>> what that technology is going to be really useful for is, say, watching live concerts orother live events from your home you'll pick up your phone and it'll look like you are there. >> was he real or an avatar? >> so, he was real, but i was looking at him through the phone, and it looked like he was in the room. but he was not actually in the room with me >> all right julia, have a good weekend if you're starting your holiday now, everybody else, thanks for watching "power lunch. >> "closing bell" starts right now. ♪ thank you, rahel and tyler and welcome to "closing bell." i'm sara eisen the major averages on track here for a second straight day of gains. we'll see whether they can hold in this final hour of trade. and i'm mike santoli in for wilfred frost. let's look at what's driving the action today consumer confidence data out this morning showed an improvement from november's reading on the covid front, pfizer getting emergency

approval for its antiviral pill. and hospitalizations from omicron are comparatively low. tesla leading the s&p 500 today after elon musk said he sold enough stock by now. sara >> for the s&p 500, tesla right up there coming up on the show, mohamed el-erian is here to weigh in on the market first hand funds, kevin landis will join us with the stocks he thinks could outperform in the new year first off, let's focus on the big stories of the hour. mike santoli is watching the stories of the hour. and meg tirrell will talk about the antiviral pill that received authorization this hour. >> today, unlike yesterday, it's a little more of a top-heavy rally, but definitely probably constructive that we got some follow-through after a 1.8% gain yesterday. it continues to look like the

market migrating to the upper end of what's become this pretty solid trading range. it's this box that we've created since early november we did not go back to the lows from a few weeks ago that's a net positive, the fact that the overall market has been able to gather itself here and get just about back to those levels just about 1% off the highs, the intraday highs is in the 4740s. so clearly looks like it's okay. it's a little bit gentler today, though, as you can imagine things slowing down. strong seasonal period but often slower pace of gains take a look at what's going on since thanksgiving, which, cof course, is also since we first had omicron emerge that's when we had that little air pocket to the downside, s&p 500 struggled there, but we're just about back to even. the s&p down 0.4%. low volatility stocks up almost 3% there's been a migration towards stability there. and this is high beta, that's

the more aggressive, more vol volatile stocks. small caps, also lots of big-cap speculative and once very hot growth stocks in there so that's where the struggle is, and that's where i think a lot of the market has gotten pretty well washed out, you know, all else being equal stocks versus bonds, interesting story, massive outperformance by equities this year, as you might expect and the question is are people going to rebalance toward year end, if they have a 60/40 portfolio, they're 60% equities and 30 or 40% into bonds maybe it's a net bid into bonds, although on a quarter-to-date basis, probably not that strong in effect. some of that activity often happens around now, around the 22nd, 23rd, 24th of the month. >> good point on that. and i was going to ask you about bonds. 10-year yield, 145 you're having this persistent

bid for bonds that's keeping yields low yield curve really hasn't steepened. in fact, the highs we saw were back in march. >> there is just a stubborn global bid for yield the 10-year u.s. yield only gets so far above what some of the european, you know, negative yielding paper is. so that's one factor also what i'm seeing right here, to the degree that the overall world is long equities and equities are up by trillions of dollars on a mark-to-market basis this year. if there is going to be a use of bonds as portfolio stability and balance, there is sort of this natural rotation of that kind of money into bonds right now and we can talk about what it means in terms of the fed, the market does not seem to think the fed can hike rates too many times even if it does get itself started in the next several months >> we'll talk about it with mohamed in just a bit in the meantime pfizer getting emergency approval for its

antiviral pill this afternoon. let's get to meg tirrell for more meg? >> hey, sara well, this was a long time anticipated by a lot of folks. the first pill that you can take at home to treat covid you take it within five days of symptoms, and it's only indicated right now for people at high risk of progressing to hospitalization from covid this is pfizer's drug. it is expected to be in limited supply at the beginning. we are waiting to see if the fda clears merck's antiviral pill as well that one didn't show quite as strong results in clinical trials and even a report today from reuters saying that france had canceled an order of merck's drug, expecting and hoping to get pfizer's instead because of the data pfizer showed that almost 90% reduction in hospitalization and death in its trial merck dropped from 50% to 30%. each drug has some safety issues

to consider. pfizer's has some interactions with quite a few other medicines. so some folks might be recommended not to take it or to have to stop taking a certain drug like a statin while they take this drug merck's does come with m mutagenicity, the fear of potential birth defects or a broader fear that this drug could lead to more mutations and variance emerging, all of those things discussed by the fda. and there may be some sort of restrictions on how it's used because of that. but merck's drug may be in bigger supply at the beginning so we'll see when we hear from the fda on it and what that clearance looks like but some new tools very much needed coming amid this big surge. guys >> yeah, it couldn't come soon enough so, meg, how does one get that pfizer pill? is it a matter of calling your doctor and who's going to be supplying that because if it's meant to keep you out of the hospitals, it's not meant for being used at the hospitals, is it

>> right so, the whole idea here is to take it early within five days of symptoms. so you've got to get a test result that quickly. and then you've got to get a doctor to prescribe it or whoever can prescribe a drug, you've got to get it and then get it probably at the pharmacy. perhaps we'll have systems where you can get a test result and a doctor who could even ship it to you. but this all has to happen pretty fast. >> yeah, get the prescription early once you get the rest result, kind of a tamaflu type model in terms of how it might go thank you very much. coming up next hour, pfizer board member dr. scott gottlieb will join us to discuss the company's antiviral approval that we were just discussing and when we come back, mohamed el-erian is here with his thoughts on market volatility and why he thinks we could be headed for more choppy waters keep it right here you're watching "closing bell"

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welcome back just about 50 minutes left to go here in the trading session. we're adding to yesterday's rally. dow's up 200 points. session high was up 240. and now we've made up for monday's selloff on the weeks s&p's up about 1.3%. it has been a turbulent december, it's the most volatile month of the year, which is very atypical for the month of december joining us now for more is chief economic adviser to allianz and

president of queens college at the university of cambridge. welcome, mohamed always good to see you >> thank you, sara >> i think the big question we're grappling with here with all this volatility and some of the changes around fed policy is are we nearing the end of the bull run what do you think? >> i don't know if we're nearing the end of the bull run because no other asset class dominates equities right now and that's especially true if growth continues to be strong. but what we are definitely in is a more volatile environment. sara, we no longer have predictable massive dependable asset purchases to power us through very choppy waters so, we become more volatile, and as mike said earlier, it is those who are lacking internal anchors, so think of meme stocks, think of the speculative

stocks, think about those outside the s&p, all that are lacking internal anchors that are most at risk >> but do you still favor stocks over bonds in this type of environment? >> i do in this environment because i think while inflation is going to remain high and more persistent than the fed expects even now, i think growth remains solid. i was very encouraged by today's consumer confidence numbers. so, i see stocks dominating in relative terms the big thing to avoid is the mindset of investors going from relative to absolute if it goes to absolute, then you get the sorts of behavior that we had on monday but as long as it's in relative space, stocks will dominate. >> mohamed, you've thought for some time that inflation was going to be a more kind of front and center challenge and that the fed perhaps has been waiting too long to taper asset purchases, i guess

