more of life insurance, you may qualify to sell your policy. don't cancel or let your policy lapse without finding out what it's worth. visit coventrydirect.com to find out if your policy qualifies. or call the number on your screen. coventry direct, redefining insurance. it is 5:00 a.m. here at cnbc and here are your top five at 5:00 we begin with stocks trying for a bit of a tuesday turn around after ending lower for the third straight day just yesterday. and investors grappling with a one, two punch, the first from omicron, the cdc out with new data on how prevalent the variant is in the u.s. and how far it's come in the last two weeks. second, we have the drama in d.c. as the white house and democrats look to salvage their nearly $2 trillion build back better agenda. and then we turn our attention

overseas, unrest in europe over new restrictions ahead of the busy travel season. and then, from bronze up to silver a sunday surge helping disney's marvel once again make history it is tuesday, december 21st, 2021 you're watching "worldwide exchange" right here on cnbc and good morning, i'm frank holland in for brian sullivan. i hope your morning is getting off to a great start we are kicking off with u.s. stock futures and this morning they're in the green, all the indices up about half a percent. the dow looking to pop 150 points at the open, at least at this point this after a rough start to the week yesterday the dow falling more than 1% for its third down day in a row, down 700 points. the s&p capping off the worst three day streak since late

december and we watch the value versus growth trade. the i shares, russell growth etf coming off a 1% loss yesterday and the fifth negative session in the last six, a slightly better day for value but not by much the real story, there is a month-to-date picture that has value up 1.6%, compared to growth which is down more than 2.5%, on pace to snap a two-month win streak, something to watch and treasuriries, slightly up this morning as investors continue to assess the omicron risk still below the 1.5% level that seems to be key when it comes to tech stocks and other high growth names we're also watching oil after the worst day since november right now we're seeing wti up fractionally, about a quarter percent. ice brent crude down

and always watching crypto bitcoin just below the key level of 50,000 right now, up about 3.5% this morning but only at 48,600 still below 50,000 also ethereum, a lot of things built on that platform, up 2.25% now turning your attention to the stock of the morning, that is nike. higher in the premarket as sales in the earnings for the most recent quarter top estimates thanks to north american demand, i'm one of them looking for running shoes. now let's go worldwide a huge turn around in asia overnight with japan jumping 2% and a rebound in europe as well. we'll turn our attention overseas -- we just did it, i thought we were going to toss somebody to overseas but i gave it to you. this morning's other top stories, silvana is here take it away.

china mobile said it hopes to raise $8.8 billion from a shanghai i.p.o., the announcement coming one year after it was forced to delist in new york china mobile is the world's largest cellular phone network operator in terms of subscribers. the listing would make it the second largest i.p.o. this year behind rivian. and it's coming as the s.e.c. prepares to ask chinese companies to post risks posed to them by the beijing crackdown. what's normally the second busiest in shopping day of the year, super saturday, not so super this year. according to new data, u.s. visits to retail stores dropped 26% compared to 2019 though they were up compared to last year, despite slow down, the national retail federation is projecting total holiday

retail sales could rise by as much as 11.5% last year. and the white house says president biden has tested negative for covid-19 after coming in close contact with an aide who tested positive the aide who was fully boosted but started to display symptoms sunday spent approximately 30 minutes with the president on air force one on friday, the other members of the staff are being contacted and will be advised to get tested per cdc guidance >> thank you very much. >> you got it. turning our attention to washington and the ongoing fight against covid-19 president biden set to address the nation this afternoon as the cdc now says that omicron is the dominant strain here in the united states. alice barr joins us from washington with much more. good morning, alice. >> reporter: good morning, frank. the cdc says that omicron now accounts for 73% of new covid

