Transcripts For CNBC Closing Bell 20171218

You go out no, i dont. Various market milestones today. The nasdaq crossing 7,000 for the first time and the dow closing in on 25k for the first time although were well off the highs right now. Tax reform hopes, and a series of deals this morning seem to be helping sentiment today. This is the first time ever, by the way, that the dow has gained 5,000 points in a single year. We began the year in president 19,000 range and now were well into 24k. Its just crazy theres no other word for it nothing like bitcoin, though, by comparison, it seems tame. We have people who are going to tell you where to make more money in the sfarkt cotock markg up in a few minutes. Is utilities are the biggest loser today. We have a debate on whether the bitcoin boom could help drive utilities higher talk about some of the power usage. Thats a hot topic. Recode calls him one of tvs most important executives. What espn had john skippers resignation announced today means for that sports giant and for disney overall well get to that in a little while. Lets start with this recordbreaking day for stocks yet another one. Joining our Closing Bell Exchange today, we have victoria fernandez from crossmark global investments. There she is kenny from oneal securities is at post 9. And look, kids, its Rick Santelli at the cme in washington as well so, kenny p. , i think this will be number 70 in terms of records for the dow this year, and our cracker jack Research Team figured out that thats 29 of the trading days this year so more than one in four days this year have been a record high for the dow. Its really been is that crazy its crazy. Its been an incredible year considering the sentiment in january, no one was sure about what was going to mean with trumps firstyear presidency, a lot of people were making a bet against it its done nothing but slap them in the face the whole year up. Now as we make yearly highs right here going into the final bell, its really its really actually incredible. Todays action, clearly being driven by whats going on in d. C. , certainly, this tax plan is going through not a doubt about it it will be delivered to the president s desk with out pomp and circumstance that he promised im sure on christmas eve. So it will just ignite the end of the year. Not a whole lot of volume today. But that just means, you know, all the long onlies, people betting on this market going higher are happy to let it ride. I guess. Victoria, this time of year were supposed to see people doing that tax law selling sort of december weakness into the january effect but retail, which you think people would be dumping, is one of the better performers again today. So wa kihat kind of moves are y guys making here no, youre absolutely right, kelly. We havent seen as much selling that you would normally see. I think there was some concern that the fifo issue and with the tax bill might cause that to be greater, but now that weve heard that thats out, were not seeing that. In our products, were really overweight the financials, the industrials. We think those are going to be big beneficiaries due to their effective tax rates with the new tax plan so were continuing to overweight those well add to those names Going Forward. But were also taking this opportunity, we think there will be some more volatility next year so using that to kind of step back to some of our clients, look at their overall allocation and maybe add to some of International Names that we have, and then also maybe using that to use some of the covered calls that we have if you have extra volatility in the market, thats a great way to add some extra income to your portfolio. Those are some things were doing with our clients. Is all right, rick, so weve pulled back a little bit from that 94 level on the dollar index youve been watching so carefully. Yields have been going up on the short end a little bit what are you looking at here today . Is you know, its been all about the long end today here the 30year bond is trading very close to 275 on its high yield of the day the tens getting close to 40 on their high yield of the day. And that tenyear is five basis points away from unchanged on the year you know what, lets all play a game here. Lets try to make 2017 make more sense for everybody. Dont think about it as a trade. Think about it as a repricing. Think about a lot of issues, Central Banks, change in leadership in many countries including the u. S. , or businessfriendly, especially in the u. S. , but not necessarily limited to, think france here. I think repricing explains a lot. Integral to the repricing of stocks, keep it simple, supply and demand if you look at the buybacks over the last several years and over the last six, seven months in particular, they might not be a record the last six months but theyre going at a very lively clip the amount of tradeable stocks continues to be a dynamic in the priu pricing of fundamentals for equity markets i think when you add it all up, i said green light most of the year i think its as green as ever today. Vick, what aborick, what abo repricing . If you told me this year we were going to have the dow up 25 as of today, couple quarters gdp over 3 , what would i think the tenyear bond yield would be, i would say, oh, easily over 3 . Yet were smack where we started, barely at 2. 4 . Is that all because of europe and those central bank effects absolutely. Now, if youd have said Interest Rates are going to be up and not specify the maturity, you could have told all your friends you were exactly right i mean, a twoyear note is up over 62 basis points. Right. Just since september. Eightyear high. We only had one rate hike in that window, that was just last week so, yes, i do think the long end is all about other Central Banks. Remember, you know, when you throw coins in the fountain, nobody knows who threw it. It theres a lot of coins out there still in the marketplace for Central Banks. Even though ours is maybe less than others. Kenny, arent you tempted to take a Little Something off the table here just in case i think you have to, but i think thats going to come in january. I dont think people are going to do it now i think theyre going to let it ride but once january comes, and once this tax package gets passed, i think youre going to see the volatility in the First Quarter of next year youll see money coming out of some of the high fliers. Repositioned into value names. Be repositioned into some financials and certainly the Big Industrial names because i think those are going to be big beneficiariy ies next year. Victoria, final question, circling back to what you said earlier, made a lot of sense a lot of people could have said that for 2017 as well. Volatility is going higher, we want to be positioned for that what happens if it doesnt materialize next year, were faced with another year like this one you know, its definiteliy a possibility. I think because we so much waiting in the wings, besides the tax plan we will probably see pass this week, we got infrastructure deals that theyre saying theyre going to bring in the First Quarter youre looking at issues with Social Security and entitlement changes that theyre wanting to make weve got Central Banks starting to make some shifts, i mean, the ecb at some point is going to have to start looking at what theyre going to do when they finish their bondbuying program. I think theres a lot playing in the markets right now that will lead to additional volatility. We dont have a crystal ball we cant be for sure so low this year, i think were set for it to move higher next year okay, folks thank you, all victoria, enice to see you, kenniny, see you around. Rick, see you later. Turning to washington where moments a egg the president made a speech about the Administrations National security strategy. Lets get to eamon javers at the white house with more. Reporter we heard from the president within the past hour, his first National Security strategy, document an opportunity for the president to lay out the trump doctrine, very much an americafirst approach to the world the president said that economic power is very much an important piece of Overall National power. Heres what he said. For the first time, american strategy recognizes that Economic Security is National Security Economic Vitality growth and prosperity at home is absolutely necessary for American Power and influence abroad any nation that trades away its prosperity for security will end up losing both reporter the president also took an opportunity here to take a victory lap of sorts on this record run, record stock market closes weve seen over the past year heres the president at home, were keeping our promises and liberating the American Economy we have created more than 2 million jobs since the election. Unemployment is at a 17year low. The stock market is at an alltime high and just a little while ago hit yet another alltime high. The 85th time since my election. [ applause ] reporter and kelly and bill, one interesting dichotomy in this set of remarks today was the dichotomy between the written language and the strategy document on russia which was relatively tough, and then the president s language in the speech in which he praised Vladimir Putin, talking about cooperation between Vladimir Putin and the United States cia on an antiterrorism matter over the weekend. The president saying that is how cooperation with russia should work nonetheless, in the document it very much approaches russia and china as strategic competitors over the next coming years, guys back over to you all right, eamon, thank you eamon javers at the white house. All right. Now the other big story in washington, of course, is the tax reform package the house is ex. Ebl expected to vote on that bill tomorrow ylan mui joins us now with the very latest. Bill, the republicans, a finish line looks like its finally in sight as you said, the house is expected to vote, thats expected to happen tomorrow afternoon. The Senate Following suit very shortly afterward. Now, assuming it passes, reuters is saying theres a new analysis by moodys projecting the tax cuts will juice up growth over the next decade then growth will weaken at the start of the following decade because the National Debt will increase. Reuters also saying the Ratings Agency predicted that home prices could be hurt even though stock prices get lifted and that businesses are the biggest winners in this bill now that plays right into the argument thats coming from democrats. They are out with their own numbers showing 15 of the biggest u. S. Companies will get a tax break totaling 236 billion thanks to the new rates for repatriation apple, alone, could see a tax reduction of 48 billion on its offshore earnings and democratic senator Bernie Sanders called the gop tax bill a massive giveaway to the largest corporations and he called for the bill to be defeated. Now the public appears to agree with him 47 of americans disapprove of the tax bill thats according to a poll released today by Monmouth University half also believe their taxes would actually go up flo now, of course, republicans dispute this argue the median family of four will see their taxes fall by more than 2,000 this is a real messaging problem for the gop, guys. Especially as theyre planning to make the tax bill the centerpiece