s&p's performance for the year most of this year it had been a significant laggard, making up for it in these last few weeks let's call it as we head towards the end of the year. the 2.7 trillion dollar market value. that's going to do it for us on "squawk on the street. "techcheck" starts now ♪ ♪ >> good monday morning, welcome to "techcheck. i'm carl quintanilla with jon fortt. deirdre is off today fed chair powell is tapped for second term. what that means for big tech and growth names as they lead the nasdaq higher this morning then we'll break down how rates relate to a few high-flying pandemic stocks that have come down to earth. just a few hours now from zoom's results tonight. and then finally, a twist in

the case against theranos founder elizabeth holmes he takes the stand live at the courthouse, jon. >> let's get started with the valuation of tech stocks who better than mike santoli to look at that for us. hey, mike. >> hey, jon. the standard idea that higher yields especially higher real yields are punishing to tech stocks, it's really being tested right now. right now nothing as a group is holding back tech. take a look over the last two years at the s&p tech sector against the ten-year treasury yield. so the conventional wisdom is somewhat that these are moving in opposite directions, inversely correlated that's not true. in fact f you talk about the lows right here towards 0 and the yield now we're up to 1.6. it's coincided with very strong results in tech. now, i do get that sometimes you have better results in the secular growth stocks when you do have yields that are tame or inflation adjusted yields that are negative

seems to me that it hasn't really manifested itself in any on going way there's an academic argument that big tech stocks are discounted back at a higher rate if, in fact, you have yields that are elevated. i think we're not in a zone right now, though, where that reckoning will take place because we still are talking about 1.6% on the ten year, half a percent on the two-year. obviously the fed can kill bull markets if it goes too far the fed can certainly mitigate the strength in all kinds of stocks especially growth stocks. but so far i don't think you've necessarily seen that hypersensitivity of tech stocks to higher yield except in the spring when we did see the very, very high velocity move higher in yields and coincided with tech in secular growth taking a hit, guys. >> great overall perspective, mike now, if i might, want to go a limit more surgical into maybe some exceptions to the overall trend. growth stocks in particular, c 3 a-i, pel on the, cheg, stitchfix

all stocks that had some kind of pandemic thesis that evolved over time and all of those more than 70% off of their 52-week highs as of today. what does the interest rate picture signal for either those particular stocks or stocks like those where sentsment seems to have turned around. >> it's fascinating, jon, you can widen that out and look at some of the up start fintech firms and roku >> massive potential addressable market common theme, the companies are relatively early in trying to tap into it they were given massive valuation premiums a year ago, ten months ago because they were given credit for actually getting there pretty quickly and here we are ten months or a year later and they're doing well but not as well as the valuation expected i don't necessarily see a macro or an interest rate driver of

those things, specifically unless it's kind of the psychological, hey, we'll buy the most speculative stuff because rates are at 0 i know that's a standard idea. but back in the '99 tech bubble when i remember things being even crazier than we saw in january and february in sp speculative tech yields were 5 and 6% you didn't have that reason. >> i'm thinking what david said last night out of goldman, bon yields will rise in '22 and fast-moving stocks are vulnerable >> sure. >> that view has been institutionalized, hasn't it >> it absolutely has i mean, i get it obviously that's the way the math works if you're trying to value these things but you're working against stocks growing 15 or 20% in earnings, what is the extra discount of a somewhat higher yield mean for them? to me, it's a matter of it's where the incremental dollars goes yields are going up and because the economy is reaccelerating or the feds finding the need to

respond to faster economy, the marginal dollar goes to more cyclical stocks and maybe it will be the banks and not software, but that's not solely explainable by where yields go. >> yeah. we'll see. we'll find out next year whether it's a rising tide that lifts many boats mike, great stuff. mike santoli let's bring in cnbc contributor to talk about powell and rates and how it relates to tech good morning >> good morning. thank you for having me. >> first, i wonder if you can characterize how you think the renominations being absorbed >> i mean, it seems like investors like it so far, right? we're seeing markets rally today and i think this goes back to how resilient this market has been in recent weeks and even months >> there was a view out there that there was some kind of put that she would be a higher hurdle politically i wonder what you think that means and whether or not the vice chair thing is also worth considering vis-a-vis the

