to five. we'll tell you what's behind the new guidance, and some major retail stores shutting down for in-store shopping in new york city with no reopening day in sight. it's tuesday, december 28th, 2021, and "squawk box" begins right now. good morning, that's frightening, just me welcome to "squawk box" here on cnbc i'm not kayla tausche, but i will be soon i'll be with joe kernen. becky and andrew are off today looking at u.s. equity futures to start we'll have kayla when we get things squared away. stocks off to a strong week. you can see adding to some of the gains we saw yesterday

dow jones indicated up 80 points for 2021 1% already and the -- yesterday and the s&p surging 1.4% to the record close the index is now up four days in a row for the first time since an eight-day winning streak back in early november. year-to-date the s&p is up 27.5%. if it ends up more than 28.8%, that willmark its best annual performance since way back in 2013 the nasdaq also coming off a banner day, closing up more than 1.3% that's the fourth positive day in a row for the nasdaq. but it's still around 2% below its all-time high. well, you would think treasury yields would be participating, but not really i'm talking about not the bonds, but the yields themselves, 1.47% at this point. can't even get above 1.5

i'm hearing some good news in my ear, kayla you're here. you're here, you're ready, raring to go it's early. >> i am. just wanted to keep you on your toes joe, make you think you had three hours of television to do by yourself. but i'm here. >> it's so confusing that was your read it said i'm kayla tausche and i had to think on my feet because i'm not. >> i was hoping to get the kayla tausche impression. >> i can do certain impressions, none very well you're going to be here tomorrow, that's awesome is that true >> let's see how today goes. >> this is interesting the cdc, kayla i know you saw it, cut isolation restrictions or quarantine, whatever you want to call it, from ten days to five for people who catch the coronavirus. now says those who are

asymptomatic or no longer showing symptoms can end their isolation period as we say after just five days, followed by five days of wearing a mask around others and similarly cut the isolation guidance for post contact exposure the cdc says the change comes because there's evidence most transmissions happened one to two days prior to symptoms and two to three days after. dr. rochelle walensky said the country is about to see a lot of omicron cases. about to we already are they wanted to make sure there's a mechanism to safety keep society functioning. kayla, this is -- i don't know for you, i see that you're just sort of a -- you could be a -- an avatar, it could be you, you could be in the area, we could be anywhere with these backgrounds, but do you know people with covid? for me it's everywhere

people, i've got it, i've got it this seems fundamentally different in terms of how many people have actually come down with omicron, hopefully because nobody seems that sick. >> it is truly everywhere, as one piece of evidence. my kid's pediatrician does daily drive up testing for families which is a game changer for us during the pandemic and normally test about 10 families on average per day throughout the pandemic recently they've been testing 400 people a day, because people have had positive exposure in the d.c. area. i ask where is it, is there somewhere in the community we can avoid because my kids aren't vaccinated, they say it's in preschools, day cares, elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, it's across the board here in d.c one of the challenges is the hot spots are places in the country

that have among the highest vaccination rates i think that' why the guidance is so confusing. i know we're going to talk about dr. fauci's comments later in the show where he said possibly a vaccination mandate for domestic travel could be coming. you have high spread in areas with high vaccination rates. that's giving people pause how do i go about my daily life? i think it's proof positive people are going on with their daily life because there is so much community spread but we're trying to figure out what's the new normal here and what is this guidance and is it more confusing than clear, some of the early feedback, at least on the cdc isolation stuff is that it's pretty confusing, joe. >> confusing but everything i'm hearing -- i don't know i want it to be over, i want things to get back to normal it all sounds like there are some silver linings and

potentially positive things. there's a south african study noted that omicron gives you give immunity to delta and the prior strains. the cases don't seem to be as seriously previous cases my dream and my wish, and it's been, you know, postulated and speculated by a lot of people is that this is the beginning of the end of the pandemic because so many people eventually get a much less serious case, develop some kind of overall immunity to future variants, hopefully, and we start to get back to normal and maybe that's a possibility, maybe omicron in that way is not necessarily a scourge but actually the beginning of how we deal with this, if it becomes endemic, whatever it is, but it's not nearly as scary, doesn't cause the societal changes. there are so many bad things going on minor bad things and real bad things people planning on having fun at

college for four years, thinking about my daughter, really no college experience whatsoever, it's all been online depression drug use, so many things that have been affected by this and lives put on hold for a long time and then you've got the people unable to get vaccinated or have bad immune systems and it's not going to work. they're prisoners in their own homes. are you optimistic or pessimistic about the winter wave, the omicron wave i'm hoping to be optimistic about it >> i'm hoping to be optimistic as well. though i come at it with a slightly different perspective because i have young children and we have seen a five-fold increase in childhood hospitalizations in in new york city, hospitalizations have doubled here in d.c. i think the data is lacking on how omicron impacts the unvaccinated class and that's something we're still trying to figure out here. so until we know that, it's hard

to change your posture as a parent of young kids certainly i'm hopeful. i'm hopeful to get back to normal, to have some of these new measures in place that will hopefully keep kids in school more regularly, more testing once they get back on the shelves and they have a more robust system in place something that should be noted for our audience, some of the changes in these guidelines, especially the cdc's recent revision of the isolation periods they say it comes in response to the evidence that they're talking about but it shows the arguments that the business community is making really are resonating with the administration we saw earlier a few months ago that the business community was lobbying the office of management and budget on the vaccine mandate to push the enforcement of that to after the holidays otherwise risking a walkout. the administration did that. here you have the airline industry essentially imploring

the administration to cut down the isolation period so they didn't have the worker shortages and the administration is responding saying we're looking back at the data and willing to do this. so if you're a company and there's something you want changed or something that you believe is ill conceived or ill fated on the policy front a lot of the arguments that corporate america is making are resonating and are being manifest in policy changes that we've seen in recent months. >> the weekend experience of air travelers is nothing close to normal talking about being back on your heels. and you wonder about it, whether -- it may not be proportional, once again, hopeful about omicron, but it may not be commensurate with where we should be with the latest variant obviously we don't, you know, l lockdowns and everything else that we went through a year ago, the one thing that we're talking about are these break through cases.

now is the lesser variety of the disease because you've been vaccinated what does omicron do to the unvaccinated population? what's that we don't know. it seems less serious but so many people who get it have some less immunity. we still don't know if it's less vir vir virulent, certainly more infectious moving on. the winter snowstorm in the u.s. can you imagine trying to get home for the holidays and so many cancelled flights after canceling more than 1,500 flights into, out of, or within the u.s. on sunday, another 1,400 yesterday. airlines have already cancelled 678 flights this morning with that number rising by the hour and you wonder how many people are sitting at home that are asymptomatic and hence the move from five to ten days, kayla

which is kind of shocking though that in the middle of everything as we -- i'm listening to fauci or others about don't even have a new year's eve party, at the same time we certainly are very guarded with this for what i don't -- when do we make the transition from delta to omicron in terms of the fear factor, i don't know, maybe we shouldn't yet, maybe it's too early. what do you think, is it too early? >> i don't know. for the new guidance, joe, going back to work after five days, you are still -- you are still requested to wear a mask and then there are questions about the enforcement of that, what type of mask is that, and then some of the guidance also applies to people who are vaccinated and boosted, what about people who just have two shots, they're essentially treated as someone who is not vaccinated so there are a lot of gray areas here where companies are going to be incumbent on them to enforce this and read between

the lines and figure out how to deal with employees at the ground level and figure out what this looks like, but i certainly, especially for the flight crews it's positive news. you're in d.c. a lot, the switch to it's not a federal problem from the obama admbiden adminis that's getting -- that's not going to go over well, is it, politically, from the previous comments about how it needs to be a federal response now almost punting it back to the governors at this point with the testing it almost looks like a -- i don't know in hindsight maybe we should have -- i don't know if we saw omicron coming to the extent we took full on testing >> there was some nuance to the comments where he suggested -- the president said it is not just a federal problem, it has to be a joint solution with the states but some of the messaging is especially problematic

because on the campaign trail when he was a candidate, joe biden said this was something that the federal government can solve and in january of last year when he released his 200-page covid plan, the word federal appeared 391 times he said for the year leading up to that there had been no national plan and that ended that day so there was a promise there would be federal planning and a national solution to this problem. and i think that the administration had to adjust the messaging because this is a localized issue that requires state resources especially in the absence of a new major aid package. one of the reasons there was federal government early on was because there was this distribution of several trillions of dollars to help combat this. now that we are living with this virus, it's now falling to each of these states and municipalities to impolilement their own procedures as there had been for some time but the

back pedaling from the idea there would be a federal silver bullet is definitely a head scratcher and is definitely problematic change in messaging for the president. >> 800,000, yeah, nothing is really panned out the way we were hoping. up next with omicron cases surging in the u.s. we'll take a closer look at stay-at-home stocks is this the time to do it or are we going to go out talk strategy ahead of the end of the year. you're watching "squawk box" on cnbc

