valuation and the chips exploding higher and it will go higher. >> why is it up 5%. chips up higher and broadcom up 8%. >> thanks for noting that. >> the dow's good about 91. we have the cpi tomorrow, and retail sales later in the week and we have a lot to cover this week with you. i'll see you in a couple of hours. "the exchange" is now. >> thanks very much, scott. i'm dominic chu in for kelly evans this afternoon and here's what's ahead. inflation data, the final bond auctions of the year and the final fed meeting of 2023 is on deck. any one of these could become a big market event, but if you're hoping it will shed light on when the first interest rate cut could come, there's an entirely different data you should be watching says one of our next guests and it suggests we could still be far off from the fed making that particular move.

plus, sherry redstone reportedly in talks to sell a controlling stake of national amuse ams, but why now and what could that do to the rest of the media landscape? we'll have new reporting on that ahead and macy's shares are surging on a possible buyout offer, but is it retail or real estate that the buyer is after? we'll have the latest there, but before we get going, you may have noticed that your screen looks a bit different this morning. it's all part of a new look for cnbc that we're very excited about. over time we hope it will make it easier for you to understand the market, the data and the stories that we bring you so hopefully, take it all in and see what happens and we'll go along this journey together. and we begin with this particular chart which is the ten-year bond auction now under way. yields currently sitting right at session highs and 4.28%. rick santelli out in chicago, crunching the numbers. he's going to join us mo

momentarily with the auctions all of this as the auctions have increasingly become bigger market type moving eventses and will it set the tone for yields from here going forward. now for more on what to watch and how to position into the new year, i am joined by brian weinstein, morgan stanley's investment of global markets and brian levitt invesco's global market strategist. the two brians, if you will. i'll start with the gentleman standing right to my left mr. weinstein. let's talk about the yield picture and i noted that the benchmark yield is at session high, but session highs is a hair over 4.25%, 4.28 and it's a far cry from where it was at the cycle highs and maybe 5.02% this time around. what do you make of the move and is this a new regime for yields at these lower levels? >> yeah. it's an interesting question. listen, we came a long way. no one thought we would see 4.25

and we flew past it and is it cheap? we're about to find out. it's a bit of a new regime and the fed even if they ease aren't going back to zero. growth still seems strong, so i think it's hard. we had notes that were closer to seven a couple of days ago and it was a tough level and we're betting on a lot of slowdown. i think when you get in this 4.10 to 4.50 range you'll see a lot of work. >> so the resistance is the four big figure-type level for the ten-year? >> i think it's hard to get through four. you have to have inflation well below two and maybe you have to have negative payrolls and a fed that's easing very quickly and all things people like to discuss as we go to year end and not things that are happening right away. brian levitt, how long has the interest rate narrative changed the investing landes scape specifically in the last two months with the entire market story and yes, it has driven primarily with interest rates

and ten-year yield with 4.25% or there abouts? >> we've had an environment when inflation is a good piece of economic data we got was being treated poorly because interest rates would move further higher and as a result you ended up with a very narrow market and investors were only bidding up those names that they thought could do well if the fed had really tightened the screws more on the economy and what's happened since as the market has become more accustom to a so-called soft landing type of an environment where the fed may ease in the coming year then we've seen a broader market environment which is healthier. you've seen greater participation from value stocks and smaller capitalization and non-u.s. dollar for international investments have done well so it's been a move. it's not all that different from what we saw in the middle of october in '22 through most of the quarter of '23 until silicon

valley failed when you had a soft landing trade and that became narrower as interest rates moved higher. we reversed that which is nice. >> brian weinstein, one of the interesting dynamics overall is not just treasurys that are getting that bid. you're seeing the same thing from liquid, corporate investment grade type securities and higher rated securities. at the same time, people still fe feel like they're yield chasing, if you will and some of the investment grade and high-yield debt markets and leveraged loans still seeing like they have some sort of interest out there. bank loans and that sort of thing. what exactly is the layout right now? how would you be distributing that kind of new capital that comes with the market within fixed income? >> i think people got wrong this year, we're now chasing and we got more defaults and we did and silicon valley bank and the high yield spreads and leveraged loans had a 10% return handel and great coupons and not a lot of default. i think we're chatssing the val

