Transcripts For CNBC Squawk On The Street 20240711

John malone with the legendary media icon has to say about the covid19 virus, direct to consum consumer, streaming, so many other topics we hit in our hour long shutdown. The ceo of goodrx, we had him last week, since then, amazon came into the business what does it mean for his business carl, well ask that question amongst others. Yeah, thats good stuff for this hour, guys. Jim, we talked for last week and a half about the fact that a path to the vaccine would face some setbacks and clearly new york city schools, new state of emergency in wisconsin, speak to that i think that one of the things that we needed was a bridge, which would be stimulus, to the vaccine we dont have the stimulus were getting terrible numbers, we have half the country that thinks the numbers are okay, given the fact that the death rate hasnt skyrocketed. We have the other half, were saying, look, if we dont do something about it, then the Healthcare System is going to be overwhelmed. In that scenario, it is very difficult to be able to say, you know what, i am going to start buying stocks, not worrying about the illness because one day it will be a vaccine david, as long as we were close to a vaccine, or at least thinking we were close, and there was nothing catastrophic between that, then we would be happy to buy all sorts of stocks but it is catastrophic out there. We have been talking about the course of the virus over the last couple of weeks, more frequently again, because we need to. Because of the potential impact that it is going to have on the overall economy, jim and we know that and the numbers are horrible there is no other way to put it. Different parts of the country are dealing with it in different ways, but the fact is hospitalizations, which i think is a good measure in terms of our ability to cope with it, is at an all time high. Where are e, 79,000 i think Something Like that, approaching 80,000 people being hospitalized in the country and a number of places are very close to being potentially overwhelmed and thats a key consideration here because at that point, your government does need to do something locally and typically to try to shut things down and some way to prevent a healthcare crisis. But the lockdown is not embraced by a series of states, mask not embraced, viewed as being frivolous ordain ush st d came out last night, the whole point is to have everyone wear a mask, so, look, if you want me to sneeze on you, all right, i think you prefer me to have a mask thats just kind of cut and dry. And, carl, i look for things like just two days ago, where we had some just roaring yesterday, with target, roaring retail numbers and saying, okay, those are ones that are going to accept, they will get through a lockdown, they will get through whatever, and then you get a little beleaguered and say, you know what, i dont know who is going to go because it is too scary. So youre back to using shipt at target, using amazon i think amazon comes out the winner here when we talk to goodrx, youll feel even better, even if doug hirsh puts up a good fight, amazon is what you go back to thats what you defaulted to when this started. And it is what you default to now. Jim, a lot of this threads into the president ial transition today it is two groups, the National Association of manufacturers and the u. S. Chamber of commerce who put out a statement saying lets get this transition going. Something that the president elect talked about yesterday. And just trying to get access to information about where we are on Covid Response in the coming weeks. Heres what he said. We have been unable to get access to the kinds of things we need to know about the depth of the stockpiles, we know there is not much at all. We get to the point where we have a sense of when these vaccines come out, how theyll be distributed, who will be first in line, what the plan is, were going to be behind by weeks or months being able to put together the whole initiative relating to the biggest trauma we have with two Drug Companies coming along and finding 95 effectiveness, efficiency in the vaccines, which is enormous promise. Jim, i mentioned the two business groups today, but axios puts it pretty well today, saying it is business leaders, mcmillan, nadella, mary barra, who are filling the vacuum of leadership in d. C. How many divisions do they have they are a private industry people, that was referenced, that was stalin versus the pope. And i always think about the idea that what michael semblis put in my head, which is that there is this is an ongoing battle to get reelected it has shown no slack, even though there has been many decisions in courts that are against the president. I dont think the president is going anywhere and i know there are people who say, wait a second, the apparatus will come in, and claim the white house. I do not see i read the president s tweets, david, do you think the tweets mean nothing . It is a strategy that mr. Trump, President Trump followed his entire life. He litigates and litigates and litigates, i remember following his Business Career and talking to people who he dealt with for many years, oftentimes, he would end up, you know, like that dish dont like that deal and then just pushing and pushing and pushing until conceivably he could get a better one that was a black swan event. Did not say it was likely. Every day i pick up there is a new challenge and a new state. This is highly unusual place we find ourselves in we can all agree on that never seen anything quite like it, 14, 15, 16 days after an election, which, again, seemed to have been decided a few days after that, when they counted all the mailin ballots that we still have a person in the white house refusing to in any way, shape or form accept that they lost what happens it is extraordinary i dont want to make light of it. What happens if barr this is not archibald cox, my friend. It is not it is not. That happens if attorney general barr says i had enough, and he impounds george wiageorg ahead of the Electoral College vote carl, can he do that . I mean this is in the semblis note, this idea that perhaps the attorney general could come in and impound some of the results, jim. That note also says that a lot would have to go wrong for trump to be reelected and even some of the experts hes working with at jpmorgan have written stories literally titled, relax, joe biden will be sworn in on january 20th. If michael semblis says dont relax, im not relaxing. Ive known him for many, many years and he is someone who jamie dimon is listening to, i believe, over these other people hes a mustread this is the eye on the market. And hes not necessarily coming up with a path for the president to become reelected he is coming up with a path that says this is ongoing, and it could go through the inauguration, and there is nothing david. No, listen, it bears watching and we all are very closely. Noted yesterday, theyre not seeking to invalidate a million and a half mailin ballots in pennsylvania, bears watching, but it also bears mentioning so far they have lost every single challenge because they have not been able to actually in any way bring to a judge sufficient evidence of what they continue to call fraud. Is that what maybe attorney general barr says the whole system is corrupt and it is time for jim, you know what, if that happens, we have got so many bigger problems, you know. I just dont want to we can talk about where were headed. Under those circumstances, do i want to go buy home depot . I dont know it would impact you, the way you view the market now. By the way, well get to them, well get to nvidia earnings, macys, well get to some of the key earnings thismorning and news as well cant we put it on the table . If we put it on the table on squawk on the street, what is going to happen, people say, okay, thats a risk factor but right now i think there are a lot of people in the country who think the idea that you need tw two white houses is ridiculous you need a second white house. I dont know what youre talking about. You dont know what im talking about . Where is the second white house . I havent arranged it yet i