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as the economy began to reopen this year, stay-at-home stocks took a beating. now we have the rapid spread of the variant, omicron bringing some renewed interest to those stocks but does it make sense or is it misplaced. joining us is mike volebang and peter. viewers at home don't have the advantage of knowing what you guys think, and i do i don't think either one of you gentlemen are ready to say get back in the stay-at-home stocks

because you have maybe the half view of omicron that it may mark the beginning of the end of this pandemic, mark, do i have that right? >> that's right. take a look, joe, at the direction that the public health officials have gone. when was the last time they eased restrictions i don't recall one since march of 2020. they've always been talking being more careful and today, yesterday, we saw them actually ease those restrictions i think it's a signal. i think it's a hint that omicron is, you know, arguably, anyway, the end of the beginning -- or the beginning of the end, i guess, is probably the way to say it what's been interesting about this market really for the last year has been its coincidence with changes in the virus. right. changes in the pandemic. so typically markets will discount things, we're seeing the market trade almost exactly with news on the covid and omicron now. so we think it's actually good

news, we think it's potentially investable. >> you may not want to buy the dip that we've seen in the stocks that we're showing on the screen right now i mean, if we were going full on back into a -- some type of pseudolockdown mode you would think these would be doing better does the stock market read the science? >> for sure. i listened to a couple of epidemiologists sort of -- guys who looked at some of the early studies from south africa, london, other places, they're clearly talking about the positive and the good news of omicron. the reason i make the point about anticipation in the market trading coincidence with the market is again, it could give somebody with some courage an opportunity here >> peter, similar feelings i think but then we come back to our -- the problems that are

always going to come home to roost, and that is maybe we passed the flexion point for rates, probably headed higher, tapering, that's happening we have inflation. we have all these sort of run of the mill problems we have to deal with, whether omicron stays or goes. >> well, i think those points you make is why investors have become more valuation sensitive. because not only were a lot of these work-from-home stocks buyable last year, but once the vaccine hit, people realized these are very expensive stocks and then you forward to 2021 when inflation rates, and what you talked about, has made the valuation compression story a key part of the stocks' decline, that's why they've fallen, 40, 50%, because of that you wonder where is the pe

multiple going to settle out at least in the u.s. there's no qe and the fed and other central banks are raising interest rates. that's a key determ nint on how the markets settle out covid really brought these companies a huge audience much sooner than they anticipated and now they have to prove they can live in a more normalized world. you look at docusign and zoom, i think the companies will adjust but themultiples within them are still heady and still need to adjust. >> it's not as if the audience is going away. yes, perhaps people go out on friday and saturday night so they're not sitting home watching as much netflix, it's not to say that people are ditching their subscription, at least in the demographic i'm in, aren't excited about the new

taylor swift with peloton. so if there's going to be further selling once the fed starts increasing rates and people fly out of the stocks to a greater degree to seek returns elsewhere? >> you make the right point. these companies have established themselves, even in a world without any covid, without any work-from-home situation i mentioned zoom, docusign and peloton. these are real businesses and it's a matter of where their valuations settle out. with zoom and docusign they're still expensive stocks but they've established themselves with a real business with a real audience whether we're working from home, whether they're not, and now they're an integral part of our lives, these businesses >> as the santa claus rally goes maybe so goes the first week of january. as the first week of january goes, so does the whole month of january. as the whole month of january

goes, so does the whole year i've heard that said any way we repeat last year's gains in the s&p anyway starting out good, but there's just no way, is there? 20 plus percent. >> if you compress that you can get it down to a couple of minutes goes the whole year. look, first of all volume is incredibly light there are no sellers right now the professional investment class is clearly dressing up their portfolios to show their brilliance to their clients they've been fully invested. nobody wants to get out of the market before the end of the year, so don't read too much into that, that's an obvious thing in our book. the biggest dynamic here is that, you know, we've got quantitative tightening now. we'll likely have higher rates we don't have the fiscal support we had last year and as peter pointed out, earnings are expensive, valuations are high and that's not a great recipe

for making money. >> peter, they're playing music, you're at bleakky, i know you have a bleak view, usually you do no way we repeat last year, is there? peter? maybe we do, maybe we don't. in your view quickly. >> markets do well when the fed is using, markets have a tough time when they're tight. >> maybe we can go up a little because it means the economy is doing better then maybe we don't. michael, peter, thank you both they've been playing the music i like the music, it's a nice background doesn't work for me to shut up. >> probably makes you feel at home, you're familiar with it i'm sure. coming up on "squawk box," apple stores in new york city shutting down for in-store shopping we have the details next and later much more on flight druioisptns we'll hear from the spokesperson

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welcome back to "squawk box. apple has closed its new york city retail locations to indoor customer traffic due to rise of covid cases in the city. customers can still order products online and pick them up outside the stores certainly, joe, a big move by a company that has required its employees to be vaccinated and in a city where there are vaccination mandates that are implemented fairly across the board closing those stores again, real impact on the

ground. >> it's a -- it's more than -- its presence in retail is more than the number of stores it has too. apple whenever i've been anywhere near one of the locations it's just amazing the amount of traffic and everything else that those places get and i like them. they -- you know, i need help with things like this. and they're quick -- they're quick to help when you do go in, they have a lot of people that know what they're talking about. >> i think also the corporate reputation, a lot of companies look at apple as a first mover in these records think back to the first days of the pandemic, apple stores closed a lot of other retailers followed suit. we'll see if that happens this time. coming up a closer look at the materials sector as we wrap up the year. and the debate over return to work as goldman sachs plans to bring people back.

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morning and welcome back to "squawk box" checking the futures this morning, more gains, more green, up 91 now on the dow after some record-setting sessions yesterday. s&p, not the nasdaq quite yet, nasdaq up 83 today the inflation story, though, continues as we close out the year and some segments of the market have been trying to navigate those trends for longer than others. and kristina joins us with the sector nomics. good morning. >> good morning, joe it's certainly not the worst forming sector this year but the materials sector continues to lag the s&p 500 as we head into the final few sessions of 2021 while just about every corner of

the market has been touched by rising inflation, this group has been exposed to those trends in fact, over the past six months every single constituent of the sector has had raw material shortages, cost increases or inflationary pressures, several companies have passed on pressures to consumers, for example, sherwin-williams saying in the past two earning calls that it was aggressively combatting raw material with pricing actions. that stock is up nearly 25% in the past six months. in building materials, martin marietta is up about 20% in the packaging arena, sealed air up almost 15%. both of those companies have also introduced pricing actions. while they may not fully offset inflationary head winds all three names are outperforming the sector up just 9% in the

past six months. >> i don't know if i'd be good as the ceo of one of those companies. you have your costs that are rising and then you figure out what can i do to pass those along, how are my margins going to react it's difficult i think they earn. i don't know if they earn that -- >> do they earn the salaries >> i wasn't going to -- just to be pc, i guess if a left-hander with a really good fastball can make 35 million a year why can't -- >> why can't a ceo. >> if they're a good ceo >> we can say that until the price increases continue and continue and continue and consumers get angry with all of them. >> do you still pop the bubbles of the bubble wrap >> i jump on them. >> you should see my dog. >> if you don't, it's not fun. >> a great name, sealed air. i still do that. think about how many things need to be wrapped in bubble wrap we should buy that stock if we

can. >> if we could, key word >> thank you kayla, do you pop the -- do you still do that? >> i should have wrapped bubble wrap from santa because that was the hottest gift this christmas of anything under the tree the bubble wrap of all sizes yeah very popular at our household. coming up on "squawk box," should employers consider scrapping return-to-work plans and just plan for indefinite work from home that debate is coming up next. later, thousands of flights cancelled in the last few days, thanks in part to covid callouts we'll hear from the american airlines pilot union about those disru disruptions. "squawk box" will be right back.

goldman sachs is responding to surging covid cases by mandating boosters for all eligible employees starting february 1st, according to an internal memo sent yesterday other banks have opted for pausing return-to-work plans so how should workers and employers approach the new year and 2022 in general for more tsidal neely and john

zavitzano. welcome to both of you john i want to start with you because you have kept your office open since the very early weeks of the pandemic and i want to hear how you made that decision and also how you're thinking about this recent omicron wave, because employers are trying to balance the productivity that their employees have while they're in the office with the productivity of a workforce when people have to quarantine or isolate amid outbreaks or when their normal childcare is not available, how do you respond to that >> so, i can only speak for my industry and what i do we are trial lawyers and being trial lawyers that requires a great deal of collaboration. during the pandemic we had a number of jury trials that actually were reached. now, in order to get ready for a

jury trial, it requires countless meetings during the day as ideas come up, as issues come up. and doing that through zoom, it just doesn't work. it doesn't work. you can't -- you can't have 30, 40 meetings during the day when an idea pops up, gather everybody up on zoom in order to discuss whether this is going to happen or that's going to happen the other thing is, frankly, i think zoom is a horrific way of collaborating in-person if your job requires collaboration because people get zoom fatigue. you can see it you can see when they're looking at their screen, checking their email, may be playing a game of minecraft, they have a half eaten tub of ben and jerry's there. it just doesn't work so what we did, we were one of the very first offices in our city, i'm in houston, to reopen

after the pandemic we followed the cdc guidelines in terms of distancing, deep cleaning, things of that sort, but our folks, a good number of them were coming in any way and certainly, there are professions where you can be productive working remotely. but for what i do, no way. it just doesn't work >> yeah. so you're in one line of business, but tsidal, i'm wondering how you think the calculus comes together for different industries or at this point in time compared to other stages of the pandemic >> it's interesting because remote work or hybrid work, a mix of remote and in-person, is an important tool. as is the office so it's industry specific, i get that and i respect any leader's perspective on in-person versus

not in-person, but the reality is we have gone through the most significant workplace disruption in our lifetimes and since the industrial revolution, where people are becoming more literate digitally and using digitally enabled technology in order to work. so we have to level up, we have to develop digital collaboration skills we need to figure out how to innovate when we're not in the same place so we can use remote as a tool while we're dealing with this virus and at the same time we know that workers have shifted their expectations and want more flexibility. and so, as we move forward into the future, remote work and hybrid work to me is only the beginning of the digital economy that's going to have us think differently about data, artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotic automation, so

if we're not engaging with this today, we are not preparing for what's around the corner >> but there are still tsedal, a lot of businesses who really value face time, being in the office, helping to build the company country, as john was saying, to collaborate in some of these meetings. i'm thinking of a politico article from a couple of months ago where they did a survey who said by and large the hybrid lifestyle would benefit women who bore the brunt of childcare throughout the pandemic. but also noted the women may be sacrificing managerial roles or higher compensation because they aren't giving that face time to their employer i wonder how difficult you think it is for employees, especially female workers, as to whether they should be a hybrid worker

