process. the other big washington story, president-elect biden expecting to name janet yellen as his pick for treasury secretary and elon musk just got even wealthier, the tesla ceo passing bill gates to become the world's second richest person. it is tuesday, november 24th, and "squawk box" begins right now. good morning, everybody. welcome to "squawk box." i'm becky quick along with mike santoli and andrew ross sorkin joe is out today this is something to check out this morning because we're seeing some additional gauins at this hour. dow up by 311 points and that is because of a lot of things that have been happening, the political winds that are shifting, the biden transition

getting access to government funds, we'll talk more about that in a moment and of course the choice that we are hearing for the new treasury secretary. and we'll talk more about that in a moment as well. yesterday you did see the dow up by over 300 points, a gain of 1.1% and that puts the dow at this point on track for its best month that we've seen since january of 1987. but it is not even the best performer when you start looking around at some of the other indexes. pay attention to the small caps today, the russell 2000 was up yesterday. that was its sixth positive session out of the last seven, that index setting another intra day high and record close. you will see that it was up by 32 points, a gain of 1.8%. treasury yields, check this out as well, you will see right now that the ten year looks like it is yielding 0 pp.864% but it ses the news out of washington really seems to be moving futures this morning >> and as you said, those are the big stories.

and let's talk about them. here is what is dominating the headlines at this moment president-elect biden can officially begin his transmission after a letter of ascertainment. the move makes more $7 million in federal funding available if biden' transition into office. president trump tweeted that he backed murphy's decision but still not conceding the race to biden, saying that his legal case will continue if you haven't read the letter, it is a fascinating read from the head of the gsa when the decision that she said that she made on her own. she says without pressure. meantime the other big political story of the morning biden set to name janet yellen has head of the treasury secretary and the first woman to hold that post. yellen was of course confirmed

by the senate in 2014 as fed chair. a job that she held until the end of her first term in 2017. the biden team had also been reportedly considering bran arrest brainard and ferguson. but i watched you guys talking about the role that she might play and the way that markets think about her. she seems to be i would argue right down the middle. she is liked by the business community and the markets to some degree, she is liked by democrats for the most part, there are some people who may think that she is either too centrist, i mean, you will get it on all sides. but maybe that is a good thing when you are not -- >> she is right down the middle in the spectrum of likely candidates, that is for sure a known quantities, somebody who has reputation of caring a lot about making sure that the

economy kind of runs to maximum potential so therefore, you know, in the stimulus mode right now at this moment we're in, but also somebody that i think there is a general view that it probably makes sense to have a little more coordination and teamwork between the fed and the treasury that has already been going on in this crisis and so a sense of maybe it should be more formalized and she would probably represent that but certainly on the progressive side, i think folks were hoping for perhaps somebody else, but i don't think that there is any outright objections to janet yellen just because she has such a breadth of experience. >> part of the big issue was that no one on the progressive side -- one of their key things is they wanted someone who didn't have any wall street experience and that is a pretty tricky situation to have a treasury secretary at this moment in time given the potential for things to potentially go haywire, that is a pretty tall ask. she may not have worked on wall street, but she certainly has

had some experience with knowing what happens with the markets having been through it and lived through some of this in the past i guess i would throw that out to you guys, what do you think of that and where does that come down, is she going to be prepared to handle markets if they go haywire? >> i think that she is as prepared to handle this as anybody. she lived through the financial crisis she's been through -- she's been at the fed for so very long. you know, she is considered obviously relatively dovish, though i know mike you made the point i think yesterday that there was that moment where she pushed for a rate hike at one point. and on the other side, she has been to some degree tough on the banks. you could look at what she did with wells fargo literally on her way out of the federal reserve imposing what some people today think are unfair restrictions on that bank. and so i think for those reasons alone, i'd put her as you guys said right down the middle >> and again just the known quantity factor is something

that -- i don't think yesterday's rally was about yellen, but we got a bit of a boost after that news came out and just sort of peeling away small bits of residual uncertainty in a strong season period for the markets anyway. so i think that qualifies for the gsa move and in addition to political news today, we continue to follow the numbers on the covid pandemic the national 7 day average of daily new cases nearing 171,000. officials caution that there could be a delay in numbers in the coming days as many local health departments traditionally pause over holidays. and check out some so-called reopening stocks, this a general category that has been quite strong and you see the airlines all indicated a good deal higher, a lot of momentum people looking ahead to 2021. cruise lines right in the center of this particular trade and some have raised a bunch of capital on the back of very open markets. you see carnival up 6.6%,

norwegian up 6 so real momentum in this area. hotels would be the other area, all either unchanged or higher and seems like people are willing to look through this period of heavy covid case rates at least for a while >> tom lee actually sounded pretty sanguine in terms of his expectations, that we could see a santa claus rally still. what do you think, mike? >> you know, it has never been that fruitful to fight the seasonal trend when the market has already been moving higher i do think that there is an argument to be made up 10% or 11% in november is way more than a fourth quarter typically gets you even in a bull market. so i think that it could go either way we've been flat in the s&p and certain stocks are racing higher and you have the big index stocks that haven't been doing much so you wouldn't want to fight it, but i do think that there is

a nagging sense out there that maybe almost too many people are expecting it and positioned for it, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it doesn't happen. every single year, people say really, is the calendar the reason to buy the stocks and many times it actually works >> if you are looking at the dow futures right now, they are up by about 327 points and that would mirror yesterday's gains nasdaq up by 45. and when we come back, black rock making an acquisition in an attempt to try to build better portfolios for wealthy individuals. we'll explain. and first, let's get a look at the biggest stock movers a lot of stocks on the move today. ♪ you can go your own way

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antitrust lawsuit against google the justice department filing that lawsuit against alphabet's google back in october the tech giant has broadly denied wrongdoing in response. but an interesting case none the less and now the states jumping on top of it so we'll have to see where it goes and apple making another concession on app store fees companies that offer digital classes through the iphone app won't have to pay the typical 30% commission fee on in-app purchases through june 2021. that fee had previously been waived through december. of course they have typically taken those fees, and they now by the way have taken some of those fees done to 15% for small businesses we'll see whether that turns out to be how they approach this come 2021. but given the pandemic and the fact that so many people are taking classes and doing things that of sort of quasi on line, they have to try to figure out how that fee structure should

work and we also have deal news this morning blackrock is buying aperio for $1 billion in cash aperio helps build portfolios for wealthy individuals. this acquisition comes as blackrock looks to make more personalized offerings and november probably surprisingly strong to a lot of folks given how anxious people were before the election but the major indexes up around 9% for the month and joining us now to talk about what to expect with just are a few days left in the trading month, paul hickey from bespoke investment group good to see you. you've heard us kind of laying out some of the back and fort on m forth on markets you have a don't fight the trend dynamic in place and yet the market seems like in

the last few weeks, it has built up a pretty good head of steam and maybe sentiment and positioning looks like it is getting overexcited. so how do you synthesize all that >> you were talking about the market hasn't done anything in two weeks. you compare to where the s&p closed yesterday to where it closed september 2, granted september 2 was a high point, but we're at the same point that we were over two months ago. so we've been consolidating what was a massive rally off the spring leds. a and in the last week or so, what was a strong rally in the first half of the month. so like sprinting a 4 minute mile and then you will be tired, you have to want to catch your breath and regroup and build up a head of steam. so i think that there are some concerns going into the winter with the rise in covid cases, but overall, we're still positive on the market, we think that there is more positives than negatives and this whole idea of what is

the up side catalyst going to be to get us to higher levels come year end, nobody ever knows what the up side catalyst is. if you had asked someone october 30th were we going to have an 11% month in november, no one would have said that so always easy in retrospect, but looking ahead, no one ever knows what the up side catalyst will be. >> no doubt about that and i would argue and maybe i look at things is the up side catalyst in late october was people were just too nervous about too many things and probably were underinvested in the theme. so where does that bring us right now? >> i'd say people are pretty nervous right now going into the winter about rising covid cases, potential for more restrictions on activity. i think that there are big concerns on the part of investors regarding the economy and what it will do this winter, but yesterday's market pmi numbers were off the charts

strong i mean, they were much stronger than anybody was really expecting. so i think that that is a positive that the economy has gotten more resilience, we just saw an earnings season which was fantastic by just about any measure. 30% of companies reporting raised guidance. normally only 10% of companies everyone issue guidance. so it is just really strong numbers. and then what we always look to and we default back to is what is the market telling us in terms of the internals, what are the credit markets and key groups telling us. we are seeing new highs expanding. the semis, which is a group we focused on intently, hitting new highs relative strength of the semis versus the market is hitting new highs. and as far as the broader stocks, it is not just the big cap techs leading things, it is a broadening of the rally and at the same time big cap stocks aren't going down, they are more

like trading flat. so underperforming but it is not like they aare bein are draggin index. >> and this grab for sickly kalg smaller stocks, just stuff that moves faster is mouf linked to the economic cycle, we saw a version of this in may into june are. and then it rolled over and went the other way. what is different now do you think about the environment? >> i think two things are different. now we can look forward and see a vaccine six months from now whereby the end of the first quarter, that should hopefully be rolled out. so people are looking past that. second is what is the characteristics of the stocks performing back in june, we saw the cyclicals and reopening stocks do well. the covid stocks so to speak, they underperformed a little bit, but it wasn't as bad as they are now right now we're seeing real underperformance on the part of the covid stocks and that is telling you that i think that investors are moving out and

broadening their horizons. an you were talking about small cap stocks, from a valuation basis, the russell 2000 looks expensive but if you are investing in the etf or the index, almost half the companies in the index don't have earnings if you just strip out companies with earnings and compare them with earnings in the s&p 500, there is about a 20% discount to small cap stocks with earnings than there is to large cap stocks with earnings >> all right just have to find the ones with earnings paul, appreciate it, thanks a lot. >> thanks, mike. coming up, global real either stahe i stae he estate bets. predictions may surprise you hesi estate bets. predictions may surprise you e i estate bets. predictions may surprise you is estate bets. predictions may surprise you is estate bets. predictions may surprise you s estate bets. predictions may surprise you estate bets.

predictions may surprise you est. predictions may surprise you

>> welcome back. this is "squawk box. elon musk passing bill gates to become the world's second richest person he started the year at 35th on the list tesla ceo of course profited from the surge in tesla's stock which is up 520% this year shares were up yesterday by 6% boosting musk's networth by $7.2 billion his fortune is now estimated at $127.9 billion that is $200 million more than gates. gates has been given away his money, more than $27 billion has gone to the gates foundation

since 2006 >> kind of amazing it wasn't that long ago we were talking about him having margin loans and maybe having to sell stock to meet them anyway, covid turning the global real estate market upside down next year could be different and now may be the time to start building your post covid portfolio. robert frank is joining us with more on that >> the smart money right now may be overseas. the 2021 forecast from the global real estate firm says shanghai will be the top performing market next year with prices rising 5%, that is thanks to china's strong economic growth and that quick recovery from covid london also a pretty good bet with 4% price growth expected thanks to a tax holiday on real estate deals and stronger overseas demand. among the losers next year will

be new york which is expected to have zero growth, mumbai and y best growth is auckland, new zealand. more than half of the major cities are back to pre-pandemic levels of sales but more than a third have seen like new york and san francisco a flight to the suburbs. there are some potential forming. some prices are predicted to double and you look at. >> interest rates in germany, right now you can get a 30 year fixed morts xwan mortgage for ls points, so under 1%. >> is that what they attribute the bubble-like dynamics to? just the interest rates?