where do you see them now? i mean, is the fed now roughly in tune with what you think both the market expects and the economy needs at this point given what might happen with inflation as we get into next year >> so, late is better than never. so, it's a good thing that finally on november 30th fed chair acknowledged that inflation wasn't transitory. it's a good thing that the fed decided to increase the pace of taper. i wish they had done more. i wish they had done more to reduce the purchases and finish it earlier because i really don't want to see a series of rate hikes coming at the same time as fiscal stimulus is no longer there, as consumer balance sheets are run down, and as financial conditions tighten. so i would much rather have had them go early. but i'm glad they moved. but they're not quite where they need to be yet, mike >> so, a lot of people, mohamed,

think that they're not even going to get the opportunity to hike rates at all, or at least as many as three times next year because of what you just laid out, fiscal stimulus withdrawal, financial conditions tightening, the omicron variant, we're not going into lockdown, but it is starting to have an impact and certainly there are restrictions in europe and asia. in that environment wouldn't inflation come down, too >> so, inflation will definitely come down. it is why it comes down. there's two scenarios. one is the one i think we all wish for is we get through the supply disruptions, it's going to take time, but by the end of the year next year we see inflation coming down, and we've navigated through it with a relatively orderly policy adjustment that's the hope. the fear is that we got a policy mistake. it turns out that the fed did not stock early enough, and

therefore it has to go too fast, it hits the brakes too hard, and that causes a recession, and that causes inflation to come down so the first scenario is a good one for markets. the second scenario is not and that's why it really matters why inflation comes down towards the end of next year >> and what would your expectation be, mohamed, at this point in terms of where inflation will trend toward, assuming the fed can begin the tightening process and we see -- you know, we're lapping some of these very hot readings this year and the supply chain theoretically isn't going to get any worse. >> so we're going to be in the range of 4 to 5 to 7 inflations for at least a couple of quarters more. that's measured by the cpi and then the question becomes do you get what happened in the '70s, not the level but the dynamic, which is you get a supply disruption here, that are goes away but that has triggered all sorts of other price

adjustments. already we see cost of living adjustment coming into new wage bargaining agreements. already we see unions getting a little bit stronger in bargaining, certainly workers are, they're hopping from job to job. so we're starting to see the inflation dynamics broaden and ultimately it's whether the fed is able to anchor these expectations and that's why it's so critical that the fed act quickly >> so, mohamed, for those investors here in the u.s. getting a little seasick over the volatility, it's nothing compared to what we're seeing in turkey and i wanted to bring this up because you wrote about this in the ft, and the crazy gigantic moves we've seen and the government's all-out war to fight it why should investors care about this what is the key takeaway >> so, if you think we are facing an uncertain environment,

go to the emerging world they are much more dependent on foreign capital, a lot of which came from the u.s. being pushed out of markets in search of higher returns they are more sensitive to global growth, which is slowing because of china so whatever volatility we feel economic and financially multiplied by a large number, and that is what it looks like in the emerging world. so, if ever this in the emerging world gets to critical mass. china is contained, turkey is contained, russia, ukraine is contained. we just don't want too many of these. so it's good to keep an eye on them to make sure we don't get that reverse contagion that would then add to our own internal sources of volatility >> a lot of folks keeping an eye on that 65% plunge in the lira this year.

mohamed, thank you when we come back, elon musk announces he's done selling tesla stock. we'll take a look at whether sec filings show he might not be done just yet. and speaking of tesla, it's the top search ticker on cnbc.com today followed by the 10-year yield, which is showing a little bit of weakness coin base up 2%. we'll be right back. bill, mary? hey... it's our former broker carl. carl, say hi to nina, our schwab financial consultant. hm... i know how difficult these calls can be. not with schwab. nina made it easier to set up our financial plan. we can check in on it anytime. it changes when our goals change. planning can't be that easy. actually, it can be, carl. look forward to planning with schwab. schwab! ♪♪

tesla's elon musk announcing he's done selling the company's stock. let's get to robert frank for a look at why musk made this move. hi, robert >> mike, elon musk saying he sold 10% of his stake in tesla that was the goal he set back in november with that famous twitter poll saying, i sold enough stock to get to around 10%, plus the option exercise. sec filings he still could have

more sellings to go. he had sold about 13.5 million shares he has about another 3.5 million shares to sell now, that options exercise stuff that he talks about, that's the $23 billion worth of options he has to exercise by august. his tax bill on that will be more than $11 billion. that's the highest in u.s. history. we know he has more selling to do because he still has 3 million more options to exercise and if he doesn't exercise those, he will be leaving about $3 billion on the table. you look at the stock today, it's up about 7% still down around 18% since that poll in november so when all the dust and the noise settles here, it will probably be down somewhere around 13, 18%, which is what everyone expected going into these sales to begin with. >> yeah. i was going to say, robert, in some respects, this could just have been very routine

other founders, ceos, they just kind of mechanically sell off shares he had to make an event and a pop populist event out of it in addition to the options that he might need to exercise, do we see that being a disadvantage if he starts selling stock in 2022 on a tax basis >> it's very relevant because if you look at the stock sales, there were two buckets one was the prescheduled sales that were part of the options exercises and the taxes. there was another $6 billion that was completely discretionary, quote, to his pocket that was, as you likely point out, probably due to tax increases at the federal level he doesn't pay state taxes because he now lives in texas. but he clearly wanted to get this done this calendar year before taxes might go upstarting january 1st.

>> well, for now investors are treating it like that overhang has been removed the stock is rocketing up to the top of the s&p robert, thank you. when we come back, delta's ceo sending a letter to the cdc asking to cut quarantine times for breakthrough covid cases coming up, a top analyst weighs in on how that could impact the sector here's a check for you on bonds. the 10-year hovering around 1.46 treasury prices strong yields lower. got better consumer confidence reading. also some weaker existing home sales. and yields continue to trend lower. it's what we've been seeing and it's what's been dragging on sectors like the banks we'll be right back. "the bond report" is brought to you by pimco, a global leader in active fixed income like this.

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s&p 500 up a little more than three-quarters of 1%, near the highs of the day it. >> here you see in the sector heat map consumer discretionary is leading the way, up 1.4%. tesla a big part of that story right there. technology and healthcare also so not quite as cyclical as yesterday, but across the board actually we have gains in all the sectors, sara. >> let's check in, mike, on some individual market movers right now. upgrading darden restaurants advantages in marketing and supply chain management, that stock up 1.4%. recently had good earnings but announced the retirement of its ceo which has weighed on the stock. loop upgrading williams-sonoma to buy from hold the firm says the pandemic likely to remain a tailwind well

into next year that stock up 2.5% it's been a big winner for the last 12 months or so jim cramer talking about it in his investing club newsletter today. to sign up, you can head over to cnbc.com have, investingclub or just point your phone right there at the qr code on the screen it's been a jim favorite, mike, for a long time, and has done very, very well, pandemic and pre-pandemic >> even after this pretty sharp pull-back recently from the highs, it's more than doubled. obviously considered a big winner in that group, williams-sonoma. time now for a cnbc news update with kristina partsinevelos. hey, kristina. >> hi, mike. here is what is happening at this hour. texas anm has pulled out of the gator bowl college football game due to covid and injuries. they are aggressively looking for a replacement team to take on wake forest on new year's eve. in florida, dozens of cars lining up at a 24/4 testing and

vaccination site in england, a spectacular sunrise over stonehenge following the longest night of the year hundreds of revellers sang and danced around the prehistoric stones to celebrate the annual event. it watt largest crowd at stonehenge since the pandemic began. and for those that ever go visit it, there is a particular fence you can stand at where you don't have to pay an entrance fee, just google it, don't tell anyone back over to you guys. >> a great tip, kristina, thank you very much. up next, the international airline transportation association out with a new warning about getting on a plane. why it says you're more likely to catch omicron and how that could impact airline stocks, up next and later kevin landis tells us the two areas of the tech market that he's betting on for next year.

