hillary vaughn is standing by at the white house to tell us if a breakthrough is anywhere in sight. and more details on president trump's surprise visit to iraq. plus this. a frightening new report says the american economy could soon feel the real impact of the trump trade war with china. ambassador terry miller here to tell us what else the president should be doing to force beijing to change its ways. plus, silicon valley versus the bears. the retail renaissance and warren buffett's spin on the ugly christmas sweater praise. we are less than an hour to the closing bell. i'm lauren simonetti in for liz claman. let's start the "countdown." lauren: let's get you some breaking news. elon musk just tweeting out he will be increasing tesla super chargers within cities and will be working with landlords to add home charging stations to apartment buildings. this is moving the stock. tesla is jumping 6.5% today on this news, and dan ives' call saying he sees very strong demand for the model 3 in 2019 and beyond, giving tesla a $440 price target. that's a nice jump from the $314 we are at now. as for the overall market, the major averages are looking to snap a four-session losing streak with the nasdaq fully recovering all of the losses from christmas eve. the major averages are up more than 2%, in many cases 3% today, but before the gains we saw today, let's talk about the wilshire 5000 index, very broad measure of stocks actively traded. it lost approximately $7 trillion in value since the market high back on september 20th. helping to drive the markets higher today of course is the price of oil. check this out. clawing back from the 17-month lows, climbing almost 10%. we are settling at $46.57 a barrel, in that range. nice pushback today. this is pushing energy as a sector to be the s&p 500's top performing sector. look at names here, marathon oil, newfield exploration, they are all up significantly. newfield exploration is up 10% as i speak. and this. retailers are cheering the holiday season. holiday sales excluding automobiles rose 5.1%, according to mastercard. that's the best pace in six years. overall u.s. consumers spent, here's the number for in-store and online purchases, $850 billion between november 1st and christmas eve. that's a lot of money. retailers as a result, some of the best performers today. kohl's, amazon, macy's, best buy and ross stores all seeing and enjoying nice gains today. best of the bunch is kohl's, up almost 5%. even with the gains today, the s&p 500 is still down in the fourth quarter, 17% this quarter. nearly 10% on the year. according to dow jones market data, when the s&p 500 is down 15% or more, in one quarter, the next quarter sees a gain and that gain averages 11.75%. we are hopeful for q1 of 2019, i suppose. but we ask a question. are today's gains the start of a late santa claus rally and will we see a big start to 2019 for the stock market? to the floor show. we have traders at the new york stock exchange and the cme group. at the nyse, teddy wiseberg. phil flynn at the cme. teddy, i begin with you. is today a turning point for investors? >> well, it sure would be nice. it also would be nice if we could buy everything at monday's prices, but clearly, we can't do that. from the moment, it has to be a relief rally from a dramatically oversold market. reversals in trends are usually sharp and steep and don't last too long. it's a little bit early to draw the conclusion that we're out of the woods but clearly up is a lot better than down. lauren: have we seen the bottom yet, larry? >> well, i like to say we have seen the bottom but keep in mind, this is the first time in probably eight or nine years where the market's actually pricing in pessimism as opposed to optimism. that's what we're so used to, if you recall since 2010, the market would go up before the data says it should. now it's just the opposite. fundamentals are good. the world is slowing but we're not in recession. global account balances are dwindling. valuations are really strong. take this tech and banks, the lowest premiums in probably 50 years. all this saying, i would like to say it's a bottom but you have a president who is very isolated right now with trade tariffs. it matters what happens with those sometime in the new year. lauren: oil comeback a big part of today's stock rally, phil. >> it is. i think it could be the bottom for this market. thank goodness, right. this market has been hammered, down over 40% from the highs initially, back 10% in one day. that's a good sign this thing was oversold. it really looks like the massacre, i guess they call it the christmas eve massacre for the price of oil, was probably a capitulation bottom, in the way that we came back 10% today is a good sign. i know oil producers are happy to hear that. i have been hearing from them. they don't like these prices. lauren: is opec having that emergency or that extra meeting, phil? >> they are threatening it. i think if prices continued to fall, they will do something. make no mistake about it, opec is serious about stabilizing prices. if they keep falling, they are going to do something to make it stop. lauren: for the stock market rally today, what was the catalyst, in your view? is it just a bounceback because we were in oversold conditions, or was it something else? was it something that the white house