which is not that. what's up, my brother? oh, hey, bud! we really needed this rain. right? [car splashing rain water] agentforce helps restaurants prevent dining disasters. paddle on over! it's what ai was meant to be. we got you, brother. alongside contessa brewer, i'm jon fortt. coming up, markets struggling into year end. continuing friday's declines. tech shows signing of weakness for the first time in a while. we'll discuss with kyle bass next. >> plus, an under the weather radar small cap struggling, but

this sports betting play is up on the month and up almost 60% for the year. >> finally, we'll get to the latest on the deadly and tragic plane crash in south korea. the country's acting president ordering an inspection of all 737-800 planes. >>let rr begin with the volatility over the past few sessions. mike santoli is here to lay out the market setup. it always feels like a letdown when you head into the new year on this note. >> for sure, contessa. of course, it goes contrary to the historical patterns which suggest general tailwinds going into the last several days of a trading year. what we did see this morning is a big flurry of selling in the premarket and it carried over into the morning session. we have found some traction. the question is whether the market is unsettled after the waning momentum going into the end of last week or if there's some larger message here. jon mentioned tech stocks came

under some pressure for the first time in a while. look at the nasdaq 100. but the average stock was making a comeback, trying to catch up to the mega cap growth stocks. the cyclical parts of the market have not been able to deal easily with rising treasury yields at a time when economic momentum perhaps has stalled out just a little bit. i do find it interesting and maybe a slight hint there was a rebalancing trade out of equities and into fixed income given that rise in yields. if you look at the performance so far this quarter of the s&p 500 against the bond market aggregate etf, you see that's a very wide performance spread, so if you are an asset allocator and care about rebalancing among asset classes you would be a buyer of bonds and a net seller of equities to take profits. not sure if that's the whole story but that was the backdrop heading into today.

>> mike, thanks. now let's bring in a power player who famously predicted the subprime mortgage crisis. to see what he's looking for in the markets in 2025. joining us is kyle bass, founder and cio of hamen capital management. good to see you. so broadly, looking at u.s. but global markets, what are the major themes that you expect to be most impactful in '25? >> i mean, jon, i look at the world a little differently and think about equity indices performance, but i think when you look at the financial architecture of the world, the inflation that the u.s. just pushed to the world from call it 2021 to 2023, had a real negative effect on all of the global economies outside of ours. we know how we're struggling here to make ends meet. given 40%, 50% inflation across the u.s. board. and emerging markets, things are worse.

so when you see, again, the financial architecture of the emerging markets, i haven't seen it this bad since '98 and even earlier. so i think that you want to focus on staying invested in the united states, in the united states tech arena specifically. and something that's really, i think, going to emerge as a theme over the next couple years is you're going to see u.s. digital manufacturing. what musk is doing with tesla and spacex and the way they are manufacturing a lot of these parts and very specific industrial items, i think you're going to see a resurgence in u.s. industrial manufacturing from the digital perspective. >> okay. >> things like that, so i'm very bullish on the u.s. and i would be very wary to be spreading your capital across the world today given the ground war in europe, the fight between israel and iran and a potential fight between china and taiwan. >> given that, do tariffs

protect u.s. exceptionalism or make the whole global situation more tenuous? >> i think this is a great -- this is an important debate to have. we are no longer running a massive surplus like we did going into the smoot/hawley tariffs. we're no longer attached to the gold standard, and this isn't the u.s. pre smoot/hawley. we're a massive trade deficit running country where we have the global store value. i actually think that tariffs now will act in a very different way than they acted in the past. and again, when you think about the rationale for tariffs, if you think about the last time trump engaged in tariffs, specifically on steel and aluminum. you remember, biden ran on a platform saying he would immediately unwind the tariffs and he didn't. the reason he didn't is because china specifically is a state actor and a state actor that is,