out now and look at the investment grade and the spreads are closer from the tight end of the range than the whys. if we do get slowdowns and the return volatility i think it's harder to own the risky assets into 2024 that it seems like it was going to be a couple of weeks ago. >> as treasury volatility falls, if we don't have a big, unexpected range, the first reaction is for risk assets for leadership to shift, and on the tale end the question is is the credit backdrop that much better if the fed stays at 5.25 and it's more difficult here than it looks and i would like to go more risk off than i would risk on at this point. >> brian levitt, does that at least agree on the market side with what you're seeing in the stock market right now? we've seen some of the mega stocks and maybe you lose a little bit of momentum here and some of the interest rate sensitive sectors start to see a little pickup in volatility and

what exactly does the first quarter look like given the rate drop as you see it right now. >> we see it as a risk on trade in the first quarter of the year and the market sentiment is pointing ahead to an economy that yeah navigates this soft landing. we're not naive that it would slow down some in 2024. so what that would mean to me is practically right now we favor things like value and small cap and international. you are likely to see a shift toward a more quality trade at some point in 2024 and we'll be monitoring that daily to provide guidance on it, but ultimately if investors are trying to look out beyond a few minutes or a few days or even a quarter. what does the next couple of years look like and our opinion what we'll end up having in 2024 is a mid-cycle slowdown with the policy easing to bring the funds rate down closer to where nominal growth is and then you're likely to be in a better

risk on environment once again. so if i'm positioning for the next few years which is in the aftermath of peak inflation, peak tightening and peak interest rates then i want to be more exposed to broader parts of the market and less exposure to the market cap. >> mr. levitt, hold that thought. we do have the ten-year auction results out right now. rick santelli is standing by tracking the action out in chicago. what can you tell us? >> well, i can tell you that the demand, i gave it a c-minus, a bit below average and it's generous and the well was poisoned a bit by an extremely weak three-year note auction at 11:30 eastern so we had 37 billion tenures of re-opening second auction of the day. yield 4.296. the problem, dom is when issued market was hovering around 4.28. so the higher yield erck called

equaled the lower price on the auction itself and that was the bigger reason to give it the marks i did. to put it in context the market has been selling off in most of the session and it accelerated after the week three year so going into this was already a bit of a handicap and tomorrow, of course, we finish off 108 billion in supply with the longer dated treasury auctions of the year with 21 billion 30s and cminus 4.296 and the metrics were close to the average outside of pricing and although the dealers take in 17.3% is above the 14% auction average and even though you see yields slipping a bit, don't fall into the trap of trying to assess demand in auction purely by the response in the marketplace. big responses, yes. some of the responses like we're seeing now is more of a function that we've elevated ten-year note yields with a handful of basis points on the session already. dom, back to you.

>> we saw that the bid to cover was $2.53, slightly better than average. what can you tell us about that indirect bid? because a lot of folks like use that as a proxy for four interest central bank buying of u.s. treasury debt. >> absolutely. and it is indeed and it's one of the important metrics that one would direct bidders and direct bidders are large institutions that need the longer dated paper, but 63.8 indirect versus ten auction average of 67%. it's close. it's been rather volatile of late and i also take into consideration, dom, that this is a re-opening. so you have to somewhat blur your eyes a little bit on some of these metrics, but all in all, foreign bidding is a little bit lighter than it's been and it's been slowly slipping over the course of the last year or so as many of the larger buyers

refrained or bid with the sellers and we have noted that we have started to see some interest from some of those that stood down on the auctions like the chinese, the japanese and the saudis and. >> rick santelli in chicago thank you very much for that. >> let's turn to brian and brian, one last word given what we heard from rick santelli. brian i will start with you, knowing what you heard from the auction of rick and what do you think of the investing landscape macro view will be the biggest difference between 2024 and what we saw in 2023? >> the first thing i'll say is i'm glad i don't take professor santelli's class c-mine us and i am not overly concerned about losing demand for u.s. treasurys. treasurys will reflect the nominal growth. this is the year in which some things got significantly better relative to expectation, inflation came down rapidly and

growth was resilient. so you had a very, very big year in the broad indices. i would think next year you'll see more modest. you will not see the same types of returns and the markets will do just fine next year. so there will be different regimes and we'll have the start of the year where it's broader and we'll go through some slowdown where investors may want to favor higher quality, but to my earlier point, ultimately, i view it as a mid-cycle slowdown and the beginning of the next stage of this cycle and that should reward those parts of the market that are undervalued and i come back to small caps and i come back to international. >> brian weinstein, your final thought is the biggest difference between next year and what we saw this year. >> i think this year we saw a lot of pressure in the front end of the yield curve which filtered through to the back end and people started talking about supply and the government being reckless and all those things. i think next year it's more balanced and it's about a fed that will ease and the other backdrop is an election year and