chief economic council adviser kevin hassett saying yeah, powell is safe as chairman of the fed? >> the latter might be a little bit of it, lauren. the market was looking for an excuse. monday was pretty dismal by any imagination. we were way oversold. we needed a spark. perhaps this whole thing with the fed was one of the unknowns that was out there that was hurting the market. perhaps that cleared that particular air and you know, maybe that's what we needed. they opened up stronger, we sold off. they were looking pretty dismal around 11:00 this morning, but clearly, we have rallied and let's just hope it continues. lauren: keep talking. hitting session highs right now. dow up almost 680 points. what's the catalyst for the green today, larry? >> well, i think personally, just a normal bounceback. it was such an oversold environment on christmas eve. you had twin vacuums of lack of liquidity and you really don't have any news to keep the market from stabilizing. i think it's that simple and reverse is true today. we don't have any major data coming out for awhile. i think it's just a lack of liquidity and lack of news that's driving the market. lauren: so do you guys think that it's all these computer algorithmic trades that are moving the big-time in the up direction or do you think it's something else? >> i think you're spot on. always blame it on the man behind the curtain. we don't see what goes on in the environment, in the computers and algo trading, et cetera, et cetera, so who knows. i do believe a lot of it is just completely robotic, mechanicalized, not real trading but lot of volume just pushing the markets around. lauren: yeah. go ahead, teddy. >> charles payne just had a guest on that in my opinion hit the nail on the head. as far as i'm concerned, it's all about the tick rule. the elimination of the tick rule for short selling basically was the gasoline that the fed -- not the fed, excuse me, that the s.e.c. threw on the fire that greased the rails with all this downside volatility. you want to see an end to the volatility, put the tick rule back in and things will get back to normal pretty quick. lauren: what's the chances of that happening? i will go to you, larry, that happening as the dow is now, we have a 3% up market. we were teetering on the brink of a bear market coming into today's session. now we have got a comeback. >> yeah. we have a comeback. but the fact of the matter is, for the s.e.c. to change those rules, i think the odds of that are very dim. i think they would need to see visible evidence, although teddy and i would definitely agree this is something that should be reinstituted but i don't see that happening any time soon. in fact, i see other rules with regard to placing orders, liquidity, things that we can't see, that would change before the uptick rule would change. that's just my opinion. lauren: all right. larry, teddy, phil flynn, we appreciate all of your opinions today. thanks, guys. let's check the big board once again. this is looking nice, folks. santa claus rally, here we come. dow up 668 points, 22,460. let's take a look at the nasdaq as well because it is still in bear market territory, although it is experiencing a nice rally today. up 4%, a 4% uptick for the nasdaq. we got to check to see the last time we saw a rally of that size. up next, retailers celebrating the best holiday shopping season in six years. but retail expert is here to tell us if they will be toasting to a banner year next year. and leave it to a buffett business to put a new and profitable twist on the ugly christmas sweater trend. we got our hands on the oracle's offering that may send you sprinting toward your new year's resolution. get it? actually, when you see these things. more ahead. amazon prime video is now on xfinity x1. so when you say words like... show me best of prime video into this... you'll see awesome stuff like this. discover prime originals like the emmy-winning the marvelous mrs. maisel... tom clancy's jack ryan... and the man in the high castle. all in the same place as your live tv. its all included with your amazon prime membership. that's how xfinity makes tv... simple. easy. awesome. lauren: this is a rally of sizeable proportion. we are seeing the dow up almost 700 points, 691 points as i speak. the dow is just 30 companies. the s&p 500 is up sharply, too. as of christmas eve the massacre that we saw back on monday, it was six and a half points shy of bear market territory. i tell you, right now we are not in a bear market after the nice gain we are seeing for the s&p 500 today and the nasdaq is up a solid 4%. let's talk retail. the solid numbers that we got from mastercard's spending pulse about this being the best holiday shopping season in six years, definitely one of the factors contributing to the rally today for the stock market. according to the national retail federation, 17% of us plan to hit the stores today to maybe buy some stuff but mostly to return or exchange unwanted christmas presents. hitha joins us to discuss many happy returns on top of one of the best holiday shopping seasons we have seen. we've got some great numbers here but not everyone is feeling the christmas joy. can you go through the winners and losers of this season? >> i think some of the biggest losers that i was looking at, obviously we are looking at target had