risk i don't think there's a good tradeoff it's over the long term a theme you want to watch in the renewable space. i don't think this is the time i want people to dabble in that energy play. there's a lot more places where we can set better expectations. >> i've got you. merry christmas. >> merry christmas two thank you. scott, morgan, thanks for hanging out today. want to wish everybody a merry christmas and make sure you join us on monday have a great day tomorrow. we'll see you very soon. "squawk on the street" begins right now. good thursday morning. welcome to "squawk on the street." i'm john kiquint kneel yeah stocks close at 1:00 we have the legislative showdown on the hill between covid relief, government funding and

the defense bill roadmap begins with jack maa's empire feeling heat from china's antitrust regulators. >> and then a possible brexit deal on christmas eve. the latest on the talks between brittain and the e.u. later, how hedge funds are capitalizing off the shift to ecommerce. we'll explain this hour, carl. >> all right, guys we're going to begin with babodo with shares down ma, 56-year-old former school teacher go from the golden boy of innovation to now the fall guy as xi appears to be recalculating the role of private enterprise. >> xi's not the only one we in the u.s. are also recalculating that it will be very important in 2021 to see the principles in both economies and how the

politics and the economic principles sort of collide and develop. we've been talking all year about the u.s. and how lawmakers and regulators here are dealing with big tech companies. we have several of them over here now as we look at alibaba, let's get to eunice yoon on the alibaba probe. eunice >> reporter: thanks so much, jon. the country's top market regulator said it's investigating alibaba's alleged monopolies stick behavior including a practice known as pick one of two which is essentially forcing merchants on the sites to work only with alibaba as opposed to any of its competitors. separate to that, alibaba and jack ma's ant group has been sum

m moned has beto come in and talk this he was highly critical of the beijing authorities. in that speech he suggested that regulations in china should promote not kill innovation. he said that global banking regulators suggesting that the people who are sitting there in the room are part of an old man's club and he said that chinese finance can't have systemic risk since essentially china has no system. so jack ma is known to be flamboyant, very outspoken, critical of the government over years, however, this speech was seen as especially egregious because he has made so much money here and also he was just about to become even wealthier with ant's ipo all the while authorities here have been concerned about his consumer loan business and it being too risky. in fact, posing too many threats

to the financial system here so at this point investors and chinese tech companies have been speaking to me about what the implications could be. there is a lot of -- there's kind of a wide split there are folks who think this could be a warning we could see that big players are going to face greater scrutiny, fines, but then also there are people who are concerned that this could eventually lead to some either serious changes to business models here or potentially even the end of what's known as the vie structure which allows -- it's kind of like a gray area structure which allows foreign investors to buy into chinese companies. so there is one big reason though as to why beijing wouldn't push too far, and that is that china does still want to have national champions. one can argue they don't want

the national champions to be privately owned or potentially -- or not at least be -- you know, at least they have to be much more compliant with beijing there was some suggestion in the state media today also that china wouldn't push too far. the people's daily, which is an official paper, said that the point of this investigation is for better development of the entire online economy. >> eunice, your perspective so important here set me straight here my perception is that in the u.s. we have multiple internet era titans you look at the founders of google, you look at what microsoft and apple were able to do coming back in that era, paypal mafia, linked-in, on and on my sense is in china there is

no figure that reaches jack ma i didn't mention jeff bezos. of course i should jack ma is head and shoulders above. that has significance. is that right? >> reporter: actually, i wouldn't agree with that jack ma does have an outsized personality and he actually has a lot of influence, as you rightly pointed out, but what's interesting is jack ma is outspoken and very high profile, which is why the rest of the world knows about him. however, as part of the conversations today with a lot of chinese tech people, they were saying his problem is that he's too high profile and that you see someone like pony ma who heads up tencent you barely ever hear from him. he's impossible to get an interview. in fact, even with bytedance, he's notoriously private and shy at least when it comes to speaking to the media or pretty much anybody else. so the understanding here is that if you are high profile and you are making a ton of money

and you obviously have to have some relationship with the government, probably not -- probably not the best to constantly be critical of the hand that feeds you. and so that's the conversation that's been going on here, that one of jack ma's problem is as one executive said to me, was that he started to believe that he was invincible to the level of president xi jinping. >> be careful with that, eunice. that's for sure. that's going to be interesting to see if there's any amount of contrition that jack ma can show to get back in better graces we'll talk about it all morning. eunice yoon. we'll turn our attention back to capitol hill we have a few pots boiling one, of course, is the president's veto of the defense authorization act. hasn't been vetoed in 59 years covid relief in question the government funding bill. leslie, you have 12 million americans whose ui benefits will

expire in two days so this is going to be quite a showdown as both the democrats and the gop show unanimous consent. >> reporter: that's right. there's plateauing we saw a nice return and recovery in the spring and summer that's slowing down especially as you look at personal income which fell in november as well as consumer spending declining for the first time since april so that adds additional pressure to koccongress to really look at what is the state for americans right now especially going into the holiday season as you mentioned, some of the benefits are set to expire in just a week's time, john >> yeah. leslie, we look at the markets and the futures. it's not as if investors are taking this action by president

trump as if it's going to derail the entire process it certainly looks like people are expecting one way or another this is going to get done, but the potential damage in the meantime and it's really unclear what the end game is going to be democrats jumped on this and said $2,000 sounds great to us let's just go ahead and get that done you're seeing some consternation out of georgia the senate candidates there on the republican side who are saying, well, wait a minute. maybe we can get to 2,000 if we can take some money away from somewhere else just a lot of motion around this investors though don't seem to be worried. >> i think one -- >> there's a -- i was going to say, leslie, there's a school of thought that this may be just delays the signing of some kind of funding for a few days. maybe you have to wait until the president's term ends in 27 days it's remarkable to see not only the showdowns here, but meanwhile brexit we're told, a