of their strategy to maintain their majorities next year back over to you ylan, as this heads toward the finish line, can any of the details be changed at this point . No. It is strictly an upordown vote on what the Conference Committee has agreed to. The bill is now final. Our property tax writeoff is still going to be capped at 10,000. They literal ly in the bill said you cant prepay. Apparently you cant prepay. You cant prepay it you cant prepay it. Any hopes you had of gaming the system, guys, just put those to bed for now. Okay. Apparently thanks, ylan. Sure thing. See you later. Ittheres other things you tried listen, for a couple months miscellaneous business deductions going away, you know, the treatment of Real Estate Income how is that theres still you know, as people are even just realizing what they did to not give to the reinsurers this sort of offshore thing theres a lot of details in here people are wrapping their heads around thats why i ask. Every single tax reform passage thats ever been passed is should be called the accountant employment act because thats exactly what it does. This one, too, for all of its simplification. Try and figure it out. Anyhow. Lets go take a quick break here with a little more than 45 minutes to go and records on wall street once again the dow is up 142 right now. It thats interesting. That says 154. Anyway, the s p is up 17 ill go by our screen. Nasdaq up 63 just a point away from 7,000 and the russell up 17. Its also a little bit of a merger monday. We have hershey and amplify, amplify snack brands, that is, one of the deals that was announced this morning well tell you what other companies are teaming up today, next. You know, i think that board has frozen here at the new york Stock Exchange. Meantime, cme Bitcoin Futures started trading last night. You probably know that besides bitcoins recent surge in the cash market, those futures are trading lower today. Coming up, well look at whether Institutional Investors could be the next group to get in on the cryptocurrency craze. And, of course, we always love hearing from you. 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Honey . You almost done . Nope. Get ready, because were helping leading companies see it and see it throughwith digital. Welcome back with some strong gains here as we kick off one of the last trading weeks of the year. The dow up 154 points today, year to date gain to 25 s p is up 17 . Nasdaq up 62 hit 7k earlier for the first time the russell up 17. The dow up 224 at the peak today. Yeah, exactly. I didnt realize that. Even stronger than it is right now. Lots stronger. Shares of kellogg also higher announcing a 1. 5 billion buyback late friday. Cereal makers previous Share Buyback plan expires at the end of the month its pushing the stock higher just under 1. 5 . Food stocks moving today on the heels of various deals on various deals talked about new details emerging on a merger between campbells soup and snyderslance, snack maker, as well as a deal between hershey and amplify snack brands kate rogers has the details for us. Thats right. Todays deals are all about the snacks pegged at 89 billion in the u. S. , alone. The bigger of the two deals today, campbells soup acquirin snyderslance. This is the largest deal ever in the soup companys history snyders owns Diamond Foods and pop secret popcorn hersheys announced they will acquire amplify snack brand. The Parent Company of skinny pop popcorn. The two stocks have been divergent this year. Campbells down 17 year to date hersheys is up 10 for 2017 so far. The deals also signify Big Food Companies like hersheys and campbells are looking to move beyond traditional offerings and diversify their own port folio of products. Consumer behaviors are, of course, changing analysts say more people are snacking on foods like pretzels and popcorn as Dining Trends become more mobile less time and money are being sent on the socalled center of the store items. Shoppers are migrating more to the perimeter of store wrs the snacks are located one more thing analysts say to keep in mind, the trend will likely continue into 2018 for two key reasons. Big Food Companies have continued to struggle and Interest Rates are low this all makes for a perfect storm for m a in the food space. Bill and kelly you know what i love about this, theyre going after the snack makers because were more mobile with our eating habits. Im serious. Were more mobile are our eating habits mobile with our communication, mobile with our eating habits. As somebody who eats a lot on the go, as you know, im not always as i witness here. Im not always reaching for the healthiest stuff i totally understand why theres a premium for the options, kate, that are out there that people like by the way, thats a rich price to pay for amplify the shares are absolutely up 70plus percent today. Of course and those two companies that theyre acquiring the market caps are much lower. Amplify is under 1 billion. The shares did get a huge pop. Another thing to remember, iri said 14 of people say theyre snacking five or more times a day, closer to 10 last year see why the old guard, so you call it in, the Food Industry is definitely interested in getting more and more into the snack space, guys. One more thing, fun fact, snyder and lance merged some years ago but the Lance Company has been around since 1913 and may have come up with the first prepackaged snack food. Really . That is the crackers with Peanut Butter. I was going to say the cheese cracker ones. Those are good. I love them my grandmother used to call them nabs wed always get them for a twret when we went to visit her. Old school. Kate, thank you thank you. Sparking this walk down memory lane. Kate rogers. Other deal news, humana reportedly in advanced talks to buy kindred. Lets get to Bertha Coombs. Not a huge surprise, Bruce Broussard in the last Conference Call last month said the company was looking to do m a when it came to home care. So add to its Medicare Advantage franchise. Take a look, humana right now near the lows of the day trading down about 2. 5 . Now, the deal would have private Equity Partners over at welsh and carson and tbg buying the acute care side and the longterm Care Services of kindred and humana would then get the home care and the hospice. The deal reportedly would value Kindred Health care at 9 a share, but its trading above that today the cash value of the deal would be about 750 million when you add in debt, it goes up to about 4 billion but lets not forget, humana having terminated its acquisition by aetna earlier this year when that deal was blocked is getting 1 billion from aetna presumably they could make this deal all in cash a number of analysts are fairly positive on the deal, though some analysts had been looking for perhaps a bit more of a Share Buyback from humana. This comes as a lot of folks in the industry are doing just this theyre looking at these vertical deals the cvs, 69 billion deal for aetna. Is to try to create a model where people can get cheaper care and you can get better margins in terms of the insurance and other caregivers and United Health has been doing this all along its latest acquisition bid, 5 billion for davitas medical group care were going to continue to see these deals, guys. Some analysts are saying if you start seeing these Companies Get more cash from the tax deal, thats only going to fuel this dealmaking back to you. Great point thank you, bertha. Thanks,er be sh er bbertha see you on the close Bertha Coombs on the floor of the Stock Exchange our board is frozen here. Ill look down there dow was up 224 as we were knocking on 25,000s door. Pulled back there. Still record closes for the dow, the s p and the nasdaq and the russell as a matter of fact, too. Meanwhile, twitter is up more than 10 on a bullish call by jp morgan why the firm calls the social Media Company one of its top ideas for next year. Thats coming up and the world piece largest Futures Exchange officially opened its doors to bitcoin last night. Coming up well analyze how bit coins trading today now we have four different prices to watch. All different. What needs to happen for Institutional Investors to start trading, or trade more of the cryptocurrency, when we come right back when you have a really traumatic injury, we have a short amount of time to get our patient to the hospital with good results. We call that, the golden hour. Evaluating patients remotely, is where i think we have a potential to make a difference. We would save a lot of lives if we could bring the doctor to the patient. Verizon is racing to build the first and most powerful 5g network, with ultra lowlatency that will enable things like precision robotic surgery from thousands of miles away. As we get faster wireless connections, itll be possible to be able to operate on a patient in a way that was just not possible before. When i move my hand, the robot on the other side will mimic the movement, with almost no delay. Who knew a scalpel could work thousands of miles away . Oh, kellys after some crackers and Peanut Butter right now. Got you going there. Lets check, with the dow and everybody else higher today, were in record territory. Had a pretty good rally today. Lets look at some of the movers in the stock market today. Shares of Akamai Technology still soaring after Elliott Management disclosed on friday it was taking a 6. 5 stake in the Cloud Services Company Sources say that elliott is pushing to curtail what it sees as wasteful spending and poor Strategic Planning akamai up another 14 today. And shares of twitter up more than 10 . P almost 11 after the upgrade by jp morgan to overweight from neutral. The firm also increased its price target to 27 a share from 20. Jp morgan says twitters Financial Results will strengthen over the next year. And name the stock one of its top small to midcap ideas for 2018 thank you for not saying smid cap. Smid cap . Is that a thing now . Its a thing. Not in my house. Lets do a quick check of shares of Berkshire Hathaway the company touched the 300,000 mark today for the first time. Its about 420 below that right thousand th now. Despite four straight quarters of low operating prooe ining prt the stock still up about 1 . So, i saw that. Every time i think about Berkshire Hathaway, i think about when my career started i could remember when it was a 1,500 stock or something. I went back and did the research i started covering wall street in november of 1981. Wow. Do the math yes, i know. Okay okay thank you. You know what it was trading at at the time . 1981 . Plalate 1981. 500. Exactly, thats exactly what i said, i wept when i saw that imagine today if you bought even one share for 500 bucks. 36 years ago it was trading at 500. Its now at almost 300,000. Still doesnt want to split the stock. Thats incredible is right . Incredible stuff. I weep. Again, up 1 today. Well see if it closes over 300k whether its today or another day, what a run. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange wiex change which is the Worlds Largest Futures Exchange launched its own Bitcoin Futures contract last night. Dom chu has more on how thats going. Following up on your berkshire discussion, theres a lot of skepticism about what bitcoin has in store in the future not a lot of september schism abo skepticism of warren buffet at n the empire he built. Lets take a look at the futures market so far today we have seen a little bit of a pickup in terms of volumes for supersized cme Bitcoin Futures. Unlike the cboe, one bitcoin to one future ratio so as we talk about the Bitcoin Futures market, as you can see here, were down maybe not so much of a difference in terms of the overall price difference we have seen a couple hundred dollars between the cboe contracts and cme contracts. About 1,000 of those contracts, a little over 1,000, 1,030 the last time i checked. Roughly close to 100 million in terms of total dollar volume very shawl comparmall compared r developed future markets the Bitcoin Futures versus the spot price a bit of a difference in terms of the premium being charged for futures. Remember, you dont have to own bitcoin, hold a digital wallet, anything like that to settle these trades maybe the premium is there as for the reasons why some Institutional Investors may not want to get into Bitcoin Futures just yet, we spoke to mike harris, the president at campbell and company, a Commodity Trading adviser. Specialize in trading macro instruments like future contracts, currencies, that sort of thing he said some the things to watch, quality of the market data, Institutional Investors and hedge funds might be comfortable if they know the quality of the market data is s there. Liquidity, not deep for futures now but maybe if it got bigger in the future, that might be different. Regulatory uncertainty all playing a part in the discussion about institutional trading. Lets end on this. The number of cryptooriented funds that trade the cryptocurrencies or invest in the Technology Behind them has risen hugely according to folks at autonomous net, 123 of the companies as of earlier this month have launched those types of funds go back to what it was last year, 13,592 you get the idea its exploded. Thats going to be a huge thing to watch Going Forward whether or not a lot more people get into this particular trading space in terms of crypto cryptocurrencies, guys back over to. You. Im still looking at calculating the return, average on the return of the berkshire its a lot. Yeah. Its a lot. Dom, thanks so much. Got it, guys. Thank you, do zblrm. See you later. Time for a cnbc news update. Lets get over to sue herera. Hello, guys heres whats happening at this hour, everyone washington states governor declaring a state of emergency in response to the deadly amtrak derailment reports indicate at least six people were killed and the death count is expected to rise. The highspeed train derailed near olympia, washington, on a highway overpass and fell onto vehicles no one on the ground was killed, but there are multiple injuries. There were 78 passengers onboard and 5 crew members. In california, calmer winds helping firefighters battle massive wildfires in Southern California one blaze, the socalled thomas fire, is creeping closer to the Santa Barbara zoo. The zoo has been preparing for possible evacuations since yesterday. The Israeli Military reporting it attacked a hamas training compound in gaza. Its in response to a jump in rocket strikes coming from the palestinian enclave. Militants have been protesting President Trumps decision to recognize jerusalem as israels capital. And a russianbased Antivirus Company is suing the Trump Administration in federal court over a software ban. The firm argues the administration has infringed on its Due Process Rights thats the news update this hour i will send it back down to you guys bill all right, sue, thank you very much. We got less than 30 minutes left in the trading session here. Im on the floor with our friend, matt, from virtue financial. Really, why are you growing the beard . Until the market goes down, im not shaving. Like a playoff beard in hockey. Theres a debate going on whether the tax reform bill is in this market, is priced in plenty of people say its already there. Theyre goingto sell off when they pass this bill. Plebt plebt ple plenty of other people say, no, it has time to grow once they know the magnitude of the tax cut. You havent seen selling, you dont know the magnitude of the tax cut. Is it going to pass this year . Going to be retroactive . This market certainly shows no signs of stopping. We hit alltime highs. You know, on the nasdaq nice round number 25,000 in the dow. Staring us in the face thats a 1 move. Right. I expect to be that, if not tomorrow, maybe the next day and are there sectors you feel benefit more than others in this case . Well, you see the russell really breaking out. Right sf. That was supposed to be the biggest beneficiary. Sold off didnt have the rally we saw now its gaining traction. Everyones getting involved in that the financials everyone keeps talking about. They had a nice move they kind of slowed down recently retail picked up the slack retail has been strong that was a sector everyone said they left for dead now thats rallied to the end of the year there are sicyclical plays you n get involved in and interesting to see if we can continue them. Well see whether you look like kenny p. Or somebody from zz top pretty soon. That would be good for the markets, right i guess it would. Exactly. Thanks see you later, matt. Kelly thanks, guys, both. President of espn, john skipper resigning today. Up next, well have the latest details on his departure and the companys succession plan. Later the dow has risen 5,000 points this year thats never happened before according to a new cnbc spur vie, 50 of the puic tnkblhis its a good time to buy stocks well tell you why they think that coming up welcome back weve mentioned the markets overall records were seeing again today. That goes for everybody here with the dow rallying higher by more than 100 points right now how about the centers of the s p . Get some sense of whats driving us higher today. Materials up 1. 5 . Telecom up 1 . Energy right behind it as for the decliners today, Consumer Staples are fractionally lower utilities the worst performer down more than 1 . Well talk about those utilities in just a little bit here meantime, espn president john skipper announced his resignation today. He resigned in order to deal with a Substance Abuse problem he said. Lets bring in Julia Boorstin with more on that story. Julia . Hey, bill, it was truly a shocking resignation of john skipper who joined espn 20 years ago and became president of the network nearly six years ago he said, ive struggled for many years with a substance addiction. Ive decided the most important thing i can do right now is to take care of my problem. Espn executive chairman George Bodenheimer, president of espn for three years before skipper was will serve as the acting chair of espn for 90 days and he and disney ceo bob iger look to find a successor. Bodenheimer r quotes ive stayed in close contact with john, i believe in the direction hes taken espn. Espns next president will see the direct to consumer app early next year but also the integration of foxs Regional Sports networks as part of disneys fox acquisition following skipper who oversaw restructuring and layoffs, his success will also successor will also face the challenge of cord cutting and cord trimming, two issues that waved on disneys shares since iger first warned of their impact nearly 2 1 2 years ago. The choice of executive will be in the spotlight as the sports giant navigates a range of challenges facing the industry back over to you. Yujulia, i was going to say, its hard to read into this what the impact on espn is going to be heres somebody who was incredibly important to the organization, but also an organization thats been struggling the last couple of years. So, you know, i dont know whether theyll sort of say, okay, were going to bring in someone, take this in a fresh direction, or if they feel theres a big institutional loss there given the challenges ahead. I think one advantage that disney and espn have right now is bodenheimer has really been part of the organization he was president before skipper and hes been there the whole time so he does have a good sense of all of the different players and the direction that the companys been moving in for now, they have that advantage of not having to bring in someone else entirely and they have bodenheimer it will be interesting to see if they make him president of the network, yet again, or if they bring in someone who has more of sort of an area of expertise in that Digital Media space because thats really the direction that things are moving in disney is launching this direct to consumer app which is going to have ult stuff thatall the s available on broadcast or cable. Down the line, it is possible and bob igers talked about this, is they will try to take different parts of espn direct to consumer. So there are a lot of different moving pieces here, but definitely an area to watch. It will be interesting to see what type of leader they choose for the next the next leg of espns journey yeah. Thats a key decision. Thats for sure. Julia, thank you very much. Thanks, julia. Julia boorstin. Meantime, stock mania. Stock mania . Stock mania, they say is hitting main street but may be just starting to. Up next were going to break down whats behind this exuberance. You have a better word . I dont think theres stock mania. Thats a good point, youre right. Later, if you think buying bitcoin, speaking of manias, is too risky, how about buying utility stocks instead weve got a discussion on how that sector could benefit from lexai cinuprush wel pln,omg feel that . Thats the beat of global markets, the rhythm of the world. But to us, its the pace of tomorrow. With ingenuity, technologies, and markets expertise we create the possible. And when you do that, you dont chase the pace of tomorrow. You set it. Nasdaq. Rewrite tomorrow. What we do every night is like something out of a strange dream. Except that the next morning. It all makes sense. Fedex powers Global Commerce with vast, farreaching networks. Deep knowledge of industries. And, yes. Maybe a little magic. We have breaking news regarding the republican tax plan ylan mui is back now what senator mike lee is a yes on the tax bill he had worked with senator marco rubio to push for a bigger expansion of the Child Tax Credit now hes made it official, he just tweeted, just finished reading the final tax cuts and jobs act it will cut taxes for working utah families. I will proudly vote for it. So republicans, again, locking in all of those last votes that they need in order to pass this bill one of the key holdouts that were still waiting to hear from is Susan Collins she had made supportive statements of the bill just on friday but have not heard an official word from her. But for republicans, one more in the yes column and thats senator mike lee of utah back over to you guys. All right, ylan, thank you. Theyre lining up. Ylan mui. As we gibegin to wrap up 20, lets take a look at the dow what did i say, 20 . 25 . 