or make everything happen to go in a day. >> i would be worried if women were the ones who were asking for more remote, which is playing out in the hybrid environment. the in-person for some things and remote for other things, that would worry me. but the reality is that we are seeing a large scale and diverse group of people who are asking for more hybrid. and so, for that reason, more people are participating in it, so it's less of a liability for women and women only but at the same time, i go back to this point again and again and again, when we go into a hybrid work setting, we need to ensure that our entire system is aligned to meet the needs of workers, including development, mentoring, promotions, and exposure to more and more opportunities. so we can't just go hybrid and just walk away

we need to build a system around it >> i want to get john's take on this too before we go. because i know your firm has made infections for high risk employees, older employees or those who said they did not want to come into the office, trying to show that you have flexibility, but i'm wondering if those employees are giving anything up by not coming into the office every day how do you see it? >> look, i think -- i think we really -- we are really losing a lot with what has happened over the past year and a half, two years with this pandemic and the fact of the matter is, when you are not around your coworkers, you don't have the ability to build bonds, to build trust, to build -- you know, when your only interaction is through a two-dimensional screen, like what we're doing now, it's difficult to build

those kinds of -- those kinds of lasting relationships that will enable you to kind of bring the best out in you. so -- >> so as someone who is not coming into the office potentially going to be getting a smaller bonus this year? does that factor into compensation or other promotions >> it does not everybody in our office received the maximum bonus. last year we had a record year last year. i think in large part because we did cut across the grain we were also one of the first -- we were the first office in the city to require mandatory vaccination before it became all the vogue. i just think you lose something. we are inherently social creatures. even monks live in colonies, right, because we just bring out the best in one another collaborating. and again, there are going to be some careers that i think you can work remotely and get the best out of people, i just --

man, i -- i just see with a lot of the companies with whom we work, a lot of the executives with whom we work are privately lamenting to me that productivity is way down, creativity is way down, loyalty is way down, and you just have this kind of sense of melee all the way around, that's way down. there's no way to measure that objectively, you know. >> it's a complicated calculus for agent and principal, something we're all grappling with right now thank you for your perspectives this morning we really appreciate it. >> thank you. crypto in the red this morning, bitcoin down about 4% got almost to $5252,000 yesterdy now back to 49 and change. break down the price action in our next segment stay tuned

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bitcoin is falling this morning after trading almost at 52,000 yesterday joining us right now noel atchison, it's going to be a new year, 2022 so you look back usually and we try to do a look forward in the crypto world, what are the big thing to think about for 2022, whether it's a physical etf for bitcoin or institutional adoption of bitcoin or regulatory actions around the world? what are you thinking about in terms of to gauge what we should

expect and i have no idea no one does with bitcoin >> that's right. no one does. as you say, bring them 2022, 2021 sure was interesting. i am grateful for you having me to look into the insights. i feel questions, what are we going to be looking for in the next year? we expect the continuation of institution involves we are seeing that we need institutional growth over the past 12 months, we're seeing strong signs of that accelerating over the next year. both through direct investment and through investment in the crypto market into structure companies themself we have 65 unicorns, worthy of which appeared this past year in the past 12 months the average is three months. that's quite astonishment.

that kind is likely to accelerate looking forward we also are seeing greater interest from the institutions in a more diversified, a year ago, you talked about it, bitcoin, bitcoin, that's all they were talking about. in the east, they were feeling good many are going to some of the riskier but also higher returns, tokens that represents technological advancements, new cultural statements. the sector has disassociated itself from just the market leader, offering investors much more choice than they ever have. >> i saw some of your tweets, which caught my attention. that is that recently bitcoin miners are at capacity not being financed through banks or market-based financing, which

not only couldiate, you know, it could add to the popularity. it doesn't take telling of bitcoin to finance the mining operation. so do you see producing more as bullish or - >> absolutely. >> you do? >> absolutely. this is fascinating. has been overlooked in the market in that once the big developments over the past 12 months was a migration from china, bitcoin mining from china a. lot went to the united states one, it changes the narrative around the energy consumption, moving to north america, gives miners access to a much more diversified mix of energy sources as well as enables them to participate in the establishment of more forces as well as strengthen some of the existing grid. changing the energy matters around bitcoin even more significantly, perhaps, the bit count market directly is the access that

bitcoin managers went to market-based financing we see more miss on public exchanges and do very well what does this mean for bitcoin, itself it means that whereas before miners had to sell bitcoin in order to fund their extension and operations, now they don't need to. they can hold on to that bitcoin and see that long data that's new bitcoin coming into the market >> they can be holders, i don't know, you know, the l and the d are messed up. noel, thank you. we appreciate talking with you this morning we'll see you again. a programing note, tomorrow night, do you believe this cnbc really main stream. ypn't see our new cnbc special crto night in america 6:00 p.m. eastern time. "squawk box" will be right back.

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good tuesday morning santa claus is coming to town the rally the bears see its best start in two decades

futures points to more gains this morning. meanwhile, with omicron surging, the cdc is updating its isolation and quarantine for americans. we will speak with the director of vanderbilt vaccine center and president biden's build back better suffered a big blow when nor joe manchin said he wouldn't support it the second hour of "squawk box" begins right now good morning, welcome back to "squawk box. i'm joe kernon along with kayla tausche. becky and andrew are off today we're in a netherweek. where are we christmas, new years right in

the middle >> i believe it is december 28th, somewhere between 3:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. >> it's all mushed together now. we're thinking about, reminiscing about last year. we're looking forward to next year it's a time for intro spection a time to check u.s. equity futures. u.s. equities are up after record setting yesterday what a year. here i am, nostalgic 2021 what a year for the averages, though we'll see whether to spring back-to-back 20-plus years is rare it's happened three years in a row a couple of times. it's rare. you wonder with rates, treasury yields, we'll take a quick look, what does 2022 hold in store for the yield curve? 1.48%. still below 1.5. then we think about inflation and all these things

these will all be in the year end look back of big occurrences for 2021 and crude oil along with the whole energy groups in the market back up to $17 a share. wti. natural gas jumping close to 9% yesterday on cold weather prediction and wti crude we said touching its highest levels the centers for disease control cutting isolation of those a symptomatic. it's five days instead of 10 at the end of that time, the cdc says it's okay to return to normal activities but people should mask everywhere, even at home yeah that's not happening but go ahead, for at least five more days, i can't see it,

myself, we're very close-knit family the changes are being driven by a surge in omicron cases and attempts to alleviate strains on healthcare facilities and businesses in terms of quarantining, that will apply to people that come into close contact with someone who is infected. the guidance says only boosted individuals can skip quarantine if they mask at least ten days everyone else should quarantine for five those people can go back to normal life and wear a mask in all settings at least five more days god forbid i say something like that we're all triple vacc'ed in my family people with young children have a different situation. would you wear a mask? would you wear a mask at home, kayla? like at home i guess if are you exposed >> i'm trying to think of a scenario i would do that, i guess if i were exposed.

if i traveled to a hot spot and engaged in risky activity was. that's not totally my style as you know and let's see, or if someone had symptoms i guess and was awaiting the results of a test maybe that's another time we would mask but there are a lot of different criteria in those guidelines people have to piece it together i would encourage people if you read on the cdc website, it confuses you, pick up the phone, say, here's my situation. take the medical advice from your doctor rather than coming back with a patchwork solution on your own. yeah president biden, meanwhile, met virtually with some of the nation's governors yesterday to talk about the fight against covid. here's what he said. >> there is no federal solution. this gets solved at the state level. i'm looking at governor nunsunuu on the board here. he talks about that a lot. a lot gets down to where the

rubber meets the road, that is where the patient needs help or preventing the need for help >> the president sppromised to support the governors to curb the spread of koichltd it was a stark messaging from the president who pledged federal solution and federal tools to combat this virus and put an end to the pandemic. clearly, the pandemic had a path and a mind of its own. we are all learning as we go here, joe. >> we've always known of the possibility and likelihood of variants, but for some reason this happened so quickly and 70 times more infectious and the numbers have moved up so fast. i don't know this would have been nice to anticipate everything it would have been nice to ramp up manufacturing of testing and you know we still need no do the therapeutic route. i don't know how we ramp that

up we will have a guest on as you mentioned that in his view a monoclonals are one of the big, big responses that we need to focus on along with other therapeutics we have been vaccinated oriented omicron breaks through triple vacc'ed people quickly and pretty easily, therapeutics will be something to finally get us back to normal. >> i think we can all use an injection of humility, a lot of guests on cnbc and other networks and advisers to the administration were saying perhaps we would see it become a dominant strain in january and it took a week so, clearly, there are attributes of this virus that are unique and that we are learning as we go. >> if we displace delta, good

riddance, i will take my chances from what we know so far >> on the market front, as we close out 2021, chip stocks have been on ale ro the semi conductor etf hit an all-time high back to its inception 20 years ago will it roll into the new year josh lipton joins with us that story. josh, what's the verdict >> so, kayla, you mentioned why etf. you mentioned the sfa, it's been on a roll and closed on monday on a record. setting down the past three months, it's up more than 45% so far this year. under the hood, we have big fames making big moves nvidia, a monthly decline, you will see it's up nearly 140% in 2021 amd also up big, nearly 70% this year broad.com, applied materials,

all trading at all-time highs here at the manned has been strong off the charts on earnings calls, chip executives sounding very positively about business trends and governments increasingly recognize chips as a true national priority bernstein tells me he is getting a bit nervous here yes, they provide a tailwind chip makers have been semg everything they make there is a growing risk that some customers have now purchased more than they actually need and won't order as much from here he says his checks indicate that is particularly true for autos and cs so commit capital. they have buys on safety place likeroad com and nvidia, where

he says results couldn't be better >> i'm curious what analysts say how much of the attractiveness of some of the sector is based on the promise of $5200 waiting in the wings for some time still has yet to become law. that is the chips act. i'm wondering whether the industry believes that will happen or is operating with a foregone conclusion that perhaps it's not going to happen >> it seems to be one of those very rare issues where lawmakers, there seems to be growing consensus there, we need to put more money, time, effort, ramping up our domestic manufacturing. that does cost a lot of money. you know the headlines, just to put that in perspective, if you build a modern chip facility, you could be looking at $15 billion for one play then after you build the facility, you have entry conversations, who will lead that plan, who will staff it

that brings up complex immigration, so it's complex it does feel like there is a lot of lawmakers on both side, we have to be less reliant on foreign sources for chip manufacturers going forward. >> we'll see what happens and we appreciate you coming on with that story, josh coming up, the aforementioned vapder built, dr. vanderbilt will have much more on the new guidance and the cdc, including reduced time in isolation. the vaccine center, will join us next plus, we will go inside the airlines hectic christmas holiday weekend. we will ask him if he thinks we are about to see traveler vaccine mandates before you head to break please check on the marks. "squawk box" will be right back.