cases. and medical experts are saying it's alarming how quickly it's spreading and how quickly it's outstripped what was the dominant strain of delta overnight, health officials in texas announce what they believe is the first known omicron-related death. this was a man who was more than 50 years old, he was unvaccinated, and we're told he had underlying health conditions the unvaccinated part, that is the key that health officials are stressing. they do still believe if you have your original vaccine doses and if you have a booster shot, that you're going to be very well protected against omicron in fact, moderna just came out with its new data showing similarly to pfizer that its booster dose does a really good job of protecting against omicron and health officials say so far the breakthrough infections they've seen have been mild, even those in the older population as you noted, president biden was exposed to someone with a

breakthrough ninfection, but because of cdc protocols he doesn't have to isolate because he's fully vaccinated. he's facing a little bit of criticism for waiting this long for coming out to what the response is going to be to the variant. we know the president is going to lay out steps to help individual communities respond to the omicron threat. he's also expected to address the frustrations over difficulties in accessing testing, expanding access. we know there have been long lines across the country for people trying to get test as well as difficulty getting those at-home tests. and we know that the president is set to issue a stark warning about what the winter ahead is going to look like for unvaccinated americans frank? >> alice barr with the latest in d.c. thank you. we want to take you to the kennedy space center down in florida for a moment where the

spacex falcon 9 rocket is set to launch a spacecraft to the international space station. this will be the third launch for spacex in four days. the flight is the 24th mission by spacex conducted under a commercial reply services contract with nasa it's happening right now, watching it live at the kennedy space center cool moment. turning our attention back to the markets they did not takeoff yesterday they got hammered on worries about the omicron variant, tighter economic policy and the collapse of the president's spending plan. but things may look up today folks say a selloff of 1% on monday tends to be followed by a positive performance on tuesday. they use the spy as a proxy. since 1993 it's had 70 dee cl

declines on a monday, on tuesday .9% rise let's talk about this and get a longer term view on what the new year may provide with emmy b bowersox thank you for being here i can't hear you are you on mute? >> no. >> there we go i heard you just now >> good. >> thank you for being here. glad you're here with us we just touched on the historical data. if history is any indicator today we could see a 1% rise, basically, it feels like we're in uncharted waters. we just talked about it, rising variant here in the u.s., rising inflation, jay powell said may be time to retire transitory and easing of historic money policy. how do you see today shaping out with everything we have on the landscape? >> i actually expect the market to snap back a bit today part of that is because -- you know, i talk about this a lot. i think we're still seeing very

significant retail flows into the market and when we saw that last omicron dip, we saw a record buying by retail investors so that's putting a bit of a floor on the market. i do think we're going to continue to see significant volatility over the next month you're right, there are a lot of unknowns out there, always are. >> certainly a lot of unknowns we're aware of, omicron, inflation, supply chain issues we could go down a list of things we know about are there any other macro trends we need to watch out for >> one of my concerns is the slow down in china i think it's an appreciated risk to global stock markets. we're seeing population growth slowing in china, we're seeing pretty sharp slow down in manufacturing activity, and so,

china is under pressure and as you likely know, you know, the chinese economy is between 20 and 30% of global gdp. so any struggles there are likely to reverberate. i'm not sure that's been fully priced in. it's also, frankly, a deflationary force that may keep a lid on inflation, even in this country. >> a couple of stock picks let's get to those i think when omicron first emerged, a lot of us the stay at home stocks would really perform well we have not seen that so far with the current environment, a lot of uncertainty, do you have any stock picks that can ride through the uncertainty in the new year >> we like the semiconductor sector in general. i ambecoming a little bit concerned about the very significant government spending on semiconductor production. and we have to remember that

semiconductors -- that sector is very highly cyclical but there's some names that i think are relatively defensive and one of those would be taiwan semiconductor. i think it's basically flat or even slightly down over the last three months while the semiconductor index in general is up about 10%. and it's a very financially disciplined company with a good yield. so for anyone who wants toget exposure to a sector, you know, semiconductor revenue is likely to double by 2030. it's a good defensive name that will provide you some cash flow in the meantime. >> any other picks one thing we've been watching is a lot more people at least talking about shopping online. with supply chain issues people have not been forced but encouraged to go to the stores to get what they want. any way to play the trend of online shopping? >> yes, we like a company called big commerce which is a shopify competitor.