dont know put it in the pentagon we get to that point, and it is were done. People being fired now. The apparatus to protect this country. Im aware of it the continued question is whether or not sufficient number of republicans in the senate and in the house will step up, jim and say, okay, we have got to move forward and you heard president elect biden talking about the real life impact of it, the funds have yet to be released for the gsa and it is having some impact on their ability to know about the trumps plan for vaccine distribution, how that would affect their own distribution. What kind of stimulus package can you do when all the president does is tweet about pennsylvania, georgia, and michigan are his and arizona is his and the georgia count is getting closer and closer. You can ignore it i can ignore it. Thats what i got to tell you to do. I can ignore it. In some way. I would rather hear malone, he gave us last year some unbelievable picks. Malone is always a man of reason talking john malone, of course typically he and i sit down live at this time when Liberty Media has its annual investor day meeting, all the different ceos of the Companies Either control or have some sort of level of control in and tracking stock in, we do it midtown, manhattan. This year like Everything Else it is virtual, it is today and tomorrow but i did get my opportunity virtually to talk to mr. Malone. Of course, about so manufacture the things going on in the industry as we always do at this time but specific to what were talking about right now, we actually also spent some time talking about the current environment, given the virus, given the impact it had on the economy, and how he remember hes one of the wealthiest men in the country, largest landowner, owns a enormous amount of maine and lumber and i asked him has the current environment and whats been done in terms of spending to deal with the relief that businesses have needed, has that changed the way he thinks about allocating capital in my opinion, were seeing we have seen we survived this because of enormous fiscal and monday toet stimulus i got to believe this will lead to devaluation of currencies that hard assets, you know, will increase in value, in currency terms. Im not sure im going to call this inflation but it will look like and feel like inflation and i think were seeing it in housing, you know, that this unrealistically low Interest Rate environment, which has been necessary now in order to avoid worse problems, you know, it is hard for me to believe that it wont be followed by a period of currency devaluation so personally, you know, ive been trying to invest or diversify into hard assets, you know i think things i bought this last year i bought substantial interest in multifamily housing, primarily in the u. S and i bought i bought i bought irrigated farms because commodities were cheap, and farms were at a low cycle in value and i always wanted to have some irrigated farming, so now im growing potatoes john malone always surprises. It is interesting to listen him talk about devaluing currency. Many people hope there is more spending to come given the period were in now and the aid that is potentially needed by small and medium sized businesses, not to mention municipalities and states around the country. That is fascinating he already owns hes the largest single landowner in the United States of personal, private land. Thats what you buy hyperinflation. It is funny, he didnt say he wanted to call it inflation, but he did believe fully in currency devaluation, which would essentially have that effect yeah it is funny, were going to talk to him as Everybody Knows all about the media landscape, his view of things, where they stand, this new idea that he has about the socalled Channel Store, that being the rokus and apple tvs, apple tvs and amazon fire stick and hes a believer. And how powerful they are. Does he think apple is going to develop channels . You know, im going to leave that for the viewer to see teasing me. Tease a little. Why not . Wow carl. Are you going to buy potato farms at all no, my wife wants to buy another house. We have a lot of houses. Yeah. It is hard assets. She says it is an investment. It is it is. Furnish it. Youll be able to move it all of them when there is two white houses. This one has ag land. Im feeling malone they got a spac did you see that, carl why not . Now liberty has a spac were going to talk to greg mafee later as they get that Liberty Media investor day under way as well. Yeah, ticker lmacu. Interesting. There is a look at maffei coming up in the 10 well get to macys, nvidia, vaccine headlines out of azn, that affirm ipo news and more. Futures are mildly weak here back of a break. Before we talk about taxsaudreys expecting. New . Twins wed be closer to the twins. Change in plans. At fidelity, a change in plans is always part of the plan. See yourself. Welcome back to the mirror. And know youre not alone because this. Come on jessie one more. Is the reflection of an Unstoppable Community in the mirror. You can go your own way its time you make the rules. So join the 2 Million People who have switched to xfinity mobile. You can choose from the latest phones or bring your own device and choose the amount of data thats right for you to save even more. And youll get 5g at no extra cost. All on the most reliable network. So choose a data option thats right for you. Get 5g included and save up to 400 dollars a year on the network rated 1 in customer satisfaction. Its your wireless. Your rules. Only with xfinity mobile. We promised we would get to the earnings lets do it in a mad dash. Nvidia is a name youve been following so closely for so long, know so well and not to mention, man, when we look at five years, which we will looks bad there one of the better stocks youve ever recommended. Thank you i got it from, believe it or not, ali, ali told me nvidia is going to change the way cars are built, probably 15 years ago and this is people thought it was just a gaming play last night, david. Yes. Tour de force, jensen on more than hes been on in a long time these are personalities in the valley people think of jensen the way they thought when da vinci came up with the helicopter remember that . I do. Very well. Hes so far ahead of the rest of us, hes talking about inference, imeans you go into ai is hot in here, immediately the air conditioning goes on hes saying the user interface is replacing the traditional semiconductor. This is before the whole thing is done without any discussion about the big deal the arm deal, yeah. The numbers that theyre putting up are enormous, not that they havent been reflected in the stock price, which gets back to t we it well see if it opens down, flat. If if it opens down, you can buy. The there was a reason why they didnt miss they missed on some lines, data center david, so much demand, they cant make them. And jensen has always said, look, thats a high quality problem, the real problem is when there is too much supply. That is not the case if he had all the chips, i have no idea what number hes saying that they should get all the chips to people who want them, and remember, were talking about google, were talking about were talking about unbelievable demand from amazon, from microsoft they all look to jensen and say, please, we need more chips the gaming companies, hes developed shading. You know what that means it means the characters are shaded, this is what cezanne did. This is what it was cezanne remember the techen tonic shift, the bowo the peaches and apples, cezanne. Cezanne. I thought he was da vinci hes both. Hes both and the two white house, look, i want to tell you yeah, what . Im saying it is going to be a fight to the end thats what the two white house there will not be it is not going to be the naval observatory in the white house e im just saying the election is not over for one man for one man. Continues to battle giuliani and then maybe barr. A couple of other people. The u. S. Army, which i think is going to take the side of biden. All right there we go john malone, hes a great patriot, the exclusive continuing to talk to him about so many Different Things in the media landscape channg sgio quickly. Stay with us opening bell coming up before we talk about taxsmart investing, whats new . Audreys expecting. Twins wed be closer to the twins. Change in plans. At fidelity, a change in plans is always part of the plan. On this week of retail earnings, look at macys, narrower than expected loss. But comps down 20. 