unitedhealth is off a fraction. davida took open, shares there at $69.20. >>> madrigal pharmaceuticals said its experimental drug for treating a chronic liver disease that could lead to liver failure or cancer performed well during a study, when compared to a placebo. shares of the biotech company skyrocketed 88% to $87.18. >>> speaking of taxes, h amp r block reported stronger than examined revenue gains. the company's loss was also smaller than analysts expected. shares of h aefrp rchlt popped . >>> brown-forman says strong sales the jack daniels whiskey and tequila helped overall revenue rise. the company is raising its full year earnings forecast. shares climbed 6% to close the day at $65.85. >>> walmart is changing its official name in an effort to shift away from its brick and mortar image. the nation's largest retailer is dropping the hyphen and the word "stores" in its corporate name to bring attention to the importance of its e-commerce business. walmart shares fell fractionally to $97.28. >>> morgan stanle

. >>> unitedhealth has gained market empls by offering an all-in-one medical and pharmacy plan at better prices. anthem develops its own unit, one benefit consultant says the trend could mean employers could have little choice beyond a all-in-one plan. >> you'll have a couple big entities with significant power, and in certain market segments, they may start to make it very difficult to carve out pharmacy. >> it could save them money, but with cvs and aetna, employers and consumers will also want to know whether the clinics will mean more limited networks. >> is care that was potentially going to the physician's office now diverted to the storefront, but certain a question i have as to how it would all pan out as it moves forward. >>cvs is hoping the deal will been proved in the first half, but tells analysts building out that new front-door health care model could take longer than the first year to really take off. bertha coombs, "nightly business >>> craig garthway joinses to discuss could mean. he's a health economist and asr of strategy as kellogg school of management. good to have y

so higher priced stocks like unitedhealth, boeing, 3m, boeing, and apple distributed to the gains, accou more than 600 points in the dow's 1,000-point gain. health care, industrials, retail, technology industries were all represented. the one exception, goldman sachs contributed just about 20 points to the dow's gain. still, everybody's happy. for "nightly business repor i'm bob pisani at the new york stock exchange. >>> as bob just mentioned, the brightening prospects of a major tax cut especially for corporations contributed mightily to today's rally. every vote counts senate, of course. today the bill picked up a key one from arizona's senator john mccain. ylan mui is covering today's development from capitol hill. ylan, where do things stand as of right now? >> reporter: tyler, debate is still handing on the senate floor but this bill does appear to be gaining momentum, especially as senator john mccain has said that he'll be a supporter of this proposal. he put out a statement saying this legislation isn't perfect but he does believe it brings relief to american families. now, there

. >>> and unitedhealth group says it has signed a definitive agreement to buy chilean health company banmedica. united's shares were off just a fraction. >>> time for our weekly market monitor who has three value picks he says will benefit from tax reform. it's his first time on the program, so we're going to welcome ernesto ramos with bmo global asset management. nice to have you here, welcome. >> thank you, sue, happy holidays to you and our viewers. >> yes, absolutely. you basically favor right now value over growth because of valuation concerns in the market, correct? >> well, that and other reasons. the tax reform will have a huge impact on u.s. growth. we think conservatively speaking, it's going to add close to 1% to gdp growth over the next few years. so that favors the value sectors because they are more cyclical, financials, energy, materials, industrials are more the value stocks, where is technology, utilities, real estate, et cetera are more on the growth side, and those are not as favored by tax reform. so that's one of the reasons we like value stocks right now over gr

boeing since the dow is a pretty-weighted index, they pack a good punch just one of those stocks, unitedhealthe is in the top ten, worth around $216 billion that's dwarfed by the $879 billion market cap of apple, the 375 of johns everyone & johnson. we all know the debate about what's bert -- pride weighting like the dow, or market cap weighting like the s&p so far this year it's been the dow that outperformed the s&p. with so many stocks reaching triple, even some quadruple share prices, many are looking towards passive investing. fewer investors buy stocks that was when visa split 4 for 1. before that, brightic, it was coca-cola. now, there were days back in the late '70s when ibm was a $300-some stock. are we seeing a return to those types of times we'll see. >> what do you think of this trend? is it saying anything about the market at large? >> passive investing has been a massive part of this and probably more the an effect. everybody is just plowing money in day after day and buying the market in general. i think not only do evident this is higher priced stocks, but very low volatility.

behind these gains unitedhealth, caterpillar. we're keeping eye on banking stocks. look at this. goldman sachs, bank of america, all these banks doing much, much better. why? because strategists are getting behind the sector saying these stocks will benefit from tax reform, interest rates go up. this is a sector to be in. also doing well today, amazon, up why? because we found out that 45 to 50% of all online sales during the holiday season went to amazon. amazing record. this is up from 38% last year. amazon making gains of 1.5% on the week. now i want to mention to you online sales, up overall as well, up 18%. we're seeing strength in banking, amazon, some of the ones that we've seen strengthen for the entire year. back to you,. lea: thanks, gerry. a new pa poll revealing health care is the top issue among americans. 43% say the health care is the issue government should focus on in the new year. the president and administration announcing plans to do just that. blake burman with details from the white house. hi, blake. reporter: what the administration considering rewrites of

