good morning and welcome to the official start of the holiday shopping season. black friday may look different in year, but still very important to retailers we'll talk about possible winners and losers straight ahead. and bitcoin boom and then bust well, the stories behind the big swings over the last 48 hours. you got to hear to understand it and we all need a little holiday cheer this year, so we'll introduce you to a trend lighting up the nation it is friday, november 27th, 2020 "squawk box" begins right now. ♪

welcome to "squawk box." i'm becky quick with andrew ross sorkin and steve liesman, good to see you >> interesting times to be hosting the show good morning >> let's take a look at the futures. hope you had a great thanksgiving let's take a look at what is happening. we have a half day of trading today, exchanges are closing at 1:00 p.m., but before that, green arrows across the board. nasdaq looks like it will open up about 46 points for all three major averages, this is the third week out of four weeks that you are seeing gains. we're on track for gains once again this week. and if you are looking at this

month, this is the third best performance we've seen in history for the s&p 500. second best month was december of 1991 when themarket was up about 11%. and in april of 2020, that is the best we were up by 12.68%, that was earlier this year. so two of the best performances not on a points term but percentage basis and i think that lays out a huge case for why you can't try and time the markets because if you do, you will miss huge gains like that. and huge declines too. but if you are jumping in and out, you could not be in when the markets are up and that is bad for long term investors. and let's take a look at the treasury market. you will see that the ten year right now is yielding 0.862% pretty steady with where we've

been and nasdaq year to date up 35% year to date so that has been the phenomenal story even though it hasn't been performing quite as strong as the other ones year to date, it has been a massive performer. let's take a look at oil prices real quickly this morning too. you will see that there is a little bit of pressure on wti, right now indicated down but just slightly. still trading well above the lows that we had seen recently of $42.32 a barrel steve, over to you yeah, a lot of people gotten early jump on holiday shopping deals. adobe analytics say thanksgiving day is on track to break $6 billion in online sales up from 4.2 billion last year. several chains kept their physical stores closed to try to limit crowds and dough badobe says online sales will be up 40% over last

year and with a look at which retailers are best positioned, dana telsey from tell city advi tel city advisory group. do you have a team of people that normally go out what is it like 1:00 in the morning, 2:00 in the morning did you go out like always >> things are different, but like a post man delivers the mail, we go to the stores. so we are hitting the store, hitting online there is nowhere that we won't be in order to be able to identify what is happening it is definitely a change. think about the shorter showers. the first store i saw opened was best buy opened at 5:00, but a lot of the other stores, it is 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. or even 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m shorter hours, limited occupancy. and frankly what people want to see, what we heard on the last session, people need a little

bit of joy this holiday season, we're getting to the other side, a vaccine is coming. it is about feeling a bit of joy. i think that that is the theme of holiday 2020. joy and safety >> there is so much to talk about. but give us the top line view here did you see a lot of people? and i don't know what i want to hear from you. i think i went from you didn't see a lot of people because people are versus about the virus. on the other hand, from a business economics point of view, i want to hear that you saw a lot of people. >> no, we're not seeing a lot of people i don't think that you will see a lot of people today. >> good. >> i think that people will shop online, i think when they do go to the store, i think that they are going with a purpose traffic will be down, it can't be like it was last year even the past few weeks leading up to this, you had amazon prime day, walmart, target, there just isn't going to be the same type of holiday season because you don't have the ability to entin

other people you are go tailer run virtual black friday event i remember when people within busting down the doors there is no physical busting down the doors is there a virtual busting downs doors that retailers are able to creative >> i think they are. those retailers that are oomnice retailers are doing it take a look at what happened monday you had sax and bloomingdales each doing their virtual holiday window openings. windows say a lot. you are seeing windows today, yes, they are showing merchandise, but using words whether it is kindness, unity, joy. people want to be together virtually and then hopefully down the line sooner rather than later they can be together physically but traffic will be lower. it is not the same type of

holiday season that we've had in the past >> i keep hearing that it will be harder to fulfill orders online, there could be shortages on items do you think that is really the case >> yes inventory levels are lower they will try to chase into any demand shipping surcharges are up you are seeing retailers put on their websites you have on order by december 4, december 10 this order to get it by december 24 so disorder early in order to receive it i think that that is one of the themes of this holiday season. >> dana, i'm confused about whether and how much black friday still matters we had prime day in october this year and i started to see the black friday advertisements beginning in i think it was early

november what kind of effect is that going to have on shopping, on spending, on the retailers and how they did business this holiday season >> i think overall y all all yoe events taking place. but when you think about the consumer, those mid to upper level consumer, they haven't traveled, they haven't gone to any entertainment or shows or things like that, so they do have dollars to spend. and we may see consumers spend a little bit more whether on consumer electronics, whether on home furnishings and will it be a continuation of active but also a little bit of dressup that people want so jewelry could be out there too. i think that black friday is still very important, but not like it was in the past. because we don't have an opportunity to gauge by traffic. you are only gauging by traffic in terms of what you are hearing with online numbers. you can't physically get the same amount of people in a store. >> dana, there is a lot of talk

about the k shape recovery you have many millions of americans that don't have work, millions getting benefits. and some people are at home and working from home just like normal does that k shape show up in your expectations for how retailers will fair this christmas? >> i think retailers yefr overall will fair around a 2% increase it seems like that it will be a decent holiday season but very different holiday season >> but do dollar stores do as sw well as tiffanys >> tiffanys could do better, but a ton of people are unemployed, so dollar stores could have a better christmas than they had last year. and so will discounters.

and pafrts it is t part of it is the seamless shopping experience. i think that luxury could have a good christmas given that high income people didn't travel as much as they did in the past. and lower income people are looking for the value of the deals. and what everyone is looking for is to manage that inventory carefully so you don't get stuck at the end of the day. and it is about innovative product that helps you deliver the feeling of you wow, what do you look like today, what can you give that you will use why are people using pelotons nearly 21 times compared to 11 last year. >> an amazing increase in what people are using at home >> dana, thanks for continuings thanksgiving tradition under very different circumstances you and your team stay safe. >> thank you you too. look forward to seeing you in person hopefully next year

it is a tradition. a very long tradition. when we come back, we'll talk broke some of the huge swiks ngn bitcoin over the holiday we'll explain some of the drivers of what has pushed it down but first, as we head to a break, check out the biggest s&p movers before we talk about tax-smart investing, what's new?

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astrazeneca and oxford are defending their trials following big questions about how the candidate was being tested the company announced combined results found that the vaccine was 70% effective, but that was from combining a smaller group of people who received an unintentionally lower dose and that dosage showed a 90% effectiveness versus the larger group of people who received the higher dosage and that showed 62% effectiveness. thehead of the white house vaccine task force raised doubts about the trial data and the drug's efficacy rate but easy

zen came says that the highest standards were used and that additional analysis will be conducted. but this is a really serious issue and this is a big issue for people who are proponents of vaccines who want to shake sumat the public trusts in the vaccines astrazeneca was not really open about this they had just said combined results were 60% a70% and didn't explain that the lower dosage was a complete accident because they had a problem with the manufacturing. these are thousands of people who got the wrong dosage only because the company had a manufacturing error and didn't realize the problem. so that is a huge problem. on top of that, you are now talking about only 2700 people who got this dosage and that is not anywhere near the much larger scale

and they were only testing people up to age 55. and that has been a big question the ren we were exci reason we were excited about know der florida amoderna and p were testing them on older adults and adults still saw more than t 94% efficacy and is this a disease that attacks elderly people more than younger people so you need to make sure that vaccines that often don't work in older people won't work in vaccines so a lot of questions being raised and is this tthis is the third d be very promising. and it doesn't require the same storage temperatures that need to be there for both the pfizer and the moderna vaccine.

so this would be something that could be shipped to places where you couldn't control it quite as well, but it does raise serious questions and probably an argument for slowing things down to do the research more thoroughly >> becky, one thing you didn't mention that caught my eye, this idea that there were disclosures by the company in a call with analysts that were not otherwise made public. and that really bothered me. i think that these companies -- i think some of them realize what they are doing is something in a transcends their responsibilities as private companies and now it is critical importance of gaining the public trust. we did some sampling on this and there is a lot of people out there who are concerned that the vaccines could come to market pushed by profits or politics. and so it is very important here that they understand the importance of transparency

and it will have a critical impact on whether or not the vaccines have the effect that they can have if people take them >> i will tell you, th company pushed back and said that we had a huge press conference, we were available for hours to these reporters to ask questions, none of them asked that and we also had a representative from the company here on this program that monday morning. we didn't know to ask that question because they didn't give us any of the disclosure until later. it was a day or two later that it was an accident that this happened it was one of the researchers talkingreuters who said this was serendipity that we had a lower companiesage and it wdosas take you didn't understand how much that you were dosing people? i think that it will be an

effective vaccine, but to your point transparency and telling everybody everything you know is important because of the number of people who don't believe in vaccines or everyone this vaccine process. if you want to work, you have to have buy-in from the public. i had people blowing back on me on twitter. but no, the reason that you have to be very transparent is so that people can trust the science underneath it. i'm pro vaccine, but i'm making sure that everybody gets to see the process and how it works and that we understand it and that you don't try to take mistakes and sweep it under the rug because that is when you will have a really big push brack. but they have to figure it out they say that they have fixed the manufacturing process.

