well, it's great seeing you. it's been too long. i want to share with you that i found out right before the show the woman that cleans our house two times a week just passed and got her citizenship last week. we all shed a tear. she's so happy to be an american citizen. we all love her. thank you. you're great. liz claman is coming next. you got a pretty good rally heading into the last hour of trading. liz: this is wild, charles. i've got a question. are mega-mergers juicing the market bulls or is it working the other way, are the bulls juicing this mega-merger atmosphere? what do you think? charles: the key is to watch how many companies use their stock versus all cash. this nvidia deal is a combination of both. when i see companies start to use the stock, that's a red flag. when they use cash, that means they think their stock is undervalued. let's watch that for awhile as the mergers continue. liz: cold hard cash, keep an eye

on that. charles, thank you. whatever the answer, right, the markets are showing extreme optimism as we head into the final hour of trade. new vaccine hopes are adding to the mix and yes, right now, the dow is topping 28,000 by a single point. the nasdaq, back above 11,000. we are at 11,044. the s&p is moving higher by 1.33% after two straight weeks of selling. oracle says it's won its tech battle against microsoft to partner up with the chinese social media superstar tiktok but at this hour, chinese media saying yeah, but you didn't win the war. top tech analyst colin gillis on whether oracle is getting snookered and charlie gasparino on those now crying crony capitalism. what does the latest covid vaccine progress mean to some of the pandemic stock superstars? the ceo and cofounder of okta is here on whether a return to work will cut into all the business he's done in the lockdown era. and the nfl is back and with

it comes an explosion of gambling apps. one of the biggest digital sports platforms expanding its gaming reach. the ceo and founder of the score on the stunning wager numbers he's seeing now. less than an hour to the closing bell, happy monday, let's start "the claman countdown." liz: it is not just any monday in the markets. it's a manic merger monday. let's start with what charles was talking about. nvidia. this is, of course, what used to be just a graphic chip company, now it checks all the boxes and it is up 5% in this final hour, despite wall street's growing regulatory concerns swirling around its new deal to buy chip designer arm holdings from softbank for $40 billion. the biggest u.s. chip maker will pay the japanese firm $21.5

billion in stock and then $12 billion in cash. softbank is up nearly 8% right now. yes, i double-checked, nvidia is now way bigger than intel. a lot has changed in the semiconductor world. we've got a steep premium not facing gilead sciences investors. the u.s. drug maker buyingimmunomedics for $21 billion to gain access to the biotech's breast cancer treatment drug which was granted accelerated fda approval. look at gilead, up 2.8%. now, here's the deal. gilead is going to acquire all outstanding stock for $88 a share. it's at $83.63 right now. so the 88 bucks is a premium of 108% over friday's close of $42.25. yeah, you can do the math. i will do it for you. immunomedics up 97%. it was up 101%. nutty day for all the stocks

involved in manic merger monday. to the plant-based food lovers' name, beyond meat, launching beyond meatballs which are apparently seasoned with italian spices and ready to cook. the stock is cooking, up 6.6% to $143.81. and we are told the product can be found at amazon, whole foods, sprouts and kroger, among other grocery stores. you got those three names either down 4% for kroger or just flat on the session for amazon. folks, look on your screen. we've got this breaking news. chinese media is insisting that its sources say oracle will get no source code with its new tech partnership with chinese short form video app tiktok. that from china's global television network. that used to be the cctv which is sort of fox business of china. tiktok expects to create 25,000 new jobs in the united states as part of its proposal with oracle

if this proposal, air quotes, is approved by the trump administration. oracle has confirmed this morning that it is air quotes, teaming up with the social media darling to avoid an outright ban but we remind you, president trump has said multiple times and very clearly that unless tiktok, which he says poses a national security threat, due to its collecting power of user data, unless it's bought by a u.s. tech company and severs all ties with china, he will ban it. to charlie gasparino. charlie, either oracle's terms won't pass the trump administration's muster or president trump backs away from the red line he drew rather clearly. charlie: let's get into it a little bit of white house politics on this and then into the crony capitalism aspect as well. i do hear from my sources close to the white house that there is a debate whether this deal with oracle, we don't have all the details, we just know it's a partnership. it's not a purchase.