deal in the u.k. is somewhat imminent the pound's been reacting to that for the past 24 hours of course, that deal it does appear bottom line that the e.u. and the u.k. will have a much more distant relationship than people thought when that vote first happened. >> sterling trading higher on this as well as yields here even in the u.s. on the prospects of the finalization goes to show you the idea of negotiating towards a deadline knows no boundary. it crosses the atlantic as well. it's fantastic one of the biggest sticking points has been that over the fisheries which is just remarkable that they are appearing to have some sort of agreement on that front and potentially we can retire the word brexit at least from our daily vocabulary or weekly vocabulary here in the near future something to look forward to in 202 2021 carl. >> feels like we've grown up

with it. we have a shortened session here stocks do close at 1:00 but for the time being dow and s&p on pace for a negative week and the nasdaq does have a small weekly gain, although it came off of at all-time high yesterday we're back in a moment some people have joint pain, plus have high blood pressure. they may not be able to take just anything for pain. that's why doctors recommend tylenol®. it won't raise blood pressure the way that advil® aleve or motrin® sometimes can. for trusted relief, trust tylenol®.

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these $2,000 direct payments through unanimous consent. that has now failed in the house. politico points out that they will adjourn until 2:00 on monday, leslie the first chapter of the response to the president's criticism -- the omnibus bill is over. >> i would expect in this week of limited liquidity we could see some additional volatility on some of these headlines out of washington, although it doesn't appear that the markets are reacting in a big way at this point in time it will definitely be something we are watching as the headlines unfold switching gears a bit. the push to ramp up covid-19 vaccinations rolls on. meg terrell joins us with the latest hey, meg. >> reporter: the push does roll on it is going a little more slowly than the very aggressive time lines operation warp speed had laid out we learned about the allocations that will go out next week, 4.7

million doses in total 2.7 million from pfizer and 2 million from moderna that's on top of the almost 8 million that went out this week and 3 million that went out next week that gets us to 15.5 million doses that will have gone out in december another 4.5 million will go out the following week that goal for 20 million people getting their first shot in december will not be met even getting the 20 million out of the door will take into the first week of january. we are also hearing that it's taking a little bit longer than operation warp speed had hoped to get those shots in arms here's the latest cdc data 9.5 million doses distributed. only 1 million shots administered as of 9 a.m. yesterday morning and a lot of caveats to these numbers the million doses talked about there, those are only pfizer's vaccines because there's a lag of three to four days on the data they're not even taking into account the moderna vaccinations as well. those should start to catch up

there are other reasons why you're seeing this go a little bit more slowly. nursing homes, for example, only 12 states currently are administering shots in nursing homes so far we learned from operation warp speed yesterday. half of the states should be getting up and running those are priority groups and they are getting allocations and they will start to administer the shots more we should see the numbers start to tick up going a little more slowly than a lot of people expected, at least at the very beginning. guys >> meg, reuters points out to reach that 20 million goal for the month you have to do 2 million a day for the next eight, nine days, that includes christmas day. is that possible >> reporter: no. you know, there is a data lag, but we're not going to hit 20 million doses administered in december i mean, operation warp speed has conceded that that goal won't be met. we're going to see that first week of january get the catch up

in terms of administering those doses and then how fast we can administer, we're going to start to see the cadence get set it's been a little bit of a clunky rollout these shots are a little bit, you know, more clunky to administer when you have to watch people for so long after you administer them. >> yes yes. meg, thanks for that it's a great place to start with our next guest who runs the nation's largest not for profit hospital system. 93 hospitals across the country. trinity health ceo michael slabowski joins us thanks for the time. good to see you. >> good morning. it's an honor to be with you. >> at this stage, it's so early. basically we're a couple of weeks in should we be drawing broad conclusions or feeling various emotions about the progress of the administration so far? >> well, we're obviously very hopeful and excited. this is a real morale booster for our caregivers in particular to know that there's some level

of safety coming for them and their families so as of yesterday across trinity health from, you know, in our hospitals and nursing homes from fresno, california, to silver spring, maryland, about 14,000 people received the vaccine 9,000 of our colleagues. we call our employees colleagues and first responders as well it's a very hopeful and exciting situation. we'll take the vaccine as fast as it comes. >> we've heard that from a few other hospital chiefs in the past couple of days, that is, you bring us more supply, we have the infrastructure, the logistics, the labor to get them into arms even faster than we are right now. you'd go along with that >> absolutely. our people are jazzed and ready and, you know, everyone who's had any experience safely

administering vaccines is ready to go. >> michael, i'm already hearing anecdotally about some hospitals in some local areas getting more vaccine than they need you're saying though that you'll take it as quickly as it comes are you hearing about kind of dish differences in the amount of vaccine that's being sent versus what's needed in various areas if that balance gets corrected, do you think that could speed up the administration of these vaccines >> sure. well, in our situation, we have not had a situation where there has been more vaccine provided than, you know, we can accommodate. we'll take every, you know, vaccine that we can get right now and our colleagues are very anxious and our physicians anybody who's close to the patient, whether it's a nurse, respiratory therapist, our housekeepers, our unit aides, people in our clinics, they're

all very anxious to be vaccinated. >> that group of people, michael, that you just outlined, are you mandating that they take the vaccine as well as in the future down the road would you mandate that all of your employees have the vaccine the reason i ask is there are a lot of ceos out there grappling with this question of whether to mandate their work force be actually vaccinated. we'd love to hear your perspective on that, especially given your role on the front lines. >> sure. we are not mandating vaccination for our colleagues at this time. you know, people need to be comfortable, and i think, you know, folks need to see the experience with the vaccine and so we're very respectful of that i could tell you that when my turn comes, i will absolutely be in line to have the vaccine because i am confident that it is safe, but right now it's for all of our front line caregivers and our support personnel that we're supporting again, there's enough people willing to take the vaccine