>> yeah, you've had price increases in the major cities in germany for a few years now. helped by fiscal stimulus. so a lot of the countries in europe where you have had low interest rates benefit not just london, paris, germany, but monaco is expected to have 3% growth so a lot is low interest rates and stimulus but germany, they are almost paying you to get a mortgage in germany and that has driven up property prices. >> robert, thank you vich. . >> a quick question. you talked about the flight out of cities like san francisco and new york those were people fleeing because the coronavirus was so strong if you are able to kind of turn things around, if you can find these advantage seechbs avaccin,

these people left and bought other places, are they renting what is going on >> it is really interesting when you look at especially lon be done and paris, the kind of parallel experience that you have seen with new york and san francisco. initially in both paris and london, you had a huge outmigration particularly to the wealthy to the countryside country side estates in the uk and in france just exploded in terms of sales and demand. now what is happening in both paris and london, people are coming back driven by more attractive prices. that is not happening as much in new york city because prices haven't come down. sale prices in new york city are only down between 5% and 10% whereas in london, prices are down 25% over the past five years. so you have had a big price correction in those cities, so you have the back and forth, people did leave, but there are new people coming back to those cities driven by low prices. we have yet to see that in new

york >> if the price is right thanks, robert >> exactly and coming up, president-elect biden set to nominate janet yellen for treasury secretary we'll talk to steve liesman. and as we head to a break, take a look at yesterday's s&p 500 winters 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.

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good morning, everybody. welcome back to "squawk box. a lot of stories we're following this morning and among those, mccormick is buying cholua. hot sauce sales have jumped more than 40% and is now a billion dollars market annually. mccormick already owns the red hot brand.

cholula is named after a city in mexico novartis announcing that it will be buying back up to $2.5 billion of its shares. targeting $2 billion of cost savings by the end of the year and jamie dinan plans to wind down his hedge fund operations, he plans to focus on businesses with longer term capital dinan will be shutting down the european a hedge funds check out the u.s. equity futures this morning, and things are really kind of off to the races once again after a gain of 327 points yesterday, you are looking at the dow futures indicated up another 316 points. s&p 500 futures up by about 30, nasdaq up by 42. it could be a very historic day. president-elect biden expected to announce he is nominating janet yellen to lead the treasury if confirmed, she would be the first woman to head that department in its 231 year

history. and steve liesman is joining us with more. steve, good morning. >> andrew, good morning. by picking janet yellen to be treasury secretary, president-elect joe biden is signaling a broad repudiation not just of the policies of the trump administration, but in the way that he went about making those policies an important often overlooked part of yellen's impressive resume including former fed chair, vice chair and cea chair, yellen was passed over by trump and she is a preeminent economist and would take office after an administration that demoted the chair from the cabinet, and has been criticized for chaotic policy making before as of june of of this year, acting cea chair as far as we can tell is also the only member of the council of economic advisers in addition, yellen at the fed was a strong advocate of working with international allies on economic issues. that makes yellen's choice a

signal that biden plans repudiation of the go alone strategy of the trump administration and while these are departures from the trump administration, picking yellen is also viewed as a centrist move. stephen stanley writes if biden's personnel choices so far are any indication, he intends to govern more from what constitutes the middle of the democratic party today than to push the envelope far to the left so yellen can be expected to advocate for strong government stimulus at least while the economy struggles to recover from the virus and some pullback when it improves oppose the trump administration's drift toward loosening banking regulations and advocate for economic solutions to climate change including a carbon tax the question for yellen, biden and for america, after four years of the trump administration, to what extent is it possible to go back to the way things were and how they used to be run andrew >> steve, so my question to you, how surprised you are by the

decision to appoint janet yellen in this role i think when we had a bit of cross talk about a week ago, i mentioned it off hand from a report by the way not in a mainstream newspaper that janet yellen's name had emerged from the frontrunner. and at the time, i think that you were a bit surprised frankly as was i >> yeah, i was and i'll tell you why. i mean, janet yellen has given a lot to government service over the years. if you put up that resume again, she was continuously at the fed, board of governors, from 2004 through 2018 she had previously worked with the san francisco fed, a stint as cea chair i wasn't sure that that is what she wanted to do in terms of her life i mean, it is a lot of government service i think that it is amazing that she still wants to do it and as somebody said to me, the call from the president-elect

that we need you to serve is a very powerful call whatever she wanted to do personally -- and i don't have any knowledge of this, you know, by myself. i just thought that she had done a lot. i think that she was enjoying what she had been doing. so the idea that she would come back into service was something that surprised me. >> if you look back in history, the distinctions between a treasury secretary who has been either in the corporate world or on wall street and how you think about those treasury zeblgsecree and how they approach the job versus those maybe like a larry summers, to some degree you could argue tim geithner had never been in industry per se, but obviously at the head of the new york fed and being through the crisis had sort of lived with the banks how do you think that they approach these things differently? >> i think that it is a good question you had had a tradition that the

treasury secretary would kind of come more from wall street than from academia. summers of course came from akebeing beingacademia academia and some treasury secretaries have been at administrations when it came to thinking how economics came up against politics i'm thinking of john snow was an being a being a democratic and also a trained economist and they come to it all with an appreciation of markets and and i think fundamentally with a free market background >> okay. steve, great to see you. i'm sure we'll be talking a lot more about this on what is a milestone today when that gets

announced. meantime, want to talk more about the biden administration's cabinet and how it is taking shape. we're joined by hans nichols great to see you as we have seen these names emerge, whether it is a janet yellen or a tony blinken, we can go down the list, but how do you look at how biden is putting together this group and in particular you've covered business for a long time, how you think the business community will be about this group of individuals. >> the business community is still waiting. they still want to know who their liaison will be. this was a problem in the obama administration on who would actually speak not just for wall stre street, but corporate america. biden administration can still solve for that, but they haven't gotten there so i think that there is waiting in the business community. in general what you see is a comfort level that they have with the president-elect

and more importantly what the president-elect has with them. so when we take a big picture, one, it is clear they don't want any confirmation fight that is one thing they are trying to avoid. and you have to be comfortable with the vice president, familiar with him. tony bl tony blinken, been by his side for almost 20 years. and one thing that isn't quite captured in the commentary is the sense of dread inside buy's senior circle about the challenges that they will face and those are known challenges and i don't want to do a full run here, but known challenges and unknowns and when you look at the yellen appointment, if she is confirmed, she is such a steady crisis firefighter that should anything happen, whether or not an international debt crisis, whether or not some state that you and i are not thinking about defaults, whatever is down the line, they think that they want someone with yellen's stature, gravitas and pure technical skills to fight it

and you can be optimistic about that, but you can also be pessimistic and say what does the biden administration see around the corner. and they are clearly preparing for the worst. >> let me ask you about a wild card in terms of thinking about it through economic crises, what do you think president-elect biden is thinking in terms of the new chair or maybe the same chair for the federal reserve position does jay powell keep his job >> depends what the world looks like and i hate to give you such a hedged answer. in general jay powell gets high marks from democrats around town as well as republicans and way most of the criticis against him has been by the president who quananted to mover on interest rates. if you think that the biden administration will improve upon the biden '09 response, there

was a big question in '09 whether he think bernanke. and at the time the markets were pretty choppy and there was concern that changing the fed chair would disrupt them even more and so obama had to go to larry summers and say i know i told you the deal was come in and be nec chair, but we'll keep bernanke there and that decision was in august of '09 so the world looks really disruptive and there is some major crisis out there that we either can anticipate or complaint, that improves jay powell's chances of keeping the job. at the same time one of the potential reasons why you didn't go with brainard for treasury, you keep her in your pocket when the chairman expires 2022. so you do it in the summer of 2021 >> and we're coming up on a break, but i need to ask, in terms of rhetoric, how do you

see president-elect biden approaching this job when it comes to business. and what i mean by that, president obama was first in that role, you remember the comments about fat cats, the you didn't build it, that created almost an taking that king anta relationship do you think biden approaches it differently? >> potentially, but i won't make any predictions on any slips of the tongue that he may or may not have i'd rather weigh in on whether or not you should invest munich than try to predict joe biden's potential slipups. frankfurt has a better airport, but if you are in munich, you

can be skiing in an afternoon. >> i need to get to the slopes and by the way, we have bodydy mill body miller coming up on the show great to see you as always mike >> coming up, the best plays in health care as the presidential transition begins and covid cases continue to rise and take a look at the biggest winners in the dow so far this morning led by boeing. alaska airlines saying that it will release 13 new 737 max plain planes after the ungrounding of that aircraft

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still to come, the s&p health care index underperforming the broader market since the election. so what can investors expect from this sector under the new administration we'll talk about that next hey, dad!