25 plus. I cant believe it is 25 but its 25 year to date. It gained more than 5,000 points this year. Which is also noteworthy Steve Liesman has more steve, is it stock mania whats your allamerica survey show you know what do people think about the market hold that thought of it being a mania or not that is a great question ill show you the data, you come back and tell me if its a mania. Our cnbc allamerica survey of 800 americans around the country finds for the first time 50 are saying it is a good time to invest you can see for much of the period of time, doing this survey, got to go back here all the way, we started asking the stock question in 08 and you can see its been under 50 finally. You can see the change here, by the way, beginning in december 2016 those who are saying its a bad time to invest down to 29 . Lets look at attitudes on the stock market by portfolio. We have some breakdown in that those with no investment, just 31 say now is a good time those with less than 50,000 say 61 say its a good time and 71 of those with portfolios with 50,000 in stocks or later. We also, by the way, have record ownership. Averaging four quarters of our data 53. 5 . Thats up a point and a half from the average in 2016 lets take a look by party you can see quite a big political effect in this democrats compareded to october 2016 havent changed their attitude much about the market independents, though, theyre more than double where they were and republicans, well, theyre just crazy about the stock market 66 say now is a good time to invest those who favor the gop tax bill, 70 , say its a good time to invest. And 43 of those who oppose it say its a good time so i dont know, bill, and kelly, whether or not this is a mania or not, but the call of the stock market, these numbers we post every day, i guess theyre on this side over here, these numbers seem to be getting the attention of the American Public are they in with two feet . I dont know about that. It feels like we should start at 50 half of people think its just a rough but weve only now just gotten to 50 , so i mean, thats, for me, is what a notable even after all of the gains weve seen since march of 2009, were still at 50 overall now i understand the political situation with republicans being more yeuphoric than the democrat right now. Right. Still, overall two things concern me two things concern me. The first is whether or not when the public gets involved, is that a sign of the top so that worries me. Typically. The other thing that bothers me is when people get into the market because the market is going up, i think thats a bad way to invest. They should have been in before. If you go back and look at the history of this thing, a lot of the public seemed to miss the rise from 08 all the way to today because of political reasons. Whereas regular investing not based on the flavor of the month or whether or not stocks are up or down, its a much better way to do this rather than people jumping in when the market is at or near these alltime highs no, i take all those points i think if were going to use the term, mania, you dont have to look far to know where it applies. To bitcoin, of course. Its not maybe the market will get there, but we have some data tomorrow, guys, bitcoin data ill save for tomorrow. Oh. Good tuesdease. Very good thank you, steve have a good day. Steve liesman. Last week, speaking of bitcoin, mr. Stan druckenmiller told me it takes the same amount of energy to do one Bitcoin Mining transaction as it takes to drilling nine hesn is uny. Ol ith could it be an under the radar way to play bitcoin . Were going to discuss that right after this lets get started. Show of hands. Who wants customizable options chains . Ones that make it fast and easy to analyze and take action . How about some of the lowest options fees . Are you raising your hand . Good then its time for power e trade the platform, price and service that gives you the edge you need. Alright one quick game of rock, paper, scissors. 1, 2, 3, go. E trade. The original place to invest online. I thwell wait. What did you meetthink about her . Its definitely a new idea, but theres no business track record. Well, have you seen her work . No. Is it good . Good . At cognizant, were helping todays leading banks make better lending decisions with new sources of data so, multiply that by her followers, speaking engagements, work experience. Credit history. That more accurately assess a business chances of success. This is a good investment. Shes a good investment. Get ready, because were helping leading companies see it and see it throughwith digital. Art cashin stopped by a moment ago and told us the market on close orders, weve seen this a lot lately, to the sell side by 700 million. And i think weve already seen that creep into the market here in the last hour the dow had been up 224 points much earlier in the day. But weve come well off those highs of the session right now backing away from that 25,000 level. Up 143. At the moment. You sure . I got it just you did cme Bitcoin Futures are lower today after its launch last night a stark difference, though, from the cboes launch a week ago where the price surged about 19 during that first day of trading. And if investors think bitcoin is too risky but still want to play the cryptocurrency, there could be another way heres what legendary investor Stan Druckenmiller had to say last week. It takes the same amount of energy to do one bitcoin transaction that it takes to power nine homes in the u. S. By 2019, it will take up all it will take up half the energy in the entire United States to run the bitcoin network. Sounds like the Utility Companies are a buy. Yeah. Well and by the way, that was not his main point which was simply that the amount of Energy Required will become unsustainable to some of the users. But lets talk he was doing a sort of an ironic way, then right . You cant keep this up forever. Well, i mean, i dont know, but it wouldnt be something that he felt strongly enough about to be investing in it was just the point is for bitcoin, itself, this is something hes quite cautious about. Now, lets see if utilities are a way to play bitcoin, well ask our guests joining us, ali, and ben welcome to you both. Ben b, ill just begin with you. Thank you what is your expectation for how much power is required to mine bitcoin and is it going to make a difference to these utilities Going Forward . Yeah, in my view, there will be an increase in the power that it will be required for the network to be continuing to maintain the level of secure trustlessness that bitcoin promises however, i think that at the same time, bitcoin is driving innovation in a number of industries for example, we see Semiconductors Industry advancing with process notes lower than ever. I think were going to see innovations in terms of how energy is generated in the first place as a result of where bitcoin is heading ali, i think youre a little more skeptical on this do you think that Bitcoin Transactions are going to move the needle for Utility Companies . Look, you know, anything thats going to cause incremental demand growth is positive for utilities my caution, skepticism, comes from the fact if you remember about a decade back when pdas were becoming the new norm and growing exponentially. To support one pda, the energy of a refrigerator so demand growth would be exponential. The fact of the matter is over the last decade, electric demand growth has been flat to declining and weve seen more Energy Efficiency usages and other factors coming into play, so at this stage i wouldnt make the case that its a huge needle mover. Thats a funny point. I didnt know they used to say that ben, the interesting thing which i think neil cashcari was tweeting about bitcoin, it has reversed economies of scale. Instead of a Consumer Device being able to lessen the cost and the need for those input over time, its the opposite takes more and more and more energy to mine each additional bitco bitcoin, right you know, what were what were seeing is bitcoin is now being mined in an industrial scale. Were seeing companies and investors putting Mining Operations in place all over the world, looking for Renewable Energy sources, such as hydropower going to places like iceland and investing in geothermal and my belief is that this is going to continue and were going to see the envelope pushed where its going to drive the costs of energy down as the demand for lowcost energy and clean lowcost energy increases. Right, but, i mean, lowcost energy is in china clean lowcost energy doesnt exist right now, right well, i think that it may exist, but it may not be widely available. I think theres been a lot of innovation thats happened over the last ten years in terms of how you can generate power i think weve seen the Power Industry investing in companies that are looking at how to mak power less expensive at scale. Theres yet another way to play it all. Indeed. Ben gorlick, ali, good to see you both thank you for joining us. Thank you. Appreciate your comments today. All right. Were coming back with the closining countdown in just a moment stay tuned [ click ] [ keyboard clacking ] [ clacking continues ] good questions lead to good answers. Our advisors can help you find both. Talk to one today and see why were bullish on the future. Yours. Talk to one today and see why were bullish on the future. Feel that . Thats the beat of global markets, the rhythm of the world. But to us, its the pace of tomorrow. With ingenuity, technologies, and markets expertise we create the possible. And when you do that, you dont chase the pace of tomorrow. You set it. Nasdaq. Rewrite tomorrow. Yes or no . Gin. Do you want the same tools and seamless experience across web and tablet . Do you want 4. 95 commissions for stocks, 0. 50 options contracts . 1. 50 futures contracts . What about a dedicated service team of trading specialists . Did you say yes . Good, then its time for power e trade. The platform, price and service that gives you the edge you need. Looks like we have a couple seconds left. Lets do some card twirling twirling cards e trade. The original place to invest online. About a minute left to the trading, close here on this monday monday. A week before christmas and santa claus is definitely here santa claus is in the house hes got a tax bill in his bag. Hes been here all year, as a matter of fact i mean, by the way, guys, if you show that, that is an incorrect number because the big board has been frozen here at the new york Stock Exchange for the last hour so were showing a bad number. There you go theres the dow for the year up 25 plus just this year not bad not bad. Not as good as the nasdaq, however. Correct. And i know when youre not in the building, it doesnt count, but we did cross 7,000 on the nasdaq which i never thought i would see, and whats interesting is, its not just the faang stocks jb hunt today is at an alltime high cintas, the unicorn maker, people saying were going to see more jobs and more unicorns. All right we go out with new records two weeks left in the year what more can happen maybe it depends on what happens in washington. We have an update on that coming up on the second hour of the closing bell with kelly evans and company. See you tomorrow, kell thank you, bill. Welcome to the closing bell, everybody, im kelly evans what a day we have on the close here on wall street. Looks like the nasdaq just below closing at 7,000 for the first time we did trade above that level earlier today. Still that represents a record close for the nasdaq with about a, lets see, about a 58point gain there 9 6 6,994 is the new record. The russell closed at 1,548. The broad market s p up half a percent today. The russell up more than 1 , by the way. The s p adding