markets. >> yeah. i mean, i had heard a little bit about that, but look, i think we're seeing the tech sector continue to rally over the past month, the s&p 500 has hit more than 60 fresh highs, the most since 1995 so so far i think markets really like this decision and it's kind of what a lot of people expected >>. >> what do you make overall of what seems to be mixed valuation signals. the last couple weeks had a number of analysts say that they were adjusting their expe expec expectations, their ratings on s.e.c. because they had risen to high then i mentioned a bunch of stocks tech related but in other areas. all down more than 70% off their 52-week highs and yet nvidia, where growth has been strong, continues to soar. must be well over $800 billion market cap right now

what's happening from your perspective? how much of this is driven by options, speculation or interest rates or what? >> it's so striking to me. i think there's a really, really big disconnect out there where investors i speak to continue to cite inflation as a big risk it's one of the biggest wild cards out there, but at the same time you're seeing these growth stocks, tech stocks keep rallying and there has been this divergence seeing the teslas of the world rally, nvidia, qualcomm are sitting on double digit gains over the past month. as i reported ecently for the "wall street journal," many people are expecting that to continue so i think that shows you that despite these risks of higher yields and higher inflation that are out there, a lot of people are sangwin. >> are you hearing areas in the market that haven't had the same kinds of extreme reactions where investors might therefore look for either less volatility or

maybe more behavior according to fundamentals from here >> you know, i think this whole market has been so momentum driven that's been a key theme throughout the year where when something takes off it just really, really takes off so it certainly seems like fundamentals have become a little bit less important than momentum trading this year >> finally, big journal piece on supply chain, sort of echoing what we've heard from others in the auto space and the chip space. with the caveat that maybe it's labor inflation that remains a little more persistent through the course of 2022 i wonder if you can put it into some framework how good of news is this? >> sure. i mean, it does seem like some of these bottlenecks around the globe are starting to ease, right? and i think kind of putting that aside, even if they don't, what we've seen so far is that corporations have been able to pass down these higher prices to their consumers, whether it's walmart or home depot.

so investors seem to be looking past that for the time being >> yeah. certainly the retail front it's something less and less of a concern. thanks so much good to see you. >> thank you for having me. let's dive now into a specific stock, goldman sachs naming amazon a top pick heading into the holiday season and 2022 they see amazon well positioned to handle supply chain issues and they believe amazon's prior investments are going to cement the company's ecommerce dominance. joining us now the analyst behind that call goldman sachs managing director eric sharedan. welcome. happy monday you like amazon, you also like walmart. how much of this has to do with size and the investment that you think is going to pay off particularly for them? >> thanks for having me on, jon. we're bullish on amazon end of '21 into '22 my colleague on the consumer side courts walmart. i think they have similar themes

we come back to on amazon. number one, scale, the ability to absorb these costs from an inflationary stand point the ability to deal with the shipping elements of the holiday period and into next year. i agreed with one of the points you made about labor inflation persisting and being more permanent that transient and you need scale to absorb that, but more importantly these companies actually built inventory over the last six months to now find themselves on the wrong side of the demand curve consumer demand from all the data we look at looks very strong going into and out of the holiday period so having inventory, being able to absorb the costs, communicating it clearly like amazon did on the last earnings call and then having the street with numbers that are set up where they can actually beat those numbers going forward, we think after a year basically of underperformance makes for a good setup on the stock. >> what about the cloud data and a.i. side of that stock. it's been so much of what's driven the valuation and we've got a.w.s. reinvent coming up next week where we expect news

out of amazon and maybe some others on that front how important is that to this call >> yeah. it's amazing for us it's very important i mean, they're the number one player in cloud computing. cloud computing remains one of the key secular growth themes for all of tech over the next five to ten years. not even just the past five to ten years when you look at where we are on the penetration curve, they just reaccelerated 200 basis points and improved faster than we expected this past quarter. and the backlog they continue to build the revenue shows that they're going to have strong growth for years ahead behind that secular growth theme. as a result of it, we think because the two pieces are together, some times you get sort of this consolidated multiple being applied to amazon where we actually look as well as a bit some of the parts a.w.s. would likely be one of the cheapest software stocks if you looked at some of the parts and paid high single digit revenue multiple for it and by the way it has 30% ebitda