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comcast business. powering possibilities. nltsz coming up on "squawk," we continue our deep dive into former president trump's phase 1 trade deal with china. it's fallen short with some industries but there is one that got a big win. we'll tell you which one as a reminder you can listen to

us on the cnbc app stay tuned you are watching "squawk box" on cnbc

. welcome back to "squawk box" on cnbc. ahead of a quickal year-end

deadline, we are taking stock this week of the u.s.-china trade deal we told you yesterday how far beijing is from meeting its targets for boeing jets. one is seeing a big boom, that's american farmers american ag is up 38% due to higher demand and higher prices. china is fairly close to to meeting its purchase targets for farm goods in 2020, u.s. farmers exported 31 billion to china. while that was less than $41 billion china pledged to buy, beijing is on track to meet its 48 billion target for this year, having bought 23 million for november according to usda figures. now, there is some disagreement as to whether the deal, itself, is responsible for the increases, the u.s. soy bean council says, yes, u.s. soy returned to the market in a big

way. currently the u.s. is dominating soy imports into china they say china has bumped up its meat purchases as a part of the deal but its livestock population dwindled because of acen africn swine population a major reason why the biden administration has some pause ripping up the deal even if other areas fall short, joe, looking at the soy bean figures alone, granted that was one shop china retaliated the volume in 2018 was in the $3 billion range. it was in the $14 billion range last year. it is on track to surpass this year more than double in some cases tripling, quadruple during

the trade war years. beijing this year is on track to meet the purchase target. >> i hesitate to give any type of projection for china-u.s. relations in the next 12 months of 2022. enelon musk was named man of the year, i post lated that it should have been president xi with as much influence on global on everything around the globe that china had over the last year 2022, we head into it with some trepidation. hopefully, we're excited about it as well, cho in any idea what we're looking for? i wouldn't even venture a guess. >> it's interesting you say that, joe. i will not pretend to be an armchair expert on this. i did talk to admiral james stavrides. he says the biggest tactical

challenge will be deterring russia at the border of ukraine the strategic challenge will be managing the u.s. relationship with china his assessment is it will be a quiet year, because you have the olympics, china wants to see go off successfully in february and the congress party later in the year, president xi will not want to rock the boat into that that's his assessment, which i give more stock than my own, it would seem from his view russia is a bigger concern in the immediate term than relations with china we'll see and whether they make any decisions. >> watching u.s. companies sort of navigate that very important consumer base, but just watching it is interesting to see you know the combination of coddling and pretending to take it let's get back to the pandemic goldman sachs will require

employees and visitors to get u.s. offices to get booster shots, that's starting in february anybody eligible must have received one to enter goldman's facilities staff will get tested twice a week goldman has been pushing harder to bring employees back into the office as we mentioned at the top of the hour, the cdc recommending shortereselation times for those who contract covid five days instead of ten if you are asymptomatic following by mask wearing, shortening at the time that close contact of those infected need the quarantine as well. meanwhile, a small study, though, out of south africa suggests that contracting omicron could increase production against delta and covid in general it shows a 14-fold increase in immunity reinfection for all this, welcome the director of the vanderbilt university vaccine center and a chief scientist of the head 100 research programs

focused on generalized, on neutralizing anti-bodies for the 100 likely causes of epidemic. so you are here, not a bias, do you think monoclonals may have been under used, doctor? i guess at this point watching vaccines and our bubble has been popped a little bit. not really i guess about the effectiveness. they're not the end all, be all, in this pandemic we need some other arrows in the arsenals >> we are getting a chance to try out at close scale technologies that we need. one of the newest developments is that we are using long acting anti-bodies. they're engineered to last six months or a year so they have become almost like a vaccine for people who can't be vaccinated. like with cancer or stem cell transplants, things like that. that's an exciting technology

that starts us thinking about preventing disease >> so those are man no clonals what do you do you add something to it to send the half life of the protein how does that work >> right, fully natural anti-bodies we get from a survivor then we can engineer a few little changes in the bottom part of the anti-body that regulates how long it remains in your body. it's a minor engineering change. it's been used in about 10 or 12 clinical trials now so we know it's safe. in the trials that were used for this long acting anti-body for covid, like astrazeneca has, individuals were good for six months, maybe a year that will prevent other diseases, not just covid, very widely infectious diseases so we launched a new initiative

head 100 most causes, we want to be ready ahead of time not be reactive. >> the next 100, it could cause effects for that good morning nice thing to think about, doctor, 100 more that's frightening it's been 100 years since the last one i hope we get better at this the it's been six weeks of omicron, maybe less. what do we know now? how is our view of covid and the way we deal with it? how has it changed since we've seen this variant? >> i think we were all hoping this thing would be over quickly and we're in an evolution where variants were continuing to come but omicron seems maybe pathogenic or not as severe but more infectious. so we're transitioning to a point where everyone in the world will be vaccinated or infected and get to a more normal

situation. but it's not going to end. we will start delivering with it we are seeing that transition with omicron >> doctor, for this current wave, for this current wave, south african scientists have equated the peak in that country to the north and south face of mount everest, i'm wondering where you see the peak in the united states, wall street strategists are putting it between january 9th and the end of the month they are not epidemiologists i am wondering if you have a read when this could peak in the united states? >> well, that just completely depends on the number of people who are vaccinated or previously affected the total herd immunity. there has been a large increase in interest in vaccinations. so we are still weeks or months away from our peak but we certainly championship

get through that with more vaccinations but the mask and all that stuff is just delaying the inevitable. vaccinating or using anti-bodies in those who can't be vaccinated is really the solution that we need to use right now. >> but south africa didn't have a very high vaccination rate, yet it came in and out relatively like a flash in the pan. you don't see that as being the same path that omicron will take here >> well, it's the sum total of who is infected and who is vaccinated so if a majority of people in a region, city, family group, the majority of people become infected, then the virus will pass on. it needs non-immune people for the most part. now, we do see omicron infecting peej who are already immune or partially immune from vaccination or previous infection. it's much less severe. you don't see those people going

to the hospital. i think we get benefit from how far we are plus the vaccination, we are benefiting from that partial immunity so when a spike happens, it does move on. >> and that historically, that's what we hope for i think there have been times where that has been thrown into question, which has been troubling construct. where we thought maybe you could have omicron and delta at the same time or perhaps delta immunity wouldn't work on omicron. we seen omicron break through triple vacc'ed people. so you wonder how effective the immunity s. even though it's a small study in south africa. if we knew that the herd immunity that we're hopefully going to get some day from covid would work fairly well against most of the variants, they didn't deviate enough, that would be a big deal. then you could add up total vaccinations plus people that have had one of the variants of

covid and try to get to a number where you feel comfortable there is not going to be a really bad third, fourth, fifth wave. it becomes enendemic at that point. >> i think we need to focus on the severe disease, hospitalizations, death, things like that. we will get to a point where those numbers will keep trending lower. even though infection rates will be high, infections will be relatively minor that's what the partial immunity gets you, if you are not fully immune to a variant, you are resistant to severe disease. that's the goal. >> therapeutics would help, obviously, monoclonals or anti-bodies aren't the only way, the pfizer drug, we're hearing and the merck drug maybe not right for everyone, but i think we should continue to pursue any promising avenues there as well. i guess you'd agree with that? >> absolutely.

what we're getting is a toolbox of different tools to use for different applications so these new oral drugs would be fine for therapy, outpatient therapy. we wanted that but also these long-acting anti-bodies will allow us to prevent disease in those who can't be vaccinated. of course, most of us should be vaccinated so at this point, we're getting lots of tools. wee need to use them in the right scenarios. >> the vaccine is only as good as your immune system f. your immune system is compromised for any reason, you need to introduce them as well thank you. i appreciate the time. >> thanks for having me. >> see you later coming up, the future of the white house is build back better plan we'll talk about president biden's marquee piece of legislation and what we might see out of washington at the start of the new year. stay tuned you are watching "squawk box" on cnbc

welcome back another temporary casualty in coronavirus cases, apple closing the new york city retail

locations to indoor customer traffic due to the rise in cases in the city. the move affects 11 locations in manhattan, brooklyn, the bronx and staten island. shares of apple this morning closing in once again on that key level of 182.86 currently at 181 in early trading that would be the level at which apple's market cap would cross $3 trillion, joe and that threshold is one that has led a lot of investment portfolio managers to suggest maybe trimming exposure. maybe not wanting to be so top heavy. but it's a pretty high flying market achievement for that company. >> they say, you know, nothing grows to the -- apple has grown, that is not true, this has grown into large numbers i thought in a trillion. i remember trying to get to a trillion it took a while. then we thought one-to-two was quick.