a massive downfall although it is going to make my 2019 outlook we will talk about in a second. macy's, especially, had a drop of 13% over the last couple -- over the last quarter. in fact, retail stocks have had the worst quarter since 2008. again, if you look at it along with the s&p, it's performing right along with the rest of it. we've had a pretty dismal month. however, retail stocks in general have not been performing well. lauren: but this shopping, people are feeling richer come christmas time, so they're making their money in the final weeks here? >> i think people have been feeling richer over the last year and especially over the last couple years. as people have been gaining momentum with the economy, kind of seeing the economy get better and feeling better about their jobs, they have been feeling a little bit more of this pent-up demand and want to go out and spend. you are seeing people go out and spend. however, it doesn't quite follow what's going on with the retail stocks. so paypal came out with a study. people, americans have been spending 47% of us have been spending online via mobile devices or computers, buying our presents that way. that certainly increased the top line growth for a lot of retailers. but what we have seen again, target, i kind of call out because they have had dismal earnings. however, they used a lot of their sg & a to beef up that online presence so people will come on and spend. we are seeing a lot of retailers do that. lauren: if you have a brick and mortar presence because everyone is battling amazon, who put out record numbers for amazon, but if you have a brick and mortar, you got to justify it and give a shopper a reason to go into your store. >> exactly. you are seeing a lot of retailers put on some fancy bells and whistles into their stores. for example, if you go over to nordstrom, they really kind of hit the omnichannel retailing, and basically what that means is people come in and you are able to shop via online, via in the stores, via other means, you know, through maybe popup stores down the street. if you go into the men's store over here, up a couple blocks, they have a bar in there with flat screen tvs so men can sit there and drink and shop at the same time. it's more of an experience that they want to be part of. even some stores like target have these charging stations from this company called charge it spot that come in, they have, you can sit there and charge your phone for free while you're shopping. lauren: awesome. talking about so many people hitting the malls to return today, but you can also do like the free shipping, free returning as so many of these companies do. does that impact the bottom line of these retailers basically fighting for market share against amazon? >> they are definitely fighting for that market share. they bake into the price with all of these returns, so the general gist is about $50 billion worth of returns are going to be happening from now until january. so retailers know that that is part of the deal as people go out and shop. however, in order to compete with amazon, they have to offer these things like free shipping, free returns in order to get that back. will that have an impact going forward in earnings? i think other things will have an impact. the amount of money they're spending in order to get their shoppers in. but returns have already been baked into the price. lauren: and j.c. penney? >> i think it will go the way of sears. instead of going in and getting appliances like we did 25 years ago, i think we will go there for surgi-centers. lauren: i'm surprised your call on target. this was the first christmas without toys "r" us. target had a pretty impressive toy section. >> very impressive toy sections. what ended up happening with target and walmart is they took a lot of those toys that weren't being sold at toys "r" us and had them stocked in their stores. that's why you saw this increase of toys, especially in the sections for walmart and target, but target is really spending a lot of money on their sg & a especially to get people to buy online. lauren: we will see that upcoming the next couple quarters. more people are going to go online and shop target. thank you very much. hitha herzog on the pulse of the consumer, how retail can do in 2019. as people return the unwanted gifts, liz claman is holding on tightly to this present. she's capitalizing on the ugly christmas sweater trend. yeah, those are ugly christmas running shoes. kind of on a whim, the company is a division of warren buffett's berkshire hathaway. they put out the ugly sweater levitate 2. knit sneakers with reindeer, holiday trees, candy cane colored laces. yeah. the first batch immediately sold out at $150 a pop. i'm actually not surprised. they have green soles sprinkled with red glitter as well. the best part, two tiny christmas bells that are attached to the tongue. i don't know. they are pretty ugly but i can see how they're popular. >> they're ugly but i kind of love the little bells. a reminder you have cool shoes. lauren: nike, visa and home depot feeling holiday cheer today. they are among the leaders on the dow 30 heat map thanks to the retail renaissance. pg & e, the biggest laggard on the s&p 500. after a report the california public utilities commission has started a process to determine if the company could