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welcome back as covid cases spike, nearly 2 million americans are getting tested every day as we head into the holiday season the lines though are long and the wait to get the results is still pretty brutal. meg tirrell is joining us with more this is frustrating for anybody. >> it sure has we're hearing the anecdotes

about people waiting hours in line and so we wanted to get a sense of whethers turnaround times are getting worse. on so we teamed up with a data and survey firm and they surveyed 906,000 people in the u.s. over the last week and asked them about their testing experiences. testing experiences and we actually found something interesting. it looked like testing turn around times on average have actually improved since the last time we did this survey in july and august if you check out these results here, you can see that more people got their results back the same day or the next day or within two to three days when we did this in november versus july overall, in july, 40% of test results were taking more than four days to come back, which experts say is too long to be meaningful now that number is 27%, and some of that can be attributed to the fact that testing capacity has gone up substantially in this country. we are doing, as you said, 2 million tests per day in the u.s. now, that's about double from

what we saw being done over the summer, and these numbers jive with what we're seeing from the big testing companies as well. while the testing industry is warning with all of this demand, they could see turn around times stretched and supplies are getting stretched. quest and labcorp. say they are turning around in one two days, four to six days over the summer for lapcorp., 27% of test results taking four days or longer is still bad. we have gone from atrocious to just plain mediocre. i guess that's an improvement he notes. still not a great situation, guys, and this varies by state we looked at the average turn around times by state. the dark green on the states doing well, and there's only two of them that are less than two days, wisconsin and rhode island you have states like florida that are taking more than four days on average to return test results. as part of this survey because

it's the week of thanksgiving, we asked people about their plans, whether they're asking guests to test or quarantine before they come, and we found that people who are hosting dinners, 62% of them who are inviting people not in their household over are taking no special precautions for their gatherings for guests going to other's homes, almost 80% say no special precautions, guys, so public health experts warning us still be very careful this thanksgiving season. back over to you. >> dr. ja is right i think even three days, the way with e measu we pleasure it, two days is one thing, two days and under is good i think three to four days gets to the point that it's useless because a lot of times you aren't finding out you were expoedse exposed five, six, seven days. dr. ja is right, mediocre if that you tweeted something this morning about the astrazeneca trials and we have been trying to figure out why the half dose

given to people, half dose and then a full dose versus a full dose and a full dose, why that was working better, and i have no idea. it was an accident they gave people the hatlf dose, and didn' figure it out until later while they were having less bad effects. it's not exactly confidence expiring >> no, i was wondering, why would they have tested a half dose and a full dose, and they got these amazing results with the dosing regimen, 90% efficacy versus 62% for the full doses. we don't know why a half dose worked better than a full dose first, and we hope to learn oemp t database ov over the coming weeks. astrazeneca, calling it serendipitous. how does that happen, but this

time it worked out well. >> thank you good to see you. covid-19 is changing deal making in the health care industry, and joining us right now to talk about the shifting landscape is chairman and ceo of farros capital group, a physician founded private equity firm it's incredibly relevant not just with covid-19 but changes and a new administration and what that's going to be for health care as well. thanks for being with us this morning. >> my pleasure >> let's talk about what you have seen. has covid impacted things or has that not made it way to the deal space yet? >> tercertainly it's impacted t deal space with regard to potential exits, it's put a freeze on companies, and on the other hand, it's gotten people to rethink about the health care landscape. and so you see again deals that

have become much more significant in the telemedicine space, for instance, much more activity going on there. we see things in the venn knew shipment space much more focus on that as well. so it certainly has changed the deal landscape initially there was a pause but now people are rethinking health care, not just in the immediate but also longer term with regard to the impact that covid will have on health care. >> you know t seems like a really difficult place to try and kind of figure out what the future is going to look like because for a long time now, you had the obama administration building up the affordable care act and then the trump administration trying to dismantle it what happens now that the biden administration is going to be coming in, and thousand do you ki -- how do you kind of anticipate where the right place is to make deals. >> we focus on three areas, improve patient outcomes, lower costs, create greater access,

and we feel like that if we can approach each and every one of our deals with those philosophical pillars in place, regardless of the administration, we'll be on the right side of public policy and politics, and so with that in mind, we expect that the biden administration will return more to the obama administration norms and at the same time, look to probably expand the public option with regard to offering citizens the opportunity to participate in the health care insurance marketplace. >> what types of deals have you done in recent years this has been your focus, you have tried to stay steady looking through this and trying to serve underserved communities, where does that lead you >> yes, so it's led us to venue shifting, meaning taking patients out of high cost venues

like nursing homes, icus, into alternative settings, palliative care, hospice, that has exploded with regard to growth. we invested in two years ago we invested in telemedicine, focused specifically in mental health 3 1/2 years ago again, tremendous, you know, tail winds with regard to that area of health care. also diagnostic testing, focused on hospital acquired infections. the worst infection you can get is an infection in the hospital, and so again, understanding, you know, the dimensions of that problem, being able to identify, and then rtry to correct it. the other area that we have been focused on is we call value-based care, which is really our simple thesis, which is away from the idea of fee for service but in fact more focused on out of pocket >> right

kneeland, thank you very much. we'll have you back because it's a very interesting space, but thanks for your time andrew >> my pleasure. hey, thank you, becky. coming up on the other side of this break two big hours ahead, the state of the consumer with former aol ceo tim armstrong is going to join us with bode miller stay tuned for that and so much more. back in a moment black friday is here early. so get the 5g america's been waiting for. verizon 5g is next level. (announcer) unlimited plans fit everyone in your family, starting at just $35, with 5g included at no extra cost.

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after weeks of delay, the road to the white house is opening up for president-elect

joe biden. plus, markets cheering his probable pick for treasury secretary. former fed chair janet yellen. futures jumping on the news as traders look for a peaceful transition of power. we've got the latest on what you need to watch in today's trading session. and taking to the skies amid the pandemic record number of travelers at the airports the most since the pandemic began. we'll speak to the president of the association of flight attendants about covid concerns and staying safe the second hour of "squawk box" begins right now >> good morning, welcome back to "squawk box" right here on cnbc. i'm andrew ross sorkin along with becky quick, and mike santoli who's sitting in for joe this morning let's show you where things stand in the markets 2 1/2 hours before they open they will open higher.

dow looks like it would open 282 points higher, s&p 50026, 27 points higher, nasdaq, 40 points higher, on the back of big news coming out of washington over the last 24 hours, and with that, i hand it over to becky. becky. >> yeah, it's been dominating the news cycle and the moves on wall street. let's get you caught up on some of today's headlines president-elect biden can now officially begin thhis transitin as general services chief, emily murphy, making money available for biden's transition into office and does things like allow for government e-mails to those working in the new administration, and allows background checks for people he would like to be checking out for jobs, and that's been important too. president trump tweeted that he backed murphy's decision but is not conceding the race to biden, and says his legal case

continues. andrea. >> and news leaking out yesterday of the president-elect's pick, federal reserve chair janet yellen, she's expected to focus on fixing the economy and reversing the impact of the pandemic yellen would be the first woman treasury secretary marking a remarkable milestone meantime, stocks kicking off the shortened holiday week on a high note as investors pile into reopening trades, thanks to positive vaccine news. president-elect's pick for treasury, and news that the transition of power is now officially underway, and with that, i want to talk to mike santoli about his market play book mike >> andrew, all of those factors plus the idea that we have an upside bias in thanksgiving weekend. we'll see if that can translate to a break for all the good that has been going on, for two weerks, the market has been sideways, closed

at 3577 yesterday. september 2nd, 3580. 3 1/2 months, not a lot going on the pfizer vaccine pop, 36, 40, we have been hovering above there, not pulling back much so far. just sort of digesting and at the current levels, the market would open around 3,600 and change, and you see right in that zone, with inhaling distance of highs, but maybe not opening right there. you know, there was talk about how it was remarkable that apple, the largest market cap company in the world was worth more than the 2,000 companies in the small cap index for a while. that has changed this is a quarter to date of 20%. look at that spread, of almost 22% with apple and right now, russell 2000 is worth 25% more than the single company apple. it's been a grab for cyclical

risk things that move fast, more volatile, more aggressive, and somewhat more speculative stocks the s&p high beta index. and energy, that's dominated by big oil, up this month cut in half over the last couple of years, versus the s&p down here at 10%. it's not been value, grabbing for risk year, more volatile, cyclical stocks, becky >> if you're looking at the energy sector, that has to do with wti, right, the energy sector, that's just the rise in oil prices >> most of it, yeah. >> it's been knocked and come back with oil prices, and that's a look at what's going to happen if the world starts traveling again, if the economy is not hitting as hard or looking through the covid shut downs. >> it's also buying laggards, oil itself and oil stocks were big laggards in this move. a huge violent rotation within the market but really the s&p has been steady in all of this

because the large growth stocks have mostly just sat still >> hey, mike, you know, we're looking at the markets looking like they're going to open higher this morning. how much do you put that in the bucket of the markets like janet yellen, and we haven't talked that much this morning about this transition news, and whether we think it reflects what could be potentially less volatile, and if you think that it ultimately to some degree is a concession, you know, jim cramer and others have talked about a coup, and all sorts of, you know, radical, some people would say they're not radical ideas but radical ideas and does that take all of that off the table. >> i think it's incremental relaxation or removal of possible risk areas and pressure points that's what's been going on for the last several weeks i was joking on pfizer vaccine monday, a movie called the subtraction of all fears

you had a decisive election result, this is a prolonged period of the market unclenching from a lot of those fears. i wouldn't say we are up almost 300 points in the dow, because janet yellen is treasury secretary and biden can work on the transition it's working in the same direction, focusing on next year and certainties as opposed to current uncertainties. >> mike we were talking just last week that all the good news had been baked in. we have heard everything from the vaccine companies, you can't get much more than this. the market can change its mind pretty quickly. >> it can and it's a process you don't have a moment where everything is priced in. you have people buying into the notion that there are positive trends and why am i going to sell now when the trend is your friend markets over shoot and who knows if we're in an overshoot as my mentioned the s&p was here 3 1/2 months ago you haven't added a tremendous

amount of aggregate value. people are feeling a lot more comfortable with what's going on. >> that's true relaxation, i like that. gradually easing our way into this let's tell you about best buy, out with quarterly earnings. the electronics retailer earnin an adjusts 2.06 a share. revenue also came in better than expected and the same store sales increase of 22.6%. let me back that up. same store sales increase of 22.6%. yes, we said that correctly, that easily beats the street's consensus of a 13.6% rise, crazy numbers from the best performers, one of those knocking it out of the park with same store sales digital sales also up by 174% during the quarter stock is down by about 1.6%. those are strong metrics on just about every measurement, andrew. >> it's not so bad: not so bad

meantime, when we come back on the other side of this, the online shopping season expected to be the busiest ever thanks to the pandemic ceo of dtx, temperature armstrong has partnered with bode miller to discuss the upcoming holiday shopping season a conversation you don't want to miss urban outfitters reported quarterly earnings of $0.78 per share, beating estimate. we're back after this.