right now that we're not running into circumstances of people turning it down. >> obviously we're hoping to see the positive effects of widespread vaccination as soon as possible. in the meantime though, if you strip out california, i know that's a big if, but if you were to strip out california, there were signs that the daily caseload has been slowing for the next couple of weeks i wonder at what point do you think we would be able to say the pressure is really coming off of the nation's health system >> well, it varies by community. and across our 22 states, for example, i was looking at the data this morning from yesterday and upstate new york our facilities have experienced an increase some other of our communities are leveling off a little bit. but i think our biggest concern is this next few weeks with everyone traveling i mean, over the weekend there was, you know, 3 million

travelers on airlines so, you know, the concern is the next surge after the upcoming holiday period we're monitoring that very, very closely. and we have, you know, ppe and equipment and we do have some therapies to support people, but now the challenges really are caregivers, having enough caregivers to support them i'm sure you've heard that from some of your other ceos that have been on as well >> yeah. there's no doubt about that. i don't know couple steps forward, one step back eventually hopefully, michael, there's progress we appreciate it thank you so much. have a wonderful holiday weekend. >> thank you >> michael slubowski of trinity health. we'll take a break a lot to get here as the market has a shortened day. what investors will be bracing for as we veha a week left in 2020 back in a minute

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watch airbnb today coming off the first day high of 165. interesting, some reports today that officials in the lake tahoe area are asking the rental site to limit bookings as california tries to enforce that stay at home order not a big impact on shares this erning, but we'll keep anye on it. we're back in a moment

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keep your eye on square today. this report out of bloomberg saying that the company has discussed acquiring, john, jay z's title service. lukas shaw is a very good reporter over there and sort of frames the whole issue of dorsey's vision of square being a collection of various businesses, not necessarily

payment related, under one big corporate umbrella >> yeah. no know who else has a vision of a collection of various businesses under a corporate umbrella, jay z, who owns title. you think about what he's done with rock nation, whether it's sports management, the fashion stuff he's been into of course music. we just had frank holland talking about his move into cannabis i mean, there are very few cultural forces like jay z when you consider his kind of billionaire status, you know, also his just celebrity fire power, his brand fire power and association that square can get there beyond a transaction for title. come on, are you really going to compete with spotify, apple music, but if they can get some of that brand power into cash app and the crypto business, that could be powerful. >> is that what it is? i was trying to wrap my head

around with what square would do with title it seemed so in opposition to what square does at its core that makes sense from a branding standpoint square obviously coming at this from a position of massive strength, carl. >> we'll keep an eye on that square is going to be enjoying pretty desent tape on this final day of a holiday shortened week. there's the opening bell and a look at the nyse it reminds you some of the other stories bubbling up about the anticipated explosion in corporate mna or at least corporate mna discussion going into the new year as companies see beyond the pandemic, the effects of the vaccine and try to pull the this mountain of cash to work. >> that's right. all of the tailwinds should be in place for an influx in recent years if you combined

this idea of low interest rates making it cheaper to finance deals, you've got this pent-up demand from a year filled with uncertainty, whether it's from the pandemic, whether it's from the election, and then you also have this idea of, you know, certain sectors that have proven to be, you know, perhaps in more distress during the pandemic may seek to combine in order to extract synergies, in order to help build their strength in 2021 and then on the other side of that pendulum you have companies that have just benefitted tremendously in the pandemic, had these huge cash boards that they will potentially put to work, john. i will expect that is certainly the case in the tech sector. >> yeah. we're talking about mna, but also there's just this question of exits and how they're going to happen. we've been talking all month about the ipo market we were talking just yesterday, you were pointing out the questions about how this sort of

enhanced direct listing might work i mean, heading into 2021 just so many interesting ways that businesses are trying to structure themselves, position themselves for further growth. coming out of a span where they've just been given in a lot of cases enormous valuations, whether it's in the private market or public market. >> i think that's absolutely true that's one of the big concerns as people are looking towards the end of the year. part of the valuation stretch. people turn to the ipo market. we hear it time and again on our air. they look to these companies, to some of them, multiples at this stage in the game. people are starting to get nervous. there was an article in market watch just yesterday saying that, you know, this christmas wall street is partying like it's 1999. we keep hearing whether it's in the spac market, whether it's in other parts of the market. i mentioned ipos as well that people are starting to get a little bit nervous

they're wondering what is kind of the support moving forward for a lot of these companies and the levels that they're trading at this stage in the game, carl. >> yeah. we're going to talk to dan primac of axios with the wave of filings we've seen for axios to the degree we're going to get a big test or a stress test of the legitimacy and viability of the spac model long term, is that -- is that a q1 story >> i absolutely think it's a q1 story because the way these things are structured, you have two years to complete a deal we've seen $70 billion worth of assets raised. just yesterday there was a 1.5 spac file, the spinning eagle acquisition company. what they say is if we don't use the entire 1.5 billion in the

proceeds we find, we can take the proceeds, spin it out into another spac which will seek another deal the point here is we have all of this capital chasing a select supply of deals that would actually be acceptable to be taken public in a spac you have these multi-billion dollar spacs to take public, goldman sachs said there was $300 billion that could be taken public through these things. so what could happen is you start to see, you know, perhaps shady due diligence, some issues on that front and deals that the market starts to really sour on. that could be one way that this market closes on, john >> you know, i have to mention, i see alibaba, which we were talking about before the open, down more than 11.5% that's a bit more than it was,

you know, indicating before the market opened. we know why that is. i'm also looking at other chinese stocks that trade over here tencent down a little less than 2% jd down. pinduoduo down 1 baidu down 1 it's interesting to see that this alibaba situation is affecting alibaba in an outside way, not as much the others. one wonders whether, carl, the others benefit somewhat from a focus on alibaba's power or if investors are just going to back away from all of these chinese tech stocks in zblernl. >> well, i think it's exactly the right point, john. i noticed a moment ago chamath tweeted xi versus ma is putin