let's just say, not one of our friends. they can act uneconomically to put some of our industries out of business if that's what they decide to do. they can act in nonmarket terms. so when they start dumping steel or aluminum because they want to be the global, let's say, manufacturing of steel and aluminum and want us to rely on them for those things, this has to be something that the new president coming in must be thinking about tariffs from both a national security perspective and from a trade global trade perspective. i think you're going to see tariffs act more positively this time than they had in the past. >> given your view of china and how outspoken you have been of tiktok, what do you make of president-elect trump's request to stay the decision to force tiktok to divest of its u.s. operations? >> yeah. i think the supreme court may decide this for him. i think we hear oral arguments, i guess they begin january 10th

and the deadline is january 19th. i read the appellate court ruling. and it was pretty unambiguous. it has nothing to do with free speech, everything to do with national security. when you read that appellate court ruling, i can't imagine that the supreme court would flip that ruling. and i think that president trump and his team this time got tiktok, let's say, to play more fair in the election. and i think that is weighing on the thought processes. >> how do you see that playing out in terms of a realistic rollout given how many users there are here in the united states, how many small businesses make their profits on tiktok? >> i mean, again, this is a false equivalency. the court ruling happened almost a year ago. and they told tiktok usa, so when you think about tiktok globally, they do about $36

billion in revenue. tiktok usa does about $12 billion in revenue. tiktok usa, i hear there are bids out there as high as $50 billion or more for it. so the u.s. court system has said, sell it to a u.s. company for the highest bid. or it's going to be turned off. so if your decision tree matrix was take $50 billion or more or take zero, the only tell in your decision is if the communist party of china who controls bytedance, who controls tiktok isn't able to give up that algorithm that broadcasts into households in the united states without the fcc's regulation or without anyone overseeing it, i think the facts are what they are. i think the decision tree matrix is $50 billion or zero. it's easy to make a decision that's value unlocking and continue this service for the people of the united states. >> so given that --

>> china is playing a game of chicken. >> given that's your expectations and you have a clear expectation of how the supreme court is going to decide and you talked about u.s. tech. how does this affect the way you might invest in meta or google or perhaps a microsoft, which expressed some interest the first time around in buying u.s. tiktok? >> yeah, look, i don't think it's an either/or. i think it already exists today. when you think about this $12 billion in revenue is already being had by tiktok, whoever the acquirer is, i think, could unlock it clearly, the state of texas, the u.s. government, the u.s. military. there are plenty of people that are forbidden from using tiktok on any of their government devices because of its national security implications. so i think there are revenues to unlock here with a prospect of buyer and also the leadership in our country deciding to protect

u.s. national security, it all makes a lot of sense. it's china, the one playing chicken with tiktok. >> all right. kyle bass, good to see you. >> thank you. one of boeing's most popular plane models crash landing in south korea over the weekend, killing nearly everyone onboard. one of that nation's worst air disasters in decades. we'll get an update on the investigation when "power lunch" returns. ment. call coventry direct to learn more. we thought we had planned carefully for our retirement. but we quickly realized we needed a way to supplement our income. our friend sold their policy to help pay their medical bills, and that got me thinking. maybe selling our policy could help with our retirement. i'm skeptical, so i did some research and called coventry direct. they explained life insurance is a valuable asset that can be sold. we learned we could sell all of our policy, or keep part of it with no future payments. who knew? we sold our policy. now we can relax and

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welcome back. a deadly air crash in south korea claiming the lives of 179 passengers. the country's acting president ordering an inspection of all boeing 737-800 planes as a result. the stock is down about 2% today. however, there are currently no signs that boeing is at fault. cnbc.com airline reporter leslie josephs here with more.

