not only extend the 2017 tax cuts but to also bring sanity to our border in her immigration situation, that should keep this market going if nothing else because americans are totally supportive. maria: we are in a melted. >> speaking of melt ups, juan soto has agreed to a $765 million contract to flip from the yankees to the mets. that is a melted up. maria: that is big news. and big money. maria: what a contract. >> 15 years, $765 million. he is an up-and-coming supe superstar. >> were out of time, i will see you tomorrow. maria: thank you everybody. have a great day. i'll see you again tomorrow. "varney & company" picks it up now. >> good morning, everyone.

that was some we stand for the president-elect. in paris he was the leader everyone wanted to meet, he issued policy statements on ukraine. he wants an immediate cease-fire in syria, we should stay out. in the long interview on nbc he laid out his policy ideas he will do something for the dreamers he will not fire fed chair powell and he will not appoint a special prosecutor to go after joe biden. no retribution, plenty of outreach to democrats. meanwhile the political map of the middle east has been largely redrawn. has sought has fled syria, he is now in moscow. several rebel groups to take over damascus, air attacks inside of syria even the president-elect trump says it is not our fight. a lot going on. to the market the major indicators at all very near record highs. 2024 is going to go down is a great year for most investors.

they dow up maybe 40 points, look at the s&p it is up 27% so far this year, down a fraction of the opening bell and the nasdaq is up 32% this year, down maybe 30 points at the opening bell. interest rates are down. the yield on the ten year treasury is lower than last week, 418 right now in the two-year coming in at 4.12%, both lightly higher. but quite $98000, 989 and ch change. the price oil $60 a barrel. i want you to take a look at the price of gas. the national average for regular is $3.1 a gallon. in california you have to pay 4.36. right-hand side of the screen, diesel coming back to $3.51 a gallon. the price of gold on the upside to the tune of turning 30 bucks higher, $2006.89 an ounce. we are told incoming trump administration will be on food

guys very soon after the inauguration. rfk junior making america healthy again. trump's energy secretary nominee is making real waves, chris wright says climate change brings positives. he says climate is not a crisis. the senate confirmation will be very interesting. a huge contract for juan soto, he joined the new york mets on a 15 year $760 million deal, that is the biggest in baseball history. monday december 9, 2023, 2024 actually. "varney & company" is about to begin. ♪ ♪ ♪. stuart: i always like this song has a certain rhythm, the blue sky, this is the one day in the

last 30 we have not had a blue sky in new york city. it is monday morning, away we go, we started to speak with president-elect trump covering a lot of ground over the weekend. he spoke about ukraine and syria and announce more administration pics and laid out the agenda for the first 100 days in office. >> will do something with the board are very strong and powerful that will be our first signal to america that we are not playing games we have people coming in by the millions as you know and a lot of people shouldn't be here, most of them should not be here, working to be extended within the. as soon as we can the trump tax-cut because you know they're coming due in the very substantial for people and we will be focusing on crime in the cities and will work with democrat governors, most of them if you look at the 25 worst places is just about all democrat-controlled cities and

states. stuart: i have to say as of this monday morning he appears to have taken over the presidency. charlie hurt with me this morning. i'm inclined to say the biden era is over and trump is already taken over. what say you? >> i think you're exactly right. looking at the video, the footage out of notre dame this weekend, it's clear he's not only the president of the united states but is

that donald trump has embraced and made part of the republican party, that it doesn't matter who they pick, if they don't have those, if they don't have a platform to run on, that is appealing to the american voter, they're going to lose either way. >> who would have thought trump the centrist? but that's the way it is. i think. charlie hurt, thanks very much. you have a great week, charlie. we'll see you again real soon. see you. yes, sir. trump has announced new administration picks. good morning. lauren. morning. take us through them. >> alina habba, trump's personal attorney, will be counselor to the president. trump says he understands the weaponization of the justice department. he also is filling out the state department.

