assessment from the covid task force as individual states are issuing washings will b. thanksgiving travel. and target will report, we'll bring you an interview with the ceo brian cornell, it is wednesday, november 18, and "squawk box" begins right now. good morning, everybody. welcome to "squawk box" here on cnbc i'm becky quick along with joe kernen and mike santoli. andrew is off today. been watch offing the u.s. equity futures and after a down day yesterday, where both the dow and s&p were down by about half a percent and the nasdaq down by about 0.2%, you will see green arrows this morning. dow indicated up by about 92,

s&p by 11, nasdaq up by about 42 there were a few areas of the market yesterday that continued to outperform including the small caps russell 2000 coming off an all-time intra day high. and then there is the khodow trs trading at a record high and right now it looks like the ten year is yielding just about 0.8% the transports a lot of times, they are an early indicator of what is to come, but maybe more difficult to glean what is happening this time given the overall virus situation. >> yeah, it is and it is really not things like airlines so much driving the transports actually fedex and u.p.s. are arguably kind of stay-at-home plays and they are also big components of the transports so really just kind of gone

sideways in the last day or so, not much of a pullback just yet. so we'll very to see how that develops and in this context especially with the white house task force painting a bleak picture on the near term outlook. the most recent report warns that there is, quote, now aggressive lenting expandin broad community spread with no evidence of improvement. and the upcoming thanksgiving holliday has the potential to amplify it considerably. daily virus deaths hit the highest level since may. montana's governor issued new restrictions for the state including a mask requirement and capacity limits for restaurants, bars and kacasinos. ohio's governor is issuing a 21 day curfew beginning thursday. people are ordered to stay home between 10:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m. and california's governor expanded the state mask mandate

to require facial recoverings when outside your home with few exceptions >> and senator chuck grassley has tested positive for the coronavirus. he is 87 and he tweeted that he will be following doctor's orders and cdc guidelines, he is feeling good and will continue to work for the people of iowa from home. he is the sixth senator to test positive for covid-19. wish him well. >> and also a bit of a game changer with a new announcemen the fda, an proving a test for people that can do at home w and it provides results in just 30 minutes it is produced by a privately held biotech company called l u you swirl it in a viral which is placed in a test unit and the ruts are made visible on the

device's display within 30 minutes. again, it seems like a big game changer to me. the fda says that those who test positive should seek additional care and those who test negative but still experience symptoms should follow up with a health care provider. but the difference being that you don't have to stand in line with other people. so you 12450 getu you should gek sure you are not a carrier, but a lot of times you have to stand in line with a bump of people that are symptomatic so that seems riskier. but that is not easy to do, it mean thas that you can't go to school or work and that is something that we've been waiting for something like this. my questions are when can you can get it, can i order these

things and how much do they cost >> and how many false positives. elon musk, two and two, two plus, two minus. just for disclosure, i went to the doctor yesterday, i'm old and have things on your skin, you never know what anything is anymore. and just the people that are there, i just -- i appreciated it so much just the lady behind the glass that checks you in, you are hear every day, aren't you? because i was uncomfortable there for an hour. i'm not petrified, but there is a lot of people in the waiting room and you are in a setting that you are in a doctor's office and usually you don't even want to go to a supermarket and then i think about my doctor and i'm like, thank you, you are here every day for like 12 hours. >> i was thinking about that with the dentist yesterday because you have somebody

breathing on you all day every day. and the dentist, really grateful for what they are doing. and they have worked hard to keep safe. >> they have some serious prote protective equipment on. like 202 2001 or something he was -- he had everything. >> given the specimen, i understand >> yeah, for who he had to see no, bullpen you figure the n95, the face mask, the protective equipment. but they are there to perform and life goes on you we are get things looked at if you need to and i looked out there today out at times square, everybody has winter clothing on now, they are all bundled up and all in masks. it looks like some weird post apocalyptic scene.

so the vaccine can't come soon enough it might actually -- it might happen and it might work and by next summer, think -- >> and we're getting to that point. there is a light at the end of the tunnel mike, any personal stories you want to share with us? >> not really personal, but i just see the lines around the block at like urgent care centers in the city. and you know, you have to assume that it is most of it is covid tests, maybe precautionary but it is just really grown in the last couple of weeks >> and again, i have to say, the reason this home test is so exciting is because in a lot of cases you can't -- like to me, a drive-up place would seem safe but there is a lot of places where you can't get a drive-up test like new york city. and for kids, a lot of times they won't do drive-up tests

either and then the pediatrician may be holding on to the tests they do have for people who are symptomatic, not giving them to asymptomatic people. s it nis not as easy as ultsyoul think or hope. a home test would be fantastic news even if it is not 100%, you still need to get checked out. and if you still continue with the symptom or you test position, you still need help. >> all right we'll get back to our -- what we normally talk about in a second. which is the market that usually goes up. coming up, we'll show you what is moving ahead of the opening bell and retail investing trends from jj kinahan. check out the shares of lowes, a penny below estimates. although revenue and comparable store sales beat estimates we'll figure out what went wrong

there with brian nagel everyone wakes up every morning to a world that must keep turning. the world can't stop, so neither can we. because the things we make, help make the world go round. they make it cleaner, healthier, and more connected. it's what we build that keeps things moving forward. so with every turn, we'll keep building a world that works.

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apple is lowering app store fees for smaller developers. those who earn a million or less a year will only have to pay a 15 respe 15% commission the usual fee is 30% that begins january 1 and you might think this is related to the pushback they have been getting there regular rate totoh industry about how much they are charging one of the things to update, i take back most of the nice things i said about at home test because there is other information that i just found out. it won't be widely available until the spring it costs $50 and it has to be prescribed by a doctor so all the things that i have thinking would make it so useful right now are null and void. >> right although the prescription is getting easier to do without a personal visit, isn't it >> but if you need a prescription for this, that means that you will then have to order the test and wait for it

what good is that? if i can't buy it immediately and have it on hand, no thanks >> if it is at -- well, you'd have to go pick it up. you have to get your doctor to call it in. >> yeah, maybe if the doctor called it in, but not even widely available until the spring and you need it right now. in the spring i'm hoping cases will have come down. prices will have come down by the spring -- i mean the lines at these testing places will have come down by then you need it right now because the lines are so long. >> if you could get it, get your doctor to call in the prescription and go in and pick it up and you could get it that day. >> then, yes, then it would be worth while. >> but it doesn't let you do a routine screening just because you have -- you want to be careful. you have to have probably, you know, cause to have a doctor prescribe it so hopefully in the spring it is beside the point and we're no longer looking for these things. taking a look at other stocks to watch, the faa is

expected to approve the rurnlg of boei return of pokemboeing 737 max ty after fatal crashes. the stock indicated higher around 217 and shares of polaris are down after news of the ceo leaving the company at the end of the year he has led polaris since2008 and he is leaving to become the ceo of cnh industrial which makes agricultural and construction equipment polaris indicated lower by almost 5% this morning and beyond meat launching a new product in china that is a plant based pergs oversion of pork. for the past several months retail investors have consistently shown an appetite for stocks like apple, at&t, really and tesla.

interesting purchases are draft kings, which has to be making a lot of money, pfizer, n imio and cruise stocks. but they continue to dump airline stocks for more, we're joined by jj kinahan at tj ameritrade a lot of these you say are millennial clients why would they be buying cruise but selling -- is that hedge buy cruise, sell airlines? >> well, it is kind of interesting. at the beginning of the millenns were buyers of cruise. and into the fall, it is kind of interesting that they have continued to have the appetite for cruise lines but not

necessarily as much for airlines and as i said, you know, they are selling delta, selling southwest, but at the same time continuing to beingaccumulate carnival and royal caribbean cruise lines maybe part of it is you just had a discussion about age in terms of the coronavirus, et cetera. i think part of it could be if you think about the fact that when you are under 35, you feel that you are a little bit more invincible, so that may be the first people that will go take cruises also so they see themselves prapg ers as the independent consumer. >> they have money they left the basement >> that is a bad 125s is bad ste >> they are out work something that is progress >> are you sucking up to your made len yillennial clients?

>> no, but i have too many good people and you have too many good people on your staff who are right there. >> yeah, lighten up, it is funny. >> i know. >> sorry, man -- what is your percentage ever aof millennial t now? >> we look at the ones we've added over the last year or so, we've added almost 35, 40ish percent. >> wow, you're changing. >> you know what, joe, people have time to invest, people have time to get educated so why shouldn't -- it has taken a little bit longer for this generation perhaps, but they are coming to the markets and they have time to do so >> even though it is capitalism, they are okay, they look the other way if they can do it. how about did you see lowes? what did you make of lowes >> you know, it is very

interesting. i feel like lowes, walmart, home depot sort of the same thing lowes was a little more disappointing, but home depot and walmart, they had actually really good earnings i think that the stocks that are suffering from, they have done so well over the last few quarter, it is really difficult overall for them to continue to take this momentum, to when you have such an amazing quarter, how can you continuethis momentum into the next quarters and the market has become very fussy shall we say about those stores particularly those ones who are able to stay open during the last time we had a shutdown. in illinois, we're going into another shutdown here friday and so it will be interesting to see how these stores do out of that especially as we head into the holiday season so i think as we look forward, any retail store that does not have a great online presence i think will get really hammered in the next earnings season

because for some of them unfortunately, the opportunity is about to wain and anyone who has a brick and mortarpresence, they have to b reexamining it right now >> and target should be probably pretty solid it seems like they are very similar in makeup and strategy i guess to walmart, digital and everything i don't understand the divergence between lowes and home depot home depot had a great quarter >> yeah, home depot had a fantastic quarter. but the stock certainly didn't reflect that >> so at in poini this point, d think that you -- the move that we've seen in the reopening stocks given that you just said illinois is closing -- we're seeing it all over the place, and maybe consumers are pulling in their ability really to go out to restaurants and other places you think that we see that

reflected in the overall economy or are we looking past that now to a vaccine maybe in january? >> well, i think most of the market is kind of looking past it you know, again, we're up 10.9% in the last 11 trading days. that is absolutely amazinamazin. you had been talking about a responsible stimulus and so it seems like that talk is maybe not needed, but kind of passed by and everybody thinks that it is january now and the market hasn't suffered at all from that. so i do think that many of these stores will get a break because we are coming into the holiday season, so it will give them an opportunity to, you know, still do sales online, et cetera what i wonder though is those stores that have a grocery element to them particularly if we'll have a thanksgiving where groups will be much smaller overall, any holiday celebration going forward i'm going to

assume until the end of the year will be much smaller so if you have a big grocery element to your sales, i think that will be affected significantly. and then the other thing,i think you guys had a great conversation about the vaccine, but i think people look back the logistics of doing this. even if they came out today and said everybody can get it, how will it get down to the average person because of course you will want first responders and those working in the hospitals to be first. how does the average person get it and when do they actually get it i would think that it has to be late spring/early summer, you would hope that we would be more efficient than that, but who he knows. it will be a very, very difficult task i think to get it out to people. and i think that perhaps we're a little ahead of ourselves how quickly that will happen >> all right jj, thank you. chief market strategist and chief politician atmeritrade. >> an irish guy from chicago, how can i not have some

political in my blood. >> you love everybody, that is nice you got to if you are going politics you have to appeal to everyone thank you. see ya and when we come back, transition friction. we're learning more about the makeup of the fed that the president-elect biden will be inheriting and as well as a report about potential cabinet members. that is next and still to come, target is set to report in the next few minutes. we'll bring you the nichls as soon as numbers as soon as they hit.