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welcome back to "squawk box" this morning, the national retail federation predicting that online and other nonsales will increase from 25 to 30% this holiday shopping season joining us to discuss the state of retail and consumer in this pandemic is tim armstrong, founder and ceo of dtx company he's brought a special guest with him this morning, olympic ski champion, bode miller. it's great to see you both tim, tell us what's going on, and tell us why and how you've partnered with bode. >> sure. great to be here, and bode has been a very special partner of ours, and you just said it, we're here to talk about one thing which is we're probably standing in front of the biggest cyber week ever, q3 retail sales up 36%, and there's an 80/20

happening right now, which is ecommerce. visits are up 80%. store visits are down 20%. consumers are looking for trusting brands and trusted authorities in different areas we came on cnbc a couple of weeks ago to talk about flow code tv and the bode is our partner in the $20 billion space of snow sports, and bode represents in my mind, the new retail channel which is he's an authority at snow sports and people trust him as an authenticated voice in that space, and so bode has been using our product flow code and flow page to simply introduce people to new products and services and i'll give him one quick introbefore bode takes over is bode has developed technology in ski, and i know you're a big skier, which is the peloton and strava of the key industry second of all, he's created

direct-to-consumer ski partnership and skis that he has developed with cross and skis, so bode is somebody who's in the direct-to-consumer part of the retail economy which is the fastest growing part of ecommerce, and bode is a partner of ours because he represents both the influence to get to millions of skiers but also he's developed products specifically for the dtc landscape, and really uses our products to get them out there, and i'll let you ask bode about it. >> hey, so bode, tell us about, and by the way, we should just say, the qr code we're showing on the screen, not to run an advertisement for both of you, but if someone putting their phone up to it, it actually works, right, that's how this actually happens, right guys >> yeah, exactly it's one of the interesting things that every time i talk to tim, something really cool kind of comes out of it and i just always like to give people the opportunity to see what we're doing, and maybe

where the industry is going without feeling like i'm selling them something you know, it's been my passion i know tons of people want to be out there enjoying outdoor sports in covid times you need communication avenues that are clear and quick, and don't feel intrusive, and you know, this has been a really cool process for me it solves for, you know, 25 problems that i was struggling with >> so bode, tell us about the business that you're running, the products that you're building, and what the marketplace looks like during covid for you. >> yeah, i mean, i'm in all kinds of things. i kind of always have been the concern is the same for everybody. nobody knows how to adapt to covid. we're in kind of an inflection point in the u.s. between people not wanting to be monitored but wanting freedom to do things in a time where there's huge risk for everyone combined with the other products i'm sort of working with, we see

it as an opportunity for people to dip their toe in and say you know what, i'm okay with the direct communication everyone is getting more and more comfortable with it at the same time, it's going to allow us to open resorts and kind of keep track of people in an effective and responsible way and we can have our freedoms and enjoy what to do my biggest concern is we don't have the information or the ability to tell people when they have been at risk and when they haven't, that's going to affect resorts all over the country, and i think striking the balance is going to be the challenge this winter. i know i'm going to be up there skiing, but i definitely want to know if i put myself at risk, or, you know, someone around me is, you know, infected with covid. between the two, it's been a magic magical fit. >> so hold on, just to put a fine point, how does this work if i were to have run into you at the lodge

i mean, am i going to get told what are you saying exactly? >> if you're on the chair lift with me, and you're like, those look like cool skies, you can take your phone out, we have a flow code in the graphic of the skis, takes you to a flow code that has information and you could have the skis on your way to the house with a 30 day money back garn fuarantee before you off the lift and as everyone has done in restaurants, you click the flow code or qr code, the wooden ski version of qr codes and we're transitioning, that takes you to a flow page that informs you of all of the capacity at restaurants, responsible behavior, and also will give you, i guess, passive feedback on if you have been exposed, if you've been in situations where covid has been present so you

can adapt. like i said, it's been a pretty interesting thing. from the product side of things, i think it's the cleanest, quickest way to give people information without having it feel like you're trying to sell them something, and that's always been my intention i just want people to know if they approve or want to join, absolutely >> real quick, because this is a very selfish question, how concerned are you, for those of us who love to ski and go to utah and colorado, go out west, how concerned are you that the rates of covid are going to get so high potentially that you see the government, either you see the government effectively lock down the slopes or you see the slopes, you know, the companies that run these slopes decide to lock them down or limit the capacity to such a degree that it's almost impossible to get on the slopes >> i think people are facing that already right now with trying to book things. i think it's going to be a

matter of how well they adapt, and what protocols they have in place to inform people of the risk you know, because there's going to be cases. we all know that if you can track those cases really effectively, really quickly, and keep people informed, i think you have a chance to have, you know, a great season we have been struggling with how to manage that conundrum because nobody wants their, you know, nobody wants big brother they don't want people tracking them all the time, but they want to feel safe and be informed and the resorts need to know that they're not going to have a super spreader where they just don't know what's going on and people are coming out positive everywhere that's what's going to lead to shut downs, so again, you know, not to over pitch it, but this is a really nice solution that came along at the perfect time to adjust for that >> hey, andrew, real quick to jump in -- >> hey, tim. >> yeah. go ahead. >> go ahead. >> well, i was just going to say, what bode is hitting on also, and this is big in the

retail business is there's a $300 billion industry popping up right now, which is contactless. and i think the solutions around contactless are super important. every human being has a mobile phone with them, and we have seen in our business, with flow code, everybody everybody from beauty counter, greg renfrow's company on the west coast, good morning america, turner sports using it on the match this week for golf, boston, the catholic church is using flow coats to allow people to give at church i think in megatrend around how do you take contactless during covid and turning it into something super fast and easy is super important, and you know, again all -- >> they're playing us out. i got 20 seconds, we do see the lot of cash savings in the bank that people have saved money during the period for those lucky enough to do so. do you think this is a big spending christmas or not? >> biggest spending christmas

ever >> hopefully take that to the bank. >> ecommerce is growing. there's a lot of money stacked up for christmas, for holidays >> tim, thank you. bode, thank you. i hope we hit the slopes this winter somehow, somehow. appreciate it, guys. becky. thanks, andrew when we come back, despite warnings against travel, millions of people are taking a holiday trip we're going to take about safety concerns with the president of the association of flight attendants. as we head to a break here's a look at the aflac trivia question, how many pound of turkey were consumed in the united states on thanksgiving last year. we'lha t awewhl vehensr en "squawk box" returns the aflac . aflac! now tell me, what does aflac do? aflac pays you money directly to help with unexpected medical bills. and is aflac health insurance? no, but it can help with expenses health insurance doesn't cover! that's right. are there any questions? -coach! -yes?

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welcome back everybody here's the answer to the aflac trivia question. how many pounds of turkey were consumed on thanksgiving last year, the answer 1.4 billion

pounds, roughly 46 million turkeys with the average turkey weighing 30 pounds, and guys, just for honesty in this whole thing, it's not 1.4 billion pound consumed on thanksgiving we cooked it on thanksgiving day, you cook that turkey because you have to and then you have to have turkey leftovers every week turkey soup, turkey tet t and not eaten on that day. >> how do you feel about fried turkey, are you guys into fried turkey >> never tried it. >> never had it either >> either have i i asked because it's something i always sort of thought i wanted but i haven't done it yet. it's supposed to be dangerous. anyway >> you got to be careful, yeah >> unfortunately we want to talk about where we stand right now with this covid pandemic, and talk about some of the numbers the national seven-day average

of daily new cases nearly 171,000. officials cautioning there could be delays in numbers in the coming days. as many local health departments traditional pause reporting those numbers over the holidays. we probably should be even more cautious about where things stand. mike the always outspoken ceo of ryan air is out with fresh criticism over the uk's new quarantine system for people traveling in the region. speaking to the bbc, michael o'leary calls the system not well thought out, adding it is quote a fig leaf that doesn't work it's not enforceable, people don't comply the uk announced it was reducing the quarantine period for people arriving from most destinations in 14 days to five having people get tested before they travel to the u.k. will be a much better system when we return, the president of the association of flight attendants joins us to discuss the holiday travel rush and ndhety concerns amid t paemic "squawk box" will be right back.

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equity futures looking higher this morning, though they have moderated their games a little bit in the last hour. the s&p 500 due to rise

about 2/3 of 1%, the dow futures up 255 points at this point. nasdaq looking like it's going to be the under performer again, right now up 27 points the s&p right around the 3,600 level. it's chrrisscrossed four or five times. there's an emerging trend in the travel industry that's pointing to a fragile and uneven recovery steve liesman is with us for the road back barometer. hey, steve. >> good morning, mike, yeah, some troubling high frequency data as we approach the critical thanksgiving travel season or day. here's a travel edition of our road back barometer, showing travel up from what it was, down big this time of year. you can figure out what's good or bad in all of that. we'll take a look at the 7-day average of the apple mobility index. that looks for searches for trarns transit, driving and walking directions, down 13% compared with its benchmark of january

13th the jp morgan lodging spending, it's down 58%. and that's while overall credit card spending is measured by jp morgan is up and the passenger travel down 61%. that's the 7-day average, had a little spurt over the weekend, really remains down compared to what it would be this time of year for the thanksgiving weekend. let's look at the airline passenger traffic and reverse the sign on this, looking as a percent of a year ago. it's up but still just 39% of what it would have been this time of year, and that's through the thanksgiving weekend that we just came through, or the weekend before thanksgiving. up kind of rivaling what it was back around labor day. and then looking at the forecast from the aaa, what they're saying is they see car travel down 4.3%. airline travel they expect to be down overall for the holiday, 48%, and in being the road back barometer report for thanksgiving, a little thanks to some of the folks that have been

providing, the corporations that have been providing this high frequency data free to the public burbio on the school data, app and will google making their data available to the public on searches johns hopkins on covid traffic, and tom tom on traffic, and yelp on store closings. they have helped change economics and economic forecasting as we know it. we're not going back to trying to figure out what's going on in the economy without this high frequency data and these corporations have stepped up to be really good citizens when it cops to providing that data to the public >> we appreciate them sharing it with us. steve, can we go back to one of the charts you showed, the one that just showed the airlines, people traveling, it was up 38% of normal. it showed that it climbed through the tsa traffic, it showed it climbed all the way through, and then it dropped you went from 37% in august down to 30% in cemeseptember and cli

back up to 38, 39% that we're looking at now is that normal for travel patterns or is this a reflection of the fact that most people traveling are doing it for leisure. business hasn't come back as strong leisure is when people are on vacation. >> i had a little trouble explaining the 38% bump. go back to the 37% that's labor day that makes sense you see that quite a bit there's a spurt around the holiday that's not a big deal. but then that 38% at the end of october. i think people were sort of thinking things were going back to normal, and all of a sudden that's the effect, perhaps, that drop of surge in ovid, people started to just stop traveling again. the surge in covid cases and then you have this resurgence a little bit again