christopher landau, a former ambassador to mexico during his first term, will be the deputy secretary of state. michael needham, former chief of staff for senator marco rubio, as the counselor of the state department, and michael anton, former national security council spokesman, will serve as director of policy planning. all three would serve under trump's nomination for secretary of state marco rubio, and that would vacate a senate seat in florida. lara trump has been floated for that job. >> she has indeed. all right. thanks very much. check futures please. it's monday morning, 13 or 20 odd minutes to go before we get to the opening bell. dow down 40. nasdaq. i'm sorry. dow. dow down. up 40. nasdaq is down 38. not much change jacob sonenshine joins me this morning. jacob. can you see anything on the horizon that would really kill this rally? >> no. not really. i think for the rest of december, we've broken out to new highs. i said this a few days ago. right. so i think the santa rally is on into next year. the main catalyst from a macro standpoint, in terms of the

broader market trading as one, are going to be the types of policies that we get from the trump administration. the thing into 2025 that i do think could kill the rally would be tariffs. we're just not there yet. but we're going to be breaking out. i mean and also you have bond yields lower a little bit. >> why do you like the home improvement stocks so much. i mean home depot lowe's, sherwin-williams i mean the real estate market is kind of not doing well. you like home improvement. >> if you read the evercore and i'm joking because i happen to read the evercore analyst on homebuilders. okay. so that guy was pointing out home improvement sales up about 4% year over year in the last month or so. he has a proprietary survey, a proprietary kind of data configuration. so it actually looks like the home improvement area is starting to get a little bit better. it got knocked down for a i sherwin williams and

and faster. >> they're taking market shares aggressively and kelly moore paint is pretty much done and they're stuart: they're 10% in 2025. our viros want to know where this thing is

stuart: 14 minutes to the opening bell, mixed picture, the dow of 30, the nasdaq 1040. rebels have seized control of serious capital damascus, president beshear al-assad has went to russia where he's granted asylum. alex hogan joins us. bring us up to speed with the latest on all of this. >> people in syria woke up to a new chapter in the country the u.s. secretary of state anthony blinken says syrians have a reason for hope. over the weekend rebels in syria stormed the presidential palace using the capital city of damascus and overthrowing the regime of bus besar headshot, te allies russia and iran acknowledge a stunning speed of his defeat with iran arguing it was never asked for help. >> the syrian government did not consider it the duty for us because it was internal issue of

syria and to its own opposition groups. >> the rebels are made up of a coalition of groups that band together to overthrow the regime, the strongest group in the coalition is hts which he u.s. designated as a terror group, hds is leader yoav gallant ordered forces to return to the military positions and the weapons will not be tolerated. in order to prevent isis in syria from attempting to take advantage of this moment, president joe biden announced the u.s. struck dozens of isis sites the u.s. intercom says the air force hit more than 75 isis targets. u.s. officials say they're taking putin majors to make sure serious chemical weapons that could've been left behind by the asad regime do not fall into the wrong hands. stuart: thank you very much, over the we can president biden took credit for the progress in the middle east, watch this. >> for years that may back a by

saad has been iran, hezbollah and russia. over the last week the support collapse all three of them. all three of them are far weaker today than they were when we took office. our approach shifted the power in the middle east. this combination of support for our partners, sanctions and diplomacy and targeted military force but necessary. we now see a new opportunity opening up for the people of syria in the entire region. stuart: morgan ortagus joins us. it seems to be that russia and iran are losing ground in the middle east, that is israel and trump's doing. i don't think but under president biden should be taking the credit, what say you. >> is an impressive level of self-delusion for president biden and jake sullivan to think that they have anything to do with the historic defeat of hamas, hezbollah and now the action that we see of asad he chased out of syria and going to