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he's a compromiser, he's data-driven, he's not an ideal hog. he doesn't want to throw people out of work, but he also doesn't want to let inflation spread unchecked. watch or listen live on the cnbc app. delta airlines asking the cdc to reconsider its quarantine protocol for breakthrough covid cases in a letter to the cdc, delta ceo ed bastion wrote, the current 10-day isolation period could significantly impact our workforce and operation. he suggested cutting the isolation time in half to five days

sheila, good to see you. this is obviously another sort of complication in the airline recovery story naturally when omicron first emerged, the airline index lost a quick 12%. it's gotten most of it back, though just in broad terms, how are you thinking of the impact, whether we're pushing back the date of ultimate traffic recovery and things like that, what does the realtime data tell you >> the sector is very tough right now. you need two things for aur lines to work into 2022, and that's one in international recovery and two corporate because domestic u.s. is basically 10% below 2019 levels. so you need those two things to work and this pushes out a recovery, according to delta, three to four months, maybe a bit longer, according to us. >> a bit longer than three to four months. so then we're talking getting toward mid-year, perhaps, 2022 what about delta in particular kind of earns it your top pick in the group what do they have in terms of

the breakdown of geographies or anything else that you like? >> sure. so, as mentioned, i think the international recovery is one thing we're looking for. and delta's exposure is primarily europe and we think that's the next leg to open up in terms of travel versus asia-pacific. the caribbean has already pretty much recovered so we like that recovery also in terms of corporate, corporate is anywhere 50% of sales for airlines and for most corporate recovery is only 40 to 50% of 2019 levels delta's already at 60% and that's partly because of their bias in terms of smaller businesses, small, medium enterprises coming back quicker. so that benefits delta, and also we're seeing a quicker recovery, say, versus new york city and san francisco that the recoveries are later and may be permanently impaired so the airline sector right now really hinges on that international recovery in that corporate recovery, and we're not even talking about the headwinds when it comes to the

labor force, fuel being higher and just generally cost being higher for the airline industry. that's one of the reasons why we like delta we think that they're better position when did it comes to the cost game because they're offering a better premium product. >> what about staffing issues to that letter that mike mentioned ed bastion sent to the cdc director i think ed probably speaks for all of corporate america there, asking them to cut the quarantine time because of labor shortages and high absentee rates and sick leaves. how bad is it for the airline sector and is it a cost that investors understand and are factoring in? >> we've met with a slough of management teams both airlines and air space and defense manufactures over the last week. in the progression of our discussions you've heard the workforce issue come up more and more and i think it's going to be an issue as a lot of the companies we're talking to are pushing their guidance into the second half of 2022 in terms of

recovery because of workforce issues you work the labor force for 18 to 24 months to the bone there's no overtime left and if this is as infectious as it is, which it seems to be and you have a ten-day isolation period, it's going to create a lot of workforce issues not only for the airlines but for the manufacturing sector overall >> yeah, and, sheila, you do cover the aerospace sector more broadly. i did want to get your thoughts lately on boeing obviously the stock has sort of calmed down, settling around this 2$200 level what might be the catalysts in 2022 >> you've got to keep wait for these three things to happen china and asia-pac are 40% of the backlog for the 737 max. and only 6% of deliveries thus far. china has not yet approved the max. and until you get that approval, i think boeing's stock is grounded second, they're having issues

with their 787 there are some cargo door certification issues that the faa has, but the aircraft isn't grounded so that's building up inventory. you need that to be fixed. and third, similar to airlines you need international travel to come back so we can start seeing order flow on the wide body side boeing is going to stick around this 200 mark unless you have one of these three things start to pick up for them. >> a lot is riding on that international travel side of things do we have visibility at this point on that in particular and when we might see recovery rates all the way back to 2019 or is it just too hard to tell with these new restrictions? >> it's hard to tell i've changed my travel twice this week already, as quarantine rules are imposed, and that prohibits the recovery and just folks' hesitation to get on an aircraft we're forecasting domestic travel coming back to 2019 levels by 2023 it's certainly going to get there, we're only 10% off.

and we're forecasting that international travel comes back by 2025. so, you really want the u.s./europe corridor to open up. and it was once the november 8th restrictions were removed. and you're actually not seeing any changes to capacity just yet. but we are seeing booking trends slow down about five points over the last week as omicron has had more of an impact. so, a lot riding on that sara >> i was going to say it's a long way since, you know, one of the bull cases for the industry was rampant. intra-asia travel was going up and up and up all the time so obviously it's a changed landscape. but before we let you go, what about the other aerospace plays such as private business jets? is there still a little bit of energy behind that trend at this point? >> i'm all about private business jets. and i think covid gives business jets a new life. they've been on fire this year many people use it as a covid play but i also think it's something

that's sustainable going forward because management teams need to see their facilities so you had an increase in jets general dynamics is also a business jt manufacture that we cover. but we actually like -- big competition that they have called future vertical lift. that's an $80 billion competition on a company with a market cap of about 15 billion we think that there's continued growth in biz jet orders and momentum there >> already a great year. sheelah, thanks for joining us always good to talk to you up next on the show, housing data comes in a bit weaker than expected and tells the advisory group names a tech giant for its top retail pick for 2022 those stories and more next in the "market zone." dow's up 204 every sector pite.osiv

we'll be right back.

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it has powerful, easy-to-use tools to help you find opportunities, 24/7 support when you need answers, plus some of the lowest options in futures contract prices around. get e*trade [ding] and start trading today. welcome back we've got a great lineup coming your way in the second hour of "closing bell. firsthand funds' kevin landis tells us the tech names that should be on your radar in 2022. elon musk says he's done selling tesla, the stock a top analyst weighs in on that move as it sores to the top of the s&p. pfizer board member dr. scott gottlieb joins us to talk about the company's covid antiviral pill that just received fda authorization. and into the metaverse, an investor in the space tells us which companies could gain traction next year

but first we've got just about 14 minutes here to go in the trading day. today we've got josh brown from ritholtz management here let's kick it off with the broader market, major averages are higher for the second straight day the s&p actually less than 1% away from its all-time closing high it is now positive for the week, though josh, it doesn't feel that way that we're close to record highs because for the average stock, it's still well off of its highs. have you taken the opportunity here with the recent volatility to buy any favorites >> i add it to amazon this week. but i think it's been a tough year for individual stocks, much tougher than it's been for apple and microsoft. that is that dichotomy that i think has bedevilled active managers all year. the typical stock what you just mentioned actually peaked in february so it's really been ten months of slow, of slow grind lower for a lot of names but not all names

and breadth is maybe not as bad as i'm making it sound the s&p 500 as an index is less than 1.5% from an all-time high. and then you have stocks like hilton ripping almost at a 52-week high it's up 9% over the last two days mare yo the's having a great moment too housing stocks are super strong. costco is super strong so you have a lot of areas that are working, but you definitely had to be more specific in the second half of this year than in the first half of this year. and that can continue, quite frankly, for a very long time to come, straight into 2022 >> yeah, actually, josh, i was going to try to frame what seems to be coalescing as a consensus around 2022. in general, we know what the index targets are. people do them reluctantly