it seems like the issue here was on the ground. >> it's very unusual. you see a plane come down at that speed, that close to the end of the runway without its landing gear down. the flaps were up. kind of everything that went wrong went wrong, that could go wrong went wrong in this case. at the end of the runway was a concrete wall. that's going to be a big part of the investigation, as we're in the very early stages of it. the cause of the crash is not known, but that wall that the plane crashed into is going to be a big part of it. >> talk about this model. boeing has had a rough year with the plug that blew out of the other jet at the beginning of the year. but this model airplane is considered really safe. >> it is. that's exactly right, contessa. this is one of the most common aircraft models pretty much in the world. we're talking more than 4400 in service just of this boeing model itself. boeing has a lot of aircraft. this is not the 737-max, which was grounded about five years ago for those two crashes that

we remember took 346 lives. this is essentially like the toyota camry of aircraft. >> then is it fairly common after a crash like this for the government to say, okay, we're going to investigate? and is our government also looking into this? >> so the way that the protocols work for crash investigations, the country in which the accident occurred is going to lead the investigation. the national transportation safety board from the united states as well as boeing as the manufacturer and then the country that the plane was manufactured in and certified, the faa will be playing a part in that investign, but it will be led by south korea. and they are investigating and taking a look at inspections for its 737-800s. >> pretty unusual for two plane related tragedies, very different in how they have unfolded, to happen so close together. >> very different tragedies. we have this different angle with the azerbaijan crash we saw very recently. the causes of the two seem to be extremely different, but this is

a year, we started out with a couple of miracles with the crash and those passengers surviving and then the door plug blowout in alaska air on the first days of 2024 and ending on these two tragedies unfortunately. >> what does this usually mean for an airline stock? the human lives are the most important thing, but it can take quite a while for people to get to the bottom in this investigation of what the causes were, right? >> it's true. it does take sometimes more than a year to get to the bottom of it when you get the final report, when you get recommendations. they always say airline safety rules are written in blood, unfortunately. it does take a long time. we should in a month or two get a preliminary report. we'll get a lot of facts coming out of the case. what were the conditions in the cockpit once the cockpit voice recorders get digested. >> is there any kind of technology improvements to avert the bird strikes? we have seen this for decades,

really, that this has been a problem. it's part of what led to the miracle on the hudson issue. are there any advances on that front? >> airports do put in some things. you think that falcons are not high-tech exactly. some smaller airports have put in dogs to chase birds away. and it does take sometimes a large bird in the case of sully's plane in the miracle on the hudson. those were geese. canada geese, which are quite large. we could get some debate, some discussion when an aircraft gets certified, when an engine gets certified, what do we do about bird injection tests. >> really incredible. leslie, thank you so much for joining us. you'll stay on top of the investigation as it unfolds. all right, well, let's take a look at another corner of the market that we have yet to talk about, small caps, which have been hit hard this month with the russell 2000 down more than 8.5%. index on pace for its worst

month since september 2022. however, there are some under the radar winners in that group. check out sport radar. it's a company that collects and analyzes sports data for its clients. shares are up more than 58% this year alone. joining us for an exclusive interview on what's behind his company's recent rally or the rally this year is the founder and ceo of sportradar, carson krol. it's great to see you today. let me explain for folks who may not know, sportraid ar has exclusive contracts with the nba, major league baseball, nhl, fifa, to provide the data for those sports to the sports books, to the teams themselves and the leagues. do you rely on further expansion of gambling in order to grow yo? >> thanks for having me, first, contessa. from a perspective of expansion, that's fairly simple for us.

we have all those contracts which you mentioned. these are all key partners. it's not only the data. it's also the audio visual. it's also data on the screen, which we can enrich, which we can put into solutions. we can sell it. we have reached that kind of tipping point that all those contracts are long term, so most of them, seven, eight years. uefa is the shortest one, three years. but we have a portfolio here where we don't increase our costs much more, and that inflection point was visible in the last quarter. that's what you see in the stock price. we show that margin leverage because those contracts are long term. the content is secured, and we put it in our solution that we have about all the connections to the betting market. >> we're seeing evaluations of sports climb and soar. but i know that sport radar walked away from the nfl contract as the data provider, leaving that to genius, which by