so there will be more testing that needs to be done. >> and they still don't know why the lower dose worked than the other dose so crazy too there is a lot to discuss on that fronts and we will throughout the program and meantime, a big market story this morning, i don't think how much you have been focused on it, but bitcoin is moving all over the place very volatile trading this week. it closed at an all-time high. but some people are calling it the thursday night massacre or -- i think i saw that trending on twitter for a while there and bitcoin now at 16,809. it has come down and why? well, a thread -- a tweet thread i should say from coin basis ceo about rumored plans of regulation by the treasury

and the ceo of coin base took to twitter effectively said that he heard rumors and is aware that they may try to regular late bitcoin. knot maybe how you think, but make it suchte bitcoin. knot maybe how you think, but make it such that what are calmed private wallets, not that they wouldn't be allowed, but you would have to have full disclosure over who is transferring money from one p y place to another you would have to know who they are. you have to know your customer, right. >> and in this case he is saying that that would be a very bad thing for bitcoin which then

raises the question of, well, if you can't know your customer, is there a problem with bitcoin unto itself. what are people using bitcoin for. but that has put pressure on that stock >> and 4-- >> i shouldn't call it a stock, but it looks like would be these days >> do they really believe that this currency, the items, the thing, will be allowed to become an essential method of currency in a coverage without substantial regulation from either the treasury or the central bank they have to be trading this and believing in this particular thing, what do i want to call it, but with some belief that if it takes off and becomes a central method for exchange, that it will be regulated. they won't allow this stuff to than in a way that you don't know your customer they won't allow to work or

behave in a way where it becomes central to the monetary workings of a country without substantial regulation i don't know what they think but the idea that they are expecting no regulation and success of the currency seems to be at odds >> i would say today most people invested this bitcoin think of it as a commodity, not a currency yet, with the up side potentially being a process speccispec i prospective currency in the future and you don't really transact using it, you transfcsfer bit qn to somebody that puts it into the u.s. dollar. so almost a quasi currency full. i would have thought hearing that the government wants to regulate it, would have actually baby a bullish sign long term.

because it would be more mainstream >> except the interference is -- >> yeah, becks >> go ahead, finish e, i'm sorr. >> no, no, the point was made. i would have thought that with the government regulating it, that actually more people might actually use it. yes, it makes it harder to transact with people in other countries. that is 100% clear it makes it harder to -- for criminals to use it. that is 100% clear so if the whole thing is use td for money laundering, yes, the whole thing falls apart. but if it isn't, i would have thought that this would be long term helpful to it >> the one thing that i would say is if we can look at bitcoin, and we've looked at a bunch of different time measurements, if you go back nine months of it and show the one month chart, britt coitcoinp

almost five fold and i think this is the explanation that this is a really volatile trading instrument, that this is not something that you are -- it is something where you see a lot of speculation that is taking place. and people who have bid it up and then get nervous and drive back be down and i think that there was some sort of intonation that this regulation would be a little more heavy handed than some might like because i think that the bitcoin investor wants to see, yes, you're right, a approval by governments and that would require regulation but they just want to be a light touch and not anything sthat shuts down things too much and just look at how quickly the run has been and so not surprising to see a pull back. but any timing you lose $3,000 off a $19,000 and change price, you have to pay attention. but still look at that chart and where it has rub sinn since mar. >> and just one comment, i don't know anything about where

bitcoin is going, but i know one thing that i'm pretty darn sure about, the sovereign will never lose control of its currency so whatever that means for how high and how widespread bitcoin can come as a means of which change, and i take andrew's point that it is seen as a commodity, but thinking about its horizon, the sovereign will never lose control of its currency, that pardon the pun you can take to the bank >> we'll see and i imagine that you'll be getting some twitter love and hate in just a moment as a result of that comments. but meantime, i'll ltell you more facebook's crypto libra could laufrk launch as early as january and they will issue a single digital coin backed by the u.s.

dollar and other currencies could come at a later date when libra first launched, there was a lot of which assignment when what it would mean for digital wallets. because maybe they might hold things like bitcoin and others and then it seemed to falling apart but now resideurrecresurr. you keep track of all that because i sure can't coming up, the 2020 spac trend and which names have been performing the best. stay tuned this is decision tech. find a stock based on your interests or what's trending. get real-time insights in your customized view of the market. it's smarter trading technology for smarter trading decisions. fidelity. ♪

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welcome back one of the biggest trends for big investors h s has been the spacs. and we're shedding light on how they are doing so far and what type are outperforming and leslie picker is joining us with the spac story. >> thank you and for a group of hedge funds known as the spac mafia, the trade goes something like that, buy share, hold on until a deal is announced where you would see a pop and then shortly sell after. if the stock doesn't pop, investors and spacs can -- on average 90% of professional investors divested their spac holdings before the deal was closed so the question becomes, who is left holding the bag and how

does the spac perform after the mafia move out our team dealed t eed pull the n return and it was just over 5% as of november 20. but history shows that spacs can be a lose being proposition, that 12 months post-merger produced negative returns every year going back to 2010. some say though that the caliber of spac manager this is year could lead to enter returns in the future >> and i have a question for you. i hear blank check and i get nervous. how many systemic risk do you think is embedded? are spacs small enough not to be an issue or is it something that if it goes bad we'll be talking about bailouts and things like that >> i don't think there is

systemic risk per se, but there has been a lot of money that has gone into this space, $70 billion year it dateto date. and one key tenant of spacs is that they have the down side protection so i think that that is the defense to being some sort of systemic risk. the real risk that comes to these things is that they raise all of this money and they aren't able to find a deal so therefore they have to essentially redeem, the sponsors could lose some money there. but i don't see much in the way of systemic risk per se. the long run, if you do see kind of alike a deal frenzy, and down the road we look back and say, wow, those were some really awful deals, people lost their money, then i think that that is where kind of the reckoning could take place but i don't know if that is necessarily a systemic risk to the fankinancial system.

>> leslie, thanks very much. and coming up, we'll be talking retail winners and losers and we led into the most important time of the year for the industry plus a holiday trend that is sweepings nation my house too contessa brewer has the bright details on what is my favorite story of the day >> you know what, i never thought that i would be saying this on black friday, but if you have waited until today to start your holiday decorating, you are probably late to the party coming up, we'll haul out the holly. 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.

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womelcome back. many families are breaking long standing traditions because of the pandemic however the retailers may be getting a boost in other way contessa brewer is joining us from kingston new york great to see you >> reporter: so awesome to see all of the holiday lights. a lot of families have hard and fast rule, no tree, no wreathes,

no christmas lights until after thanksgiving but this is 2020 and a lot of rules are out the window families are pulling out the blowup figucharacters and pullig out the lights target, home depot and lowes are ready to fill the need and they say that the promotions that they are rolling out to help consumer boss are spending so much time at home, and if you are the kind of black friday viewer who wants some hard and fast numbers about, well, how sales will happen at the holidays, here where sales of holiday items from october 1 to

this week, how about this, up 56%off last year even before thanksgiving pretty remarkable. becky. >> it is but add me to the list before we've had our christmas he trees up for a week at this point, we got three this year. fake ones because we were of a phrase this they would be dead by the time christmas got around but we needed the lights put the rest up yesterday and i will admit for the first time in my life, yesterday on amazon, i ordered one of those 8-foot blowup santa claus things for the yard never thought i'd do that. but the 4-year-old really liked the neighbor's black cat down the street at halloween. made me go every day to visit the black cat. so we're getting santa and he will be on the yard come tuesday. >> so you are partaking in the whole griswold thing where you have to best the neighbors we'll see a lot more of these displays coming up because if you can't invite the neighbors

over for a holiday cocktail party, what can you do you can show up bigger and better than ever that is if you can get to the day without -- there is a big brawl in my house hold because we had a hard and fast rule that i wanted to change this year and somebody else said no. so i have to deefl with thal wit today. >> and this is a year throw out all the rules. love the story thank you. and joining us is the ceo of j rogers enterprises and also sarah and what will the holiday season look like for the retailers? >> i think you just told us, but if anything, i think that it will be a strong holiday season and i think that it will be a strong holiday season in my kind

of retail because the experiences aren't there, references aren't there, you can't throw a party, don't have to pay the caterings none of that will happen, so it is all going in so sweaters. so i think that we'll see sales up in the 5% range and i would have never dreamed that when all this started but already have my poinsettias up, the wreathes up, trees are coming tuesday so i think that we've all done the same thing and if you haven't started your holiday shopping, you are behind the curve. >> sarah, what does it mean for the luxury retailers >> and we are expecting it for be a fairly strong season

overall. across all of retail to jan's point, up probably around 5% so looking at 755 billion plus the biggest difference, and this is true for luxury as well, that the shopping period is lasting much longer. and then a lot more of it will be on line we're estimating that probably over a third of sales will be online this year >> amend between tnd between t i was surprised with this last reporting, numbers show that traffic was up at least at target, maybe not quite as much in terms of the basket side at walmart. and i wonder, are people at the lower ech he said of the spe

lower end of the spectrum starting to feel the pinch >> we see the numbers all the time, but you can't really see it in sales. we're seeing it in strength at the bottom and all the way across so there is something going on there. but i still think a lot of what is happening is the transference of where the sales are coming from if you are not doing other things, you have the ability to spend on your house. and then if you look at the top 15 things being sold for christmas already, 14 of them are tech i think as we believe that it will be over, it will really blossom. true luxury, i'm with you on that, i think that it will be strong >> sarah, one question on that if online sales are stronger, i always thought of the high end

luxury as being something that was maybe a little resistant to online sales because if you are spending that much money, maybe you want to see it in person, maybe you want to touch it and hold it. is that not the case anymore >> so it has only changed and particularly in the last, i guess, eight, nine months we've seen significant change. so luxury because much slower to onli online some was by choice covid changed all that and now we've seen a real acceleration during the covid period that we expect to stick. physical stores will still be important in luxury, but absolutely online is going to accelerate beyond what we see and that will stick. and by the way, we saw that in asia with saw it with the sars crisis in '02, 0'03, we saw a

shift. >> and did that not change after sars >> some fell off, but a lot of it stayed. i mean, again, i think when it is safe to be installed again, i believe many shoppers especially luxury will still do that. what we will see though is a lot of the online will stick and i hate the word, but this onmnichanne omnichannel, anything that strofs both online and offline will be huge and we're seeing it in america across the spectrum of price points buy online, pick up curbside or in store will be one of the biggest drivers this holiday season >> sarah and jan, want to than you both good to see you. >> thanks. when we come back, stocking stuffers of a different kind we'll be talking about opportunities in equities when "squawk box" comes right back.