2. Not that much better than they expected 23. 4 decline shares down 5 well get to that and a bunch of dto yws uray thithsd soon ganhere a lot of airline news today as southwest holds a call about returning the max to service jim, at the same time, delta is going to keep the middle seat open through the end of march. And united says they are seeing an uptick in cancellations and decline in bookings for the week that ended yesterday as maybe perhaps some of these restrictions are starting to force americans to cancel some travel plans yes, i think it has to do with where theyre going, not the plans. I believe that the airlines and boeing have made a very good case by now, saying, look, one of the safest things to do is be on a plane i think the 737 max is a plane that i would fly with ease but to where to where what to go to . Little bit of disney land that was just opened, david where are you going to go . Take airbnb and go where what is your plan . I dont have one, unfortunately. I i did i look forward to getting the vaccine as soon as we all possibly can and start to move around. Are you which ones have you applied to i applied to j j and pfizer. I havent applied to any im going to wait until it gets distributed and it is available to me. But to your point, and this point has been made, of course, by southwests ceo, who gary kelly who joined us saying, yeah, were ready to go, the request he is whether people have anywhere to go, jim. I know. Gary kelly, from the beginning, carl, he points this out, he is hes just hes talking again about, you know, what is there to do . Hes right i mean, i want to go ill go at this point, ill go anywhere ill go to the new white house yeah. Stop. Jim, you know, you mentioned disney and got lost yesterday, but s p did cut disney to triple b plus. Their point is that vaccine does not mean that the consumers are going to race back to crowded venues they say they see normal operations at the parks in fiscal 2022. So this notion of even i think it is leering today, says no full herd immunity until 2023, 2024. I disagree. Best case is by next by next summer and early fall of next year you have enough where people can get back to schools and entertainment. What if if thats only half the equation, if youre disney, you can, with all these new at homes and with the abbott test, you can make it so that it can be covid free. They can test people, you just have to do you think the cruise ships are going to wait until everybody is vaccinated . No theyre going to make everybody have a pcr test, before they go on the boat. The two ways to do it, david, you can vaccinate, or you can test and theyre going to test. And if everyone has been tested, hey, welcome aboard. Youre nodding were going to talk about the opening bell here. On the podcast, it sounds like youre dissing it. Im not dissing you im waiting carl typically talks about the opening, telling us who is ringing the bell, if there is anybody there i wanted to give him that chance yeah. I got nothing on bellringers today, jim you mentioned the cruises. And carnival just now with 10 million shares at 1759. Karan racarnival is like an investment bank. Can you imagine youre in jamies having a meeting, saying, listen, solomon has carnival, i need carnival, carnival is going to make our quarter. You get royal. I want norwegian get me delta these are founts theyre founts david they do issue a lot of stock. You cant blame them for doing it do it while you can. The zillion what do they call them now, zillenials . They love it they think issuing stock a great thing. They like the new Simon Properties deal. They think the more stock, the merrier. Like robin hood. Maybe educate them about dilution it creates a lot of value. You cant kid jim, the idea is to bring these people in, as you know you spent your life wanting to do it and now youre making fun of them. There is a group of people who dont understand a group of people who say if they issue a lot of stock, sure going to be solvent, so therefore theyre going to go in the spring, theyre going to do the pcrs, they need to issue stock and theyll be right, younger people will be right. I dont think they understand if you bid stock up, that youre going to get slapped with an equity offering. Carnival would be down to 16 these people like it and they may not be wrong. Theyre taking a longer term view than a typical hedge und. Yes, they are some anomalies where we have seen remember hertz almost did an offering as a bankrupt. But look what they did to ford and ge, millennials at 6 and 7, literally, six weeks ago. Millennials piled in, good quarters, and now theyre up a lot more than most of the armageddonists we have to deal with all the time. Are you surprised theyre still do you think this cohort, this group, we talked about this of course malone is coming up, dont you worry, we talked about this, carl and jim, early in the pandemic when there was no Sports Betting and we said, well, these guys are following that guy that used to talk about all the time, whose name i wont even mention, theyll go away when sports come back. They have not gone away i was on schweppes show, he had this great package about all these people who are never going back, they dont have commissions. Carl, no commissions inspired a lot of people to say, you know what, im going to buy individual stocks and they bought the if you look at what i have robin hood on tonight, if you look at what they were buying, they were in there buying all the stocks that ended up doing incredibly well who are we to criticize . Who are we we cant wait to hear about robin hood, jim, because just in the past couple of days, either filings or reports of robinhood, airbnb, door dash, we havent yet mentioned affirm, it is a wave it is a wave. And people are excited about it. And people are excited about stocks and we better catch the wave and surf the wave or else were going to be left behind. Individuals like stocks so much. And if they cant buy a 500 nvidia, theyll buy a fraction of nvidia. Theyll listen to what malone says and they will buy a stock if malone says it is good. Theyll say malone is great. People should it is a new generation that needs to listen to somebody like that who has been allocating capital for now 40 years built businesses and still has a great idea of that, but is also allocating capital. He gave us discover he gave us discovery, yeah. That was at 18, went to 28. You think the millennials the Millennials Google malone, really smart, hell come on and say, x, y, z and theyll buy it. And theyll make money all the armageddonists, theyll sit back and say thats a foolish thing. Well, you know, suns you menti since you mentioned it, we should get to my conversation with john malone, chairman of Liberty Media. We spend a lot of time talking about the significant changes that have been taking place in the video ecosystem for lack of a better term, direct to consume, we focus so much on it, it is so important to disneys Business Model it is netflix. Is it important to amazon . To apple but it is a place we always start with, john, at least i do, every year, and i did again. Sort of saying give me your take on the landscape, given hbo max is now up and running, our own peacock here at comcast is up and running what does the landscape for direct to consumer look like . Clearly there is two there is one dominant player in direct to consumer, which would be netflix that has scale, and global globality. Disney is making a good run at it getting substantial numbers, penetration. At least in the u. S. And in some foreign markets. Yet i dont think we have yet seen what the Conversion Rate of disney is going to be. But they seem to be off to a very strong start. And then there is a ton of other streamers and there is a ton of Channel Stores, i guess you would call it, and there is the hybrids, amazon, the