russia. in fact is the administration did not enforce any of the sanctions on the books against iran or syria, what we know even happened in the last few years it was a biden administration who instead of putting pressure on asad in the regime they are working with arab leaders in the region to normalize asad. what we see from the biden team in the last week, we saw statements from de-escalation and an attempt to try again to normalize asad when the rebels were clearly on the advance. you can basically take everything that the biden team has done to the middle east over the past four years due to the opposite which is what israel did and get to the outcome. the only reason that we see the advancements in the middle east against russia and against iran and the terrorist is because benjamin netanyahu in the state of israel effectively ignored biden, they did not operate out of fear and operate out of fear

of escalation and they have been destroying their enemies. this is what happens when you reward friends and allies and go after your enemies. we have to give large credit to president donald trump being reelected. i tell you every terrorist in that region remembers what he did in 2022 qasem soleimani and they are all scared. stuart: on truth social trauma call for an immediate cease-fire. zelenskyy and ukraine would like to make a deal and stop the madness, they ridiculously lost 400,000 soldiers and many more civilians. do you think we are moving out quickly toward some kind of cease-fire in ukraine? >> i think so it's clearly what the american people want and what the europeans want as well, this of course is president trump statement after meeting with zelenskyy. you know this is something that they talked about read zelenskyy has been talking about how they

know they need in end game and they need to get to a negotiated settlement. when people ask me how does this all end. it's going to end with, here's where president trump, donald trump negotiated a settlement between the russians and the ukrainians just like every other war. you're going to tell me that the people that biden harris are responsible for american hostages are still being held in gaza for over a year, we negotiate a better ending to russia and ukraine the president trump and his team read i don't buy that for a minute. stuart: morgan ortega's, thank you for joining us. we'll see a lot of you in the near future. palantir ceo powerful guy every important that will be alex cart, our country, america is facing legitimation crisis. what exactly is a legitimation crisis. >> legitimacy crisis when americans don't believe what their leaders tell them. carp says that he hopes that does the department of government efficiency can restore that by rooting out what

is not working via transparency. here he is on "the claman countdown" last week. >> we have a dearth of legitimacy and this comes under culture, all of them are in charge of measuring, fixing, doing things, have low legitimacy. we need transparency as the first step to reinvigorating legitimacy in this culture and i wholeheartedly support what they're doing and god knows you cannot have a better person than elon musk doing it. >> palantir represent the intersection between technology and reform karp also says democrats lost because people want to feel safe and they want to believe that the person empowered has the enemy scared, the enemy is scared, you can be safer. palantir delivers the a.i. technology for the military to make the enemy scared. the shareholders have benefited. the stock is up your today over 340%. stuart: it picks up another 6% this morning. more on this later in the show. check futures, i have green for

the dow, it is up 50, small loss for the s&p, small loss for the nasdaq. the opening bell is next. ♪ what does a good investment opportunity look like? at t. rowe price we let curiosity light the way. asking smart questions about opportunities like clean water. and what promising new treatment advances can make a new tomorrow possible. better questions. better outcomes.

stuart: early going suggests a small move up for the dow in the small move down for the nasdaq. keith fitz with us today. why do you call apple the sleeper stock of 2025. >> oh my goodness this is what my favorite multiple billions installed devices and upgrade cycle 300 million pounds alone, yet perhaps next year 20% accessing a.i. one form or another through an apple device, earning growth 2025%. stuart: 20 - 25% and profit growth next year, will that translate into a 20 - 25% jump in the stock price? >> that's the hope over a long period of time earnings drive prices, the reason it is a sleeper the iphone in 2007 services in 2014 both people pooh-poohed apple in the fact

that they got their attention off of apple when is making such big changes is a carbon copy repeat. stuart: how about palantir you and other people have been really recommending it very, very strongly, do you think it will hit $100 a share. >> i do, we've taken out 80 which is right on your show back when it was under 50, here's the thing palantir makes stuff that makes software work, imagine your governor employee 81, 93, 2001, they can't talk to each other there beyond scalability, palantir sandwiches that together not only makes it talk but makes it productive and could do that anywhere in the world where the government system the civilian system is inexpensive contrary to what people think. stuart: the big picture do you see anything on the horizon which would interrupt the rally, we're in rally mode at the moment. >> the economy is really strong the black swans are good to be something going hot and one of