a government that will continue to spend, so i expect curves to steepen by the front end to continue to fall in yield over time and i'm not so sure at the back end and i like a spread that's eight or nine basis points and it's the government spending and that will rear its ugly head again and it's a stock picker's market and high yields will be fine in parts and you can't just go and buy the whole thing anymore. i think more selective on the yield curve and buy twos, threes, fours and fives and more selective on the bonds and don't buy the index and buy the things that you've done research on because it will be more diverse in this coming year. >> diversification in stocks and bonds. brian weinstein, brian levitt, thank you very much for your thoughts, guys. >> my pleasure. let's turn to the fed. our next guest says we will see decisive loosening for the fed to start cutting interest rates. joining me now is chief darda

with our very own steve liesman. you heard the conversation with brian levitt and brian weinstein and vis-a-vis what we got from rec. given that, steve liesman, can you give us the setup for what the fed will deal with this week and what kind of commentary we can get and of course, what the so-called dot plots are and what they could mean. >> all of those are good questions. i think the bond market auction ended up being okay. i see the stocks were relatively unchanged and maybe even higher on the auction, so it ended up being a non-event. i still think we need to watch carefully as we've been doing and each one of these auctions, i think tomorrow is another event and it's a lot of paper and the market seemed to digest today's pretty well. as for the fed tomorrow and wednesday, i think that chair powell may remind us what the phrase higher for longer means

because if you stopped the phrase higher for longer it begs the question higher for longer than what? high for longer than what they thought they were going to be, and higher for longer than you think they ought to be and i think that's the key wi to finish that phrase, dom. so the point is when you think the fed ought to be cutting because you've had a couple of rounds of good inflation, i think that you're not then embracing the idea of higher for longer. it is just the time when inflation comes down and starts to behave that the fed will evoke this idea of higher for longer because i do think that powell's major concern is not being the guy who starteded to cut rates too quickly. i do think cuts are in the cards. i just think the market is ahead of itself here. i believe powell will advise the market of that on wednesday. >> it's not an outlier point of view. there are a lot of folks out there who believe that the

market might be a little over its skis with regard to expecting the level and degree of fed rate cuts next year. is it true? is it significant and correct in your mind that the markets have declared mission accomplished when it comes to the battle against inflation? >> thanks for having me on, dom. >> steve made a lot of good points. look, i don't think it makes sense for the markets to be expecting rate cuts as soon as they are and of the mgitagnitud with the real economy and risk assets meaning if we take a look at where consensus expectations are now, most strategists, economists are looking for a soft landing. analysts are looking for double-digit earnings growth and most macrostrategists think they'll continue to rise and against that foliage that the fed will drop is a bit much to

ask for. to steve's point i think powell is once bitten and twice shy after an inflation overshoot for two and a half years and the last thing he wants to go down in his record is the guy that started to reverse course and cut rates too early and they had to go back and deal with the problem later on. i do think they would rather deal with the recession than starting to ease too soon and having to reverse course. >> michael, with that in mind is there a level that you're looking at for a key economic data with regard to what would tell you whether or not things are -- i mean, all clear is a rough way to look at it, and i understand it's not that black and white and it's multiple shades of gray and what kind of economic data has to come through to make you sense as though the fed feels a little bit more comfortable about the environment. is it jobs-related numbers? is it retail sales? is it inflation prints?

sentiment data. what exactly then has to be put forth in a portfolio of data for the fed to be able to now say, yes, let's ease things up a little bit. >> i'll give you my perspective and then what i think the fed is thinking about. >> nominal gdp growth is running double digits on average during this cycle. if growth potential is running around 2% then you will have a big inflation problem. we think we probably finished the year with an average of 5.5% annualized nominal growth. next year we think we'll be below four. so you could actually make the argument that inflation ultimately is headed below the fed target and why would they start cutting rates and in the back of their minds it's a philips curve model so i think they'll want to have confidence that the labor market is loosening up more than what we've seen. evidence in their framework that demand is weakening relative to supply and if the unemployment