versus cortikofsky but i one kerr, john, if you think this is a story about ant financial being in every corner of the chinese economy? >> you know, i defer on all of these to eunice yoon on all of this because she's just so smart about what's happening in china in the context and is very aware of what's happening here it certainly seems like there's this pattern of expectation that chinese business and chinese entrepreneurs look to the government as being the source of largess and who they have to kind of kowtow to, leslie. it's so different than in america, the mindset when it comes to business is that business and private enterprise is what powers the economy and, you know, the general narrative that we tend to hear is, boy, the government needs to be happy that we have this freedom and

this private enterprise here we talked about job creators we can disagree about the value of capital versus labor in this situation. a very different take than what we see in china where if you're an entrepreneur, doesn't matter how successful you've been you're supposed to know your place and bow to the government. >> you can see that in the stock price reaction, right? china comes after alibaba saying it is potentially engaging in monopolies stick activities. that's down 12%. we have probes at google, facebook those stocks relatively speaking barely move on that. as you can see here, one of the reasons that alibaba tends to have these exacerbated moves is the fact that it has a very high concentration of hedge fund ownership. you can see there is number 4 in goldman sack's list of vip hedge fund stocks or stocks that tend to show up more frequently in

hedge funds top ten holdings that's important for a few reasons. number one, hedge funds are actually levered at or near record highs this year so there is an excess amount of exposure to some of those top names. when you do see a negative headline that is concerning to people, that stock tends to fall, partially because of that leverage as eunice was mentioning earlier, the risk of foreign ownership of chinese names, that spooks people. the potential of the vie structure to go away, fines, it allows for 10% of the last 12 months' sales. that could be billions of dollars in fines for alibaba all of those things are very concerning for u.s. investors, carl >> guys, we'll keep an eye on that along with some other movers that we're going to watch this hour. in the meantime though,

let's check in with rick santelli on this thursday morning, on christmas eve. hey, rick. >> reporter: good morning, carl. there's a lot of stories out movement on the deal with regard to brexit even though pretty much we know brexit's going to occur, just a matter of the details. how nasty it ultimately is going to be. the other big story, of course, is president trump and the issue regarding those checks they don't seem to have had a huge effect on the market. many markets are closed. look at one week of treasuries on the 10-year note yield. it starts on friday where we close at 95 basis points we're not that much changed. we haven't had a huge range although volume is pretty good krk it's holiday time. you open up the chart, what you see is we're concentrating on one area, early december's 90 basis points we close above those levels, you start to trade at levels we haven't seen since pre-covid that would be considered a

breakout back to the foreign exchange, you know, the british pound, everybody's looking at the pound today. there's some nuance of this. one week with the pound versus the dollar, things should jump out there. i'm sorry, that's a dollar chart for one we aek you see that the pound is doing better against the dollar for one month but it's not doing better against the euro. when you open the chart up to that prebrexit vote which is june 16th, this says the story against the pound, the dollar is still down 5%. against the euro, the new partner with a little glitch there, it's down almost 12%. carl, back to you. merry christmas, happy holidays. >> same to you, rick thank you. rick santelli. we are right at dow break even let's get to bob pisani. hey, bob. >> we're down about 0.2%

sort of a flattish open i'd say. even on the advance decline line let's take a look at the major movers once again, semiconductors lead. that's been the lead story smh is up about 50% this year. there's your big story everything is using semiconductors one way or another. industrials flattish, the consumer staple hasn't had much. banks have had a nice run on the yield curve and on some of the announcements, bank buybacks flattish as for the megacaps, they're starting to go up. they don't go up the same way or down the same way. microsoft has been holding up well amazon, nothing. amazon has been flat for months now. alphabet has been in a downtrend for a little while up a bit facebook was at a two-year low due to some regulatory efforts

things moving the market, smooth vaccine rollout. hopes for additional stimulus. remember as my friends, the trading community, keep reminding me is the big stimulus program is not the fiscal stimulus, it's the fed bob, you're not emphasizing the federal reserve's role enough. that's true. the program, they have $3 trillion so far. their balance sheet has gone from 4 to $7 trillion. 2021 they're going to buy 120 billion a year of additional fiscal stimulus that will be happening for them treasury bonds keep an eye on that, moving the markets here leslie, talking about alibaba. remember it was 3:15 when he was making those comments, down to 30%. 23i6 do the rest of the chinese markets holding up, it's been one of the best performing markets in the world

the thing you want to own here is mchi. it is the broadest way to own stocks it owns stocks like alibaba. that's up 25% this year. it's one of the best performing indexes in the world and that's because of the rapid turn around in the chinese economy they're seeing over there. finally, the santa claus rally this is one of wall street's favorite old saws. the tendency historically is to go up 1.3% in this period. traders love this because it's easy to play against the problem is, it doesn't work that much anymore, leslie, primarily because i think a lot of people have figured out ways to play it efficient markets, these kinds of things can be arbitraged out. it hasn't worked well. >> it's the grinch selloff perhaps. we should start calling it that.

bob, thank you. when we return, how hedge funds are capitalizing on the shift to ecommerce "squawk on the street" will be right back some people have joint pain, plus have high blood pressure. they may not be able to take just anything for pain. that's why doctors recommend tylenol®. it won't raise blood pressure the way that advil® aleve or motrin® sometimes can. for trusted relief, trust tylenol®.