not two-to-three coming up, the flight cancellations the last few days have been a nightmare for travelers? what about the airline industry in the group is once again on the front lines of a resurgence pandemic next, though, is president biden's build back better bill salvageable in 2022 or some portion of it? you got to debate. if you don't want to miss, "squawk box" returns "squawk box" returns >>e workday. it gives us insights, so we quickly pivot our strategy, people, planning, you name it. sorry, sir. i will aim straight at your next step. see that you do. would you like some coffee? workday. hr, and planning system for a changing world. ♪

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. welcome back west virginia senator joe manchin's suggestion of the build back better plan put a year-end damper on president biden's signature piece of legislation. could the 1.7 billion social package be revived in 2022 let's welcome the director of economic policy studies and david wes em, director of the brookings institution hutchins center on fiscal and monetary policy thanks to both of you. david, i'll start with you, because we have heard from other democratic lawmakers perhaps they will be pursuing this now on a stand-alone basis i wonder if you see provisions

like the child tax credit, which the administration promises will be fully refundable if there is a way you can beat senator manchin's demand to have a work requirement attached to that how do you square that >> i think the democrats are under a pressure to get something done that they'll call build back better and the pressure is coming as omicron erodes the economy for next year the most important feature of the bill as far as near term gdp bill is the no child tax credit. making it refundable means the really poor people get some cash i don't think the democrats will live in the work requirement it's anti-ethical to what they are trying to do here. but my guess is that they're going to put something together and it will include, continued expansion of the child tax credit unfortunately, they'll probably still go too far up the income

level for my taste up to $400,000 that's something they were bequeathed by the tax bill. >> michael, i am wondering if you see any provisions in build back better, if they were strict out on a stand alone basis would garner republican support? david mentioned perhaps the work requirement isn't feasible, then you lose joe manchin i am wondering what you see as potentially a bipartisan provision to take out? >> well, historically, there hasn't been republican support for the child tax credit, this has been a program that enjoys bipartisan support and the creation in the 1990s, we saw senator mitt romney today or a few days after it looked like senator manchin was going forward with build back better, senator romney started touting his proposal for expanding child credit senator marco rubio along with

senator mike lee tells us president trump's 2017 tax cuts, he said they didn't include an extension of the child credit. senators liking, that was eventually included. so it reads, there has been a couple eager to expand this credit i think the real hangup is over these work requirements. democrats want child credit to deal with all households, regardless of whether they were working and they want a household zero dollars to get the same amount in the child credit as earning 30 year $35,000. and so along with republicans are having a hard time with that there are ways to square the circle that gives everybody something that they want i'm just not sure whether or not people are too dug in at this

point. >> right >> i mean the politics of this are complicated. the elephant in the room have you the mid-term elections looming, senator rubio and others are up for re-election next year so they want to do something that is going to be helpful to their constituents, but they also want to have their messaging aligned with the party. president biden campaigned on package that looks like build back better, but the lion's share in that package wouldn't take effect until november, do you think voters really care if this gets done or the white house would be better served moving on to something else at this point >> i think what voters care about is the economy and the virus. but the problem here is that the democrats have barely control of the congress they have the white house. they've managed to do some really big legislation and make theblgs look like failures so david axelrod has a piece,

the former obama adviser in the "new york times" today, in which he argues they need to recover the appearance of being able to govern and i don't think they're going to get much help from republicans. so they will have to do it on their own. i do agree with michael that the child tax credit, it's not auto of the question, a bunch of republicans and democrats can agree to do this unfortunately, the climate is such that any time there is a bipartisan xoelgs building something coalition building, something blows it up. i don't think it's dead. i think it's very hard to see the path that we get there given the current political polarization >> and then there is the spectre of inflation the white house and democrats, their message has been that this much spending would not create inflation, because it's small relative to the overall size of the american economy and spread over a period of several years,

so it would be essentially negligible from an economic standpoint as far as inflation is concerned michael, do you buy that do you think that larry summers is wing his hands somewhere? >> i just love where everybody is right and everybody is wrong or talking past each other the ten-year impact of build back better on inflation is surely negligible and really shouldn't be one way or another we are evaluating this over the whole thing. i am concerned about the effect of this bill to hand le inflatin into 2022 and perhaps 2023 that's true for a few reasons. one thing is spending is front loaded so the framework would likely

add three or 400 billion deficit in 2022 and 2023 the tax increase so you are back to the same situation that we're in the american plan, where you are putting several hundred million into pockets of households through a larger child tax credit through a tax cut for households with high state and local tax liabilities. that's going to fuel consumer demand that will put pressure on consumers. three or $400 billion wouldn't be the end of the world in a normal economy the economy in 2022 will still have more demand than comply keep up with so inflation will be a problem build back better will make it better >> david, inflation as we know is the mandate of the fed. we'd be remiss if we had you on

and didn't ask you about the fed nominees the white house suggested a few weeks ago, we would have names before the holidays. that did not happen. what do you think the holdup is and what attributes do you think they're looking at in the board of governors >> you are right that's what determines inflation over the long run will be what the fed does they did say they would name them before the holidays they didn't say which holidays maybe they were talking passover or easter. i expect them soon we did that before i think they are very focused on two things one is pressure on the president to have a more diverse federal reserve board. women and african americans is very strong. i expect we will see some of that secondly, i think they want to bolster j. powell's approach to the economy, which has been very white house friendly, very moving very slowly slower than some thing he should to tamp down demand in order to

reduce inflation i think michael is right that build back better doesn't do much about inflation in the long run. the question is whether adding some hundreds of millions of dollars to the economy and consumer spending through the child to tax credit who make the difference, particularly if we're seeing the erosion of things due to covid and i think that's really the big question as i said before, i think the world economy related to covid will push the democrats to get something done they've pushed the fed to move quicker than they have previously. >> yep democrats are in recalibration mode right now we'll see who they came up with. happy new year to both of you. thank you for joining us >> thank you. coming up, what lesson should airlines learn from what happened over the weekend in terms of travel chaos. plus, are we on the threshold of vaccine mandates for domestic flights? we'll get into those topition

and much more when "squawk box" comes right back comes right back >> your job description. visit indeed.com/hire

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. omicron is another 1,000 flight cancellation yesterday. it's the fourth day of problems in america's airports, coming as millions travel. what airlines are learning about holiday surges in the age of the pandemic also dr. fauci's new suggestion

the government might want to look at a mandate for air travelers. our friend, american airlines pilot, spokesman for the allied pilots association the industry, itself, amazing that it ever worked. really when you think about it. when you combine weather and you combine basically everybody is a key employee from pilots to flight attendants to the ground crew and you try to juggle all that, even on a perfect day with no weather and no pandemic, it's amazing that there is still delays so how many people are we talking about that have to be affected for this to just get thrown into the chaos? 5%. >> 5% is daev stating to this industry, isn't it >> that's a great question you are right, welcome do the nfl, sometimes weather is not good, sometimes you plan on things you didn't plan on, you

got to call audibles we don't have the number of pilots particularly not able to work due to the infection. it's a narrowmargin. management decided to fly so many flights this door at the back door covid came knocking. we saw it hit the entire industry, not just american. american came in later on the 25th, to cancel flights. we ended with 600 canceled and 6500 passengers affected so it was a big deal looking at the recovery. that's the key hard to recover after the weather hits when something like this happens. >> what can we do in terms of dealing with the point you can't obviously control the weather. some people do we'll see about that what do you do with the pandemic what can we do you saw the cdc went from 10 to five-day i talked about the nfl for a few times f. you triple vax and are

asymptomatic go out on the field, they're not going to test you. what is the proper thing for the airlines to do now or should we just accept that it not a great time to travel and maybe get on the road? >> well, it is a deteriorate time to travel the thing about the airplane is it's the safest place to be. oftentimes, i'm more nervous going no the hotel shuttle to the airport on that van. i rush to the ampl i know the air flow, the filters, the masking works. so we are going to keep that rolling. it is a good time to travel. the american public has shown that we have to make sure management teams sell tickets they can actually fulfill if the weather hits or an anomaly like this hits you can't plan for everything. you got to have a plan for something. >> how about dr. fauci it's kind of interesting talking possible vaccine mandates after we learned about how many break through cases there are with omicron, triple vacc'ed people

does that make sense, to mandate a vaccine for domestic travel? well, i'm just the captain on a 737. but what we have been using on the airplane has worked. and while we're interested in keeping everyone safe on the airplane as safe as possible, we're also very interested in making sure our enterprise american airlines survives and is profitable. so we want to make sure that we're informed and if we have an opinion, we don't want to see a rush to comply, we certainly don't want to see air travel used as a leverage to compel people to get vaccinated i'm boosted, vaccinated. i believe in it. it worked for me and my family but everyone is going through this process you do exemptions for folks for medical reasons is very complex. we want to make sure there are no obstructions to people buying a ticket and flying on that airplane and it is safe. so, we're not the scientists we're certainly looking at this

with a cautious hand i do want to get to the cdc guideline change, too, if you get a moment. >> go ahead. >> one of the things that it's got a myriad of things, if you have been boosted or not the bottom line is the quarantine period has changed. during that time, it says as to wear a mark when you are around other folks. uniquely for pilot, the faa rightly granted an option, if it gets in the way of your duties and you are not able to execute them safely and fully, you have the option of not wearing a mask on the flight deck i personally do. i am used to it. but we have a lot of folks a lot of our pilots it distracts from them so how do we get that done at american or delta or anywhere where you have two, maybe three or four, depending on the flights international folk up there and someone can't do their duties while their mask is on. so it's a narrow band. but it's a thing we have to talk with the airlines about, how do we get this done safe will i to

protect crew members we saw what happens if pilots have a wave of infection going on most of the flights cancelled for american that they couldn't connect the pilots, 80-to-90% of those flights. >> the new ceo of american, what would you be doing for next weekend? would you be cutting back on available flights hor flights you know are potentially not going to be staffed adequately and, therefore, cancelled? how would you try i to match supply and demand? can you? >> that's the key. that's what they get paid the big bucks for. sure, i think we're compelling management to build a rational reasonable skuchl you dschedule don't book as many folks just as damaging to the enterprise is a brand damaged if you don't fulfill the close of the deal and get people from a-to-b so that and, you know, some investors are looking at that as

a capacity discipline thing which increases the yield. so it all comes into the machinery. welcome to the nfl, the ceo, it all falls on your shoulders. make the right calls >> okay. good to see you again. are you a good resource for us when we have these issues. good luck. you got the mask that's good. you know, it is difficult. like i have a special excuse for not wearing. although, a lot of people wish i still was wearing one. i don't wear one very much in my job either special discompensation from max who has one on kayla, there is no one around, there is no one here >> yes yes. well, we're doing a split show i'm in d.c so, yes, that's the state of our life right now state of our life right now. coming up, we got a big show in the 8:00 hour

the big question in the omicron show why wasn't the u.s. ready with lots more tests? 23 will talk on the front lines. ay tuned you are watching "squawk box" on cnbc >>