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welcome back to "squawk box" this morning it is time now for our what's working segment. our next guest says the value sector, big retailers in the consumer are the ones to watch joining is sam stillwell, chief investment strike thategist. good morning to both of you. happy thanksgiving sam, i want to start with you. let's sort of walk through kyour thinking and also try to understand what kind of shift you think we're going to be seeing in terms of the market psychology about some of these stocks which frankly have been under loved for quite some time during this pandemic >> good morning, andrew. basically we have been seeing a shift, a rotation out of many of the growth areas toward the under valued value areas, also

seeing the same with small cap stocks as well as international. i'm encouraged by the fact that we do have such a broad participation in this continued market rally every style, every size, every sector within the s&p 1,500 is up since the beginning of november and 99% of the sub industries all but gold is up for the month. and when you look to both the charts and to the fundamentals, you do see that unlike the past where fool me once, shame on you, fool me 12 times, shame on me, there does appear to be a rotation that looks sustainable. >> before i get to kevin, in terms of that sustainable, how sustainable this is in terms of that rotation, what does your time line have to be, people talk about a vaccine, how quickly does it have to roll out

and roll out meaningfully for the stocks you're talking about have to work >> i think with the expectation right now that we're going to see the beginnings of a rollout in the first quarter of next year, and that we see a majority of americans and people around the globe getting inoculated by the middle of next year, already people are forecasting more than six to 12 months from now. it's not a six to twelve week forecast but nor like a six to twelve month forecast, and right now the expectations still are that we see about a 6 1/2% gdp growth this year, and i think we're also likely to see not only the 20 plus percent earnings growth expected for indicati next year but a ramp up in the forecast as economists and analysts become more optimistic about the recovery. >> right kevin, are you in the same place? >> i agree with a lot of what

sam said, andrew you know what isn't working could be a better question right now. 30,000 on the dow this week. perhaps the best month for stock performance that we've seen since 1987, and so much of this rests on the shoulders of the u.s. consumer. i mean, it's so incredible, the resiliency when we think about it being black friday last year on the show, my mom was at the store shopping and very few people are this year. the online retailers are going to knock it out of the park. it's not just a black friday or a cyber monday it's really a cyber month. sales have started weeks ago, and they're going to continue into december. it will take a little bit longer to get some of the numbers to see just how good it was, but i'm incredibly optimistic. >> sam, you want to throw out a name or two before we go we have a hard break in just a moment. >> sure. i think if we're focusing on

retail today, a lot of the companies like columbia sportswear, decker outdoor, even william so knnoma we think will well in the period ahead. >> sam and kevin, we wish you both a happy thanksgiving and holiday season we have christmas and hanukkah and everything else coming up soon we will see you hopefully very very soon. meantime, two big hours ahead, you don't want to miss our big retail lineup, bill s h simon and steve sadove will be telling us what to expect on this holiday shopping season take a look at futures this morning, looking a little higher, dow up 60 points, s&p 500 up about 65 points you're watching "squawk" on cnbc

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begins right now ♪ ♪ you know, the music gets you into a bit of a holiday spirit happy thanksgiving, everybody. good morning, welcome back to "squawk box" here on cnbc. i'm andrew ross sorkin along with becky quick steve liesman is hanging out with us on this day after thanksgiving joe is off this week meantime, u.s. equity futures are looking green. a little positive news on this shortened friday trading session, dow up 53 points, nasdaq looking to up 46 points higher and the s&p 500 about 7 points higher. steve? >> good morning, andrew. yeah, good to be here. the latest numbers on coronavirus related mortgage bailouts are in. and moving in the wrong

direction. diana joins us with news. >> after seven months of general improvement, the number of homeowners in the covid related bailouts has risen for the second straight week they increased by 27,000 in just the past week, bringing the total number to 2.78 million that remits jupresents 5% of alv mortgages, $564 billion in unpaid principal the bailout plans, by government entities, fannie mae, and freddie mac, they allow borrowers to delay for up to a year, and pay them back when they refinance the home or sell the home this week's increase was the result of a jump in fha and va plans along with a slight increase for loans in private label securities and bank portfolios increases like this have been more common in the middle of the month. the strongest improvements have been early in the month when the

quarterly plans expire of the 3 million loans still in bailouts, 81% have had their terms extennded at some point since march. we have to watch these numbers closely. >> i have a bunch of questions about this first of all, where does the loss, it's not a loss, they're taking what should be paid now and tacking it out on the end, but in terms of the loss of cash flow now, is that to the government agencies or is there a private sector part of that loss to cash flow? >> vast majority of it is to the government agencies, and they have to pay things like the p principal and insurances on the loan the services had to pay for the first four months and the government backed them after that there are some borrowers who are going to have to go into modification programs, those in the bank portfolios or privately held loans, private label, because those differ a bit

the vast majority are in government backed mortgage fore be bear, we have to see whether that's going to get extended. >> so there's this forbearance program and people are defaulting in general, not in forbearance, what's your take on the general level of stress in the mortgage market and how it compares to say a typical recession? >> you know, certainly there are going to be those who are going to default on the loans and not be able to stay in the homes, not be able to afford them what's so different about this than say as you may remember, 2008, 2009, 2010, is we have a very strong housing market right now. very healthy, people have tons of equity in their homes because home prices have risen so much, even if they were to pull back or cool a bit, we have a lot of cushion, unlike during the sub

prime mortgage crisis when people were under water in the loans. if they can't get back on track with the payments, they could sell the home and possibly profit a little bit once they pay it off it's not that dire a situation as we saw before. >> great, diana, thanks very much for your help on this becky? let's get to dom chu taking a look at market movers. happy day after thanksgiving good to see you. >> i hope you and yours had a great one, if there was a day to talk about retail, it would be on black friday, the day after thanksgiving we thought we would take a look at some of the big retail winners so far this season if you take a look at the retail industry overall, it has been an out performer over the s&p 500, on a year to date basis, up 13%. the consumer discretionary sector is up 26% and equally waited index, and etf of retail stocks is actually up 32%.

the reason why that's important is because amazon lays a huge waiting in the consumer discretionary sector, but this eft treats all retailers on an equally waited basis amen amazon is not as big a portion there. the white line out performing everybody else here. if you take a look at the relative winners, it's been a big spattering of the consumer discretionary names. on the luxury side of things and the value side of things tapestry, ralph lauren, outperforming 30%. ross stores off 30% over the course of just this month alone. you have seen that real action moving there as opposed to to some of the other places we're seeing, what's happening with regard to travel and leisure, wind resorts up 49% marriott, that real play on the consumer rebounding because of the covid-19 crisis into next year and beyond, and the most

important stock in retail, it is still amazon.com because that stock is up, again, 74% on a year to date basis the moves we have seen here have been trailing off as of late the reason it's important, amends, currently about a 5% waiting in the s&p 500 but a 21% waiting in the sector for consumer discretionary remember the etf, the xrt, the equally waited one, it's a 1% rating there some of the moves for amazon track very differently for certain etfs. >> yeah, and i was going to poe point that out you would say it's the most important retail stock i thought take argument and put walmart as the most important because amazon isn't really a retail stock it makes up for the majority of the sales but not the majority of their earnings. more than 50% of their earnings come from aws, the amazon web services so i don't think it's fair to take that stock and match it up against the other

retailers. >> and that's a great point, becky. not only is the aws a bigger part of the profit, it's the biggest growth engine with amazon you can see where that's going if you want to throw a wringkle, walmart is not a retail stock, it's a consumer staple stock the whole thing becomes strange. >> stupid. >> i think it's interesting because you bring that up. walmart's definitely a huge retailer, it's the place we talk about on black fridays. >> it's the largest retailer on the planet, 10% of u.s. total retail sales it's a retailer. >> you should talk to the s&p 500 index folks and say why is walmart a consumer staples stock. >> they're wrong, we're right, dom. >> we're right, exactly. >> that's right. thank you, dom, we'll see you soon >> you got it. andrew okay thanks, becky. when we come back on the other side of this wall street bonuses, they look very different this year that conversation right after

the break if you work on wall street or want to understand it, you got to hear it. later, what the mall will look like this year. i bet you know what it's going to look like but we'll bring a live report right after this let's get a check on markets on this shortened trading day, the dow opening 60 points higher, the nasdaq 47 points higher,he t s&p 500 looking to open a little over 7 points higher we're back after this.

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pl . welcome back to "squawk box," despite a change this revenue, bank of america keeping bonuses for its trading staff flat this year an interesting development joining us to discuss what the economic and political environment could mean for bonuses across wall street is kate kelly, reporting for the "new york times," and cnbc contributor, bethany mcclain good morning to both of you. happy thanksgiving let's talk about bonuses and the environment we're living in today. this bank of america story is kind of fascinating because obviously the trading revenue has gone up materially and yet it sounds like the bonuses will not. what's happening, kate >> well, b of a is a bank that i have done some reporting on this year, andrew, as you know, and i think part of the reason that employees were concerned this year about being asked to come to the office, among other

things, when the virus was at its worst in some cases on the trading floor is that there was some hard feelings over pay, so i think last year, the feeling was that they weren't as well paid as they could have been, and there's this whole mantra floating around like flat is the new up i think the agent you see operating this year is the sort of weakness in the retail and consumer aspects of banking across the board which has a huge effect on b of a, which i think touches one or two american households in one way or another with one of its products the mere fact that trading businesses, especially fixed income have done well, may not be enough to ensure that people in other parts of the bank get good bonuses. >> bethany, let me ask you, when you think about sort of the bonus picture, how much do you think politics is going to come into this in terms of where we are in this moment because we are in the middle of a pandemic there's that element yet the market has obviously run straight ahead of it

what can the banks do in terms of pay or not. >> i think it's a really tricky issue, and it's going to be a tale of haves and have notes on wall street in the sense that private firms are going to have an opportunity to pay people in the way big publicly traded banks are not. the publicly traded firms are wrestling with the overall political environment and wrestling with corporate clients who are struggling terribly, and paying huge bonuses at a time when your clients are struggling isn't a good look, and yet the trading businesses of these firms have dramatically out performed as kate noted. it's going to be a tricky issue for the big firms to navigate. >> kate, though, the question is can these traders effectively go elsewhere. are we going to continue to see the brain drain away from the publicly traded big banks towards the private equity firms, towards the hedge funds and the like where frankly there

isn't the same kind of scrutiny? >> i think that's an important part of the backdrop, andrew, and i think we have seen some high profile departures, just a handful recently and i think that is indicative of the fact that it's a very tense kind of market for hiring. if you're an out performer, if you're a great producer, you're probably always going to have job offers, you may make a move even if it means your 2020 bonus will be impacted, especially if you're leaving early the first part of the year after bonuses have cleared the bank account or the second quarter when people have a chance to catch their breath and interview around there's a feeling that we have had a tough year economically. there are bright spots on the horizon over vaccines and perhaps more predictability coming out of a biden administration, but that doesn't mean we're going to be out of the woods for another six to even nine or 12 months, depending on who you talk to