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welcome back to "squawk on the street." the pandemic has ushered in a huge shift of where and how people spend their money the where is often online. the how? well, increasingly it's cashless this has been to the benefits of hedge funds and others that mine through specialized data sources. cash of course is hard to track. electronic transactions or a nonany mized credit and debit card data tracks and analyzes alternative datasets for investors and corporations. >> as people go digital, online, go more cash-less, that helps our cause in no uncertain means. it's kind of the thing we've been waiting for for years it's filling a lot of holes in our data, a lot of gaps that existed as a result of cash transactions so it's giving our clients a

more holistic view into the consumer economy >> the buy side is expected to spend billions on alternative data this year increasingly popular channel for hedge funds looking to generate alpha, especially among the disintermediation caused by the pandemic many hedge funds are beating the market with technology, health care, energy, multi-strategy funds all on pace to outperform in 2020, guys. >> leslie, this makes me think about this controversy between apple and most notably facebook. the digital ad community about apple's news in the operating system to limit the ability for companies to track you without your consent given that hedge funds are getting so much more access to richer data here, you have to wonder if they were able to connect that to other data that

personalized it, gives more information on you, how powerful would that be and for companies like apple to give choices where we want to be tracked. >> there is a big push and pull. obviously the less de-identifying the data is, the more valuable it is for an investor, right? if you can pinpoint specificity with regard to consumer spending, that's going to be a lot more valuable to you on the other hand, of course, that gets into this gray area of privacy rules, which have so far been able to, you know, maintain that a nonany miced datasets and i can expect in 2021 we will see a lot more on this front, carl >> that's fascinating, leslie. we'll watch that with your help. in the meantime, the wires do say the u.k. and e.u. have reached a provisional post brexit trade deal to avert the

last minute no deal split. we'll take a look at the best performing sector so far this quarter and how you might play it in the new year don't go away. you can watch the croods at home on your big screen.

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>> taking a look at the top performers goldman sachz leading the pack rounding out the top five. 'lbeig bk. turn on my tv and boom,

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>> trying to bounce back from a rough year will the rebound continue in 2021 let's ask an expert. third bridge global sector lead for industrials and energy thank you for being here clearly a remarkable performance it has been a great quarter. it has been a rough decade there is only one s&p energy that has outperformed. that is valero energy. there are three main drivers.

as they are coming back in the market that is not so much in demand demand is coming back and sort of the peak height in demachbd at least not in the near term. some companies are betting the peak demand has already occurred and will decline over the next decade it goes to the fundamental problem that there is not enough investment going in. that's how this rally can continue >> investment from who from the buy side or the actual

companies? the actual company at the low end of their spending in 2021 could be $16 billion that is half of what they are doing last year. so, this under investment could lead to limited supplies outside of opec and demand as we have seen is coming back. it is not all the way back that is the encouraging thing as prices have recovered. the demand still isn't back to 2019 levels like we've seen in other industries that have quickly snapped back, oil hasn't done that just yet >>peter, when you look at the write downs of the past several months, the slashing of cap ex is 2021 going to be the year

where dividends come under sharper threat >> for the major oil, they have been for some time shell covets dividends for the first time since world war ii this year. getting them to vest more in alternatives we are looking more at chevron and exxon. to us, looks comfortable will get a lot of questions but they are addressing it through spending cuts and efficiency there is some that could improve. this is a big every quarter could net from their chemicals business that will start to come off during 2019. if that starts to catch up, there is an opportunity for a bit more stability or at least the perception of that dividend.

>> then of course, the big activist proxy fight at exxon we have to track and follow and potentially see some is movement there in 2021. peter, thank you and happy holidays to you. >> and to you. >> leslie, we appreciate the assist from you. good thursday morning. welcome to "sqwawk on the street." morgan is back with more tv today along with john ford david feber has the morning off. christmas eve, stocks close at 12:00. road map begins with alibaba shares in their worst day in the u.s. ever as it is now the target of an antitrust investigation. >> reunited with john which feels so good. brexit breakthrough. the latest on those trade talks between the uk and eu.

>> a holiday rush like no other. how retailers are gearing up for this year's unprecedented challenges is this the 10 or 11 carl we'll start with the stimulus today. those attempts in the house which will try this a different way on monday. eamon has more >> nancy pelosi here trying to call the president's bluff the president said he was upset with this relief bill because the amount of money going to individuals at $600 was too small. he wanted $2,000 she said fine, i'll put that on the house flow with he saw that within the past hour, republicans blocked the measure to increase the funding from $600 to $2,000. republicans offered their own measure which democrats blocked.

now we are at the laggard heads. >> this is christmas eve surely the president of the united states whether he's in mar-a-lago or any place else ought to empathize with the pain and deep angst the american people are feeling this christmas eve and sign this bill >> so really not clear where we'll go in terms of negotiations nancy pelosi suggests she'll force a vote on this next week that is a reported vote where everyone has to stand up to say whether they are in support or not. that puts the republicans in a tough place. that is the president's key element to the objection to this

bill still a possibility the president simply backs down and allows the bill to go through and he'll sign it. that's one scenario here we are in uncharted waters here, guys back to you. >> eamon, when you look at the defense bill and senate armed services chair saying things like this should be signed the way it has been for the past 59 years. is consensus that that veto will be overridden? >> it is that streak of so many years is so important that's one of the last remaining partisan things that defense bill gets done he doesn't like the fact that they are taking confederate names off the u.s. military. he also wanted some social media issues there that didn't get added to the bill. the consensus is that they have

the bill seeing too many republicans peel off those in the house and senate the margin seems to be there to override the veto and put it into law >> we have seen the ndaa defense bill some troop draw downs and what thepresident can do that eamon javers, thank you and merry christmas. >> we are watching those negotiations closely for more pone e potential market impacts. our guests join us now good morning happy holidays >> same to you nice to see you. >> the fact of the major averages i understand it is a holiday today. volumes are pretty low >> markets are hire. what does that tell us

