quintanilla. we saw the dow cross 30000 for the first time yesterday and the stocks leading the way, salesforce, apple and microsoft, the top performers in the dow for the year, salesforce, a new recruit to the index apple and microsoft among the biggest blue chip gainers since the dow crossed 20,000 back in 2017 they are also among the biggest players this critical holiday season, deirdre, with cloud, apps and gaming squarely in focus and computing, of course, that's been a big issue, connectivity for productivity, during this covid time >> that's right, jon and we've certainly seen techs that have underperformed in the last few months, but of course some of the big names you outlined, they have brought dow to this important milestone and just to put this in context, from 20 k to 30 k, that's a 50% move in the dow. take a look at the other major indexes. the s&p is up 59% during that

period, the nasdaq has more than doubled, up 115% in that time, carl, and it really tells you how important technology, and particularly those large caps, have become to this market and just how much they have surged this year as we see a digital transformation amid the pandemic. >> that's a great point. and jon, we're going to continue to look for names that are going to perform well, no matter what kind of reopening or reclosing environment we're in amazon, one of the top leaders, but so is zoom on teleconferencing and in tuit on payments and those are the markets we'll be paying attention to. >> tech investors have a lot to be thankful for this year in a tough year overall for the world. let's talk more about the need em portfolio manager and chief investment strategist. guys, good morning

brian, where are we now with kind of rationalizing and strategizing around the tech trade, given how far so many of these trends have run? >> i think some of these trends existed before the pandemic and have been exacerbated by this, so the trend toward just greater localization, digitization, i think those were with us before hand 2020 is this big downturn and 2021 we hope is a great normalization. after that we're back in an environment where we're 2% gdp growth, for the s&p maybe 7% or 8% these names are still going to stand out. it may be an under-performer as we cycle back up, but where we end up is still going to be good for tech. >> so, chris, it really is the big names that the dow represents, but there's a lot more to the market than that you watched the small caps as we head into 2021 with

president-elect joe biden, with kind of a balance of power in congress that's not yet clear, but also vaccines on the horizon, what are good bets? >> look, i think a significant theme we need to find in companies is sustainability and to exactly what you were talking about, what were the trends in place before the pandemic, what are the trends after the pandemic and there's volatility in there, but for long-term investors, i think there's still a lot of opportunity. one major play we've talked about for over a year is the 5g rollout, both with the devices, with the infrastructure. that's not going away. that's moving ahead very quickly on a global basis. we think it's going to accelerate in 2021 here domestically but you also have an increased need for broadband, for communication. how do you move all this information around

how do you process it? how do you store it? how do you make the experience that good with downloading over the top content. so we still think there's a lot of opportunity in the small cap tech names small caps in value have been doing well recently. but that's probably more from the rebound in energy and other places where we think are probably more troubled long-term. so technology, small cap, we still think there's some great opportunities and we're deploying capital. >> chris and brian, you agree there's more opportunity ahead brian, the shift that we've seen into value from growth over the last few months has been about that question of sustainability and i wonder when you say that there's still opportunity for these tech stocks, which ones are you talking about or which sectors? some of the numbers that we have seen put up this year, i'm thinking of zoom, that incredible revenue growth over 300%, is that sustainable?

>> probably not if we go back to some kind of normalization but i think some of these trends are here to stay so we may have people working from home more often, we may have people shopping online more often who weren't doing so before so that shift has been brought forward. in fact, our real estate team that looks at this for the purposes of industrial real estate where there's a lot of growth due to warehousing, shipping, storage, logistics, that's an area that's had tremendous growth because we've seen basically our forecast for online shopping pulled forward five years where we thought we would be in 2025, we are this year so there's areas with a lot of opportunity. it's the entire infrastructure that the country has to build around this shift to an online, commerce online shopping world >> chris, i wonder, we got the transition now apparently under way, there's reports today that the president-elect is getting a look at the presidential daily briefing and there's more discussion that they're going to face, obviously early tests,

whether that's about stimulus or in the middle east there's commentary that maybe that's a play on oil i just wonder if you're on guard for any kind of surprises, downside surprises in q1 that are related to the tribulations of any new administration. >> look, transition always has the risk of volatility, but i think you have a lot of folks that are lining up to come back in that have been in government before i think there's a lot of hype around the transition, but it will be methodical if it ultimately occurs. but i think that there are some opportunities here that, again, are long lasting and broadband is one of them that i think that there's bipartisan support to grow i hope that infrastructure is one that's bipartisan because we certainly have a lot of failing bridges and roads and tunnels that need some work on