the conflicts but the fed backpedaling on rates other than that the path of least resistance is up and i wouldn't be too worried about over the next 12 months. stuart: trump says he will not fire jay powell is not reassuring to wall street or not? >> i cannot speak for wall street but to me i look at that and say i take both sides of the coin on that one. stuart: do we want to politicize federal reserve, that's my question. >> i don't think we do, we want to let jay powell do his thing but i would argue doing his thing hasn't necessarily been good because the market will do it better than a centralized institution like the fed. stuart: he is staying, that's the way it is. see you again soon, we have ten seconds to go, we start trading on a monday morning, we should tell you the major indicators are at or near all-time record highs, this market has gone straight up in 2024, overall we gained over 25%, big-game were

opening today's trading, up near five points, more red than green on the red 30, the s&p 500 has been slightly lower, seven points that's it. the nasdaq composite slightly lower, 45 points, a quarter% on the downside. i imagine big tech stocks are down, they are, amazon is up again at microsoft, apple, meta have all open lower. look at nvidia, china is accusing that company and breaching antimonopoly laws. good morning, what is going on. >> in my opinion i think is mad about the u.s. has restricted a lot of invidious most advanced ships to china because they are not our friend we do not want to give them good technology that we should be using instead. in retaliation china is launching an antimonopoly probe that dates back to a company that nvidia partnered with almost four years ago. we'll have to see how this plays

out on the market, 3% decline is not nothing but will have to see if there's any teeth to this from china. stuart: china is angry. they have invited social media companies to a meeting and it'll be in mid-december, what are they meeting about? >> a lot of this comes about their policies around drug sales online and mainly fentanyl that is become a big political issue one of the reasons trump wants to close the border with mexico, he wants to understand how these companies are surveilling online drug sales, what barriers they have around it, other monitoring this stuff just to get more information. stuart: tomorrow microsoft will announce whether or not they will buy some bitcoin, what we know about this. >> tomorrow we will have about whether they should publicly assess putting bitcoin on the balance sheet, board members at microsoft actually are voting against the proposal, we already look at all of these alternative

ways to think about making the company stronger national center for public policy research is supporting the proposal and they said bitcoin is excellent if not the best hedge against inflation and will get a vote tomorrow on whether microsoft will publicly assess putting bitcoin on the balance sheet, will have to see what goes through and we will establish bitcoin is another formative player. stuart: that will be another big deal we said were going to buy. palantir expanded the deal with the military we're going to talk about this all morning and all month, were up nearly 7% this morning what can you tell me about the deal with the military. have a partnership with operations command, for a.i. and defense, this is where palantir marries the two of them the $37 million contract for about a year, we are hearing this reaffirms that this is been a three-year ongoing relationship the reaffirm palantir as the number one company for the war fighter. again another big deal for

palantir. stuart: a workday the last time i checked the update of 6.8% there going to join the s&p. along with apollo on the morning of december 23 that is a monday morning right before christmas eve, what they're saying this is more representative of the large-cap space they are replacing corvo and another small company, that is the chipmaker. would you think about being added to the s&p 500 you always rally because you find a fund manager in a benchmark to the s&p 500 and i have to buy workday to stay in compliance with that. stuart: is 6.5% point gain because they're getting it. that's quite again. give me the latest on bitcoin and we checked earlier 99000. >> we drop below 100,000, at one point last week we got up to 102, breaking the psychological barrier of 100,000, want to see if 100,000 is the new floor we can rally up against worker for reaching technical levels maybe