>> believing we were getting a deal in fact not getting one, the markets went up 4,000 points so this last minute back and forth hasn't been too traumatic for markets either they should know some form of a deal is going to get done at some point that is more of a political story than a market one. pointing that out earlier in the day than in the deal that wasn't passing and the markets were favorab favorable as well. >> the 5% upside from here for the s&p, how do we get there

>> i have to agree with everything we've said. everybody is disheartened as we are sitting here on the brink of a holiday. we have people shopping and renewed unemployment and shut downs and we are disappointed that washington seems to have delivered. as we've been looking through since february highs and march lows, we continue to look through what we hope and have every season to believe is effective and widely distributed vaccine which will get us back to normal. when you look at that number of 3,900 which we've not been too far from even amid renewed shut downs. that's 5% and given that we have

a bill that will pass given today or tomorrow or this year we have a massive amount of cash and fiscal support you are seeing that in spacs and i have more ipos coming up than i ever thought would be possible all of that could lead to 4 you,0yo -- 4,000 or even 4,400 looking ahead to emerging markets. why now or just in general >> no. it is very particular we don't

even view that as top down, like this country to that country the first time in a number of years doesn't have the head wind of a really strong u.s. dollar holding back returns for us u.s. equity investors i do like going into the new year it has been an incredible story this year, which i'm shocked is not getting more play it worked dramatically, all of those stories are still there and you don't have to pay 30 times earnings for it. you still get to pay a midteens multiple certain areas like asia we are really big on the story

>> looking at whether or not this is a gradual recovery explosion goes the other way, we know what the fed has said about this what do you think will happen? >> i think it depends on the path of normalization and how quickly it is. if we have this base case end of second quarter massive immunization and progress on the delivery of those, then you probably see the normalization and in this global growth in the emerging markets supports the value. cyclical, small caps and then maybe 12 to 24 months where you don't have a move up and you don't have a contractionary policy you do see some inflation and the fed moving

you do have the down side. i'm not sure that that is as likely as this continued financial repression and inflation of assets. >> we've wrapped all of this up and talked about the dollar and emerging markets give me some stocks for the stocking, if you will. >> i agree with what she said about the rotation, the value, the cyclical names we are dividend growth investors at the bahnsen group we are strong prayers and growers give you a defensive play and upside from here. we like apollo and black stone in the same group. the private equity asset managers that are fee based kick off a ton of free cash flow. particularly in apollos case, they are undervalued

the prior guest, you are talking about the energy sector. i can't find a reason to not like chevron that 6% plus yield is protected. every negative comment someone may have about the awful things, the biden administration might do to the energy sector might help chevron as some of the smaller players might get hurt by the policy and the chevron that could more afford that. we like chevron and apollo going into the new year. >> a lot of these still very beaten down on the new year. thank you for joining us today >> thank you be well. watching the news out of the uk and the eu. the choir quoting number 10 now saying the deal is do done jouma

bercetche joining us now >> the prime minister just tweeted a photo going like this saying, the deal is done it wouldn't be europe if we didn't get it done in the last minute here we are, confirmation that there has been a brexit deal it has been a long time coming a couple of key sticking points we've talked about in the past that of the level playing field, the uk right to make their own legislations and laws. how they could govern that lastly, the economically insignificant but politically significant point of fishing rights it appears as though they've been able to gloss over the differences on those particula sticking points and why we are

being presented with a deal. a word of caution. no one has seen what is inside the deal yet it is a 2,000-page document. no doubt we'll be busy going over this deal we know for sure, come january 1, the uk will be treated as a third country vis-a-vis the eu there will be no tariffs applied when it comes to the transportation of goods. there will be some trade barriers things like custom checks, border checks and barriers so it won't be entirely seamless that is to be expected as now brexit has official liqueured and the uk will become a third member of the eu come january 1. quite significant, services is not included in this deal.

the uk is an 80% services driven economy. financial services is a big part of the total gdp london. a key part of that that is not included in the deal going forward, that would have to be the bilateral basis. cheering it on everyone is happy. you could see it breaking through the pound at that mark it has been a long time coming >> what a year for brexit and the world. thank you. as we head to break, check out shares of alibaba down more than 14% their worse day ever as chinese regulators have opened an investigation into the company we'll be right back. stay with us

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welcome back submit city md clinics are changing strategy when it comes to covid testing and offering the option of virtual lines to accommodate for the holiday rush it is more than 200 clinics. gearing up to administer to nonhospital-based health care workers in january the ceo of summit city md with us now

thank you for being with us. tell us what the status is for the roll out we've seen a lot of information where the federal government is. >> thank you for having me today. i wanted to thank all our health care workers at summit citymd. we have seen over 200,000 covid cases. we are setting up in new jersey. working with us closely since we are not a hospital-based system. we got our covid clinics up and running. we probably could handle at this point, a minimum of about 1,000 to 2,000 vaccines a day. we'll open other sites to accommodate it in new york with

our citymd sites there was a little hiccup from the state and city they are allocating us our allotment to start with the health care professionals in the new york area. especially the ones with summit citymd who already saw those cases with covid >> doctor, do you have a sense at this point of what the main logistic call challenge will be to get this vaccine or these vaccines out in the smoothest, most predictable, highest volume possible >> operation warp speed seems to be getting the handle on the logistics to the distributors

and to the sites right now, with our site in new jersey with our distributor, we are using the moderna virus, in, new york it could be pfizer. in new york, we'll have to have these ultracold refrigeration sites to handle that we have 130 sites with summit citymd you have to distribute this in a timely fashion because it will start to thau we have it planned and moving in that direction >> i'm curious what the testing landscape currently looks like a lot of people traveling around

and people trying to get tests ahead of that. how easy or hard is it to get one of those tests right now, we are seeing about 24,000 cases a day around 17,000 are covid-related visits we have not seen a marked up tick since thanksgiving in that. it has been steady we have an app now for all our sites. i was very concerned about people waiting in the cold we get their name. we have an app to text them. we have them screened right

there. >> so important that you thought of that to take people's needs into consideration i'm wondering for the sake of color and for the sake of what is happening on the ground the new york area has been through so much. when it comes to people's buy hafors, how does this compare to what you saw in the fall, summer and spring everybody is getting covid fatigue. we really need to be diligent. there is light the vaccines here are getting it

to the phase 1 a then essential workers people over 75 and over 65 we have to be diligent with this >> well taken. we appreciate your work and all the work of health care workers. >> thank you happy holidays >> we'll work on that. yesterday, we brought you the news from the journal that they had terminated a contract with public services for work on commercial ev garbage truck. more word on that. don't go anywhere. that's why doctors recommend tylenol®. it won't raise blood pressure the way