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president trump's fed nominee was fairly controversial, judy shelton, failed to clear a procedural vote in the senate making her confirmation now unlikely. three republicans opposed her nomination including senator susan collins who cited shelton's calls for the fed to be less independent and statements questioning the need for a central bank and roger ferguson is retiring as ceo of tiaa kref, one of wall street's most prominent plaqblack executives and could go up, we're minutes away from target's results and an interview with

brian cornell. and a look at yesterday's s&p 500 winners and losers i made a business out of my passion. i mean, who doesn't love obsessing over network security? all our techs are pros. they know exactly which parking lots have the strongest signal. i just don't have the bandwidth for more business. seriously, i don't have the bandwidth. glitchy video calls with regional offices? yeah, that's my thing. with at&t business, you do the things you love. our people and network will help do the things you don't. let's take care of business. at&t.

good morning, u.s. equity futures now up about 73, 74 points on the dow, 33 on the nasdaq, s&p up just under 10 and that gives us not too far from 30,000 on the dow becky, i think we have a report out. >> we do target just out with its earnings we've been waiting for this one. it looks like target came in with earnings on adjusted base of 2 pp$2.79 a share versus the $1.60 that the street was

expecting. revenue too, up by 21.3% from a year ago to $22.6 billion. the street only looking for 20.9, so a beat on expectations for revenue that is up sharply from a year ago. comp sales overall, up 20.7&, but that does include digital comps which are up 155%. but just the same store sales themselves, they are up about 9.9% and for a major retailer like this is phenomenal i think walmart was up 6.3%. so this really tells you something about what is happening here and right now the stock is up by about 0.8% walmart saw a drop in the stock price which is confusing to a lot of people who looked at this and the basket size grew by 15.6% in the third quarter and traffic same store traffic

at the stores up 4.5%. year to date, the company says that they have gained market share across all five of their core merchandising categories and say year to date, they are now looking at$6 billion of market share that they have taken from other retailers we'll get to talk to target ceo brian cornell, he will join us just a few minutes away. looking at some of the things here though, operating income margin, 8.5% versus 5.4% in the same quarter a year ago. part of that is because of what this company is doing with fulfillment, they say 95% of their fi third quarter sales were fulfilled by the stores and that is a big deal compared to others who have to use u.p.s. and fedex, like mike you were talking about. a lot of what they do is things that come up with people driving up to the store and picking up in the parking lot, or being able to walk inside and pick up the delivery there so 95% of their sales were actually fulfillinged by the

stores themselves. that is an advantage companies like target and walmart house. stock down by about 4 cents. >> and looks in a way like walmart, a flawless report, the market saying what comes next, holding its value, but definitely given how much it was a blowout on the bottom line, you wonder what the market is trying to extrapolate into next year in the meantime, let's continue our look at retail and the consumer lowes reporting earlier this morning missing by a penny on the bottom line in adjusted eps, sales did beat estimates however. let's bring in briin mabrian nao break it down. you were kind of handicapping it, maybe though it is kind of in the stock and also guidance for lowes maybe was a slight disappointment, so how are he reading what they report >> the words you just are said and when you were discussing

take your g target, like what is next. if you look at this lowes report, it was amazing we want to be nit-picky, we say maybe there unit with a as much earnings growth. they did talk about higher spend just like home depot did yesterday. talking about a modest deceleration in sales growth in q4 again, a great report. i think the market is saying what is next and they are looking towards 2021, very much the potential for this coronavirus crisis to abate and how do consumers shop the home improvement stores over the next several quarters. >> and there is? criticism i guess that lowes is maybe a step behind the competition, home depot, in terms of online and getting exposure to digital channel. and i guess the question is, if you haven't capitalized on thi bonanza we've had in home improvement and housing this year, you know, have you missed a bit of a window and how does that feed into what you think of

the stock. >> i actually disagree with that i think lowes has done an amazing job. we were having this discussion a year ago, that would be the case but at that point lowes which was ineffective online over the past couple quarters under the guide dance of theanc, they have done a phenomenal job online and there is an important point as we watched, once again, lowes outcomped home depot basically 30% versus 25% this is now becoming a trend lowes is performing well here. it is just the concern why the stocks are doing what they are doing is consistent with the downgrade i issued several weeks ago, the market is worried about what comes next and how the companies perform against the very difficult comparisons >> so where does lowes shares for example get interesting if they continue to back off right here based on what we can surmise about what 2021 will look like? >> yeah, so i said that i see

down side support for lowes in the range of 130 to 140. and so looking at where the stock is opening, just under 150, so a little ways to go in my view. but the simple math, that is kind of a trough-ish multiple. at that point i think that it is attractive and then you are looking towards normalization in trends 22, 23 when the company really starts to perform well again. >> so roughly speaking, maybe 10% below where it is indicated in the premarket brian, great to check in with you. thanks very much >> appreciate it coming up, much more on today's big retail earnings, including an exclusive interview with target ceo brian cornell. and then later dr. scott gottlieb joining us for an update in the surge on virus cases. and you can watch or listen to us live anytime on the cnbc app.

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welcome back futures indicated up about 83 or so points. 86 points. and i know becky, we have brian coming on, but you i don't know, at the risk of sounding like a suck up, i was thinking what do

walmart and target have in common, and that is great young ethical really smart ceos, right? doug and brian and you can sort of tell that it is a new breed of ceos i would almost say, right? >> definitely a new breed of retail he ceos who look at this and by the way, who are working on problems that are larger than just retail problems larger than just industry problems >> yeah, spent a little time with doug, not with brian, but you can tell i just think that you can tell i don't feel that around all ceos >> i think we sound like a suck up when we come back, target shares -- >> who said that >> target shares rising on a blowout quarter for earnings yeah, up now 1.2%. we do have an cloexclusive interview with brian cornell, oar ony.nyndheis compa a t brdeecom

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pfizer releasing more details from its covid vaccine trials meg tirrell last the details >> good morning. well, last monday we got the interim look at pfizer's phase three trial and today we're getting the final results, they have beingaccrued enough cases have a final look. and now it is showing 95% effective at preventing cases of covid-19 at this point, they have seen 170 total cases, the split of that, 162 among people who did not receive the vaccine who were on the placebo, only eight on the vaccine. and they also saw ten severe

cases of covid-19 in the trial and nine of those were among people on placebo, only one on vaccine, suggesting also that it is strongly protective and they also saw efficacy across age groups, 94% in adults over 65. the company saying that the vaccine was well tolerated, no serious safety concerns. and so now they plan to submit their application to the fda within days. in terms of other toller ability issue, they say side effects were headache and fatigue following the second dose but they tend to pass quickly. so now planning to file to the fda, 95% efficacy on the covid-19 vaccine guys >> meg, we should point out that pfizer shares are up about 3% on the news this means that the vaccine is just as effective as what we've heard from the moderna, which is

saying 94.5% effect difference and the key point i took out, for older americans, you are still talking about 94% efficacy which is incredibly important because that is the group that is most affected by this and there has always been questions about vaccines for older americans. just because they tend to be less effective in general as you get older. the market still looking like it is up at about the same levels it was before, but very mornts news and we'll get back to you with more on this. right now dow futures up by about 140 points we'll continue to dig into the numbers. meg, thank you right now, let's get to our interview with brian cornell. brian, thank you for being with us for those who missed the results that we reported earlier, earnings per share, $2.79 on an adjusted basis and that is better than the $1.60 the street was looking for. revenue also blew expectations out of the water at $22.6

billion. comps came in at 20.7%, same store sales just in the stores themselves, up by 9.9% it looks like you were firing on just about every cylinder here i couldn't see anything that turned down. describe what you are see and how much of a surprise this has come to you. >> good morning. i think what we're seeing is the relevance of our brand and business model in the current environment. and actually we've been delivering very solid results now for several years. but i think that you are seeing both sides of our which is modemode business model, strength in the stores up almost 10% and really strong digital results and so both sides of the business model working well. and a family shopping all of our key categories, and i think the multicategory portfolio right now is critically important to the millions of families that we serve each and every week. >> and i think that is part of the surprise too earlier in the pandemic, you had areas of merchandise that were

doing well and others that weren't doing well from what i can see at least, it looks like just about every merchandise category you have, especially the big ones, are all performing like double digit growth sort of setups. what do you see in terms of what shoppers are looking for at this point and what they are willing to pay for >> it has been a while since you and i walked one of the target stores if i take you through a store right now, we're seeing many families coming to us to pick up a new aew barbie or something fr their kids, a new lego item. but while they are there, they are shoppingfor microsoft items, for apple, even during the pandemic children are outgrowing their clothes, so guests are coming to us for that but then they discover that we have levi red cap available. and they are shopping the home category, but also visiting food and drench obeverage and discov