rate continues to move up in a more decisive fashion than they are so far, that doesn't really look like a soft landing and the beginning of some cases. >> steve liesman, we'll give you the last word. covering the fedda you have been over the last several years, what kind of dialogue, formal statements and informal remarks do you expect for the policy perks if we get him into a position and what are the markets going to do? >> this is a big debate going on right now among those watching the fed. there are two debates and one that we haven't talked about is that the fed is not impossibly far away, dom from beginning to discuss ending quantitative tightening either. depending upon where you want to put that end point for the balance sheet and bank reserves

we'll have some information on that, by the way, our first question on it in quite a while in the cnbc fed survey, we asked people when do you think the fed ought to stop qt. that's in the cards next year as are rate cuts. maybe people misunderstood. i do believe the fed can cut rates tomorrow, next year -- not tomorrow, next year in the context of declining inflation, but the trouble is going to be orchestrating rate cuts and those that are keeping the rate level relatively restrictive while not getting the market off to the races in terms of pricing in tremendous cuts down the road. so i think the fed has to begin a conversation. last time, dom, powell wouldn't entertain the question. he was asked about cuts. powell said we're not talking about that right now. it was kind of of a full stop on the question. i don't know if he gets away

with that tomorrow because one of his main governors, the fed governor waller has talked about the idea that if inflation comes down the fed will be cutting. so a conversation has to be started, but you can bet right now that the fed is trying to figure out what that language is going to be in a way to limit how much the market prices in. >> the devil is in the details for sure. michael cardia, steve liesman, thank you both very much for the conversation. we'll see you soon. >> coming up on the show, macy's shares are surging after a group of investors made a $6 billion buyout offer for the retailer. we'll look at what the buyout would mean for the legacy store itself and the rest of the retail landscape, plus fraud in a bottle, exclusive access to one pharmaceutical company's war room where tens of thousands of confiscated counterfeit pills are being stored. we are tracking the millions of dollars pouring into some of those schemes. "the exchange" is back after this. ♪ ♪ this is "the exchange" on cnbc.

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i don't know how to thank you. i'm here to thank you. welcome back to "the exchange." take a look at macy's on pace for the second best day on record after receiving a buyout offer for nearly $6 billion. cnbc.com retail reporter joins

me now with the detailses on just why macy's is in play, so to speak and why it's a target for possible private acquisition. >> so it's a great question. macy's business has been under pressure. as of friday's close before this news came out, their shares were down about 16% year to date. you're facing competition from online upstarts and you have amazon and schein and the brans that have long sold at macy's are pursuing their own drive to consumer models and they're competing with the brands, and why would they go to macy's when they can go to coach, calvin klein or the retailer. what the value is here is what will be interesting. >> okay. so what is the value proposition for someone who would want to take over somewhat struggling laggard operation like macy's at least indicated by the stock price? >> absolutely. so it's important to point out here that this is two investment firms that are interested in buying and our capital

management and arkhouse seems to be the one leading and they're interested in the boxes that they have and that seems to be the case with macy's. so j.p. morgan put out a note and macy's real estate is valued at 8.5 billion and their market cap on friday was about 4.7 billion and that's almost double the market cap and. >> and their deal is worth 6 billion. >> exactly. they're buying it at a premium and they're willing to offer premium and the share price of $28 a share and they offered 32% higher, but when it accompanies a lot more than the market cap. macy's has the location alone might be worth about 3 billion and the other flagship looks and think union square and san francisco and downtown brooklyn and 617 million and overall the footprint and i've seen estimates of 6000000008.5 billion and what we've heard from people close to the deal is

that they are willing to offer more after due diligence and that's crucial because it doesn't seem to be as much of a premium as we think. >> what will be the trajectory of the traditional anchor store, shopping center like a macy's or bloomingdale's or saks and many of those are private and they've been taken so and is it a retail operation can they still exist if private companies. >> whether or not they can still exist depends on what a consumer wants and going to what's convenient and they're shopping in amazon and places like schein and you have to think about the future shopper, as well. gen-zshoppers are going to stores and gen z sees stores a a place for community and whether or not i'll go to a department

store remains to be seen and there is value in the boxes at malls. malls right now, they are splitting up these boxes and they're turning them into housing. if you can believe it, people are living at malls and it's becoming senior housing and they've become to these community gathering spaces and whether or not -- the changing paradigm of the shopping experience. >> gabrielle from cnbc.com. thank you very much. >> thanks, dom. you get the full story, by the way. just head over to cnbc.com where gabrielle's story lives and you get the whole detail and everything else about the macy's deal, as well. >> apple is blocking a new app following android users to use i-message and it's catching capitol hill's attention and we'll tell you why after this commercial break.

