well, it's been a heck of a week, hasn't it? with the s&p up 1.3% and rivian shares continuing their advance $111 billion market value. that will do it for us on "squawk on the street. have a great weekend, everybody. "techcheck" starts now. good friday morning. welcome to "techcheck. i'm carl quintanilla today sometimes breaking up is for the best and what other companies in tech, perhaps, could benefit from some space? options traders pour into te is tesla and amazon

nvidia up 130% this year why one wall street firm is downgrading the stock today. john >> johnson & johnson joining general electric in plans to break up their multibillion dollar conglomerates there is a cyclical side of this some would say the market reward size sometimes, sometimes focus but each case is also about a specific company with a specific problem and when it comes to tech the question is would some of the biggest companies benefit from a break up. there's alphabet with youtube and the cloud business and amazon, aws and, of course, meta recently drawing some lines between facebook and its other entities d, i don't really think this is so much cyclical with tech as if you've got an old slow growth business that's throwing off cash and then a newer business that investors are more excited about, sometimes companies feel like they need to separate the two. also, if you've got two completely different business models and you're under pressure

as a company, sometimes you can feel like you need to do that. but, i mean, i know that analysts and folks, you know, like to say, oh, you should break this up, break that up but separating youtube from google they're both advertising driven businesses and in this environment with ios, you have first party data and less so with other businesses that helps them >> some good synergies when you look at the pharmaceutical sector this is a trend happening to help each company. not that kind of problem when it comes to big tech as the last 18 months have proved they are able to innovate on a number of fronts and businesses but some pressure, john, that you allude to, regulatory break up in terms of big tech. julie, when you look at an amazon that has been talked about for many years what if you break off aws or cloud business, could actually make the whole company value much greater if you actually broke that off. and ease some of those regulatory concerns. the whole idea that amazon could be using the data that it

collects from cloud to compete on the ecommerce side. >> yeah, i would say that argument that the pieces are worth more than some of the parts is one that analysts have used when they were looking at facebook and instagram and why they weren't concerned if the company were to be broken up now more than ever and now that they identified themselves as meta, i should say and they have this new division that's focused on all of these virtual and augmented reality things it's essential to keep the two parts of the business together because you'll have the ad supported part of the business funding the part of the business that is not going to make money for quite some time. and i would say now especially as they battle those apple operating system changes as you guys mentioned is more important than ever to have facebook, instagram, messenger and all those different pieces working together but i just have to mention the media space here because we've seen some interesting divestments. verizon and at&t at one point were pushing big into media. at&t divesting of discovery and

still some questions about whether the big media companies need to be split up. again, the question of cbs/viacom do they need more scale? maybe those pieces would be split up and combined with some of the other assets at play, carl. >> i was just thinking about that, julia. john, i think it was in code a few years ago where randall stevenson talked about telecomes ability and willingness and eagerness to move into the so-called artistic community and buy some media assets because they felt the data plus the creativity part of it could co-exist clearly we're no longer in that environment. >> that thesis didn't work out to everyone's satisfaction i think it would be fair to say, carl nobody talks about breaking up apple. you know, they're not talking about, oh, apple has a semi conductor design business and why don't they spin off iphones or max from the rest of it aside from regulatory, d, they're not

talking about spinning off the app store from the rest. why? because it's working usually when stuff is working and it's a diversified business model. it's a good thing. >> no one is telling apple that they have to focus more. but you could see some in the tech landscape where you could make that argument but that is a key point. let's move on to the poster landscape. the market has been far from stable if you're an investor in square, telecom you saw cut the share prices from 10% to 30% over just a matter of days the vix has seen a drastic move in october and jeffries out showing it is unusual and stocks moving more than average in the five days following misses for large caps and smallp caps ali. options trading driving up avis and other meme stocks. $890 million worth of single stock options traded the highest level ever according to goldman