winners in the dow, visa, mcdonald's, amex, unitedhealth. variety of industries there, broad improvement across the board. other news that markets responding to, pending home sales increasing .2 of a percent, exactly like it sound. tells you how the housing market will be in future weeks. gaining hovnanian, lennar, pulte group and toll brothers. good news it there. tesla having its own announcement. elon musk tweeting today that they will start making a truck, a pickup truck that they hope will to up against ford and the f-series trucks. could be a while coming though. we're still waiting for the crossover from tesla which is supposed to come out in 2019. big promise. we'll see whether they can deliver. back to you. lea: gerri willis thank you. >>> consumer confidence falling from a 17-year high. the number remains strong, 122.1 but it came in lower than the analysts were expecting. let's bring in today's panel. liz peek and veronica daguerre. retail sales had a banner year. are consumers expressing different sentiment in what they're saying

this to provide, you know, lower-cost options so it's not always about, you know, amazon even unitedhealthgetting more into the provider and offering lower-cost solutions and different ways to engage with the system. >> so, michael, i have a question when it comes to consumers and lower cost options. i think i'm a pretty informed consumer, but i don't always know what it costs when looking at different options for either a test or procedure or medications. does a deal like this necessarily mean we're going to have more pricing transparency as a consumer so i can make better choices about health care >> no, that remains a big issue. transparency continues to be a big issue in health care we're starting to see ways to make it kind of more convenient, so when you go and visit your doctor, your doctor will be able to see what the relative costs are to a medication, and instead of waiting for a prior authorization, you may be able to get it there. so when i talk about kind of cost differential, it's really relative to the high cost hospital, and, certainly, you're seeing the rise of more urgent

within the dow, unitedhealth group the best performer, up about 1%.oming in at number two. joe: "what'd you miss?" italy's president has formally is all parliament at the request of the president, setting the stage for national election scheduled to take place on march 4. opinion polls show the nt establishment five-star movement ahead of the ruling party democratic party. none of these parties looks likely to win outright. joining us on the phone from the lawn is our overseas bloomberg news operation from italy. thanks for joining us. i'm very excited about spending the next couple of months covering the italian election. what is the key thing we need to understand about the italian election law that defines how the race works? >> the election law was put together in the last few months, specifically in an attempt to reach an agreement to have these elections before the end of the natural term of this legislature, which roughly is the spring of next year. it was a very difficult task, as you can probably imagine. they ended up producing a lot that's

unitedhealth already has a pbm a pharmacy benefit manager.eting with aetna in two different ways. you might see insurance companyç walks away from cvs because there is conflict at the pbm level. there will be a lot of turmoil here. basically health care is definitely on a long-term, good trend. you get these buying opportunities when hillary clinton tweets about clamping down on drug prices or something like that. whatever the next thing that sends prices down i think that will be a good buying opportunity. neil: switch gears quickly. bitcoin seems the next crazy thing. we could have wild swings in this, whatever you want to call it. >> you can't call it currency. neil: whatever it is, but i do know it swings wildly from day-to-day and i'm wondering what you guys are making of it? all this with a backdrop of a market that doesn't stop. >> we're covering more, hey, here is what is going on. usually we don't take a view that buy this thing. i wouldn't be surprised if it went from 10,000 to 500 or 40 bucks or 100,000. it is just so, there are gr

the dow shed 39 today to close at 241406789 some of the other big stories in our rapid recap >> unitedhealthuying davita for $4.9 million in cash. >> seems to be no stopping the crypto currency. surpassing 12k. >> just pure gambling. it's just gambling you want to gamble go to vegas vegas is fabulous. >> i hope we don't make big changes in terms of the economic growth structure which concludes having our tax rate be slightly below the average of the industrialized countries >> the administration is doing a tax cut and a spending decrease but he's doing them in the wrong order. what we need rightnow is a focus wholly on reducing debt. >> i have determined that it is time to officially recognize jerusalem. as the capital of israel sflt easy money has been made, the s&p has quadrupled off the bottom makes sense we would want less risk than three years ago or six years ago or nine years ago. >> and "consumer reports" has tested the iphone x and say the phone is an innovative geiss, has fantastic camera, a beautiful display, but they also found other phones are tougher and can operate longer on a

caterpillar, unitedhealth, 3m, just to name a few. o push dow up to levels.we'll see whether or not that happens. look at names that came under pressure. ge with restructuring also cutting the dividend really weighed on general electric, for the year down 44% for 2017. when we just look at some other favorites that everybody has, david, names like groupon, tesla, all up more than 50% this year. other winders, fedex, google, microsoft, they have been great up more than 30% here for this group. a lot of good news on the economy and the tax plan. big picture, great for the markets. david: nicole, thank you very much. how does all this play into politics? the white house is at odds over strategy going into to 2018 on midterms. carrie chef -- sheffield here. quick question, will republicans lose either the senate and house in 2018. >> in terms of house, looking electorally there is good chance they will hold it. in this environment -- david: spell it out for our viewers, democrats have to hold 28 seats in 2018. republicans have to hold just eight seats in the sena

david: you talked about unitedhealth group. -- united health care. >> everybody has been looking at twohings right now. they have been looking at united and saying these guys are performing -- outperforming a lot of the health care sector. it is a ghost that exists over this large group of middlemen and suppliers that people have felt needed to be under pressure for some time and that this was going to collapse. it was those factors coming into play. david: drew armstrong, thank you for being with us. we welcome someone who knows big mergers and acquisitions. jim forbes as vice-chairman of the ubs investment bank. let me start with the basic question. why is the sum greater than the parts? aetnahink what cvs and are trying to do here, i call it the 80-20 rule. 20% of the population is responsible for 80% of health-care costs. by getting more people into i think what you are seeing is some of the parts -- they're going to try to control more of the health-care dollar going forward. ishink the sum of the parts it's not so much a synergy play, it's getting more revenue. getting more of the