it seems like people are saying, hey, brace for more volatility, we have a transition to a fed that's going to be in tightening mode, and therefore prefer quality and stability. every bit of that is plausible these things only become the consensus because they are plausible, and smart people try to figure out how to navigate this thing that's so tough but how do you read that at the starting point of 2022 >> i think that's right. and the consensus is not always wrong. it's always tempting to say, well, everyone believes this, therefore it'll be that. the stock market has gotten a lot right this year. the stock market started to really fall apart late november as these omicron headlines were surfacing in south africa, and then you really got a huge correction not in the average but in the typical stock you really got serious damage beneath the surface that wasn't really apparent in apple,

microsoft, alphabet. but the stock market picked up on that, digested it, cycled through those headlines, and now seems to want to say, okay, q4 went out with a whimper, that'll slow up in earnings reports, we'll look through it. so i think the consensus is right, as far as what does that mean for next year, i really like the setup here in a few different sectors. but the most obvious one to me is biotech the sector is down 2% this year. it's very hard to find one of those years where biotech -- forget about being negative, underperformed this is a sector that's supposed to outperform in rallies, and actually it looked atrocious so, i think biotech has a great setup. i like the ibb instead of the xbi. you don't have to throw darts at which drug will get approved look at those stocks starting to find a bottom right where they

found the bottom back in march i think there could be a lot of upside in those names, especially because they're giving you what i call defensive growth they don't require a reacceleration in the economy to work >> yeah, it's basically flat for the year, and over the last year, the ibb. mike, just a question for you. on volatility, which everyone's predicting is here and is going to stay, mohamed said it at the top of the hour. a the vix just went below 20 and making a sharp move lower. how do you read that given with the fed taking away the punch bowl, everyone's worried about volatility >> well, the first input to how the vix is going to trade is, has the market been calm or jumpy recently 19 vix is implying a pretty decent day-to-day jumpiness. we've seen times when it was half that in super calm markets. so i don't think the vix says everybody's going to get

blindsided if the market gets choppy again it's more just forecasting the present. i think, again, it's one of those things where probabilities have said years like this year when the maximum pullback in the s&p was only 5%, you don't usually have two of those years in a row just based on the averages, so i think that's a fair idea to say that maybe volatility, this is kind of the zone of a floor for now, especially until we're totally free of the possibility that a covid headline is going to really knock things off course for us. meantime, let's turn to housing. josh mentioned a group, coming in shy of estimates today. diana olick has more on those numbers. hey, diana >> hey, mike despite that miss in existing home sales, stocks of the big builders are moving higher with bigger gains than the broader market that's because the big takeaway from that disappointing sales report is that there aren't

enough homes for sale. inventories shrunk even further, and that benefits the builders also we saw mortgage rates dip slightly last week, always good news for the builders. lennar, dr horton and especially luxury builder tollbrothers all up tomorrow we get the numbers on new home sales in november, so we'll see what the stock reaction to that is. back to you guys named amazon its top pick for 2022 the firm says amazon is gaining market share by leveraging its sticky prime customer base, expanding into new retail categories like grocery, pharmacy, fashion, and growing aws to enhance profitability meantime, amazon reportedly facing antitrust scrutiny from the federal trade commission the ftc chair advancing a probe into amazon's cloud computing business they told cnbc it does not confirm the existence or comment on the investigations.

josh, you said you just picked up some more amazon, not worried about any antitrust scrutiny ramping up here? >> i mean, antitrust scrutiny will be a permanent feature of the landscape for amazon for as long as we all live and for as long as the company exists and, actually, there are arguments to be made that in the rare case that four years worth of legal battling from now all of a sudden they're forced to make aws a stand-alone company, for example, actually that might benefit shareholder who's get to own both pieces separately and unlock a ton of value. so on the list of things to worry about with amazon, i would say that's very low. it was actually an average up. i think i paid more than 100% higher than my original purchase price, which i almost never do did. but amazon has been fast asleep for 18 months the stock has done absolutely nothing, especially when you compare it to the rest of the

nasdaq large caps and i think that can change in 2022 this is a company that has 40% of all e-commerce, and then 50% of the entire cloud. there is no company that's this dominant in two verticals. then you throw in advertising, which obviously is a new but booming business, and then you think about prime video, and now you think about physical retail, the amazon go stores, whole foods, and basically whatever else they feel like doing. and i think amazon's got a ton of levers to pull into '22 so i like this name, i like that it's underperformed for a while. i've been wrong about it all of last year. i think next year i get a do-over and this thing has what takes to go higher >> obviously throughout its history it has had these periods where it has basically sat and not done much of anything. although if you look attwo years relative to the cloud etf and relative to the retail etf, it's right in there.

it just seems like the market's treating it as generic cloud but generic retail so i guess that's your edge if you feel, like, well, it's better on both or has more to it than that. >> yeah. this is a company that does not buy back stock, does not yet pay a dividend, has yet to do any kind of meaningful spin-offs to create value it's just kind of biding its time with a new ceo. and i think at a certain point they're going to want to break out and get this thing moving again, and i think they can. >> all right, well, oppenheimer naming coinbase. >> digital assets move into the mainstream the analyst points to adoption from crypto. for institutional investors interested in getting exposure to digital assets, we believe coin is well-positioned to benefit. and we are still in the early innings of this development and

believe many investors are still on the sidelines the firm says coin base is well positioned to make strategic acquisitions as well, giving its strong balance sheet a boost of about 2% after that call back to you. >> kate, thank you yeah, i mean, josh, it's interesting, coinbase, unlike the rest of crypto where it's all about dreams and what might be to come and how businesses might get built, it earns money, it's not all that expensive. it seems like it's the incumbent, it can only lose market share or pricing power. i wonder what you think has kind of got the stock stuck >> so, to me, this is the most obvious play in the stock market right now as far as a directional bet on whether or not there will be huge flows into crypto from institutions and wealth management next year. and i know there will be because this is who i talk to all day. so if you want to make that bet,

coinbase is the most obvious way to make that bet, much more so than straight-up bitcoin, much more so than buying michael sailor's bitcoin hedge fund. like, this is the play i think they're positioning themselves as, like, the fidelity of digital assets so we would make that directional bet. i absolutely am making it personal with my holding in coinbase we're making it as a firm. we launched the first-ever sma that's an index of cryptocurrencies just for our clients. so i think that's all going to be happening next year, and i think coinbase will work alongside a lot of other things that are related to this market. >> pretty bullish. we've got less than two minutes to go here in the trading day. we are looking at session highs. what do you see in the internals? >> yeah, it's been strong. it's actually gotten better throughout the day it's sort of had this levitation in the afternoon

s&p heading to that 4700 level you can see here more than three to one advancing to declining volume in the new york stock exchange that's obviously strong. yesterday also was strong. so that kind of checks off the box. take a look, though, at nasdaq new 52-week highs and lows more lows than highs 135 nasdaq new 52-week lows. the volatility index is buckling as we head toward some holiday influenced trading days. market at all-time highs we now have that kind of almost completing that big spike in the vix which usually means the market has found a little bit firmer footing as we do head toward the close 4712 is the all-time high. 4701 is where we stood the day before thanksgiving before the omicron shock hit the market

so obviously that has made a pretty good round trip small caps underperforming, but just by a little bit it's a fairly inclusive rally as the dow is going to go up just about 265 points, 35753 for the dow jones industrial average [ bell ringing ] >> another strong finish two in a row for stocks. we're firmly positive for the week and the month welcome back to "closing bell," everyone i'm sara eisen here with mike santoli who is in today for wilfred frost. coming up this hour, investor kevin landis on the outlook for tech and his top under-the-radar investment opportunity for next year plus, pfizer board member and former fda commissioner dr. scott gottlieb here to weigh in on the fda's emergency use authorization of pfizer's covid antiviral pill it just happened this afternoon. we'll get his first response josh brown from ritholtz management is still with us,