a little bit of disappointment that we fell below but 99000 you're pretty close. >> 99000 is 99000. >> "after the bell" is an important announcement. >> are having their best year in terms of stock performance, 1999 as dockets up 82% year to date this is all about cloud momentum for a company. an early starter but other companies were late to appreciate the cloud momentum within oracle, investors are appreciated they are saying the cloud revenue could be $10 billion in the fiscal year ending may of 2025, it's all about the cloud. it's all about the call and where they say they're taking the company. a terrific performance of our this year. we are four or five minutes into the trading session, the dow is picking up a little grand at 44700. look at the dow winners, caterpillar, chevron, boeing, verizon and amazon.com. s&p 500 headed up by inter

interpublic, the warner bros. and supermicro. they were on the list, the nasdaq composite, do we have big tech, pdd, workday, warner bros., mongo and walgreen boots alliance. the ten-year treasury up a little bit this morning, you stopped a relatively low level 4.17%, the price of gold strong this morning up 2692, the price of bitcoin right now 99100, oil 68, $69 a barrel, 16-point to three right now. nat gas, 317 hardly changed. the average price for a gallon of regular all the way down to $3.1 per gallon. most of them paying $3. california $4.36 per gallon. coming up trump has a solution for families mixed immigration status. deport them together.

>> i don't want to be breaking up families, the only way you don't break up the families, you keep them together and you have to send them all back. stuart: some will see that as harsh, well as portable truck counsel chris cabrera about that. democrat senator ab klobuchar went after biden for pardoning biden, she's calling for reform. >> i am not a fan of these, i did not like the pardon of the presidents on i did not think that was putin, i think was the pardon reform and get right of these presidents. the next question will biden pardon his own family. we'll talk to house oversight chair james comer who is investigating the presidents family for years. trump brushed off concerns that terrorists will raise prices. can you guarantee american families won't pay more. >> i guarantee anything, i cannot guarantee tomorrow.

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stuart: 12 minutes in, it's gone read but not by much, the dow is up to, in s&p down eight and nasdaq 15 that the pretty trump planning to pull the plug on the ev mandate. jeff flock in philadelphia, what does this have to do with the post office? >> they got to replace lee's old mail delivery bands maybe you see them behind me these trucks are as old as you are, these are called common llb lifelong

vehicles they blasted a long time, the newest that you see right now is actually 30 years old they have to replace them in the postal service has been replacing them with electric vehicles as a result of biden policies. oshkosh defense is building them, ford transit bands are in-service down in georgia and there's plans for a whole lot more, the postal service was slow to go to ev's, they said they were too expensive but the climate bill got them $3 billion to buy 66000 ev delivery bands in 14000 chargers. the question is could president trump unwind the deal, these contracts have been signed we have been able to see the actual contracts but the question is can he unwind them because the postal service is run by an independent board, the president doesn't totally control it, is like a publicly held company. you gotta get the board on

board, pardon the pun and whether that can happen or not we don't know if the president was successful the companies impacted would be oshkosh, 45000 ev's they got a contract for ford transit bands in siemens charge.am link that will provide the chargers. my way of thinking electric vehicles might work best for a deal like this when they come back and forth every day, they don't go that far, easy to charge them, who knows. i think everybody agrees that these vehicles behind us should be put out to pasture unlike you and i we have a lot of trouble. stuart: i knew you were going to circle back to that, you are alright, see you again soon, trump was asked whether tariffs will cause price hikes, watch

this. >> economists of all strikes say ultimately consumers pay the price of tariffs. can you guarantee american families won't pay more? >> i cannot guarantee anything, i cannot guarantee tomorrow but i say if you look at my pre-covid, we have the greatest economy in the history of our country. i had a lot of tariffs on a lot of different countries but in particular china we took in hundreds of billions of dollars and we had no inflation. stuart: economists got that, steve moore. in your opinion if you impose tariffs do you raise prices for consumers? >> good to be with you the president had a good response to that where you said i was president for four years, we did have tariffs and we had record low inflation. i think he is correct, there is no law of economics that says when he raised tariffs that overall inflation will rise