good and gather brand. and in their cart are paper towels and detergent and we're seeing that guests shop multiple categories they might leave with a cup of starbucks in their hand, but in their trunk is a bag oflay snac. they're taking advantage of the one shop solution. they're shopping both our own brands and the iconic national brands we have throughout our assortment >> brian, you mentioned in the release that you have seen market share gains of $6 billion year to date i mean, that's incredibly impressive i know that your traffic was up by 4.5%. the shopping cart, your basket grew by 15.6% in the quarter where are you taking market share from what competitors >> well, again, becky, we're seeing market share growth

across all of our major categories you see it in home we're seeing it in beauty. in food and beverage household essentials tremendous share gains in our hardline categories, electronics and toys real strength in apparel despite some of the pressures we've seen in the overall apparel market. we reported our apparel comps up almost 10%, and we continue to pick up significant share in those categories it has been broad based and we're picking up share from our traditional competitors as well as specialty competitors you follow retail very carefully with a comp of 20.7% stores up 10%. digital up 155 our numbers compare very favorable to our peers in fact, in most cases we're growing at two, three, four times the rate of our peers from a physical or digital standpoint so we're picking up share across the marketplace. we've seen that all year long, and we think that's going to continue not just in the

holidays but as we look to 2021 and beyond >> you know, i misspoke earlier. i was comparing your same store sales comps, 9.9% from walmart 6.3% their numbers included their digital sales, too if you're looking apples to apples, the same store were up 0.7 versus your 9.9. their traffic was down, yours is up 4.4%. are you taking market shares from walmart as well >> well, becky, there's a lot of impressive numbers in our print this morning, but i have to come back to the work that we've done in our stores and the work that our store teams have done throughout the pandemic. we've been very focused on the safety of our team, the safety of our guests, building trust each and every day with the families who shop our stores, and during the pandemic to see our traffic grow by almost 5% and our store comps growing at

the rate of 10% when many americans are consolidating trips and spending more time at home, that to me is a signal of just the relevance of our business model, the trust families have placed in target and the tremendous work our teams have done at store level to beat not only the store demand but as you talked about, 95% of ourgrowth is enabled by our stores those same-day services of pickup, drive up which grew by 500% our ship service all of that comes from our 1900 stores that are at the heart of our strategy and work every day on behalf of the millions of families we serve across america. >> the question wall street always has is what have you done for me lately? your shares are up 3% today. the question people have is what will be happening with shoppers a year from now? will they still continue doing what they're doing now

or is this a bit of a, you know, stay at home trade to some extent because of what you're able to do with fulfillment? what do you think? what are you planning and what are you doing in terms of what you stock up on? you have to make those decisions six months in advance or longer. >> becky, as you would imagine, we talk to consumers each an every week throughout the pandemic we've put a real premium on agility and flexibility and adapting to the environment. we'll do that again as we go into the first half of 2021. unfortunately we're all sitting here right now looking for greater certainty. as we talk to consumers, they're looking for certainty around when is this virus going to be behind us? when will there be a vaccine what's going to happen with the economy? when do kids go back to school none of us today have any idea if i could package up certainty, it would be the top selling item i've sold at target today. we think in 2021 we have to be flexible and adapt to the current and changing

environment. i feel like our team has demonstrated that ability to adapt and flex each and every week during the pandemic we'll continue to do that as we go into 2021 >> are you seeing any signs of hoarding, of people starting to get some of those peak supply items again like cleaners, toilet paper or anything >> becky, we're looking at it very carefully i think it's going to be a market-by-market phenomenon. certainly not seeing anything like we saw during the february/march period of time. obviously as different cities and states begin to lock down we'll have to make sure we're keeping up with the need and the demand system. we'll watch it very carefully. we're certainly not seeing anything that resembles what we saw in february or march, but we'll watch it each and every day across the country >> and, brian, we are just -- this is the first time we've gotten a chance to talk to you since the deal was announced last week with the tie up of ulta beauty.

how did that come about and what does it really mean for you? >> becky, i am really excited about this new partnership you know beauty's been a very important part of our business for years now. we've made significant investments in the space it's been an area where we've seen great growth and market share gains, and this partner with ulta beauty will allow us to take it to another level. it will take style and frequency within our business and as we work with ulta and bring the partnership to life, we'll bring our guests new brands in prestige space, bring new service is experiences in select stores and on target.com so it's just another way for us to elevate the experience and brianne iconic new partner into our target stores and into target.com i am really excited about this new partnership. >> brian, i want to thank you for your time today. really appreciate it we hope we'll get the chance to talk with you again soon >> thank you, becky.

>> thank you brian cornell again, the ceo of target mike >> all right thanks, becky. coming up, take a look at futures as we head to break. they got a little bit of a bump after we got the revised pfizer vaccine data taking it up. >> mike? >> yeah. >> we're also -- maybe there was some word getting out, but bloomberg is -- there's a tweet about the 737 maybe being -- you saw that >> i did see the tweet i did see boeing reacting. >> just for the dow -- >> on the dow, yeah. >> yeah. so we'll see what happens today, whether that comes to pass, that that plane will be flying again, which will be there. we'll talk to dr. scott gottleib this is decision tech.

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good morning and welcome back to "squawk box" here on cnbc i'm joe kernen along with becky quick and mike santoli u.s. equity futures, perhaps

there's a recertification of the boeing max being approved and being ready to fly again we will -- when it becomes official and it comes out, we'll bring that to you. meanwhile, we have breaking news from pfizer within the past 15 minutes. releasing more details from the covid vaccine trials meg tirrell joins us they start with 90 moderna -- sputnik goes 92, moderna comes out 94.5 now we see the actual results are 95 it's a coincidence and it almost looks like they're outdoing -- to be fair, pfizer had originally said over 90% you implied at the time it could be 95. but very similar who's counting, 94.5, 95 seems like they're pretty close and very effective, which is great. >> very effective. that is the bottom line now, joe. we have two covid-19 vaccines.

the first two out of the gate that have shown 94.5% or 95% for pfizer efficacy in preventing covid-19 the reason the numbers changed the look that pfizer gave us on monday was from the first interim look at the trial. it didn't have all of the cases that would be considered the complete efficacy, just that interim look the end of the trial and the numbers of cases they needed to declare the efficacy point they've seen 170 points and it's a placebo. did not get the vaccine. tennessee veer cases and 9 on placebo, 1 on the vaccine. the protectiveness appeared to be similar across age groups and

backgrounds in the trial 94% efficacy in people over 65 now they also looked at safety, of course. they said no serious safety concerns there are side effects here. after the second dose in particular you do have sort of intense cases for some people of headache and fatigue that typically resolves quickly, but it won't be easy for everybody to take necessarily. pfizer and biontech said they will talk with investors around the world. the number once they got to the time efficacy point, 95% efficacy for the covid-19 vaccine. >> crank if t up let's get 24 hours overnight. keep people -- pay them overtime we've got to make this stuff, from both sides. meg, i have a quick -- i heard albert gore call it biontech, too. is it biontech or is it b

biontech they messed up with the name no one is ever going to call it that and people are saying, ah, hell, it's biontech. >> we had biontech ceo on. the first question was how do you pronounce it he said it's either biontech or biontech he did not say biontech. no answers there. >> what's that one, biomarin we messed that one up. it's in marin county these are the important things, meg. that's great that is awesome. you know, for a while it looked like i was going to ask for moderna. we had said, i made a point that will there come a day where there could be a difference on which one you would want if they were all available my point is with personalized genetics and with underlying

medical conditions, we may find out that an adeno for some people mediated might not be as safe or might have more side effects perhaps than just an mrna you might get a recommendation that differentiates between the different offerings of vaccines. hopefully we get to that point. >> yeah. we have to see the next data and those adeno vector vaccines are next up. they started their trials two months after pfizer and moderna. we're going to get them by the end of the year or early next year and we'll start to be able to compare until then, the prioritized groups, once these mrna vaccine groups from pfizer and moderna get there, more production will be coming from them. it will come online. operation warp speed is playing out. we have to cross our fingers for similar efficacy. >> meg, do you think senator

grassley with regeneron with that antibody, i bet you he is, right? >> i don't know. i was set s-- sad to hear of hi diagnosis. regeneration hasn't received emergency authorization whereas eli lilly has. that would be easier to get. yeah, why regeneron has been he did, it is a bit odd. we haven't heard from the fda on regeneron's drug they did have one of their trials paused but in more severe hospitalized patients, not in the indication they applied for the fda's green light. it is a question, what's going to happen. >> gottleib is on. we're going to probe his brain for all of these things. meg, thank you >> joe, there is a big question looming over investors and the

market are the fed's emergency lending programs about to expire steve liesman takes a look at the debate whether the emergency programs are still needed. hey, steve >> good morning, mike. the fed reserve and the treasury appear at the moment to disagree over whether the fed emergency programs should be extended. fed chair jay powell made some of his strongest comments yesterday about continuing the programs which provide financing to the muni market, money bonds and loans to medium-sized businesses powell said, quote, so we came in and the markets have reopened, and when the right time comes, and here's the emphasis, i don't think that time is yet or very soon, we'll put those tools away so far treasury secretary steve mnuchin, who has to agree under a lot has not said which way he'll go here's why people think the program should be continued.