it may not be easy to hop firms. you may want to stay where you are, even if you're unhappy with pay, unless you're one of the top players, at which point, you're probably always going to have an offer if you need one, you're going to stay put. >> bethany, what's your sense of the incoming biden administration is going to think about wall street? and the reason i ask is if you remember right after president obama was inaugurated and took the job, there was a lot of rhetorical back and forth, let's just say it was in the aftermath of the financial crisis he called the bankers fat cats, there were the comments about you didn't build this. it created this sort of unique animosity, though there were progressives who said he didn't go far enough, and folks on the other side who were, you know, very upset about the kind of language he was using. where do you think biden is

going to land in that kind of debate >> i think it's still tbd, but i also don't think the banks, given that it is tbd, the banks don't want to draw scrutiny the way they did in the after math of the financial crisis. it's a completely different picture. that was an economic calamity, in large part caused by the banks and their return to paying huge bonuses after they had gotten a bailout, was an enormous part of the bailout in this case, the big banks have come through this well, thanks in part to tougher capital roles in the wake of the financial crisis, but the last thing they want is to draw political animosity where there isn't much at this point. so i think that adds to the tension that the big firms face and just to echo what brilliant kate kelly said, i think the big performers are always going to have a place to go, but for a lot of people, it's tricky, it's not like you go start a hedge fund these days if you didn't get the pay you wanted it's a very different

environment than it was even a couple of years ago. >> thank you, both appreciate it very very much happy thanksgiving, guys, it's good to see you. >> thank you >> you too >> you doing any black friday shopping online? >> i have a lot of shopping to do i have not -- i got to get -- i'm way behind already but there's some good deals. there's some good deals, which we'll be discussing, i'm sure over the next two hours. nice to see both of you. thanks >> a couple of corporate stories for you. astrazeneca and oxford are defending their covid vaccine trials following questions about how the candidate was tested earlier this week, the company announced combined results, found the vaccine to be 70% effective. that number came from combining a smaller group of people who received an unintention that willy -- unintentionally lower

dose of the vaccine. the head of the white house task force, raised questions about the efficacy rate. the higher standards were used and additional analysis will be conducted. disney planning to cut 32,000 jobs by march. those of those reductions coming from its theme park division which is of course struggling with covid related closures and lower attendance most of those reductions will come from the theme park division which of course, we already said that, didn't we now, i'm curious about why they think they need to lay folks off if the vaccine is coming and everything is going to be okay i think it's a bad omen, at least from disney, and maybe other corporations here. this is about, by the way, 4,000 more people and the 28,000 job cuts announced in september. "squawk box" comes back after a break. aflac! now tell me, what does aflac do? aflac pays you money directly to help

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welcome back to "squawk box" this morning amazon giving its front line workers a one time $300 holiday bonus. the company will spend $500 million on the payouts. announcement coming as workers at amazon and other retailers

have complained talking about hazard pay and wanting hazard pay issued during the early months of the covid outbreak and saying that had since been cut those workers work sing so hard and deserving. >> and we're grateful for it, all of us. with covid-19 infections on the rise, once again, it's going to be difficult or impossible for many families to relive a beloved holiday tradition this yore, and that's taking the kids to go see santa claus. as chris pollone reports, santa is getting a quick lesson in technology to get he has job done >> reporter: with the holidays here, the effects of covid-19 have reached the north pole where even st. nick realizes he has a problem. >> perhaps we need to make it easier for children to visit with santa. >> it's not like taking the kids to see santa was a perfect experience before covid hit. >> we sat him on santa's lap,

and we want to be able to snap a quick picture, the experience itself is just very short. >> so tell me, how have things been going >> several online services have popped up giving families the chance to talk to santa claus without leaving home, and because parents tell the jolly old elf, the visits are often more intimate than spending 30 seconds with santa at the local mall. >> i have enjoyed those dance practice moves that you have been doing for tiktok. >> reporter: it's not a one size fits all experience, many online santa services create custom fit vi v visits based on needs, and ethnicities. >> you can choose a black santa, you can choose a signing santa, a spanish speaking santa. >> it's a personalized, spiritually up lifting experience. >> he spends less time traveling and more time focused on what the season means. >> it's really about taking care of one another, and giving

selflessly to others without expecting anything in return. >> you might not be able to see santa in person this year, but getting a chance to talk to him online might keep spirits merry and bright this christmas season >> so let me wish you and yours and everyone a merry, merry christmas. >> reporter: chris pollone, nbc news, new york >> virtual visits with santa generally cost anywhere from $20 for a recorded video to $65 for a live video chat. both santas club and chitchat donate a portion of the profits to charity i have to tell you, this reminds me, this is a shameless plug, but we had nbc on for nine hours straight yesterday, the parade, then the dog show, then the parade reruns the next time around, my favorite commercial through the whole thing was the comcast one, which i didn't know was a comcast one until the end, steve carell as santa claus, trying to get up to date trying

to figure out the holidays this time around. best thing i saw. >> i missed that commercial. i will say, because i'm a gadget freak, i don't know if anybody did this during the parade, verizon, which i think was a sponsor of the parade, had this app that you could go on, where you could actually almost like ar, you could move the phone around or ipad around and be on the ground right there where savannah and hoda were, and my kids had a ball with that. we were doing that like crazy. it was kind of fun. >> i was grateful for the parade, you know, like the one tradition that actually stayed this year. it was great >> for a brief moment, it was a sense of normalcy. >> exactly they probably had the highest ratings they have had for that. on "squawk box" this morning, an outlook for the holiday season, two big names, former walmart u.s. ceo bill

simon, and former sachs chairman, steve sadove d jeremy siegel, we're going to talk to him about what he thinks right now ♪ should auld acquaintance be forgot ♪ ♪ and never brought to mind ♪ should auld acquaintance be forgot ♪ ♪ and auld lang syne

♪ we'll take a cup of kindness yet ♪ ♪ for auld lang syne next customer please. ♪ ♪

♪ deck the halls with bows of holly fa lala lala tis the season to be jolly ♪ >> welcome back, covid restrictionings may have put an end to the predawn rush of people into the big box stores it doesn't mean this year's black friday is any less important to retailers bertha coombs joining us from a mall in paramis. is there a big echo there, or are there people there >> reporter: well, we're seeing cars pull in they opened at 7:00 a.m. we're starting to see people trickle in you know, it's interesting, deloitte told us that genz and millennials were more likely to

shop in store. we saw a small crowd outside the entrance near game stop store. some of them had camped out overnight, looking for the holy grail, a ps 5, the one thing that they cannot find online >> we all thought the ps 5 was going to be on short supply, but hopefully we'll each get one instead. it's all good. that's what they do every year. >> reporter: all good, he said the real expectation is that people are going to come to the mall today for the most part for curbside pickup. if you take a look at edison trends, some of the big mall stores are seeing a big spike in the week leading up to thanksgiving kohl's and macy's are up more than 50% in terms of online orders, but they're still not able to compete with the big box stores they continue to outperform. take a look at target, up more than 160%. that's just in the past week best buy, walmart, amazon up

65%, but bear in mind, that amazon has 2/3 of the market share. 10 times what best buy and walmart have but none the less, they are still seeing growth as well, and an update on that ps 5 quest for the holy grail we did find some folks who came right out at 7:05 after the store opened the manager said they didn't have any not sure if our friend dean was able to get the one or two that was in there but a lot of other folks say it was chaotic, and they are out. back to you. >> you got to be kidding me. those guys waited out all night in the cold in midnight, went in and didn't get what they came for? >> they were lined up. yeah, i mean, it's one of those things that's been happening with the whole ps 5. they know how all of this works, and they said you can't get it online because the bots are in there ahead of you, and pick all

of them up, they resell them, marking them up. they were hoping that maybe there would be a few in there, but the early reports we got was that they really weren't they did have xboxes but it was your basic door buster experience where they said it was chaotic, kind of crazy and the ones who got here just before 7:00 said it's nuts, we're out of here. >> that sucks. bertha, thank you. i have to tell you, i don't miss black friday shopping early in the morning at all >> hey, bertha. >> steve, go ahead . >> reporter: yeah, steve. >> did you have a chance to walk through the mall i want to know, are stores closed down in there are they empty are there empty stores more than you normally see or are all the stores still open and ready for that delivery and pickup >> to be honest, i haven't

really walked through the mall they just opened at 7:00 normally they open much later in the morning and a lot of retailers have restricted hours because of social distancing and frankly for their staff to be able to restock things a lot of them are using their stores to fulfill those online orders the biggest sort of lines that you are likely to see today will be people coming to pick things up >> okay. >> thanks, bertha. >> for more on this year's holiday shopping outlook, we're joined right now by bill simon, the former president and ceo of walmart u.s., also steve sadove, the former chairman and ceo of sachs, and a senior adviser for mastercard steve, i want to start with you and ask about the department stores it's a very different story than what we have seen from the big boxes all yearlong, the big box retailers. how are they doing right now i know there was a big build up heading into black friday.