shopify is trading at around 20 times sales. you look at the chart, it does not look particularly attractive it's a long-term hold. but frankly, if you look at the russell 2000, there are parts of the index already in a bear market small cap has really been hit with the volatility of the last few months so with careful selection of small cap names, and particularly companies like big commerce that are disruptive technology companies and that are basically a play on buying online, i think is a good long-term investment very disciplined management team, by the way. >> big commerce. i know they had partnerships with next and stocks are up in the premarket. some of the people thinking the way you are, emily thanks for being here. >> thank you very much. unrest in europe over new

proposed lockdown measures in the face of omicron. plus an industry hit hard by the pandemic facing an uncertain future at least in the near term we speak with one restauranteur who had to make hard choices in the last two years. and later why president biden's build back better agenda may have a lifeline left to play. but first the launch to the space station, the company's third launch in four days. a very busy hour, "worldwide exchange" just taking off itself stay with us

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welcome back to "worldwide exchange." now to the developing situation overseas amid surging omicron cases. leaders in germany are set to decide on new restrictions for the post-christmas period aimed at slowing the spread of the virus. this as demonstrations against fresh measures continue in that country and turned violent in some places. annette weisbach joins us with the latest >> thank you for having me we're having a crisis meeting

today in berlin in which most likely restrictions for social gatherings will be decided and those will kick in from the 28th of december, according to reports i've seen. so essentially people who have been vaccinated are allowed with ten other people, the unvaccinated are already in lockdown, they're not allowed to enter shops and go to restaurants and cinemas. so what's discussed is also shutting down nightclubs and cultural events, sporting events, only happening without a physical audience. and another report gives us a reason for the timing, according to the chancellory, omicron will hit the country only in the beginning of january and the chancellory thinks the restrictions would not last a couple of weeks and people would not follow if they lasted

longer given the protests, only 30% of people are unvaccinated. it's a huge divide in germany. >> it's a huge divide, i think, globally, at least here in the u.s. the protest and strong pushback by people is this more germany specific or more pan-european? >> it's not pan-european, one could argue those countries have been hit very badly in the first two waves, they have a very high vaccination level. for example, spain has a high vaccination level. italy has a high vaccination level. these are also the countries, interestingly now, who have a very relaxed approach to the omicron wave potentially hitting their country. so they are pledging to keep everything open. france is among them france is insisting there will not be any lockdowns but they have restricted travel from th uk into the country as well. so for now one can say the northern countries in europe are

headed towards more lockdown measures whereas the south, like the mediterranean countries, do pledge to keep their economies and their societies open >> thanks for the latest out of germany. we appreciate it as we head to break, stock futures extending gains after a rough session yesterday. here's a look at some of the dow's biggest pre-market gainers. you're watching w"worldwide exchange." we're back right after this. >> announcer: today's big number $5.6 trillion. that's the total of all m&a deals so far this year a new record, according to deal logic. deal volumes jumped 63% over 2020 why not both? visibly diminish wrinkled skin in... crepe corrector lotion... only from gold bond.

welcome back to "worldwide exchange." let's get a check on this morning's other headlines. frances rivera is in new york with the latest. happy holidays and good morning. >> happy holidays and good morning to you, frank. we start with the new year that has arrived early after a cross country trip that started in california, the 2022 numerals are now in the big apple they'll be perched atop one times square later this week to help ring in the new year.