be broken up. bloomberg is reporting that officials are worried about liability regarding their role in the california wildfires. let's take a look at shares of the company, down about 1% today. but that's big in a market that is up tremendously. coming up, gas prices falling below $2 a gallon in many places but as crude oil hovers right around the $40 range, $46 today, what does this mean at the pump and for the economy overall? jeff flock, live at the cme, joins us next. (clock ticking) (bell ringing) it's time. time for a new kind of cloud. the ibm cloud. the cloud that proactively protects your business from threats, instead of just reacting to them. that lets you modernize and move more of your apps without re-writing. that unlocks insights from all your data and puts it to work with ai. get a faster, more secure journey to the cloud. the ibm cloud. the cloud for smarter business. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ this holiday season, families near you need your help. visit redcross.org now to donate. lauren: santa's a day late but he came to wall street. the dow is up 751 points. that's just four points shy of the high we hit moments ago. this is a nice rally, 3.5% gain for the dow jones industrial average, recovering from the steep losses we saw on christmas eve. investors not just returning their unwanted gifts this boxing day. bitcoin also getting the holiday snub. the original crypto currency extending losses for day two now. it's at $3,792. bitcoin's slide is weighing down the entire crypto market. the value of all crypto currency is sitting around $129 billion. losing as much as $18 billion in the past 48 hours after hitting a one-month high back on christmas eve. it doesn't look like santa is coming to the rescue of the market any time soon, either. futures also down in trading today. oil, that is not down. it is trying to claw its way out of bear territory. it does have a long way to go, but it's certainly higher today, settling at $46.22, up more than 8.5%. you're looking at $46.57 right now. but you know, if you look at where we were back in october, oil was at $76 so it has come down quite a bit. jeff flock is tracking all of the action from the floor of the cme. jeff, what do you make of this comeback today, this bounceback for oil? what are traders saying about it? reporter: yeah. you know the selloff on monday was huge, not as big as this runup, though. by the way, that's you up on the board, the big board at the cme. that's me, too. there you go. quiet, fairly quiet on most of the floor but as you point out, oil, huge and traders are saying that was an oversold market on monday and now has risen even more than it declined on monday. and perhaps there is a buying opportunity out there for the oil stocks which as you know, have been really beaten down this year. take a look at a couple of them. exxonmobil, for example, up today, i think my figures say about 2.7%. high for the year was $89. trading around $67 today. chevron got as high as $133, now trading just over $100. that was up big, about 4% today as well. bp got as high as $47, 52-week high. $37, closer to that now. that's up a couple percent today, too, so maybe some big opportunities there. speaking of a buying opportunity, maybe you ought to go to the gas pump, because we have had 77 straight days of gas price declines. today, the average gallon of regular in the u.s. is $2.31. it was $2.36 a week ago, $2.55 a month ago and now you get an 8% rise in oil today, maybe that has some impact, maybe kicks prices back up but a lot of people don't think that will be the case. we think we're still going to have low gas prices so that's overall good for the economy. that's the only one still alive out here. lauren: it seems like gas prices always follow oil prices a lot higher a lot faster than on the way down. know what i mean? reporter: oh, i know. that's just the way it is. that is absolutely the way it is. we get, i won't say screwed, but i guess i just did. that's kind of the way it works. lauren: $2.31 is nice. that's the buzzer. you got to go. good to see you. merry christmas. let's check the markets once again. nice rally that we have on our hands. the dow is higher at 763 points, 3.5%. ditto percentage-wise for the s&p. the nasdaq gaining almost 4.5% at this hour. the russell 2000 in bear market territory. these are the small caps, they are up 4% as well. dow transports also in bear market, up 4.2%. this is a nice solid comeback. half an hour to the closing bell. up next, a new report says the trump trade war with china could have very real consequences after we ring in the new year. the former state department official, ambassador terry miller, is here to tell us what he thinks the negotiator in chief needs to do to avoid a crushing blow with beijing. we'll be right back. shield℠ annuities from brighthouse financial allow you to take advantage of growth opportunities with a level of protection in down markets. so you can be less concerned about your retirement savings. talk with your advisor about shield℠ annuities from brighthouse financial, established by metlife. a new way to save on travel. now when you book a flight you unlock discounts on select hotels that you can add on to your trip up until the day you leave. add on advantage. only when you book with expedia. and all thro' the house. 