and, mike, i'll turn to you. it feels like the last few sessions, big comeback in the omicron variant, cases coming down in places like south africa where we first saw it. you still have the fed worries, though how have we rebounded? >> one of my touchtones is that a threat that seems less threatening is a friend of the bull market because it does get the market to kind of sell in a pretty indiscriminate way. and on top of that, just people just exiting some of these broken momentum stocks so i think we're kind of sold out coming into the week, and that's why i think just incremental good news on omicron said, fine, maybe we're going to get through this thing a little bit quicker and in better shape. market holding true to form. at the index level it looks really resilient the fed, i feel like it's more

in tune with where the market was already pricing. yes, we might have some scares along the way, but for now it doesn't seem as if there's too much of a challenge to the prevailing view coming from fed rhetoric >> let's turn over to kevin landis he is president and chairman of firsthand funds. he is looking at different ways for investors to play the ev tech space interest take here on ways into this big theme, which at times has really dominated parts of the market with the pure oems, the automakers, tesla, and related companies. but talk about what you like in this general ecosystem here. >> sure. well, at first hand i think we have more than our fair share of old chip heads so we're always looking for the less obvious play on something if you take it apart and look at the components, sometimes that's the way to get there in the late '90s you could make more money off of the chip ics

so, how do you play that with an ev look for the power electronics the power electronics demands in an electric vehicle are pretty daunting you have to take a lot of power out of a very limited amount of batteries. that favors some kind of exotic technologies and our favorite there is silicon carbide, and our favorite plays there are st micro. >> st micro and onsemi and the others that you mentioned here, obviously they have had a pretty good run for a while, maybe not -- but it just seems as if it's not necessarily undiscovered, but you actually think that there's going to be a longer life to these trends. >> right st micro's got a market cap i think 47, 48 billion at the other end of the spectrum, wolfspeed's got a market cap of about 12 billion the reason we like them better

than the other two is it's really a pure play on silicon carbide. the others have great automotive exposure wolfspeed, by the way, it had a monster year last year it went from less than 50 to, i want to say, 120, 130 bucks. this year it's been more flattish so, i think there's plenty of room for it to have a really big year next year and -- >> kevin, what is silicon carbide? >> so, if you go back to your high school chemistry, silicon has four valence electrons so does carbon >> clearly not my best >> it's an exotic material if you could do something in pure silicon, you do it there because it's really cheap, it's really well understood but there are times when you just can't use silicon, it's just not the right material. it has to do with physiques and

band gaps and certain voltage levels if you make your power electronics out of silicon carbide, it's more efficient, drains your battery more slowly, it means your ev has greater range. that's all you really need to care about silicon carbide equals greater range on the ev. >> as a firm, you have ample exposure to lots of different areas of technology that are more familiar. but your emphasis in these areas, does it suggest that you think some things are played out or they're fully valued, whether it's social media or traditional semis or any of the other areas that you may be playing more as a core holding >> well, our intellectual achilles hill is getting out too early. we got out of the fang stocks probably two years ago and that's not to say that these other popular trends don't have a lot of steam left in them. i'm sure they do but we just figure that you

don't need to hire us as money managers to go out and buy facebook and google and amazon and all those and names you already know we try to get in and dig and find something that's a little less obvious >> josh, where are you on the trade of 2022 of silicon carbide? or just broader ev times next year in general? >> yeah, i'm loaded up with silicon carbide, but i took physical delivery. so i'm not in the equity, i'm in the commodity. hey, kev, have you ever taken a look at the charging equipment companies? i own a little bit of this thing chargepoint. i don't know that much about it, quite frankly. but i looked at evgo i looked at volta. is there money to be made there? what do you think? >> there was a trade in there because they thought buy back better was going to pump a lot of money into charging networks. but let's speak as investors, not as traders we actually have an ev truck

company in our portfolio and one of our senior executives there came from charge point so he's kind of my secret weapon. i'll call him up after this and get the scuttlebutt. most people just go from their home to the office to the store, whatever so they want a big network out there but they hardly ever use it and i'm not quite sure that's going to play out that smoothly. >> okay. i appreciate it it >> thank you >> thank you for joining us with some of your calls >> you bet happy holidays >> happy holidays to you we are getting some breaking news here on novavax meg tirrell with the details meg? >> hey, sara novavax out with a press release looking at how well its vaccine can stand up to omicron. and the results appear pretty similar to the trend we've been seeing so far. there is some decrease from two doses of the vaccine against omicron. but they do see an increase in

activity with a booster. so they say a booster could be helpful for fighting omicron and in omicron-specific vaccine they say may also be beneficial they've begun the work on that and they could begun human trials of an omicron-specific vaccine in the first quarter these are along the same lines of what we've heard from other vaccinemakers. we know that pfizer and moderna, for example, are proceeding with work on their omicron-specific vaccines in case those are needed even though booster doses so far have shown to lift those antibody levels back up pretty well so we're expecting a conference call from novavax at 4:30, and potentially to answer some more of our questions here. we'll bring you any news we get to that. >> so we just talked to the ceo of novavax two days ago on this show, and he teased this that he has some good data on the current variants that are circulating including "options action" --

omicron. i think the w.h.o. also has approved novavax have we started to see shipments go out are people getting these shots >> you know, we haven't heard about that specifically. it likely is but we know there are a lot of people around the world who are not yet vaccinated dr. tedros from the world health organization today saying three out of four healthcare workers in africa have not yet received a dose of vaccine. so there's a lot of need around the world. if omicron becomes dominant globally, which is expected, will we need three doses will we need an omicron-specific vaccine? so all of these questions are out there. and strangely novavax falling on this, we'll dig into what might be disappointing anybody in the idea the and bring it back to you. >> sometimes it just goes the other way. when it got approved in europe, it fell as well. meg, thank you, keep us posted and, josh -- total rollercoaster, agree josh, before we let you go, we did want to zone in here in the

"market zone" on one of your holdings, alphabet because tiktok just overtook google as the top site this year do you think that matters? >> not really. tiktok is not even really a business, like it's not based in the united states, it's in china, there is questionable things about how involved foreign governments might be with it. like, i don't feel like that has the staying power that people might think it has alphabet, their last earnings report, it was supposed to do 38 billion. they did 52 billion. they are crushing on another level, expected to continue to do so next year. the content is way more important for the way society functions. basically lumpy teenagers from the midwest lip-syncing to travis scott i just don't think it has the staying power that google search, youtube and some of these other properties have. so don't make that comparison. it doesn't make that much sense. >> all right, you're saving me from having to actually, you know, get on tiktok and figure

out what it is, josh, thanks a lot. >> i'm verified if you want to follow me. >> josh, thanks a lot. we are just getting started on the second hour of "closing bell." tesla shares taking off after elon musk said he sold enough stock. up next an analyst tells us why he's so bullish on the name right now. and later, scott gottlieb on today's approval of pferiz's antiviral pill we are back in two minutes