what would you think they're going to look like come the end of the holiday shopping season in terms of how it matches up last year? >> i think what you're finding in the overall retail market is far improved season than anybody had anticipated. if you look at the month of october, the mastercard spending pulse numbers were up over 4% in the first half of november we have plus 5.8%. you're seeing underlying growth and strength in the consumer, especially at the higher end consumers coming back. the department stores have been much slower than some of the others they have seen growth in their online business. overall online business is growing in the 40 to 50% range and is about 20% of commerce, but the department stores have struggled. i think that you have seen some improvement over the last number of months. there's a lot of optimism for the department stores. clearly in a post vaccine world, the stocks have performed kpe exceptionally well in the last couple of weeks. i think the department stores

were a difficult sector coming into the pandemic, and they're going to continue to be struggling, relative to some o. other category killers, and the big box retailers who have expanded the number of categories that they're playing in >> yeah, bill, let's talk about walmart, and what these other big box retailers are doing. they have been knocking it out of the park all year they're not willing to put up numbers to give guidance on what they're going to see this year because it's just been such an unpredictable year and consumer trends, we tend to change so quickly. i have been wondering about the health of the consumer, especially at the lower end. you think that will really push through this holiday season as people lose some of the benefits they have had to this point and as jobs have really come under pressure, especially as some of the states and local municipalities have kind of cracked down again because of covid? >> yeah, i think you hit the nail on the head you're right they have been remarkably buoyant, the consumer has been remarkably buoyant throughout all of this, but as unemployment

starts to tail off and as we get into what looks like another tough stretch, i think it could get a little bit worse, but the really interesting thing to see has been how they have all tried to extend black friday they have been trying to do that for years, and haven't had any success and this just might be the year they pull it off. >> yeah, i think the comment is absolutely right we're seeing a fundamental change in the promotional calendar first of all, most of the retailers came into the season with inventories and lines, so it's not overly promotional. going much earlier, starting in early october when amazon broke with prime day and the others matched and then having the holidays extend through the season, especially because you're going to have a hard time with late shipping in terms of the ability to shift after the first couple of weeks of december, so everything is earlier, everything is online, everything is on the channel i think the retailers have done a brilliant job of extending the

season, and that will play out for the longer term as we go into next year >> you think that extends, though, that trend, is that a one and done, people are willing to do it because they have nowhere else to go, and they're worried about not being able to get things and do you think this is going to be a new retail call dear bill, i'll ask you a question first. >> it's interesting for the big box stores, walmart, target, they're moving from a channel where they're completely dominant, where they have market shares in the 30s and 40s to an online channel where, as you know, as bertha just reported, amazon has 2/3 of the market so they're moving from a position of a channel of dominance to a channel where they're a distant second, and they're going to have to catch up very quickly or they're going to try to change the calendar back to be more physical and more black friday because they're not going to like the result >> yeah, i think it's going to be a combination of both

i think everyone's benefitting from the early burst you saw the big volume increase year on year, and it's continuing, and i think that's going to lead to bigger numbers for the holiday season you're going to be lapping those kindsov kinds of numbers as you go into next year. i think the retailers are going to try to play it both ways, you continue the early promotions and a big burst at the black friday, cyber monday period. >> steve, what are retailers doing in terms of inventory for next year? because we know or we expect at least that the consumer will be strong through the holiday shopping season. it gets a little dicier maybe in the first quarter. are they stocking up they keep saying they can't give guidance they have to say how much supply. >> i think everybody is being cautious this is very different than the '08, '09 recession then we saw this massive disruption, bankruptcy, and volumes went down 25% overnight, and we bought the inventory in the spring this time, consumption was down,

let's say 12% in march and april, and retailers were buying for the fall, and they were very cautious, and inventories were not purchased. suppliers pushed back down the supply chain to reduce inventories and we came into the season very light in inventory with an expectation that the consumer demand wasn't going to be there the demand is there, inventory is getting wiped out and retailers are being cautious as they go into next year everyone is excited about the vaccine era, and when we get back to normalcy, but the next three to six months are going to be tough i think that we're talking about the booming of the big boxes if you look, though, at local, restaurants, local retailers, the lower end consumer where benefits are leaving you're seeing some real suffering going on, and i think retailers are being cautious relative to their purchases for the spring season, and i think you'll get back to a much more normal purchase of inventories as you go into next fall

>> hey, bill, i have a retail 101 question for you how much do i buy when i go into a store that i didn't intend to buy? and how much does it matter to retailers that i'm buying it online and not in the store and going away with stuff i didn't go in for to begin with? >> that's the whole story. you hit it just exactly, you know, black friday, if you just sell the deals, you're going to lose money it's not set up that way you've got to sell the wrapping paper and the christmas lights and the candy canes and everything else that goes with it or you're just not going to make it. i worry that, you know, the online sales are just going to cherry pick, you know, online is margin challenged as well. shipping constraints, we talked about that just a little bit ago, are going to be tough it's already at capacity, and as people wait, they're going to be

really disappointed if they order anything past the 10th of december because it's just to the going to get there it's going to be challenging. >> i think, steve, one of the questions there is the importance of this buy online, pick up in store that's where you do get some of the margin enhancements. online shopping, especially with low end price points is very difficult online when you get the buy online, pick up in store, and the big boxes have done it well that really does win. >> the whole stick doesn't work, right? if the black friday discounts were a loss leader, you bring them in to up sell them on some other stuff, and now all you got is the loss leaders with no up selling to anything. i don't see how the whole game, the whole black friday game works this year with online. >> i think it's going to be tough. >> part of the question. >> go ahead, bill. >> it's going to be tough, and buy online, pick up in store is better, but it's not great

because you can't pay somebody to put it on the shelf, and pay somebody else to take it off the shelf and city still do well with it. >> i think the only benefit you do have is people are surfing the web, staying at home, thinking differently, and actually looking not just for the deal but their finding other things as well you go to a walmart or target, you're seeing them picking up a lot of other categories than they traditionally would have. apparel i would have never thought would have been as strong in some of the big boxes. >> steve, bill, nauthank you bo great to see you. >> happy thanksgiving, you all see you. >> you too >> andrew? coming up, thanks, becky, a lot more on "squawk," a check on the markets this morning, and check out the price of bitcoin this morning been on a volatile ride all week the cryptocurrency soaring about 19,000 that happened on tuesday for the first time in nearly three years, closing in on an all time high check out the drop yesterday,

among the reasons from coin base ceo, for rumored plans we're taking that as a negative. others might think it's a positive long-term we'll see. isnsig aerx" retur rhtft th

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welcome back to "squawk box" this morning the dow looks like it would open up 67 points higher. s&p 500 up about 10 points, looking at the nasdaq about 53 points we'll also show you oil, which has been an interesting story all week long. actually, much longer than that. you're looking at wti crude, 45, 37, and finally, take a quick look at the dollar, though, these days maybe it's more exciting to take a look at bitcoin which we're talking about all week as well andrew, thanks, when we come back, wharton school of business professor jeremy seigle is joining us we'll talk to him about where the market is headed next "squawk box" will beig rht back. at fidelity, you'll work with an advisor

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welcome back, joining us to talk about how the dow found its way to 30,000, and what's in store for the rest of the year, jeremy siegel, professor of finance at upenn's wharton school good morning, jeremy. >> good morning, steve, happy to be with you. >> i was really looking forward to this interview all morning here >> yes. >> so i did a little research in

preparation, professor, here, i'm going to get my glasses on and read it to you if you hit 20,000 in 2017, that was 18 years after 10,000, and now we're like, i don't know, three call it four years later to get to 30, too much too soon, professor? >> no, i don't think so. but you're right, less than four years for a rise of 50%. >> less than four. >> yeah. a little less than four years. right, i think there's three major factors that are really supporting the market. first of all, the liquidity in the system i don't just mean reserves added by the federal reserve the m1 money supply up 44% since the beginning of march we have not seen that since world war ii that tremendous liquidity. now, it's been repressed because of the virus, but then on top of

that, of course the vaccine news, better than anyone had expert opinioned and actually perhaps deployed earlier than anyone expected to enable this liquidity to increase spending next year, and third, i think the election came out certainly far better than a lot of people feared in terms of the senate, very likely staying republican, the tax cuts going to, you know, remain in, corporate tax cuts in particular, and maybe not some of the crazy trade policies that i don't think were productive that trump tried to pursue, so on all of those three fronts we have positive forces for the market that i think are going to cause 2021 to be a very good year >> so professor, from the what have you done for me lately department, when do we get to

40 how long until then? >> well, so 40 would be another, what, one-third increase could we, you know, 8% a year, you know, 7, 8% a year would be the long-term expectation on that, so, i mean, i guess if you do the math, you get, you know, five or six years, until we hit 40 we're selling 22 times next year's earnings on the s&p, lower on the dow because of the tech valuations being higher than the rest of the market. but personally, i think we're going to beat 2021 normally earnings expectations go down as we progress through the year, but i actually think that we'll have a boom next yea that we're going to beat those

probably 20 times earnings and in a world of interest rates, so record low, hey, you can't boat the stocks as an asset continued flows into equity. >> so i think you just partially answered my question, but if i do the math on what you just said, what you're talking about is the doubling from 10 to 20 took 18 years, and if it's five years to 40,000, the doubling from 20 to 40 is nine years. why is the doubling coming at a much more rapid pace than it had been previously? >> well, those are very sensitive to what year you started. you know, if you started in a bear market, or near a bear market, you're going to get doubling much faster i think you look at the long-term and of course, you know, i've done a lot of research on long-term returns in the market, and the long-term returns are 6 1/2 to 7 after

inflation. now, i think we're not going to get that high long-term. i think we're closer to 5% total return after inflation with minus one after inflation, and probably even less than that i actually think there's going to be much higher than 2% inflation over the next couple of years you know, that's still a margin that is really overwhelming to propel assets into the stock market so i think we're going to get lower long-term returns than let's say the 200 year average, but still enormous when you compare them to fixed income assets in the economy. >> back in 2000, professor, you were still pretty bullish on stocks but you were concerned about the tech sector, then, to be fair about your warnings. does any particular part of the market look frothy to you now?

>> i would say tech is high, but so much lower than it was back in 2000. i believe the tech sector of the s&p 500 back then was selling something like 70, 80 times earnings today i guess we have tech marks closer to 30 times earnings. nontech sector, you know, closer to maybe 18 times earnings so we are much lower in a world where interest rates are much lower. so tech is high, not crazy you know, robin hood stocks and some of those electric autocompanies, they look speculative, but much smaller than what we saw in 2000 much smaller. >> professor seigel, it's always a pleasure for me to talk with you. thank you so much for joining us this morning

>> thank you thanks for having me, steve. >> andrew. >> thanks, steve great interview. coming up, when we return, president-elect joe biden's tax plan and what it means for your portfolio, and later, founder of drexler ventures and former j crew chairmaann d ceo, mickey drexler is going to join us. "squawk box" returns right after this really?! mom! at&t has the deal for new and existing customers! i will. so what'd she say? wrong person. it's a guy named carl. but he's very excited and on his way. word-of-mouth advertising. it's what they did before commercials. it's not complicated. everyone gets our best deal, like the amazing iphone 12 mini on us. sometimes, you want speedy but reliable. state-of-the-art but dependable. in other words, you want a hybrid. so do telcos. that's why they're going hybrid with ibm.