sachs. joining us now cnbc contributor of "wall street journal. great to have you with us today. you wrote a piece about this and a lot of othis movement as we've seen over the last 18 months has been coming increasingly from retail investors >> that's right. retail investors have definitely driven the surge, especially when it comes to options trading which is kind of surprising because these are risky trades, right? you can definitely double, triple, quadruple your money through the options market but it comes with significant risks. retail investors have flocked to this market especially bullish call options to play the stock market higher higher and higher. >> it has only gone in one direction but lay out some of those risks because volatility on the upside and also voltilly on the downside which is increasingly important as we talk about policiy y y potentia rates next year. >> that's right. when i speak to institutional

investors, they do highlight that this options trading can drive a lot of the momentum and it can kind of exacerbate these moves higher and higher. the stock market has been pretty calm it's been on a record run but underneath that we're seeing these incredibly violent moves a $1 trillion company like tesla jump 10% in a day and these really sharp post earnings move. >> gunjan, we usually try not to bore our viewers with intricate wall street lingo, but one day we'll walk into the office and read about gamma exposure. an easy way to help viewers understand what that means >> so basically if i'm a retail investor and i'm buying tesla stock, there's a marketmaker on the other side of that trade that is selling me that option and they have to hedge their exposure in the stock market by buying or selling shares and

that's what traders say really exacerbates this volatility. their hedging activity on the other side of the retail trades. any time you see a big stock move, it's not necessarily the options activity, but the options are playing a bigger role than they were in the past. activity has just shattered record after record this year. >> gunjan, what are people saying about what might happen this time if we hit a real, you know, pothole in the market given all this options activity. for now, stocks are higher and money to be made some place if you lose money some place else but if everything goes down, does it go down harder >> that's what they're saying. they are saying it can exacerbate a reversal. what we see is people pile into these very crowded trades. in october around 50% of all options activity was in two stocks, amazon and tesla people are piling into the same things that have worked over the past year and that can

exacerbate in the other direction. >> gunjan, we spent a lot of time talking about the newer platforms like robinhood and the role that they're playing and gamifying some of these trades and options trading and we know that sec chair gary gentzler and it hasn't slowed down. do you think more scrutiny and what happens to the likes of robinhood and others if the market does turn and a lot of retail investors are left holding the bag? >> look, it already seems it is under scrutiny and how payment for order flow has kind of fueled this boom in retail trading over the past year and regulators do seem to be looking at that. what i found striking i spoke to a 51-year-old woman for an article this week and she started trading options last year as kind of a side gig and she's doing these tech momentum driven trades and i uz wajust struck by, you know, how people are just so key to jumping into the market, take advice from

tiktok and they learned something totally new over the past year and it doesn't seem like their activity has been slowing down at all. >> yeah. we certainly see it, it's in their earnings report now. thank you, we'll talk to you again soon >> thank you. meantime disney one of those companies with that big plunge post earnings and there have been a few of them investors not impress would the slow down in disney plus subgrowth. today disney celebrates the two-year anniversary of its streaming service with some new releases and a lot of tweets this morning about disney plus day and some of the stuff they have coming in '22 >> well, carl, that's right. disney is rolling out a flood of new content and promotions to draw am more subscribers as it offers a $2 entry deal that's a $6 discount as it looks to jump start growth after adding just two million subscribers in this last quarter. now, the service is premiering 25 pieces of content, including series starring will smith and

one with chris hemsworth and also making the film that was just in theater available to all subscribers and sharing first looks at more than 40 new upcoming titles. ceo said that to hit their subscriber targets which they expect they will, the new content is going to be essential as well would international expansion. the service did go live in south korea and taiwan today and launching in hong kong next week so, what's particularly notable to me about today's event, though, is it puts disney plus in the center of fan relationships off that streaming parts. parts division they get perks including access to disney world and disney land for 30 minutes before the park opens. and at those parks, as well, as disneyland paris special photo opportunities with characters and then for consumer products shop disney offers free shipping for disney plus subscribers and they're discounted ebooks, as well he sees disney plus becoming the

