of course, we did have a weak adp private jobs numbers tuesday, but expectations are very muted so anything better than 440 gives another boost to the market. david: great to see you, thank you very much. liz claman, over to you. liz: david, thank you very much. david, you have heard of wing and a prayer? stocks are surging on a stimulus tweet and a prayer. we've got new record highs as nancy pelosi's deputy chief of staff, in a tweet, pulls back the curtain on possible compromise between the speaker and senate leader mcconnell. the dow now above 30,000. we are at 30,049 points and flirting with a record. it needs 162 points of gains. we are up 163. you got to stay with me. any gain for the s&p, that's the third straight all-time high and the nasdaq is about to notch its 47th record of the year. this comes as congress sends a bill to the president's desk

that could spark an ugly storm for investors in chinese stocks. just back from asia, undersecretary of state for economic growth, keith crock, is here live to react. he will reveal the new weapon our government is using to counter china's fast-growing technological might. the deadliest day of the coronavirus pandemic, now at this hour has los angeles going into full lockdown mode. we are on the ground in l.a. as businesses shutter in real-time. from college dropout to ceo, the youngest self-made billionaire in the world with us live on the day his tech company goes public. discussing the risks he took that triggered his laser-like rise to the top. first, we begin with a fox business alert. the tweet heard round the stock market with billions in coronavirus relief at stake. house speaker nancy pelosi's deputy chief of staff just put out this tweet in the last hour and a half that used covid

relief and as soon as possible in the same sentence. the tweet confirmed that the speaker and senate leader mitch mcconnell spoke today and have a shared commitment to breaking the stimulus stalemate. the market's cheering tempered by news the house last night sent the bill to the president's desk that will kick chinese companies, names like nio, alibaba and more, off u.s. stock exchanges. basically, ban them if they don't follow u.s. auditing rules. the trump administration appears to be taking kind of a scorched earth policy toward china in the final month and a half before president-elect joe biden steps in. undersecretary of state for economic growth, energy and the environment, keith crock, just returned from a trip to asia. the former ceo of docusign joins us live. good to see you, undersecretary. the house passed the bill unanimously but the trump administration has led the way on blacklisting chinese companies for various reasons. as a former tech ceo, founder

and investor now at the state department, why is this the smart way to go? >> you know, liz, the chinese companies don't have to follow the accounting rules that all the other companies follow. i mean, for a guy who has taken three companies public, i don't think that's fair but that's a personal issue. it's really about protecting the american investor. it's also about making sure that the chinese companies don't have unfair advantages because financial strategy is a core part of business strategy. and also, to preserve the gold standard for our stock market. so i think the line in the sand has been drawn and they should really comply. liz: i couldn't agree with you more. i'm sorry, rules are rules. look what happened to investors here in the u.s. who invested in luckin coffee, the starbucks version in china. it was a complete disaster because they did not have transparency, there were all

kinds of shenanigans going on. i think this is proactive, i think it's rational. certainly unanimously the house felt that way. let's talk about what's happening here. you just got back from asia and a very broad-based trip to south america, where you were pushing something called the clean network. this has nothing to do with clean energy or anything like that. it has to do with making sure the 5g network globally is secure. it sounds to me like this is everyone's invited except china. am i right? >> so the clean network is an alliance of democracies that is addressing the long-term threat to data privacy, security, human rights and trusted collaboration. it's rooted in internationally accepted trust standards which are basically on democratic principles and it's an enduring long-term strategy. right now, 53 countries are on

the clean network. and industry leaders from around the world from fujitsu, oracle, hp, and it represents two-thirds of the global gdp. so this is not only for 5g but it's also for all kinds of other areas, clean cable, clean carrier, clean cloud, and it actually can certainly be extended to clean energy and clean minerals and clean supply chains, clean labor practices. i think this is a really -- what started out as a project has really turned successful. it's turned huawei's 91 5g contracts they announced last february, most we can count is a dozen so it's turned back the tide of huawei, it's proved