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around 10% >> that was tesla's ceo elon musk last night saying he hit his goal of selling 10% of his stake in tesla musk sold nearly another 580,000 shares yesterday, bringing his shares to 13.5 million tesla rallying on the news today, finishing higher by 7%. it's obviously kind of fair to say that this entire musk-selling episode, it coincided with a pullback from highs in tesla shares even though ceo sells stock in their founded companies all the time but i wonder where you think it leaves it. we're still at a trillion-dollar market cap it's pretty close to your price target how do you characterize the outlook for the company relative to where the stock is right now for next year? >> all right so, drama aside, and there's

always a lot of drama when we talk about tesla but leaving all that aside, tesla is about a momentum stock. i've always looked at this in a very simple way. look at it with that sort of scale, what's on the prob, whats on the negative side for potential risk and do we have more catalysts coming up that are positive versus negative? and i still think that we have more positives than negatives. this is a production story so it's about, you know, these giga factors we're mere week as way from berlin coming online, and you're going to have texas coming online and you've got the 2170 batteries transitioning to 4680s. that gives them optionality, which is the ability to move from just an auto company into an energy company. and i think that that's not fully baked into the shares at this point >> do you feel it's not baked into the shares in terms of how

the story line might be energized by that, and therefore you get, you know, a restart of that momentum? or do you actually believe on a financial basis that the potential for these new giga factories and the energy business line are not reflected in the valuation >> well, we have to look at are we in a bull market, are we in a bear market? so if we're going to look at the -- because it's all relative we're all trying to look at what is relative performance. so, we would be having a different discussion if the argument here was, hey, we're in a bear market in terms of the total value. by the way, the guys that argued value on tesla got their heads handed to them time and time again here in a bull market -- and, by the way, the build back better, that not happening, at least for the time being, that actually takes the whole competitive side away from, you know, all the competitors coming in and taking

a share. because tesla wouldn't be capturing that anyhow. so i do think that in this market at this time there are still more positives than negatives with respect to tesla. and i'll keep the buy on that. >> just back to the stock sales for a moment there is this question about whether he's actually done or not really done. robert frank reporting there is still some more for tax purposes elon musk self-tweeting there are still a few tranches left but almost done. it is material, right? the stock last peaked early november just before the twitter poll was out and lost about a quarter of its value >> listen, i haven't done the math in terms of has he reached the full amount or is there still a small amount left to be sold if he's still selling shares, it puts pressure on the stock but i think as we can see here, that the baby did get thrown out with the bath water.

tesla was down also with the build back better. and i don't think it should've been so, i think it's in the grand scope of things, i don't think it matters all that much >> you mentioned build back better not, you know, passing or not moving forward as expected as a net positive perhaps for tesla competitively. but we have ford out there pretty much selling every one of the f-150 lightnings they can make, we think they were tweeting ford motor company tweeting memes out yesterday to promote them as an ev company has the competitive landscape not just grown tougher anyway for tesla? i know that the premise has obviously been they're going to lose market share on a much bigger pie but how do you see all this? >> i get in this debate with investors all the time in terms of is the pie growing, what is the rate of the total evs? the future is electric vehicles. and from an economic and energetic basis, not just -- so,

i don't think that you need the subsidies in order to make -- because this is clear that this is the path of the future. and i agree with you on in terms of his little spat that he got in with senator warren i actually do think that whether you have a subsidy on this or not, this is where everything is going, and it is the future of our transportation >> so, jed, what is the next catalyst is it the new manufacturing plants big move up today. >> so the next catalyst is my kids yelling at me on christmas because i did not buy the cyber quad for them. and, unfortunately those sold out, which is something we usually don't talk about now, i think, joking aside, i think the giga berlin coming on, which is already reported that -- are being produced over

there, and then texas and kind of seeing those materialize and what those numbers -- and we'll see that on the quarterly call we will get delivery numbers in the beginning of january as well >> jed, thanks for joining us. >> happy holidays. >> happy holidays to you the ceo of fedex says he sees signs of a supply chain comeback find out when he thinks the ongoing issues will be fixed plus, pfizer board member dr. scott gottlieb on whether he thinks it is safe to travel during this holiday season as omicron cases continue to surge in this country. we'll be right back. to be strong. to overcome anything. ♪♪

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who's your rock? - music is a universal language. - it crosses cultures and brings us together. - guys, we're on. right now. - now? - [gasps] - performers, composers, conductors, and dancers... - bring our stories to life and make our world a more beautiful place. - i won't let you down, sir! - so support music education... - and help unlock the creator in all of us. the more you know. president biden holding a virtual meeting of his supply chain task force, and the ceo of one major shipping company thinks the supply chain kruny may be easing. frank holland has some of the highlights >> hey there, mike a lot of news coming out of there. containers they're moving 125% faster through the port of l.a. and even faster through the port of long beach.

fedex ceo fred smith one of those executives in attendance virtually, his company shares they're down today but they've actually outperformed the s&p since earnings last week where the company said its ability to hire is improving. smith said he's seeing improvements across the board. >> the supply chain issues are not all solved, but there's a lot of effort underway to solve them, and we're optimistic that people will have a good peak season, and most of santa claus's products will be delivered to the consumers >> however, the cost of trucking still the main part of the u.s. supply chain those costs continue to be elevated they're still off their highs from earlier this year general trucking rates are 18% higher demand is over 80% higher. back over to you >> so, frank, in terms of the gradual clearing, i guess, of the port clog and things like that is that just now time will heal

it and we'll get past peak and this is on a glide path? or is there still more for the government or these companies that they have to set in motion to get things right? >> great question. i don't think anybody knows 100% for sure we have to get past this holiday season remember, a lot of u.s. retailers and other companies, they want to have more inventory here in the united states. that's going to require bringing more goods and more things from overseas and then coming up on february 1st is a lunar new year. that's a time in asia where a lot of these factors will shut down generally goods are pushed forward ahead of the lunar new year when the workers take about a week to ten days off is that a time for the supply chain to catch up? or does it just create more backups? >> frank holland, thank you. pfizer getting a pop today after the fda granted emergency use authorization for its covid antiviral pill up next, pfizer board member former fda commissioner dr. scott gottlieb on that news

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tonight, pfizer's covid pill authorized, but will there be enough supply? plus, a 3-year-old girl vanishes in texas. now the fbi joining the case the facts,

time for a cnbc news update with contessa brewer >> congress will investigate the astroworld festival tragedy. the house oversight committee announced a bipartisan probe to focus on the concert promoter livenation ten people were killed and hundreds injured in that crowd surge during travis scott's performance in texas livenation says it will cooperate with the committee and the house committee investigating the january 6th insurrection wants to hear from congressman jim jordan the committee said today it asked for a meeting with the trump ally to discuss their communication with each other that day no response yet from jordan. just yesterday congressman scott perry of pennsylvania refused to cooperate with that committee. a new poll shows a majority of americans do not trust social media. they want the government to do something about it