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good black friday morning to you. futures in the green once again as we get ready to close out a solid week for stocks. with two trading days left in november, the dow is on pace for its best month in more than three decades. let the buying begin it's black friday. things look different this year. we'll show you what's happening at the real mall and the digital mall as the pandemic changes the way we shop, and we'll take stock of a year unlike any other for retailers with industry veteran and former j crew ceo mickey drexler, the final hour of "squawk box" is beginning right now.

good morning, everybody, happy day after thanksgiving welcome to "squawk box," this is cnbc i'm becky quick along with andrew ross sorkin and steve liesman. joe is out today but steve has been with us for the morning we have been hanging in and checking out to see what's happening with the futures if you look right now, on this last trading day of the week, a shortened holiday, where markets close at 1:00 p.m. eastern team. the douw, the s&p and nasdaq ar all looking to end their third week higher out of the last four s&p up by 9 points and the nasdaq up by 48. this month has been pretty spectacular. not just for the dow, but for the s&p 500, it's on track for its third best performance ever. second only to april earlier this year. and then what we saw, i think, back to december of 1991, so very very strong month for the markets. you're looking at the bond

market the ten-year is yielding 0.875%. >> before we launch into our final hour of covering the retail frenzy that is black friday, i want to bring important updates on the race for a coronavirus vaccine. astrazeneca likely to run a new global trial of its candidate according to the company's chief executive officer. the drug maker may launch a fresh study testing the vaccine at a lower dosage, rather than adding a test of the lower dousa dosage it was shown to have an average of 70% effectiveness, it came from combining a smaller group of people who unintentionally received a lower dose of the vaccine, who proved 90% effective. a larger group showed 62% efficacy the head of the white house vaccine task force raising doubts about the trial data, and the drug's efficacy rate

but astrazeneca said the highest standards were used and additional analysis will be conducted. there's been a lot of debate about this on an earlier edition of closing bell, you don't want to miss an interview with injure john bell of oxford university helping to oversee that vaccine, and none other than legendary composer, andrew lloyd webber will be speaking part of the vaccine trial. lots of questions about the astrazeneca trial, and we talked about it in the last hour or two now, and big issues about the credibility of vaccines broadly and what this may or may not do. we're going to keep our eyes on all of it, becky >> i think the biggest problem was that the company was not up front about this when they announced with a lot of he, they announced the great results, they weren't very forthcoming about how some of it happened, why some of it happened, and as

it trickled out over the week, it made people kind of question what was happening there they have a lot of things they need to answer it will be interesting to hear this today from the oxford study side of things, what happened, why, and how they go from here because the group where it was most effective, the lower dosage, actually done because of a manufacturing error where they were given a smaller dose than they thought they have since fixed the manufacturing errors but the group that that impacted was only about 2,700 people. that is a much smaller scale study than the 20,000 we have seen from some of the others that's what they will have to follow up on it will be interesting to hear the commentary you see the stock is down by 1.9% it had been done several days earlier this week as questions were surfacing as we mention, a half day of trading today. we are seeing sizable stock moves in the premarket dom chu has been tracking all of them, and he joins us with a few of the things that have been happening.

good to see you. >> the holiday shortened trading is kicking off today we've got some movement. one is a covid stop. we'll get to that in a bit you have shares of amazon up nearly a percent on 32 shares of volume premarket, the retail and cloud computing giant. it plans to spend half a billion dollars on employee bonuses this holiday season that works out to 300 bucks for full-time employees, 150 bucks for part-time workers if they work the month of december those shares up fractionally you have shares of disney, down fractionally on roughly 16,000 shares of volume premarket the median theme park giant has increased the size of planned layoffs from 32,000 employees, from 28,000 it announced in september. due in part to have the continued closure of disneyland park because of the state's covid restrictions and limited operating capacity at other parts in the world, and those shares off fractionally, and we're going to end on vaccine news, pfizer up fractionally on a quarter million shares

premarket. the drug company could see the covid candidate get regulatory approval in canada sometime next month. that's according to canada's chief drug regulator, health n canada it had been slated for approval sometime in the first quarter of 2021, besides astrazeneca, we have pfizer news helping out shares as well we'll send things over to you. >> dom, thank you for that, and happy thanksgiving to you. as we head into the holiday season, and with all of that holiday shopping, we're focusing on american's spending patterns, and we're lucky to have steve here today, taking a look at the health of consumers and whether they have the means and ability to spend. >> means, ability or the will to spend, andrew. there's a big debate about the health of the consumer heading into or maybe i guess the way things work, we're in the middle of the extended holiday buying season, and whether the consumer can live up to the forecast for big spending gains this holiday season so let's take a look at some of the key points, sentiment, it's

falling recently, though it remains at a high level, especially for what we're in the middle of right now. income is falling with a decline in government benefits, salaries in the private sector, their rising spending still rising but at a slower pace, and look at that savings rate being really high that's normally good news, it's not bad for spending but high savings rate is one source of debate this season 13.6% of disposable income six points higher than before the pandemic that means americans have a lot of money in their pockets or at least some do. but will this excess savings be spent and which americans have it and over at jeffreys, we believe that most of these excess savings are generated by high income households and are the flip side of reduced spending on services we expect the savings to be deployed post vaccine, but steven stanley at amherst has a different take he's optimistic, saying the consumer in the aggregate has

much more wherewithal to spend heading into the christmas holiday season than normally would be the case. he's bullish, and that is certainly true that they have the savings there, but if the excess savings were held by the wealthy, and they don't generate or don't spend it, then some retailers and the broader economy could be headed for a tougher christmas than the buoyant one that's forecast. andrew, there's also this big pot of money that people spend on services. they give, you know, show tickets and plane tickets and they go on vacation around the holidays, that's available for the good sellers this year it's a very confusing set up going into the holiday season. >> are you expecting, by the way, that next season is just going to be crazy? i do think there could be outrageous spending a year from now in a way that there isn't today because of the uncertainty. >> i think that's right, and i was sort of talking offline with jen, he thinks it's going to be

crazyfecti next year i think it depends a little bit on how much scarring in the economy. it looks like we're getting out of this without a lot of deep scarring there's going to be businesses that are never going to open again. there's going to be employees that can't go back to their jobs because they don't exist anymore. that's going to be a drag on the economy, but it depends a lot on the scarring we may get out of this okay, andrew, but have got to be a little bit cautious here becky? >> thanks, guys. when we come back, we're going to take a look at what we have learned about joe biden's economic plan since election day, and the details that wall street is still eagerly awaiting rchgt a plus a retail luminary, former j crew ceo mickey drexler will join us as we head to a break, take a check at the s&p energy sector, two trading days left in november actually a day and a half when today is a half day. it's on pace for the best month ever, down today by 2.4%

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welcome back to "squawk box" this morning, we're looking in the green. dow up about 72 points, s&p 500 looking to open 10 1/2 points higher, and the nasdaq looking to open about 53 points higher becky? andrew, thanks we've got just under two months untilinauguration day. president-elect biden has proposed a series of changes to the country's tax code including raising rates on people making over $400,000, but with a divided congress, biden's plans could run into trouble joining us right now to talk about this and what we can expect from the biden economy is lauren ponts, the tax counselor for the house, ways and means committee, where she worked on the tax cuts and job acts. jason is going to join us in a moment let's start off with this conversation first of all, we're calling it a divided congress but that really depends on what happens in georgia. how much of this do you think, let's say it's a pretty close congress no matter what happens, how much of this plan do you

think can actually make it way through? >> good orning i think it's going to be difficult. you know, there's a lot of emphasis that's being placed on the primary in georgia in january, but regardless of the outcome, if the democrats are able to take control of the senate, there are progressive and moderate factions in the party. so sweeping changes to the tax code i think are going to be difficult to achieve, whether democrats or republicans control the senate >> right you worked with the republicans kind of advising on them at the ways and means committee, so you see with the down and dirty details how difficult it is to kind of make these things happen what do you think the likelihood of raising rates on people who make over $400,000, and the likelihood of social security, which caps out at $137,000 and $700 the likelihood of ranging that so it picks up on anyone over

$400,000, those two things alone, what do you think >> i think those are both going to be difficult lifts. even if the democrats are in control, you would imagine that the tax changes would be done through reconciliation, and reconciliation prohibits changes to social security rules so it's strictly limited to tax provisions and if the democrats are not in control of the senate, i think the republicans are seriously going to not participate in any legislation that involves raising rates on individuals, top earners. >> is there anywhere where the democrats and the republicans agree in terms of changing or ale t altering the tax code? >> there are areas where they agree. you know, i could see that as we go forward and look at the next tranche of covid-19 relief, there could be some tax provisions that are included in that package, and we can also see some areas of bipartisan

support with regard to president-elect biden's made in america initiative whereby he would like to incentivize domestic production activity one might imagine that as a part of that legislation, we could see some features in the code that are amplified to assist with encouraging or incentivizing research and development, so maybe an amplified r and d credit, expanded credits, investment tax credits, advanced research credits, and also looking at perhaps a repeal of the r and d amortization, which was enacted, but is not yet in effect comes into effect for tax years 2022, maybe an added push to repeal that provision. >> and that is peanuts compared with what the biden administration or what joe biden was campaigning on, what he was hoping to do or what he said he was hoping to do, and what a lot of the progressives in the party have wanted to do.