so i think that at some point they're going to come to some agreement. i just think it's going to take a little bit more time here in the end of the year. >> yes, we are indeed in that season of looking forward to the end of the year. chris, brian, thank you. happy thanksgiving. >> happy thanksgiving. >> thank you the holiday shopping season we've been talking about it all week, finally kicking off as retailers prepare for a surge in online sales bertha has more details for us it's not really a day tomorrow, but more like a cyber month or two months. >> when you say finally kicking off, it's been going on for a while. black friday sales have been like fast and furious sequels, they just keep coming. amazon, walmart, target and best buy all launched online deals in mid-october. in thefirst three weeks of november, americans have already

spent $58 billion online on holiday deals, an average of $2 billion a day according to adobe analytics and this week that spending is expected to ramp up 50% to an average of $3 billion a day. more than half of millennials surveyed plan to shop in store on friday morning, amid covid, three out of four consumers are worried about crowds >> i've maybe gone out for a doorbuster on black friday or late thanksgiving night if something was really enticing, like maybe i should try and grab that, that's a great price but there's no way this year i would go near the stores >> yeah, and so as a result, it's expected to be a weekend online adobe estimates we'll spend a record $10 billion on black friday and another $12.7 billion on cyber monday, still the biggest shopping event of the holiday, up more than 35% year

over year. and that online shift is not necessarily a bad thing for retailers. consumers surveyed by deloitte are planning to spend $229 in their online shopping this weekend compared to $149 for in-store shoppers. and people just don't go in and browse anymore when they're in store, but there's nothing to keep you from browsing when you're online. >> yeah, provided that the platform has a good discovery option bertha, certainly not a bad thing but you've got to hope that all of these retailers can deliver on the e-commerce logistics and deliveries frank has had me worried about procrastinating. that does set us up perfectly for our next guest, ubs retail analyst. michael, i know all week we've been talking about how big this holiday season is going to be for online sales, but when you look at q3 digital sales the rate of growth has come down a little bit

part of that may be reopenings, stimulus running out, less need, perhaps, for repeat purchases. do you think that we will see sort of a return to that double, triple digit growth from the big box retailers given this holiday season >> i think the most likely case is that we see steady online growth over the course of this holiday season because of the same factors that have been driving it over the last couple of quarters like the need to social distance, the convenience of it, the repetitive behavior of buying online now, it will become important to have this presence as we move throughout the holiday season because there are some bottlenecks in the logistics chains in this country and so by the time we get to middle of december, being able to fulfill from stores and have buy online, pick up in store, will be a real advantage for the traditional retailers and that's going to further facilitate demand for online shopping >> right, so michael, who is

best positioned for the omni channel sales? i think amazon recently said that they're encouraging some of their users to go to bookstores to pick up goods but that's not that many amazon bookstores is it walmart or target? who is best positioned if we see some of the log jams in the logistical processes closer to christmas? >> it's the winners who keep on winning, the big, large, traditional players like walmart, like target, like home depot, like lowe's, who have done a fabulous job at pivoting and serving customers in a variety of channels and being able to get -- >> not amazon, michael i notice that you didn't include them >> yeah, amazon is covered by my partner, eric, and he is a big fan, a big bull on amazon. he thinks that not only is it going to be a winner in the near term, but the long run we think the important point

over the holiday season will be having this multi-channel approach and that's going to put more of the volume, more of the share to the large players like walmart, target and others. >> michael, good morning what do we learn from gap? because that's a company that should be in a great position with omni channel, having a bunch of physical locations, some of them not even in malls it's a name that people know apparel isn't doing that badly but, you know, they didn't really seem to do that great >> apparel is a very occasion-based purchase and the fact that consumer behavior has changed significant ly over the last six months, going to less e convenience and going to work less has really put a damper on overall apparel sales. at the same time, there's been market share shift to players like target that have been really winning within the apparel sector so i think what we're seeing across that space is some of the challenges within the sector,