Channel Store or are they a direct Consumer Video provide r . We have with discovery, we have aspirations to be able to offer direct to consumer services, and that organization is working hard at that. And i think it is too early to see what kind of results peacock is going to generate with their hybrid approach. So it is kind of too early to say, id say, right , who ends up controlling it. I think the people who have the platforms, in addition to the content or only the platforms, like a roku, are in pretty good position to build a longterm profitable Global Business i think you have to draw the distinction between people who get to the consumer through other platforms, or people who get to the consumer directly on their own. And i put certainly netflix in the on their own category, and maybe disney everybody else is going to be in some kind of a hybrid world of depending on, i guess you could call them Channel Stores or third party platforms, to reach a large scale audience so if you have to go through the apple store, or you have to go through roku, or you have to go through amazon, it seems to me that youre ability to understand your consumer and your profitability perhaps is going to be adversely affected versus being able to be direct. Interesting, again, this idea of Channel Stores, the rokus, which he clearly sees very positive on their ability, jim, to sort of continue to deliver and take that toll, the amazons, not just prime in terms of what youre tuning into, but amazon as a store for other peoples content that they will deliver to you because their platform is so ubiquitous or apple he feels these are adding a lot of value it is interesting because chris malone, tci, again, the young people may not remember, he built liberty by taking equity stakes out of those programmers that he gave distribution to on his largest cable platform and in a way it is somewhat similar to what were seeing now with the rokus you need to be on roku you need to be on apple tv you need to be on amazon platform if youre laufrmi ilau direct to consumer we have seen even some of the disputes between peacock and some of them david, he is saying something that people arent thinking about. Hes talking about an apple revenue stream that could be very, very big and people are just thinking that apple is rogue, so to speak, versus say a peacock, owned by this network, he did not say he questioned the viability of peacock to some degree. He said it is too early which it is. It is too early. Ad supported, has begun a different direction, saw a gap in the marketplace and trying to fill that i think peacock is doing incredibly well. If you want to launch a new direct to consumer, as discovery likely will, can you do it by going direct to your consumer and creating that brand or must you have that distribution through these Channel Store and how much do you have to pay for that, how much do you have to give up to them . He thinks it is an enduring Business Model. I dont see it. It is already there in the app store. Were talking about the same thing. I dont see it. The sense this is an additional revenue stream they cut the developer fees, the that was a big deal. It was a big deal, but this is a revenue stream, carl, i read all the apple reports if they listen to what malone just said, they could actually take up numbers. They could katy huberty takes up numbers. She would, carl. She would say thats interesting. Thats interesting. A Big Development for the app store, but the head of epic games told andrew yesterday that it really doesnt it is an effort to maintain the monopoly or the duopoly, not any real concession to developers and then we had david hidemire miller say it who started this whole thing to begin with and argued that it is really just peanuts compared to the power that apple still yields. Wow i looked at it and felt it was a genuine attempt to help Small Business, because there is a limit that is put on, the 100 Million People and do you want them to get them to 2 million, 3 million, you maybe take a little less of the vig if youre apple. It is apple taking a longer term view right but when you have global scale, unlike even your local your cable company, which nationally can have some significance, but global scale the way they do, it gives you enormous power most interesting i thought it was roku, we have gone back and forth about, is that Business Model sustainable . He clearly thinks good, because that stocktirea pandemic tock. People feel when the pandemic is over, that and zoom are the two most dangerous stocks. I think had the pandemic is over, roku rules everybody, and we use zoom to the way you would have thought 1964 you went to the world series, to the worlds fair, and they had the phone. They had the phone that you could look at each other right fascinating my mom and dad took me the phone where you could look at each other. Where was that, where was the worlds fair queens, flushing. 1962 stones throw from that the the pavilion, the whole thing, yeah. Some of it is still there, the ruins. Carl guys, the ceo of good rx is coming up after the break on why amazons Online Pharmacy is complementary to their business, not competitive. Before the break, take a look at the bond market, chart of the tenyear note, ahead of existing home sales and lei at the top of the hour yields also falling in europe amid some worries about the spike in corid casvid cases ove squawk on the street is back in a minute. Dow is down 130. Before we talk about taxsmart investing, whats new . Audreys expecting. Twins wed be closer to the twins. Change in plans. At fidelity, a change in plans is always part of the plan. This was the theater i came to quite often. The support weve had over the last few months has been amazing. Its not just a work environment. Everyone here is family. If you are ready to open your heart and your home, check us out. We thought for sure that we were done. And this town said not today. Shares of goodrx higher this morning. Wow. It is down more than 25 this week alone. After amazon announced the launch of its own Online Pharmacy, came out in the morning and the people who own these stocks, including the drugstore stocks, were just choking. So with us now is the companys ceo, who is most impacted by this announcement, this is goodrx and the ceo doug hirsh. I want to read you a quote from a brutal downgrade that happened after the stock came down. It shocked me that you can still go and just crush the stock again. It is by doug amoth, jpmorgan analyst, highly respected. We believe goodrx could be impacted and were downgrading the shares of goodrx to underweight from neutral why should we not be worried when a very good analyst says that you will be materially impacted by amazon prime rx. Sure. So pharmacy is really confusing. Thats one of the reasons why we started goodrx amazon did two things they said they want to improve their mail order to pharmacy, but mail is really hard, 5 of prescriptions and hasnt grown in the pandemic theyre trying hard to improve it one way is with the prime rx offering jim, you if you have a pharmacy, you cant discount prices yourself. It violates both government as well as insurance contracts, you cant say, doug, i like you, ill give you half off they took a company, insider x, and they said well use you for our discounts and were going to allow you it use the discounts elsewhere, but lets stop for one second you think amazon expects foam go to walmart with an amazon discount card . Theyre arch enemies what is fascinating is i dont think amazon expects someone to use it, but they have to do it for insurance contracts. This is about lawyers. They thi theyre offering one little discount of which goodrx offers thousands and thousands much better prices. There is a very thoughtful piece, positive when you said we all think that amazon is the death star, im quoting, john malone is in my head chewy, stitch fix, blue nile, okay they were all supposed to be annihilated by amazon. And they are thriving. Stitch fix is incredible why should we think that somehow amazon is going to inhibit goodrxs ability to grow monthly active consumers, as jpmorgan says again, theyre in the trying to do retail