39% of what it would have been a year ago, and way down the upcoming guest of the flight attendant association is going to talk about how troubled it is the thing i can't get my brain around is you want to see the economy coming back. you want to see travel coming back but at a time when we have this virus surging, i'm not sure any increase is good news. >> yeah, that's the catch 22 of this whole thing, and that's in fact how we have set this up steve, thank you, and as steve mentioned, despite the warning coming from the cdc, the tsa screened over a million passengers on sunday, the highest number since march if you want to get a look at covid-19 concerns during the thanksgiving travel and the airline's push for virus aid we welcome sara nelson, the international president of the association of flight attendants you may be concerned about what's happening if people are traveling but if they're not, you don't have jobs. where do you come down on this argument >> this is not a normal time at all, becky i mean, we are just back to not

even 40% of the demand that we were a year ago, and as you noted, business travel is not happening, so the revenues are just half of that. the airline without government aid are making decisions they have gone a lot of liquidity to stabilize the airlines they are losing money every single day but trying to cut as many costs as they can, and when the requirements of the federal relief ended on september 30th, that meant mass furloughs, but they have also asked for unpaid leave as well. so we're actually running at quite short staff, and the other thing that's colliding right now ironically is that we are short staffed, we've got more people who have to sit out on sick leave. we have more generous sick lever possibilities that are under strain because of the cost cutting. we may see flights cancelled, if there's enough demand, even with the leisure travel over the holidays because there's not enough staff in place.

the other issue is because dwoedon' have -- >> on that point alone, i want to get the rest of your thoughts, but on that point alone, who do you blame for the staffing shortage? that's a big deal. is it the airline's fault or is the government at fault for not stepping in and helping? >> the government's at fault the airlines are doing what they need to do in this market. this market is not a rational market this is the major disrupters bigger disrupter than we have seen in a hundred years. there no way to make the airlines operate during this pandemic with any kind of rational thought here, and continued thought to safety layers without that government help the relief we got in place is different than the rest of the bailout packages for other corporations what we did is the workers first package and covered 70% of the payroll, required the airlines to keep everyone on their jobs,

connected to their health care, still paying taxes and rent, and helping the economy and providing slack, so the airlines continue to serve the communities. all of those requirements are gone, and now what the government needs is these airlines to distribute a vaccine. so that we can get the virus contained, get out of this massive economic disrupter and public health disrupter and get this under control that's not going to happen unless we get the jumbo jets in the air, and are able to use all of the aircraft in place to distribute that vaccine. >> i thought it was fedex and ups that were going to be largely responsible for distributing the vaccine, not the major carriers. >> what's interesting about that, is they will say that and even the united states government will say that fedex and ups only is able to operate when they use the commercial aircraft. they actually outsource some of that, a lot of that cargo to the

passenger air craft. so fedex and ups cannot meet the demand alone, and iot a has been clear on this. this is going to require all of the aircraft, commercial aircraft around the world, and they have warned if governments don't take action to get people off of furlough, pilots, mechanics, flight attendants we have to have our safety credentials in place, our currency with being able to fly the aircraft, and if we don't get that back in place and make sure the that government is ensuring that everyone is called back to service and able to service those planes, a lot of those planes are sitting in the desert right now that's going to take a heavy lift to get them back in place we're not going to be able to distribute the vaccine fast enough to get us out of this crisis. >> sara, let me ask you a question, we often have conversations that are put to some degree in moral terms about what's required to help, for example, your constituents, the moral obligations related to

potentially the distribution of the vaccine, though i will say there is a debate about whether fedex and ups can handle this on their own. so i just do want to clarify that point but let's assume that that is the moral argument and you're on the right side, if you will, do you think that there's a moral argument to be made that from a capacity perspective, the airlines actually should not be increasing capacity but should be reducingcapacity for passengers given the wild spread of this pandemic in the united states from a health care perspective, given what the cdc has said, and everything else? >> i think, andrew, that that is what was intended in march was that we would actually take actions for public health and provide that support from the government in order to be able to do that we have been missing that cohesive government plan joe biden has that plan but we're looking at waiting until

january 20th to even start to get that in place, and the truth is that regular public businesses, private businesses cannot make those decisions on their own when you're down 60% in demand, and even more than that in revenue. as you know, those pressures do not lead to good public health decisions. so i would agree with the moral argument here. actually, the very practical argument about how to get this virus under control. but that is not going to happen unless we get the relief in place, and again, i just want to remind everyone, this is a workers' first program that actually capped executive pay, bans stock buy backs and dividends, and required that that government funding only go to supporting those workers. in return, the airlines are providing the critical infrastructure. >> right i appreciate that. i think the point that i'm making is one of the things you're seeing is the airlines are increasing capacity during the holidays, they're not just increasing the capacity of planes in the air, they're

increasing the capacity in terms of seats that they are filling what i am asking you, since you have made many moral arguments on this program is from a health care perspective, let's say we'll take care of your people, do you think it is in the service of america and the health of americans to put more and more people on airplanes at a time when covid is spreading like wildfire? that's my question to you. >> i will make two points on that, andrew i agree with you 100% that we should be taking actions for public health first and foremost because the virus is the problem here secondly, i would say that if you want to look at the conditions on board the aircraft, when you have that support, the airlines have been able to put in place layered safety procedures that make it one of the most controlled environments in the country. and so without that support to continue to make those good decisions about having liberal sick leave policies, ensuring

the mask requirements, ensuring that they are continuing, the air flow and hepa filtration, ensuring they are continuing the cleaning as they have been doing, all of those things can lead to a controlled environment. >> sara, let me turn it around do you support the cdc's decision to tell passengers not to get on airplanes this holiday season >> well, let's be very clear i think every business across america supports the cdc's decision on that. that's why we're seeing decreased revenue because business travel is not taking place, and rational people understand what need to be done in order to get public health policy in place that can control the virus. yes, i support that, but with it, i'm being very clear that it is just not possible unless this government takes action right now to extend the payroll support program. it is not possible for us to do those things that support that

public health policy unless that action is taken. it can be taken. i want to remind everyone, in march, there was a vote, 96-0, and 419-6 in the house, in favor of doing exactly this for $2.2 trillion. there is no reason the same exact congress cannot do that when they come back from this thanksgiving holiday >> yeah, sara, i guess there's a long line of people waiting to hear something and congress has not done it to this point. i don't know that it's going to happen right after we appreciate your time, and we appreciate you making the case good to see yo. >> good to see you, becky, and it's going to happen >> thanks. meantime, we have news crossing the wire. double dose of breaking news from dick's sporting goods the chairman and ceo, ed stack is going to be stepping down on february 1st he's going to take the title of executive chairman the current president of dick's lauren hobart will be the chief

executive officer. she has been with the company since 2011 when she joined as chief marketing officer. she has increased, we should say, so much of the women's franchise at dick's sporting goods, and pushed them into new areas there. a big milestone, we should say, ed stack responsible largely for the success of that company, but in addition to that, making that very unique, perhaps controversial decision not to sell firearms at dick's, and really created a national conversation in that regard among business leaders separately, dick's reported quarterly profit of $2.01 per share, well above the consensus estimate of $1.01. comparable sales surging 21.2% compared to a consensus everyday of 14.1% another indicator of where companies and more importantly where consumers are spending

their money these days, mike. >> the trump administration making federal resources available for president-elect biden's transition into office exactly what many business leaders were asking for. we'll discuss what it means for coore err d of powean rpatamica. we'll be right back. x-smart inv? -audrey's expecting... -twins! ♪ we'd be closer to the twins. change in plans. at fidelity, a change in plans is always part of the plan.

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get 5g included and save up to $400 dollars a year on the network rated #1 in customer satisfaction. it's your wireless. your rules. only with xfinity mobile. the trump administration approving the start of the formal transition to the biden administration, providing federal funds and resources to begin the transfer of power. exactly what business leaders were calling for

joining us now, jeff sonnenfeld, and lester crown professor in the practice of management at yale school of management and a cnbc contributor good to see you this morning what's your read on this kind of campaign, i guess, at first tentative and much more, i guess, firm by many ceos to press for the formal transfer of power, the transition process to get underway is it just about honoring norms or do they have an eagerness to operate under a biden administration right now >> well, that's a great question we've got about an hour and a half or so to respond to that. i could keep you here until lunch on that one. good morning, mike: i think that the business community, major business leaders, larger ones have never been that comfortable with president trump while perhaps 2/3 of them are republican, the surveys continually showed back in 2016, most didn't support him. however, when he got elected,

they were enthusiastic they thought there would be regulatory roll backs, and some of the tax relief that, in fact, they got on both fronts and they were happy there the oneoffs is part of president trump trump's, ford versus gm, pfizer haves merck, and lockheed versus boeing they hate that stuff, and they're happy for that to come to an end. the disruption of global markets with some of the ad hoc trade policies that were so divisive there are some that they like, by the way, and still, those are some of the reasons where they're hopeful for a change a lot of the international agreements that they want to get back into on climate change, perhaps, and some others however, there is a desire for stability. they don't like the uncertainty. they don't like communities, angry work forces and the rest, and to have some degree of

continuity that way, they're excited about that. a specific business agenda, and i think a lot of their enthusiasm is not parochial self-interest but patriotism they like the transition to be a smooth one. >> what do you make, jeff, just to focus in on maybe one example of this, you know, ceos and companies falling in line behind the trump administration, but then pulling back. this announcement by gm, they are no longer going to back the trump administration's lawsuit against california emission standards that came out yesterday. what does that say about mary barra kind of going back and forth on that? >> you know, that's a pretty sophisticated question, and i don't think a lot of viewers would have been tracking as carefully what's been happening there, just far second or two of background, that's an example of the auto industry that was split. ford and bmw, and some other big auto makers went and working

with california, they had an exemption of the clean air act to try to make more efficient cars gm didn't buy into that, and toyota was being pressured by the administration to fight california's exemption, for more exalted, higher level standards to meet. half of the industry went one way. the trump administration sued part of the industry that wanted to work with california, saying we're on track we think we can make a much more efficient car, 55 miles a gallon in the next five years and mary barra, and gm have changed their position a good example, build back better sometimes the green solution is the most efficient solution. that's where mary barra is, and it's been tough for gm, she has never publicly challenged president trump, and yet, i don't know what's going on there. she's so frequently become a scapegoat on trade issues or having to do with the manufacturer, incredibly heroic story what mary barra and did

with the manufacture of pp skper e and ventilators on short notice, and they have come under a firing line when she's a nonpolitical person. she's a great example of that auto industry coming together the way others were fractured through this period with the build back better theme. >> for as mump ch as there mighe relief to orderly transition among ceos, is there a concern about reimposition of regulations or some of the policies of progressives that might not be as business friendly >> that's an interesting paradox there s ironically, and i think a lot of our friends in the environmental movement were surprised as to who their new allies were, the auto industry in the example i used, for example, wanting to meet higher standa standards for clean air act in california, and they have been investing the money, and oil and gas, believe it or not, have actually been fighting the trump

administration to want to retain investment they have already made, billions of dollars, in trying to take out the carbon dioxide, and utilities, similarly, or methane for them, carbon dioxide for the facilities they have made progress that they wanted to come together on that we don't have a battle between the two. there's a great article on the front page of today's "wall street journal," just talking about the example of dupont, and how that affects the biden administration, joe biden having been close to dupont, under irving, shapiro, former ceo and founder of the round table, the great alignment in the best of society, and there's a win-win there, and i think that's where president biden and ceos are where there's not a natch l rurl divide in the sand they can be on the same side, and that's a lot of enthusiasm we see there, enough of the name of drawing lines in the sand, finger pointing and the oneoffs.