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(vo) snap and sort your expenses to save over $4,600 at tax time. quickbooks. backing you. from capital one.nd i switched to the spark cash card i earn unlimited 2% cash back on everything i buy. and last year, i earned $36,000 in cash back. which i used to offer health insurance to my employees. what's in your wallet? lauren: you have to go far back, maybe to 2015, to find a one-day gain like this. the dow at session highs, up just about 810 points. the nasdaq, the s&p, the russell 2000, dow transports, retail stocks, energy sfotocks, all sharply higher today. nice bounce-back. maybe the start of a santa claus rally. the white house in the last hor releasing pictures of president donald trump's first visit to u.s. troops overseas. the president flying with the first lady to iraq late last night. hillary vaughn is live at the white house and joins us now. this is a surprise visit coming on the fifth day of the government partial shutdown and also, on the heels of the president declaring victory over isis in the mideast and saying he's going to pull troops out. but no plans to pull the 5,000 troops in iraq, correct? reporter: that's correct. he reiterated today at this surprise visit, surprising over 5,000 military members, speaking to them at a dining hall, visiting them on base in iraq. this is his first visit to a combat zone, saying he has no plans to pull troops out of iraq. he spent over three hours visiting with them and this is really his first stop of what is a two-stop tour overseas. we don't have the second location for his second stop just yet but we're waiting on those details soon. president trump has made bringing u.s. troops home a signature issue and defended his decision to remove troops from syria, saying quote, i think a lot of people are going to come around to my way of thinking. it's time for us to start using our head. the president says he has no plans to pull out of iraq but actually gave new insight into his foreign policy strategy, saying iraq will play a key role in syria's draw-down, saying u.s. troops can levy attacks against isis as needed from iraq instead of from syria. this trip overseas, though, comes right in the middle of a government shutdown. we're on day five of that. economic adviser kevin hassett tells us any impact from this shutdown is temporary, telling me with federal employees' paychecks delayed it could put a dent in the gdp for the fourth quarter and it also could bump up unemployment rate if it lasts past january 10th but says the side effects will go away once the government opens back up. what is the impact on the economy and the market from the shutdown, you guys aren't concerned even if this goes on for several weeks? >> that's correct. in the end, a few week shutdown is not going to be something that has any kind of significant effect on the outlook. reporter: he made it clear there's a ticking clock. the democrats take over the house majority on january 3rd so not a lot of time to figure things out. lauren: the house and senate back in session tomorrow. day six of the shutdown. hillary vaughn in washington, thank you so much. 2018 was the year the trade wars broke out. 2019 might be the year the global economy really starts to feel the pain of all this. bloomberg's global trade tracker says importers front-loaded their orders ahead of the tariffs, setting the stage for a slowdown next year. bank of america is estimating that these wars have already cost the s&p 500 a 6% drop this year alone, while china's market has lost $2 trillion in value this year. we bring in ambassador terry miller, director of the heritage foundation international trade and economic center, to break all of this down. ambassador, thanks for coming on. i guess our question is how bad does it get before it gets any better in our negotiations with beijing? >> my goodness, there's so much good news in the market today, i hate to be the bearer of bad news here. laure lauren: but you will be. >> i do think there's the possibility if this trade war with china is not resolved, it could start to have a very negative impact on the u.s. economy. what we're going to see is prices rising, we will see pressure on the currency, we will see all kinds of investment pressure and a general slowdown both in global trade and global gdp growth. that's not going to be good for anybody. all that means is that the u.s. negotiators and chinese negotiators really need to get down to work and get the job done. lauren: how much do you see the u.s. market decoupling from the chinese market and is that a positive or a negative? >> well, i don't think there's going to be massive decoupling. the relationship between china and the united states is highly beneficial for both countries. so it seems to me that we're going to see some pullback, but maybe a rebalancing would be a better way to describe it, with the chinese doing a little more purchasing, the u.s. doing a little more selling. that should be something that president trump likes a lot, and maybe could be a factor in getting this trade war resolved. lauren: it doesn't seem president xi is that willing to negotiate, unfortunately. a lot of folks say that's because he doesn't have to worry about term limits or getting re-elected. so it begs the question, is an uneven playing field better