center of a new metaverse. it's clear the company wants the subscription to be central to every part of it relationships with its consumers with parks and consumer product sales the more they know about who their subscribers are the better it can market to each consumer speaking of virtual worlds, today disney also announcing a series of nfts featuring its characters guys >> julia, maybe i'm going to regret this, but i have to give jason credit for this vision, right, which i think he laid out with us on "squall alley" before it was "techcheck" years ago on how disney plus and subscriptions and parks dying back together with the digital world, et cetera have they talked about how much insight and data they will have into the makeup of each household. within disney plus different profiles you can have for each person are they getting insight into who in a family is what age and who is a fan of what because it

seems like they could perhaps tap into datae on that younger demographic in a way they're getting heat for and disney may not. >> facebook is trying to track you and use that information to target things when you're on it's sort of on the app versus off the app. that's what the operating system change is all about. you're logging in as yourself and you're saying my family watches this content and wants to go to this theme park on this day and we want to buy this consumer product for this holiday. it's just all tracking who you are and what you want and th theoretically giving you more data for that. they haven't revealed what data they have or what they could potentially do with that information. it's clear someone just watching this system unfold that the potential is so massive. also cutting out the middle man. remember the days when we were talking about subscriptions for espn and how challenging that was going to be for disney when

all the numbers declined guess what, then they were still reliant on that cable ecosystem and now people are streaming things and all about the direct to consumer relationship and no one standing between disney and the consumer ask so much more data and so much more potential down the line. >> julie, i wonder what you make the note this week where they said, look, we believe they have best in class awareness but they're failing to get penetration in older demographics where, clearly, there aren't kids begging for disney plus content and that is going to put more emphasis and need on some offbrand platforms namely hulu. >> well, yeah, that's why i think they really see hulu as being that general entertainment offering carl, that's why so much pressure on this international expansion. we talk about the disney plus numbers so far one reason they didn't add very many subscribers in the last quarter just two million subscribers is, a, they had limited new content in part due

to production delays and they didn't have any big international launches as they launch in some of these asian countries, there is the potential to reaccelerate that growth so, yes, they're not getting the older audiences here because the content whether it's the big franchise content is targeting more families whether it's a marvel, a marvel movie or, you know, an avengers movie or a starwars movie but if you look sort of big picture, maybe that's what hulu is for here and internationally they need to keep getting those families and investing more in local language content and a big driver of growth and also cost >> not enough old people where are we going to get the old people from? julia, great insight after the break, why downgrading nvidia after 130% run to start the year. the analyst behind that call still likes it and joins us on what has been a big week for chip "tec

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time for gut check today we're looking at contex itlogic. got a lot of retail attention and shares have just fallen apart. down 83% since february 1 st new today thecompany's founder is stepping down as ceo after more than a decade in the role the announcements come as the

company reported a 40% decline in the third quarter sales and disappointing outlook going into the holiday season shares are in the red this morning. they're just above $5, but, john, this is a company that went public less than a year ago at 24 bucks a share. ouch >> yeah. little show and tell we were just talking about the impact of options on the market. turning now to semi conductors, our next guest is downgrading chipmaker nvidia to neutral today saying no negative catalyst for the ratings change. the conditions have only improved for the company in the last three months. so still likes the company, just can't love the stock let's bring in matt bryson who is out with that downgrade on nvidia this morning. matt, i'm so curious nvidia is kind of like the tesla of chips, if you look at the rise over the past 12 months, if you look at the way that people believed in it so, i wonder, is this partly due to your sense that in this infl

inflationary market that stocks are more at risk valuation wise or more that within the semi conductor space itself you think there are other good bets that aren't so highly alued >> so, i think it's a little bit of both, though, it is really valuation. when you bring up tesla, that is really the only other name in tech that has a hardware component that trades at a valuation richer than nvidia i struggle looking at semi conductors historically to come up with something else that trades it 65 times my two-year earnings estimate. but, yes, it's not, there is nothing fundamental. it's just the stock it entered october at 200 and now it is 50% higher and so it's how do you justify that move over the last month, what changed and, yes, conditions are better but not