the way, genius shares, i know you don't like this, but they're up 40% year to date, far outpacing some of your clients. if you look at penn and others, they're quite negative on the year. when you look at the value of that nfl contract, how much -- how much is it worth paying to have that, and at what point do you pull the plug and wash your hands of it? >> it's a complex thing. so we have a sensational team working on the contracts where we're modeling how do we earn money over the long term. it's not a short game, as you know. so if we are looking now to the nba, it's a seven-years modeling. so we have exact information, how can we sell that, how can we put it into future solutions, which is a bit tricky to predict that for three, four, five years ahead. then we are coming to a number. and we are very strict in this. we are very strict in how we manage these contracts and how we do the bids. if we believe there is value in

it for us, we do this. if not, we don't do that. but everything should be in our target margin which is a 25% to 30% ebitda margin with a cash conversion of 60%. if such a deal fits into those numbers we're going for it. if not, and others might see a value, we're happy they're going on this, but for us, it's very important that we're disciplined. >> how sophisticated is the depth of data at this point? right now, people are becoming more familiar with betting. parlays, you can pretty much guess about anything that's going to happen in a given game. but how deep is this, and to what extent have newer technologies around a.i. sort of allowed people to use the data that you have to predict even at the microlevel what's going to happen minute by minute, second by secondane game? >> well, speaking about

technology, the data is increasing exponentially. and the skill here is we're going to have to process this in real time, and we're going to have to apply the a.i. or next gen a.i. that we can get meaning into this. to give you a glimpse of where it is at the moment, for the nba, we see the finger position when the ball is leaving the hand of the player. and we can look on the finger position, might that be in or out, and calculate probabilities on the ball going into the net. >> what about latency? when you see that, the person sitting in the stand, the better, still has an advantage on their phone opposed to the person sitting at home on their couch because of the latency in what the ball position is. >> that's the critical element. so what we see in the u.s. is we see a huge boom of in-play

betting. so exactly that latency is really defining is a sports book winning or losing. therefore, such deals and such contracts are so important. we're sitting on the source of the data. we're not copying it. and it is very important that it is real time. when it's not exactly real time, as many of the technicians might understand, there is currently around about nil.6 to nil.7 milliseconds but that is good enough to say it's close to real time. if you play a bet, there is also processing time on the operating side. >> one more, there's been a lot of speculation with an incoming administration change in washington, d.c. that the environment for mergers and acquisitions is going to loosen up. in your space, endeavor has just announced last month they wanted to sell off open bet and img arena for about half a billion dollars. and that has the contract with

pga for the data rights for pga. is something like that an acquisition of that size interesting to you and something you would consider? >> first and foremost, we have a very strong organic growth. we have an engine which is working rock solid, and which is well oiled. so we show margin leverage which our existing portfolio, and going forward, we have secured all the deals which we need to have. it's pretty tough to see something, to buy something which is matching the parameters which we have organically. but nevertheless, it's not surprising to us that some of the market companions are checking around what is possible for them. i think we reached a stage that we demonstrate leverage on scale. so we are looking to the market, very interested, but it's really tough that you match the profile which we need to have to show that we have margin leverage.

>> it's great of you to join us. we appreciate your time. happy new year. >> thank you. happy new year. still ahead, all in on a.i. microsoft pouring billions of dollars into improving its a.i. tex knowledge, but when will this pay off for shareholders? we'll dive into that when "power lunch" returns. ♪♪ the agents applaud. your travel itineraries are so well written, they're on the best seller list. and you have access to lounges that don't officially exist. that's why you rent with national, where you can skip the counter and choose any vehicle on the emerald aisle. because travel isn't a competition. except that it is. and you're winning.