and party goers are hoping the festivities won't be cancelled because of the latest pandemic surge. new york mayor bill de blasio is expected to announce the status before christmas spacex is dealing with an employee employee covid outbreak in california the rapid spread of the virus has led the nhl to become the first professional sports league to pause its season. the league and players union have agreed to delay five games and begin the holiday break early. games are said to resume monday december 27th. the vikings and bears rekindled their rivalry under the lights of monday night football it was a low scoring struggle, led by big defensive plays like the interception on kirk

cousins. in a game rescheduled because of covid, the browns grabbed the lead with under 4:00 to play, only for the boot of daniel carlson to lift the raiders up las vegas cashes out in cleveland, 16-14 and a rare pair of tuesday night games are on the docket tonight. both postponed from sunday's slate. especially with so many things leading up to the holidays cancelled we have football. >> i'm an eagles fan so excited for that game. curious how it goes after the postponement we'll be watching. still ahead, the new spider-man film. where it stands in box office history and the staggering stat on the money it's brought in so far. if you haven't already, follow our podcast, check us out on apple, spotify or other podcast apps "worldwide exchange" is going to be right back.

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a tuesday turn around taking shape as stocks look to shake off losses and put a stop to the omicron fuelled slide. futures are higher giving build back better another go new details on the talks between president biden and senator joe manchin and how the plan could possibly be saved. covid once again hammering restaurants around the country we talked to one new york city

restauranteur on the new hurdles he and others are facing to keep their doors open amid omicron. it's tuesday, december 21st, you're watching "worldwide exchange" right here on cnbc and welcome back to "worldwide exchange. i am frank holland in for brian sullivan let's get to stock futures halfway through the 5:00 a.m. hour here in new york city we begin with a green outlook. the do w looking to pop by abou 200 points at the open also seeing the s&p and nasdaq in the green this comes after a rough start to the week. falling yesterday for a third down day in a row. the s&p catpping off its worst three day week since september and the ten year fighting to stay above the 1.4 threshold earlier now at 1.443, rigt below

the 1.5 level that's key for tech stocks. and oil, wti up almost a percent. brent crude up just over half a percent. something to watch. breaking news, the biden administration announcing some new steps in the fight against omicron and covid overall. the white house says it will buy 500 million rapid covid tests and make them available for all americans for free starting next month. they're also opening federal testing sites starting in p new york city ahead of christmas and plans to activate 1,000 military personnel to help hospitals in the surge. a check on the vixx, spiking as much as 6% on monday as the markets fell in part over pressure amid the omicron fears.

it's down about 2% this morning. for a look at what may be ahead in the markets, according to funds track global advisers, the s&p could fall further before hitting the bottom for more let's bring in jon any jerian thanks for being here. >> great to be with you. >> i know a lot of people look at the volatility of the vix you're tracking the volatility of the qqq or the nasdaq what are you seeing there and what are you seeing in the options market in response >> sure. both of them popped yesterday, frank. like you said, the vix and the vxn, both went to the upside pretty strong but both pulled back pretty substantially. the vxn was up about 17% but

pulled back to a gain of just 5% so that kind of told you that things weren't quite as bad after that initial pop in volatility and that 600 point selloff. people started nibbling back in and that's why the vix started to head to the down side the vix itself for the s&p 500, as you said, made a bigger move. made about a 27% pop to the upside but finished with a gain of less than 6%. so both of these two metrics that sometimes we call them fear gauges or whatever, both of them surged and then made pretty dramatic selloffs in the vix that is. in other words the fear went down as the day got longer that was a good sign and i think people, perhaps this morning, that were buying yesterday are the ones that are sort of feasting on that fear today, frank >> a lot of fear there in the

market, jon. one thing i know you're watching is industrials you're tracking the xli, it crashed through the 200 day moving average, kind of a technical indicator. what are you seeing there and how are you playing that >> that etf, the xli for the industrials, one of the spiders, i guess, there are what eight or ten of them, this one had been up around 105, just a week ago, frank. $105 per share and crashed all the way down to about $100 per exchange traded fund and then they started m coming in, buying upside calls on that etf. when they're doing that, that's telling us, and they picked almost exactly the 200-day moving average, the 102s is what they were buying yesterday so they're saying between yesterday and the end of the