china is beatable and in the process, it's exposed i think the chinese communist party's biggest weakness, lack of trust. liz: okay. i understand all of that and i wish we had a cyberscroll because the map didn't really show the importance of the 53 companies that are actually in the clean network. albania, belgium, brazil, bulgaria, denmark, french, germany, greece, israel. in essence, it is going to give certainly u.s. companies an advantage when it comes to rolling out 5g. but is this basically a way of saying we are shutting out china which you know, that math doesn't -- it shows a few countries but i'm telling you, you guys have some real oomph behind this with so many names. it almost feels like it's a shut-out of huawei which had been on track to basically dominate the 5g technology that was out there. so what do you say to people who

say this is really just politics? >> well, huawei is china's only worldwide brand in the company. it's an extension of their surveillance state. that's what they use to -- for all the human rights abuses. this is a tool the worst of dictators could only have dreamed of. so this is really absolutely incredibly important because on these 5g networks, it's not just about smartphones, liz, it is about power generation systems, it's about internet of things, manufacturing processes, sanitation systems, global power grids. liz: agreed. sure. yeah. >> this is absolutely critical. liz: undersecretary, i do want to ask you about tiktok before we get to your very important diplomatic visit to taiwan. on tiktok, tomorrow is the day

that it is supposed to, at least its parent, chinese-owned bytedance, is supposed to divest of u.s. tiktok or else it will be incurred with lots of financial penalties. tell me why the administration is spending so much time on this particular chinese company. i mean, that's my dog and my cat. i went on tiktok and posted them scrapping, fighting. there are so many other bigger issues, are there not? >> well, liz, it's more than just about tiktok and tencent. it's about data. these are other tools that china uses in terms of taking all this data in. you know, they have this great china firewall. all the data comes in but none goes out and they use it for their purposes. everything from a social credit system to all kinds of things. and also, you know, that great china one-way firewall is reciprocal in terms of all the

propaganda goes out but the truth doesn't come in. this is incredibly symbolic, liz. liz: i'll tell you what's symbolic. you just visited taiwan. you are the highest ranking state department official to have visited taiwan in four decades. this of course is like poking china again, because china feels it's their territory. taiwan is a democracy. it is self-ruled. we support that, certainly, but this is a gutsy move on your part. how do you see this relationship moving forward? >> well, i went over there to honor president li, their father of democracy. they had a memorial service for him and so it was a great honor. i always welcomed them of course to the clean network and we had an economic dialogue. subsequent to that, they came over a week ago last friday and we signed an m.o.u. for the li economic prosperity partnership which is economic collaboration,

all kinds of different areas from health care to 5g to semiconductors, education, all those kind of things. and if you look at taiwan, they are a role model in terms of capitalism and democracy for that reason. actually, for the entire world. they are a great partner and a great friend to the united states. liz: undersecretary of state keith crock, thanks so much as always for joining us. we love you as a guest because you have been on both sides. you founded arriva, you ran docusign and of course now in government. unanimously approved, mr. crock was. thank you so much. good to see you. >> thank you, liz. liz: one of the market's most famous short sellers throwing in the towel on tesla. the electric vehicle stock is up 4% on the heels of short seller and tesla bear jim chanos reducing his short bets.

he says you know what, he has a short position, 5% of capital at his fund, but he's not the only one. he says his short position has been painful, as the stock charged higher by 600% so far this year alone. tesla is not the only stock that's squeezed short sellers lately. let's get to our floor show traders. andrew smith and phil flynn. andrew, many stocks completely defied the odds of horrible headlines all throughout the last nine months of the pandemic so short sellers have been squeezed. what are you seeing in the short space? >> that's exactly right. it's been a capitulation of shorts as of late. in fact, one of goldman sachs' data points over the last 20 years shows it is a low record level set for the amount of short interest as a percentage of flow for the s&p 500. it's not just the overall index. we have seen the gig sectors, all of them except for energy have hit these record lows in the amount of short interest. so it's really across the board, short sellers had a hard time,