margins in the last quarter as well. >> eric, i know this is probably overstepping, but if inventory, in fact, is safe for holiday and we graduate into 2022 and there's still a lot of inventory, what's the risk of things getting more promotional in the first couple quarters of next year? >> yeah. it's a great question, carl. and it is a real possibility if inventory was built too much and we hit sortof peak fear about the logistics bottlenecks in late october or mid october. there's a possibility of that. there's also some people that studied the logistics chain that also call out elements of chinese new year in q1 lead to another bottleneck i don't think we know the answer to that yet. could it be more promotional, definitely it's certainly a possibility but i think against the comes we see in amazon's model we have some conservatism baked into the first half of next year. >> right

meanwhile, there's this universe of ancillary policy risks, i guess, regarding amazon. there's the whole jedi controversy. bezos giving money to the obama administration how would you grade them handling these d.c. centric policy decisions and responses >> yeah. look, they seem pretty responsive to all the things that come on to their radar screen you know, across my coverage universe elements of data and privacy or elements of seller information. and we think most of the companies i cover would love to have national solutions to these problems sometimes states, individual states try to do state by state solutions. that's particularly difficult to implement. and the federal government hasn't really tackled as many of these issues on a nationwide scale yet. but it seems like amazon is navigating through that and we don't see any particular head winds. the one area in our own research we've called out is that the regulatory scrutiny on big tech, hasn't impacted pnls has led to

a freeze in mna and causing some companies to do more organic growth than inorganic growth v-mna, amazon trying to buy mgm the movie studio and receiving a lot of scrutiny at the ftc we don't see in the anti-trust issues from that from a distance but it's interesting that that gets a lot of scrutiny as an output of the higher level of scrutiny for big tech. >> eric, i don't want to ask you specifically about zoom necessarily, we'll talk about zoom, talk about roku and these stocks that benefitted from a lot of momentum in the past perhaps, now getting punished. i know there's some that fit that profile in your portfolio how are you looking at the metrics that are most important to you with that kind of a stock and perhaps give you more of a signal than the noise in the market just around what the stock itself is doing? >> yeah. i think what we try to root ourselves around is how much of any demand in these types of stocks was pulled forward by the pandemic

amazon, netflix, chewy, peloton, stocks we cover. and then we look at how the stocks have been traded. right? amazon did nothing from july of 2020 until really about the last week or two to be perfectly honest where peloton had gone up to 150 and is now corrected back to a much lower level as the year has gone on so i think what you have to overlay on is how much of the end demand was pulled forward versus creating a new normal how much of the consumer behavior or enterprise behavior and the example of stocks that will leverage it out are permanent versus transient and how much of that is already priced into stocks from current levels as opposed to just taking a step back and saying, whatever won in the pandemic is going to win forever even in travel w make a strong argument for normalization as we get into '22. but that's normalization of demand, supply, and marketing intensity. so a lot of forms of normalization that have to work through a lot of these business models going into '22 and

beyond. >> i'm glad you brought that up because we talked for so long about the consumer overspending on goods, underspending on services as covid has been structural head wind, but if that fades, does that make you want to lean directionally into more of those travel-related names versus ecommerce or hard goods like a peloton >> i think some of that is priced in. travel stocks had a nice rally off the bottom in the last six months we still like expedia as one of the online travel plays we have a buy rating on. a mixed of not only domestic travel but also the opening up of cross-border tral which we think is one of the big laggards if you look at travel trends where you haven't made that big trip to italy or big trip to asia in the last 18 months and you certainly could see some shifts what gives us some confidence in amazon is how much of what we would call staple spending or elements of week to week type behavior by the consumer has shifted online fromoffline so there's been an element of

discretionary moving into almost that staples element and some of the products they have subscribe and save we think that will maintain momentum in ecommerce dollars revenue growth. >> watching those demand signals. we get it. thank you, eric sharidan from goldman. uber now getting smoked this morning as wells gets bullish on microsoft. both of those stories are next "techcheck" is just getting started. ♪ it's another day. and anything could happen. it could be the day you welcome 1,200 guests and all their devices. or it could be the day there's a cyberthreat.