year, december 31st, because those were the calls they were buying, they think perhaps the xli climbs back and again just like with the vix, the people that believed in that yesterday are making some money today already, frank. >> i know you have a segment called unusual activity but you're also citing interesting activity when it comes to travel stocks, specifically cruise ships and airlines, what's interesting to you obviously a lot of volatility there with the omicron concerns? >> exactly frank, when you have people concerned about omicron, people seeing all the lines in new york city for tests and you just described how the biden administration is going to be making, what, 500 million free tests available, prior to that, the cruise stocks yesterday, they were down about 3 to 6% initially yesterday. and they climbed very quickly

out of that hole and most of them were positive on the day. you rarely see a turn around that big in a given segment of the market so to us, that said that people were perhaps anticipating some sort of news -- we both know that we haven't really seen the hospitalizations and mortality out of omicron and we're obviously hoping that we don't ever see hospitalizations and deaths out of omicron like we've seen in some of the other variants, but the fact that these cruise lines turned it around so fast, that tells you that people's comfort, getting back onto cruise ships is something that we want to pay attention to >> jon anajarian, we appreciate the insight as always. and the fallout over joe

manchin's refusal to support president biden's build back better plan. silvana is back with those details. >> despite senator manchin saying he could not support the social spending plan the door is not completely closed on the matter, a spokesman told nbc news the senator spoke sunday night after he announced his no on the bill. meanwhile, america's biggest coal mining union is calling on manchin to reconsider his opposition to the bill stressing that it includes an extension of a fund providing benefits to coal miners suffering from black lung disease. shares of citrix are jumping over word of a bid for the cloud computing company. vista equity partners is partnering for a deal.

it could involve one of the portfolio companies that provide data analytics software. and "spider-man: no way home" is getting bigger. it surpassed the 2018 marvel flick avengers infinity war and making it the second highest opening weekend of all time. and frank, according to comscore, it was so strong it pulled in more than any movie released during the pandemic. >> bigger than infinity war. amazing. i'm going to contribute to the total in the near future might go see it on christmas thanks. >> you got it. to the omicron covid-19 variant. the cdc revealing it's now the dominant strain of the virus in the u.s. accounting for 73% of

infections in the last two weeks. president biden has had close contact with a staff member who has covid-19, is set to hold a press conference this afternoon. case counts are rising in the northeast with new york alone seeing a 76% increase in the last 14 days the sudden surge forcing many in the state, including the hard hit restaurant sector to make choices in the new year. one restaurant is schippers, a family-run restaurant group that has gone from 150 employees to 40 employees and two locations that's for being here. >> thanks for having me. >> what has to be an interesting day for you with the president's speech, all of us are going to

get some guidance and information about the country's strategy for winter and omicron. how do you see the situation, is it another bump in the road? or for you is it where you have to make a detour or change plans? >> we're assessing every single day. this is going to be more than a bump in the road you know, no matter what the president says and no matter what policies are put into place at this point, you know, we've also been battling fear now for the better part of almost two years. so the mandates or any new policy moves will have an effect, but there's no way of getting around people's nerves i feel like new york city right now is on pins and needles everyone is waiting to see how bad think thing is you can see in the explosion of cases it's dramatic. we have restaurants temporarily closed because we have staff outbreaks, which is something we have not seen before you have broadway closing down, many shows because of covid

outbreaks there as well. we're hopeful the end result will be that this variant won't be deadly and will actually be quite mild but as far as it being contagious and getting everywhere, it feels like that's where we're headed >> you mentioned rising cases and staff having to timeoff because of covid-19. a lot of what we've seen is restaurants having a hard time finding people to work there right now for you are you hiring, trying to find more staff? and long-term with omicron variant and delta variant shaking things up, do you see it hurting your ability to staff in 2022 >> no question we're always hiring. we're always looking we're very fortunate, we have a core group of employees that have been with us for a while and a handful that were with us throughout the pandemic even though in the height of the pandemic we were off by over 90%. as you said in your opening we went from roughly 150 employees