there's no price attached. as you know, oracle's stock is up right now. why is the stock up of the acquirer if it's not buying something, usually stock goes down when that happens. well, because it's not spending any money. it's not buying it. at least the market believes that. so the white house is still debating it. from what i understand, mnuchin, secretary mnuchin, who is on cfius, the council of foreign investment in the u.s. which must approve this deal, is inclined to approve it. just so you hear what i'm saying, inclined. he believes it's not a political battle that's worth fighting in this environment when you have an election coming up. obviously the people that watch tiktok, use it often, do not vote. they are people like my 12-year-old niece. but they have parents who vote. so there's a little bit of -- liz: they may, charlie, can i just say, there is an 18 to 25-year-old base who uses this in a very heavy way.

they have become the new voting bloc if they are unhappy. charlie: my producer did a great story on that demographic and how it uses tiktok to get news. yes, it could have an impact. some in the white house still believe that blocking tiktok during an election year is politically untenable but there is also people in the white house who say listen, is this sort of trusted partnership really what we want here. let's be real clear. microsoft put a bid in to buy tiktok. it wanted what's known as end-to-end control of the algorithm and the entire product because it wanted to be completely secure from any chinese influence. microsoft did a major defense contractor, that's why it was worried about that. that was rejected by the chinese. then bytedance which is the parent company of tiktok will say well, the chinese didn't reject anything, we rejected it. bytedance is owned by a chinese

national which, by the way, reports to the chinese government. that's just the way capitalism works over there. so the chinese said no to that sort of deal and opted for this partnership deal with less control by oracle. so now will this get passed? if it does get passed, and i will say if the trump administration agrees to this it will be a 180 from what the president said, which he wanted an outright sale with complete control by the u.s. company. it would -- i don't know how much he's getting his big payment, remember he said he wanted some investment banking fee for this going to the treasury department? liz: finder fee. charlie: right. let's be real clear of the politics here. larry ellison, head of oracle, major trump supporter and friend of the president. bill ford, who runs general atlantic, doug leone, top guy at sequoia, the two big investors in bytedance, the parent company of tiktok, major gopers in

silicon valley. if this thing does get approved and it looks like sort of tipping the scales to oracle, letting them do something that was initially not favored by the president, the word you will be hearing a lot are these two words, crony capitalism. that's what is going to be said here. because again, oracle's stock is up today because they have reached a deal to get something without spending any money and if the trump administration approves that, i am telling you, that is going to be the story line, whether this was wired in to somebody who is obviously a political supporter. and you know -- liz: yeah, or the president backing away from a red line, a very stark and stark red line that he himself had drawn. we'll be watching it. charlie, thank you. i want to bring in colin gillis,

who has covered tech stocks for decades. he joins us via phone and trader scot redler. colin, start with you. my source, i'm just getting this, who has intimate knowledge of the early oracle/tiktok negotiations, is telling me quote, don't jump to any conclusions because this tiktok back-and-forth has taken so many twists and turns, but it's not even that. last we checked, a partnership is not a divestment or sale. do you see this as being accepted by the administration? is tiktok saved or banned? >> you are correct, the oracle offer is not a divestiture. it will be a much smaller scale and scope and likely a price tag than what microsoft was offering. but you have to remember that it is a solution in an election year, for this administration to both notch a win, it looks like in its battle with china as well as give some support to people who have supported him, the

oracle ceo. so let's see if the oracle offer of just being a controlling authority is going to be strong enough. i think it will be. liz: oracle is up 4.5%. scott, is this the green light for chinese stocks? i was checking early on, alibaba, tencent, jd.com, baidu. they seem to be getting a nice move to the upside on this. i don't know if there's any relation, i'm not knowledgeable enough to know that, but where do chinese stocks stand as we look at some of these, they are all green on the screen. >> in the back of all the traders' heads, no one wants [ inaudible ] if all of them get you listed or all of a sudden he holds the red line. if you think back, even the whole china deal, phase one, phase two, what really happened? absolutely nothing. it was all rhetoric and grandstanding to figure out who has more control. the more that we hear about the tiktok deal, bytedance, who is