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welcome back to "the exchange." the markets right now are near their session highs. the dow industrials currently up 129 points as you can see here. the s&p roughly up about 13 points and the nasdaq composite lagging up only about 12 points. here are some of the movers and broadcom having its best day since may after a coverage with a buy rating and chipmaker are in rally mode, as well. applied materials, kla corporation, lam research all higher though nvidia is notably underperforming its peers in today's trade. watch also crispr shares on the worst day since the editing treatment for patients with sickle cell disease, and by the

way, for more on that story, the ceo of crispr will be joining closing bell overtime this afternoon for an exclusive interview, must watch 4:00 p.m. eastern time today. now let's send it over to tyler matheson for a cnbc news update. good afternoon, ty. >> dom, thank you very much. special counsel jack smith is asking the supreme court to decide whether donald trump has immunity from prosecution in his election interference case. earlier this month a district court judge denied trump's motion to dismiss the case on presidential immunity and constitutional grounds. the former president is appealing the decision and seeking to put the case on hold. now smith is asking the supreme court to circumvent the appeals process and to expedite the decisions. l.a.'s allies of alexei navalny say the russian opposition leader has been removed from his penal colony and his current whereabouts are unknown. the spokeswoman said lawyers haven't been able to access

navalny in recent days, and he didn't appear in court today via video. prison officials cited electricity problems. swimmers in australia were in for a huge surprise this weekend. a large whale was seen swimming in shallow waters near a beach in perth, about a dozen swimmers swam up to the mammal and touched it. look at that! that's nut, man! local media report that the whale swam back out to see after an hour of sort of letting it be massaged there. look at that thing. dom, would you go touch a whale that size? >> i might just stay onshore. >> no siree, man, that's crazy. >> tyler, thank you very much for the news update. coming up on the show, we have a cnbc investigation into the underground networks of criminals targeting life-saving prescription medications. that full story is coming up after this break.

♪ welcome back to "the exchange." pharmaceutical companies are fighting fraud across the nation. perpetrated by criminals who tamper with life-saving prescription drugs. who is in on it?

patients, pharmacies and wholesale distributors and in just one sophisticated scheme, hundreds of millions were stolen to siphon off profits from big pharma and stick taxpayers with the massive bill. >> here's contessa brewer with a cnbc investigation, fraud in a bottle. >> at the casino cage, wads of cash in hand, the security camera captures a real player. a larger than life gambler, a familiar face at world poker t tournaments. >> lazaro hernandez is once again setting the pace. >> with posts from luxury boats and private planes, lazaro hernandez fashioned himself as a high-flying high roller. turns out he was the mastermind of a $230 million drug counterfeiting operation, and he was gambling with people's lives. these thousands of bottles were

originally prescribed and filled for patients and now in gilead sciences in northern california, every single bottle was discovered in a complex, criminal drug diversion scheme. >> we are playing a bit of a game of whack-a-mole. >> lori fights to find the counterfeits every day. she oversees global product security at gilead which manufacturers hiv medications weg overy, and both at the center of the fraud. >> we know according to thousands of bottles of counterfeits were earned into the supply chain and. >> what would they be worth if people were paying full price and those bottles would be $230 million. here's how drug diversion works. a patient fills a prescription for a medication worth several thousand dollars, but turns around and sells it for a fraction of that in cash. the buyer, known as an aggregator, removes the patient

information, alters the bottle and then sells it to a wholesale distributor who sells it back to the pharmacy discount. so the same bottle re-enters the supply chain. it's part of a massive illegitimate drug industry the world health organization estimates that as much as $431 bell onannually around the world. not only a financial threat, but one with serious health consequences, too. >> you could have an original bottle with the wrong tablets inside that's resealed to make it look like a genuine gilead product. that's a counterfeit. you can have a cap that is not a genuine gilead cap on a bottle. that's a counterfeit. the label itself could be a copy and not coming from our line. >> gilead first learned it had a serious problem in 2020 when reports came in of biktarvy bottles that came with an antipsychotic drug. what they found were a slew of