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good morning here is your cnbc covid update today, california is the first state to reach 2 million confirmed covid cases that accounts for almost 11% of the country's 18.5 million count texas has the second highest number of cases with more than 1.6 million. in a scene being repeated around the u.s. hundreds lined up in san antonio for free covid tests with many seeking security ahead of the holidays also a common scene traveling ahead of christmas raising fears of another surge 1.2 million went through check

points christmas may be tomorrow but another holiday in washington. calling him a hero to our nation that city's mayor has named it dr. anthony fauci day in honor of dr. fauci's 80th birthday today. we wish him good health and all the best >> yes the last minute holiday shopping rush is different this year how retailers are adapting >> bertha, we've got to adapt. procraft nators might have a bit more elbow room at the mall than they did a year ago in person. based on phone location data we've seen a couple of spikes on big days like black friday and

saturday when foot traffic was just above last year's levels a lot of retailers and tool. big box for the intention. >> the real strength is still target and walmart we are seeing enormous crowds there. the malls i was in were busy not as busy as last year we know conversion is much better >> consumer growth partners say shoppers are converging, buying at 3% to 6% more this season than last.

stockso stocks outperforming they'll continue to fuel better margins this holiday that may not be good news for shoppers today >> you look at cozy comfortable. those are categories where you see stock ends >> out of stock items have doubled this month particularly in top athletic brands like underarmor and columbia. if you are shopping on christmas eve, you can't always get what you want >> if you shop well, you might just find what you need. just laid out so well, the holiday season has looked very different this year. which stocks are going to be

best positioned into 20, 21 and hopefully a return into something more normal. joining us now with their top picks in retail. i believe you like the home improvement names like lowes and home depot >> one of the names is this massive shift. we still have a robust demand for housing and building and home improvement projects. you would normally think lapping this, you would see a little valley we think that's going to be on fire and will be enough to offset the deficit you will see in some of the shares. these are really good

businesses they are growing 20% above where they should have grown if they retain that amount of sales which they think they will, new earnings power should be explosive >> michael for the people who are getting outside the house, maybe engaging in some athletic activity, what is happening with sporting good retailers that investors should be thinking about? >> dicks is a name we think that is an undervalued stock. taking different endeavors like golfer skig. people are getting outside more. that is driving sales.

there was an important report from nike that is really improving and showing the relationship and dicks being one of their preferred partners. >> i'm fascinated by your home improvement call those material shortages is it more a function of, well we are not going to get a new home so we'll redo what we have? >> i think the trend is the additional cycle of new home sales. that could be the one risk if price appreciation doesn't continue, people won't put as many money back into existing

homes. people haven't sorted that out looking at the underlying drivers and the demand, it looks like you'll have a pretty robust growth which will make it a good year on top of what we saw in 2020 >> things like stimulus checks last week, -- last time we did see checks to americans boost up is the expectation that we'll see something similar again. >> a lot of that would be expected around the holiday period and early next year with he saw that spent in areas like home improvement.

we also think you will see continued strength in gaming we think that will continue into 2021 that would benefit best buy. another one is bjs, another warehouse club as they picked up a lot of new members we think that will be sticky and a lot of stimulus money could be spent in retail like that. >> i expect omni channel, that combination of brick and mortar and digital will continue to be important. to what extent to investors expect an increased investment

the idea that you could use your stores to get through. they are dealing with demand that is 10%, 20% above normal. those companies have been vesting heavily for the past 5 to 7 years you are seeing the scaleability of some of those some of those retailers that may have lagged behind, you could see technology stepping up or leading in for the most part, you've probably seen some of the best demonstration of technology on display in 2020. we don't think there will be another step up. some of them as i mentioned will step up into 2020 along the way. >> thank you happy holidays >> thank you appreciate that. same to you. >> good discussion, guys

keep your eye on some of the week to date dow gainers apple is close to the top. up 5 for the week. 15 for the month up 81 for the year we are back in aomt. men some people have joint pain, plus have high blood pressure. they may not be able to take just anything for pain. that's why doctors recommend tylenol®. it won't raise blood pressure the way that advil® aleve or motrin® sometimes can. for trusted relief, trust tylenol®.