especially with the fed liquidity injections that have really sent this market higher. everyone is throwing in the towel and saying we will take the other side and close the short book. it's definitely manifest within the market. energy is the only one that has not caught up to that trade. liz: oh, phil, timing is an interesting thing, though. when everybody starts throwing in the towel on one trade, doesn't it make you wonder if within the next few weeks or so, something bad might happen? i don't know. what have you seen? are you seeing any flows of short sales, people betting against a certain stock, basically throwing their hands up and saying i'm out, i'm getting squeezed? >> this has been the most hated bull market in history, let's face it. you and i have been talking about this for a long time. this market continues to defy the negative expectations because things overall continue to do very well. we have had this accommodative environment. the shorts don't usually give

up. they continue to keep getting their heads handed to them the last couple years. it's good to see a little of that capitulation because if they keep going that way, they will be in big trouble. it's amazing how many stocks are really hated this month. some of the top stocks that got shorted this month, best buy, believe it or not, the other one of course is advanced micro devices, beyond meat. to be honest with you, i want to short sell beyond meat, to be honest with you. i think that's overdone right now. it got a big bounce today because they're selling meatballs at costco. yay. i'm still not a big believer, at least not at these price levels. i think that's due to come back. the other one that's really been short sell a lot this month has been advanced micro devices. this has been a company that has had a few challenges but i think they are going to do very very well in the new year. so look at that. facebook has been really beat up as well. lot of short sellers got beat up

on that. holiday season, you don't usually want to be short facebook going into the holidays when ad sales usually rise. liz: people who are trying to short the airlines, delta is up 5% today. it's a tough, tough market to guess. good to see you both. andrew, phil, thank you very much. we do have the dow chopping up to session highs here, at least getting closer. up 181. the city of angels on lockdown but could the entire golden state be next in line for a shutdown? we will take you live to los angeles on the economic impact already being felt from the latest rounds of covid restrictions. the closing bell rings in 45 minutes. we are on track for an s&p and a nasdaq record. you're watching "the claman countdown." stay with us. new projects means new project managers.

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wednesday. u.s. hospitals bursting at the seams with 126,000 patients, also the highest during any given day on the pandemic. this as los angeles has ordered residents to stay at home with mayor eric garcetti saying the city is approaching a quote, devastating tipping point that could overwhelm the hospitals. fox news' william la jeunesse is in los angeles. this has got to be a instrumentiblow for struggling businesses. reporter: it definitely is and there is a growing backlash against what many see as unsupported evidence to these very hard lockdown rules and very strict rules. unlike back in march, when people pretty much accepted it, now people are not. they are asking for the hard evidence. people are fighting for their lives and demanding data. so far, california, and i know l.a. county, has not provided that. parents are out playing with their kids in closed parks and playing kickball without masks.

diners are fuming over rules that allow massage, hair and tattoo parlors to stay open but are closed to indoor dining. yesterday we learned l.a. county used indoor dining transmission rates to close outdoor dining. only 4% of cases have to do with dining at all. last night, mayor eric garcetti issued a stay-at-home order. no walking with others, no hanging out with anyone outside your family. >> it's time to hunker down. it's time to cancel everything. and if it isn't essential, don't do it. don't meet up with others outside your household. don't host a gathering. don't attend a gathering. reporter: facing a shortage of hospital beds and overflowing icus, governor newsom is today expected to require all non-essential workers to stay home in those counties where icus are more than 85% full. we know that santa clara county and potentially a few others in

northern california. but definitely people are sensitive right now to any of these broad lockdowns. that's something i think the governor knows and is going to be very -- a little bit more circumspect if you will about having a blanket shutdown, especially as christmas approaches and you know better than most, businesses need to make their money, retail does, anyway, in this 30-day period. back to you. liz: yeah. absolutely. absolutely. and being from los angeles myself, i just feel for those restaurants who scrambled to put out sidewalk tables and warmers, et cetera. i really feel for those business owners. not to mention, of course, the victims of the coronavirus. william la jeunesse, thank you very much. live from los angeles. cruise line cancellations are actually getting canceled out by vaccine hopes, despite extending suspensions of multiple voyages in just the past 48 hours. look at carnival and norwegian cruise line stocks. they are among the s&p's biggest winners right now.

carnival up 9.5%. norwegian up 9.66%. royal caribbean also up, despite additional cruise cancellations. it's seeing a 5% gain. from the seas to the skies. we've got your first class view of the 737 max's return to the skies. our own intrepid grady trimble, there he is boarding the maiden voyage of the controversial rejiggered boeing jet. he's going to take you along and describe that experience when the closing bell rings in about 38 minutes. stocks at session highs. look at the dow, up 222 points. we'll be right back.