. good morning, new guidance on the cdc cutting isolation time, details next plus, debate the rational for vaccine mandates as the number of brake through cases surges higher. and get your portfolio for the new year we have retail picks that you might want to consider the final hour of "squawk box" begins right now good morning, welcome to "squawk box" here on cnbc. i'm kayla tausche, becky and andrew are off today the u.s. equities have been in positive territory the s&p opened by 13 the dow by 90, the nasdaq by 84.

the santa claus rally off to its best start in more than 20 years after the s&p closed at its 69th record high yesterday. let's take a look at the treasury yields are continuing to flatten seven days in a row we seen the ten-year yield below the peak 1.5% mark two year at three-quarters of a percent. so 30 year >> wifi dependent, it's good i'm actually here at the cnbc head quarter. hard wire. there is good reason we can't depend on wifi. we can depend on volatility from bitcoin. the price pulling back after trading near $52,000 yesterday 49 and change that's a tidy 4% drop, which is measured at this

point. and ran back up from the mid-40s to almost 52 52,000 at one point yesterday and then you can turn around here we are back to the low 50 we got as low at 48 at one point. it was as high as 65 actually above 65. not too long ago, up from 28,000 or so kayla, at the beginning of 2021 so you will play, know what you are in for there >> and it's amazing to see the continued interest in crypto throughout the year. we saw in january of last year, the massive retail interests really kick off. it was not short lived whatsoever google searches for crypto have continued to rise throughout the course of this year. we'll see where next year takes us we mentioned the clause rally off to its strongest start in 20

years. we will go to mike santoli does this guarantee with rest of the week we will keep ramping up >> nothing will continue as long as i have been doing this, i wondered why these well known tendencies aren't ash travelled away they still continue to actually hold some value in knowing what the bias is in the market. that's what's actually flowing through. i think when you get a 1.4% update on the first date of this period, it gives you the cushion the overall phase will be up which is really the signal for what might be to come in january. that's when people started focusing on this area. take a look at the s&p chart it looks like basically we're back to that 45-degree rally in place most of this year, that defines how you mention we are working on the 70th new high of the year the most since 1975. i think the one thing about this year sit hasn't been easier in a straight line really because you have reloaded this buying power

from the early november when the market was stuck with the ceiling, up 25% year-to-date range. we've obviously broken above that i think you should have reset people's portfolios to a certain degree people were worrying maybe you wouldn't get the year end rally. that might have refreshed a little of the ability of the market to take advantage yesterday. i want to take a look at stocks versus bonds it's been a huge play. bonds have done better than many would have expected. yields have not gone up that much total returns is down 2 or 3% year-to-date that's not terrible, relevant to stocks it is having a widening gap, especially you wonder if there is ever going to be a moment where stocks get too stretched relative to bonds, there is going to be a flow of rebalancing at hom point globally possibly. that so far has not been the bet to make right now. then a few areas that i would characterize it macroand risk appetite indicators, that would be the blowingerred dealer

index. commodities, broadly speaking, it all perked up recently, you can see they're off their highs from earlier this fall, let's say. that also tells you that the market is kind of refreshing itself to some degree and it's pointing in the right direction, but there is definitely some catch-up either potential or need to catch up to confirm this last little move in the rally was something you can believe and build on. >> mike, i know i am putting you on the spot here i think that chart that you put up, the s&p 500 versus the vanguard bond fund was so illustrative of the trend you were describing. i am wondering the historically those two lines, if they get closer together, start to intersect when we are in a hiking period, what will happen when the fed starts hiking rates next year, are those lines going to converge? >> well, it wouldn't necessarily converge remember, that's the price of

the bond so in theory, if rates with going up, if yields are going up u up, the bond fund will go down what's interesting about that two-year chart, where they cross, stocks accelerated up versus ond, that's the 2020 election essentially, it was organization maybe we have this fast nominal growth story kicking in, maybe no real fiscal discipline. we will start to spend that was one thing going on at that moment so i imagine if you were bearish on bonds, that emergence will go up as you see this year, expectation of head hikes have not translated directly into longer-term bond yields going up very much. >> we have seen, mike, some defensive periods where there is a multi-day rotation into utilities or healthcare, but by and large, it has been big tech that is powering the indexes higher do you think it's an entirely risky bet against those

companies going into next year >> it doesn't seem like a great probability that you will going to say big tech all at once starts to fail here. i think you are in a period where probably predictability of earnings will be in demand that's where a lot of these companies have i am aware there is a good case to be made a lot of the atmospherics around faang have not been encouraging jeff bezos leaves when mark zuckerberg doesn't want to be in the facebook and changes the name jack dorsey sells twitter. i see you say, look, the people who were in earlier taking some off the table. so maybe that's relevant down the road but to me, it's tough when you look at the numbers of these companies. i'm not going to bet microsoft is going up 50% next year as it did this year. it says something about the almost seeming inevitability of the success of these companies after these runs, it still feels

tough to say that the rally is over >> mike, you like to mess with the viewers a lot. what was that weird background you had that weird like a log cabin or something you had that going for a while is that a clock, what the heck is that? >> we talked about this yesterday. >> do you have modern electronics? >> it's a vintage clock radio. >> arthur godfrey hour at 6:00 what is that >> slightly, i said yesterday i listen to ball games from 50 years ago on that. so you know, when i'm the one who is restricted to one room and i don't have the tv i can listen to it >> it's endearing. it's endearing i wonder, you have air pods and stuff, right >> i got a 1930s typewriter, too, i'll show you >> does that work? honestly can you listen to war of the worlds >> the clock is busted

but the radio works. >> all right cool mike santoli, where was that place with the outhouse you were for a while? >> a separate location >> separate undisclosed location all right. mike santoli, thank you. coming up, the surge in covid cases driving up dep manned for covid tests we talk to the ceo of one company currently sold out of its home rapid tests it's a different kind. it's pretty cool as we head to break, an update on flight cancellations. more than 700 flights have been canceled into or out of the united states or within the united states, that's according to flight aware. just horrible when that happens. "squawk box" will be right back. "squawk box" will be right back. >> and thinkorswim trading™ is right there with you.

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>> we have technology you have developed by your ceo now. it's more expensive, it takes a little longer. i assume it's much better in terms of an antigen test this is a molecular test you don't have any we can buy anyway, how does it work >> good morning, joe, thank you for having me. as you said in opening remarks, the theft is a rapid molecular test this means it offers the quality of a pcr laboratory result but it's 50 times more sensitive than a rapid antigen test. so you want to use this test in those situations where you want a pcr laboratory quality result but you want it really fast. you want it really quickly it's a new category of tests in the market

there are quite a few examples of places where that would be helpful. i'll mention a few related to your opening remarks when you want a rapid mo lel leg lar test, for example, if you have been exposed to someone who has covid. you want to be certain, if you have that buyers or not. another example is if you are about to see someone who may be a high rick person that you don't want to catch covid, you want to be tern e certain, you also use a rapid molecular test and there are many more examples of when using rapid molecular tests such as detect would be advantageous so, just as an opening remark. >>ant yen tests, tests for the virus, which may be too low for a rapid test to pick up on you could still be positive for covid. this, does it amplify small messenger rna sequence like the pcr would do, so you are able to pick up a much smaller presence?

is that how it works >> that's exactly right. so it's a rapid molecular test also known as a nucleic amplification test the key word is amplification. similar to a pcr machine, it amplifies the virus a billion times so you can see it in very small quantities in the sample sow see the virus in the sample days earlier sometimes than what when you could see wit a rapid antigen test >> what the biden administration failed to ramp up or is it just and what we're now trying to get a half of billion of, that's not what you have. you can't ramp up quickly enough to satisfy that type of numbers, right? we need these antigen tests. how would we do that now could we use some defense authorization? what should we be doing to try to hit that half a billion dollar number? and what are the chances we'll

do that in coming weeks? it seems like it's very difficult and do we need to do that for omicron >> we're trying to do our best, of course, and try to do our part here. you know, we design, detect to scale. right. we want to be able produce this in the millions per month capacity obviously not the 500 million numbers are you talking about. at least produce in the millions of millions per month capacity a rapid molecular test can be paired with rapid antigen tests as an important sort of tool set used in this pandemic. and we just got our authorizations from the fda two months ago we're a relative new company that didn't exist be every the pandemic so we're beginning to ramp up our own supply chain but there really are playbooks, particularly from the consumer electronics world at play here to be able ramp up quickly and do our part.