it starts with the economy and markets are not out of the woods yet with a surge in the pandemic especially with the recent surge. the programs have served as a critical backstop to markets year end is the wrong time to eliminate them because the challenges in the financial markets around the year-end funding. there's a case to end them the other side said the reason to end them is markets are functioning pretty well, pretty normally you can't get funds. what they really need are direct grants, not loans from the fed they need fiscal policy. now markets have been so far not too concerned about these programs expiring. if they do, you get tested soon about how much progress stands on their own joe? >> interesting, steve. appreciate that. i don't know what do you think of shelton >> i think she's a controversial

candidate. i think that -- i would personally prefer that a person go to the fed that didn't -- wasn't so controversial, that there was, you know, 70, 80 senators on one side here. i would like that monetary policy would be the results of a consensus, but of course i live in a naive bubble. >> you do. haven't seen recent supreme court votes. 51 -- >> right right. exactly. >> in this world, 51 is the most you can hope for at this point >> 51 is an overwhelming majority, right? >> yeah, it is some pluralities are majorities. beck >> yeah, right. >> i have a question, too. the way you were laying it out, i hadn't considered it or thought about it before. if you have these programs at the fed ex pier at the end of the year, does it just mean -- how do you restart the programs again? would it be 20 days later if there's a new administration they could restart them just with the signing of a pen or is

it a more complicated process that has to go through congressional approval or something? >> becky, thanks for pouring salt in my reporting wouldn't right there. it was a great job you did because i have struggled over the past several days to understand what happens to it, and it seems like there are different understandings for one thing, the money not allocated, which is about $250 billion, that goes away. that expires it goes back to the general fund, but there's money that's allocated over there it may be, and i'm trying to figure this out, it may be that a new treasury secretary can come in and just agree with the federal reserve board to restart them on the other hand, and what am i on, like a third hand here, it looks like when i read the c.a.r.e.s. act and have other people interpret it for me as well, the fed can't lend any new money under these programs after december 31st. that's an argument i'm working

still, becky, to understand. the c.a.r.e.s. act is relatively complicated and it looks like there are different understandings it's a really big question because the markets will be like, hey, if all we need to do is restart them, then they're kind of there. if it takes an act of congress to restart them, then they go away, it's a much bigger deal. you're right, becky. >> good luck >> good question. >> thanks. >> thanks, beck. coming up, breaking news on the mortgage front diana olick plus the ceo of the number one wholesale mortgage company on the exodus from the big city to the suburbs. tough one on "jeopardy," becky, exodus, when they do that. "squawk box" will be right back. i feel like we're forgetting something.

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breaking news this morning this time on housing diane olick has the news on housing. >> november is not historically a strong season for home buying, but this november, like all of 2020, isn't following any rules. after a brief pull back around the elections, mortgage applications to purchase a home rose 4% for the week according to the mortgage bankers association seasonally adjusted index.

volume was a decisive 26% higher annually mortgage rates are certainly helping. the average on the 30 year fix with confirming loan balances edged up a bit that was a full percentage higher a year ago. rates to refinance well above. down slightly 2% for the week but 98% higher than the same week a year ago. now thousands of borrowers have already rephied especially those with higher loan balances set to save more when rates dropped earlier this year. back to you guys >> thank you very much let's take a look here at boeing stock is up on expectations the 737 max will get approval from the faa to return to flight. now the stock has been on a little bit of a comeback and it's adding to it this morning, 6% 12 points on a dow component

that gets you probably about half of the indicated 146 point gain in the dow so far right now. you also see it's actually challenging that june high so many of these re-opening trades, cyclical stocks have a spike like that in june when we got a really good jobs number and we had a lot of enthusiasm about the pace of the reopening before you had the summer spike. they're challenging those numbers. you have to go back to before this when the 737 was grounded and much higher levels s&p over ten days, the pre-market action here, little bit of a bump in response to that slightly incrementally better. this is the spdr etf. that's 36.50 equivalent on the s&p futures. it's more like 36.40 on the s&p itself we haven't quite gotten back the markets have held together and you see a pop this morning markets barely off the highs it's interesting we had a big,

enthusiastic, emotional burst higher a week ago monday and now we're trying to see if we can digest that or challenge it at some point, becky. >> so what next? sorry, thought joe was jump p in here >> the setup of the market, it's getting a little bit over bought people are getting excited and throwing money into the market especially since the election. it's tough to get in the way of the fourth quarter seasonal strength but the market is looking slightly stretched and the case has been made that you now have that positive catalyst of vaccine success, somewhat in the rear-view mirror the market is willing to look ahead a few months to the time when it helps us restart most of the economy, but i do think there's a decent question

because right now really what we're talking about is seasonal tailwinds. you're seeing reactions to walmart, home depot, lowe's news >> not just that i'm a little surprised that there's not more strength in the overall market based on be the new results that we got from pfizer, the idea that it's 95% effective and 94% effective on older americans, those aged 65 and up, which is the most important group to be protecting the vaccines haven't always worked well with older americans. the only thing i can take from that is all of the good news on the vaccine front has been baked in. >> right we've been progressively pricing it in. we have expectations for success. better than most thought that's why you got the pop beyond that it's difficult to make head way just on incremental improvements in the data alone >> all right

you know, so, mike, just back to boeing for a second. there are other places that seem to think that they know about this, but it's expected. i guess if you see 12 points, right? this morning >> we don't know the market is acting if they have an idea. >> things come out, embargoed, people see it. if every place has an embargoed copy, someone's going to jump the gun. >> yes >> you know that after. >> i was at the news wires, it was still teletype. >> that's true at f&n with ed harp he was crazy do you remember him. >> except mike's joking. >> yeah. i'm not joking

ed harp, he'd be over there. we'd all be typing on ib ibm selectric typewriters. he would go, ohhh. people remember him from f&n thank you. the late, great ed hart. thanks, mike >> yeah. >> i've turned into ed hart. >> our very own benjamin button. when we come back, andrew is going to join us with highlights from the dealbook conference and a preview. is his mike on this time can you talk >> yeah, i can talk. >> don't want to talk to you. >> you can >> yesterday they wouldn't let you talk. >> you can't hear me >> i can now we're going to see you in just a minute. >> i decided to wear a coat because i felt like i was a guest. i felt very guesty. >> good job. very distinguished looking we'll talk more with andrew in a minute check out shares of tesla. that stock was upgraded from

over weight. it raised its price from 560 it's at 540 today. time now for today's aflac trivia question. in 1817, inventor karl drais rode a 2-wheeled running machine 4 miles and is considered the earliest version of this popular vehicle. what is it the swaner when cnbc's "squawk box" continues and this is the ak who helped me cover it. aflac. these are all the cab rides to my physical therapy. and aflac paid me directly to help. aflac. what he said. and this unexpected bill is from... the two-thousand-dollar specialist. thanks. aflac. when you're sick or injured, aflac is there. we can help with expenses health insurance doesn't cover. get to know us at (aflac!) dot com.

now the answer to today's aflac trivia question. in 1817, inventor karl drais rode a 2-wheeled running machine 4 miles and is considered the earliest version of this popular vehicle. what is it the answer, the bicycle. two wheels seem -- i kind of knew -- seemed obvious. the second day of dealbook's conference kicks off andrew ross sorkin, i knew it wasn't a motorcycle. seemed it would be abicycle. how did it go yesterday? what happened with elizabeth

warren >> very possibly. >> did that finally come off, senator warren >> we ended up -- we did that interview much it's going to be available today. it's now part of the lineup today starting at 10:00 this morning. >> great >> joe, i got your question in about treasury secretary so you are going to want to -- you're going to want to tune in for that we've got a huge day ahead we'll talk about what's on tap-in just a moment, but want to show you a little bit, some of the highlights from yesterday. perhaps one of the most remarkable moments was when we were speaking with soft bank founder and ceo massa son. he shored up almost $80 billion in cash on hand. i asked him what he makes of this current environment, and i hate to scare you, but this is what he had to say >> in the short run i am pessimistic that the -- it's still increasing the second wave

or third wave of the covid-19 around the world of course the vaccine is coming but who knows in the next two, three months, any disaster could happen so we are just preparing for the worst case scenario. >> so keeping some cash under the mattress in case something bad happens there. we'll see what he does with all of that cash one of the places masa has put his money to work is some of the tech stocks. i asked him about the valuations and whether he thinks there's a market bubble. >> i think this is just the beginning of a revolution, the tech revolution, information revolution the value of the asset we have owned has grown 157 times in the last 18 years.

when the same period new york's dow has increased 2.7 times. tokyo stock exchange, 2.1 times, nasdaq 6 times from the crash that people thought, this was internet bubble crash i think this is the exciting beginning of the growth and excitement of the future of ai and the information revolution >> and yesterday i had a session with bill gates. heidi larson of the vaccine confidence conference and alberto borleau. i asked him, this is the first time he addressed it, the criticism he faced over selling pfizer stock his answer was fascinating take a look at it. >> i regret because for me it's the first time but i become so famous and from a hero to why

you sold in one day. you know, it was -- you know, i was very happy, then i was devastated what was written. yeah, i wish i didn't have to deal with that but, as i said, it's -- it's coming. it comes with the territory. >> said he didn't even realize that the stock had actually been sold on that day because it was pre-programmed until the headlines started coming out one of the questions that we had yesterday following these promising vaccine developments is when we can return to normal life is the question we all ask. bill gates has a pretty interesting perspective on what this could mean for business travel >> my prediction would be that over 50% of business travel and over 30% of days in the office will go away that now that it's not the gold standard but, yes, flew all the

way here to sit in front of me, that you can do the virtual connection, that it will be a very high threshold for actually doing that business trip and that there will be ways that you can work from home a lot of the time. >> huge changes in the world if bill gates' prediction comes true we have a huge lineup of guests today. we'll be taking, of course, highlights on cnbc you can register still to view it all online and participate in it at nytdealbookconference.com. here's what's on tap jamie dimon, ruth porat from alphabet then somebody who's really in the news this morning, tim sweeney who runs epic. owns fortnite in a battle with apple over the quote, unquote apple tax which you know and just reported this morning, apple has lowered that tax, if you will, or lowered the

commission it takes for small businesses we'll see if he takes credit for that then we have robert smith later in the afternoon along with killa mike and ursa burns. the king is joining us lebron james is going to be with us at 4 p.m. to talk about more than a vote and the role that they played in the 2020 election so a lot going on today. >> when you said the king at first i thought elvis. lebron, that's even better >> lebron, you know, we thought we'd save a surprise guest for the end. >> that's good that's good. what bill gates said though about travel, business travel i think has some pretty major implications for the stock market if it in fact comes true. >> huge. >> because we've spoken with the airline industry and doug parker at american airlines said it's going to be hard to get back to

the levels they're at before in terms of profitability and revenue without business travel coming back because that's where the money is the business traveler -- >> right. >> -- is the one that they make all their margins on if you don't have business travelers, imagine what it means for the airlines, hotel companies and for so many other places along the way we've seen downturns in the past after the great financial crisis where people didn't travel for a while but it always starts to come back. >> the thing that was so interesting with what bill said, he gave an example with albert, they apparently have a meeting of some of the big pharmaceutical executives and others in that industry four, five times a year. a mini conference and a meeting they do. they typically fly to new york and do it four, five times a year we probably wouldn't we've been doing it on zoom. maybe they do it once a year you do the flight, create the relationships but then the four other times you'd be on zoom and that will have -- if -- if that comes to pass, it'll have

huge implications. so that's all we've got. look forward to seeing everybody. >> the entire industry built up around that. andrew, thank you. we'll be watching. >> you bet. >> a lot of great stuff yesterday and more to come. >> thank you. >> good to see you in your suit. >> see you tomorrow. still to come this morning on "squawk box," dr. scott gottleib with the latest on the battle of covid-19 the latest vaccine news from pfizer and much more. right now though as we head to break, take a look at the futures. dow is up 160 points "sawbo wilbe, nasdaq up by 33. quk x"l right back.