"the washington post" published the poll showing people trust facebook the least with instagram, tiktok, whatsapp and youtube not far behind you could just get off social media? tonight, cookies, they're delicious, they're profitable, and we're talking to one small business about its recipe for success during the pandemic. join me tonight for "the news" right after cramer 7:00 p.m. eastern. >> we'll see you ten contessa, thank you. the fda issuing emergency use authorization for pfizer's covid-19 antiviral pill today. paxlovid, the first oral treatment to receive the green light. joining us now former fda commissioner dr. scott gottlieb, who also sits on the board of pfizer dr. gottlieb, welcome. obviously a huge milestone for pfizer and for the country and for the world. so tell us specifically who gets these pills as they start shipping in the next few days and how. >> well, look, the government's going to have to work out some kind of scheme to ration the

supply, at least initially supply is going to ramp as we get into 2022. initially there's about 180,000 shipping between now and the end of the year. i suspect they're going to target this to people over age 65 or 60 but as you get into 2022 there's going to be substantial supply coming online upwards of 120 million doses coming online in 2022 so i think this is a real game changer. the opportunity to have an orally available antiviral drug that could be taken shortly after symptom onset to prevent hospitalization, prevent death, prevent more severe outcomes from this disease i think is a real game changer in terms of how we approach the treatment of covid. >> what about for kids so, it allows us to get back to normal, but it's not approved for kids unless they're over the age of 12. so parents can't exactly go back to normal. are there trials going on for these pills and any sense when

they might be available for kids >> it's approved down to 12. i think you look at kids a little bit differently because they're at less risk from covid infection. i think the primary objective is going to be to get a vaccine authorized for children under the age of 5 once you get base-line immunity, i think they're going to be at a substantially reduced risk they're at lower risk, generally speaking and i think the goal is to get more kids vaccinated right now >> so as we learn more about omicron, and there were two good studies today out of scotland and out of south africa showing a markedly lower risk from hospitalization from the omicron variant, should people's risk tolerance be different around this variant than delta or some of the earlier versions now that we have thesetreatments, vaccines, and data on how dangerous it is? >> yeah, look. i think people's risk tolerance is evolving, and the policy response is evolving as well because we have a much more substantial toolbox for dealing with covid you're not seeing businesses shut down.

you're not seeing cities shut down you're not even really seeing hospitals take measures to try to reduce volumes in advance of what's going to be an increase in hospitalizations. generally speaking, we're not seeing the kinds of policy response that we saw certainly during the first wave. more people have base line immunity, upwards of 80% of the population, probably more than that, have some form of immunity either through vaccination or prior infection or a combination of both. i think in terms of looking at the hospitals, we need to look not just at hospitalizations, daily hospitalizations but we should look at total hospitalizations, and also icu capacity i suspect that you're going to see more of the hospitalizations be shorter stays because we are seeing people who get hospitalized have less severe disease from omicron and i think you're going to see fewer icu admissions if we can preserve capacity in the icus and if more of the hospitalizations are short stays, that's going to be a good reflection that we're able to

maintain hospital capacity through this wave. but really it's going to be the pressure on hospitals, i think, ultimately, to determine whether or not you're going to see a policy response to try to implement more stringent mitigation >> so when do you see omicron peaking in the u.s.? >> yeah, look, we've seen with the past waves they've lasted about five months because they've moved around regionally. this country is a large country, it experienced the delta wave probably in six or seven distinct regions right now there are multiple regions that are pretty lit up with omicron i think the tri-state is probably the hardest hit right now. you're seeing cases pick up in florida and the pacific northwest and seattle. so i think at least the new york city area is going to be through this probably some time in mid-january you're going to see the tri-state region peak. but this is going to move very quickly through the country just given the current trajectory and i suspect that there is fa

more infection that seems to be the case in south africa where you saw a very sharp up and a very sharp down that's probably a reflection of us not fully understanding the epidemiology of this disease and that's accounting for the fact that the epidemic sort of burned itself out quicker than what you'd expect. >> there's also the shortage of tests, which it's hard to believe two years into the pandemic that we are seeing here in new york certainly and across the country. also omicron is acting a little differently with tests, just anecdotally with rapid tests and the time you test and pcrs people are going into holiday, christmas gatherings are their families, parties. what is the optimal time to test before you are going to see people >> yeah. so, fda put out some guidance today saying that the two most popular tests look like they detect omicron with the same

sensitivity that they detect in the old variants what's being reported by clinicians is that the time interval between getting a positive on a pcr and registering a positive on an antigen test is getting stretched a bit. you might not have registered a positive 24 to 48 hours. now you're talking to some doctors who are saying it's taking as long as three days to get a positive on an antigen test relative to when you might hit a positive on a pcr-based test so you want to be absolutely sure that you're not infected, getting a same-day pcr test is probably the best way to go. if you're not registering a positive on an antigen test, more likely than not you're not as infectious, it's probably the fact that you have some mucosal immunity because omicron is affecting people who have -- it's taking longer to register a

positive and they're also probably not shedding as much virus it's probably the case >> so you'd have to have access to a rapid pcr test on the day of gathering because the problem also is that the pcr tests are taking days to come back >> yeah. and that's the difficulty. there's also molecular tests that are available at home they're a little bit more expensive, but they're probably going to be more sensitive earlier in the course of the illness than antigen tests the other way to use these tests is just to serially test with them if you really are entering a setting where you don't have access to a pcr-based test or a molecular test, you test again the next morning, that's probably going to provide more sensitivity than when you're testing once people are having trouble getting access to these tests.

so not everyone has multiple tests at home to do that >> yeah, no, it's very disappointing that we don't have ample testing at this point in the pandemic finally, dr. gottlieb, another pfizer question. a little disappointing that the vaccine trials are delayed for kids 5 and under we know that pfizer said it's testing a third dose to see if you get a bigger response, especially for younger kids. when is the earliest we could expect to see vaccines for kids 5 and under? >> well, look, if the company continues on the current course in terms of extending that trial to look at a third dose and also collecting the longer-term follow-up data, you're looking at a second quarter in 2022. i do think that there is enough data that fda will be in a position to make an earlier authorization if in fact the epidemiology of omicron demonstrates that kids are getting in trouble with it, that our hands are forced, from a public health standpoint, that you want to get base line protection in children under the age of 5 so far we haven't seen evidence

of that. there was some suggestion of increased hospitalizations in south africa we aren't really seeing that here but the company and others are looking at that very closely >> yeah, hope not. dr. gottlieb, always so valuable to have you. thank you for joining us >> thanks a lot. thank you, sara. up next, a look at how history says the market could perform during the fed's tapering period plus, a venture capitalist tells us where he sees the biggest opportunities in cryptos and nfts, all later on "closing bell." retirement income is complicated. as your broker, i've solved it.

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strong close for stocks. s&p gained 1%, second day in a row of gains let's send it back to mike santoli who is looking at how the market performs during a fed taper period, which we are going into here. >> we are in it, right, sara and actually there's only been one previous fed taper, as we're now defining it, when they're kind of reducing the pace of their asset purchases. that was in 2013 to 2014 2013, very strong year, very similar to this year, something like 30% but you do see that once you got into that moment when the taper actually started, it did give way to a little more of a downside chop, kind of a flattening out of the market

2014 was another decent year for stocks, but it did get a little bit more of a give-and-take. so, obviously you can't take one precedent as somehow a guide to the future perfectly but not bad to know that this is what happened last time around of course, last time the first fed rate hike came a full year after the taper was done at the end of 2015. take a look at the treasury yield curve over ten years, it kind of captures that period as well so here you have the spread peak right there in 2013 and it did get compressed as the tightening moves were coming into sight we peaked at much lower levels than we normally do after a recession and down to something like 70, 80 basis points it's a little bit narrower than people are comfortable with, but it doesn't really raise a lot of alarm, sara? >> so, is there a lesson, mike, in what types of stocks to own

in that kind of environment when the fed is tightening on liquidity? >> you know, it did tend to give way 2014 was kind of a fangy and somewhat more defensive stock kind of year so it was, you know, the cyclicals had had their run in 2013 it normally i think lines up with what a lot of strategists are saying right now, which is don't go for the fastest growing aggressive stocks. it seems like those that have a little more predictability have done better. up next, a venture capitalist gives us a list of companies he thinks will cash in on the metaverse plus, julia boorstin looking at some key technology advancements that could draw more consumers into the metaverse. julia? >> well, sara, the future isn't just virtual, it's also augmented reality. i'll show you how this green screen room with 30 cameras loamho this startup ceo into a hogr w showed up in my