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welcome back. big tech losing some of its footing in to year end and the gains this year were massive but some are worried whether the trade will hold up. take microsoft. the company had tens of billions of capex, specifically around a.i., but hen will that spending really pay af. >> that's the big question. microsoft, by the way, their shares like so many of the gains happening at the beginning of the year and really struggling going into the end of the year. microsoft is ending the year spending at least $53 billion in capital expenditures. that's not accounting for the current quarter we're in. nearly all of that is for artificial intelligence, nvidia chips, data centers and related infrastructure. microsoft has implied to expect

about $20 billion in capital expenditures each quarter going into 2025. that's at least $20 billion. the risk, of course, s losing their patience for a return on this spending. the ceo and cfo on recent calls have said the a.i. demand is out there and microsoft will keep spending to meet it. they can also dial back the spending if demand starts to slip. over the last year, microsaumpt has also announced at least 20 investments of a billion or more for data centers and also things like a.i. training and other programs that includes locations like spain, india, indonesia, london and so many more including several states here in the united states. meantime, don't have a clear vow of how the sweet of a.i. products are selling. anecdotal data, but microsoft said it's on track to generate $10 billion worth of a.i. represented sales this year. a lot of that comes from the azure cloud business. as for the rest, their copilot pcs launched earlier, but

without the artificial intelligence feature called recall, also no clue how well copilot for business is selling after more than a year. i have heard from a few ctos, 2025 is going to be the year they assess if copilot is worth the enormous cost and if they go all in or dial back their test versions. and then there's open ai, its losses are now bleeding over to microsoft, which is of course its biggest benefactor. microsoft says it expects openai's losses to shave a cupp cents off its eps in the december quarter. a lot of costs still unclear when it's going to pay off. and in the meantime, spending like crazy. >> but important to put into context, a.i. investment isn't just for what we think of as a.i. today. mark zuckerberg famously a couple years ago was buying all of this, you know, a.i. infrastructure, not sure what it was for, and it turned out to be hugely beneficial once they figured out how to make reels

work. >> exactly. >> microsoft has all of this home-grown software that needs a.i. so it's not just hoping other people buy it. they need it. >> and it's not just a.i. it's openai, a.i. they're using as well. you know this, going back to nadella's early tenure, he made huge investments for today's cloud business early on in his tenure, so you can make the comparison to what he's doing now. yes, a lot of spending. it's unclear when the spending is going to slow down or stop, but nadella was very good that first round predicting how the cloud business would play out. that bet paid off enormously, and so the bet here again is that he knows what he's doing. all this investment is going somewhere, just not exactly clear when and how and how long it's going to take. >> all right. thanks for joining us. let's take a look at the insurance space, and reinsurance renewals are due january 1st.

ahead of mega catastrophes they buy policies that help insure them. a report says reinsurance rates have declined 5 to 15% depending on the region and what level the policy kicks in. it's not because the risk is any lower but rather than the premiums have been skyrocketing over the last couple years. that makes for attractive profit potential. more companies got into or expanded their reinsurance offerings and that competition lowers prices for the customers. take a look at the returns here. reinsurance group of america is 9% above its 52-week high, up 31% this year. renaissance re up 21%. aon falls into that, and brokers make money selling all the higher priced policies. you have willis towers watson, arthur j. gallagher, and marsh mcclennen which are all up double digits. look at that. willis tower watson 30% this year. progressive about 50%.

all state up 37%. chubb, travelers, hartford, progressive, by the way, 50%. they had a rough year with auto insurance, but they have really turned that around. if you have opened your property insurance bill this year, maybe your jaw dropped. you're not alone. property and casualty insurers are finally catching up to inflation fueled loss costs. on the other hand, if you had -- now i'm like jon fortt, if you had invested in the much smaller insure tech type companies look at lemonade, up 140%. hippo, 200%. root, 600%. root was really struggling with auto insurance. sold off a bunch of real estate, laid off a bunch of people. but boy, those shares have turned around. and those investors probably like that even if they don't like what they're paying for their own policy. >> if you're an investor, i guess you're happy. >> we continue to monitor the volatility in stocks today. the dow is on track to post its