what happens to the corporate tax code any chance that gets raised? you know, what happens along the line are so many of the other plans that have been put out there, you think all of that is dead on arrival? >> i think that is difficult to do, but this is a four-year administration, and you know, i do think with the return with president-elect biden's administration, we will see a return to traditional budgeting processes so we can look forward to a green book, and that is a great place that administrations past have been able to signal kind of broad sweeping tax legislation and also revenue raisers that could be drawn upon in the future. and so i don't think that these ideas are necessarily dead, but there are opportunities to put them out in the world and we'll see where they're able to get in the next few years immediately, i think that the prospects of major tax legislation being passed are not

great, and also there are competing priorities there are other things that president-elect biden would like to focus on as he comes in lauren, i don't know if you're an expert in this, but what authority does the executive have on his own to interpret tax law andchange tax law without congress >> that's a good question. there are some tools at the administration's disposal, and we have heard some chatter about tax regulations being altered in ways that the democrats believe are more reflective of where their policy would like to go, and so we could look at maybe some changes to the regulations that have been patrromulgated t far to amplify tcja provisions, and executive orders, the current administration has used those prodigiously, and some might expect that that has signalled that that's an acceptable way of establishing

policy, and so maybe some executive orders could be issued, and also irs notes we have seen that well there are some tools that the administration has at its disposal >> let's also bring in jason fuhrman, the former council of economic advisers chairman, and harvard kennedy school professor. jason, you're late did you have too much pumpkin pie yesterday, like i did? >> maybe it wasn't the pumpkin pie. we think he's frozen and we lost his connection we're going to give him a break on this. we'll have jason back very soon to talk about all of these different issues loren, i want to thank you for your time. it's really good talking to you. >> thank you >> take care. all right. coming up, is the pandemic permanently going to change the way we shop during the holidays? i want to know the answer to that question.

former j crew ceo mickey drexler is going to join us as we get sit to enter retail's biggest season on a year like no other, stay tuned you're watching "squawk box" on cnbc offers investors a broader view. ♪ we see companies protecting the bottom line by putting people first. we see a bright future, still hungry for the ingenuity of those ready for the next challenge. today, we are translating decades of experience into strategies for the road ahead. we are morgan stanley. to high quality computer science and stem education. ♪ i joined amazon because i wanted to change education and i am impatient. amazon gives me the resources to change the world at a pace that i want to change it. ♪

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exclusive interviews, secret tapes and never before told stories, and it premieres this sunday at 8:00 p.m. eastern time right here on cnbc you don't want to miss it, and dare i say i make a handful of cameos in this documentary if you want to see those, you can watch them for that reason. >> did you just say you do sfl. >> i do. >> very cool i thought we might tease this earlier >> one of the many talking heads i am so you'll hopefully all get a chance -- >> don't sell yourself short, you're not a talking head, you're a prompter reader. >> yeah. >> i'm looking forward to it thank you, andrew. i have been loving these commercials we have been running for it i do want to see it. when we come back, the pandemic is pushing black friday further online what does that mean for the nation's malls, bertha coombs is outside a big one, and is going to join us next. bertha, what do you have coming

up for us? >> reporter: we're here at the garden state plaza in new jersey it's beginning to look a little like black friday. i have to tell you, it's not that hard to get a spot right by the door we keep seeing people coming in quickly, and leave quickly when we come back, we'll tell you how people are shopping this year on e tonofhe biggest shopping days of the year. before we talk about tax-smart investing, what's new? -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.

welcome back black friday looks a little different this year, thanks to the pandemic, but it's still a day for heavy consumer spending and we're watching online and in-store sales closely we're going to check in with bertha coombs at the mall in just a moment. first, let's go to frank holland who's in south carolina and looking at one retail category that's boomed during the coronavirus, home improvement. frank? >> hey, good morning, steve. you know, we have seen pretty steady traffic here at the home depot on this black friday shares of the home improvement retailer doubled from their march lows as more and more americans are investing in their homes or buying brand new homes during the pandemic. the companies preparing for a

record black friday as home improvement spending has surged since march with double digit increases year over year since may. in response, home depot says it will increase staffing, as well as for traditional instore shopping to manage what could be an unprecedented home improvement spread during the holiday peak retailers have warned about shortages due to supply chain issues for manufacturers and getting the goods to the store, the president of u.s. stores for home depot says the company is mitigating that by creating a gift center online and in stores for best sellers, and focusing on volume over variety. >> reduce the number of items and buy deeper in those items. traditionally, and i'm using this illustriously, we would have ten drills. instead of ten, we may buy eight and a lot more of those drills so we have more product for the

entire season. >> reporter: and obviously curbside delivery is going to be a big story this black friday as people have buyers concerns, concerns about going into stores home depot says 60% of online orders get picked up through curbside, one of the lockers in the stores or people going to the customer service desk to pick up and walk right back out. the company says we'll have double digit staffing for online support centers, because this retailer like many others, don't know how customers will spend on this very unique black friday. back over to you >> frank, i don't know, are you a diy guy, frank i'm a little bit of a diy guy, i'm terrible at it, but still try to do a lot of stuff are you one of those guys? >> definitely. i learned how to put an above the store microwave in i'm definitely a diy guy because i don't want to pay extra. >> tell me something, i do a project and it's three trips to the home depot, minimum.

it's always three trips to the home depot to get it right sometimes i use my local hardware store, shout out to wise hardware if pelham for that, but listen. >> reporter: we're doing shout outs, steve? >> i can't get my brain around, frank, buying home depot stuff online, like a drill or some of the other stuff you go to home depot for. what am i missed here? >> i don't think you're missing anything i think a lot of people will still come to the store. we have seen it here in south carolina, and home depot, they're expecting a good number of people to come to the store, and something they saw in q3, the number of transactions and the average spend by customer increased by more than 10% for both, and they are saying on this black friday and throughout the holiday peak, they expect that trend to continue, because they're expecting people to come and buy a lot of things at one time to avoid what you're talking about, making multiple trips, again, because of virus concerns. >> frank, thanks a lot, get a bunch of two by fours.

>> thank you >> let's go to bertha coombs on what's different at the mall this black friday, bertha. >> reporter: you know, i was surprised but we have actually seen a bit of a crowd here this morning. they opened early for black friday here at the westfield garden state plaza at 7:00 a.m., and we saw cars coming in just after day break, and people actually going in and already seeing people come out with things that they bought in person, in store not just coming for pickup, but overall, the expectation is we're going to see a shift this year over the last few years online has permeated more at deloitte, six in ten would go to a store more than half of us would also buy something online this year, it has flipped and six out of ten say they are buying online, oftentimes because they are concerned about crowds that said, we did see a bit of a crowd. deloitte said millennials are more apt to line up for the door

busters, and we saw that early this morning a bunch of guys lined up for the holy grail, trying to get a ps 5 at the game stop store there weren't any available online there's still a huge crowd in front of the game stop store they still haven't quite sorted out how they're going to let people in, but other than that, we really are not seeing that many crowds. it's really all about online shopping adobe analytics expects we spent 6 billion online yesterday on thanksgiving when stores were closed we'll spend more than 10 billion today online and over 12 1/2 billion on cyber monday the interesting thing, steve, is that more of us will probably shop today, according to the national retail federation they expect to see about 105 million of us shop instore or online, and they're only expecting to see about 65 million on monday. but the folks who are targeting

cyber monday for those electronic deals are very intent on getting online for those early. back over to you >> thanks, bertha. what are people coming out with? are they multiple shopping bags, is it one item, sweaters, tech, what are you seeing? >> reporter: i don't know if we got the shot in, but i did see a guy with a dolly full of legos, legos very good. haven't seen anybody come out with game stuff. also seeing some apartial, apar have come in quickly, and out. people have pulled in and they're out a little later but legos, definitely very big, as they always are >> thanks, bertha. andrew >> okay. steve, thank you for that. i want to talk more about black friday, and how the whole retail industry has changed this year with an industry legend.

mickey drexler is the founder of drexler ventures, the former chairman and ceo of jay crew, mickey, it is great to see you this morning, how are you? >> i'm good, andrew, nice to see you. >> happy thanksgiving. so tell us what you're seeing as the merchant prince would see it, and i know the world has changed so very very much. >> well, i see things a bit differently. first of all, i'm not a big box commodity player i don't do that. i say i'm not -- it's something i enjoy doing, so what i see for us is what i probably spent my career doing is developing, designing, running businesses that have fashion to them, and not commodities, and i also see, well, we're not running black friday today last year, our first year, and i should say, we have a small company called alex mill very exciting small business

with all of our own goods designed by us, run by us, priced by us and that's what i like to do, and that's what my partners like to do. but what i'm seeing is the same old in a sense it's tough because the pandemic has made this the most difficult year on record and i think a lot of that will stay i'm kind of listening to how great people are raving, but i don't know i just don't know enough to say what they're raving about. i don't know enough about their margins. i don't know much about their businesses in a sense, but we're sticking to our knitting, high quality, good value. >> in terms of reaching the customer, though, and alex mill has been, you know, a great start up success, how are you getting to people? is this an instagram story is this a facebook story, are

you using social, you know, and what's the customer acquisition cost looking like right now? >> well, the customer acquisition, we keep it low because it's less than 10%, and my own sense is that acquisition means great merchandise. it means great service it means great marketing it doesn't mean spend a lot of money to, in fact, buy more customers, so we have an 8% acquisition. we spend a lot of time on quality and design, and it takes a little more, maybe, but it's what we like doing and, you know, we've had a really nice start. we're a small company, but we're small and growing at a stock right quickly, and it's a high class problem we have. i got a note from a good friend and the coo of a company last night. i can't buy anything in size medium in navy, and i was upset about it, but on the other hand,

i'm allergic to a lot of inventory. always have been, and always will be. but i'm not sure where the world goes right now the pandemic will change things dramatically shopping malls, i can't imagine they'll ever be the same and the other thing i can't imagine, sort of personal, is that shopping centers will be that interesting to go and shop in sdplch in. >> right >> given what i'm seeing. >> mickey, one of the things that you hear from some analysts is actually that clothing and retail should actually do well this holiday season but actually that there's some concern about what it looks like in the future given that you might imagine money that was being spent on quote unquote experiences, travel, and the like, may get spent online this season, but once you get to a vaccine, and i don't know how you feel about it, whether you think that then all of that money is going to shift in a major way towards

experiences because people are going to be desperate to get out of the house and do all of those things they couldn't get to do i don't know if that actually is beneficial or not to the retail world. you may want to get dressed up to do those things experience as well. >> i'm not sure of the answer. i would think there would be more apparel business if there were more interesting apparel players, at asmaller level i'm not talking about the big commodity guys you know, if you look at our industry over the last period of time, the dropout rate has been pretty amazing, two big transactions this week skprk , t the end of the day, it comes down to, i'm a broken record it comes down to high quality, nice style merchandise with taste and style, and for us, that's what we do. and all of the companies i have been involved with do that and it's hard to predict

i think clearly experience, most words in the world get overused anyway i'm not sure how much there will be people are dying to get out and go shopping again, along with doing a lot of other things. >> besides alex mill, what brands right now do you look at it and go, you know what, that's interesting, those folks are clever, i think there's something going on over there, they're going to have a lot of sense. >> my friend at the furniture company, gary friedman, you know, restoration hardware i have watched gary now. he worked as a store manager for me and with me many many years ago at gap, and it's extraordinary what he's done beyond extraordinary i'm trying to think of other good players out there they're there, but gary always comes to the top of my list on that i don't want to leave anyone out, but.