today about nearly 15 points to close at 2,690. A record high. The dow up just more than half a percent. The dow closing at 24,795, its first close above 24700. The 70th record high close for the dow this year. Its the 62nd record high close for the s p. And some of the numbers on the yeartodate performance are staggering those are just the numbers were focused on here at the immediate close. Well have much more on this in a moment these markets surging ahead of the house vote on the republicans tax plan which is slated for tomorrow. Well have the latest details and why banks could be getting a boost from the plan. A lot of banks at alltime highs today as well. Thats coming up. Joining me on the panel, cnbc senior markets commentator michael santoli. Dennis burman whos financial editor at the wall street journal. Stephanie link, managing director and equity Portfolio Manager at tiaa investments. Welcome, everybody now, as the dow closes in on 25,000, the market have been on a tear all year. The s p is now up 20 year to date we even put it on some hats. Theyre graphics we could make these, michael maybe only good for a day. The dow up 25 for the year. The nasdaq up 30 in 2017. Some of the market milestones as we mentioned today include the nasdaq trading above 7,000 for the first time how about this berkshire, the a shares hitting 3 00,000,000 for the ft time today closing up 1 , 40 bucks shy no, im sorry, with berkshire, im always off by a whole order of magnitude off by about 600 from that level. Michael, i mean, were out of adjectives. We should probably just close up the market for the year were at nice round numbers. Everybody can remember exactry how much we could have closed it up in november or october. Its true the market right now, today, is doing almost what its supposed to do right now. I mean, every single textbook, seasonal, years that look like this, are always finishing strong you have momentum. It was in the second half of december that they tend to take off. I almost feel, i keep saying this, the best time for a tax cut is tomorrow. Always tomorrow. Because i do think that the market is kind of able to keep that out there as just one of the positive inputs of course, the German Market was up 1. 6 today. So we have basically this global good feeling that tax cuts are certainly a component of. What do you make of that, Stephan Stephanie . Well, definitely is part of the seasonal trade that youre talking about. I think a lot of that is really whats going on here but certainly, we are excited about this tax bill. And itti getting passed. Heaven help us if it does not get passed for whatever reason be that as it may, the logic is youre going to see better growth, going to be seeing more investment less deregulation. The whole thing. We dont know what its going to mean for gdp underlying. Last week, we got good economic data, particularly retail sales which i saw a lot of gdp numbers get bumped this is before the tax bill. The economy is certainly getting a little stronger for sure earnings we know have been there. Its interesting the yeemd curve ste steepened today. Well see if that lasts. Its starting to buy in to make a little bitbetter growth. But actually youd see the cyclicals continue to outperform some of the defenses its really broad based in terms of the cyclicals not just financials, its industrials and energy participated and tech and discretionary. Its like the list is a mile long. Etch on the dow, best perfor, caterpillar, dow dupont. Tech names, amd having a nice session. I wanted to point out, dennis, to your point about the macro data, the housing data this morning, nahb survey jumped to 74, the highest reading since 1999 this is a survey of home buildings about their expectations by the way, housing was one of the areas that might have gotten hurt in some parts of the country from the tax bill, right . Certainly seems that was the case out of the tax bill of course, when you look at the real numbers, 750,000 mortgage deduction only applies to a relatively small portion of hom homes sold in the u. S. Now, of course, some of the Home Builders move for higher prices than that, but really when you look at it, you know, we in new york and washington get obsessed about these numbers because the cost of living is so high here in the real world, kelly, its nice in the real world, the housing industry has been telling ah, no, sold, this, that, dont mess with it, its going to hurt housing. Im saying for three months straight now, the Home Builders survey has been surging and show no sign of concern about some kind of hit. It has been surging one other point i think is important to think about, you said lets close up the books, were done for the year. But i think its the tyranny of the index fund, kelly, that has to keep people most people in the market so did you beat your benchmark or did you not you can say, hey, i got up 28 i had more risk aversion in my fund than the next doesnt matter did you beat the benchmark so thats why people have to stay in. Perhaps in a way they did not have to ten years ago. I like that point were going to leave it right there, talk a little bit more about the tax reform bill. The house is expected to vote on it tomorrow on that legislation. This on the heels on the heels of that vote, i should say, President Trump released his first National Security strategy this afternoon. Emphasizing his americafirst Campaign Calling out russia and china, challenging americas power and security i dont know if theres anything to glean from sort of where we stand in terms of geopolitics. Since we havent used the phrase, geopolitics in so long, it would suggest investors right now are whistling past any kind of Global Concerns that are out there right now. Yeah, it was tough to tie the speech to any specific likely action i mean, there was a lot of preliminary talk he was going to label china an economic aggressor and maybe that was the heightening of a little bit of the contentiousness there. Doesnt seem like that loop was closed here. I think theres twosided risk when it comes to trade on the one hand, if there are any gestures on the part of china saying, okay, fine, American Companies maybe can have a better shot at doing business here, i dont know if thats likely, but theres a chance of that on the other hand, if they decide to go hostile, its not necessarily going to be received well by the market. No. Or, i mean, overall for the economy. Steph, i was going to ask, because you mentioned it earlier, if for some reason theres a hurdle between now and the end of the week with passage of the tax bill, how much of a hit do you think the markets will take. I think it will go down quite a bit. Were starting to price it in. A couple weeks ago it wasnt priced in. Some of it was priced in look at the markets. New highs every day as you talked about if it doesnt go through, thats a really big issue lets see what happens, if it doesnt go through but sounds like something can happen in the First Quarter, january as long as its tomorrow. Like mike said. Thats right. I actually do believe thats true a quiz, how much is how much is the s p up this month okay. 3 1. 6 . Okay. It feels like the market has been going up a lot every day. Thats because we had the little dip so my point is its just the relentlessness of the rally. Not that theres so much air thats been put under this since the tax cut looked like a share thing. Its a rotation to your point, financials are feeling it in a wonderful way. Industrials go up every single day. Metals, resource metals, are on fire so, yeah, okay, maybe tech is taking a little bit of a breather, which is okay, maybe health care is taking a little bit of a breather. You are seeing these really big, big moves and some of these economicallysensitive sectors which tells you that resource constrained, lets get a Corporate Tax cut and invest a lot does that make sense i dont know, thats what i was saying. Lets talk about other drivers today. A big day for deals on this merger monday that we had. How about in the food space, campbells soup and snyderslance closed the deal cnbc told you about. Companies moving higher after campbells announced it will buy snyders f snyders. Yeah, dennis what i love what morrison said about that deal, said the world of snacking and meals are overlapping each other in ways never seen before. Which, hey, its probably true people are probably eating fewer meals sort of at their dinner table and more on the road and on the run but you have to think its a bit of a capitulation from campbells just on what they do every day i dont know the actual number of the percentage of campbells sales that are actually soup, but this obviously makes it a lot lower and i think even the crazy demand of heating up a can of soup might be too much for people these days. So the goldfish. Campbells already owns pepridge farm. Schmumuckers did the peanut better deal. Paying 19 times ebitda. Synergies in 2022. 2022. Their marquee product is low cal popcorn. Amplify, yeah so the deal is mostly for air. Thats right. Air is a big component of the value here its branded, bagged air hey, you know what theres something to it. Costs are pretty low for that go ahead, dennis. Costs for the air are pretty low. Probably a highmargin product thats why theyre paying 19 times for it. Let me take sure, i dont want to confuse everybody, skin economy p skinny pop maker amplifier hershey will buy that company. Snyd snyderslance. Theres the two deals for the day. The popcorn space, lowcal popcorn has been hot for the last several months. There was another startup bought in november boomchickapop was the brand probably a much smaller deal than these its obvious that to dennis point about the Big Food Companies capitulating, look, every one of these niche millennialfriendly food brands, snack brands is for sale at some price. If youre the winner, it means everybody else looked at it, too. Yes that might explain the premium as well. Oh, yeah, when theyre looking, theyre looking for growth, anything, 2 , 3 organic growth would be a home run for the Consumer Staples sector. Thats why youre seeing this mad dash i would say this, theyre not making deals unless they feel confident in the macro and their own business and think something on tax is going to get done and can kind of see a clear line of sight at the end so its an interesting time for the staples sector. Shares of csx, rail operator today, actually closed higher after initially falling 2 premarket after the death of csx Ceo Hunter Harrison on saturday. His death came a day aft the company said hed been placed on medical leaf we saw shares fall when that was announced on friday. On optimism the company will carry out harrisons turnaround plan csx down about 6 in the last week, its up more than 48 this year because harrison was going there. Thats why the stock was up 60 at one point. He really was a master in the railroad industry. People think of him as a legend. So it was clearly a loss for the company, and i would say what do you want to do with the stock from an investment point of view now you dont know who the ceo is going to be they laid off the ceo and cmo last month you really dont have leadership now on the flip side, maybe they can bring a new team in and revitalize and keep the restructuring going. A lot of question marks. For now youre going to see money rotate out of csx or unp, a similar restructuring story. Those hirings will tell people a lot about where they doubling down on the vision, on the plan, and executing what Hunter Harrison laid out right i dont think theres a lot of mystery the components of this turnaround plan are kind of out there. Its not so much that it was this magic touch it was a willingness because theres a lot of pushback. Yes. Institutionally against this. At the company against a lot of these measures so the willingness to actually follow through last word, dennis lets not forget, paul halal, the hedge fund who brought him in and ran his campaign against csx, it was all built around Hunter Harrison so we cannot forget that it was a kind of unique in it being a kind of a oneman band of an investment idea of course, we send out our condolences to his family. Yes. Back on wall street from an investment perspective, im with stephanie on this, wheres the plan if the plan was a man, whos your next man . All right guys, thank you. Appreciate it. We saw those shares turn around during the session today stephanie link, Dennis Burman joining us this afternoon. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you both. Bitcoin futures started trading on the cme yesterday currently trading down about 2 . Up next, we will hear from a cryptocurrency trader about the best way to play these markets right now. Also, thousands of passen r passengers stranded in atlantas hartsfieldjackson airport which is one of deltas hubs after a power outage the latest on the flight delays and how it might impact deltas bottom line is straight ahead. And we want to hear from you, contact the show, share your thoughts with us. Twitter, facebook, or send us an email youre watching cnbc, first in business worldwide mary had a little lamb whose fleece was white as snow. But after an electrical fire from faulty wiring, marys vintage clothing and designer shoe collection were ruined. Luckily, the Geico Insurance agency had recently helped mary with renters insurance, and she got a totally fab replacement wardrobe at bloomingdales. Mary was inspired to start her own fashion line, exclusively for little lambs. Visit geico. Com and see how affordable renters insurance can be. Wifiso if you cant live without it. T it. Visit geico. Com why arent you using this guy . It makes your wifi awesomely fast. No. Still nope. Now were talking it gets you wifi here, here, and here. It even lets you take a time out. No no yes yes, indeed. Amazing speed, coverage and control. All with an xfi gateway. Find your awesome, and change the way you wifi. Welcome back another major moment for bitcoin. The cryptocurrency debuted on the Worlds Largest Futures Exchange last night. Joining us now with more on what to expect from it is Cumberland Head of trading, bobby cho great to have you, bobby. Glad to be here how much trading are you guys doing of bitcoin generally in this cme product sure. So cumberlands been around since 2014, so weve been heavily involved in the spot market thus far. We were involved in the cme and cboe launch. In terms of overall activity on the futures market, its been light. To give you an idea of how light its been, right, theres an exchange calmed coinbase traded around 500 million today notionally whereas the cme contract traded around 100 million. Were active in both markets but obviously the spot or cash market just far surpasses anything thats happening in the futures market and i wuonder, bobby, what might change that situation . Is there not enough of a kind of natural Institutional Ownership of the underlying to make the hedging worthwhile or is it the sfakt that t fact that the ownership of actual bitcoin is so concentrated among the early adopter im wuondering about the components that make a good twostarted market. The first part you made in terms of just hedging, ritght. Cboe, you saw the basis trade around 8 . That was a spread between futures and spot when cme launched, it was right around 4. 5 . From our perspective, it looked like Market Participants were much better prepared for the arbitrage opportunity. Second to your point in terms of just natural buyers and sellers, obviously, natural buyers and sellers are looking for liquidity right now. So if you have been, you know, lets take it a miner whos a natural seller in the market, theyve been operating for a number of years. They kind of have their operations down in terms of being able to sell the actual, you know, physical bitcoin, if you will, and obviously for cumberland, we make institutionalsized markets for Market Participants such as those funds and other institutions. Bobby, im reading you guys are one of the largest Bitcoin Trading desks and liquidity providers in cryptocurrencies across the globe and you previously were doing Crypto Trading youre a true believer do you own bitcoin, yourself what it to you think of this whole thing . The idea of bitcoin came about in 2009, the asset class in general, how we look at it at cumberland, dont look at one cryptocurrency to win it all broad range of the asset class there are thousands of cryptocurrencies now the market cap of the total cryptocurrencies out there is about half a trillion dollars now. We only see that kind of going up and are really optimistic about the future is it getting more competitive . Because, you know, i was reading in the journal the other day, bored Commodity Traders are, you know, relaunching and getting in on the crypto craze and so forth and coinbase has done a nice job of kind of putting itself in the middle of all this so do you feel the competition heating up you know what, i think theres room for other Market Participants obviously for our business, were day in and day out trying to provide liquidity to funds or other entities out there looking to either get into the space, or have been involved in the space really since the beginning of our business in 2014 and, again, still we see the spot or the cash market just completely far surpassing whats happening in futures and probably will do so over the next six months or so. Is that because the margin is so high on the futures why is it that shorting bitcoin im just guessing if you wanted to own it, obviously, you could just buy it, but why do you think theres so little interest in shorting right now i think thats part of it i think people are still kind of dipping their toes into this product. No one really knows what to expect we havent gone through a cycle of expiration yet. And so everybodys trying to get a grasp of the nuances of both the futures market, but also the implications of what happens in the spot market come expiration. We got to go but the thing i find strange is how different the future prices are, futures prices, spot prices. Isnt there arbitrage there to narrow those spreads how long do you think that will last you know what, it can be derived from a few different things, right . I almost call it structural arbitrage or regulatory arbitrage. A number of jurisdiction, number of countries that have come out with rules and regulations the standardization across whether its exchanges or different venues is all over the place. So if you ask ten people in the room what the price of bitcoin is, youd probably get ten different answers. Still, im looking for the its weird to me they can persist this long. Bobby, thank can you very much hope to talk to you again soon. Thanks for having me. Bobby cho. Theres a hedge fund heavyweight whos put 50 of one of his funds into the cryptocurrency well tell you who that is in todays takeaway after this. Markets surging ahead of the tax vote on the republicans tax plan tomorrow. Will passing the bill be a sellthenews event for stocks thats coming up whats the secret to turning a no into a question do you know how to network like a champ . And when is a good time to have some fun in the office ive got some great answers to all of these questions which might help you run a Better Business check out the your business page on nbcnews. Com for an exclusive online video series to help you work smart, grow fast and go further sponsored by American Express open helping you get business done. Some more breaking news on tax reform lets get straight over to ylan smz mui. Kelly, senator Susan Collins of maine said shell support the republican tax bill. She is speaking on the senate floor right now. She said key to her decision was the expansion of the state and local tax deduction. Also the expansion of the medical expense deduction and ensuring that taxfree contributions too s to retirem accounts can continue. Undecided republican senators falling in line. It looks like this is pretty much a done deal for republicans. As now senator Susan Collins of maine says she will support the tax bill back over to you do you say some of that retirement accounts, ylan, too, along with the medical deduction . Yeah, she said she worked to ensure that you could still contribute to your retirement account tax free that was also key to her decision yeah, but i mean, is that independent or is that related i think there were different versions of the bill that basically were going to she supported several amendments to the bill and those were three amendments she highlighted that were crucial to her decision yeah. Good stuff, ylan thank you very much. Again, Susan Collins speaking now about her decision to support this bill as we near the key vote tomorrow. Weve got a news alert on mcdermott, meantime. Mr. Brian sullivan, whats happening there . Not dylan mcdermott, the actor, its the energy company, mcdermott international, mdr, doing a deal, basically buyin buying merging with cbmi, old Chicago Bridge and iron based technically in the hague, the netherlands here mcdermott buying cbmi. Going to combine two Infrastructure Energy plays here not much of a premiumon cb i for the shareholders there, theyre probably disappointed. Heres how the deal is going to go down. Mcdermott is going to pay 2. 472 shares for cb i for every stock it gets, roughly 18. 40 per share which is about a 2 premium. Now, keep this in mind, guys, Chicago Bridge and iron, which was an old carl icahn investment of a couple of years ago, was a 35 stock a year ago now in the 17s the deal taking it out at about 18. 40. 2 to 2. 