pharmacy. That are trying to improve mail order pharmacy thats what they have been trying to do for a long time remember drugstore. Com mail is really hard. Theyre doing whatever they can. And to do that, they have to offer this card which is buried deep in their website that allows you to use it at their competitors. They dont want that, their competitors dont want that and it is not that good compared it the many discounts you can find other places like goodrx i dont think it is material to us at all. Let me ask you, doug. Point blank, would i find that the average price, average price of goodrx is lower than what amazon is offering so we obviously looked at that and we have lower prices with our version of amazon primes mail order product over 90 of the time because we have so many prices, 2 billion price points every day in goodrx, they have one, one program. It is fine it is an okay program. This is Old School Way that pharmacy discounts were handled prior to goodrx. We have so many more well, doug, i want to thank you for coming on. I think there are a lot of people who felt you hid. It is the opposite you came forward i think you came forward with compelling industry. Thank you for millions of people who you have saved a lot of money. While i love amazon prime, i would be foolish to move away from the prices youve gotten me thank you for coming on sqwawk on the street. Thank you appreciate it. Interesting more from my exclusive Liberty Media. Virtual for the first time doesnt mean greg maffei wont be live thwi me. He will be we have that coming up dont go anywhere. At fidelity, youll work with an advisor to help you build a flexible wealth plan. Youll have access to taxsmart investing strategies, and with brokerage accounts online trades are commission free. Personalized advice. Unmatched value. At fidelity, you can have both. Unmatched value. Its time you make the rules. So join the 2 Million People who have switched to xfinity mobile. You can choose from the latest phones or bring your own device and choose the amount of data thats right for you to save even more. And youll get 5g at no extra cost. All on the most reliable network. So choose a data option thats right for you. Get 5g included and save up to 400 dollars a year on the network rated 1 in customer satisfaction. Its your wireless. Your rules. Only with xfinity mobile. Lets get to kim listening to gary kelly, i think you should sell boeing when i listen to boeing themselves, i am boldened. Do not overlook the bidenchina. The tariffs is what i would term meaning there will be peace and the way president xi could show he means business. His olive branch, to buy a lot of maxs thats what may say says whats on board tonight robin hood. Well talk to these people smarter than the average day workday and one of the most exciting places when you are locked up at home, the container store. A mecca for people who are disorganized i remember when they went public speaking of consumables for the home l brands had a pretty good quarter. Almost a year and a half high. People watching their hands keeping an eye on macys. We know it well. Down as much as 8 to 9 back to flat ebita was ahead strong Liquidity Position they say they have got 1. 6 million in cash i wont say the stock wont go down, this Christmas Season comparable sales down 21 okay. David. I know kohls moving up substantially ahead of this report. I cant wait. The defense business said the era of cutting the defense spending is over the most pearlious since the cold war we cant ignore, even though all the defenses are up today. Lets just hope there are not planes in the air. Well see you tonight mad money, 6 00 p. M. Well take a break here. Session low down and well be back in a minute hey frank, our workers comp insurance is expiring, should we just renew it . Yeah, sure. Hey there, Small Business owner. Pie insurance here with some sweet advice to stop you from overpaying on workers comp. Try pie instead and save up to 30 . Thirty percent . Really . Get a quote in 3 minutes at easyaspie. Com. Wow, that is easy. So, need another reminder . No, no no, im good. Uh, yes please. Oh. Ho ho ho, yeah need workers comp insurance . Get a quote in 3 minutes at easyaspie. Com. Ok, just keep coloring there. And sweetie can you just be. Gentle with the pens. Okey. Okey. I know. Gentle. Gentle new projects means new project managers. You need to hire. I need indeed. Indeed you do. The moment you sponsor a job on indeed you get a short list of quality candidates from our resume database so you can start hiring right away. Claim your seventy five dollar credit, when you post your first job at indeed. Com home. Good thursday morning. Welcome to sqwawk on the street. Interesting day. Most of the major indices mostly flat here. More uncertainty regarding the president ial transition. Working our way through the fed and claims well go back to rick. We are expecting our october read on leading Economic Indicators we have five ups in a row. They are getting smaller pretty much every month the data seems to be running in to a bit of a delay here here it is up. 7. Exactly as expected. So that is the sixth up in a row. When you look at the last six months you can clearly see the trend maybe on the positive side, whatever smaller numbers our october read on existing home sales for that, we head east rick, a huge beat on existing home sales in october. Up 4. 3 month to month to an annualized rate of 6. 25 Million Units to the highest level since 2006 calling that quote a spectacular gain the highest rate weve ever seen is 7. 1 million in 2005 when we had nearly twice as many homes on the market. Inventory down 19. 8 to 1. 42 Million Units that is a 2. 5 month supply another record low pushing prices higher. Median price 313,000. A lot of that is the squuing of the sales that is higher priced homes are selling more than the lowend. Million dollarplus home sales nearly doubled while sales on the low end is falling. Investors not stepping away from this pricey market they are coming into it. 14 of october home sales to investors. All cash buyers, 19 you got to have that in a bidding war. Huge gain. The street was expecting a drop. Back to you guys still hot, hot inhousing thank you. Well start the hour with covid19 this morning. Some sobering statistics the u. S. Death toll from coronavirus now surpassing 250,000 lives lost new York City Public School system halt inperson classes and cities across the u. S. Are imposing restrictions. Joining us, a member of biden covid19 task force and specialist and epidemiologist. A long resume there. Thank you for joining us, doctor i wanted to start out with some hopeful news, which is more good news on the vaccine front with oxford and astrazeneca showing good use a lot of talk about the delay of the transition from trump to biden. The fact that gsa has not followed through with ascertainment of the Election Results is a major impediment to us we are not able to be on the inside of these in terms of how these different vaccines will be distributed. It is not enough to have a safe and effective vaccine to get it through the arms of people to get it to work vaccinating 330 million americans is a massive undertaking as people in this country have seen since the days of the polio vaccine i guess my follow up is really how much power the federal government has not just in the vaccine but in fighting this crisis. It feels like it ishappening a a local level. The governors are already designating the hospitals that will have the vaccine in that state. How much power would biden and the task force really have this is a reflection of how the response has been drought under this Current Administration and really a abdicated. With Something Like a distribution of a vaccine, which we saw earlier this year with the distribution of personal Protection Equipment it was like a giant ebay that is not a good approach when it comes to vaccines certain vaccines may be more suitable with distributions in rural areas, maybe the elderly there needs to be a coordinated plan to make best use of a limited resource was it your belief the lack of transition planning will have an ability to effectively distribute