but also a share shift and that's influenced the outcomes for different retailers. >> finally, michael, i'm thinking back to some of the concerns of the week so far. no guide from best buy and no margin blowout, despite those incredible comps on appliances, and then this operating expense number out of gap, obviously shipping goods around the country is getting more expensive. how much do you think those play in the larger sense of the sector >> so there are a couple of important points thus far from reporting season number one, trends have strengthened early thus far into the holiday season for those retailers that have been doing particularly well two, some of the change in channel mix has had an impact on profitability. players like best buy, dick's sporting goods, target, walmart and lowe's, they've done a nice job at shifting and dealing with

the channel mix and the profitability pressures that come along with it some of the conversation around the trends have been a little conservative, but it's just keeping the expectations low because there is a lot of the season left and there's still time to go out and get your presents if you haven't gotten them already >> a lot of season left, but quickly shrinking. michael, thanks so much for being with us. michael lasser at ubs. >> deirdre, nikola shares plunging 12% this morning, losing two-thirds of their value since hitting highs of the year. hat is behind the stock's latest drop is next. stay with us pair the path forward is sponsored by adyen business, not boundaries

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interested in gm's hydro tech fuel cell system. it's very interesting to us. we're interested in the battery system both of those are interesting to us and we continue to talk to them about those things. >> that's mark russell last night on "mad money" with jim cramer investors would have liked to have gotten a more definitive view, but that said, so much news regarding evs today citi initiates fisker with a buy and you've got morgan stanley cutting ford on some of the

headwinds that come along with transitioning to ev. so a lot of chop in the marketplace. >> yeah, and, you know, as an investor, you've got to consider do you look at this sort of in the short-term or long-term. going back to nikola, shares have still tripled year to date and the loop capital analyst says the deal falling through is a short-term risk, but in the long-term they still have the advantage, and if you believe that it's a matter of when, not if, heavy duty trucks are powered by batteries and fuel cells, nikola could still be a bet. it's hard to see this when you have all the noise coming through in the short-term. >> elon musk and tesla might make this ev stuff look easy it's not easy. you get the sense some investors were looking at nikola as the next tesla if you take a look at how each has performed since march, tesla

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morning, down about 6%, despite posting a beat on the top and bottom lines, raising full year guidance joining us now first on cnbc, the vmware's ceo, pat gelsinger. great to see you happy thanksgiving it seems to be the guidance here that's giving investors -- i mean your gross margins were strong overall, but the projections for the next year,

particularly it seems because of some on-premise stuff, not what the street was looking for >> i think first to you, jon, carl, deirdre, great to be with you. also happy thanksgiving to you and all of your listeners, despite the tumult of the year, we do have so much to be thankful for it has been a blessed year for all of us. we're happy with our performance and beat and the raise, but the guidance as we look into next year, i think customers -- you know, the market is saying what's happening with the on-premise business, help us understand that, even as our subscription business again showed very good growth, a large portion of our business is on-premise and how is that being affected by this environment and then the lowering of the margin and growth rate versus where some were expecting it to be next year we are leaning into what we call the sas smile and we're going to accelerate that portion of our business and it does have some

pressure on the growth rate and the margins as we lean into the migration. we also take a more modest view of the economic recovery we think we still have a long way to go and until we're fully on the other side of the pandemic, that's what led to our guidance and we feel confident in the overall business and our strategic role, but anxious to see some of these things materialize. >> i meant to say your operating margin, the 31%, was well above the street, which was a little below 28% in the ex sppectation. tell me what's happening this season this holiday season, q4, sees such strong demand for technology, for cloud services i imagine for your technology as well we've been talking a lot about omni channel and the need for flexibility for so many businesses heading into 2021 how is that showing up with your customers and their command for what you provide >> yeah, and i think we really see a tale of two cities, where as customers need to rapidly

scale for these new areas such as delivery systems, omni channel, as you say, but we're also seeing the on-premise projects where a lot of our businesses, those are being slowed those are being prioritized differently. people candidates get back into the data center yet because the buildings aren't open and the projects are thus being delayed. we don't see any losses in our business, just the delay of some of those transformational businesses and projects as we would call it. but we, too, are seeing an acceleration of our subscription and saas, 44% growth in that area of your business last quarter. we also have a lot of strength there. as that gets bigger, of course it could be a positive view for vmware for the long-term, but we still have a lot of work to do to see our on-premise transformational businesses get back to normal in a