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i'm morgan brennan with your cnbc news update. president biden ordered all executive departments and federal agencies to be closed on january 9th as the nation honors the life of jimmy carter. markets will also be closed for his state funeral. president biden is expected to deliver a eulogy for the 39th president who died sunday at the age of 100. a name, image, and likeness legal fight is heating up at florida state. six former fsu basketball players claim the former head coach, leonard hamilton, failed to deliver promised nil payments of $250,000 apiece. the lawsuit claims they even organized a teamwite practice boycott over the issue, and new york city is making sure its iconic new year's eve ball is ready for its starring role later this week. organizers practiced raising and lowering the ball today before sending it up to the top of its 139-foot flag pole in times square. the ball is nearly 12,000 pounds. it's comprised of 2700 waterford

crystals and can apparently display more than 16 million colors. i didn't even know there were that many colors. but to me, the number that stands out, one ton of confetti is going to drop at midnight. >> they go out there the next day and clean it all up. insiders tip, like i am a new yorker 20 years now. the tip is, it is much better on television than out in times square. because standing in a pen is not fun. like, 12 hours. you get locked in there for 12 hours. no drinks, no sitting, no blankets. you're just there. >> you do it once and never want to do it again. it's off the bucket list. >> thanks. >> stocks in the red but off the lows of the day. friday's decline, of course, this is just a continuation, the dow sharply lower for the month, as you can see, off by more than half a percent. this year's explosion in valuations may give some investors pause, especially in regards to big tech. is there more room to run?

our next guest still sees opportunity from here. let's bring indory wily, president and ceo of commerce street holdings. great to see you. do you see opportunity right now because we're seeing a bit of a sell-off here at the end of december? >> i do. i think there's opportunity across the board. i'm a little disappointed nvidia is not down more because i wanted to buy some. >> where do you see opportunity, in what specific areas of tech? >> well, i think in all areas of tech. first of all, we have a market sell-off toward year end for whatever reason. it could be profit taking, early rebalancing, the end of the trump bump, fear of cutting rates, et cetera. then i think you look at some of these sectors, and try to see where they have been going up. you brought up insurance earlier. i think community banks still look really good. i know quite a few community banks still trading below 12 pe, and a market where everyone is crying overvaluation. that screams undervaluation, especially when you have banks

that are growing, have stable deposits, are looking for an easement of regulations so they can do more m&a going forward. >> there is some concern watching the bond yields here. and an indication that maybe the fed is not going to keep continuing on its path of cutting. maybe this is where we're going to stay for a bit. what's your view on whether that should affect the equities investment? >> well, absolutely. we're getting mixed messages from all the wire houses. goldman comes out and says we're going to get three rate cuts and the fed comes out and says, look, we changed our dot plot to a 50 basis point cut next year. i don't know if they're paying attention or not or maybe they don't believe the fed knows what they're doing, but the fed has a track record over the last year or so of being right and the market wrong on what they're going to do. having said that, the market is sending a different message. if you look at that ten-year, it's up 60 basis points since they last cut 100 basis points.

the market is saying the rates should be going up, not down. >> is 2025 another year where the equal weight s&p 500 underperforms? >> yes, it is. if you look back, we have got the mag seven still dominating the market. and look at the year. we had an election year, a couple assassination attempts. we have all kinds of geopolitical scares going on out there. and we have 20% less volatility in the s&p than its long run average. and i would contend even with the increase of mag seven and that percentage weight, it's because of mag seven and why is that? because mag seven makes a lot of money. it has heavy gross profit margin, heavy returns on equity. it's way different than the dotcom era, and it's actually providing stability, ot instability. but people are afraid of it because it had such a big run-up. when you look at it, it's very,

very real. >> all right, thanks, nice of you to join us. well, treasury yields slightly lower as the last trading week of 2024 starts on a sour note. we're going to go to rick santelli for the read on the bond market when "power lunch" returns.