for more on the pfizer news and a new study that shows covid immunity lasts longer than originally thought, we're joined by dr. scott gottleib, cnbc contributor and he sits on the board of illumina and pfizer the pfizer news when it came out initially was over 90. they probably knew it was close to 95% maybe not that big of a surprise

but gratifying, very similar to moderna's numbers. >> yeah, look, these are great results. these vaccines have a chance to be real game changers. you can effectively end the u.s. epidemic if you can widely deploy a vaccine that's more than 90% effective, 95% effective. hopefully people will take the vaccines hopefully they're safe, effective and the data continues to improve these are great results. stunning results with both vaccines i don't think anybody expected the vaccines to be this efficacious. it tells us about immunity the virus seems to be sensitive to antibodies and antibody production not just vaccines but the antibody based drugs >> doctor, we all aren't experts on the immune system the vaccines you get when you're a kid that last almost your entire life, maybe you need a booster or something, what is the difference between the

target disease and covid which made people think it could be three months worth of immunity what would be the difference there? and then we -- you know, then we know about flu shots every season flu, influenza mutates, it's a different version. we can understand that why would you think you wouldn't be immune for the longer -- for a longer period with covid >> depends on what the vaccines are doing. if it's just an antibody response that you're generating that's going to be protective, antibodies weigh in over time. you don't have circulating antibodies you have memory b cells that are pre-programmed to start producing antibodies quickly when they confront the virus in the future you don't have the antibodies that creates sterilization in your blood you can get re-infected again. the question is do the vaccines and does exposure to covid induce a full compliment of cells, the t cells and memory

cells that could get immunity. with sars and mers, other coronaviruses similar to covid, they had a more enduring immunity we weren't sure that this virus, this covid-19, sars cov 2 had this with respect to the vaccines, we assessed the vaccines early on and their ability to generate an anti body response what we've seen in the data and the studies including non-human primate studies is the nonmrna vaccines get a t cell response the immunity can be more enduring that might mean you need an annual injection or a regular schedule every two years of a booster with these vaccines, but that if you get infected in between, if you are generating a t cell response in addition to an antibody response, you'll have a level of protection that's the hope.

getting a t cell response and fuller complement of a response. >> we have been talking about the flu season overlapping and it's not quite time yet and we've also talked about the southern hemisphere where you really department see the same severity can it be totally attributed to different behavior, more hand washing and less social contact? or does there seem to be something that we don't understand genetically, the crossover between these viruses or immune systems. can you explain it, doctor, why we may have an anemic flu system small gains. >> it appears that the mitigation would take -- right it appears that the mitigation we're taking to try to thwart the spread of coronavirus and covid-19 is exquisitely effective against flu. that may be because of the way

flu spreads. you have these super spreading events if you have the mitigation, you're cutting down on the routine spread of flu. with covid you still get spread because it's the super spreading event. it may be the case that the mitigation tactics work better against flu better than covid even though they work against covid. >> we feel like we're way too reckless as a country in terms of the way we're dealing with covid but in fact it's plenty of mitigation to deal with the flu, which we didn't know it just shows you that it's not perfect but people are trying to do this. we need to do more and more masks and everything else. it's going to be .45 mortality as we -- you know, as we see, as we go to 30% from 15% infected

that is going to just result in really terrible mortality figures even though we take care of people much better. >> yeah. look, we see the light at the end of the tunnel now. these vaccines could effectively end the epidemic in 2021 as we more widely deploy them. we still have a challenge globally we have a hard two to three months to get to we need to think of what temporary sacrifices to make including economically with congress stepping in with ppe to support businesses that are going to be shut over the last two or three months. we have to do what we can to preserve life over the next two or three months recognizing there's a better future for covid-19 in 2021. >> thank you for addressing any subject that we come up with >> thanks a lot. >> we will speak to you again soon thanks probably tomorrow. >> thanks, joe >> all right

we've got some breaking news on boeing right now. let's get straight over to phil lebeau phil, take it away. >> reporter: becky, taking a look at shares of boeing moving higher it's official, the faa has officially ungrounded the 737 max. that means after 617 days when airlines, leasing companies were not allowed to fly the plane at all, even if they wanted to, they were not allowed to do that now once they make adjustments in terms of the software for the flight control system as well as modifications to flight training, they will be able to put the max back into service. the soonest we expect that to happen is the end of december. american airlines has a flight scheduled i think for december 29th it is official, the faa has cleared the 737 max to return to service. it is no longer grounded we have a lot of questions for the head of the faa, administrator steve dickson. he will join us first on cnbc. do not want to miss this interview. that is coming up in 20 minutes at the top of the hour we'll talk to him about the

ungrounding order, whether or not they believe that they can instill confidence in the flying public there are a lot of people, guys, who will look at this and say, i don't care if you've signed off on it being safe, i don't feel comfortable getting on the max we'll talk about that at the top of the hour. once again, the 737 max has officially been ungrounded guys, back to you. >> really good news from boeing. you know, for the biggest manufacturer in the united states and jobs and for a lot of things >> yeah. >> now we just need someone to want to go somewhere, phil, and not worrying about a mask or -- you know, it's unbelievable. >> baby steps. joe, after 617 days, i can tell you this, dave calhoun will take it he will take an ungrounding in this market versus not being able to -- >> definitely. >> -- deliver those planes. >> can you believe you're reopening into this environment? you know what, a, we have the vaccine and hopefully it's all working towards a successful resolution towards all of these. what are you going to do next

year, phil no covid, boeing is flying again. >> i don't know. >> we'll find something, i think, right >> we will we will. >> no tweets. >> looking forward to hearing from administrator dickson in the next hour. a lot of questions for him. >> okay, lebeau. thanks for bringing this. >> you bet. >> all right in the meantime, check out shares of target the company out with its earnings earlier this morning. it reported an adjusted quarterly earnings number of $2.79. that was way ahead of 1$1.60 a share. strong numbers across the board. same store sales up by 9.9%. comps including digital up by 20.7%. that stock up better than 2.5% this morning here's ceo brian cornell on the company's performance. >> so we're seeing who's shopping all of our categories, taking a look at one stop shopping solution from a digital and physical and they're

shopping both our own brands and those iconic national brands that we now have throughout our store. that news from target, the pfizer news on its vaccine, the boeing news. boeing's dow component all helping the markets. dow futures up by 176 points s&p up by 16 the nasdaq up by 29. "sawbo wl rhtacquk x"ilbeig bk. (♪ )

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welcome back to "squawk box. a few stocks to watch at this hour norwegian cruise lines announces a secondary stock offering of $40 million a share at $20.80. the cruise line operator plans to use the money for general corporate purposes as they try to navigate through a cruise industry shutdown. the stock is down 5 or 6%. and polaris ceo scott wyand resigned to become the ceo of case and new holland polaris is immediately beginning a search for a successor bairupadd gring boeing to 306. "squawk box" will be right back. businesses today are looking to tomorrow. adapting. innovating.

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in 2015 one of the largest producers of rare earth was squeezed by china's low prices and forced into bankruptcy today after being taken over by mp ma materials, it has been recharged. this morning mp materials is taking this company public and will be trading under the ticker symbol mp. joining us is the founder,

chairman and ceo jim latinsky. it's been a while since we've spoken with you. >> good morning, becky it's great to be here. today is a great day >> thank you for taking the time today. i know we've spoken with you in the past and explained to people about rare earth materials and what they're used for. why don't you walk us through this again mp owns and operates mountain pass that's the mining and processing site in north america. these rare materials are used for things like electric vehicles so walk us through a little bit what happened with the china squeeze. >> absolutely. wind turbines, drones, robots. pretty much any advanced motion technology of the 21st century requires these materials the key thing, and i think it's an important distinction, as people talk about it

for us for rare materials, our stuff goes into the magnets for the motors for most of these things so when you think about batteries and some of those other things where you have technology that is sort of still up in the air and you've spent a lot of time on the air talking about hydrogen versus electric and some of these other things, no matter how the energy gets to the motor, you pretty much need rare materials in these technologies to make the move. it's a very important industry as you said, the chinese dominate the supply chain. they have north of 80% of this supply chain and we are restoring that in the united states of america. our mission is to make sure there is a strong american company that can also lead in this space. >> america led this race for rare materials for a very long time until china came in and started doing it without being

environmentally conscious, having to go about their mining. how do you tackle that when they're still not very conscientious about doing this and you're held to different standards? >> the chinese were very strategic. they methodically over a couple of decades took over this industry they lowered the cost of capital. they lowered environmental standards. they did what it took to take over a strategic industry. the good news for us at mp materials is frankly i founded this company three years ago we bought these assets out of bankruptcy the predecessor had spent $2 billion building a state of the art environmentally friendly facility becky, this facility was built a little over 5 years ago in the state of california. you can imagine how important environmental standards are and so we have the good fortune to have a foundation and that's really important to us we want to make sure that, you know, not only are we going to be a strong american competitor in this space, we already are.

we're the second largest producer in the world. we're going to do it in an environmentally friendly way.

we have a team of very proud americans on site. obviously today is a big day we're going to try to enjoy. tomorrow we get back to work on making sure that american industry has an option to buy these materials in the western hemisphere and that's our mission. we're going to reinvest, unwavering. >> very quickly, why did you go the way of the spac. that's kind of the way this year but why? >> sure. if you think about it, a spac, i think when you look back a few years from now, there will be quite a diversity of outcomes in this space but a spac really allows a sort of creative capital solution as well as the ability to bring in partners we are able to have the great partner. we were able to get to partner we were able to go over the wall and bring in great institutional investors. our pipe was really -- really

had great blue chip investors. for us it was a great mechanism to get our company done thoughtfully but from here, you know, we're just an nyse listed company like any other we have to execute i think in spacs just like ipos, once day one begins, you have to execute. ultimately over time the value of your company is going to be driven by the cash flow you create for your investors. >> right jim, great to see you this morning and we hope to have you back soon. >> thank you thank you, becky, i appreciate it thank you, everyone. coming up, faa administration -- faa administrator steve dickson joins us to talk about the agency's decision to unground the 737 max. that's next. check out shares of boeing ahead of that interview. they are soaring "squawk box" will be right back.