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liz: we have some breaking news on facebook shares. facebook shares are falling about 1.5%. we can take a look at the intraday so you can see how it started to spike and then

dropped, because facebook's been accused by the u.s. justice department for discriminating against u.s. workers. the doj has just filed a suit, this came in our urgents file, accusing the social network of refusing to recruit, consider or hire quote, qualified and available u.s. workers for more than 2600 positions that were instead allegedly reserved for temporary visa holders that the company has sponsored for permanent green cards. so it's been a rough session anyway but you can see that just after 2:00 p.m., the word started to get out that the doj was putting out this lawsuit. we do need to tell you, facebook has just released this response in the last minute. quote, facebook has been cooperating with the doj in its review of this issue and while we dispute the allegations in the complaint, we cannot comment further on pending litigation. the lawsuit, a result of a two-year-long investigation by the justice department.

so we are looking at the stock. down about $4.49 or 1.5% to $283 and change. this as we have just a few minutes ago hit session highs for all three major indices. in the meantime, dow stock boeing flying high at this hour with not one, but two reasons to push it higher. we do have boeing up 7.5%. first reason, ryan air reaching a deal to purchase 75 additional boeing 737 max jets in the company's biggest deal since the plane was grounded by u.s. regulators in march of 2019, after two fatal crashes. the two companies already had a deal in place to purchase 135 jets. ryan air expects its final delivery by the end of 2024. now the second reason. a successful demo flight of the 737 max. american airlines running a 45-minute test flight from dallas to tulsa yesterday and fox business's grady trimble was invited to go along on board.

grady, i'm sure a little bit of white knuckle experience, maybe, but tell us about the experience you had. reporter: well, i actually wasn't nervous, liz. this was like any other commercial flight and all of the pilots we talked to, american ceo went on board the day before, everybody says this is essentially the most scrutinized plane in aviation history. you can see some of the video of our flight. american is looking to rebuild confidence in this airline before they return it to commercial service later this month, and one of the ways they're doing that is offering these demo flights to employees. we were on one of those demo flights. in fact, it was actually one of the first flights with members of the public on board since that plane was grounded in 2019. of course, since those two crashes, it's had wiring fixes and an update to that mcas flight system that was partially responsible for those two crashes. the pilots will also have to do new training. we flew to tulsa, which was not

an accident. that's where american has been storing its 24 max planes since they have been grounded. they have been doing regular maintenance on them, including rotating the tires, firing up the engine. that plane is more environmentally friendly than previous boeing models. it's also a cost saver because it's more fuel-efficient. that's why the american c.o.o. told me they plan to expand their fleet to up to 100 in the next few years. >> -- important part of where we're growing. our whole point on this one here is the fact the pilots, flight attendants and mechanics all say this is a safe aircraft and is ready to fly, we want to get it up, but the whole point is you are going to build confidence. reporter: there has been some talk about rebranding the 737 max because of what it's been through, but boeing's ceo said today they have no plans to do that, although don't be surprised if they emphasize the 737 part of it more than the max

part. but you mentioned some people might have that white knuckle experience, might be a little hesitant to get back on one of these planes. all of the airlines, american, united and southwest, that plan to fly 737 max planes in the near future, they will let you rebook your flight if you don't want to fly on the max. liz: all right. we'll be watching it. for people who feel that they missed some type of opportunity, the stock is still down more than 40% year to date. at the moment, yes, a gain of 7.33% for boeing. but we shall be watching this. thank you so much, grady. good job. up next, we introduce you to the tech genius bribed by peter thiel to quit stanford. the kid is now the youngest self-made billionaire in the world as his autonomous driving laser company speeds on to the public raceway. with 29 minutes left to trade on his first company's first day of