>> quite a change in the private sector in recently years, jeff, thanks a lot appreciate your time this morning. >> thank you still to come this morning, senator debbie stabenow of michigan will be joining us to talk stimulus, the presidential transition and much more that's next. as we head to a break, take a look at biggest winners in the s&p 500 this morning s&p 500 is indicated up. markets across the board are indicated up after strong gains yesterday. dow is indicated up another 313 points this morning. rhtacawbo wl "squk x"il beig bk.

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good morning the dow ready to continue its best month since the late 1980s. futures up nicely, and pushing us ever closer to that 30,000 mark yesterday, vaccine developments helped stocks higher, and today it's political movementsme the federal government has okayed the transition to the biden administration, and biden plans to nominate janet yellen as treasury secretary. and elon musk is in the number 2 spot the final hour of "squawk box" begins right now.

good morning, everybody, welcome back to "squawk box. joe is out today he'll be back next week. we're watching u.s. equity futures, and things are looking up you did see major gains for the markets yesterday. the this morning, the dow futures indicated up by 300 points s&p up by 28, and the nasdaq up by 36. with the gains we saw yesterday for the dow, that actually puts the dow back to the best performance that it's seen for the month. let's get you caught up on stories investors are going to be talking about today first up, we've got sources telling cnbc that president-elect joe biden has chosen former fed chair janet yellen to be his treasury secretary. yellen is a known quantity in

washington and is likely to focus first on fixing the coronavirus induced economic slum markets rallied when the news leaked yesterday afternoon yellen would be the first woman to lead the treasury department. we're going to be talking about her kmpted nomination, and what she would mean for america's biggest banks. profit and revenue also beating estimates, but this is a little bit of what we have seen with other retailers, great numbers, and yet the stock markets disappointed you can see best buy down by about 3% in the meantime, dick's sporting goods seeing comps crush estimates and earnings per share doubled the consensus. that stock is up by 1.6% separately the company announced its president, lauren hobart will succeed the former ceo, ed stack. and elon musk has another reason to dance according to the bloomberg

billionaire's index, he is the world's second richest person. the ko the ceo's net worth increased by $7 billion yesterday he's worth $128 billion all together, having just passed mark zuckerberg and bill gates only amazon ceo jeff bezos remains ahead of musk, but by more than $50 billion, so he's going to need at least another, oh, i don't know, seven days like yesterday andrew >> you know, i have nothing to say. i can't even get over these numbers. we'll see. >> i'd dance too >> you would dance i would dance if i was selling the stock. that's when i would dance. given what i can have. meantime, a key government agency formally giving the green light for the transition to president-elect biden's administration to begin after a

two-week delay, the hold up w was -- that means biden can receive classified security briefings and allows his team to access millions of dollars in transition funds now, this all coming as the biden transition team denying reports that the president-elect is pushing democrats to compromise with republicans on a smaller stimulus package in order to get more relief now joining us right now to talk about that and so much more is michigan senator debbie stabenow, she's also part of the democratic leadership as claire of the policy and communications committee. good morning to you. there was that report yesterday saying that president-elect biden was worried about a double dip recession and a meaningful problem in terms of unemployment in this country, and wanted to get a deal in place before the holidays

when i say holidays, not thanksgiving at this point but christmas. i know that they're pushing back on that, but what can you tell us behind scenes >> sure. well, it's good to be with you i will say we should all be concerned about getting additional help to people to survive the pandemic and everyone in all parts of the i economy, we should be trying to help right now, and not pick winners and losers, by the way i know earlier today you've been talking about the airline industry, and workers, which is critical small businesses at the end of this month, we're going to see people who are self-employed, contract workers, those who are gig workers. all of them will stop receiving any help under the unemployment system and all of this is going to affect the economy good news in the economy, you're talking about now, but this is going to affect everyone and every part of what is happening

now as we try to go forward. so there's a lot of discussions going on on a bipartisan basis, i'm involved with those, and to me, this is about making sure there are no winners and losers, that whatever we do is comprehensive and it's less about the overall number because even if there is a short-term package for the next few months until we get into the new biden administration, we have to act now. and my biggest concern is that at this point, about half of our colleagues, republican colleagues in the senate say they don't want to support anything more, and senator mcconnell has to make a decision so far he's not been willing to engage in negotiations. >> senator, the question is -- senator, i appreciate the need or the view that there should be a large and comprehensive package, but i think there's a question mark right now given

the timing, given the severity of this pandemic, given in winter that we are coming into right now. talk about trying to avoid w winne winners and losers there are going to be more and more losers unless something is done with some speed i talked with jamie diamond from jp morgan. he said you know what, stop it, this is childish, split the baby, be done with it. forget about the numbers per se, forget about whether you're winning on this side or losing on this side the american people deserve more what do you tell him >> well, i would say i agree with that. what i just said is rather than looking at numbers, we ought to be looking at how we help everyone in the economy. so when i say winners and losers, i'm not talking about political win skpeners and lose. i'm talking about the person who is self-employed being helped as much as somebody who works for the airline industry or has a retail shop. we should be looking at all parts of the economy, the person

who's being forced to stay home because of covid right now, and can't keep a roof over their family's head or food on the table, so what we need to do, even if it's short-term, to me, it's not about -- i would love to see a large comprehensive package moving forward, but if that's not achievable, it just need to be comprehensive in terms of people, americans, and so if it's -- >> what does that look like? what kind of number would you put on a deal like that? >> i'm not, you know, going to put a number to me, it's about a few months maybe it's through the first quarter. maybe it's, i mean, i agree, we need to act and my colleagues and we have good discussions going on, bipartisan discussions in the senate right now, and what needs to happen is everyone needs to understand this is extremely serious, even if it's just for a few months to get into the administration, and then looking more

comprehensively. that's something that should be considered but this is about making sure that everyone who's caught in this situation with the pandemic is getting support so it's not just the airline industry or just ppp it's got to be looking at everyone, whether they work on their own, whether they're home because of the fact that their job went away because of what's happening, whether they're in a retail shop, whether they're working with the airline industry, we should care about all of that, and i think that's the most important thing to focus on right now. >> senator, one other question i wanted to ask you before we let you go is president-elect biden has said that one of his big priorities when he gets into office is going to be raising taxes, both on individuals who make more than $400,000, but importantly on corporations, and i wanted to ask you whether you would support an increase in taxes on corporations during

this pandemic and this crisis at a time when we're still talking about stimulus >> and we've got the tax code to make sure it's fair for everybody and during the middle of a pandemic, we've got to make sure that every size business is contributing to the recovery, to our safety, to our national security so i think there's work that needs to be done and those that are in a situation now where they have benefitted and aren't contributing to the health and welfare and safety of our country, they should and so let's do something that's fair for everybody again, whether it's the contract worker or a multibillion dollar corporation. that's really what in america we ought to be looking at is making sure that everybody is a part of the solution, everyone is a part of moving us forward and helping to contribute financially to do

that >> senator, appreciate you joining us this morning. thank you so very muchl. coming up, we speak with the ceos of fresh direct and the company taking a majority stake in it, about the growth of online grocery shopping during the pandemic is this sector ready for customer demand this winter. and as we head to break, we've got another retail earnings movement for you, urban outfitters, shares lower despite third quarter revenue and profit beat an amazing november so far this stock up 40%. quk x"u' wchg reatin "sawbo on cnbc ♪ you can go your own way

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welcome back to "squawk box," the "squawk" futures indicate ago strong open dow industrials up 320 points right now. the nasdaq trailing a little bit in percentage terms up 44 at the moment beck >>. the pandemic has caused interest in online grocery shopping to spike, and one of the hottest brands is being acquired supermarket is taking a majority

stake in fresh direct, and center bridge partner wills have 20%. this comes ahead of the biggest food holiday of the year: fresh direct ceo david mcerny, and franz mueller, welcome to both of you i have long talked about how i have used fresh direct, and it's been interesting to kind of watch this franz, let me ask you first, what attracted you to fresh direct and what do you plan to do with the company now? >> yeah, becky, i think as you already mentioned in your introduction, fresh direct is a strong brand, a leading brand in the new york tri state area. 9 billion online market and strong number 2 position it's a nice complementary part of our market, and adding to our family of great local brands we're very happy to hopefully bring this to a close in the first quarter of this year for

next year. >> what do you plan to do? is the service going to change for customers on the other side? >> fresh direct is already nice retention amongst their customers and a great reputation, but i think also with combining the knowledge of both companies, i think we can make it even more competitive, compelling, and at the same time, fresh direct is a high fresh share, i think also for our company in the u.s. with other five great local brands, also a nice moment of learning at the same time >> hey, david, i would assume there were other suitors who had contacted you. why did you go this route? >> look, this is a, this is a tremendous milestone in fresh direct's history, and we are really happy to join the family of local brands and that's particularly important when we looked at sort of how they have -- how they operate within

their individual brands and there's a lot of individual identity and that's something that is serious about, protecting our brand, and preserving the iconic brand that we have and a fanatical customer base we have record nps scores right now. tremendous strong double digit growth, so we were natural attracti attractive given where the world is in terms of online adoption of food, and we're happy with our decision to go with ahold. >> david, i just wonder what this is going to look like, and newscast why i asked frans the same thing, are you going to operate unilaterally, what will you be bringing in, and what will look different to customers? >> that's exactly right. hopefully the only difference that customers see are benefits.