going to get it, oracle, microsoft, i think traders at this point are numb to it. that's why today, microsoft was down about a dollar and a half, went green and rallied. that's why today oracle is up even though that's supposed to be the ib inquinquirer. people realize that nothing drastic is going to take place. a lot of it is back-and-forth rhetoric. if you want to buy chinese names, love the company you're buying. do it more than just whether or not oracle can take over or take the relationship with tiktok. i think tech is a little sigh of relief, i think more people are worried about whether or not china was going to start banning apple products because if we ban tiktok and that doesn't seem to be happening, so at this point, tech is, in fact, i think there's a little bit of a bid in tech and just don't trade off of what the white house is saying. liz: colin, what do you like here? we are up 182 points with the

nasdaq. we know that last week we saw pretty significant spasm to the downside. we are kind of getting some of that back but are still in correction territory. you like big tech or some of the smaller subsectors? >> so just to finish up on tiktok, what the buyers are seeing, there's 100 million active users in the united states. if you apply facebook's average revenue per user, $40 per user, that's $12 billion in revenue right there. that's a mature number, that's facebook's number. there's a big billion dollar advertising market and new demographic so obviously, there's going to be competition and whatever company gets in the middle between the united states and china, they are going to find themselves in an uncomfortable spot. we will watch this and see how it plays out. in terms of larger tech, we always love, you want to talk about ai and companies that have strong artificial intelligence? let's just buy alphabet. stick with google and let's own

that human capital they have such an incredible well of. liz: yeah. google right now, if we can just grab that, i'm checking it at the moment, we do have it flat but as you see, it has done incredibly well over the past year, up 22%. we will watch all of it. scott, colin, thank you so much for joining us. closing bell, we are about 47 minutes away. we do have a nice bull run happening at the moment. dow is up 276. we are just slightly below dow 28,000 at the moment. pg & e rising after restoring power to most of its northern california customers. the utility says it has found, check this, 27 instances where more fires could have been sparked in the region had power not been cut off ahead of time. pg & e stock up 5.7%. meantime, regarding the fires, the president surveying the damage in california just 24

hours after signing an executive order he says will lower drug prices. but big pharma calling big foul. why some of the top names in the covid fight say the president's plan will not help patients. that and more next on "the claman countdown." keep your eye on that nasdaq, up 182 points. i'm greg, i'm 68 years old. i do motivational speaking in addition to the substitute teaching. i honestly feel that that's my calling--

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liz: breaking news. we want to show you the california national guard helicopters used to fight the wildfires raging across the state. this is an area where president trump is about to arrive to speak. he is wrapping up a meeting with california executives. he is also going to be giving medals to some of the national guardsmen who have been fighting the fires, which by the way, have torched more than three million acres. tinder-dry wilderness has been no match for multiple fires but we were also looking very specifically at the big story that started over the weekend and that is the president signing an executive order to cut prescription drug prices. for more, let's get to blake burman with the very latest. blake? reporter: president trump out right now in mcclellan park,

california, the greater sacramento area. pretty fascinating few moments just a little while ago. the president was sitting down with leaders from the state of california, that includes the governor gavin newsom, those two don't necessarily see politically eye to eye but were having a fairly cordial conversation as president trump believed that there needs to be more, as he puts it, forest management in that area to help suppress some of these fires. newsom agreed they do need forest management but also said there are many within that state who also believe that global warming and climate change is at play here. that was some of the back-and-forth the president initially was involved in before he ends up heading to the event you were just discussing. the president is out west right y now and has been there for a couple days for several campaign events. he will continue today in arizona as well, by the way. over the weekend, you're right, the president was touting an executive order that he had signed for prescription drug prices. according to that executive order, the u.s. government via medicare shouldn't pay more for

drugs than what other countries pay. this was the president over the weekend in nevada touting that eo. watch. >> we're going to come down to the lowest price anywhere in the world because we did a favored nations clause. you know what that is. the drug companies don't exactly like me too much. they're spending millions of dollars on negative commercials, please understand when you see those commercials it means your drug prices are coming down. reporter: big pharma panned the move. in a statement they say quote, it's an irresponsible, unworkable policy that will give foreign governments a say in how america provides access to treatments and cures for seniors and people struggling with devastating diseases. the president and members of his administration say this will bring drug prices down. the critics of this say it's essentially price controls and allowing foreign governments to set those prices. also, big pharma says now is not the time to do this, considering the attention that they're paying to covid-19.