better enough. >> so, are you dpeg going to hao eventually make the same call on amd and risk doing this, the same fate that people who stepped away from tesla too soon have faced and, you know, continuing to watch the stock go up as people believe in it and the market marches on. >> i mean, that's certainly the risk, right. so, tesla seems to have divorced from, i don't recall the name but seems to divorce from not fundamentals, but from traditional valuation. certainly that could happen with nvidia when you think about things like the metaverse. when you think about trying to figure out what ai growth is really going to look like over the next decade, those are, those are questions and problems where there's not a great answer and i certainly could be wrong

in the sense that ai growth could just happen at a faster pace the metaverse could show up more quickly than i anticipate and clearly graphics are a very important piece of that puzzle, if the metaverse comes to fruition sooner rather than later. >> your note is really fascinating and it sort of gives us a window into the way in which analysts think you say point blank normally on a downgrade you wait for a negative catalyst. there aren't any fundamentals getting objectively better why not wait for a quarter in which they miss the whisper number or something like that. they give you some cover >> you know, that's a great question that's traditionally what i would like to do even entering the next, entering into last quarter's earning season i was more concerned on the fundamental side

and rich valuation for some time so what i really struggled with is if the client graphics business falls off and at that point crypto demand seems to be declining and gaming demand was taking a pause, then what will happen with nvidia given the rich valuation this time around those concerns are gone whether it's crypto being, doing as well as it's done and miwhete it's gaming coming back into the holiday season regardless, there is no shortage of demand for client gpus. my struggle is that once i start shifting my price target so, if all of a sudden i'm at 360, 370 in terms of where i think nvidia is going to go and the stock doesn't climb and then i look and it looks like they'll

miss that whisper number then in some sense i'm being disenginuous in my metrics to go to 370 and take it all right back that is the struggle at least i encounter every time i get into these richer value stocks. >> matt, could n, hvidia take advantage of the huge move and what could they do with more money to justify the valuation you said tesla or amc playbook >> so i think they are doing the best thing they can do already in trying to acquire arm they were ahead of the valuation appreciation a lot of value appreciation semi conductors where they made that bid i think in my mind that acquisition is going to be difficult for them to pull off just given concerns around

market concentration, what china's thinken to their semi conductor development but honestly i think they already made the best attempt that they could to use their higher stock to acquire something that or their attractive stock to acquire something that would certainly increase their valuation. >> yeah. well, it's a brave move which we appreciate matt bryson from webbush, thank you. coming up after the break, we'll hear from google head of commerce partnering with shopify ahead of the holidays. plus a lot of direct to consumer companies have come to market recently as you know. we'll break down which names might be safe to own stay with us

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welcome back to "techcheck." i'm carl quintanilla and john fortt. biggest laggers. peloton, paypal. more on that in a minute but first a news update with rahel solomon. >> good morning. here's what's happening at this hour shares of johnson & johnson up 1% after the health care conglomerate announced it will be splitting into two publicly traded companies names like band aid, neutrogena and lister listerine and the sed company will include the johnson & johnson names and pharmaceuticals and medalical devices. they have been inkthinking aboua break up for some time because it will bring tremendous opportunity to shareholders.

>> where we see things going in the future fee feel right now is the time to make this kind of move and ultimately allow us to reach more patients and more consumers and have more innovation and execute in a much more focused wayp. >> trusts of elom musk selling $687 million of tesla stock yesterday. and the ceo of bed bath & beyond saying that shoppers should start buying early and in person due to the country's ongoing pandemic supply chain problems i'll send it back to you i guess i should work on my list >> rahel, speaking of shopping early. google is gearing up by for the holidays and struggling to find its footing and ad dollars to amazon and google partnering with shopify i caught up with the company's president of commerce and payments bill ready who gave an update