welcome back to "power lunch." let's check in on the bond market. rick santelli is tracking the action. rick. >> reporter: hi, jon. indeed, we had chicago pmi this morning at 9:45. if you look at the last 28 months, the last 28 months, we have only had one reading above 50 that was november of last year. not only was today's reading weak and under 50, it was under 40. weakest since september of this year. now, consider this. normally, when we see very weak data, we see a differentiation

on the coupon curve from the shortest coupon at two-year to the longest at 30-year. as you look at the charts, there's virtually no difference. we're significantly lower in yield, higher in price all along the curve. as a matter of fact, if you look at the twos/tens spread, it's hardly moved from last friday, hovering at 30 basis points, virtually the steepest going all the way back to mid-2022. now, technically, many traders always are looking for clues as to when they can lean against these higher rates and longer maturities. well, the thirty-year bond delivered. if you look at a chart year to date, what you should notice is that friday's close was a whisker under 4.82. if you look at the end of april, we also had another yield close right under 4.82%. that double top is something traders are talking about. now, it does meantime that it is the top, but many traders will view that as a top.

i know pretty much 2024 is over, but this is significant that we have hit that level in reverse. that same level in a ten-year is a bit higher at a yield of 4.7%. but we want to monitor that on a closing basis. contessa, back to you. >> rick santela, thank you, sir. coming up, a special year end edition of three-stock lunch. we trade a few names to leave behind in 2024 and one you're just going to love in the new year. we're back in two. do you have a life insurance policy you no longer need? now you can sell your policy - even a term policy - for an immediate cash payment. call coventry direct to learn more. we thought we had planned carefully for our retirement. but we quickly realized we needed a way to supplement our income. our friend sold their policy to help pay their medical bills, and that got me thinking. maybe selling our policy could help with our retirement. i'm skeptical, so i did some research and called coventry direct. they explained life insurance is a valuable asset that can be sold. we learned we could sell all of our policy, or

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welcome back. time for today's three-stock lunch. we're taking a look at some of the worst s&p laggards this year. which names should you dump, and are any due for a comeback? here with her trades, victoria green, chief investment officer, a cnbc contributor. great to see you. first up, we have walgreens. boy, this has been a rocky year for the retail pharmacy unit particularly. the shares down 64%. what do you think of walgreens? >> man, i think they can't end this year fast enough. for me, leave behind 2024.

just because the stock is trading at $9 down from $50 doesn't mean it can't move from $9 to $7. they have so many structural problems. they got a bump, a potential piout, but that's a difficult buyout. they aren't that large, to buy an entire company like walgreens. there's also multiple bond covenants that make this difficult. so there's a lot of structural problems there. as you pointed out, retail u.s. pharmaceuticals is about 80% of the retail, and they keep losing market share to hings like cvs, to optimum rx. you say what does greens need to do? they likely have to break up or take private. for me, leave it behind. don't touch it in '25. >> okay. speaking of problems, intel down 60% this year. as the company grapples with how it should position itself in the a.i. battle. it's also searching for a new ceo. what do you think? >> for me, again, it's leave

behind in '24. i think they're having a bottoming process. i just don't think it's going to happen in 2025. they do have to find a new ceo. they have current co-ceos who are trying to kickstart the business. one of the problems is their servers. their business there is so far behind nvidia and amd that for me they're having to base themselves only on the pc market and a.i.pcs have been slow. i'm not sure we're going to see the catalyst come around in '25. it might be turning a battleship, but i'm going to leave it here because they have a lot of structural decisions. it's been a lost two decades. we can wait it out a year or two more. >> the final trade, dollar tree down 47% this year. it's really struggled with the battle for bargain shoppers. it announced it will consider selling off its family dollar chain, but is it a bargain worth taking? >> yes, i'm going to point out these are all trying to catch a falling knife, but i love this