5 premium not a lot. It will be based in that startup oil town known as houston. Back to you. Ive heard of it. Good context, brian, thank you very much. Brian sullivan. Thousands of passengers at the Atlanta Hartsfieldjackson airport getting stuck in the dark for 11 hoursthanks to a blackout and caused major delays across the country during the Holiday Travel season. Phil lebeau has the latest hi, phil. Kelly, some of those delays are easing, in fact, as you look at the flight schedules going in and out of atlanta, really theyve cleared up as the day went along all together, more than 400 Flights Canceled today now they are slowly getting that flight schedule almost all the way back up. They expect to have Ripple Effect through the middle of the week but its definitely Getting Better Georgia Power is investigating what exactly happened with the outage delta, not surprisingly, given the fact its based in atlanta, is feeling the brunt of the cancelations today, canceling 296 flight the not a lot of impact on the stock today. Thats not surprising. You might want to consider this similar to what you would see if there was a major blizzard or a storm that might knock out a hub for a day or two the analysts factor that in. The airlines factor that in that they have one or two of those a year so for the most part, this is an event delta will be able to ride out. Take a look at the dow transports, kelly, hitting an alltime high again. Like so many of the different sectors within the dow, transports climbing to an alltime high today. Kelly, back to y you. Recently crossed above 10,000 now were above 10,500 last i heard it was an underground fire it was a fire in the main Power Substation looking into what the exact cause was. They believe it might have been with some of the router switches down there the fire was so intense that the heat knocked off the redundancy unit the secondary unit that was supposed to kick in when the main unit failed and thats why you had a complete outage. Wow major stuff. Phil, thank you. You bet. Phil lebeau. Its time for a krcnbc news update with sue herera hi, again, sue. Hello, again, kelly heres whats happening at this hour, everyone new information on the victims of the deadly amtrak Train Derailment outside olympia, Washington Hospital Officials Say at least two people are in critical condition. 11 others have been seriously injured. Reports indicated at least six people have been killed. And dozens more are at area hospitals. The highspeed amtrak train derailed above a highway and it fell on vehicles earlier today British Police say a security incident at a military base used by the u. S. Is not being investigated as terrorism. A 44yearold man was arrested today on suspicion of criminal trespass American Service members fired shots during that incident the suspect suffered minor injuries and no one else was hurt. The fda plans to take a tougher stance on homeopathic drugs that are unproven and potentially harmful. It comes following a jump in complaints of side effect and ten deaths in the past year. And the ceo of m t bank has died the bank says Robert Wilmers died saturday at his home. Wilmers, 83 years old, led that firm for 35 years. Youre up to date. Thats the news update this hour kelly, ill send it back downtown to you. Sue, thank you very much. Bob wilmers was one of the most wellregarded forget even bank ceos, ceos in the country. Without a doubt endorsement of warren buffebuffi believe. His annual letters were essential reading. With what he did for the buffalo region, too, i think he helped keep the bills there maybe just within the last couple of years. Yes, i do think thats right. I mean, you know, its the natural thing to ask when Something Like this happens is now m t is a highquality asset. Oh, yaeah. Potentially merger hed been there 34 years at the helm again, our condolences to his family. Lets take a look at how we finished the day on wall street. Ts a major one with dow up 140 points on the close, below 24,800 up more than 200 at the highs of the session. Records for all the averages you can see there, 70th record close for the dow today. The best performer this year i should say the best performer, the russell, up more than 1 and closing at a record high as well. Lets get to other big stories now in our rapid recap. The cme group, the Worlds Largest Futures Exchange group, is now launching and has launched Bitcoin Futures. Hershey officialry buying amplify snack brands and 12 per share in cash. Campbells soup buying Snyder Snyder snyderslance. Penn national gaining buying pinnacle thats very complicated 20 bucks a share. John skipper resigning as espns president George Bodenheimer taking over as acting chairman. This is a huge victory for corporations and middleincome families across america. Reducing the corporate rate from 35 to 21 is a huge monumental victory. The first time, american strategy recognizes that Economic Security is National Security the superlatives keep piling up for this market which really just says you didnt even have a pullback, so almost every time it kind of continued a little bit higher, it was a new record high its been kind of remarkable. On the idea that there are things to sell, and we do catch downdrafts and we would be foolish to think that at some point we are not going to get a couple percent decline you made the rapid recap. Very i moved over one seat im still trying to make it. Time for the takeaway. We begin with revelations that Value Investor bill miller has half the money in one of his funds in bitcoin miller in a wealth track podcast mentioned hes looking for ways to mitigate the risk without selling the bitcoin outright michael, what do you think he should do . Interesting theres means to do that, right . In theory, you could sell the futures or stay kind of short the futures for a while. Its a very cumbersome expensive way to do it i dont know what other way got up to 50 because of what the price of bitcoin has done. He did not go in at 50 . Its a good problem to have. Only 30 a couple of months ago. You know, you got assuming you got a lot of taxes, of course this is the hedge fund. Yes that performance is acouple hundred percent higher this year the opportunity from the income fund, theyve all had great years, but its also interesting because we always talk about bo miller is a Value Investor which is not exactly the right way to describe somebody whos c constantly at the forefront of technology exactly it brings up the point, i mentioned earlier, the ownership of bitcoin is concentrated now among people with billions and billions of windfall gains as much as the Early Technology adopters its a very unusual market where even a whisper that the early adopters are going to sell could have a big impact on the price. Thats interesting. Bill said hes not going to actually sell the bitcoin. No, he might siphon it off somehow, sort of a different that sort of thing. Next, espn is losing its longtime president john skipper who stepped down today to deal with Substance Abuse problems. Comes as es, pn is hurdling int digital with a launch of direct to consumer streaming platform and in fact, analyst Richard Greenfield thinks disney should sell its majority stake in hulu which it will get after the fox deal closes. In order to focus even more on the launch of the espn platform. So how big a blow, i should say, is skippers loss . Certainly a significant one i do think all indications are that this was truly an unexpected personal matter its not some kind of coded, you know, kind of strategic shift by the company, itself. As for the hulu idea, first, espn is going to be its own direct to consumer thing as it probably should be the whole point of the unbundling cord cutting, people dont want to be forced to include sports if they dont want it. You know, i think hulu is a big attraction of disney and part of the fox deal and secondary point, i dont think disney is taking advice from rich greenfield with whom no, theres been a longrunning feud. Feuded for a while. Thats why it caught my attention. Finally, hong kong at long last is loosening its listing rules. The venue which wouldnt loosen its one share one vote policy for alibabas listing ultimately came to the nyse the listing is doing away with the rule thats a catch the market cap for these companies has to be over 1. 25 billion. Some exceptions with biotech companies. Long story short, ike, it appears hong kong really wants the aramco offering, right or get in the running for it, yeah its kind of you have is to take a little pause about this whole race to loosen standards to accommodate the privatization of aramco. I mean, is it really worth that much to essentially change your standards forever on this . I dont think hong kong necessarily becomes the frontrunner for that listing. It is interesting in this kind of a market, it seems as if youre placing yourself at a s disadvantage if you keep to london is also trying to get, of course, the nyse the president tweeted he wants it to go to the nyse, he doesnt want the chinese to step in and fund the whole things, themselves. Thats true, too. You basically want look, you always want it its going it be a tremendous source of trading and data and all the rest. Well see where it goes, if anywhere, again, if it does list now, businesses are getting their tax game faces ready ahead of the house vote on the gop plan up next, a look at some of the many tricks businesses are going to employ to pay the least amount in taxes. And a cnbc investigation has revealed ubs has been covering up the risks associated with Puerto Ricans bond funds both from clients and brokers that shocking story mi ucongp. Us. Its what this country is made of. But right now, our bond is fraying. How do we get back to us . The y fills the gaps. And bridges our divides. Donate to your local y today. Because where theres a y, theres an us. So how old do you want uhh, i was thinking around 70. Alright, and before that . You mean after that . No, im talking before that. Do you have things you want to do before you retire . Oh yeah sure. Ok, like what . But i thought we were supposed to be talking about investing for retirement . Were absolutely doing that. But theres no law you cant make the most of today. What do you want to do . Id really like to run with the bulls. Wow. Yea. Hope youre fast. I am. Get a portfolio that works for you now and as your needs change. Investment Management Services from td ameritrade. The republican tax plan hasnt passed yet and some businesses are already gearing up to game the system. Robert frank joins us now with a look at some of the loopholes. Robert kelly, never before has there been such a vast difference between the tax rates paid by people and those paid by companies. So the new system is going to be ripe for gaming. An academic paper written by 13 prominent tax law professionals called games they will play says the bill would, allow new planning opportunities for welladvised taxpayers will will result in unanticipated consequences and costs for everyone else. Start with passthroughs, advising ways around the guardrails law firms, for instance, they could create subsidiaries where the associates are the partners and athllow them to deduct 23 f their income as long as they make less than 315,000. And then go pass it, the plan favors passive businessowners rather than the people who own or run the companies so owners can split the companies into business lines and make sure that they dont materially participate in any single business line then you got Family Companies that will make sure no Single Family member spends too much time running the business. Then, of course, youve got ccorps, people are going to push their salaries and investments through corporations and generate income in the form of corporate profits of dividends. Now for a tax bill that was supposed to put tax preparers out of business, its more like guaranteed employment for accountants, guys. Back over to you robert, thank you robert frank breaking just moments ago, senator Susan Collins, mike lee, both saying they will support the tax reform bill. Stocks have run up ahead of the vote could passing it be a sell the news event lets ask ed mills, managing director and washington policy analyst at Raymond James ed, welcome. Thank you so i was going to ask you about other, you know, other ways to game this thing. What do you think the impact of the whole thing is going to be well, i think the impact of this here is unknown just yet and thats why i think theres still a lot of room to run here in this rally. What weve been seeing is that a lot of investors, a lot of analysts, a lot of companies were caught flatfooted by this sudden movement especially in the senate, now going to the conference report. When we talk to the companies that we under coverage, theyre not yet ready to give guidance when were talking to investors, they are shocked that theyre going to get as much of a benefit here on the corporate side as they are, and so i think that people are still going through these details. Still trying to figure out exactly how much of a tax break is going to come for a lot of these corporations and thats why i dont think a lot of this is jet fully priced in ed, what about some of the perhaps lesserdiscussed aspe ss of the Corporate Tax cut, Corporate Tax program as the bill lays out right here for example, for the Big Companies with lots of cash overseas, big tech companies, you have this deemed repatriation, Something Like a 15. 