because let me give you a simple example, let's say we put 25% tariff on toys that are imported in the united states from china, that will mean anybody who buys toys imported from china will pay a little bit more but the fad underfed has control the money supply, that means the price of other things wouldn't necessarily be depressed. the only way you get more inflation is when the fed flushes more money into the economy that is something milton freedman taught us 50 years ago and he was exactly right about that. i'm not here to defend terra firma free-market guy i believe in free trade but i would rather have tariffs as low as possible. one other point i get asked this so many times and there's so much confusion even by economist larry summers who is a smart guy what he does understand, i work with trump on this stuff, yes we are going to raise some of the tariffs imported into the united states but we will lower the taxes of things that are made here that's going to lower their

prices, overall i see no impact on inflation whatsoever. stuart: straighten something out, when you post tears on the first administration did not literally bring in hundreds of millions of dollars to the united states treasury? >> i don't know the exact number, not hundreds of billions but tens of billions of dollars cayman, tariffs are attacks they do bring in money to the federal government i'm hoping what we do in the second term i don't think american people what an overall tax increase your lower taxes on things made in ohio and pennsylvania and michigan and you get a raise the tax coming in from china or japan and a lot of americans would support that idea because why not favor things that are made in america. stuart: i see the point, one last question he's not going to fire the federal reserve board chairman he's not going to fire

him are you happy about that were not. >> there was a lot of indecision about this president by president trump on whether he had the authority to fire jerome powell and i believe the president does have the authority, there was a good piece on fox news by a top legal scholar sandy president should be able to fire the fed chairman, i think you should trump is doing the right thing, the markets are fine with jerome powell and he has 15 or 16 more months or so to be chairman, weighed about mr. president and putting somebody like kevin wurster kevin hassett or art laffer somebody who will be an expert on monetary policy. stuart: don't rock the vote, thank you for joining us we will see you soon. this weekend donald trump dominated on the world stage looking and acting like the president he is the one telling the world where america is going in the biden era is over that is my take top of the hour, trump

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stuart: trump has announced he is appointing his attorney alina habba as counselor to the president. rich edson joins us from west palm beach, florida. who else is trump appointing to his administration. >> he has announced that he hand full of senior advisors and members of the cabinet and the team in the designee for secretary of state marco rubio that includes christopher landau former ambassador to mexico during trump's first term as deputy secretary of state michael needham the former chief of staff for senator rubio as counselor at the state department and former national security council spokesperson michael antone to serve as director of policy planning the president-elect is laying out an aggressive start is the administration, he told meet the press he is going to the port

all of those here illegally, he'll try to cut the deal with democrats with immigrants brought here illegally as children into prosecute members of the jittery six committee. he said those members of congress should be prosecuted. >> cheney was behind it and so is bennie thompson and anybody on the committee, for what they did honestly they should go to jail. >> former republican representative and liz cheney responded donald trump suggestion that members of congress who later investigated is illegal and unconstitutional action should be jailed is a continuation of his assault on the rule of law and the foundation of our republic is in the president-elect said he will not instruct his special counsel jack smith. he is winding down his

operations after trump won the election last month. back to you. stuart: thank you very much indeed. a quick check of the market, the nasdaq just hit another all-time high, 198 is where it is, check the big board, the dow board down a fraction down four points, that's all they got, the dow winners let's have a look we have a few of them, with caterpillar, boeing, chevron, amazon amgen, is to be 500, the winners a good opportunity to show was a whole bunch of stocks, interpublic, celanese, freeport, aes corporation, nasdaq winners, who do we have, pdd holdings, workday, warner bros., walgreens alliance and illumina and still ahead on this program today border guy chris cabrera is on trump's proposal to deport families of mixed immigration status together, deport them altogether. trump is laying out his plans for the first 100 days we were asked gop spokesperson elizabeth

pitcher what will be his first priority. some democrats are furious with the hunter biden pardon, could the president pardon his whole family. will ask how so oversight james comer. syria collapsed trump and biden have different views on how to handle the unfolding situation, kt mcfarland on that. the 10:00 o'clock hour is next. ♪

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