trade, the luminar ceo austin russell is here to laser in on his gutsy pathway to wall street. the dow right now, up 214 points. the s&p seeing a gain, look at the nasdaq up 70. we'll be right back. is is decis. 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. it'sthe north pole has tond now wibe feeling the heat. it's okay santa, let's workflow it. workflow it...? just picture it... with the now platform, we'll have the company you always imagined. efficient, productive, seamless. ok, i'm in! whatever your business is facing... let's workflow it. servicenow.

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options, answer any questions you have and help you enroll over the phone. plans with a zero dollar monthly plan premium are available in many areas. call now and we'll also send this free guide. humana, a more human way to healthcare. liz: a fox business alert. one of the hottest cybersecurity stocks is striking the brass bell right now. look at crowdstrike shares. they are spiking after the company reported record third quarter results and positive fourth quarter revenue guidance. needham raised its price target on the company to $200 a share and right now, it's at $161 and change, up 14%. i have a little math for you. when does 37 equal $4 billion? well, when flutter entertainment spends $4.2 billion to acquire 37% of sports betting and daily fantasy site, fan duel, bringing

its stake to 95%. it's an interesting deal. the deal leaves the door open to further involvement by fox sports which of course is owned by fox corporation, the parent of fox business network. flutter has given fox sports the option to buy 18.5% of fan duel in july of 2021. flutter is up 7%. snowflake shares are melting up after the company's first earnings report since its ipo in september came out. wall street overlooked snowflake's operating loss and focused instead on the 115% increase in product revenue. that's good enough for a 15.25% jump. and weed stocks. you know, this morning my team and i were talking and i said we got to show weed stocks because they are on a high lately as a biden presidency is expected to support decriminalization of marijuana and as several states just recently legalized the use

of recreational marijuana in the november election. let's see how they performed since the start of this quarter. look at aurora cannabis, tilray and canopy. they all have been spiking. tilray up 88% this quarter. canopy up 102%. had you invested at the start of the quarter in aurora cannabis, you would be up 144%. if you jumped in on luminar, you would be up double digit percentages as well. luminar stock cruising on its first day of trading. this is an autonomous driving sensor technology company that has just debuted. all right. this kid right here is 25-year-old austin russell, who is the youngest self-made billionaire in the world. he's the man at the helm. he got to open his stock at the nasdaq earlier via spac. it went public via a special purpose acquisition company.

as he rang the bell this morning, his enthusiasm jumped just like the stock did. spac is a word of course you keep hearing on the show and for good reason. now 208 companies have gone public through this method, compared to just 59 last year. it's like a blank check type of company. let's bring in the whiz kid, austin russell. great to have you. i'm sure this is an unbelievable day for somebody like you. what's this like? >> absolutely. no, it's incredible and surreal. thanks for having me on here, too. it's great to get a chance to connect. it's certainly been eventful, a lot of sleepless nights and you know, there's a whole lot of work leading up to all this. it's been eight years on the journey here up to this date of us going public. it's always been part of our road map but excited to be able to get out there and lead up to a strong close even despite the head winds of 2020.

we have got some great feathers in our cap for major oem and business wins leading up to it. just keep charging on. liz: yeah. well, you know, you guys make these light detecting and radar sensors. i know from lidar because i covered the autonomous driving scene. what makes yours different? because you have a very interesting sort of tagline where you say that these systems which basically send out lasers at objects that are on the road and then measure the distance once they return, they're 99% effective but you would like to say what about that? >> yeah. so really, the whole challenge for autonomy to ultimately get it out of research and development and into production, all comes down to that last 1%. it's ultimately easy to make something work 99% of the time. but that last 1% is critical because you can't really miss anything when it comes to autonomy. you have to be able to very