>> we've seen really great results from that already and, you know, many more merchants coming to be discovered on google 80% plus lift in our merchant base and 70% plus lift in our product catalog and our shopping graph and a lot of that is a result of our open platform approach >> this past quarter the company's retail business was the largest contributor to growth in its ad business. we also talked to bill about buy now, pay later specifically if google would build a similar product or enter a partnership with a fintech similar to what amazon and affirm have done >> to be very clear, you know, we're not the retailer we have no aspiration to be the retailer we're really focused on how we helped retailers connect with consumers in a shopping journey and the vast majority of othose consumers will complete their purchase with the retailer >> so, if you read in between the lines here, guys google certainly differentiating itself with things like open

platform and meeting the customer where they are from amazon a little bit which has faced scrutiny but the buy now, pay later option has proved extremely popular over the last year or so and that's where you meet customers you have to wonder if google not doing it itself like rumored apple is going to be doing it if they're missing out on revenue there. >> shopify, so interesting here because it's almost serving that google -like role. google from 20 years ago of connecting the retailer to the audience, right. we're hearing from affirm earlier this week. max talking about how buy now and pay later, shopify has been a huge volume driver for that. and now even google like one of the names in volume turning to shopify for ecommerce volume is amazing. staying with ecommerce shares reversing direction after losses grew in q3. courtney reagan joins us with

more on how direct to consumer businesses have faired since going public inest thering quarter for them they raised their full year outlook and they are leaning in on investment here 35 stores they still plan and they argue, hey, look, you know, vertical integration, we don't get hurt as badly with these shortages. >> yeah, absolutely, john. i actually found a lot of interesting nuggets sort of in this call because it was the first quarter that warby reported results as a public company. we got to get more color and background information on sort of the inner workings and for so long i think so many people thought that stores just really weighed down on costs because of rent and because of paying employees. but i think we now understand how expensive it is to run an e-commerce business which is why so many players continue to run at losses just like warby parker but they are adding stores and gave us interesting productivity

numbers. the average sales per square foot is $2,900 and that's the goal they want to continue going forward. margins about 35% and they see pay back in under 20 months and they actually saw a bigger shift in customers coming back into the stores in this past year i think they said only about 42% of total revenue came from ecommerce so far this year, which is down pretty significantly from 2020. of course, we know the stores were closed for some period of time so there is a shift there but for a player that really started with these online only direct to consumer business. you can see stores are really becoming a key part of this strategy >> although we followed these guys for years, court, we know they pioneered the idea of having a pop up at least i wonder given now the cost of oacquiring customers online and supply chain shortages maybe make consumers think to themselves and maybe i should just go to the store if i want to make sure i'm going to get it >> yeah, those are really, really good points, carl

you know, this company seems to have fared really well we historically use air freight to get our goods that is the way it has been for us we have been able to avoid congestion at ports that we've seen from other retailers. still the cost of that air fright did go up for them, as you could imagine. that weighed a bit on margins. they said they're still getting a lot of customers through word of mouth some marketing spend to be expanded to grab those new customers as part of this growth strategy going forward and that top of mind brand awareness for people to identify warby parker as a place to go for not only glasses, but also contact lenses and those eye exams. if you shop for more than just the glasses, you're worth two times as much a year later >> a lot have stores right here in san francisco, just a few blocks from here and everyone seems to be talking about omni channel amazon 2

making a growing push into physical stores. but these brands like warby parker, allbirds part of the strength is to control the brand from start to finish so they never list on online marketplaces like an amazon. do aiothiyou think that is the e can you envision them being sold inside department stores >> you know what, i actually can. i don't know if that's a popular opinion or not but i think a number of these other players that we talk to and talk about for instance, contour brands this is not a direct to consumer business in the same way they sell lee jeans and wrangler jeans and strong direct to consumer business right now and wholesale are churning out strong results for them. i do think if you can get the relationships right, you can make this work for you both direct to consumer, owning that channel, that vertical integration like you're talking about and also if you partner

with the right retailers the brand is presented in the right location and the right stores and it can just open opportunity. >> fascinating look at the mix between physical and online retail, court. thanks so much our courtney reagan. as we go to break, let's get a check on the recent public debut. roblox up another 6%, 7% this morning after a 42% jump on tuesday following those results since its direct listing in early march up 132%. a lot more on gaming stocks when we come back stay with us feel stuck with your finances? move your money to sofi and feel what it's like to get your money right. ♪♪ ♪♪