i think there's an enormous opportunity and cost of goods synergies, with ahold delays, and we plan on continuing down the path we have been on we are heavily focused on fresh good and our mission, which is just making it easy to get fresh food is one that we're going to continue we're thinking more and more about speed as evidenced with what we're doing in washington, d.c. we have the micro fulfillment will be coming up in january we have two in new york that have been doing really really well over the last year, and we'll continue to try to get closer to the customer, so it's faster, and while at the same time offering more optionality, we're in a spot where you can see you can get it right now, later this evening or you can get it tomorrow. so we are intent on preserving what we have in terms of the quality and the fresh, and the brand, and just continuing to

grow within our existing geographies, you know, we're in a fairly large trading area and we see big opportunities for penetration in the existing area without having to go further. >> what your plan has been for the last several years has been pretty major investments, will that continue? >> i'll let frans answer as well i would say on my side, yes. you know, we're going to continue focusing on what we did. which is really the fresh food, and now it's speed and i think, you know, there's a lot of opportunity in micro fulfillment, you know, and same day and on demand deliveries >> and as david mentioned, becky, we are a company investing 2 1/2 billion euros per year, and this we do in our great local brands, so in the u.s. on the east coast with food lion, and giant and stop and

shop, and also hopefully soon with fresh direct and it will be in a very respectable member of our family of great local brands and therefore we will for sure invest not only in bricks and mortar, but also in pure online next quarter hopefully, and also in technology and in digital, but also learn from the fresh direct experience in being so close to the fresh supply chain. and i think we also can pick up interesti interesting learnings from this, and looking at the customer retention, happiness of customers of fresh direct in manhattan and new york city and in the tristate, it's in the token of appreciation as well. >> yeah, and i guess that would be any question, too, frans, do you plan to mix any of these brands or do any of the fulfillment out of stop and shop stores or change anything with pea pod or is this going to run independently? >> it will be run separately we believe in fresh direct as a brand personality, we run

separately, if it's mentioned we might pick up here and there, sourcing synergies, and partnering with central bridge, we can win from this by understanding more about their knowledge about local markets and operational expertise, the financial rigor and access to talent i think the kings is in the unique combination, also for us, but i'm very much looking forward to it. the other thing is promising to make the fresh direct plan stronger, with all the strong work the team has done over the years with the brand new well functioning warehouse in the bronx, i think it's a nice complementary access to us for what is important in new york and manhattan markets and therefore very interesting to us as in the majority stake as from the next quarter next year, after we pass the regulatory approvals. >> frans, in terms of demand for

online grocery shopping, it's hit a peak because of the pandemic do you expectpeople who have come into online shopping and grocery shopping will continue that once the covid falls back a little bit, once we get the vaccines coming out? >> we saw of course with covid, and acceleration of online demand, we think online demand will stay at a higher rate, and slower growth rates, but we accelerated online and food in our total network tremendously we grew last quarter 115% in the u.s., and more than 50% in europe the acceleration expedited us in five months what we otherwise would have done in a couple of year's time. that will stay the higher base will stay often in the years to come the other thing what we see is customers are changing habits, looking at fresh food, healthy food, better balance in the diets, online services, and the

trends will stay, and of course in this heavy season of pandemic but also thanksgiving, and holiday season coming up, it's therefore utmost importance to us to make sure that safety of our people, safety of our associates and our customers guaranteed in a very busy times to come. >> frans and david, i want to thank you both for being with us, and congratulations on the deal. >> thank you very much >> thanks, becky. >> bye bye. >> thank you. thanks, becky. when we return, we're going to tell you everything you need to know about janet yellen who we're told is joe biden's pick for treasury secretary, and we'll talk about what she's likely to focus on first come next year. as we head to that break, take a look at the price of oil this morning, crude just hitting it highest level since march. wti crude, 43.59 you're watching "squawk" on cnbc

welcome back to "squawk box" this morning let's show you where futures stand. dow up about 332 points, nasdaq looking to open 43 points higher, and s&p 500 looking to open 30 points higher on the back of news out of washington this morning becky? >> thanks, andrew. when we come back, we're going

to talk about what wall street's biggest banks and shareholders can expect from a janet yellen treasury department. the always outspoken mike mayo will join us after this. stay tuned, you're watching "squawk box. this is cnbc

markets appear perfectly happy with joe biden's expected pick of janet yellen to be his treasury secretary steve liesman joins us now with what we know about yellen and what we think she would focus on the most, steve. >> yeah, mike, good morning. markets seeming to applaud news that president-elect joe biden will nominate janet yellen to be treasury secretary yellen can be expected to favor additional relief and stimulus for the u.s. economy believing less in the ability to have markets to navigate their own way out of recession in a cnbc interview in april, she advocated for another round of stimulus if the coronavirus surged again. >> if this lasts a long time, there will need to be additional support for unemployment

insurance, possibly further checks to support other needs. i think state and local governments need more support than the c.a.r.e.s act provided. perhaps health insurance, particularly for workers who got health insurance through their jobs, and that's been severed. those would be things on my list. >> yellen also could be expected to be more in line with democrats on the issue of holding the line on existing banking regulations, maybe disappointing bankers who hoped for more deregulation under a second trump administration. i know we've got mike mayo coming up. but she won't be as strident as elizabeth warren would have been on the issue progressives had hoped to wield major influence in the next administration but if biden's personnel choices so far are any indication, he intends to govern more from what constitutes middle of the democratic party than to push the envelope far to

the left markets may also be cheering the possibility that yellen's appointment signals a return to a more orderly and coherent process of policy making that existed in the trump administration mike, i'm reminded of one sunday when president trump tweeted out that he was going to slap tariffs on some of our allies and i called two members of economic advisers of his to ask, ad they know he was going to do this, and b, was it legal for the president to do this, and both advisers said they had no idea it was coming or if the president could indeed do that i think that's not what's going to happen in the biden administration. >> yeah, it would seem that the president-elect, and of course yellen herself, methodical, process oriented, it would seem, always out there with a framework she's working with one quick additional question, steve, is there's been this talk for some time about the need, perhaps perceived need for the treasury and fed to work closely together as economic policy makers, fiscal and monetary

together, is there anything tangible we can expect on that front? >> i think so in the following way, first of all, over the years, treasury and the fed have had a fairly close relationship. but remember, mike, that comes at a time that you and i have both covered this extraordinary story of declining interest rates and declining inflation. at a time when you need to raise inflation, and stimulate aggregate demand, the treasury and the fed generally need to work together, and that's true not only in the united states but at central banks and finance ministries around the world so you can expect that to go on because that creates essentially a better policy outcome. it's when they start to go their separate ways, if inflation should rise, interest rates go up, and you have a booming economy. that's when they should separate that's when the real test of janet yellen and her relationship with the fed and the fed's independence are going to come into play. that time is not now

>> okay. steve, thank you for that assessment we're going to continue talking a little bit more about janet yellen's led treasury department, and what she would mean for america's biggest banks. we want to bring in mike mayo, senior banking analyst at wells fargo, a bank she has been quite tough on her way out of the fed. what's your take of whether bank ceos are cheering or jeering this morning >> i think this is good news to have janet yellen as treasury secretary. to me, she transcends politics she's not pro bank or antibank she's pro, you know, economic growth she's pro employment she's pro a thriving economy that will be her score card. and she checks three main boxes. it kind of shows and to quote abe lincoln, don't swap horses midstream, and this is no time

to change policies dramatically, the three boxes, number one, economic recovery, she is an economic recovery specialist, number two, in terms of speaking the language of the federal reserve, treasury will have to still work with the fed during these still sobering times and number three, she is a known commodity to wall street we collectively know her and this is not a time for big changes. so she's not a push over we see her as having a consensus building approach, a measured approach, when she was at the fed last decade. you had more risk based capital programs for banks nothing easy about that. but those programs worked and that's a key reason banks have some of the greatest resiliency encountering any recession in modern history >> let's just talk about from a regulatory perspective, on the banks, how do you think she's going to approach it and do you

think that she's going to do anything that would be arguably tougher, frankly than this last administration >> well, pull the lens back. bank stocks under the last administration have had their worst performance versus the stock market as a whole in modern history this idea that, you know, republican presidents are good for bank stockholders and democratic presidents are bad, is just not the case over the last 40 years. banked performed well under president obama and president clinton, and performed poorly under president bush, and president trump. so i think economics trumps politics there's likely to be tweaking but the major regulation in force is dodd-frank which was passed when president obama was at the helm, and frankly it did its job. banks have twice as much capital, a lot more liquidity, this time around, banks are part of the solution, and not part of the problem as they were during

the global financial crisis, or i would say actually were the problem. >> mike, what about taxes? i know that's a little bit off of your beat per se, we were talking to senator stab now a little bit earlier, and now vice president biden, president-elect biden says he plans to raise taxes on not just those who make more than 400,000 on an individual basis but wants to raise taxes on corporations. as she wants to balance a recovery at a time when we're looking for stimulus, how do you think she's going to think about that, and perhaps advise the president-elect? >> well, look, she inherits, if she gets the job, she will inherit a very tricky and difficult situation between dealing with the federal reserve, encouraging more fiscal response, and stimulus, that's no easy task by any means. but when it comes to the banks,

the biggest tax, and i would say this tax is three times greater than any proposed increase in the corporate income tax, the biggest ta biggest tax is the flat yield curve and low interest rates agz the fed took its balance sheet from $7 trillion $50 billion a year in annualized earnings to the extent we get to a more normal economy after the war on covid is won, the reversal of that rate environment, the reversal of the decline net interest margin, and eventually the reversal in the terrible loan growth trends, that will overwhelm the impact of a potentially higher corporate income tax. >> how do you see her as a negotiator with congress you know, president trump would often use secretary mnuchin to negotiate, if you will, a lot of the economic policies and some of these stimulus measures and

the like do you see her doing that? >> well, look, she will be the, confirmed, she would be the architect of the economy but she's going to need a lot of builders and people understand the plumbing and people who know how to do the negotiation, and so i think thooshe's going to probably rely on her staff more than one other type of treasury secretary at the top, like robert reuben. having said that, don't forget, she's been around for a while. she was part of the clinton administration the council of economic advisers, the fed, academia, and so she knows how the process works. so whether she's the person getting it done or it's her team getting it done, i think we can have confidence that she will have a team that's able to do, be na sort of negotiation, but that is the tough part of this dealing with congress. working out deals, that's not part of her resume as much as