post-pandemic world. >> we're getting word that the vaccines, mid-year, 2021, we could have people returning to locations. do you expect that to happen with data center as well and for there to be some built-up demand for those kinds of services, or is that going to shift to the cloud and is the on-prem business not going to come roaring back >> we indicated the overall economy, we call it the nike swoosh my friend john donahue doing a little bit of advertising for nike there we see it as a gradual bit of business so far. we see resumption and we said in the q4 guide that we see in the pipeline momentum for some of those projects to get started, but still not back to the level they were. the first half will improve over where we are in q4, but it's really not until second half where we see things sort of resuming to normal overall we're sort of like halfway through the pandemic

until there's a broadly deployed vaccine. we still have nine-ish months to go, so a long way to go. so for us it's going to be a first half, second half story next year where much more of the normality of on-premise and transformational activities will be weighted to the second half of the year. and obviously q1 of this year was a stronger quarter we really didn't see a pandemic impact so much more the second half of the year we'll see that being the case and that's all factored into the guidance we gave. >> got you so next week i'm calling cloud week, we've got amazon re-invent coming up, there will be focus on future technology, particularly artificial intelligence how is that particular trend playing out for vmware, perhaps even the technologies that you're deploying >> we're looking forward to that as well. our relationship with them as a

cloud partner is going great and that was one of the strong factors in our results this quarter, greater than 100% growth in that portion of our business overall, you know, quite excited about what we've called the democracitization of ai and we announced a major partnership with nvidia this year. we're working together with nvidia, the world's leader in ai and it will fully be delivered on top of the vmware platform. so a major partnership to thing ai to scale. and we're also building ai directly into our products we're taking many of the operational tasks of optimizing storage and networks and we're doing it with ai and we released what we called ai ops at vmware this year and we're getting spectacular results, 30% to 80% better than if they were being manually tuned by individuals. that's sort of like free performance for our customers,

so quite excited about that area in the past we were the best person to respond to our customers' needs, in the future we're going to tell them what we did and a lot of that is going to be using ai and machine learning. >> a lot of anticipation from you for what you and your partners over at aws are going to announce next week. we will hear from them patrick, it was great to hear from you happy thanksgiving, once again. >> thank you as well always great to be on the show, jon. in the meantime after the break, the governor of mississippi, tate reeves on his state's vaccine distribution strategy we're back in a couple of minutes.

welcome back, everybody. i'm sue herera here is your cnbc news update at this hour. the white house is considering lifting travel bans for non-u.s. citizens coming from brazil, brittain and 26 other european nations. that's cording to reuters. the move would be a bid to help struggling u.s. airlines in the canary islands at least eight people have died after a boat smashed into rocks. more than 30 people were on the overcrowded ship and it is one of 17 boats intercepted by

rescuers in the last 24 hours. in italy, researchers are testing an electronic monitoring system on covid-19 patients who are isolating at them. vital signs are checked every five minutes and transmitted to doctors via the patient's smartphone the system is disposable and it works for ten days, allowing patients are mild symptoms to stay out of the hospital you are up to date that's the news update this hour carl, i'll send it back to you. >> sue, we'll see you soon sue herera mississippi is developing its covid-19 vaccine distribution strategy as 19 more counties mnow have been added to the mask mandate list. the governor of mississippi joins us this morning, tate reeves great to have you with us. happy thanksgiving thanks for the time. >> thanks for having me on and happy thanksgiving to you and your family and the entire cnbc family. >> thank you very much i want to get to the vaccine distribution in a moment, but just shorter term, walk me

through the calculus on the mask mandate and any news about how hospitals are managing the new caseloads. >> well, there's no doubt that we are taking a different approach than most of my colleagues around the country. there are statewide mask mandates in approximately 40 states around the country. but my opinion is that our goal should not be to just focus on those three words, but to focus on what can we do as leaders to ensure that the majority, and quite frankly, as many as possible are actually wearing masks in public. so we've taken a county by county approach and we have a very objective criteria. if you as a county have more than 200 cases over a two-week period, or more than 500 cases per 100,000 residents, then you automatically have additional restrictions put on you, which includes a mask mandate, but it also limits the size of crowds in those individual counties and we are seeing rising cases here, not to the extent that you're