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let's get another gut check onape. downgrading from neutral to sell and from 14 to 16 as they predict a weakening spending environment here in the u.s. in late 2021 and early next year. goldman pointing to dow and cisco as better options within enterprise shares. hpe dragging down nearly 7%. another spinoff name >> when you look like cracks in the windshields do we really want to go to the metaverse? iceland has mixed feelings and an alternative >> some said it's not possible

some said it's out of reach. to them we say it's already here seriously, look. it's right here. and what do we call this not so new chapter in human connectivity the iceland worst.

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mark zuckerberg has a mad rush to enter the space or at least be seen as the company entering the metaverse with partnerships and acquisitions mentions on the q3 conference call help the metaverse reach a billion people and hundreds of billions of dollars of commerce this decade. as washington wants facebook to get smaller, he's doing the opposite planning to spend $10 billion in the area just this year. is this real have we already burst the meta bubble in two weeks? our next guest is calling the move hail mary play. here to discuss charles. happy friday >> happy friday to you, too. >> i want to talk about whether you think the platform generically has merit over the long term. before that, i would imagine you think zuckerberg is just trying to co-op this phrase as a way to distract from other troubles >> he's trying to change the conversation about facebook given it is under investigation and it seems every month on capitol hill

look, deciding to rename facebook is like philip morris saying instead of changing cigarettes their solution is to create a brand-new amusement park named tobacco adventure land and hope that gets everyone so excited that they stop remembering that the cigarettes are unhealthy for you. >> the engineering, though, charles and the marketing effort is not something you can just whip up in a couple of weeks in response to some pressure on ios or from congress or something else this had to have been years in the making it's hard to imagine this was strictly a defensive move. >> there's no clear reason why they announced this except to try to distract us think about how amazon rolled out alexa. they spent years and years and years developing the technology and released it. by the time you had a fully functioning alexa in your home, you didn't even realize it was such a huge leap because you didn't see the drips and drabs of it. for facebook now to be renaming

it self meta without having a product of the metaverse, that's a desperation play it makes no sense whatsoever no clear evidence that facebook is the company that is going to be able to bring us into the metaverse. a lot of hardware companies that are further along this journey than facebook is >> that's very fair, charles we spent the last week talking about that but we also spent the last week talking about the metaverse and facebook and not really regulatory pressure. so, yes, facebook tried to change the narrative is that working? >> i don't think so. i mean, except for the fact that we're talking about metaverse right now. >> we are. >> facebook spent all this time talking about metaverse and what is there is to go buy right now? what product was released this week there isn't one. the greatest product is something sold byp apple, the airpods. sold 2 to 3 million oculous last

year apple sold 110 million airpods last year. they're augmented reality and listen to what is going on around you and listen to your own music or podcast or audio books on top of that it doesn't make any sense for facebook to be doing this and i think ultimately it will backlash because the more we talk about the metaverse and the more we point out this is just a way for them to try to detract us from the fact that right now they can't stop 14-year-old girls from bullying each other into eating disorders on their own platform so why should we believe they will do a better job with a new technology >> i'm having a hard time knowing what to do here because i'd like to make it clear. i was here first earlier this week, maybe even last week my problem here isn't with the components that are being kind of glommed into the metaverse. great business models here from adobe and nvidia and look at apple's new chips that are tuned towards graphics, as well as the

airpods that you mentioned it's putting in these unproven things like ar, vr headsets which have been around for years and haven't gone mainstream and somehow try to co-op suggesting that this hardware is more successful in the future than it has been in the past to me that is completely unclear. >> two separate questions here the first is, are we going to eventually move to a world where there is more integration between digital and the real life the answer is absolutely yes over the next decade or 15 years we are going to see more and more digital aspects to our daily pass of life but the second question is, is facebook or any existing companies, the ones that right now are going to bring us into that new universe and new tomorrow i would argue that apple has a pretty good history of hardware design and hardware innovation amazon has proven itself facebook has not proven itself to be a hardware company in the slightest nor really an innovator when it comes to taking a new technology and