accurately understand everything going on, you know, so that's the whole point of what we deliver. we built this type of lidar sensing system entirely from the ground up, making our own components, lasers, receivers, our own chips go into this, all to be able to deliver this level of safety and do so in an economic device. maybe you are familiar, if you covered the autonomous vehicle space, these roof racks full of devices that's $100,000 type stuff. we had to have something that we can profitably sell in vehicles for more on the order of $1,000 and do so with higher quality. that's exactly what we have done here. liz: well, we showed that it looks pretty streamlined. we went out and test drove with waymo, of course. waymo makes its own system called the honeycomb laser bear and they are very proud of their system. i would say maybe that's a competitor but you are looking

at a deal you struck with intel's mobile eye which is in 54 million vehicles but that's more of a assisted driving thing. you are going for autonomous, correct? what deals do you have out there? >> absolutely. we are working with a total of 50 commercial partners including some of the top ten largest auto makers, and that's really where recently, some of those programs that we were working on have progressed to a new stage for the industry of actually getting an opportunity to begin production. really, everything with the company you mentioned or others out there, they have be stuck kind of in r & d mode, testing mode, whereas we have been really focused on working directly with auto makers to see this happen out at scale. also, with the right ecosystem partnership. we are talking on the automaker side, volvo cars, daimler trucks, largest manufacturer in long haul trucking and intel's mobile eye for their av series

solution and their robbotaxi. liz: awesome. you have a very interesting back story. you little brat, you quit stanford just a few months in. i'm a two-time stanford reject. undergrad and graduate. i ended up at berkeley, it's not so bad, i did okay. >> there you go. liz: but you accepted the peter thiel challenge where he would encourage very smart people to quit college for a $100,000 investment and you took that deal. what did your parents who i know are fox business fans and are watching right now, what did they say when you came to them with this idea? >> you did what? got a little bit of that, you know. i think, you know, i think it's funny, obviously your parents have always been super-supportive. they kind of joked like they're not from the technology industry at all or anything related to it. they're like you just go do,

from a young age, you do your black magic in the garage. it was always kind of funny. i always knew academia wasn't going to be the right route for this. if you really want to make a huge impact in the world, you know, being stuck in a given lab is not the right way to do it. you have to be able to commercialize and make it economically viable and to make all that different. that's why i'm just so happy to see all this value creation and having an opportunity to really apply everything we do into the real world. liz: austin russell, the ceo of luminar, congratulations. it's your first day of trade. a big gain here for the stock. we will see you again, i am sure. the dow has just given up most of its gains. i'm not going to blame austin for that. he's so enthusiastic. we will find out exactly what's going on behind this. we were up 222 points. now we are up just 52. stay with us. we will get you the news in a minute. now is the time for a new bath from bath fitter.

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points. we are back now up 122. if we can flip it over to the s&p. s&p just turned negative a second ago and now it's popping slightly back up by about three points. nasdaq as well. we are watching this story but it appears at the moment that pfizer is going to have to tame or at least pull back some of its original planned amount of the vaccine that would be going out because the original materials that they were able to secure did not meet their standards. okay. let me talk about hockey here. there's some news breaking here. in his first interview since the stanley cup finals, national hockey league commissioner gary bettman sat down with me for a fireside virtual chat yesterday as part of sports business journal's deal makers in sports conference. he broke the news that january 1 puck drop on the 2021 season is still quote, a work in progress, not a sure thing, due to the pandemic and questions such as whether teams will play in their home arenas or be forced to go

back into bubble hubs like they did during this year's stanley cup playoffs. that whole thing is still up in the air. but the bigger question now may be whether the league and team owners are now trying to alter an agreement the players and the nhl signed back in july to now make the players financially shoulder more of potential team revenue losses than the original percentage of their salaries agreed upon by both sides. here's what bettman had to say about that. >> please clarify. the word is now that the nhl is moving the goalpost, so to speak, asking players to defer an additional, i don't know, 10% or more into the 2021 escrow. where do negotiations stand? >> well, we're not actually having negotiations and we're not seeking to renegotiate. there will be stresses on the system and we have had discussions about what those stresses are and how they might be dealt with but we're not trying to say you must do x, y and z.