back to you. liz: no, no, no. when is the time? i'm with the president on this. i mean, enough with the insurors and big pharma and i know they spend an inordinate amount of time, sometimes more than 15 years, developing a drug that saves lives. they should be paid for that. but at what point does something break where our consumers need to be paying something that's commensurate with what everybody else pays? blake, thank you. that's my little rant for the day. doctor's daughter here. i'm only saying what my dad used to say. liz, they do just fine. you saw all of their stocks in the green regardless. got the closing bell ringing, 38 minutes away. we have the dow jones industrials at the moment up 280 points. nice move for the nasdaq, up 190. we are at 11,044 for the tech heavy index. new york sports club owner town sports international, remember we told you friday word was they might file for chapter 11 protection? well, they have.

they have officially filed. the gym chain unable to shoulder the financial weight of pandemic related gym closures. already down more than 84% since january 1st. look at this. town sports moving higher by 18% but that still makes it a 32 cent stock. on the flipside, the nfl's kickoff kick-starting sports betting shares. coming up, the color commentary from one of the industry's rising stars. by the way, wait until you see the one bet that paid off the most for those keeping score with the score. that's straight ahead on "the claman countdown." this is decision tech. find a stock based on your interests or what's trending. get real-time insights in your customized view of the market. it's smarter trading technology for smarter trading decisions. fidelity. every curve, every innovation, every feeling.

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liz: breaking news. president trump is now honoring seven california national guard members who have been fighting those california wildfires. he's awarding them the distinguished flying cross for their bravery and service. now, if the president takes questions, we will take you back

out to california. all right. check the nasdaq, up 176. we also have the russell 2000 in the green. don't forget the instasmall and midcaps. to football. apparently not all of america was waiting for sunday night. the dallas cowboys lost to the l.a. rams. final score, 20-17. but the nfl also suffered its own loss. early ratings show a 23% drop in viewers as compared to last year's sunday night opener. that news has got to be disconcerting not only to the league but to all the companies that reap piles of cash from sports wagering. for example, our parent company fox has fox bet, that's an app. we have fan duel, draftkings, wynn resort, wynn view, bet mgm, points bet, william hill, barstool sports. some of these are games of skill, some are wagers, which tomorrow, barstool launches its highly anticipated betting app in pennsylvania. of course, penn national gaming is a big stake in barstool and

then there's score bet, an expanding branch of score media. the second most popular sports app in north america behind only espn. john levy is the man running the show, ceo and founder of the score, he joins us in a fox business exclusive. okay. how did the score bet do over the weekend? tell me about the activity you saw and what it looked like and where you saw the biggest moves. >> oh, my gosh. liz, it was craziness. listen, we all were anticipating that, you know, there was a huge pent-up demand for sports. you know, as you mentioned, we are both in the sports media business and the sports betting business and that makes us very unique from everybody else. we will talk about that. but even before this weekend, we saw two weeks ago, three weeks ago, you know, our media app went back to pre-covid numbers in terms of number of users on the app. we are the second most popular app in north america, and people flooding back to it in huge engagement on the app. on the betting front, too,

people were flying back, you know, into betting on sports. so this pent-up demand was real. you know, we were just top line, we were seeing numbers even before the nfl started, where we were like 50% higher in terms of betters and handled over what we did during super bowl week. no question that people were waiting for this. liz: okay. where did you see the most activity? i'm talking about matchups. >> so it was pretty spread out all across the board. the big teams get the big action. don't forget, for example, right now, we offer score bet in new jersey and we just launched in colorado. so obviously, a lot of sort of emphasis on sort of northeast and in colorado and the sort of southwest. a lot of times, people bet -- lot of people are betting homers so a lot of activity on the new york teams as you would always

expect. but big teams like dallas, you mentioned dallas in the lead-in, dallas always gets lots of action. what really was impressive was more just the general volume and the activity level, both on the media app and in sort of the betting app. liz: yeah. but, john, you had some upsets. jacksonville, chicago and washington as upsets, all of them pulling some big surprises there. no surprise that my browns ate dirt once again. >> i didn't want to mention that one because i know you are a big fan of the browns. bets were piling in against that team. bottom line is people are going to win. for us it's not just all about winning. for us, it's about the engagement and about people having fun and really sports betting has always been just a part of why people love sports. it's not this monolithic thing like other betting companies