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let's get a gut check on uber first fore ray into cannabis canada they can order tokyo smoke through uber eats. the service is only for pickup, so you order and pick it up yourself no delivery option just yet. back in april, ceo told us he would start looking at cannabis delivery here in the states once federal regulations allow it shares in uber are down almost

4% trading once again below that ipo price of 45, carl, i'm sure a lot of people would like to get it higher and maybe this is a step in that direction >> you couldn't resist i knew it. you could not resist i remember we talked about this with dara, when he first announced drizzly, which just seemed like a natural extension but clearly overall the movement has a lot more headway in can than it does in the united states, at least on a federal level, jon. >> yeah. i think it's interesting if you look at uber eats, door dash the way these marketplaces are working, it's not just about delivery it's also about marketing and discovery of different services that people can get. here, it's just like, a menu you put in your order, go and pick it up but if these players like uber can surface this option to the right kind of consumer already on the platform, maybe they can generate real value, carl. >> yeah. we'll find out meanwhile, turn to microsoft

this morning as well wells fargo initiates overweight $400 target as the company hits new intraday highs yearlier tho month. booming operating margin gone from 30 to 42 over the past five years. most important piece in their view is cloud business azure could overtake a.w.s. by 2028 we did watch that azure metric in the last print. i wonder what kind of contest you think that is? >> more and more talking about cloud overall as this versus that, whether you're talking about a.w.s. versus microsoft throw google cloud in there, whatever, doesn't make a ton of sense, right you have to think about linkedin and the momentum particularly there. i think you have to look at office 365, they have this price increase that's coming in march. here on "techcheck" not too long ago arguing that the software

itself was deflationary so even though they might be charging more for it, the customers will see value. you look through at what they're doing in gaming, in the cloud there. that too is software that there's hardware connected to it then i think you have to think about the profitability within those software models, carl. so, i think, yes, a.w.s. and azure is interesting to look at the growth rates there, but we also got to look at industries, how they're gaining there. we are talking to a.w.s. leadership next week about exactly that and just how much advantage they can gain in these various areas of strength, carl. >> yeah. no a.w.s. -- it's like a star tight end. great player and when they catch the ball it's exciting, but there's a whole other number of offensive players they can utilize. that's interesting now. now moving off of uber roku estimates. are they too high? we'll discuss next. plus, nvidia hitting yet

another all-time high. shares up a whooping 60% in just three months up 2.5% today above 338. "techcheck" will be right back

welcome back to "techcheck" i'm carl quintanilla with jon fortt this morning stocks are higher, in fact, dow once again getting close to the session high up 300 s&p 4730 is an all-time high apple, adobe and others all-time high tesla one of the key stocks leading the charge at the nasdaq which has an all-time high of its own. news update with rahel solomon. >> hi, good morning, carl. here is what's happening at this hour existing home sales growing less than a percent in october despite strong demands and rising prices. inventories of homes for sell are down 12% over the last year. go to cnbc.com to see how investors are squeezing first-time buyers out of the market futures rising nine-year

high soy bean and corn prices are moving higher as buyers seek cheaper alternatives vonage shares jumping 25%. ericson is seeking to buy vonage a deal worth $6.2 billion. and consolation brands is reportedly discussing a merger with monster beverages, the deal would create drinks giant that would offer everything from spirits, wine and beer to energy drinks companies have combined market cap of nearly $100 billion carl, lots of uppers and downers in that mix, just don't do it all at the same time you should be good send it back to you. >> drink responsibly thank you, rahel. we focussed so much on evs recently, we want to highlight a piece of news from gm today. company is announcing it's getting into all electric boating. buying a 25% stake in pure water craft, an ev boating company shares of gm, of course, up more than 50% this year a lot of that has been attributed to the company's renewed focus and investment in evs as stocks like tesla and

rivian capture some of the market imagination in that space, gm currently up 3%. jon, as we see some of these use cases potentially multiply. >> yes and lots of question around how much government investment will be powering that particularly out of infrastructure. speaking of government, president biden nominating jerome powell to a second term as chairman of the federal reserve. ylan mui has more on the details on that. white house is opting for continuity and stability at the central bank we'll hear from jay powell and the nominee for vice chair at a press conference at the white house later on this afternoon. president biden did say in a statement, quote, i have full confidence after their trial by fire over the last 20 months that chair powell and dr. brainard will provide the strong leadership our country needs now, both nominees do have to be confirmed by the senate and there are at least three democrats who have come out