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good morning futures pushing higher and moving us ever closer to dow 30,000 a big reason more highly

promising coronavirus vaccine from pfizer. saying it's seeing 95% efficacy. and after two years the federal aviation administration has ungrounded the boeing 737 max. we will speak live to the head of the faa coming up, the time hour of "squawk box" begins right now. good morning and welcome back to "squawk box. andrew is off today. u.s. equity futures at this hour positive again this morning. where to start boeing, some news about that grounded 737 max, no longer grounded ungrounded then some additional vaccine news from pfizer 95% efficiency i guess that maybe leap frogs

target and some of the other earnings, beck. >> i think it does there is a batch of news we've been following this morning as joe mentioned. the first up, the new data from pfizer's covid-19 trial showing a measurement of 95% efficacy. you'll remember that just over a week and a half ago pfizer said it had seen more than 90% efficacy the new results show the vaccine was effective among age groups across the board and suggest that it's protective against not only symptomatic covid-19 but severe covid-19 based on what they've seen there are 10 severe cases and 9 came from a placebo, one came from someone on the vaccine. pfizer and its partner biontech are now planning to submit an application to the faa for emergency use authorization of the vaccine within days. that's good news for pfizer up 3.3% biontech up 6.6% the big news out of this, it

works at 95% effectiveness for people who are age 65 and up which is very important. vaccines don't always work for other people that happens to be the demographic that this disease targets. that's key huge earnings from target this morning crushing eps earnings. same store sales surged by nearly -- well, 9.9% in the stores themselves. comps were up by almost 21% when you include the digital camps up by 125%. analysts forecasting 11% gain. much stronger than anticipated margins up operating margins up that speaks to what they have to do with people at the store, drive up and the agreement they have with shift. we spoke earlier in the show with target ceo brian cornell. >> so we're seeing a guest who's shopping all of our categories,

taking advantage of the one-stop solution we offer, both from a physical and a digital standpoint, and they're shopping our own brands and the iconic national brands that we have throughout our store. >> shares of target this morning have been higher they're up right now by about 2.7% also let's check out tesla this morning which is higher after morgan stanley upgraded shares of the electric car maker from overweight to equal weight and raised the price target to 540 a share to 360 a share the stock is at $540 right now tesla is making a shift towards generating high margin recurring revenue. like apple. the faa announcing that it has ungrounded the boeing 737 max. this is big news it's been over 600 days and phil lebeau joins us now with a special guest. phil >> thank you, becky. let's bring in faa administrator steve dixon joining us from faa

headquarters in washington administrator dickson, thank you for joining us this morning. people are hearing this news and they knew tvs coming a lot of people in the flying public are going to listen to this and go, no, i don't trust it why should they believe this plane is safe? >> well, good morning, phil. it's a pleasure to be with you this morning, and i'm very proud of the work that the faa team has done on this airplane. i'm 100% confident it's the most scrutinized airport in history i've rescinded the grounding order that was put in place in march of last year we've got -- this is not the end of this safety journey there's a lot of work that the airlines and the faa and boeing will have to do in the coming weeks and months, but we are entering a new phase with respect to the 737 max >> you flew the max on a test flight i think it was a month, month and a half ago you said you liked how it felt

i've talked with a number of pilots and they have said, look, i want to see those procedures that are being modified for people flying the 737 max and if i'm not comfortable, i'm not sure what i'm supposed to do what do you say to those pilots that will look at the procedures which you just published this morning, if they're not comfortable, what are they supposed to do >> well, phil, this airplane, the work that we have done with the design changes and the training changes that will be made to the operators and the pilots will be -- the training pilots will be undergoing makes it impossible for the airplane to have the same kind of accidents that unfortunately killed 360 people in the ethiopian airlines and the lion air accidents. those conditions and scenarios can no longer happen so, you know, the training is --

was reviewed by an international panel of pilots. they accomplished it over a ten-day period and we have incorporated all of their recommendations. we have taken public comments and adjudicated all of those in the flight standards report. the training is very straightforward. i did it, and for anyone who's an experienced 737 pilot, it will -- i think it will be a good program >> as you know, you've heard from a number of the families of victims of the 346 people who were killed in the two 737 max crashes. they wanted a complete redo. they believe that this plane should have been modified much moreextensively for a variety of reasons having to do with the engines, the landing gear, et cetera when we've talked with them, all of them have said the same thing including a father whose daughter died in the ethiopian

air crash. we talked to him and said how do you feel that the faa is close to recertifying this plane i want you to react to what he had to say here's what he told us >> they cut corners in the original design and they're cutting corners on the fixes it's not a safe plane. they refused to do fixes that were pointed out and passengers should just simply avoid it and try to find another plane. >> your reaction, administrator dickson? >> well, first of all, the families, the victims in these crashes have been foremost in my thoughts and foremost in the thoughts and prayers of everyone at the faa for the last 20 months as we have gone through this effort. i can tell you that i am 100% confident in the actions that we have taken, the design changes that have been put in place with the 737 max and i would put my own family on it

and, you know, i understand the concerns this is a time certainly for humility this is not the old faa relat n relationship with boeing we have reset that relationship and we will continue to have a very safe and focused and compliance focused relationship with boeing and all manufacturers going forward. >> you mentioned that relationship with boeing over the last year and a half there were some really damaging emails that came out from some of the boeing engineers as they were putting the max through its certification originally essentially they were mocking the faa, and a lot of people said, look, there's too cozy of a relationship between the faa and boeing now you have your people individually certifying each aircraft to make sure that these changes have been made before they can go back into service. how do you reassure people that you are tough enough on boeing >> well, it's a great question, and as i said, one of the things

that we have done during this whole process over the last several months is that we have reset the relationship with boeing and i have visited with my team and aircraft certification and flight standards, my whole aviation safety team and i have repeatedly assured them that i have their back and that they are to take whatever time is necessary to do all the due diligence that's required to make sure that this airplane is safe and that we have a very robust process also, our work has been validated by a technical advisory board and that's something that we will incorporate into our future certification projects on other aircraft and i have also had the same conversations with boeing leadership as you know, there have been some changes at boeing over the last few months, but you can't just move boxes around the organizational chart, put new

people in to get the kind of safety culture that you want this is going to be something that we're going to continue to look at closer. >> when was the last time you talked to dave calhoun, the ceo of boeing? did you talk to him and say, look, it's officially ungrounded what are the status -- how would you characterize the relationship you have with dave calhoun right now? >> the relationship with the boeing leadership is very professional and, you know, we need to collaborate for aviation safety i understand they have a business to run, but we are the aviation safety regulator. i've made that very clear to mr. calhoun and the entire boeing leadersh leadership, and that was the basis, the foundation of our discussions when i was out in seattle at the end of september to fly the airplane. i expect that to continue going forward. i have not talked to mr. calhoun yet. i will be speaking with him in the coming hours, probably tomorrow and -- but today i'm

making calls to stakeholders we're having a couple of briefings for our oversight committees on capitol hill i do plan to speak to the families this afternoon. >> administrator dickson, you are ungrounding the max. you expect brazil will follow closely and eos and canada what about china what's your sense of when the chinese aviation authority will say, yeah, we approve with what the faa has done here? that's such a critical market for boeing and for the max >> well, we've worked -- as you've said, phil, we've worked very closely with all of the international regulators, all of our counterparts, brazil, canada and antiosa. we have outreach sessions scheduled between now and the first week of december to go

over all of our processes and really get into how we conducted this review. we've also released a 100 page report with detailed information about how this whole process worked and we will be having those discussions with the chinese regulators along with everyone else. >> administrator dickson, one more question because we know you have a very busy day as you've gone through this process i'm sure you've heard from friends, family, others who at some point have said, you know what, this leaves a bad taste in my mouth about the max. after you make all of the changes, the training changes, software changes, i'm just not sure i can get on this plane what do you say to people who look down at their ticket and they see it's a 737 max? >> well, the 737 max, as i said, it is the most scrutinized transport airplane in history

and we have -- this is not a typical certification process that we have undergone the system has been redesigned to the point that these accident scenarios could never happen and beyond that, the 737 family has a long and storied safety history. i believe over something like 190 million flights with, you know, a tremendous safety record and the max is being added to that operational family. so, again, i would put my own family on it i plan to fly on it myself, and -- but the public will have to -- will certainly have to make its decisions but i believe that it is a safe aircraft that meets our safety and certification standards and i'll stand behind that >> dickson joining us from

the faa. i know it's been a long road we've been in touch a lot. i'm sure we'll be talking more in the months to come as we see the max moving forward and eventually into commercial service. joe and becky, just so you know, the first commercial flight that we're expecting is from american airlines at the end of december. keep in mind, they still need to make the software changes to the aircraft as well as institute the pilot training procedures that have now been certified or approved by the faa. but that is the expectation. maybe the end of december, could be the first time we see a commercial flight 737 max. >> then it starts flying and we see and time goes by and hopefully everything is fine and maybe some day it will be, oh, yeah, i'm going on -- not even notice there are -- >> if there are no incidents, two years from now people will say, yeah, that was a really bad situation there. if there are no incidents going