>> obviously, hugo, the pies po price point is not accessible to the toolkit you are providing. we seen biden administration work with walmart to offer them at cost about $14 per pack i am wondering if a partnership could be able to detect and so what cost would it be for you? >> hi, kayla, great to see you so we, first of all, are already in partnership with the federal government we've received an nih grant a few months ago, and what we did was to design something we can scale and then bring the price down yetly quickly so the desect test today is $49. which is already much cheaper than a pcr test. it's not quite yet at the price point of a rapid antigen test. over the next few months as we scale our supply chain, we think

we can bring that $49 price point to close of a rapid antigen prices kind of an idea of a pcr quality test priced comfortably to an antigen test we think it can play a role here we will continue to work with the federal government we think there are more partnership opportunities there as well. >> how many tests do you think you would need to produce to get to that point? what would scale look like for you to bring that price down as we're trying to figure out the art of the possible here and manufacturers trying to produce millions of these tests for americans? >> yeah. so you would need you know hundreds of millions of rapid molecular tests per month, but you need them on a reasonable ratio with rapid antigen tests the. we think if we are able to ramp our supply chain to a few millions of these per month, we

will be able to slot in nicely a portfolio, public health tools the government is trying to put together but everybody needs to be doing the same thing with the tests they are capable of making the manufacturing sort of machinery that's at our disposal today particularly from the consumer world can ramp up to hundreds of millions a month we need fda, federal government, cdc all to be on the same we lepth so we can do all this together >> hugo, you are a president for android product management at googling you got a masters in electrical everything nearing and from mit. you are not specifically healthcare oriented. but the way these two businesses, these innovations are intersecting, it's very exciting as evidenced by detect. i just have a quick question as we're watching the elizabeth holmes trial go into the second week did you know all along that

black box didn't exist to do what that company is claiming to do and when we will be able to do something like that two a single drop of blood? >> i didn't follow that story too closely. i looked at it catch diddly, it was clear it was a strong promised suit, perhaps not backed by science and engineering as it should b. i think bringing diagnostics in the home in a way that feels familiar to people and the consumer electronic smartphones, tablets and other electronics is really important so i entered the healthcare segment to really try and bring the consumer friendliness to products that we want people to use at home every day, so they can be demock tra advertised so they can be -- democracidemod

>> diagnostics and prevention and getting a heads-up is a lot better than spending a couple of days in a you know $30,000 a night room at a hospital so this is going to be big in terms of our healthcare, pressure and everything else that we are doing. he did the massively paralleled dna sequencing get him in on this he probably is on this at this point hurry up, will you >> we try to do our best here, joe. we think diagnostics at home is a major wave we're trying to bring both the scientists and the harvard engineers together, people that were working on smartphones and head sets in their prior jobs are now working on home diagnostics. we're excited about it on that wave length. we look forward to bringing more products to the market. >> okay. excellent. you work seven days. if that's what it takes? we're counting on you.

>> thank you, joe. i appreciate your vote of confidence >> thank you >> good to have you on >> good luck ramping up. >> see you later, hugo bar >> hugo was a, he's always a frequent guest on the show, formerly known as "squawk alley. good to talk to himmant testing now. as important as that is. coming up later this hour, vaccine mandate showdown we'll debate whether private employers will develop a jab for on site workers. don't miss a cnbc special tomorrow crypto night in america. 00 p.m. eastern time "squawk box" will be right back.

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>> welcome back. early holiday sales results indicate a strong season for retail if you weren't invested in the sector, don't worry just yet >> hi, good morning, kayla all the nuances that differentiate retailers inevitably means lots of opinions among stock pickers i found a common things leading to a handful to end up on more top picks. the casualization of a workplace, whether at home or back in the office along with brand strength and stronger

direct-to-consumer businesses has several analysts pointing to lululemon and nike c capri holdings, rocks anne meyer is the parent of michael kors, jimmy chu and versace. it's reigned in promotions the ceo says it won't revert back to discounts, even if competitors do the dislocation and the supply chain over the past 18-plus months, led to the thrill of the treasure hunt has several analysts looking for opportunity in this space. it's not the previous darling tjx for 2022 rather it's burlington and five below that seems to pop up on a lot of analyst's radar the holiday sales results led to a strong holiday, there is diverging opinions on macy's for 2022 they have the department store

as the top pick for the year forecasting it will take share from department store rivals and grow profitably, thanks in part to leader in in omni channel and focusing engaging customers. ups jay sole says macy's will continue to lose share to pure play online and off price players as well as websites leading to lower sales and operating margins. that's the battle for round one. we'll have to white and see, kayla. >> choose your own adventure there. thupg, courtney. one more analyst joining us now with his top retail picks. brian nagle at oppenheimer you heard courtney's report just there. how if there is quite a divergence of use among many analysts where some believe stores like macy's will believe. some believe you should ditch that as an investment right now. where do you stand, specifically

on macy's before we talk more broadly? >> i don't cover macy's. i will say is i have been doing this for some time now developing an outlook for next year is more difficult than i ever remember. there are a lot of variables, obviously, the biggest is covid so as i think about you know m our playbook for '22 once again in the beginning will be a year of ups and downs the way to play this is look for those companies that have the ability to benefit as the covid crisis continues but also benefit as the covid crisis fades as it will i like the nike move i think the acquisition space is positioned extraordinarily well here add a couple names that weren't mentioned like an auto zone. the auto parts business is tracking as strong as i can ever remember right now auto zone is an incredible operator a name i talk on the show,

lowe's and the home improvement benefitted a lot in the pandemic i calm it a self-help story. head winds, tail windows, challenges i think lowes will continue to do well. >> brian, in this part of the year, we see this trend over and over again, pandemic or otherwise, where you see a buildup in retail over the last quarter of the year, but then there is almost a sell on the news when the company starts reporting earnings in january and february and they talk about how promotional they had to be or how high return volume was. i wonder if you anticipate a similar cycle come up this year or do you think this time is different? >> i know it's always dangerous to say this. i think this time is different we talked a lot about the supply chain issues and we have matched that on sales or in some cases the expensive structures the silver lining, the supply

chain issues is there is simply not that much product out there. so that really limits the threat of price promotions. what is happening is the much bet per run companies, the nikes, lululemon and others like courtney mentioned, they're in a strong position they're not having to contend with potential price promotions because the product isn't there. i do believe on that part, it's going to be different this time. >> and then in terms of gift cards, when consumers hear supply chain issues and possibly not getting your gifts by christmas, one easy solution is to get a gift card or egift card, but, of course, the retailers can't register that revenue right away so when do you think some of that revenue volume will actually come into play for these companies >> that's a great question typically, that dynamic lends to sales for basically now and interestingly enough, my wife

gave mae gift card, she couldn't give me the products she wants so that's a tail wind for sales. i think that can be a stronger, that could be more at play this year given like you say the supply chain constraints and as people are thinking they couldn't get the product they actually wanted to buy >> yeah, finally, before we go, we have been talking about the news from apple that it will be temporarily closing its new york locations, citing the rise in covid cases there. i am wondering whether you think other retailers will follow suit, especially in the northeast and what, if any, material impact that could have on the bottom line >> yes, so we're watching very closely. we miss all the gain back in early 2020 apple was first to close the stores then. i very much think that given what we are seeing at apple today or others retail stores, i am optimism the closures will be much more limited this time. but the key here is one of the

themes i keep talking about clients getting stronger these companies, a lot of the names you mention reasonable doubt very well built out online operations so, yes, it hurts when the stores close, but their businesses done shut down is consumers can continue to shop online so, to answer your question, i think 23 will see more stores, i think they'll be limited for those companies, that's not a massive problem given their online operations. >> ryan nag him, appreciate your time this morning. thanks so much >> appreciate it coming up, dr. anthony fauci suggesting a vaccine mandate for domestic travel would push more people to get the jab. we will talk about that i guess it is a debate it's still a debate straight ahead. >>

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that, cars kept coming you know, it looks good. i don't know whether i'm ever going to get in trouble for that or not coming up, a vaccine mandate showdown with the surge in break through cases tied to the omicron variant. is it time to rethink the mandate for private employers? that debate ahead. futures solidly in the grid. "squawk box" will be right back.

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>> you know the requirements you might want to get if you want to get into college or go to university or work in certain places, when you make vaccination a requirement, that's another incentive to get more people vaccinated if you want to do that with domestic flights, i think that's something that seriously should be considered. >> dr. fauci yesterday on msnbc. meantime, it's the second day of new york city sweeping mandates for private businesses and travel, for ork, anthony scaramucci, skybridge capital founder and partner and key contributor. mick mulvaney, also the former omb director were you guys pals did you work together, anthony you were there for 12 minutes,

anthony? so maybe you don't >> don't cheat me out of the 11 days, joe, it wasn't 12 minutes. but i know mick. i met mick in the white house. i have a lot of respect for him there. >> he does a lot for you as well >> absolutely. we didn't work together very much we did have a good deal of respect. glad to meet him >> i will tell you the premise we set this up now we are getting calling break through, someone wrote in that's a term on this tv show, dope, this is totally different. if you if you for private mandates before, i don't see why this break through of people getting vaccined with onmicron, if they have the vaccine, it's much less of an issue. it pays off for omicron, would that change anyone's minds, if you were for mandates before

versus after >> i don't think so, joe, the big trouble in the society now is we politicize this. if we look at the science and what dr. fauci is saying, you're 61 times less likely to go to the hospital if you are triply vaccinated so, if you think about the risks associated with the vaccine, their scans and for skybridge. you know this back in july i mandated a vaccine a booster about a month ago. it was a great management team there. ultimately, if you want to get us through this on a greater path of economic freedom and prosperity and personal freedom, we need to mandate this. >> let's keep in mind, joe, by the way, thanks for having me. merry christmas, happy new year. everything he said is right. it's not relevant to the conversation what we're talking about is not private industry or goldman sax should be able to do it.