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mom, hurry! our show's gonna start soon! i promised i wouldn't miss the show ♪♪ and mommy always keeps her promises. oh, no! seriously? hmm! it's not the same if she's not here. oh. -what the. oh my goodness! i don't suppose you can sing, can you? ♪ the snow's comin' down ♪ -mommy? ♪ i'm watching it fall ♪ watch the full story at www.xfinity.com/sing2 we've got a market flash here kristina partsinevelos has the details. christine? >> ev startup nikola just announced on twitter that their

first delivery or the first customer delivery is done, and there's going to be more to come so, this announcement was on twitter now, but the company actually delivered the truck on december 17th. they put out an announcement but because the stock has popped, that's why i'm coming on air to tell you this right now the tweet came out just after 4:30 p.m. eastern time you saw a little bit of a reaction to the stock which is trading roughly 3% higher right now. there was actual news today for the company coming from hennef transportation that just signed a letter of intent to purchase 100 zero-emission trucks so that's the new news from today. that tweet came out in after-hours trading so you did see a little bit of a reaction in the stock which is now trading about 4% higher. back over to you >> a bit of a bounce after about a 70-% drop from the highs metaverse has been tone of this

year's biggest buzzwords julia boorstin has the details >> there are some key technology advancements that could make the metaverse a lot more accessible. first let's start off talking about augmented reality and virtual reality headsets apple's expected to introduce one around the end of next year, and meta is working on a higher-end device that makes its virtual elements with the real world. pokemon gomaker niantic has teased its augmented reality glasses as well. this is my avatar in "ready player me" which i could bring into multiple other games. then let's talk about augmented reality that doesn't need special hardware you'd be able to access augmented reality images on your phone. live hologram video calls from startups 8i and eighth wall. they use 30 cameras to capture a

person that enable you to see them in your room on your phone. that's how i spoke to a hologram of their ceo >> the question we have is, is the metaverse going to be fake people or is it going to be real people we think it'll be real people. we think this is solution to authenticity in the metaverse. >> that kind of hologram technology is really designed for beaming the likes of concerts or other live performances into your house so you can imagine, say, watching a netflix stand-up special, maybe see the comedian standing there in your living room mike and sarah >> how intimate is that? julia, thank you julia boorstin for more on what he's watching in the metaverse space into next year, let's bring in eric hippeau. where are you guys investing within the metaverse and how bi of a theme is it in the broader portfolio? >> thank you for having me we're investing in blockchain,

which is kind of part of the metaverse. we are also starting to look at nfts and some of the other components however, we believe that the metaverse is going to take a few years. zuckerberg himself said that he expects the metaverse to be five to ten years from now. the way it looks like today is really kind of an extension of virtual reality, augmented reality. we do have some investments in augmented reality on the industrial space, where augmented reality is really helpful in training workers on new machines or helping them complete their education in certain aspects of the job but it hasn't really yet taken off in the real world as it were >> i don't know if you saw the tweet from jack dorsey, of course, of square, and twitter today, on this, basically on -- he calls it the web three and he

criticizes it saying you don't own web threes, the vcs and lps do, it will never escape their incentives it's ultimately a centralized entity with a different label. know what you're getting into. he's blaming you guys and not so much a believer in the metaverse and web3.0 >> vcs are in the job of backing new ideas. some of them work out fantastically like blockchain. others don't work that well. i don't know blaming the vcs is going to help matters. the fact is we provide startup money, very high risk money, where no other money is available. and i think that's a great service. >> eric, i think as a vc, you're looking for businesses that have some claim or participation in the new realms, as opposed to trying to promote the development of whatever the next phase of social connection in the internet is going to be, i would imagine. talk a little bit about some of

your more targeted nft-related investments, business for art and things like that. >> yeah, so nfts for us is -- we're moving a little slower the way it works is that when you get these new markets, take crypto, blockchain, which is now arguably worth the market is worth $3 trillion. at the very beginning, about ten years ago, it was more speculators, more speculative buyers today, it is core buyers because the blockchain has become essential to some transacts. we believe in nfts, the same phenomenon is happening right now, while there was one piece of art that was sold by christie's for $69 million, the majority of objects and items in an nft sold for less than $1,000 only 250,000 people at the

moment participated in that market it is a very nascent market. we believe right now it is more in a speculative phase and we're going to be waiting to see how long-term buyers, the holders, get into the marketplace in the meantime, we're investing in some tools and some infrastructure we have an avatar company, we just invested in the company that is going to make much better screen to this display nfts and nfts for the most part displayed on the computer or television, really that's not high quality enough for art. should be displayed on l.e.d. screens. >> yeah, interesting, a way to make it more vivid physically in person, for something that started digitally. eric, appreciate it, we'll certainly go back to you with updates on all of this thank you very much. >> my pleasure consumer and housing data could move the market tomorrow all the reports investors need to watch for when "closing bell"

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tomorrow's economic calendar jam packed with potentially market moving data investors set to digest the latest weekly jobless claims on a thursday the november readings on personal income and spending, durable goods, also out tomorrow, new home sales, consumer sentiment also, we just got a better consumer confidence read today we'll get another consumer sentiment report for the month of december. and, mike, i think economic data starts to matter here because one of the debates shaping up for 2022 is growth it has been strong can it stand up to the omicron variant here in the short-term, even if we're not seeing lockdowns, we're seeing a little bit of consumer behavior change, and more importantly maybe a tightening fed and withdraw of fiscal stimulus and that could dictate how the market goes. >> these numbers tell us the economy's exit velocity from 2021 essentially just exactly how much of a cushion there might be in growth as we go against some of the things like the fiscal

cliff, that hits the consumer if you don't have a renewal of the child tax credit pretty significant, pretty measurable so we'll see, one difference, though, we were just talking about the last time when the fed tapered. back then it was about, you know, 2% growth maybe, almost no inflation, we were kind of at stall speed. a net benefit here to having a little more of momentum in growth to work with. but obviously those numbers tomorrow tell us just how strong it was and we have to see how much that might throttle back. >> got another strong day in the market, 1% gain and strong finish as well closed at the highs of the day now positive for the week, and for the month, except for the nasdaq and it is a holiday shortened trading week tomorrow is the last day of the week what willy you be watching >> the only directional drivers really i think is the seasonal tendency to have this upward drift. that is the pattern. pretty rock solid. did we steal some of that with up 2.8% in the s&p in two days

here that's difficult to know i would point out the s&p closed today exactly where it did november 5th, strong jobs report sideways for almost two months sometimes that creates kind of a base there we'll see how that goes. and i will not be here with you. have a great day tomorrow and i'll catch up with you again next week. and thanks for watching. that does it for "closing bell" today. "fast money" begins right now. tonight on "fast money," the big chill, we're going off the charts one top technician is laying out the three best looking stocks to play heading into the new year we'll bring you those names straight ahead plus, a moderna meltdown the vaccinemaker getting whacked today, but we spotted something in the market that could point to a big turn around trade and later on, a crypto coincidence? the one chart that shows bitcoin could hold the keys to where the market is heading. that's coming up next. we'll explain. welcome, everyone, to the big