counterfeits. this bottle doesn't even contain pills, just rocks. and this man, let's call him julio, we concealed his identity. >> they had aids, cancer and they don't have any money. so for $100, $200 they'll sell it every day. >> so they'll forego the medication. >> they won't take the medication. >> julio says he got rich even as a mid-level middleman in a hustle that billed millions to medicare for counterfeit medications. the fraud achieved size and national scale because licensed distributors buy from aggregators like julio sell to the pharmacies and give the whole process the sheen of legitimacy and the distributors have relationships with thousands of independent pharmacies across the nation. stephen mahmoud is assistant special agent in charge at

health and human services office of inspector general and he leads investigations into medicare fraud. >> the pharmacies on the receiving end of these diverted prescriptions. do they know? >> some do, some don't. medicare pays out to pharmacies a lot of money for these drugs because they are expensive and life-sustaining. >> this hidden camera video has never been seen in public. shot by an undercover informant, it shows a woman, her husband and son cleaning prescription pill bottles in a south florida apartment. >> the individual in the white shirt in the middle, you can see the -- what appears to be lighter fluid. he's using that lighter fluid, a harsh chemical, to clean the bottle and remove the pharmacy prescription label. >> that would have had the name of the patient on it. >> that would have had the name of the patient on it because obviously no one is going to sell a drug with someone else's name on it and they're cleaning it to make it look new again. >> johnson & johnson whose hiv

drug was targeted said in a statement its hiv medication boltss filled with a different product or bearing false or adulterated packaging, labeling or instructional inserts. gilead sciences and johnson & johnson have sued distributors and pharmacies throughout the country. their investigations and lit gagsz are still unfolding. >> these three were convicted in connection with a prescription drug count are fitting operation. julio served time behind bars for his pill diversion scheme and insists his counterfeiting days are behind him and the big-time pocker player, lazaro hernandez's jetsetting days ended abruptly this year. he was convicted in that $230 million drug count are fitting operation. he is serving a 15-year prison sentence. by the way, his lawyer argued at his sentencing hearing that he was driven to do this by his gambling addiction so he would go to the casinos and spend the

proceeds of his ill-gotten gains, but at this point we're largely seeing the wholesale distributors escaping at least criminal responsibility, though the ceo of scripps wholesale which is based in brooklyn was indicted in june for buying more than $150 million of prescription, hiv medication that had been illegally diverted, prosecutors say he then re-sold it to pharmacies. he's pled not guilty and his attorney declined to comment to cnbc. >> why have, contessa, these critical cogs in the system escaped any kind of blame at least from a criminal perspective on this? ? the question is will they continue to escape claim? we know they will continue investigation into the wholesale distributors and we know gilead and johnson & johnson are pursuing civil litigation against them and federal authorities and the pharmaceutical companies say, look, the fact that the wholesalers are legitimately licensed to sell other

medications, just muddies the water. >> complicated story for sure. >> big investigation. thank you very much, contessa. >> all right. coming up on the show, apple's app store's under scrutiny yet again after it shut down an app that would allow android users for the apple i-messaging service and the big fight shaping up over the little green bubble text next. powering sustainable growth in a changing world. powering financial solutions that transform industries. powering innovation with access to capital. powering critical decisions with precise data and insights. powering seamless execution in evolving markets. we deliver our entire global bank to power new possibilities for you.

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a bank that knows your business grows your business. bmo. apple is shutting down a third-party app that allowed android users to use the apple i-message service. that messaging service which is exclusive to apple products is something google and competitors have long called on regulators to act upon. deidre bosa spoke to the app's ceo for today's tech check and d, a lot of folks know that group text message with that one green bubble guy or gal. what does this now all mean? >> it's so frustrating when you get that green bubble for both sides. some people know it as green

bubble stigma. if you text with android user or you know an android user, you know missing features, distorted media quality and group chat issues. well, a start-up called beeper found a work around last week. suddenly and seamlessly by downloading a paid app. android users could send blue bubble message in group chats if they automatically switch over to imessage. this is a breakthrough if you've been one of these people and it caught up like wildfire and 100,000 downloads in 48 hours and apple shut it down citing security saying it was trying to protect the privacy and security of their imessages. i did speak to eric megakovski. >> we think that that statement is -- it is untrue. beeper mini makes communication between iphone customers and android users more secure.