now down to 40, which is the height of what we've been at since the pandemic began we don't need that many employees unfortunately because of the nature of our -- the fact that we're off by so much. so i think that, you know, i wouldn't call it fortunate, i wish i needed more employees but we haven't had so much difficulty hiring. our nature of our business in new york is also more day time so i think that can be appealing to a lot of employees. but as the pandemic rages, there's no question in my mind we will have difficulty getting more employees should we need them and other restaurants will have difficulty getting employees. and one of the ways i see that is that the -- maybe not all 150, but we reached out to a lot of previous employees that left for the pandemic and many of them did not want to come back for a variety of reasons, shifts in their work for the pandemic

but also fear of coming back to work, the omicron virus and the fact this is so contagious and out there isn't going to help the situation. we expect it to get worse but we also unfortunately expect our sales to get worse after the new year and likely won't have a need for as many employees that part for us is a catch-22 it's the circular formula. we don't need as many employees and, you know, there aren't as many. >> one thing that has to be impacted are workers returning to the office. a lot of companies delaying their return to the office your food, generally comfort food, hamburgers, fries things a lot of us eat for lunch because it's relatively fast and enjoyable. how have back to office plans impacted your business and planning are you able to put the same things on the menu you want to put on there does it hurt your ability to bring in food or other supplies? >> well, i mean, the

back-to-work -- the office back-to-work has been an ongoing nightmare for us we're a fast, casual restaurant. we're not fine dining. and we are in a very large office building. our restaurants are in large office buildings we attract our lunch crowd which is, generally speaking, an office crowd. i think the fact the workers have not come back, is 8% have come back five days a week as i said to a landlord who said we know workers are coming back, yeah they'll be back three days a week but they'll be back our business model serves people five days a week lunch in offices. that's the most frightening thing. this is more than a bump in the road this is another instance in the pandemic where everyone was expecting workers to come back, there have been multiple times after labor day this year, now it's january but it's going to get pushed back.

that back-to-work thing is a problem. once we're two years people working from home it's harder for people to come back to work. so from that perspective, yes. >> andrew, best of luck to you, your family and workers. thanks for being here. >> thanks for having me. big money movers next. including nike first as we head to break, some of your other top stories. francis sanity announcing it's buying u.s. based pharmaceuticals for $1 billion, it comes after sanofi was facing pressures. the fda giving glak sew smith cline an injectable hiv drug approval. mcdonald's will suspend sales of medium and large size

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welcome back to "worldwide exchange." time now for your big money movers, three big stock stories of the morning we begin with one of my favorite

things to wear, nike second quarter earnings topping, demand helping supply chain issues and dropping sales in china. nike is in a stronger position than pre-pandemic, shares up about 3.5% micron, shares down about 20% after the company posted up -- up 7%, almost, after posting better than expected first quarter results with demands driven for data chips. micron forecasting second quarter profit and sales will beet estimates with chip shortages easing next year tesla, is up today but as of yesterday's closed it lost all the gains, sparked by the 30% rally in the deal it struck with hertz in october tesla sliding 3.5% yesterday closing a touch below 900 bucks

a share. on deck, stocks looking to bounce back and put an end to the recent slide why the return of risk may be a good thing for the markets and what investors need to do around it and catch david faber's exclusive conversation with bob iger as he prepares to step down from disney. and the growing battle for viewers within the streaming space. >> i think you're seeing a migration to more digital, direct to consumer forms of entertainment distribution and being in that business in a larger scale, which i think that will provide more growth for the company than the traditional media platforms would have, and just the migration,the erosion of the traditional media platforms and the growth of the new ones we're playing in that space much more aggressively than we would have obviously without disney plus, without hulu as well

welcome back to "worldwide exchange" and back to the markets. as futures point to a rebound following monday's selloff on the one, two punch of omicron and build back better being pronounced dead, at least for now, the next guest says the market's pull back is a reassessment of risk and healthy move michael farr is the president and ceo of farr, miller and washington thanks for being here as always. >> good morning, frank glad to be with you. >> let's begin we're on cnbc a lot, talking about crypto, nfts, spacs, different emerging trends in the