>> let me ask you this, though, we have the gap up on the screen right now. your former home for a very long time, and it's something that you built to a remarkable position how do you think about big chains like the gap in this environment? >> well, you know, i hang around a little with the executive chairman, bobby martin he's a terrific guy, and i'm always saying, you know, i think the gap is a great opportunity i think it was when we did it. old navy, you know, we invented. i think with the imagination, with the point of view with anything that makes sense, you could be successful in the apparel business i think gap and i have a lot of friend who still work there, it's not complicated, in fact, the world needs a good gap, absolutely needs one, and they're not getting it, but they could do it. it's always if they have the right team

without the right team in apparel, and there's not a lot of right teams out there, without the right team apparel it's hard to do, and so much of it is instinct, feel, et cetera. and people don't like to use that word, but you know, when you're a merchant, and you're looking at goods, you're operating on instinct. and on feel. i don't think you're necessarily born with nthat if you want to turn something around and drive something upward, you better smell the goods, feel the goods, and i think that's what drives it. with gap, bobby and i have smoosh sessions. i never thought a walmart guy and me would be good friends but i love bobby talk about what you can do with that, but you can do plenty with that and i speak to him and bob fischer and it's fun to chat with them. people in the fashion business there's commodities, and there's fashion, and they can all be done i find fashion a little more complicated than commodities

>> hey, mickey, what's going to happen to retail rents are they going to come down to a place where you're going to have a new equilibrium where it's going to be cheaper for businessi businesses to be in stores and compete online >> in my opinion, has to be. has to be. friends in the business have lowered rents right now. could be short-term. dramatically lowered rents and have dramatically had their values affected. there's too many stores, and by the way, this all started ten or fifteen years ago. there's no surprise with the pandemic, not the pandemic alone, but if you looked at the business for the last ten or fifteen years, it was coming it was coming. too many stores. too much assortment. too much of this and too much of that so the rents are clearly down right now. we have one store, and even that store is down, but we only have one, thank god, but they have to

come down. there's no demand. in my opinion, there's no demand i have a lot of good friends, well, they don't necessarily tell you, there has to be less demand, less stores, and less, frankly, good stores in a way. >> fair enough >> mickey drexler, it is always a pleasure to see you. we wish you a happy thanksgiving and thank you so much for being with us. good luck with everything going on at alex mills, it's an inspiring story to see it working so well. so thank you. and now i can't get anything in navy. so now i know. i don't know what i'm going to do about that. when we come back, how the pandemic is shaking up the traditional black friday move list so much is different this year we know that it's been the case all year, but one thing that hasn't changed is demand for the hottest video games. in fact, the demand there has skyrocketed. companies anstksred oc a benefitting. we're going to tell you which

ones "squawk box" will be right back.

welcome back, everybody. a few minutes ago we took you out to some of the busiest black friday places. now we're going digital with some of the top demand items online first we're going to julia boorstin, she's been watching video games, a sector getting ready to finish off what will likely be a record breaking year julia, what have you seen? >> well, becky, the pandemic has

driven video game sales to a record, with $15 billion expected to be sent in 2020 sdpr u.s. consumer spending on video games is projected to top $13 billion this november and december it's up 24% from last holiday season, according to npd group so what's driving this surge well, people are stuck at home, and more people are playing video games than ever before, a record 244 million people. that's 30 million more than in 2018 this holiday season, there is a huge demand for just released new generation consoles, the xbox 1x and play station 5 but that demand coupled with supply chain issues due to covid is causing a shortage, and pd group predicts they might not be available again until well into the first quarter of 2021. that's causing prices for the consoles on the secondary market

to skyrocket we have seen new play stations listed for up to $60,000 on ebay one thing gamers can buy this holiday season, though, at the retail price are newly released games. analysts expect the top seller to be activision's call of duty game for the 12th year in a row, and with people hunkering down thanks to stay-at-home orders, video game stocks are up dramatically take twos up 42% act vision up 29%. and ea up 30%. analysts are majority bullish on these stocks, about 80% of analysts have a buy rating on activision, blizzard, and take 2, and 62% have a vibrating on ea >> it's been hard to find new content in television and especially with the major movies

that haven't been released because of all of this how has that impacted the video game industry? >> well, look, i think the holidays used to be a really important time for the movie industry this is the time families would go out and go to theaters together now the fact that you don't have the majority of theaters open. you don't have major wide releases is are staying home and watching video games. becky, i would note, the fact that a lot of the films that might have been released in theaters are going direct to consumer, you'll be able to watch wonder woman 1984 at home on hbo max it might raise the question of whether people are going to be doing streaming video content and even paying for premium content as an alternative to playing a game, but at the end of the day, those games are pretty good investment in terms of the amount of time spent per dollar spent for those games >> yeah, the long way of saying people spend lots of time on those things julia, thank you great to see you. right now over to deirdre bosa, who is on black friday deal watch

deirdre, what have you seen so far? >> well, becky, over the last few years i brought it to you here on "squawk box" the hottes deals on black friday stay pretty steady. this year, though, there are those and a whole lot more, deals that started earlier and other categories like home decor and beauty are more popular than ever cracking the top ten list of most wish listed items through the app include a wooden salad bowl set from the food network and gramercy storage containers. aside from the big e-commerce names we look at, there are more deals to be found from smaller businesses, mostly on the large platforms. etsy, for example, is celebrating a cyberweek sales event with 60% off one of a kind items from personalized gifts to masks to juliry. and amazon has a support small section where you can look for local deals by region.

in the pacific, there is net pods, dairy free crame eamer. but the most featured deal still on mazon, no surprise here, they are their own devices like echoes and ring doorbells. so we'll see if that sort of marketplace platform can make a dent for small businesses this season as they struggle. back to you, becky. >> earlier this morning we were talking about some of the unwelcome attention that amazon has been getting, under some scrutiny about the warehouse conditions and the pandemic and it raises the question about whether labor issues could pop up again during this busiest season what do you think? >> yeah, so they do have popped up in past years and they are once again, you're seeing strikes at certain warehouses around the world there is also the threat of unionization amazon trying to get ahead of this with that thank you bonus giving to front line workers, but this is certainly a theme that we have seen this year, especially amid the pandemic, when there has been more tension

on their safety protocols and just their massive hiring spree, they have over a million employees, a lot of those warehouse workers, continues to be a theme and we will track it among this holiday season, which will be bigger than ever, thanks to so many people shopping online, becky. >> yeah. d, thanks, we'll see you soon. okay coming up, we are going to talk markets as we get ready for the second to last trading day of november with the dow on pace for the best month in more than 30 years. stay tuned, you're watchg quk x"n bcin

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we're just a little bit over half hour away from the opening bell on wall street on a shortened day. joining us now it talk markets is joe terranova, investment partner senior managing director and a cnbc contributor how do you feel, you're the guy we call when cramer is not around, pretty good place for you, huh >> that's quite a compliment, steve. happy thanksgiving to you, by the way. >> and to you. listen, how do you feel at 30k here, get that sort of kingly feeling on the back of your knees a little bit of queasiness in the stomach or feeling pretty confident here

>> i'm not so sure, let's not forget that the nasdaq composite and the 2800 members in the index traded to an all time high i think investors really are best served here to continue to look at small caps, midcaps and large caps, steve, and let's not get overdecided about going to the falling ni ining knives have been dictating if you take the top ten s&p performers during that period, nine of them are energy companies and even today they're still all down by 35%. >> joe, as an economics reporter, which you know is my first love here, and i want to take the market by the lapel, i want to shake it and say there

is tens of thousands of people getting the virus every day, there are thousands dying, what are you guys doing does all of this make sense to you? >> of course it does because of the federal reserve and just think about the conversation that is going on currently related to the december 15th and 16th federal reserve meeting. the asset purchase program, 80 billion a month, will we raise that above 80 billion, potentially. we'll be talking about potential load guarantees for small businesses, possibly asset maturity, so it is about the federal reserve, steve, about the low interest rate environment, that's why i think you got a cap here on yields above 1% in which you want to make sure you're allocated still to this growth story because that is ultimately your best hedging mechanism against a muted growth environment >> and real quick, about vaccines too this idea you guys are able to

look past these next coming months that could be tough when it comes to the economic data and you see better times ahead >> agree on that, but i also think it is about janet yellen and her nomination as treasury secretary. i wonder if jay powell right now is thinking about his policy as it relates to the coordination potentially with janet yellen. you tell me, you think they've spoken >> it is a discussion for another time i'm told we're out of time i don't think they're going to coordinate per se, but they will coordinate i think in fact let's have that conversation joe, you did a great job filling in for jimmy nice to see you. happy holidays to you and your family back to becky. >> steve, i think that's a great cliffhanger to make sure people come back next week for a much bigger conversation. i know that's like the way to sneak in a big idea right at the end. >> the jay and janet show, that's what we got to figure out, how that's going to play out. >> that's the question i think the market is asking now

i have quickly, take a look, this is a half trading day, markets close at 1:00 p.m. today because of the holiday, i guess, people want to get out of here earlier. steve, andrew and i have enjoyed having you with us today thank you for being here great to see you. >> pleasure. thanks. >> andrew, steve, everybody else, have a great weekend we'll see you back here on monday right now time for "squawk on the street." and good morning, welcome to "squawk on the street. i'm david faber with melissa lee and mike santoli stock markets, we'll say it again, closing early today, 1:00 p.m. eastern the bond market abbreviated session, it will close at 2:00 p.m. eastern let's give you a look at futures, you're seeing them now, we look like we're going to have a higher open when we get started with trading about 30 minutes from now road map, it begins with, of