against powell senators jeff merkley and shelden white househouse are worried he's not grefs enough on climate change and senator warren long opposed him. she voted back against him in 2018 when he was nominated the first time still, i am told that the president discussed this decision with senator warren, that they met recently at the white house and she got a chance to provide her input the administration is also been working closely with the head of the senate banking committee, sherrod brown, who today signals support for both powell and brainard republicans, they also appear to be on board. senator mitt romney tweeted that he will vote to confirm powell he wrote, i believe he's a person of capability and integrity. while i disagree with some fed policies, powell's recent comments give me hope that the fed is way to address the rising inflation that we're experiencing so guys, at this stage, it does look like both nominees should have enough votes to easily get confirmed. back other to you. >> wow something getting easily done in washington i will wait with baited breath,

thank you. meantime, we talked about how the fed and rates have affected the valuations of stocks and growth stocks in particular one of thebig movers reports earnings just a few hours. that is zoom that stock had a bit of a rough 2021 down 30% year to date and the street is anxious. citi noting that sentiment is, quote, quite negative ahead of earnings thanks in part to zoom fatigue. and concerns over the declining use of that core product in schools and businesses reopen, carl morgan stanley cut its price target on zoom as well it will be the first time we heard from the company since the collapse of that 5.9 acquisition as investors try to figure out where zoom's next leg of growth will come from carl, i'm thinking not just growth, but also overall stability, what 5.9 seem to represent to me and we talked about this year on "techcheck," was a return to that core of enterprise users as opposed to relying on the consumer and maybe smaller business user

whose usage might be more spotty and i think they still have some filling out of that overall strategy to do now that 5.9 is specifically isn't going to be a part of it. >> yep cramer of course, long said we need to know what zoom 2.0 is going to look like then, jon, come january, february, we're going to get another stair step, we think, we hope, in return to office and that's going to be interesting to see what the knock-on effect will be on say, usage and hours used for zoom. we'll see what happens tonight meantime, turning to another pandemic winner losing its shine, streaming hardware player roku facing critics. shares now 50% off the highs as moffit takes the company down to sell and calls the streets overall long-term estimates, quote, just too damn high. with us this morning, the only list founding partner michael nathanson. good morning great to have you back. >> good morning. nice to see you. >> your note is remarkable in that it sort of paints a picture

of the way in which you've become disenchanted with this name in a fairly short period of time, right? >> yeah. carl, the story was that the disclosure in the company is not great. and we thought there was a bigger driver of the business being advertising. it turns out that's really the streaming war competition that was fueling more growth than we thought. something we dug into and trying to figure out how much growth is coming from streaming wars which we think are cooling versus advertising. >> then last week we get the note from them that they're going to create some original content which i think historically they had said they would not get into entering the hit-making business so to speak. is that a signal that they are grasping or is there something else going on? >> no, that's exactly right. that was part of the thesis, right? that they needed to compete for share of time with all these other companies. and using re-run, old content given the investment anyone else is making is a tough strategy to

draw eyeballs in we thought they would have to invest in new content, which is a completely different business. it's cap intensive, maybe lower margin when we heard that news, that was after we downgraded it, it was a confirmation that, you know, our view of it's a different business going forward is being confirmed >> michael, on the other hand, i've often thought that roku's business gets underestimated by investors, just in terms of how many consumers use them as their gateway into the streaming experience and also this idea that they've got the one operating system that's purpose built for tv and for streaming so that allows them to be more nimble than some competitors might that work against your thesis here? >> look, jon, i agree with that thesis to here i have roku sets interface is great people who don't like connected

tvs go to roku, it works better. but we think we're at a point of change, right? amazon is making their own tvs android and google have now woken up to this opportunity we think they'll get more competitive. but samsung, vizio make their own operating system roku works for people, but i think their competitors have picked up on their success and will start mimicking that success, right i think you're right but we think going forward their share of players and their share of op right systems will decline as others get into that space. >> so which is more of an eyebrow raiser for you, netflix going into video games or roku going into original content? >> that's a good question. i would say -- to back away, they both -- not to answer the question, they both represent something which is businesses

that they're in are changing, right? so, for us netflix is really a side bet that games will help them drive engagement. but i think of the two, roku getting into content is a bigger stretch, right that's a riskier bet that's a bigger sign of perhaps changes that they're seeing. and you know, we thought the market would maybe react positively when that report came out because it addresses a fear of, you know, roku losing share. but i think people are now grappling with the fact that it's going to be more cap intensive, so they're battling on operating systems with the people we talked about, battling on viewership with companies we talked about it's a competitive space where as netflix has such an advantage that they're looking to add more viewing time from a bigger vantage lead where as roku is battling out with pretty big companies with a share of time and share of player sales. >> yeah. that chart right there is pretty interesting. the roku versus netflix.