so what apple tried to do over the weekend was actually make iphone customers have a less secure chat experience. >> so apple has, in fact, considered integrated android messaging in the past and they were made the regulatory battle and it revealed that imessage is a way of locking users into the ecosystem and in other words, protect the walled garden and this is increasingly at odds with app developers and regulators. >> there's a small band of us that are fighting the good fight and trying to make a more open, equitable and offer consumers more choice because as of right now there's too many lock-in effects that are causing people to not be able to choose the technology that they want to use. >> it is actually getting bigger. senator elizabeth warren has been tracking this particular battle as well posting into the

weekend on x. big-tech executives are protecting profits by squashing competitors. dom, certainly, this is not the last that we're going to hear about this because beeper, the app pound a work around today and they're still working to make it more seamless. i don't know what apple's going i don't know what apple's going to do, and probably when it comes to ai, there's something big happening. the smallest things are creating giant revolutions... at world wide technology, we're at the forefront of ai. with our one of a kind ai proving ground, cyber range, and full stack approach, you can build, test, protect and implement ai solutions

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welcome back, paramount global shares are down about 4% today. sherry redstone is in talks to sell a controlling stake in national movements. that is paramount's big parent company, saying it would have any upside for shareholders. our next guest agrees, let's bring in senior media analyst at rosenblatt securities along with our own julia boorstin. let's start with you, bartender, on whether or not this type of a deal has any kind of legs, and why investors would want to get in on this kind of action. >> well, look, to step back at

we have a celebrating at paramount that we have had for some time. this is a volatile stock and very sensitive obviously right now, to deal conversations. i do think that the issue with paramount is that nearly all of their cash flow comes from their tv networks. the theory with paramount is you can grow enough cash flow from their streaming to offset the pressure on tv networks. and then you have meaningful value in the library and you have a fair amount of debt. we put all these things together and we think that the tv network business, buyers of that are a diminishing breed. and we don't think there is enough value in the library to really offset the equity from here. all of this is kind of like unsourced kind of reporting, we don't know for sure what is going on. so, i think that alone, there is a certain grain of salt, but

you look at the breakup value here, there is a meaningful risk that if you wait too long, the meaningful cash flow engine at tv may not be able to drive the value you need to make some of the parts work point. >> yeah, i mean, i just have to weigh in here and share my reporting, which is that there have been talks, they have been very preliminary, we got a no comment from all the involved parties, but i do think it is worth pointing out why it would make sense for sherry redstone to consider and why that make make more sense, especially given the regulatory environment right now when it comes to completing a big deal. so, this idea that it's sort of a clever way to get control of paramount by abaya and the national amusement shares that have such powerful voting rights when it comes to paramount, but i think at the end of the day, the issue here is that while paramount may be

for sale or want national amusement shares may be effectively and play now, thanks to these latest developments, that while we have value -- a clear value in the library, we also have heard from a lot of people that there is interest in buying assets such as b.e.t., as well as the studio, and the lot, the historic paramount lot, there is a lot of concern about those more traditional linear assets, that comprise so much of paramount's business, which as barton mentioned, are struggling with things, so a lot of different factors in play, but this is really the beginning of the next wave of m and a talk in the media space, we have warner bros. discovery effectively coming into play in april, and i think it will be interesting to see what unique partnerships or maybe bundling happens given the regulatory environment. >> that is a great point, julia. barton, if you look at the things that will shape up in 2024, it could be a wholesale

change for the media landscape, given all the headlines we have already gone through with regard to labor issues, artificial intelligence, and everything else. what exactly does collins consolidation then look like, the government can't just allow a handful of people to pretty much control all content in hollywood, right? >> look, i think the governments hand is held in check by the president. obviously, we have an activist kind of antitrust environment right now hunter biden and frankly under trump before him, but the court hadn't really backed up a lot of their efforts to block consolidation in media, and i do think that the trend towards consolidation makes economic sense, for the content, the sports rights to flow towards the big tech platforms, that first raises the antitrust questions. but these platforms have great advantages in terms of their ability to monetize these

assets differently, they have an ability to market through their solid base of devices, and ultimately, that looks like a winning hand over the long- term. i think that is the future of media you guys have to play for. that's the latest on that paramount deal or no deal, thank you guys very much. that does it for us here on the exchange. we will pick up the market coverage, the dow is up 124 points, we will be back after this quick break. >> [ music ]

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go deeper with thinkorswim: our award-wining trading platforms. unlock support from the schwab trade desk, our team of passionate traders who live and breathe trading. and sharpen your skills with an immersive online education crafted just for traders. all so you can trade brilliantly. good afternoon, everyone, welcome to power lunch. we have got lots of big-money deals to talk about. deal monday today, a former rumored buyout to macy's to the big box. first, let's check on the market. shares of apple are lower today, despite some positiv