taking it main stream. much like every other technology that is out there that has become popular, we don't know what the path to the future is going to look like it is going to take us off guard and unpexpected and come from a college student sitting in a dorm room and become the most valuable company in the world. trying to gain out what the next decade is going to look like is a fool's game and only exists to try to change the conversation around the fact that this company is obviously suffering from terrible leadership right now and that they don't seem to know what they're doing when it comes to stopping regulators from cracking down >> although, charles, let's back up a minute and admit that zuckerberg has built a behemoth and that wasn't an accident and although they may not have been the tip of the sphere on innovation they found ways to buy it, copy it and no reason to think they won't continue to do that >> that's absolutely right he has planted his form in the

flag of technology that doesn't even exist yet a big difference between saying we have first advantage and able to exploit that with good algorithms to grow in a social network where we already know that social networks make sense andmyspace and we have other progenitores that people have and we want to grow on it there's a future that is ten years from now and we'll be the the first ones there without anyone being able to see what that future actually looks like. that's very, very different from buying instagram or whatsapp and integrating them >> charles, good discussion and one we'll have for ten more years, apparently. good to see you. >> good to see you we're not getting away from it that fast, guys. we'll stay with virtual worlds they're betting on block chain when it comes to disrupting the video game market. kate rooney. of course they are

so deidre, block chain technology not just for bitcoin, with soft bank an dreesen horowitz and sequoia see this as a potential disruptor to the gaming market dominated by the likes of roblox right now. in a traditional game you can buy and spend those assets and live permanently inside of that game like infinity or central land that's another big one the digital real estate and the things that you own in the games are nfts you can sell those on an open market and the value of the virtual world nfts grew by 175% in the past month and that's according to gap radar that's due to more attention to the space after facebook's big pivot to the metaverse in the money in these games is cryptocurrencies, the tokens

related to decentralland and it is up 230% respectively since october and axios' cryptocurrency and that is up 25,000%. the user base topped 2 million this year with the most growth in the philippinesand brazil a people looked to these games for alternative income they call that play to earn, but not all of these cryptocurrencies are registered as securities and something regulators may be paying more attention to lately. blockchain games are a $1 hun billion gaming market can't ignore right now they can emerge as competitors or potential m & a targets he tweeted recently that, quote, we are not touching nfts he said the field is tangled up with scams >> it's a big target which is seen leading the metaverse in many ways. one media company seeing a spike

in insider buying after posting quarterly results. find out the name to what other topics they're betting on their own firms only on cnbc.com/pro "tech check" is back right after "tech check" is back right after this and advanced security integrated on our activecore platform so you can control your network from anywhere, anytime. it's network management redefined. every day in business is a big day. we'll keep you ready for what's next. comcast business powering possibilities.

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we close out the week, seeing gains of 29% and 22% in the first two days of trade. this morning up almost 5%. now we're at $110 billion. elon musk did wish the company well in a tweet. he says he hopes rivian can achieve break even cash flow and tesla is the only new u.s. automaker to pair production volume in the next century and tesla having a rough week as musk was selling shares down almost 16% for the week. btig did cut lordstown saying the production will not ramp up until the back half of next year and blink surges after reporting record revenue numbers and you look away ten seconds you miss a lot in the ev space. the market ridiculouslessness

calendar is in the latess 90s. >> a busy one next week. retail earnings and big tech names like nvidia which what a run also >> yep, and you'll have cramer to play with out west as he goes out west. >> can't wait. >> and retail earnings let's get to the half. >> carl thanks so much welcome to "the halftime report." i'm scott wapner the week that either confirmed the rally or questioned it joining me for the hour, kerry firestone, co-founder of market rebellion. the winning streak yields and the ten-year note yield 157. 1.57%. we'll get to that debate and it's a good one to have, but we have to get down to d.c. kayla tausche has breaking news. >> the white house is confirming that president biden will hold a virtual bilateral summit with china's president xi