seeing in many other places around the country but because of that, we added 19 additional counties and today i have exactly 41 out of 82 of my counties that have those additional restrictions in place. we think it's going to help us slow the spread. >> and meantime, are hospitals having to defer elective surgeries, bring in staff from other states where they can? anything like that >> well, we definitely have challenges within our health care system. there's no question about that in fact, in our state we're a very rural state and many of our hospitals actually have icu bed capacity issues, even in years when there is not covid. to give you an idea, at our peak of total number of covid cases back in early august, we had 337 patients in icu beds with covid confirmed. today we have about 210 cases. so we're at about 65% to 70% of

our capacity do they have challenges, absolutely but you mentioned something that i think is important when you talk about bringing in staff from other states, that's exceptionally challenging right now because, unlike the initial surge in new york city and the northeast in march and april, and unlike the surge in the sunbelt in the south, what we're seeing today is there's a pretty significant surge in virtually every state around the nation. and so that limits your ability to bring in staff from other states, which then of course puts even more challenges on the hospital system. >> governor reeves, i just want to go back to your mask mandate and i just wonder if it's somewhat backward looking. if you mandate masks only in areas once they've reached a certain threshold, wouldn't that be too late? why not make it mandatory statewide since we know that works and we know it's preventative >> we certainly know that if you wear a mask that it is certainly helpful. it helps protect yourself and it

also, the data shows, helps protect those around you so there's no doubt that if you wear a mask, it is helpful in slowing the spread of the virus. we don't necessarily -- cannot necessarily argue that a mandate itself causes the virus to slow down, because what matters is whether or not the people are actually adhering to whatever the rules you put in place it's not the words on the page, statewide mask mandate, which has become a buzzword across the country, but if you'll recall back in early march the buzzword was ventilators and shelter in place and one after another. every leader of state and community should do whatever they believe is in the best interest of their citizens to get the most number of people to comply and to participate in the measures that actually work. and that's what we're trying to do in our state. we have seen it work, by the way. we took this exact same approach in june and july and august

during our first spike we went up to approximately 9,300 cases over a seven-day rolling average, and now -- and then we went county by county and we saw significant decline down to about 3,000 cases over a seven-day period now we've turned that, unfortunately, with winter approaching, that has turned around. >> governor, i do want to ask you about vaccine distribution, but before you get into that a bit more, my understanding, mississippi does have a mandate for childhood immunizations to enter school so i'm not clear on what's the difference if you're going to mandate that, why not mandate masks? isn't it a similar public health concern? and then, please, do talk about the strategy around vaccine distribution >> yeah, there's no doubt that -- and this may surprise some of your viewers, but the

immunization record of mississippi is outstanding when compared to virtually every other state around the nation. we do not require young kids to get vaccinations we do require them to get vaccinations if they want to attend our public schools. and because of that, we have a significant, very, very high rate of immunizations. that is a law that was passed by the mississippi legislature. that has been in place for many years. and i think it's a good law. but that is sort of the difference where we find ourselves now. as the governor who is operating under emergency statutes, it is my view that it should only be utilized in terms of a statewide mask mandate if and when the numbers call for it, when it is justified, when it is truly an emergency. we are moving towards that area. but, again, if i thought that putting a statewide mask mandate in today would lead to more of my fellow mississippians wearing

a mask, i would have a different consideration. what i'm suggesting to you is that when i named 19 counties yesterday whose numbers had increased to meet our criteria, i feel confident that the vast majority of people in those 19 counties fully understand and fully appreciate the danger zone that we find ourselves in. and i believe that the participation of those individuals in those 19 counties is far better today than it was some year or so ago. i'll also tell you, and i went through a lot of this yesterday during my press conference, if you look at those states around the country that instituted statewide mask mandates nearing the early summer and kept those statewide mask mandates in place -- and by the way, i'm a numbers guy, i'm a data guy and i look at the numbers every single day but if you look at many states around the country that have had long-term mask mandates in place, their numbers are actually far worse than ours and i would submit to you the

reason for that, at least partially, and i don't know all of the details about every other state, but one of the reasons for that is that people become complacent if you leave these kind of orders in place for a long period of time, people ultimately say, well, he must be talking about someone else because i don't know anybody who has the virus or i don't have the virus and therefore they become complacent. that's the reason i believe the county by county approach is far better and by the way, the w.h.o. and so many others have advocated for more local measures that are dependent upon what the actual virus spread in the communities look like. >> maybe you're right. maybe there is urgency in doing it more local. i had one last question for you, governor we're going to get the fda panel meeting in early to mid-december assuming all goes well and this thing gets regulatory clearance, when do you expect to do your first vaccinations in the state?