while i have you, i would love to get a question in on disney as it tries to find its legs coming out of that report today, wells trims their target as they said the slowing content machine was the culprit for that last quarter. where are we right now and are we really going to start pitting disney on netflix on the number of titles >> no, carl. what's interesting because a couple weeks ago i remember talking with you guys our view was that disney plus has done a great job out of the gate. but its content is just too narrow, right if they have focussed on their strength, pixar, marvel, lucas film, they need to broaden out older homes homes that don't have kids or super fans netflix built a completely different business, right? the volume business. tons of new content. i think disney can't chase netflix down that path they need to expand the content. and that calls into question

vis-a-vis disney plus. so that earnings call release and the conference call kind of in my view synthesized the challenge that disney has. they need to broaden out that will take some time that will be expensive as well >> yeah. certainly that's what investors are getting their arms around. back down again today. great note on roku, maybe mooi kal. thanks so much. >> thank you for having me. meantime, we'll keep an eye on adobe atlantic takes dubai get bullish on the company's growth prospects coming off intraday high elizabeth holmes taking the stand live outside the courtroom in a moment when "techcheck" is back in two.

theranos founder elizabeth holmes taking the stand in a move that surprised many scott cohen is live on the scene with the latest. >> good morning, carl. she'll be back on the stand 20 minutes from now this is, of course, the founder of theranos who raised some $900 million in capital for that company. those same persuasive skills

will be back on display in the courtroom today as she answers what we expect will be very friendly questioning from her attorney, kevin downy. elizabeth holmes not answering questions from us when she arrived at court just a few moments ago. >> ms. holmes, what do you hope the jury will learn about you this week? you looking forward to this? holmes was on the stand first for about an hour on friday, about enough time to get comfortable for the jury to see her without a mask for the first time in 11 weeks often smiling, she talked about her early successes in starting up theranos and tried to counter a picture that the prosecution painted over the last 11 weeks of someone carrying out a massive fraud. she is expected to go through this direct examination probably today and tomorrow with the idea that the jury will be left with a positive impression of her over the long holiday weekend, but then it's the prosecution's

turn with cross-examination that is likely to be very, very tough. and we do have a sense of how she performs under those types of circumstances thanks to hours of deposition video obtained exclusively by cnbc. listen to her in 2017 being questioned by an s.e.c. attorney about the claims that their ramos was making to investors in 2013 and 2014 that they had this technology that could perform tests on just a few drops of blood and was ready for patient testing. >> i don't know that we said it in those words, but generally that was -- what we were working to do with lab going into the fda and that time frame. >> reporter: how hot a ticket is her testimony? well, they started lining up about 4:00 a.m. this morning pacific time, so about four and a half hours ago they're still in line. we have our ticket we'll be in court all day and we'll let you know how it goes guys >> scott, thanks

it will be a tough job for the prosecution. she's known to be, of course, charismatic and convincing part of what got us here scott cohen covering that for us thank you. investors in atm counting the cost this morning. the indian fintech company backed by softbank, warren buffett and more plunging 40% in two days after going public last week in india's biggest ipo ever investors lost on paper $090 million in just 48 hours by some estimates. stay with us

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ed time for a gut check on semiconductor manufacturer global foundry getting a boost after host of initiations at buy today. shares are up 40% since its debut in late october. just a couple weeks ago. analysts are forecasting on average more than 20% upside for that stock as it continues to benefit from the chip shortage and partnerships with companies like ford, carl. meantime, jon, keep an eye on tell la doc today shares down 15% this month the stock goes down to neutral on slowing growth. plus, what is next for blizzard, rumors that ceo could be on his way out. journal piece about what it would take to have him leave we'll discuss that don't go away. ♪ 's another day. and anything could happen. it could be the day you welcome 1,200 guests and all their devices.