a vaccine is. I think so. The longer we wait, the more people will get infected and die. This is really a major impediment to rolling out and scaling the vaccine. Doctor, weve got some people on wall street trying to look at models areas like illinois and then texas who havent done a whole lot in terms of mitigations as a state. Even when state officials dont take action. You look at data like google mobility data. People are getting scared where they see the cases going up. They are taking matters into their own hands and responding you see people staying home more used to be people going to Grocery Stores and retail less in these areas people are understanding what is happening in their communities even if their elected officials are not. Can we talk about new york city and the closing of new york schools despite positive parents need to work, they need health care. They need to keep going. Is there anything in the Biden Administration that can be done about this the consensus is that we want to keep schools open as much as possible it may not be possible where you have widespread trabs anything keeping schools open, hire settings like restaurants, Group Classes in gyms. You have to compare that to make sure they can be open safely providing personal protective equipment, reducing class size and density of classes and supporting parents and families through all of this. On Vaccine Acceptance dr. Fauci spoke about the number that would need to take it to get herd immunity. I do have some concerns about the skepticism people have is expressed. It is all over the map you have people all over that already didnt take vaccines and dont want to be told what to do you have minorities who didnt trust the industry and the people who think Natural Immunity is the best way so it is about reaching out to what their concerns are and addressing that lack of trust. Thank you for talking to us today. We appreciate it we have got a startstudded hour ahead for sqwawk on the street. More from my interview the man that runs liberty. He joins us on another liberty exclusive. He gave me a preview of that take a listen. We got ourselves through this to this point. Where i dont think anything is any of the businesses im involved in or any jeopardy at this point of either losing value or having to lay people off long term. If the vaccine comes along these businesses will all come back very nicely what do you look for when you trade . I want free access to research. Yep, td ameritrades got that. Free access to every platform. Mhm, yeah, that too. I dont want any trade minimums. Yeah, i totally agree, they dont have any of those. I want to know what im paying upfront. Yes, absolutely. Do you just say yes to everything . Hm. Well i say no to kale. Mm. Yeah, they say if you blanch it its better, but that seems like a lot of work. Now offering zero commissions on online trades. We charge you less so you have more to invest. Taking a look at spdr s p retail macys, shares down 50 for the year lower today after the company did report Quarterly Results same store sales fell by 20 one bright spot was digital. Seeing online sales grow by 20 . Stock has turned around now. Up 1. 5 . Well keep an eye on it. Still very far from its heyday sqwawk on the street will be right back this is the new iphone 12 pro with 5g and its on at t, the fastest nationwide 5g network. Now, new and existing customers can get our best deal. Really . mom at t has the deal for new and existing customers i will. So whatd she say . Wrong person. Its a guy named carl. But hes very excited and on his way. Wordofmouth advertising. Its what they did before commercials. Its not complicated. Everyone gets our best deal, like the amazing iphone 12 mini on us. Thats why i get up in the morning i have a secret method for remembering all my hr passwords. My boss doesnt remember approving my time off. Lets just. Find that email. The old way of doing business slows everyone down. With paycom, employees enter and manage their own hr data in one easytouse software. Visit paycom. Com for a free demo. Welco welcome to my house live. Do you wanna see something really cool . My man cave. Another sharma . Its a place to relax. Its hot in here. Uh, you might be more comfortable if you removed your fur pelt. I already did. Oh. The Company Announcing it is launching a spak always good to have you even virtually. Hopefully next year. Lets start with a spac announcement im some what limited on what i can say. The tool and Corporate Finance can be put in ways to the spac liberty exists as this entity where if im on investor, i want your accumen in terms of financials and the industry this is focused on. Why isnt this a conflict of interest with your Current Business a very fair question. If you look, some of our entities have capital. They are different levels. We have put in place rules to make sure there are no conflicts. Weve always had 24 issue about where something goes things fall into place you are still looking at the assets making similar decisions. I dont know. Why. I dont know is the right answer if it is something with motor sports, it probably logically belongs there. Something with music in other spaces, we dont have the capital and they dont necessarily fit. This is just another tool we can use and put to work. And committing to another 250 billion as you know, it is relatively easy why toy scale these up and harder to scale them down. I hope we would find an opportunity from larger size and to put in more capital and hopefully the third party responses. But you have a much harder time scaling back than up with spac you guys look for opportunities that may have some hair on them oregon, some proficiency in terms of financing and the capital markets. There is so much spac money. Why do you think youll be able to end up with a good one . Thats a fair question. There is clearly enough we hope to offer through the spac and some of the relations and insights youve heard from today to be of value of the potential targets. The paind in our view will linger there isnt a switch there are certain segments that come out in slower rates and opportunities we can assist those companies. It is funny we talk about those that will come public in a sense it is very possible you could cease on things is that a responsibility well look at anything in terms of capital give me a feel here lets start with live nation, which is essential to the vaccine and getting back to enjoying live music. What have you got now . I think it is very hard to sit and say here is the time frame. Youll see them build hatches. Cut tofts. It has tested virtual concerts ideas of Rapid Testing on site we know there is demand. 90 of fans have expressed they want a return. The vast amount of Tickets Remain in place and there is a supply there are artists that want to tour is theyve tried and tested the possibilities. It would be not wise to turn around this bet tomorrow i credit the team for setting this up well for the future and talking about what his thoughts are and the Capital Position of course, we are all just guessing but next summer, do you think youll be watching the Atlanta Braves in the stadium or is it a year from now . I think the braves outdoors or places like georgia, i think youll have fans, whether the full density and other protocols in place we went on sale yesterday with the braves. They had a great season we have a new owner now and hes got more money than you do. It has been shown money is not the root of all wisdom in baseball well hope that he does well i found that to be true in life thats not the root of all wisdom lets go to formula 1. Have races gotten back on track again. A lot of it is European Base they rebuilt the calendar from scratch. Put some in, put some out. I credit formula 1 and the teams themselves theyve done an awesome job. Nevertheless, theyve been hurt. Because weve rejiggered the prod cast revenue, thats hurt formula 1 will be profitable this year unlike baseball and the braves it will be profitable but does not have the ability to generate income for the teams we are well set up i expect the Global Nature of it and the ability to be farther along in terms of getting fans in seats than