>> well, i met with secretary azar, with hhs and many other governors via a conference call earlier this week and my impression is as soon as the fda approves it, there will be distributions occurring the very next day so we have our distribution plan in place in mississippi. we're going to get these vaccines out very, very quickly. this is a huge -- it's a huge challenge. we know that but the president's investment in operation warp speed is going to make a huge difference. we're so much further along than we might otherwise have been and the fact that there is a vaccine means that there is light at the end of the tunnel. but as i've been telling my people in mississippi and i say to people all across the country, right now we're in a bridge period. we've got to bridge the gap from today when numbers are rising, to that point at which the vaccine is readily available for those most in need of it, which in our state we're going to focus on health care workers and the most vulnerable.

>> governor tate reeves, thanks to you for all your hard work and sharing it with viewers. appreciate it. >> thank you >> tate reeves of mississippi. slack halted on some alarming and impressive headlines out of the "wall street journal." >> yeah, this would be big the journal, according to sources, is reporting that salesforce has recently been in talks to buy slack slack has a market value of about $17 billion and, carl and jon, slack has been one of these names, a work-from-home winner, but perhaps an under performer we haven't seen the games like others in the space, so it would be a very, very big purchase for $17 billion. but, jon, we know that salesforce has not been shy on the m&a front. we've seen a number of big acquisitions over the last few years that has been working out

for the company quite well shares this year are up some 50% to slack's 40%. >> yeah, and salesforce down right now on this news almost 3% it is rebounding right now, though, as we speak. you can see the little blip there at the bottom of the red line you've got to remember that salesforce look at buying twitter not too long ago this would be an interesting more enterprise focused move and a little bit more on the kpun communication and productivity front inside salesforce as they've been building out a suite of cloud-based productivity products. it would put them more squarely in competition with microsoft and they're also battling with adobe, guys, when it comes to the experience technology. >> we've got shares reopening now. it was halted at about 7%

increase, and currently now looking about 16%. the journal did not look into pricing here, so the market is going to have to do some work on their own on that front. but it would be an interesting commentary, assuming the journal has got this right, that crm sees some value, even as we've seen multiples in the space go quite higher in light of what's happening in the enterprise. >> yeah, we should note, too, that slack halted once again for volatility but the big story around slack and why it's been one of these relative underperformers in the stay-at-home space this year is because of its intense competition with microsoft microsoft has been incredibly aggressive with teams and some investors have been worried that that is eating into slack's opportunities. so perhaps, you wonder, with a salesforce, does it become a better competitor against microsoft, jon does that competition become

even fiercer certainly we use slack a lot we use teams as well you bounce back and forth. but i don't think that there's a clear winner in this space by any means yet. >> we would have to hear a lot more about this. the stock is once again halted at about the levels where it was trading back at the beginning of september. it's still way off the highs that slack reached back over the summer but part of the challenge now, both for slack and for microsoft with teams and office, is not just enabling communication within an organization, around products, around projects, around initiatives, but now more and more this is an area where microsoft has been a little bit more, slack is reaching out and using its technology to bridge organizations that are working together looking to do that in a secure way where people are able to keep the secrets secret and collaborate on the things that companies at different enterprises want to work

together on. that fits more squarely into the wheelhouse of a salesforce, which is very much from the beginning -- i mean, it's salesforce, it's been about interaction between organizations and between large organizations. we'll have to hear more about this and see how real this is, what kind of pricing there is, and whether these conversations continue to go forward >> we should also note, carl and jon, this isn't the first time that slack has been talked about as an acquisition. it has long been seen as sort of valuable in this collaboration communication space. it has partnerships with some of the work-from-home plays like zoom i think there were rumors earlier this year that perhaps amazon could be interested it certainly is a good enterprise play and i would be surprised, though, if stewart butterfield, the ceo, would be open to an acquisition whenever you talk to him, he just has such big ambitions and you know that they're fighting

microsoft overseas, in europe as well, bringing antitrust scrutiny to microsoft over there in the way that it competes with teams. so it will be interesting to hear stewart butterfield's take on this. salesforce shares have come off lows they were down i think as much as 4%. >> all right, guys we'll watch that we'll see if there are any halo effects on any other small to mid-cap growth momentum software plays. a number of which are going to be having earnings in the coming days and weeks the dow is down 200 and the s&p back to 3623 we'll take a break and be back in a moment.