treat it like. they are struggling to find their place and that's why they are doing all these big deals with media companies like the one announced today, or the points bet a couple weeks ago. they are trying to figure out how to put that special sauce around these setting technology companies and media companies are trying to figure out how to get in because they don't want to go all in like we did, and all they want to do is sort of figure out how they can take their little piece. liz: right. and you are launching as you said in indiana next week. but barstool sports which has a huge following, obviously an integrated media and social media platform that's hugely popular here, hitting with penn national gaming tomorrow in pennsylvania. when will you be in pennsylvania and how do you look at them as a rival? >> so i can't say specifically when we will be in pennsylvania but like our footprint extends to about 30% of the universe of all the population base in the u.s. we are working hard to get into

other states as well. but we are going to meet up with, you know, with barstool in some situation and you know, they are partners with our partner. penn is -- we did our deal with penn for access and it gives us 11 states. at some point we will come up against them, unfortunately. you know, it's media but it's a different approach. i would say obviously ours is the best. i would say in their content, they are inclined to sort of blend this influencer type approach. portnoy is like the pied piper in stock, as you know now, and in sports betting. it will be interesting to see what he focuses on when betting starts back. ours is more about the real better and providing sports news, sports data and all the information necessary to make a bet and that's what we have on the media app. that's what we integrated score bet into. so it's a really different approach. it's going to be fun when we go head-to-head with them. but you know, the market is so huge, right, there's room for

everybody. you don't need [ inaudible ] the other guys are talking about. if you can get 5%, 10% market share in any state you go into, that's a hell of a nice business. liz: okay. yeah. you want to crush your rivals, john. just admit it. listen, good luck. we will be looking for -- >> i do want to crush these guys. no question about it. but we are trying -- liz: i know. i knew it. what do you think, i'm dumb? >> we're not going to overspend like the other guys. we're not going to go in and sponsor hot dog eating contests or put our names on top of stadiums. we are going to build the best product in the market and we are going to do it in a responsible fashion. we are a public company in canada, right. you know, that's not the reason you want to be responsible. you want to be responsible because you're building a great business. we just can't wait to expand as much as we can in the u.s. liz: john, come visit us when

this whole nightmare of covid is over. we would love to have you back and see how you expand moment by moment. thanks so much. john levy, the score. he lost money because people bet against the browns and the browns lost. how could the browns have lost? i'm very confused. closing bell, 26 minutes away. pfizer's ceo says it could have a vaccine ready for action by the end of this year. but what does the potential game changer really mean for work-from-home superstars? let's call them work from anywhere superstars. we are asking the man who helped to protect the remote work forces of businesses big and small. okta's ceo. the stock has been on a tear. he's here when "the claman countdown" comes back. (♪ )

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liz: the vaccine pendulum swinging to the optimistic side in this final hour of trade.

pfizer and german partner biontech's stock are on the move on news that the two will hit enrollment of 30,000 participants by this week for their phase 3 covid-19 vaccine trial, and they have proposed to expand that patient pool to 44,000 participants. pfizer up 2.8%. biontech up 3.5%. then flip it to astra-zeneca's phase 3 trials resuming in the uk after being halted last week, after one patient had a serious physical reaction. astra-zeneca is up half a percent at the moment. now, even though as vaccine movers move closer to their target, more companies are allowing their employees to choose whether to return to the workplace which bodes well for work anywhere stock, okta, up 68% year to date. okta recently announced most of its 2600 employees can work off-site permanently. the remote secure login software giant earned subscription fees to help clients keep their data

and employees cyber-secure no matter where they log in. the ceo and co-founder, todd mckinnon, is smack in the middle of this constantly shifting landscape. great to see you. i'm interested to know how many of your employees have told you you know what, i'm going to opt to permanently work remotely? >> well, as you know, they are all working remotely now, as are 70% of employees in the u.s. because of covid-19. what we have done is we really decided a few years ago that long term, we were going to give employees choice and flexibility for the reason is we wanted to hire the best people no matter where they were in the country. so we wanted that flexibility. it was a little bit slow getting going but one thing covid-19 and this work from home we are all in now has proven is that we can be very effective so now we are really embracing this choice and this freedom for employees going forward. liz: jpmorgan made a lot of news last week saying it now wants its traders back.