forward from here, the memories of the public, it fades. >> it will take time that will happen with thousands and thousands of flights -- >> yeah. >> -- which that's about the only way, i guess, phil, to regain everything. anyway -- >> yeah. that will be the ultimate proving of confidence in the plane. >> right all right, phil. thanks >> you bet. on another issue, you do the pfizer vaccine or do you fly on the 737? let's talk with meg tirrell. we have more vaccine news. meg tirrell has the details. what's up, meg >> reporter: well, joe, we're just learning about what the regulatory process forward for these vaccines might look like i have heard from a source that the fda has asked a key group of advisers to set aside three days in december, december 8th, 9th, and 10th to discuss covid-19 vaccines it's possible they could discuss

fooi pfizer and biontech's vaccine and moderna's. this is what the fda will have before it would authorize any vaccine to market. we are talking about pfizer saying it's going to file in days to the fda for emergency use authorization. moderna said on monday it would file within the coming weeks with the fda once it does that, this advisory group meets, discusses all of the data and the fda will make its decision we are getting information of what the timing is getting the first vaccine in the u.s december 8th, 9th, 10th the key dates. they are not set in stone. the fda has declined torr discuss whether those meetings will be held right now that is the time line hearing for potentially getting the vaccines to market guys >> like we think, meg, where you see one of those advisory panels, they vote. it's like you see 9 to 3 or something but then the final

approval, isn't that day, then they act on the advisory panel's recommendation subsequent to that, right? so we're still talking weeks ready, let's go. >> well, right so the companies have to get their applications in, then the fda would hold these advisory group meetings typically there is a delay between the advisory meeting and the fda making a decision. you don't have to follow what the advisory committee votes on. in this situation it's expected that we're in a pandemic thousands -- more than 100,000 people getting infected every day. the fda deals with it quickly. it won't be the same delay on what the fda decides >> front line people, those people, incredible okay, meg. there is existing doses. there are people you can do immediately. i'm sure there's a lot of -- you know, there's a pretty good pace going on with all of these things, which i'm in favor of anyway anyway, thanks, meg. coming up, the government

bottleneck that's preventing the incoming biden administration from fully getting ready to take office and what the risks could be for the economy, virus response, national security. stay tuned you're watching "squawk box" on cnbc

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welcome back to "squawk box. jack ma is reportedly raising $3 billion to deploy new investments. the information reports the fundraising by ma's jung fang capital will be in fewer chinese funds. he's put money into chinese ev motors. >> thanks, mike. the government general services administration has yet to allow the incoming biden administration to access resources to help with the presidential transition as calls have grown for the president-elect to receive key government briefings so he can be fully up to speed come inauguration day

senator james lankford of oklahoma he is a member of the appropriations, finance, homeland security, government affairs committee and helps oversee the gsa. senator, thanks for joining us how far behind would you say the administration is at this point? and what are you recommending to the presumed outgoing administration, the trump administration what do you want them to do? >> so i think the trump administration should allow both sides to be able to get access to intelligence briefings, get access to information. that helps both sides prepare. a lot of people don't know that both sides have received intelligence briefings for months as soon as there is a candidate that is settled in the democratic/republican nominees in the summer, they start getting intelligence briefings you don't gain intelligence information over a weekend you have to know trends and directions so the intelligence area especially is something you have to get a long term look on

kamala harris sits on the intelligence committee and she gets all of the information as the intelligence briefings are done joe biden does not we need to fix that. in 2000 we had the same issue. we had a disputed election he relented and said we'll allow both a few weeks later it was settled and it was done and we moved on. i'm just recommending at this point, we learned the lesson from 2000 in that we not split this off but both of them get access to the information. even the 9/11 commission came back and said one of the gaps that we had in intelligence in 2001 was the lack of transition time for the incoming administration so let's not make the same mistake we did in 2000 in that election let's actually make sure both sides are getting access to the information. >> it's a gray area, isn't it?

there's still just one president, obviously i know it's a lame -- kind of referred to as a lame duck, but still in charge of these things, and then you get into the logan act type situations and gray areas. what are you doing hey, you're not supposed to be doing this why are they calling you do our enemies know that we're in that position right now and wonder, you know -- enemies or friends, wonder who they should be talking to or worried about >> yeah, there's no question the whole world is watching what's going on right now the difficult job is actually for gsa. gsa, according to the law, says they have to ascertain who the winner is to help them in the transition and set them up with all of the equipment and access they need. gsa can't just choose. the electoral college chooses constitutionally they can't choose. they're helpless in this there are only two ways gsa can ascertain, once the electoral college is finished its work,

december 14th, or when both sides agree on who the winner is that's the only way they can ascertain. in 2000 al gore ran it up to december 14th. that was a long period of time we'll see what the decisions are and cases are. there's a recount in georgia that may finish today. they are looking to be able to certify on friday and so there's a lot of things sitting out there. we'll see where this goes. the president has every right to be able to challenge on the legal aspects on this. joe biden is already receiving a lot of the transition work, i.t. support, all of those things but he's not receiving intelligence briefings at this point, and i think he should. >> as far as the covid response goes, do you buy into the notion that lives are at risk based on not letting the incoming biden administration start calling the shots right now? >> i do not. i think it's just a harsh

political statement. some in the democratic party are saying donald trump is so careless, he's taking the lives of people. that's not true. there are a lot of great scientists and great professionals working in the trump administration, the distribution process is going out. all of the organization that they've done to be able to get access to things like syringes, glass, all the viles, all the process that they've done in months in preparation for this there aren't lives at risk because of access to what's happening with covid if joe biden is chosen to be president-elect, he should get access to that information that's different than the intelligence information getting access to the distribution plan, the distribution plan for those vaccines will have to long be in place if joe biden were able to come and be president on january 20th >> all right, senator. >> that's already in place and the trump administration has done a good job getting it out. >> you talk to senator grassley, tell him we're thinking about him. he looks like a young man. we have all of the confidence in the world he's going to be

great. we're thinking about him and pulling for him. thank you, senator. >> will do he's a tough 87. we'll pass it on. >> i know. i know hopefully we're like that some day but, you know, we've got plenty -- five, six years -- no, anyway seyou e later. thanks "squawk box" will be right back. this is the new iphone 12 pro with 5g! and it's on at&t, the fastest nationwide 5g network. now, new and existing customers can get our best deal. really?! mom! at&t has the deal for new and existing customers!

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box. rick santelli live here at cme hq october read on starts and permits. hitting the wires, 1.53 million on starts. that's 1,530,000 that is, indeed, better than expected that's up close to 5%. do remember last month it was all about single family starts, and we will look at that deeper in a few moments they represented almost 80% of last month's starts. if we look at permits, also about as expected. arguably just a smidge light 1,545,000. these are close, 1,545,000 would be equal to last month's read or just about a lateral to last month's read so these are very good numbers and we will eventually go to diane who will give us the breakdown on this, but suffice it to say interest rates have moderated quite a bit. many say it's due to lack of stimulus many believe, of course, it's

the fact that the equity markets seemed to have stalled a bit even though they're close to all-time highs, it seems as though the needs of the treasury market for ongoing good news to make it boulliant is something we need to pay close to attention to, watching how demand goes for long maturity may give us more clues back to you. >> certainly be watching for that later thank you very much. coming up, more on the presidential transition, specifically what joe biden's policies and maybe even a democratic senate would mean for investors. stay tuned, "squawk box" will be right back

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president-elect biden will inherit a fragile economy in january and he'll have to figure out how to mitigate the damage on the virus while potentially pushing for a new stimulus package at the same time joining us is former treasury secretary jack liu he served in the obama administration it's great to see you. thanks for joining us. >> great to be with you, becky. >> so this is an interesting time we just heard from senator

lankford, republican from oklahoma, about concerns he has during this transition time about security if we don't have the administration cooperating with the incoming biden administration and i just wonder because of everything that's happening right now, because of your experience as a treasury secretary, what you think the risks are just in terms of the financial handoff as well. >> you know, becky, i think the way the outgoing administration is handling the transition is totally irresponsible. it's absolutely clear what the outcome of the election is and they're just delaying the orderly transition that we know is going to happen what does that mean? it means that on the disease front we now have the good news of a vaccine breakthrough. and that sounds like it's the end of the story if the vaccine works, but it's really only the beginning. the actual operational issues of executing a plan to immunize hundreds of millions of people is an enormous undertaking,

especially when the vaccines require special handling one of them requires being moved in 97 degree below zero conditions and stored. not even the mayo clinic starts out with the capability of doing that this is an enormous undertaking. i'm not saying it's impossible, but you don't want to lose a day, not a day in terms of a smooth transition. delaying that is fundamentally irresponsible which it puts at risk people being sick and dying. on a national security, the world doesn't stop the world looks for a weak spot. joe biden will be one of the most experienced people to take over he will have an experienced team around him as senator lankford said, this is not one moment. you pick up points of information and you put them together the earlier you start the better your understanding and the clear jury your judgment as the 9/11 commission reported,

delays undermine our security. this has nothing in common with the 2000 transition. in 2000 there was a difference of under 600 votes, 559 votes. it was unclear who the ultimate president-elect would be this year it's very clear and in 2000 if you asked the incoming bush administration, they got everything they needed and it was done to a t. so i think this administration is setting a new low in terms of how to handle a transition from the point of view of national security and frankly it's unpatriotic. >> it's hard to point to the 9/11 commission pointing out those flaws in 2011 and the problems it created while at the same time saying this is different. if there's a problem with transition, there's a problem with transition and i would argue there is a problem with this transition that's taking place. let's talk about what congress has done at this point, which is

dealing with a lame duck congress that has not come up with a second stimulus plan. while we do have these vaccines on the horizon, it could be a long several months between now and then there are a lot of american people and a lot of american businesses that are suffering in the meantime what do you think needs to be done on that front what can be done >> absolutely, becky it's an immediate crisis and shouldn't wait until next year i think i've said on this show it needed to be done before the election it needs to be done the next time congress meets. let's just review where we are yes, there was record growth in the third quarter but where does it leave us? it leaves us with an economy that's 3 1/2% behind where we were millions of families without enough money to put food on the table. there's two economies here the people who are working and the economy that's not back. they have no more assistance and