there are a lot of things we have to deal with if we're going to return to play, including realignment because teams aren't going to be -- you have seven teams in canada and we weren't going to be able to get in and out of canada to deal with that. what the season will look like, whether or not we play in our own buildings or in hubs again. liz: so this issue that you are talking about is not worth a red line where if they don't agree to add another 5%, 10% in the escrow account, it's going to ice the whole season? it wouldn't come to that? >> i'll be very clear. we have been absolutely unequivocal with the players that we're not attempting to renegotiate. liz: okay. two things here. the league is still not sure that they will have people in the arenas, fans in the arenas. that's 1.3 million per game depending on each town, as far as gate ticket revenue is

concerned. number two, you guys can tell me, my background was better than gary bettman's background. at least i had a fireplace for the fireside chat. the dow now losing once again almost all of its gains of 200 points. we are now up 32. the s&p now down more firmly in the red by six points on this pfizer news that it has slashed its vaccine rollout target after facing supply chain obstacles. up next, our closer's picks to shoot not one, but two hat tricks in your portfolio, speaking of hockey. closing bell, seven minutes away. we'll be right back.

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♪. liz: again, folks you are seeing the s&p really struggling here after having been as high as 13 points. now we're down about six points after pfizer just came out with breaking news that it will only be able to ship half of the original amount of vaccine that it had hoped to, once they went

go h to get the raw materials that they did not hold up to pfizer standards. jim chanos was returning from bearish ways reducing the short position. we'll talk to charlie fast speaking with jim chanos. what did he i say? >> conversing amorphous text, i interviewed jim many times on tesla, trying to get my hands around his position on this which was a max short position. he was short. the max he does is in his hedge fund. i always raised a question with him, how do you short a stock that is boosted by a combination of iraqal exuberance, government handouts and and a cult? he could never really answer that question in my view right. he is right, maybe on the metrics, on the financials but he could never answer that question until today, he did answer that question he said, it

is really impossible to short this stock right now. says he reduced his position. he still has a small short position. he reduced it but it is telling, liz. this stock was one of the most controversial stocks over the last four years. you and i have, have recorded the travails of elon musk. jim chanos doesn't believe the stock is zero anymore. that is saying a lot about this company. now that doesn't mean the company is out of the woods. that doesn't mean the financials all of sudden look great but you know, it is hard to short a phenomenon and you know, tesla was the first ev, essentially out of the gate. it produces a decent car. jim took issue with production car. i hear otherwise. you look at that with other government handouts. jim would say it is an impossible short. what he is doing now looking at

other companies around tesla to short. again, he is always said that tesla is a zero. he doesn't think it's a zero anymore obviously, and you know, but as you know, liz, the final chapter on tesla has not been written. there will be more on this this company still has balance sheet issues. back to you. liz: okay. charlie, thank you very much. charlie gasparino. let's quickly get to our "countdown" closer. chad, you have 19 billion in assets under management. director of asset management at huntington. put up three metrics you look for. we're compressed on time. global growth, blue chip core, blue chip dividends. tell us about stocks, we'll put those up, you say fit into the three metrics. >> sure. thanks for having me on. we'll be quick. the names that you see here are really part of our core portfolio, our thinking about long-term stable businesses and so, all of these firms stand to benefit from the shifting

demographics as well as shifting consumer behaviors. as much as there has been talk about rotation and pre-covid. [closing bell rings] we think they are sustainable businesses regardless of the environment. liz: chad, we'll have you back. literally hoping for tomorrow so we can get more of your picks up here. that will do it for us. a big selloff but still green on the screen. connell: losing momentum in the final moments. we have california planning for more lockdowns, lockdowns that would be trigger based on icu capacity. we have pfizer making a big announcement of its rollout of its covid-19 vaccine. both headlines hit in the final half hour of the trading day. both seemed to hurt stocks. at close we're near the lows. s&p 500 and nasdaq hitting all-time highs earlier in the trading session. the s&p closes down, snapping a two-day winning streak at the process. nasdaq makes it happen record wise, closing at a new record high. it is up 28 points. the dow hangs