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pressure mounting on acti vision blizzard. outside groups like girls who code canceling their partnerships with the company. joining us now to weigh in, vice chair nell minnow.

this company has run since 1991 rescuing it from scrap, a lot of people would argue he is a colorful guy not known to convention this company is built in image of cultural problems perhaps part and parcel of that. what do you think of this image that he can quickly fix it >> it's a big complicated problem. i'm delighted they got rid of the binding arbitration clauses and i hope everyone else follows suit on that but to suggest that anything like this could be quickly fixed is another bonehead response just like his previous boneheaded responses where he didn't pass on information to the board of directors daidn't act on complaints he received and i hear no specifics on how that's going to work. the board says maybe they'll put together a special committee let me just tell you something he's made a lot of money for the company over the years but his customers are mad at him and i'm

talking about big customers, customers that make the systems that his games play on and his shareholders are mad at him and only people not mad at him was the board of directors issuing a statement that was vague >> a number of employees are upset. what is the path when you do have an effective founder. he's not technically the founder but effectively the founder. a board with a lot of loyalty to him and he doesn't appear to be ready to go. how will this play out >> the board of directors must be consulting their own lawyers right now because someone is going to have to remind them as duties as fiduciaries. this is a weak board a lot have been on the board for too long once they sit down with lawyers, they'll remember that their duty is to the shareholders and they need to do better. i think he's on his wayout >> what is different about this particular controversy

is it about the board composition relative to other episodes that are, sort of, in this camp that we've seen in the past few years >> i think what is different about about this one is we've seen instances where the ceos themselves have been involved in misconduct in his case it's definitely his managerial judgment and competence that's at issue and that's something that is to me an even clearer case >> would it satisfy, you think, those who are concerned bobby's running of the company if he steps back to chairman and puts a ceo in place, does he have to leave the company or could he step back? >> i think he has to completely leave the company. you know very well that switching around the name plates between chairman and ceo is often meaningless. come on. it doesn't mean anything what we need is a strong statement from this company and i'm talking about the board of

directors about the specific steps they're taking going forward and his departure is one of them. >> what should investors do here the longer this drones on? i know you're not an analyst here but you have seen cases like this where there's a governance issue affecting the stock. what should people consider as this continues to play out >> this is the time of year when shareholders start looking at their shareholder proposals in just a few months on voting on proxies. this board is looking at a strong negative vote if they don't change their perspective and they don't start taking action >> strong take from an expert. mel, thank you as we said earlier, zoom reports after the bell catch a breakdown of these numbers tomorrow on "tech check. subscribe to our podcasts.

"tech check" is back in a moment i think you're going to like it here. umm, why is everyone... throwing things at me? look, as cfo it's my job to be ready for whatever's next. that's why i have my finance team, randomly hurl things at me. it's also why we use workday. it gives us insights, so we quickly pivot our strategy, people, planning, you name it. sorry, sir. i will aim straight at your next step. see that you do. would you like some coffee? workday. the finance, hr, and planning system for a changing world. ♪

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remove the shuffle option. listeners will hear tracks in their listed order this was the only request i ever had in our changing industry, adele wrote in a tweet on sunday >> dude, you're getting adele in the order she intended now, i think they overuse the shuffle button on my playlist. you press the long thing and you're all over the place. one last thing to borrow from apple, ken griffin beat a group of funders for a rare copy of the u.s. constitution last friday the group raised over $40 million from 17,000 participants

to purchase the copy and make it widely assessable to the public but griffin secured the copy for 43.2 million at the auction saying he plans to lend the copy to the crystal bridges museum of american art in arkansas if that's not a sign of the times, i don't know what is. i mean, here comes a hedge fund guy in with a bunch of money spoiling the crowd funded fund >> outwitting the crowd. a lot of national treasure jokes on twitter the last few days we're going to keep note of the sell-off in the nasdaq we're down almost 0.8 of a percent but get getting names here as money rolls into the dow but off the high also. i was reminded of the names we'll get this week. a good diet of retail. >> as we mentioned earlier, we're getting zoom today that's been an important story

of this pandemic overall i think a question of what will drive growth going forward and what their narrative is going to be >> meantime, of course, we're watching for continued market reaction to the news about powell renomination and we look forward to the president tomorrow, we believe, talking about rising prices. let's get to the half. >> carl, thanks so much. welcome to the "halftime report." a sideways run for stuck is an end of year rally in the cards we'll debate the road for your money ahead. joining me, liz, steve, joe, but take a look at stocks. we see what major averages are doing. reversal in the nasdaq drawing attention. dow is good for 200. s&p is good for 12 rates moving up today. perhaps on the fed chair being renominated and that's very interesting for the dime dynamic moving forward tech n