we don't need to tell you it has been a record year for spacs. will 2021 keep up the momentum it is great to see you merry christmas. happy holidays >> you as well >> we love turning to you. you have great institutional memory and cover it with so mucy granularity. does this feel topee or not? >> i can't say toppy, i would

have said that tlie or four months ago and it keeps get bigger last check, there has been 35 to 40 new spacs i actually added a section to my news letter called the spac section. it has become the largest section of that news letter. >> you think it is the favorite tool of the three, has this become the favorite son >> it has become this thing of option at. every private capital firm is at least forming one. when you form one, you have 24 months to find a target. it is better to have one at their disposal >> there is demand out there it is like a spac attack

is there enough supply out there? are there enough companies with the merit at this stage of the game >> we are kind of going back in time a little bit. particularly for tech companies, they used to go public relatively early the idea is if someone was really going to capture the value of growth, the late stages of capital and all of that, companies may plan to go public in 20, 22 or 23 saying we could go now looking at the markets but then again, there is morris being on a younger, less mature company >> we've seen three space deals. there are companies that

wouldn't even be necessarily close as they have been up and running yet. raising the question is this a direction listing with the new nyse rules with the continuation right now. are these going to be increasingly blurry lanes looking at these two options is. >> the direct listing thing will be different the hybrid where you can reach primary and secondary capital. those companies that were to be doing those anyway would have been the liquidity most are companies that expect to go public but aren't quite ready to go today and this let's them go quicker. you mentioned space. it has been electric/autonomous

vehicles and others like space >> you raise such an interesting point about these younger companies we used to see going public earlier that largely disappeared. a lot more might be coming out these investors would adopt the raccoon strategy wait a bit if things turned down, you could go through the trash and pick up a bit. >> that is true. we think about this as the retail investor. draft kings and these other things are going public. the question of whether they'll continue is kind of in their hands. if they turn on these sorts of deals, then the whole thing

cools off. >> what do you make of the roblox moment we had with the delay of the ipo there with a lot of volatility and the new names coming to the market and we are shooting higher are what does that mean for ipos in 2021. >> they had just purchased a company before they were supposed to go public. getting that paperwork back just in time. roblox was indeed concerned about the spikes because the ipo was a big part of that was employees selling stock. they go public and those would

feel screwed over. it would be interesting if they tried to go farther frmt this it was this year or the year before selected by celebrity or an athlete. we've tiny examples of that in the past is that a natural revolution or bank talk? >> it is both. bankers are talking spac again, for the sponsor of these. there isn't all that much down side they are very easy to raise. the worst thing that happens is

you find the company and you give the money back. >> what an amazing evolution of your beat. we look forward to more ahead. >> when we come back, the shipping nightmare before christmas. how fedexand ups are dealing with this year's holiday shipping delays. we'll be right back. stay with us d but simple. d but simple. cutting edge made user friendly. in other words, we want a hybrid. and so do retailers. which is why they're going hybrid, with ibm. a hybrid cloud approach with watson ai helps manage supply chains while predicting demands with ease. from retail to healthcare, businesses are going with a smarter hybrid cloud, using the tools, platform and expertise of ibm.

welcome back as we close in on the last minute holiday shopping rush, how are this year's delays impacting the shipping stocks? joining us now is david ross, managing director of global transportation and logistics at staple great to see you happy holidays it's amazing, when i look at the dow transports, year to date, the two best performers are fedex and ups. i realize whether we talk about some of the shipping delays that are afoot currently, a lot of that is really more the postal service rather than the private carriers right now what are you watching as we finish up this peak shipping season, especially as we also see simultaneously the vaccines rollout? >> yeah.

we're watching all the carriers and postal service and fedex and others are able to really handle all of the volume surge. carriers have been operating at peak levels for a while now this year so when peak actually came, there was question about what the stepup in volume from also stretched networks is going to do and the carriers have worked the best they can with the customers to try to set expectations, get people to shop ahead of time but, you know, it's not human nature to plan ahead and last minute shoppers are not going to go away. and, you know, really just dealing with issues they have in managing the best they can >> yeah. fedex reported results last week we saw that stock sell off despite better than expected numbers. really because of, i think, the ground margins, at least on the domestic side. are costs up for the carriers right now? is that going to be one of the key things for investors to tune into as we get into earnings season next month? >> yes cost is certainly up for the

carriers and several other factors that have gone in that with fedex and ground margins. to get ready for such a strong peak that we talked about, they had to invest in the network ahead of time. some of the investments were delayed due to the pandemic and getti getting permitting to expand the network. now it's a matter of hand willing all of it and getting through before the return season happens over the next few weeks. so the networks are going to be stretched for a while. and the costs are going to be high not only from complying with all of the ppe and keeping their workers safe as they can, but just in handling the immense amount of volume and trying to do it as best they k. >> it's an interesting dynamic shaping up we look at the delays within the postal service network and usps would say they're taking all the packages, they're not turning any away meantime, you had the reports that ups and fedex have perhaps chosen not to take any

additional package that additional packages that were not negotiated with the retail customers ahead of time. any extras which is why we're seeing this flood into the postal service i wonder thou dynamic is going to shake out and what it will mean in terms of market share going forward. >> yeah, it's definitely good for investors. i don't think it will have a huge impact on market share. we talked about that a little bit. fedex was much earlier to this, i would say, limiting capacity during peak surges than ups which is newer to the game it goes back to not building the church for easter sunday fedex and ups, you know in, normal times, fedex may haul 15 million packages a day and during peak they may be hauling 35 million a day you are don't want to have a network built to hand will 40 million packages a day if you're

only hand willi handling it every year fedex went to the peak season philosophy that, you know, they're going to treat the customers to ship with them year round and provide them capacity or in peak ups is finally coming around the postal service is just like you said getting dumped on and they have to figure it out. >> yeah. definitely a big question there. quickly, before we let you go here if you had to choose one name going to 2021, top pick, what is it >> between fedex and u.p.s., fedex just because they've got a lot more margin expansion potential. there is risk there. but if they can get that ground margin back to double digits and continue with the volume growth that they've shown, the stock is just less expensive than u.p.s. so they could have a little bit more room to run in terms of closing that gap but they're both excellent companies and have a lot of growth ahead >> david ross, thank you for joining us today >> thank you >> markets pretty steady this morning on the shortened session.

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good morning, it is midnight at alibaba headquarters in china. it's 11:00 a.m. on wall street and "squawk alley" is live ♪ happy thursday welcome to "squawk alley." i'm jon fortt with carl quintanilla and julia boorstin we're going to try to give you a peek at the future, what tech trends will be important in 2021 will 2020 winners continue to

run?