues with china are going to be and we have the elections as an investor, stay prudent and diversify your portfolio >> you talk about two to three years which implies as kind of a road map based on other business cycles where you have all these accommodative fed and pent up demand and industrial companies get more productive and leaner in the course of the downturn. i mean, does any of that really apply at this point? are we going to see kind of a traditional recovery dynamic even though we only had at this point what looked like a few months of a short shock recession? >> well, i think one of the things that we're looking at is the demand has been pulled forward for the e-commerce companies but for the industrial companies it really hasn't been because we had the stay at home phenomenons. a company like honeywell that partakes in aerospace and

transportation and xpo will do well because as people start traveling and you have other things, you have more logistics. you're right in the sense of you have to look at where we are right now, but there are other pieces of the economy that have really been left behind until we get some type of vaccine or therapeutic where there's confidence to come back and i think those are the companies that will benefit. also doing a lot of work right now. they're becoming a lot more efficient using technology and really looking to see how they're going to, you know, prune their balance sheet. low interest rates is one of the best things for industrials at this point >> just in terms of i guess the character and the rhythm of the markets right now, sarat, tons of attention on this public excitement for stocks and stocks splitting their shares, which you and i both know should not be the main catalyst for upside when it comes to things like that is that something that concerns you or encourages you in terms of what it means for likely market returns down the road

>> it's more of a concern at this point i think the idea that you can, you know, have more pieces of a pie for the same pie is concerning, especially for long-term investors. i think the ability for some of the retail investors to get in there and trade. that's making me a little wary when you look at how fast some of these stocks are moving when they're announcing splits and some of the stocks that are just moving and these huge ranges even though the broader market is not moving and you get a lot of stocks moving i think when you get some of that air coming out of the bubble, it might bring down some of the rest of the market and that's going to see some resilience in the breath of the, mat and stocks that have solid balance sheets and good growth trading at what we think are good discounts to the market and the retail investor will probably get hurt in some of the stocks they're just buying because they're always splitting. >> always hard to time that dynamic. we'll be on alert for it, sarat,

thank you. all right. let's get a final check on the, mats this morning. it the final trading day of the month of august and so far it looks like we've been seeing some green arrows. dow futures are up, but pretty modest gains up by about 12 points and s&p and nasdaq both higher, as well. want to thank both mike and brian for being here today good to see you guys we'll see you back here tomorrow good monday morning. welcome to "squawk on the street." kramer has the morning off final day of august as we wrap up the best august for stocks in 30-plus years. dow has some new components today and apple and tesla split and oil is above 43. our road map begins with the banner month for stocks. wall street looking to wra