5 rate on cash held overseas you owe it once the bill passes then you get to decide be what to do with it. What do you think is the short and longterm impact of Something Like that . Yeah, ithink theres trillions of dollars about ready to be freed up you can do anything with that cash that you want to. Back in 2004, when we did a repatriation holiday businesses had the choice and you had a specific requirement to put that toward capx now because we are deeming it repatriated, we dont have any real guardrails of exactly how that money gets spent, plus were adding to this bill a provision that gives you 100 depreciation in the year in which you have any capx expense. So i think what the Congressional Republicans are hoping for here is that 2018 and slightly beyond, youre going to have a lot of demand to buy a lot of stuff, a lot of money to do that and a lot of dividend increases to shareholders, buyback of stock a lot of those details are still getting kind of written about on the sell side. Investors are still trying to kind of go through those numbers. People are kind of more cautious about this passage than they have been in the past because congress repeatedly has failed to give the Investor Community what they thought was going to happen so i think while this is not, you know, a sell the news event because people are still so shell shocked by all the near misses weve seen from congress in recent years. Thats thats what i was going to ask, ed, before you go. So because theyre still looking at the details, you dent think people are going to say, okay, all good stuffs priced in, there might be more good stuff they dont know about . I mean, weve run up so much, right . Yeah. I think a lot of this has been priced into the 21 kind of tax level. People are kind of going to their spreadsheets and saying, all right, what does 21 get me . What youre actually going to see for a rlot of corporations s a tax rate sub 21 and thats not been fully priced in i think also what is going to happen over the coming weeks there are going to be relative winners versus relative losers and that is going to be kind of more discerned i think what we have looked a lot at here at Raymond James is the banking space, our bank team has looked and said, you know, this is probably at least an 18 upside to earnings once this is all priced in. Well see ed, thanks for joining us. Some good thoughts there thanks. Ed mills from Raymond James. A cnbc investigate has revealed that ubs masked the risks associated with puerto rican bond funds both from client and from brokers. We have those shocking details coming right up. The moment a fish is pulled out from the water, its a race against time. And keeping it in the right conditions is the best way to get that fish to your plate safely. 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A cnbc investigation found within ubs the risks were known but brokers continued selling them to conservative clients, anyway less lie picker joins us with te details. Thats right. Several years ago cracks were beginning to show in the puerto rico economy but investors say ubs was not forthcoming about some of the major risks. In early 2012, ubs issued a report on puerto rico identifying major issues for investors. Including the islands economic recovery slower than anticipated, rising debt burden, and saying that conservative investors with concentrated exposure to any single borrower in the Municipal Market should pursue portfolio diversification. But brokers were told in december as in this email we obtained to keep selling the risky bond funds one top ubs executive on the island wrote to a group of financial advisers, my own impression is that over a few months, prices will be firmer and todays bad news will be yesterdays news for some, todays prices may offer a buying opportunity. Ubs needed to continue selling the bond funds, or it would be stuck with all the risk on its own balance sheet, says craig mccann he runs a securities Consulting Firm and testified as a plaintiffs Expert Witness during many arbitration hearings. Well after the recession started in 2007 and 2008, and into the period when it was clear that puerto rican bonds were really risky and these funds being leveraged in the worst of those bonds speculative, extremely risky funds, its clear that ubs was pressuring its brokers to sell these funds. Reporter some puerto rico investors may not have understood ubs Research Reports highlighting the risks they were not translated from english to spanish according to testimony we obtained by the top ubs executive on the island, neither were the quarterly or annual reports from the funds ubs declined to make anyone available for an interview but a spokesman wrote in a statement to cnbc that concerns about the puerto rico economy and its prospects had been the subject of wide public debate and press coverage for many years, but no Ratings Agency or analysts predicted anything like the precipitous drop in bond prices that occurred in august and september 2013. He added there were no undisclosed issues with the funds and the funds generated taxfree returns greater than 12 in 2010, 2011 and 2012, guys. Who suffered most of these losses these were mostly retirees on the island there were big corporations that existed in puerto rico, about ten years ago they had a tax credit for big corporations to be in puerto rico. A lot of these retirees were from pharmaceutical companies and paid in lump sums pharmaceutical companies, paid in lump sum and told to put the limb sums into they see bond funds, because they had attractive yields, much higher in comparable product. Puerto rican retires putting money into puerto rico bond funds. Was it a broad fund o. A specific specific . They were broad it was a broad muni fund that had exposure to puerto rico. In order to get the tax benefits it had to be at least two thirds in puerto rican securities we saw over time that those funds were bumped up to as much as 98, 99 concentrated in puerto rican securities, as recently as 20 and of course post 2012, we started toes a real degradation of the quality of the bounds and quality of the correct, which is why the overconcentration turned out to be so problematic for a lot of the retire years that held these bond funds. I just didnt realize, that so many people i knew there were a lot of americans with that took losses, because med some exposure. I didnt realize the puerto rican themselves now in this terrible economy also got the hit. It would be the equivalent of a circumstance of hef state muni fund, but in a way youre overcontraiting your they would tell us dont overconcentrate your portfolio in the Parent Company. Umhmm. Leslie, thank you. The Carolina Panthers are up for sale well tell you who might be interested in buying them, coming up. Stocks getting caught up in the cryptocraze. The chairman and ceo longfin will join us in the next hour h. No. At cognizant, were helping todays leading manufacturers make things that think and do automatically. Imagine that, a world of new Digital Products and services all working together for you. Can i borrow the car when its back . Get ready, because were helping leading companies see it and see it throughwith digital. Carolina panthers pup up for sale after the end of the season those details and potential buyers, are next music plays throughout you cant predict the market. But through good times and bad. At t. Rowe price. Weve helped our investors stay confident for over 75 years. Call us or your advisor. T. Rowe price. Invest with confidence. Welcome back the Carolina Panthers are up for sale after the Team Announced an investigation into owner Jerry Richardson for workplace misconduct serb has the details. Thats right. The panthers announced that richardson would step aside immediately. Tina becker is named as the new ceo. Yesterday richardson announced he will sell the team at the end of the season after allegations involves sexual and racial misconduct richardson said, quote, i believe its time to turn the franchise over to new ownership. Hes a former fastfood giant and the only active nfl owner who played in the league back in the 1950s, the only owner of the panthers ever sages founding them as an expansion team. Forbes estimates it at about 2. 3 billion, only 21st rarchled in the league, but nfl teams dont often become available the last deal was almost four years ago for the buffalo bills. So this will be a test of the mark to see if the cachet of being an owner outweighs lowering diddy already announced he wants to buy, but hes been saying that for years. A couple months ago he said he wants to buy the entire nfl. Moreserious buyers are some minority shareholders, the belk family, known for Department Stores in the south, the la vine family who founded family dollars and woodsworth brothers who sold a meat coto Berkshire Hathaway so theres though, not to compare puff daddy to derek jeter, but if he was serious enough about it, do you theres a whole political angle to this as well. Hes kind of said i would go get kaepernick and put hem into the panthers, and do you think he could get people behind him and seriously buy this team . Or is 2plus billion and in diddys case, he doesnt have any football experience so he would need someone with money and with experience. You need 30 , though, to be the controlling owner, and if the team goes for 2. 5 billion, that 750 million, that maybe by his entire net worth. Real quickly, do the other team owners have to sign off the rest of the league, you would need a large majority to approve it, like 20 or 24 owners you need most to approve it for you. Michael, what do you think . I think i team will good i dont think youll see a down round in that i think the scarcity value is too much nobody has ever lost money doing this. I dont think theyve won a super bowl. Theyve been in one, havent they anyway, i think the League Approval is the variable here. That to see it for closing bell today. Fast money begins right now. Fast money starts right now. Live from the nasdaq marketsite overlooki. Check out shares of this brandnew ipo, it longfin. The symptom is going oar well at the time you about the he and he said yesterday, the ceo of longfin will join us for an exclusive interview, no holds barred you will not want to miss it brian kell