some of her other strengths. let's not forget, she sets a nice tone at the top, first woman as treasury secretary, this would be government that better reflects the mix of society. >> the market is looking past the next couple of months, looking beyond at this point, there are some pretty difficult things we're going to have to maneuver through in the next few months there was a new sur rvey, 5.8 million adult, they could be facing foreclosure in the next few months, behind in rent or mortgage payments already. what does that mean for the banks, any deal is going to take a while. >> these are very sobering times, especially the next three months, the increase in covid cases, we expect bank loan l losses to increase two to three times. this is going to be painful. banks have front loaded the expenses but there's actual loan losses likely to peak over the next 12

to 18 months, those are individuals and corporations going bankrupt you can look at, you know, commercial real estate that's certainly an area to watch more than any other. it's not all bad there's some covid enhanced industries you know, certainly look at the suburbs, at the growth, and home sales, you have record home equity, so this is not like the global financial crisis when it comes to homes and banks have an incentive to work with borrowers because the collateral is so strong. record home equity mortgage, commercial real estate of 50%. if borrowers can't pay, and since you can see the light at the end of the tunnel with the vaccine, i think, again, banks will be more part of the solution than ever before. this does not delay and pray or extend and pretend this is delay and extend with something on the other end for the banks and the borrowers and

the economy. >> mike mayo, always good to see you, thank you for the perspective this morning appreciate it. >> thanks for having me. >> over to you. coming up, thanks, andrew, is it time for investors to let go of some of their uncertainty now that michigan has certified election results and the federal government is taking more steps to aid joe biden's transition team elon musk just became the world's second richest person. tesla hit another big milestone. "sawbo iwh you autt en quk box" returns

welcome back, we're watching shares of tesla this morning, and frankly, when are we not the stock is up 5% pre-market. that follows a 6 1/2% gain during yesterday's session based on this morning's jump, the company looks like we're top $500 billion in market value s&p said it was going to be putting tesla in the s&p 500 next month, perhaps in two stages, waiting to hear about the mechanics of that. remember, it will go in the s&p at about 80% of its total market value. basically s&p counts the freely floating shares for any company, and it's going to be close to the top ten in the s&p, and more than 1% of the index at today's market value but also, take a look, year to date, of tesla against neo, the

chinese electric vehicle company. tesla shares are riding along on global ev wave, tremendous strength in all of these stocks. they have been some of the strongest names in the market. up 1300%, this is just last month. makes tesla's gain look almost insignificant and a lot of small gains as well. this is not about a biden administration policy on alternative energy or anything like that. this is a global move in that area, andrew >> okay. mike, thank you for that we're going to get jim cramer's first take on the trading day ahead right after this break plus the dow is on pace for the best month in 30 years is that where we'll end up that's the question. stick around, we'll bring you the answer when "squawk" returns.

let's get over to cnbc headquarters and check in with jim cramer, we have been watching the markets this morning. a lot of people kind of saying this is getting rid of some of the uncertainty in a step by step sort of basis here. the president hasn't conceded yet but the transition is starting to take place, and i think people are looking at this with a little more calm. what do you think about it all >> i think there's two parts to the market

there's the cyclical market which is doing very very well and the speculative part of the market which is insane we've got a lot of stocks that everyone must think are the next teslas, you see them go up so th so-called robinhood stocks a lot of people buy these now. everything they buy goes higher. so that's what i'm focused on, cannot continue because that speculation is usually met with some sort of big sell-off. hasn't yet, though >> what do you think of tesla? >> well, i'm a big tesla fan so, it is almost like you shouldn't ask me i've liked it for a very long time and i keep waiting for sellers to come in and they don't come in but i think that it is a technology company, not an auto company. and that's how i can justify it. if it is an auto company, it is too hard to justify. i know it is not rigorous to

justify it >> i know. is there a point where it makes you a little nervous, though >> i have to see the next quarter. what happens is they start selling out in china, german factory takes off, or the pickup takes off and you get blind sided by all these people who are first timers who don't really care about things like earnings per share or revenues per share. they just like it. and we haven't seen something like that, i don't even know how long it is not 1999 they just like tesla >> is this different than the day traders who were kind of trying their hands at this it is in some ways an irrational market, you could say that of a lot of different points that the markets rational. >> i don't know. they don't seem to sell it when i look at lee, li and neo, or carnival or norwegian or american air, i don't know where the demand comes from that they

don't even care about -- they don't care about the plug power, they don't care about pollution, fuel cell, don't care about pollution. these are things that -- norwegian just did a gigantic offering if i'm the companies who are -- look, see the airlines i would be offering 50 million shares right now right now. let them go by it. but they're happy to buy it. they bought a lot of american. i find if i were any one of the airlines, i say i will offer every share i can and it gets lapped up. then you have things like pounds here pounds here doubled. but nothing happened but, becky, i've not seen this in my career and i think we have to recognize that there is like a whole group of people, maybe reddit buyers i have people criticizing me for not doing my homework on li. i don't know doesn't have any -- it is just a chinese van company.

look at li look at that i've got people saying how can you tell us to take profits in li there are people who think i'm a war criminal because i want to take profits in nio. but they went from 10 on "60 minute minutes" down to 2 and now these are ridiculous but it doesn't matter. it doesn't matter. because they love them. >> doesn't matter until it does. >> yeah. >> no fat lady it is like the president, no fat lady he came out, i'm not giving up i concede nothing. fat lady never sings with that guy either >> does seem for us at the end of this, because we got to wrap things up so we can get to you in a few minutes bye, jim. >> bye-bye. >> check out the futures as we approach the top of the hour premarket gain for the dow now at 320 points. pushing the index to the 30,000 mark it has been close to four years since we first hit 20,000 on the

dow. joining us to talk about what could power us higher from here, mona mahogin at alliance global advisers great to see you without a doubt, the markets have been rounding into this position of looking for better things in 2021 almost everybody agrees you have some kind of relaxation of restrictions, we're going to get vaccines how much of this do you think is being priced in, not to necessarily the overall market, but to those cyclical parts of the market leading the way for a couple of months now >> yeah, absolutely. thanks, mike i think cyclicals have had a really nice run since the beginning of this quarter. if you look at the s&p 500 broadly, up 6%, but cyclical parts like energy, financials, industrials, up 13 to 19% plus so clearly the advent of a vaccine, perhaps potential biden victory combined with the split congress, those are some of the ingredients in place for the

start of a value rotation. we look more broadly over a ten-year period, growth versus value, we could make a case that we're still in just early innings of the cyclical rotation i think really what markets are looking forward to are, you know, perhaps second half of next year when consumer behavior actually returns more towards prepandemic levels according to leaders in the operation warp speed we will be getting 20 million vaccine doses in december, 30 million there after every month and perhaps you're at a better point in mid next year, by mid next year. i think if growth continues to accelerate next year, u.s. and globally if rates continue to remain low, stimulus into the system, that's a pretty good backdrop for risk assets and perhaps a continuation of the cyclical rally >> we also -- just another manifestation of this, the small cap stocks, they are more cyclical, they are more leveraged, certainly takes a higher risk april tide eer ris

them the megacaps had just trounced small caps for so many years on end and even though it is a dramatic move in small caps to the upside, on a long-term chart, it doesn't look like much yet. again, would you be endorsing further rotation in that area to get more exposure to bring up the risk level, really in the cyclical exposure of your portfolio? >> yeah, look, absolutely. i think the small cap universe was damaged in an outsized way during this crisis it was small and medium businesses that got hurt while the large cap players actually in some ways thrived through this crisis, many of them did so we would advocate if you get the opportunities, it has been a bit of a one way trade, hard to buy any dips at this point if you get volatility, make sure you start to layer in the cyclicality. also from a global perspective this year, the u.s. was the

primary game in town, that could also look different next year. especially if you see this ongoing weaker dollar trend and global growth accelerating as well. >> what gives you pause or what do you see out there that could possibly be a hurdle at this point? naturally the most immediate thing is this rising national covid case rates market seems very content on saying, look, it didn't pay to get all defensive back a few months ago when we saw this happen we know how to bend the curve and seeing positivity rates curl over in some areas but what else? people get overexcited about the markets and therefore you have to worry about a contrary move >> yeah, you know, i think it is your point, we are facing a tough few weeks ahead of us. we're head ning into thanksgivi weekend. i think we are in a period where the virus is still very much front and center so, of course, the trends, not only the trends, restrictions imposed on state and local basis

and how the economic data falls out from that, we're already seeing a plateau in mobility data, some weakening in economic trends as well, but to your point, the market has looked through it there may come a point where either, you know, we just got up too far, too fast and due for a period of consolidation and look toward the virus as perhaps a catalyst for that. we do think it is healthy after such a strong run to see, you know, some profit taking, some sideways movement and that perhaps is the opportunity for those that are looking for tactical opportunities the other risk perhaps on the horizon, we're going through this presidential transition and we will still have to hear what the biden/harris key agenda is for first 100 days. we remain hopeful that stimulus is on that agenda, infrastructure is on that agenda, a bent towards clean energy and more globalization which could benefit the global market as well >> all right, yeah we will have all that on our radar, we have a few weeks to go, thank you for your time this

morning. >> thank you so much, mike have a great thanksgiving. >> you as well thanks andy y andy >> as we get ready for markets to open half an hour from now, quick final check on the markets, show you where things stand. dow does look like it is going to open higher 318 points higher right about now. s&p 500 up we'll call it 29 -- 30 points, and then the nasdaq looks to open 52 points higher we'll show you the ten-year note right now. those of you interested in a -- 30-year too, nobody gets a 30-year anymore, do they .867 let's show you where oil stands, brent at its highest number since i think march. we're looking at brent at 4673 wti crude, you can buy it for $43.72 it has been a fun show mike, thanks for hanging out with myself and becky.

>> absolutely. >> market living up to its reputation for strength in thanksgiving week. i don't know if you had to look at the headlines, but those things are not hurting the fact that, yeah, seasonally strong period as well here. >> okay. >> mike, thank you. >> we'll take that to the bank we'll see you all tomorrow make sure you join us then "squawk on the street" begins right now. good tuesday morning welcome to "squawk on the street." i'm carl quintanilla with jim cramer and david faber futures are solid as the presidential transition begins yellen reportedly the treasury the dow once again on pace for the best month since '87 we need a little more than 400 points for dow 30k today road map begins with the biden bounce the 30k watch continues. the transition in place, the expectations for a yellen treasury. >> we have a bunch of retailers reporting earnings