they should. it's not whether or not they are good for people and healthy, are will not get the disease or make it less deadly if they do get it it's whether or not we should have the federal government mandate everybody should have to have it or pay a penalty, whether it be financial or losing your job. that's a different debate. i'm vaccinating my whole family. there this is not a discussion of the efficacy of the vaccine if they are going to do it they've done at this time wrong way. tof the president come out and wave a magic wand and say dr. fauci will mandate it and to have the government work when the executive make laws, people don't like it when the judiciary makes law, people don't like it if you do it, you go to the legislature. have you plenty of time to do it the biden administration doesn't want to do it the right way. >> it sounds like we will not get a big article in here.

let me shift gears in here quickly. not that that's what we're looking for. >> i don't want to argue with mick, i want to point something out. >> okay. go ahead >> the collective will of the our society has been fractured and so ultimately we've got 20-to-25% of the people that is disaffected. they've lost trust in the medical establishment, they lost trust in the business establishment. it's tragic to see that happened whether we like it or not, our freedoms are conjoined maybe we want to go through the legislature. the truth is eisenhower didn't have to do that during the polio situation. we need to really figure out what happened to lose that trust and how to restore it. >> that's a fair point i agree the country is fractured. no question about it but this is just going to make it worse yes, we have politicized vaccines, mandates both parties have done it.

keep in mind the items have now been the white house, he once said he wouldn't take a vaccine by the other guy the politicization goes deep on both side. is that an excuse? number one, give up your system of government. is it an excuse to give up your freedoms i don't think it is, i don't think the federal government coming in saying we will have a vaccine mandate solves many problems they came up and announced it in september. it was not in place. it was an emergency, what eisenhower dealt with in the '50s and other emergencies in the past why was there this slow ramp up? it's still not even in effect. a lot of people thought it wasn't in effect another two weeks so this is just a further breakdown of the system. i think the administration has had a chance to bring the country together and has failed at that, they don't need a vaccine mandate at the federal level. state governments tend to work, to anthony's point, state governments work a lot better a.

federal mandate is going to make things worse that's why you see the pushback you are getting now. >> mick, let me ask you a question how do you feel about governor abbott making the suggestion that private companies in the state of texas shouldn't be allowed a vaccine mandate. what is your thought on that >> i think, again, i don't like the governor making that decision the legislature is able to do it >> i'm just making the point he is political sizing things, mick ultimately we went with the signs, we'd be health year >> at the end of the debate. it is an authoritarian piece, there was a piece in the "wall street journal" once an executive says ex, it breaks down debate. we seen it on social media, once the federal government says we will have a vaccine mandate, there was an end of debate, actual censorship by private government whether or not to continue to discuss these topics there is many bad things that

happen when you have one person ruled by it or by a small group of people. why we won't let the system work anthony, maybe the best way to heal the nation is see if the system does work and can work and have the legislative bodies weigh in on this even if you lose a debate. you are against the vaccine, the state legislature approved a mandate, you feel like you've had your say >> well, i would like to see what the preet journal would say. go ahead, i'm sorry. >> well, i'd like, that's okay i'd like to get both of your take on the difference between the two administrations here because you know, mick, you are talking about president biden's comments yesterday there is no federal solution it's up to the states and governors to craft policies that wok for their constituents there. and the journal makes the argument that that essentially undercuts the argument for this vaccine mandate when president trump was in office, his administration really embraced almost a fema mantra of

federally supported state managed locally executed but i am wondering if you guys think the trump administration missed a federal solution to should have been implemented earlier on and the biden administration has missed one as well, if there is one. anthony, i'll start with you >> i obviously think that and the election was very close president trump lost by 40,000 vote if you look at those couple of swing states had he have been a life president and he had been focused on the health and safety of the american people and he had personally masked up and influenced people as related to the vaccine and he deserves credit for helping to get the vaccines established with operation warp speed i think that was a very big miss by the trump administration and, frankly, i think it cost him the election >> mick, you were briefed in congress early on. you were helping craft the early strategy was there a federal solution that was missed by both administrations? >> again, anthony's points deal

with the personality of the president not the policies we took i think we believe at the end of the day it had to be state and local. that's how we handle public health in this nation. the progress was warp speed in terms of federal money and federal deed regulation in order to allow these things to move through a little quickly that is the right position to take i think it worked. the proof is in the pudding. we did get the vaccine much quicker than expected. if there was a shortcoming from a policy stand point not a personality, it was the federalization of the testing. the cdc admitted it dropped the ball, contaminated tests, weren't allowing competition and so forth i think the centralization of the decision-making was probably the wrong thing. judgely speaking, yeah, we took the fema model we'll fund it. we'll get out of the way what can states help to manage health health in florida is different than washington state. our system recognizes that if

you let it who,. >> i think what mick is leading out though is the presidency is a bully pulpit on to him of the promulgation of the policy so ultimately there is a public relations pulpit if you will and the president failed at getting the message out to getting as many people vaccinated and mage. the guy was talking about reopening the economy on easter sunday on 2020 it caused great consternation. it froze out the administration because they never knew when he was going to tweet about them personally nobody likes to be lit up by the president on his twitter feed. it's not just the policy ultimately one person, particularly the american president, matters and he failed at it. and one of the reasons why we're still where we are right now in this thing is that the public health and safety measures weren't handled right by the

administration >> i think certainly the presidency is obviously a bully pulpit but i think we're making an assumption in this conversation. the only people who are pushing back against a mandate are trump republicans, the deplorables, the right wing of the conservative party that's not the case. the reason you've seen this delay from, i think, originally the mandate was going to go in place in early december. now it's early in january. is in part pushback by the democrat-leaning unions. when we say it's politicized, it is but it's not fair to say it's just republicans who are against mandates and democrats who are for it at this point the opposition to this is real and bipartisan all the more reason to let the representative bodies work -- >> i accept that, mick but leadership in this case really does matter. >> anthony, the bully pulpit has been used again and again by president biden with very little actual substance to promle

gaiting the policies we don't have a contract for 500 -- why haven't we ramped up testing since january 1st of this year? if he had a plan for how he was going to handle -- you got the bully pulpit, but you got nothing backing it up in this case. >> joe, i think they've -- joe, i think they've admitted that they missed a step on the testing. this is an imperfect thing that's going on right now. being led by imperfect people. >> you're not feeling a whole lot of confidence in the way we're handling the pandemic at this point, are you? >> no. but if you mandated it either through the legislature or by executive action, you would increase the likelihood that we get out of this disaster. >> i was going to bring up build back better. but maybe you can come back for that anthony wants to do that now i don't know this man anymore. i know and love anthony -- >> what are you talking about, joe? >> who are you >> you got to fix the lower income people, man

>> what if it hurts gdp, we know where a lot of those things lead when you take money out of the private sector and give it to an ineffective government entitlement and raise taxes to do it, it can backfire you know that, anthony you used to be a republican. it's good to have you. it's good that we can talk it out. we can talk it out the three of us. >> happy new year, joe. >> happy new year. kayla? >> we should make that a regular feature. coming up, u.s. equities looking to end the year on a strong note. we'll talk abouthe t potential for a santa claus rally. it's already happening

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about 30 minutes before market open, futures right now do appear green. coming off the highs that we saw earlier in the premarket session. santa claus rally getting off to a solid start yesterday with the s&p 500 closing at its highest level on record. its 69th record this year. let's talk markets now with paul

hicky and cochief investment officer of investment pmc. what do you like going into this final few sessions of the year >> well, i think the -- as you said, the santa claus rally is in full force. the santa claus rally does tend to show up i don't think there's a lot left that we can hear about this week that could upset it. but we're talking about the one week here, anything is possible. and certainly i think all eyes on omicron and what happens there in terms of development. i do think we're probably in for a good rest of the week. but a lot of volatility, i think, lower growth, higher volatility coming in 2022. at some point, that obviously shows up as well >> paul, yet again, the market seems to be divorced from the covid headlines that we're seeing do you think that continues to be the case through the winter >> yeah, i mean, i think so. when we went out our 2022 outlook last week, what we were saying is that everyone seemed

to be focusing on what could go wrong with covid, the fed and stimulus and how attractive valuations were. we asked, what could go right. what we're starting to see with covid, omicron is -- we've seen quarantine times lowered, we've seen signs that it's going to burn out faster than expected and people are less fearful of it so that's a positive in the long run, that's a good thing. as far as the fed is concerned, the fed's bark is usually worse than its bite. that's something to keep in mind going forward. sentiment got so washed out last week that everyone focusing on these negatives, the market only had one way to go but up if you're investing based on what everyone is talking about in the headlines, you're probably not going to outperform when you see the extremes moving one way or the other, it's best to bade them going the opposite direction. >> do you share paul's glass

half full view >> i do. i agree with what he's seeing. the uk has led the u.s., for example, in hospitalizations, positivity rates and we're seeing some evidence out of london that deaths per new cases are lower with this variant now. they're not what the delta variant was. and we're starting to see early evidence in the u.s. that it's just not as lethal as previous variants i think also we have certain amount of lockdown fatigue to the extent that we have to kind of get through this, i think we're going to see less in terms of lockdowns than we did at the beginning of this pandemic and we're sort of kind of all ready to manage this to a certain extent, not to say in any way that it's not still a problem on the health front. but i think markets, i think businesses are learning how to manage this. >> i sure hope that's the case paul, dana, happy tuesday to both of you.

thanks for your views. appreciate it. >> thanks. final check on the markets for today as we got about 20 seconds or so. up about 39 points 49 now on the nasdaq up about 7 on the s&p. ten year, still below 150. will i see you tomorrow, kayla what did you decide? >> i think so. and i think according to sorkin time, i was actually early for the show i'll try to make sure my text is fixed before the top of it >> make sure you join us as well tomorrow "squawk on the street" is next ♪ good morning welcome to "squawk on the street." i'm carl quintanilla with scott wapner futures pretty solid after four straight days of s&p gains ten-year yield is just