as we head to break, another quick look at slack and salesforce sales after dow jones reports salesforce has been in talks to buy slack slack now up 30% salesforce down 3% microsoft hit session lows on the niece, teams a fierce competitor of slack. and intuit announced this morning it would sell credit karma's tax preparation unit to square that boosted that cash app

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we continue to watch shares of slack. work up positi30%, salesforce dn about 4% on this news from dow jones that salesforce has explored buying slack. we will see where that goes. the stock -- slack has been halted a couple of times and, deirdre, you know, there's been so much m&a towards the end of the year in general, this space they're playing in is a very hot space i'm looking for other stocks that are, perhaps, moving in sympathy i can't help but notice asana, dust dustin moskovitz that stock is up 9% just today perhaps investors anticipating a little bit of eyes on these enterprise tools that help people to work better. >> right we've been talking about it all week, all month, all year, but this digital transformation that

has been sped up, i think a lot of these big companies are looking at, how do they take advantage of it to be part of this next leg of digital growth, which is going to continue long past the pandemic. look at other shares that are reacting i know i mentioned microsoft bouncing off session lows. down 0.6%. they were seen as sort of winning this battle, perhaps, in work space collaboration against slack, but if you have a better feel, marc benioff, that could be nice for that collaboration if salesforce were to take on slack for about $17 billion, its latest market value, that would represent its biggest acquisition ever as i mentioned before, it really hasn't been shy about taking on new companies and getting into new spaces, carl >> i will take it, deirdre we've got dan ives on the phone. you know, good analyst mind to

talk about this with dan, what do you think of the prospect of salesforce taking on slack? in what ways might that shift the enterprise software landscape? >> look, i think this would be an aggressive but smart move for benioff. salesforce continues to expand their landscape, we've seen that with tableau slack is a unique class they can go after >> is it possible, dan, though just looking at perhaps the downside of such a deal, could it be a distraction at a time when they are focusing on more growth in that front office and the enterprise space is there a way of looking at it like that? >> yeah, i think it would definitely raise some integration concerns if you look at what salesforce has done, how they negotiate

acquisitions, no doubt, they are in the hunt for bigger deals as we're entering a golden age of cloud computing. i think this is something that's definitely on the radar, if not slack, another asset of similar type of capability >> dan, would it raise any anti-trust concerns? i know we've talked about microsoft being such a fierce competitor to slack, but does a slack/salesforce combination, you know, divvy up the field into two players would that be too much for regulators >> i think it does maybe raise some eyebrows on the anti-trust front, especially given more and more focus within the beltway on anti-trust if you look at salesforce, obviously, microsoft with teams, i mean, that would be a two-horse race and i do think slack views it as they see a challenge competing more and more against microsoft.

they've talked about that. salesforce deal would give them a lot more horsepower to go after nadella and redman. >> but does that make it harder for -- sorry, go ahead >> dan, do google or amazon have to answer here and even the likes of an adobe or an s.a.p., which has not fared so well, even during this pandemic and the focus on enterprise software? you talk about it being a two-horse race we have to be quick. >> it's a great point because i think this would be a shot across the bow i think curry and google would definitely have to accelerate their acquisition strategy to the previous question, i think there is an anti-trust view here that would be more and more scrutinized but that would be a shot across the bow to google where they would have to get that m&a engine running. >> dan ives from wedbush, great perspective. thank you. we'll keep our eye on the

overall impact of the report out of the journal about salesforce and slack. salesforce shares have been a little bit more of a drag on the dow, the last few moments, taking about 70 points off the index. session low on the dow was down 240. that kind of coincided with governor cuomo of new york saying new york city has topped 6,000 cases for the first time since april. have a good thanksgiving let's get to the judge i'm scott wapner, welcome to "the halftime report." means to your money, are stocks too tired for end of the year burst or perfectly primed for one last push? we debate that joining me are joe, jon, rob with ubs private wealth management is one of forbes top 100 financial advisers good to see everybody on this