i have heard a lot of companies say that they want their upper level management to get back into the office once again, and yet even as those announcements are coming and those directives are coming, you are signing on new clients. we put together a bunch of names here of some of the current but newer clients, equifax, t-mobile, you are either getting new clients or upping your existing power with some of these names. what's at the heart of what they are doing when it comes to the relationship with you and okta? >> i think it's important to understand that this transition to flexibility for choice, dynamic work, is not something that happens overnight. you really have to build your processes and your culture and most importantly, your technology around it. we have the advantage that we use okta internally so we are a leg up on moving toward this flexibility. other companies i think will move to this over time but it will happen at different paces for different companies. i think what you are seeing in the marketplace is that, you

know, more and more companies choosing okta is this choice and platform that gives them flexibility across both their employees, you mentioned the traders at jpmorgan, but also their customers so somewhere for every trader there's many customers logging on to a website, interacting with that company directly. okta gives both -- gives our customers the flexibility for not only remote employees but also great experiences for their customers as well. liz: todd, have you modeled, have you prepared for a vaccine? we hear that of course, the names we just articulated, whether it's astra-zeneca, pfizer, biontech, inching closer, moderna, then there are therapies that are already established out there, and they get closer. have you modeled for what that might mean for your company and you know, then there's russia, russia claims they have a vaccine that has not been independently verified, but the chinese are getting close, too. >> we have.

i think as i mentioned right now, we are all fully remote but the future is we will get through this in terms of the vaccine and covid-19, and we will put it behind us as a country and as the world will, and when that happens, we will be in this dynamic world and the big advantage for companies in this dynamic world i think is the flexibility and the ability to hire great employees to help move your company forward no matter where they are. and the flexibility to do that and make them productive and also a way that makes them secure as well. we can't forget about the security implications of all of this. liz: well, which i really wanted to bring up. okta has been that key name that's helped us get toward digital, accelerating the digital transformation, but you know, you look at what the fbi just came out with, they say there are 4,000 cyberhacks a day, that they are getting complaints about, up 400% from the pre-coronavirus era. you know, these numbers prove how important your multi-factor

authentication software is needed now more than ever. what's the next step? because you struck partnerships with names like crowdstrike and proof point to make yours more secure. >> it's really important for your viewers to understand and it's kind of nuanced. okta is an identity platform which essentially means that we keep track of your people, whether they are customers or your employees, and the technology that they can connect to. that gives you control as to who can connect to what and we talked a lot about in this meeting about enablement, enabling people to have flexibility. it's also about security. you cannot only make sure people can log in when they say they are who they are, but also the bad guys can't. it's a big deal. the bad guys are coming after us. all this remote work is great for flexibility, but it also opens up potential issues. if you don't have a system that can keep track of who the people are, make sure they are who they say they are, logging in securely, that's what you need. then it goes further than that, too. you have to -- the technology landscape is broad so no one vendor can secure it all alone.

that's why we are partnering starting from our strong foundation, partnering with companies like crowdstrike and proof point, best in class in terms of end point, end computer security and crowdstrike, proof point secures the e-mail vector effectively partnering with okta is unassailable. liz: okay. we've got to run. todd mckinnon. we'll be right back. so you're a small business, or a big one. you were thriving, but then... oh. ah. okay. plan, pivot. how do you bounce back? you don't, you bounce forward, with serious and reliable internet. powered by the largest gig speed network in america. but is it secure? sure it's secure. and even if the power goes down, your connection doesn't. so how do i do this? you don't do this. we do this, together.