the unemployment benefits ran out, the extra benefits ran out. congress needs to act quickly. the four pillars they need to do -- five pillars one is dealing with the health crisis making sure that all units of government, federal, state, local have the resources they need to vaccinate and to do the prevention of public health measures then on the economic front the four issues that are critical, state and local government need the support to continue providing services families need the ben nats come from unemployment insurance and people facing eviction need to get both eviction protection and support because if we have millions of people, families homeless, the problem will only get worse. finally, we need to deal with the nutritional crisis that millions of families are running out of money to put food on the table. >> secretary lew, let's talk about the position you held in the administration secretary of the treasury. and how important that position is going to be as you come into

some potentially pretty uncertain times for the economy, for the markets. what does the treasury secretary in this new administration, what trai traits does the secretary need to have? there has been a reporting out there that suggests they don't want anyone with wall street experience and that seems crazy to me if you could have the markets go haywire again what do you think are the most important traits >> there are a lot of things the secretary of treasury needs to do i'm not sure everyone has come in with absolutely every element on the day they enter the office i think there's a lot of candidates that have the packet of skills to deal with financial institutional threats, to deal with fiscal policy, international economic policy. to deal with some of the issues that while they're not as immediate as people getting sick and dying are just the core of our national challenges and i spent a lot of time on this, financial inclusion for people

who have been kept out of the financial system for a variety of reasons there's many things that secretary of the treasury needs to do. i think president-elect biden has a number of candidates who bring the ability to come into the office with the talent, the knowledge to take that on and to provide assurance. i don't think we're out of the woods yet in terms of threats to the financial system if this second wave ends up causing spiraling number of business failures and loan failures, we have not yet seen what the final word is in terms of stress on the economy and stress on financial institutions i think that's one of the reasons you hear fed chair jay powell saying so loudly that there needs to be more fiscal policy, because there is another danger ahead you need a treasury secretary who can deal with those kinds of issues, and i'm quite confident the candidates they have in front of them bring those skills

to the table >> mr. secretary, we appreciate your time today. it's good to see you >> always good to be with you, becky. >> take care mike >> thanks, becky. coming up, inside bit koicon surge with mike novogratz. check out shares of lowe's you see them picking up a little bit. no, they are not they are down 6.8% the home improvement retailer slightly missed analyst estimates for the third quarter. comp store sales growth was 30% with expectations of 23% like home depot, iesrsnvto wondering if that's as good as it gets. stay tuned, you're watching "squawk box" on cnbc

welcome back to "squawk box," everybody. the futures are indicated higher this morning we have pared the gains. this is where we started at 6 a.m. eastern time. up 100 points on the dow we have a lot of news that's come through some positive nuz ews on pfizer. positive news out of target. it's been doeg that's driving things boeing is indicated up by about 90 points now on the dow that's most of the gains you see. you see pfizer, too bad that's no longer a dow component is up 2.7% boeing is indicated up better than 6%. that's the majority of the gains in the dow right now. >> coming up, jim cramer's first

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let's goat cnbc headquarters jim cramer joins us now. i'll tell you one thing, jim, about pfizer and moderna does it feel like 180 degrees in terms of whether we're worried about the vaccine and taking it? if the guy shows up today, i'm rolling up my -- i would i would roll up my sleeve. i just feel like maybe a lot of people are feeling that way and only people that were anti-vaxx prior to all this are the ones that might still be problematic, right are you ready? >> i made two calls today, one to the people running the pfizer test and the other running the j&j. j&j second time i feel like may be excited, steroid shot for a torn rotator cuff four months ago. i should be able to get in i don't understand why anybody else wouldn't. people say -- come on. you got three months you got three months that you're

going to probably -- you have a good chance of getting it. i would like to take that off the table. these are not fly by night companies. the best companies we have. >> it is like -- i shouldn't say it, but it is like, you nknow, t is like a bad hangover, okay, all right, i know what that is, i can -- i dealt, i can go through that, right? >> yeah, look. i see people who are adamant this is nothing, that it is just a couple of weeks laying down, i wish my -- >> versus a headache for two days and some body -- you know -- not minimizing side effects of vaccines, i'm not >> the flu shot, i mean, i got the flu from the flu shot at one point. that was a bummer. bring this one on. and i just think that the people who don't want to do it are people who genuinely believe this say hoax anyway or don't like the companies and think the companies are just a bunch of, you know, really just

hype artists so i say let's get it done let's get started. let's start getting people back to work, fly on boeing planes, going places >> that's my next question get the vaccine andfully on t f 737 max. >> what, the plane should never fly? they have done every -- that plane is the safest plane i've ever seen. they tested it and tested it and tested it. the cynicism, joe, is something that i really feel like our generation has i'm not so sure the younger people even share cynicism. >> i blame it on twitter that's all the young people. i don't know maybe not. just unbridled anonymous snarkiness, you know >> that's true >> bad -- >> it is only the people who don't give the real names, like, you know, a lot of the names are like i am stupid idiot number 52 >> i blocked him earlier and 1

through 51 i blocked, i think. >> i don't know jack 22 a. look, i look at those people on twitter and say, give me your real name. of course not. they would never say i'm an idiot, they would say, i'm a geniu genius but imagine if twitter decided you got to have a real name. the mous would go down bad it would be so much more fun because people would be very civil. >> yes, i agree too. >> i'll call people, i'm on scott's halftime show and do things for the street, i'll say, listen, here we go, mr. i don't know jack 24, i'm going to find out where you work and share your name with your boss, how is that going >> i'm afraid i'm going to -- how come i never run into these -- if i run into them, are they going throw something at me >> we can find out who they are.

i am obtuse 22 from shaw shank never do they say they're brilliant. i don't really care at all number 28. who are these people >> right. >> i'll tell you who they are, people who are going to find out, because in the -- not that jack dorsey is going to tell us because jack is a -- he's an other worldly figure i think we can trick these people. >> he looks other worldly. he does. he looks like he's throwing some tablets or something we all got to live by. >> he looks like a general from a guy -- >> one of those re-enactors. >> yes like -- i remember my father saying 1928, a confederate and general -- u.s. and federal generals came to see them. he is clearly emulating those people >> right except for the nose ring i don't know >> the nose ring is kind of -- that comes in the family, actually but we're going to find out who these people are we're going to get somebody on

twitter going to tell us imagine that we're going to take them under fire it is just going to be intercircumstantial ainte interstitial maybe they're midlevel ibm people and we'll say you have a person there trashing me and saying, listen, nothing matters number 27. get every one of them. >> santoli, are you ready? >> thanks, cramer. i see mike laughing in the monitor. >> all my snark is under my real name let me get that out there. >> you are -- you're funny, not snarky. >> thanks for that let's take a look, we'll pivot to bitcoin it is surging this week. the digital currency at the highest level since the 2017 peak joining us is mike novagratz good morning let's start with the comparison to the 2017 run. that was a huge kind of speculative stampede, we have

done a round trip in three years. anything similar or different right now to what is driving it? we lost mike's audio all right, yeah, so -- pardon me >> hello sorry about that >> sorry about that. go ahead >> so i'm sorry, listen, in 2017 i think we were in a global speculative frenzy where everything was going up in crypto world it was almost solely driven by retail retail in the u.s., retail abroad this market is very different. bitcoin found a real lane in macro portfolios citibank, their currency strategist talked about bitcoin going up to 3,000. 30,000 next year bank of america did a portfolio manager survey, and what are

your most favorite investments for 2021 and they had emerging markets, s&p, gold, oil, housing and bitcoin. so the big banks, now, it is interesting, you can't buy bitcoin and citiy bank y iy iyiy citibank or bank of america. we're seeing people buy into this across the board, institutional adoption so we kind of hit escape velocity there is a network effect. if you're young, bitcoin is social money in a world of social media, and by the way, twitter, no fake name, in the world of social media, bitcoin is social money for adults, you know, for the baby boomers, they're looking at it as a macro hedge. so i think completely different circumstance. >> there is institutional buy-in at least intellectually. do you still not have to ask the question why what problem is it solving that

other assets or currencies or commodities can't? >> it is scarcity. it is as old as the first currencies, you know, how do i store my value and people are worried that our governments, who have printed more and more and more fiat are less trustworthy you see what happened in places like zimbabwe or germany, there is a hundred examples of currency -- governments debasing their currency to oblivion but even something like the pound sterling, right, like, if you think about the pound sterling, used to buy a pound of sterling and now maybe this much sterling so there has been this long debasement of a stable currency. so people are going to bitcoin because they're 21 million bitcoins ever mined. a complete scarcity in it, people believe it is a store value, a social construct, and you change that.

>> ultimately that's what makes money, people believe it is money. but where does it go, i think, maybe in the shorter term here it is getting vertical on the chart. >> it is getting a little frothy 20,000 is the old high most lukely when you have runs like this, you'll go to the old high and then pause. we'll correct off in 20,000, i don't know if we'll go to 16,000 or it will bounce around but i think by next year, we're 55, 60,000 and i say that not just pulling a feather out of my ear. listen, bitcoin is replacing gold in lots of ways as a store value, supplementing gold. today it is 3% of gold getting to 10% of gold doesn't seem crazy that's 55, 60,000 bitcoin assuming gold goes up a little bit. i think that's my target for the end of next year and i say that because we're just seeing so much adoption i just brought two new trading businesses in the galaxy, just to kind of keep up with the demand that we're seeing my competitors are doing the

same thing we're not crazy, we're not hiring people because there is nothing going on we're hiring people because we see lots of demand for people to learn about the space and get in the space. >> we'll watch and hold you to it mike, thank you very much. >> thank you, guys >> talk to you soon. >> becky >> all right, guys thank you. good to see both of you. we'll see you back here tomorrow morning. right now, time for "squawk on the street." bye, guys. bye, beck. good wednesday morning welcome to "squawk on the street." i'm carl quintanilla with jame cra jim cramer and david faber the faa clears the max to resume flight couple that with some final pfizer vaccine data, 95% efficacy, and more blowout retail earnings from target. our road map begins with the max. set to fly again the faa giving the green light to boeing after a 20-month grounding. shares are climbing ahead of the

open.