we were with baseball but we have further challenges we are hoping for a vaccine and further testing as well. Im sure as youve sat where you are and thought about life after the pandemic have you looked in an area you may not have previously . Something that would capitalize with the way you look at the world . Today is our investor day i went out with a relatively long think piece about what happens post the pandemic there are changes that are short term. To quote, consequences have consequences the changes are short term and some wont well be looking at what would be impacted by the Digital Economy and accelerate some things and hurt other things we are trying to do the same thing as the assessment with some of the same things going on i do not think well get Business Travel up for a long time i do think Leisure Travel may accelerate we are trying to weigh all those pieces one of the reason we have those is to think about investment that may result from the consequences of the consequences sorry we are not in person. I hope you will resume in person next year and not make it an annual event we found taping it this way was equally hard for us. We hope to be back in person the companys chairman john malone will join us with a lot more after that after this break. Stay with us at fidelity, you get personalized Wealth Planning and unmatched overall value. Together with a dedicated advisor, youll make a plan that can adjust as your life changes, with access to taxsmart investing strategies that help you keep more of what you earn. And with brokerage accounts, you see what youll pay before you trade. Personalized advice. Unmatched value. At fidelity, you can have both. More than this lexus has been celebrating driveway moments. Heres to one more, the lexus december to remember sales event. Get 0 financing on all new 2020 and 2021 lexus models. Experience amazing at your lexus dealer. Welcome back. Im sue herera the nations largest mass transit system, new york mta says it will have to cut service by 40 to 50 and layoff 9,000 workers to shrink deaf tights unless it gets 12 billion in federal aid. Russia confirming 2 million covid19 cases infections and deaths also hit new records today. South australia starting a sixday lockdown even though know new cases were reported today following an outbreak of just 22 new cases. In uganda, at least 16 people have died and Dozens Injured after Police Arrested bobby wine, an option running for president next election. Thats it for us today back to you. Weve been sharing excerpts of an interview Liberty Mutual it is their annual investors day. Some of the media stray broadly speaking and changes of that industry one hes introduces of late is the theme of Channel Stores. The rokus, the apple tv and fire sticks they are more and more being relied on as the tv. The cable industry has a cable box. I asked why arent they in a dominant position for distributing this new streaming programming . I believe the cable industry kind of missed the boat on being the direct service provider. Never say never the scale is small compared to the scale of an amazon or apple from an investor standpoint and programmer or content providing, how should i be thinking about the potential dominan dominance these are going to have i think these will be enormously powerful and most product creators will be selling wholesale through these transport systems if they have a strong brand identity, then theyll be part of a package or bundle, the consumer is not going to want to buy from a broad number of services they are going to tend to want to go to one convenient supplier it increasingly looks like it would be amazon or prime or apple or it could still be a google effort. These things are global. Of these are a sub set of the u. S. I dont see how at this point they can catch the scale to show the distribution you are wearing a discovery vest there you and i talked about discovery in the past in terms of developing a direct to consumer model there. You ago gated an enormous amount of content there and globally too. Getting us back. From all these platforms and paid the toll. If you only had the chance of reaching consumers that you want to it is not clear yet. Whether or not we can reach our global audience. There are more to come fairly soon on that subject discovery has that benefit of global brand, global identity. Well see what evolves but it is important that at least some of discoveries programming if they continue to have an important advertising component means ubiquity of reach. Meaning some of the programming is ubiquitous. You are right. In order to get multiples like disney or discovery has, they have to be ready to breakthrough the direct consumer model. Whether that is direct or through interimmediateries collectively where does it all end weve seen it playing out. Take me forward a few years here youve talked about it for years. My guess is there will be a point where the bundle breaks apart and a lot of the content will be available direct to consumer and or a la cart. Some sports may move over to a premium or to the big tech companies. Im not sure my guess is that there will be a point in time when programming even the company like yours will be close to direct consumer platforms in a way of mass market add supported i think thats what the peacock experiment is all about. To see if you can make a go of it on an advertising only basis with fewer ads but not knowing the viewer, there for higher cpms, fewer ads or whether you have to get somehow into a subscription stream of revenue from the consumer in order to be competitive and afford the level of quality and quantity that it takes to attract the viewer going forward. You mention the platforms we talked about earlier in this content and taking their toll. The power we talk about it on air now of facebook or alphabet. What is your sense of how it may change or affect i think theyll have a very hard time figuring out what to do for the most part, the scale is preventing them from providing consumer benefit that Smaller Enterprises would be able to create or provide and so how do you regulate something actually good for the consumer. At least for now thats kind of what you are seeing with Companies Like amazon or google providing extremely High Quality Services meeting consumer needs. Because of their market power, youll be in position to crush competitors and to wreak havoc i dont see anything likely to slow down. A regular torry question, one dr. Malone nose well people like to watch the full interview. We sat down roughly an hour. If you want to do that, go to cnbc. Com youll find it there, the full hour we hit a lot of Different Things very interesting to get dr. Malones take on an ever changing media landscape that i like to talk a lot about i was so interested in the sound you played last hour saying his good investors as well talking hard assets like land, farming because there has been so much fiscal and stimulus. Why bitcoin has been surging and people feel that we are going to stimulate out of this forever and the fed is never going to be able to raise rates and europe is negative. Hasnt been proven out yet the dollar is still the reserve currency and people still go there during times of stress but it was notable to hear him talk about that i thought youd like that at the beginning of the 9 00 hour because Asset Allocation is important to follow for people who dont understand or know about his long career in creating or helping to create the cape business in our country. You are right. Buying potato farms. Hes the largest single land owner in the country he likes those hard assets he does believe that we will see the debasement of the currentcyi given the debasement we have seen talking about losing currency status great interview. Check it out online. Wanted to show you l brands trading at its highest levels in two years. Still well off its perch from a few years ago but showing progress in that turn around Comp Store Sales up a whoping 28 . Thanks to 56 increase at bath and body works more on sqwawk on the street. We are digging in to the egas approval to approve the b boeing 737 max and whether passengers will be able to get on board