one. i'm going to quote one of my favorite movies, dumb and dumber, you're telling me there's a chance. they already made some of thaz decisions. lower margin, you're not doing great, we're closing up to 600 stores, focusing on dollar tree. look what they're doing with their tiered pricing. that's offering a wider variety of products. they're able to compete with the wall marts of the world and get more on retail. they have seen some decent foot traffic even if transaction size is lower. they're seeing consumer staples continue to be bought. for me, this turnaround story is already past the first lap. we're seeing a little bit of a bottoming relative to the consumer staples. there's a little bit of a u-haped trend. so i see this as positive and if you're going to go bottom feeding, for me, dollar tree is the one i take into 2025. >> i love any guest who can deliver a very piffy movie line. victoria green, thank you for that. happy new year. >> happy new year. >> still ahead, the rise of

social media shopping and influencers leading to the growth of knockoff brands and so-called dupes this holiday season. we'll get the full story. >> and remember, you can always listen to our podcast. be sure to follow and listen to the power lunch podcast wherever you go. we'll be right back. i'm just here for the internets. at&t, it's super-fast! you locked us out?! and when thrown a curveball... arrggghh! ahhhh! [crashing sounds] we had everything we needed. is the internet out? don't worry, we have at&t internet back-up. the next level network for small business. ♪♪ i sold a pillow! hey, can you speak french? who, me? i know a few words. if you're struggling to speak a new language, you should try babbel, a learning platform designed by over 200 language experts. it's like having your own personal language coach. babbel offers live classes with expert teachers for real world conversation practice. it's totally flexible so you can learn at your own pace

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welcome back. bootleg retail items have always existed. in the past, you fork up for a luxury purse or hit up canal street. now, social media might be increasing the popularity and access to dupes. courtney reagan is here with that story. >> so today's dupes aren't counterfeit in so far as the branding. and sure, fashion and premium brands have long dealt with lower priced copycat goods but social media has kind of accelerated what's called dupe culture. sprinkler ai ran a query for cnbc with more than 2.9

mentioned in 2024 from public posts on social media sites along with youtube blogs and other sort of shopping sites. for the word dupe. so chanel was the top brand associated with dupe. at more than 19,000 mentioned. followed by dior. then apple. lululemon also had a high number of mentions associated with users looking for dupes. imitation may be the highest form of flattery but it means potentially loseing the sale to someone else. while no one copycat brand dominated for dupes, sprinkler a.i. found that for 20 of the most common lululemon dupe requests, the social media community suggested similar options at walmart on eight of those 20 products. amazon for five of the 20, and sheen for two. here's an example of a walmart dupe for the lululemon everywhere belt bag. it doesn't say lululemon but it does look strikingly similar. for free people, dupe's amazon was the answer for 14 of the top 20 products requested. it is important to note that 94%

of these mentions that were aggregated for us were not from influencers pushing goods for commission or fee but rather consumers more or less crowdsourcing a look for less. where can i find this lululemon dupe somewhere else. >> i think that's super interesting but also, i just went into walmart. and i was surprised to see name brand goods that i have never seen in walmart before. now you can just go to walmart if you want to get a name brand thing and pay the lower price but right from the store. >> and most necessarily also from walmart.com because they're really expanding their marketplace both with sellers that sort of post on their own, but also with these sort of partnership agreements. i don't know if you remember c-wonder founded by tory burch's husband, it sort of disappeared and walmart owns the licensing rights to that. so the internet also offers us

an endless aisle and online social media gives us a very quick access just through a click when someone finds something pretty cool, look for less. >> the fast fashion outlets are so quick to copy whatever is hot. thanks. what brand were you surprised to see? >> there was brand were you surd to see? >> there was reebok, chaps, polo. i thought, normally that's outlet shopping. >> chaps at walmart. who new? "closing bell" starts right now. and welcome to "closing bell." i'm mike santoli. this make or break hour begins with stocks finding traction after a morning skid brought the major indexes within sight of their december lows. the s&p 500 was off more than a percent and a half before the dip buyers showed up. nvidia has been instrumental to the intraday recovery, rising at one point above that 140 level. the stock's been shopping ar