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liz: breaking news. hurricane sally, as we speak, has gained strength in the gulf of mexico at this hour. right now, it is a stronger category 1 storm, top winds of about 85 miles per hour. just to let you know, it's located about 130 miles east-southeast of the mouth of the mississippi river. it is a slow-moving storm that

is expected to make landfall sometime tomorrow but slow-moving storms mean dangerous storm surges and massive flooding potential. residents from texas to louisiana and alabama rushing to make last-minute preparations at this hour. two feet of rain expected in some areas. energy companies, refiners and ports are shutting down or have already shut the doors on their operations. the port of new orleans closed today. chevron and bp closing their offshore production facilities, evacuating workers. phillips 66 shutting its refinery in the region and shell cutting production to minimum rates. hurricane sally is the second major storm to interrupt operations this season. walmart taking to the skies to make deliveries for health and wellness products, thanks to a new drone deal. let's get to ashley webster for the drone details. hi, ash. ashley: yeah. hey, liz. the drone wars are heating up. walmart says it's teaming up with a zip line, that's a

company that is better known for its medical drone operations in africa. the deal will reportedly focus on delivery of select health and wellness products in the united states, but ultimately, the plan calls for drone delivery of general merchandise. now, don't forget, this is in addition to a deal made public just days ago with walmart running a pilot project for delivery of grocery and household products through automated drones with delivery firm flytrex. that's two separate agreements. they have already begun delivering packages to walmart customers in north carolina just last week. now, as walmart seems happy to partner with companies already working in the space, amazon just recently received approval from the faa to operate its own prime air delivery drones. amazon says it will begin its own delivery test but hasn't shared any details on when and where exactly that will take place. but we should be very careful

and keep this in mind, liz, the full scale drone deliveries as we all imagine, fully automated without direct line of sight, still could be many, many years away before the infrastructure is properly integrated and all the rules and regulations approved. that's going to take longer, i think, than some people believe but we are slowly but surely getting there. liz: yeah. well, zipline is doing it. we have had those guys on the show. brilliant people. congratulations to them. ash, thank you very much. nasdaq up 215. the dow is still powering higher. 380 points to the upside. we'll be right back. introducing stocks by the slice from fidelity. now you can trade stocks and etfs for any amount you choose instead of buying by the share. all with no commissions. stocks by the slice from fidelity. get your slice today.

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now since the march choses that we're at the lowest we had seen, right? at least for the year. the dow is up 50%. the s&p is up 51%. the nasdaq is up 61%. pe, price to earnings ratios are just skyrocketing. look at the merger atmosphere, nvidia is inking with 40 billion acquisition of arm. 108% premium to friday's share price. how are investors i don't know with 300 billion in assets viewing to let the good times roll atmosphere? let's bring in one of them. today's closer, bruce biddles, more than 300 billion in management. bruce, give me a sense how you're viewing it right now. >> that is a good question about the mergers and acquisitions because a surge in mergers and acquisitions typically occurs in the late-stages of a bull market. in the present example however,

economic conditions, economies of scale, favor large well-capitalized companies more than perhaps ever before. it is the large, well-capitalized companies are attracting most of the investment capital. and i believe, i think a lot of this has to do with the record low interest rates that allow for low-cost financing. makes acquiring more attractive while businesses with less scale are hurt by the banks tightening, the lending standards. i would also add many tech and health care companies would rather buy the new tech or new drug pipeline and fast changing economy than develop it from scratch which of course takes a lot of resources and time. liz: well, at what point do you say or do you believe on the belief we're starting to get close to maybe a death throw here and there of a bull market?

>> the stocks are priced for perfection, there is no question about that. valuations are stretched anywhere you want to look, if you compare it to interest rates but of course valuations look much more attractive but when you look at absolute valuations, first of all valuations don't tell you there is a rational of the stock market. what they do tell you that the inlearn risk in the market if something should go awry but as long as the fed will keep interest rates at zero and there is no alternative for investors and there is lots of money on the sidelines and if we get a virus vaccine, that is a game-changer. so the markets are setting up here at these high valuation levels, i think in some respects, justifiably so. now with that said, if, the election goes poorly, and by poorly i mean it ends in a draw or a contested affair, that

takes days or weeks or months to resolve, that's a different story. [closing bell rings] connell: liz, bruce you articulated it so well. a healthy dose of caution. a lot of positives here. bruce biddle of bear, that will do it for "the claman countdown" a green day on wall street. melissa: stocks rallying on positive vaccine developments in major deals in technology. happy monday, i'm melissa francis. hey, connell. connell: hey there, melissa, happy monday indeed. welcome to "after the bell." second day of gains for the s&p. the nasdaq snapping a two-day losing streak and up almost 2% on the day. we'll talk a lot about it and cover the other big stories with fox business team coverage. blake burman at white house. gerri willis is watching those markets. we start t