thats online. More sqwawk on the street coming up. Crude oil is trying to hang on energy is the biggest s p lagarde. By a pretty large margin talking about the outlooks of the sector wed be closer to the twins. Change in plans. At fidelity, a change in plans is always part of the plan. Its time you make the rules. So join the 2 Million People who have switched to xfinity mobile. You can choose from the latest phones or bring your own device and choose the amount of data thats right for you to save even more. And youll get 5g at no extra cost. All on the most reliable network. So choose a data option thats right for you. Get 5g included and save up to 400 dollars a year on the network rated 1 in customer satisfaction. Its your wireless. Your rules. Only with xfinity mobile. Energy has been an historic terror expected to gain 20 in november alone our next guest, just published his 2021 commodity outlook joining us this morning, good to see you. Thank you for having me it sounds like you dont see this rebound simply a knee jerk response to the vaccine. Absolutely not. I do agree the vaccine is essentially a v shape trade in crisis for next year effectively, the catalyst is a vaccine story however we think that is oil and commodities. And whats driving that is the pandemic itself. In fact, we would argue the vaccine is a tactical catalyst the pandemic itself is a structural catalyst. So i think the three key points that were focused on is, one, is that were seeing a structural decline in investment we call that the avenge of the old economy. No cap ex is going into the old economy. Thats going to create supply shortages across the commodity complex. Heres a fact for you today. Every single commodity with the exception of cocoa and wheat are in a deficit right now that tells you you ghaet tha vshaped recovery, the markets are going to get tighter the other big theme is policy driven demand and the third one is reflation. On that last point, i mean, whats the bigger driver you talk about the revenge of the old economy and obviously capacity constraints as you just lined out. Is that the bigger dynamic here or simply trying to protect yourself against rising costs in general . I would argue, you know, its all of the above back again, so the reflation theme which is what youre talking about right here, thats due to the fact that youre seeing a substantial devaluation of the dollar. And when we start to see weakness in the dollar, it puts upper pressure across the entire commodity complex. We saw this in the 2000s and in the 70s. Were teed up to see that same dynamic. The higher the Commodity Prices go, the weaker the dollar. The weaker the dollar, the higher the Commodity Prices. It can spiral up to much higher prices jeff, what about the chinese recovery how much is that playing a part in the price and the trajectory of oil and other Commodity Prices right now absolutely critical i think everything solid both the metals as well as the Agricultural Commodities in particular, they have been fueling that recovery through Infrastructure Spending as well as construction. Which is creating a very strong base metals and bolts market you know, we have seen copper pushing to earlier this week hit up to 7200 a ton. These are prices we havent seen in years and in terms of thinking about agriculture, you know, we had phase one of the trade deal. Thats not whats creating that huge surge in import its the fact theyhave real Food Shortages they killed off the hog herd during the covid19 crisis and the imports of metals and agriculture are surging. This exact same time theyre building reserves. I would like to point out what kicked off that bull market in commodities in the 70s, 1972, it was russia buying up grains look at a chart of soy beans and corn chinese are buying a lot of grains right now jeff, how do you think about two things that we often hear from the other side of this trade and that is the he lrise the electric vehicle and esg and cultural dynamics around the ownership of the Asset Classes are those do you think sentiment on those two issues is inflated oh, absolutely not. You know, in terms of thinking about the impact that esg has had on investment, its clearly having a substantial impact on the European Integrated oils you know, youve seen it with total and the other big european majors they shifted their investment away from oil and into renewables and other types of Sustainable Energy investment. So that is a supply side story lets talk about the demand story. That is even bigger. While youre making the investment into these sustainable type of energy sources, its creating stimulus. We think that the cap ex for the capital intensity of the Global Economy is going to go to 28 over the course of the next decade that is as big or bigger than what the bricks boom was in the 2000s. So this is a huge cap ex cycle and the stimulus effect is going to be significant. We like to point out even in oil youre going to get the stimulus effect on demand before you ever begin to think about oil demand. Jeff, what do you do if you hold gold . Its already up 22 this year. Obviously a lot working for it with fiscal and monetary stimulus flowing from all corners of the globe do you still buy absolutely. And the reason why we like gold is because the first leg was really being driven by the printing of the stimulus which creates a basement effect against the dollar the second leg is going to be once you begin to see the recovery take hold, inflationary pressures begin to resurface a lot of people say well wont that make real rates start going up on the back end of the curve and make go down yes. It will make them go down but it will be a steepener. As you have that front end real rates go down as Inflation Expectations rise, thats driving gold back up thats one leg lets not forget what is going on in india and china. Robust Economic Growth in china will increase the demand for physical gold. What we call the wealth effect well have the fear effect going on with inflationary pressures in the west and then the wealth infe effect going on in the east. The two will Work Together our target on gold is 2300 an ounce. Wow jeff, next year is going to be fascinating. Well get through it with your help, i hope its good seeing you thanks so much thanks for having me. Jeff currie talking energy and commodities. One more thing before we close out the hour here. New york city mayor bill diblasio moments ago saying that Indoor Dining and gyms are very likely to be shut down in the next couple of weeks. Speaking at a News Conference right now, sara, of course, you mentioned earlier the closure of new York City Public Schools the mta yesterday looking at severe budget cuts and layoffs state of emergencies in wisconsin and now missouri extending their own into march 31 so thats one of the suppressants on enthusiasm today for sure also minnesota governor is calling for a four week restriction shutdown for ars, restaurants, and gyms. Look, governors and mayors are going their own way facing the rising positivity rates. There is going to be a debate. Now there is a test case to see if these restrictions and lockdowns work they never closed down in florida, for instance, or at least they havent despite the rising cases, carl so theyre going to be questions. I this i diblasio is facing a ton of criticism by closing schools and not bars and restaurants and gyms why are they more essential than schools . Very difficult policy decisions here as they have to weigh safety and the economy as we go to break, take a look at shares of sonos surging after the company beat estimates. A strong full year forecast. Shares up almost 24 well talk to Patrick Spence on squawk alley in a bit. In the meantime, the dow trying to get another 50 points will put it back on pace for the stbe month since 87. Dont go away. Some hot cocoa . Mom, look are you okay . Head home this holiday with the one you love. Visit your local mercedesbenz dealer today for exceptional lease and financing offers at the mercedesbenz winter event. Good morning it is 8 00 a. M. At sonos headquarters in santa barbara, california, and it is 11 00 a. M. At the New York Stock Exchange and squawk alley is live