market but you said something is going to return to the markets that we haven't seen since '09 and the throwback is good. you have to explain that thesis. >> frank, i think the thing we haven't seen for ten or 12 years really is fear in the marketplace. fear in a bear market, fear that i own stocks ever in my life at all and wish that i had never heard of this, and wish i didn't own any right now. that hasn't happened for a long time the 2020 march dip was really too brief and we have a generation of investors that have never really had that scary moment in a real bear market so i always feel that a little bit of concern and a little bit of worry is healthy. i don't like the fear stage of the market, nobody likes it, but that could happen again. it will happen again at some point. the fear and worry being brought on by omicron, inflation and a fed reaction i think are

healthy. it makes people examine balance sheets and understand what they own, it keeps a lot of fluff out of the bubble area of markets. it prevents the bigger and steeper declines you hope and keeps you honest while you're doing the hard work of investing. >> you ever listen to little wayne? do you know who that is? >> i do know him, my kids love li'l l wayne, i can't stand lil wayne. >> i'm going to bring this back to the markets lil wayne has a group called young money, i call you old money, a lot of people think old money is smart money and right now it's headed to the bond market. what does that signal to you that a lot of people are going back to the bond market? >> well, i think there are a couple of things one i think it's a fear trade. it's a flight to safety trade, it always has been in the 140

range. the fed said they're raising rates the 10 year hasn't budged. but interest rates around the world we're still high the ten year bund yield has a high right now relatively we still look okay but it doesn't look like robust growth, an enormous demand here for growth >> yesterday we saw a bit of a sell off i know you have stocks you say you should never sell even with the omicron uncertainty, the fed changing the monetary policy, inflation we're seeing can you give us a stock you would ride through the uncertainty at least through the end of the year? >> i don't know how eager i'd be to jump into them right this second but part of my core portfolio, like buffett's portfolio like

coca-cola, i own johnson & johnson, pepsi cola, microsoft, i may trim them if they get too expensive. i hope to leave those stocks to my grandchildren, i hope they're part of my estate still. we have a short term thing going on with omicron, this will pass. longer term we have an expanding economy that's still healthy these bull markets don't die of old age. so we're going to look at the fed, what they're going to do, and will the fed, as the economy continues to expand, put enough pressure on inflation to keep that expansion intact? that's the million dollar question when you go through these periods you still remain invested and do it with the healthiest companies you can find. >> michael farr we appreciate the insight as always. thanks for being here with the old money perspective. great to see you. >> old money, thanks, frank. one last look at the futures. across the board in the green. dow looks poised to pop over 200

points at this moment. that does it for us at "worldwide exchange. "squawk box" coming up next. thanks for being here. hey, angie! you forgot your phone! hey lou! angie forget her phone again? yep. lou! mom said she could save up to $400 on her wireless bill by switching to xfinity internet and mobile. with nationwide 5g at no extra cost. and lou! on the most reliable network, lou! smart kid, bill. oh oh so true. and now, the moon christmas special. gotta go! take the savings challenge at xfinitymobile.com/mysavings

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good morning, futures are pointing to a higher open as the major averages look to break three-day losing streaks with some pretty big numbers. not on a percentage basis but we're up a couple of hundred this morning on the dow. president biden preparing to address the nation about omicron today as the cdc shows the variant is now the dom nant u.s. strain making up 73% of cases. this morning stocks to watch, nike, shares jumping after the company posted quarterly results. it's tuesday, december 21st.

i think it might be one of those short days unfortunately it's still 24 hours, or fortunately, i guess depends on how you look at things "squawk box" begins right now. good morning, everybody. welcome to "squawk box" here on cnbc i'm becky quick along with joe kernen and andrew ross sorkin. joe, you have to look at it optimistly, you need every hour of the day whether they be dark or not, because you have so much to do before the holidays. my brother's birthday, happy birthday rob, and happy winter solstice. >> days get longer from here on out, every day bill walton who's like -- i don't know what's left from the grateful dea