than perhaps no playing field? >> well, i think the playing field, the more we get the governments out of trying to influence this playing field, the more level it will become. i'm a great believer in the power of markets to get the prices right and get the buying and the selling right. president xi is in a very strong position but he's not unassailable. he has to deliver jobs for his people. he has to deliver a high growth rate for the chinese economy. those are very real pressures for him, just in the way public opinion is pressure on the president and his team in the white house. i think both sides have an incentive to get something done here. lauren: ambassador, you have now killed the rally. the dow is up almost 4%. you have actually encouraged it. japan, an ally of the u.s., set to cut tariffs on several u.s. allies, including australia and canada in just a few days, then again in february for many european countries. do you see other alliances forming without the u.s.? >> i don't think so. the u.s. has such a dominant role in the world economy, it would take i think several years of extremely bad economic policy on the part of the united states to even begin the process where there would be a major restructuring of international trade or international financial flows. these moves by the japanese government should be very welcomed by everyone and i think will be good for the japanese economy, and a stronger japanese economy will be good for us as well. lauren: all right. on china, and the trade spat that we've got going on with them, are you optimistic for 2019 or no? >> i'm pretty optimistic. i think there's a lot of pressure to get something done by the end of march, and i think that our trade negotiators will, in fact, succeed. lauren: ambassador terry miller, thank you, sir. >> thank you. lauren: let's look at the big board once again. in fact, we have been up on the screen because the rally is huge. the dow is at 22,674. it is up 882 points. coming up, big tech is battling the bears, muzzling them today completely. one of the top tech analysts in the nation is here to tell us if silicon valley is about to get mauled in 2019, and be sure to start your day with me and cheryl casone beginning at 5:00 a.m. eastern time. comcast business built the nation's largest gig-speed network. then went beyond. beyond chasing down network problems. to knowing when and where there's an issue. beyond network complexity. to a zero-touch, one-box world. optimizing performance and budget. beyond having questions. to getting answers. 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(sighs) i hate missing out missing out after hours. not anymore, td ameritrade lets you trade select securities 24 hours a day, five days a week. that's amazing. it's a pretty big deal. so i can trade all night long? ♪ ♪ all night long... is that lionel richie? let's reopen the market. mr. richie, would you ring the 24/5 bell? sure can, jim. ♪ trade 24/5, with td ameritrade. ♪ lauren: all right. let's show you the big board. the dow up 921 points. it was up at one point almost 1,000 points today. that is a gain of 4.25%. after falling into bear market territory back on friday, we're looking at the nasdaq now and dropping another 140 points on christmas eve alone, that was on monday, the tech sector is leading today's market rally. the nasdaq is currently up 5% to the upside right now at 6503. many of the tech titans that we like to watch every day, facebook, amazon, netflix, they are in bear market territory. what does this mean for the sector in 2019? let's bring in colin gillis with ch ch chatham road partners with his outlook for the new year. what do you think? do you have hopes for the popular tech stocks, facebook, amazon, netflix, alphabet? >> absolutely. the key to remember is fang is not down and out. there are still ample opportunities to make good investing decisions but we will get volatility, 2019 will be the year where you still have a good economy, you still see growth in both revenue and earnings. but stocks are going to behave volatilely. lauren: what do you make of today's rally for stocks overall, particularly the nasdaq? >> i love it. once again, you have the american consumer showing that there's a strong backbone and driving results for investors. big chunk of this rally is based on the amazon news, showing that the holiday commerce results are extremely healthy. we are talking one billion items shipped via prime. great news from amazon. last night, many people, a lot of investors were worried what today was going to bring, what this market was going to bring. it's well-timed news from amazon to help deliver and lift up these names that have been battered particularly on christmas eve. lauren: you look at the bull market which is nine years plus in the running, the nasdaq is actually up like almost 400% in that time. a lot of folks are saying this makes sense for the market to cool off. i want to go through some of these popular trades, and you give me a ho, ho, ho or no. start with apple. >> unfortunately, apple is a great company but from an investment angle, i say no. you look out, you see a company that is just dependent on their hardware sales of iphones and there's a lot of enthusiasm for their software and services revenue, but i don't believe that that's going to make up and grow fast enough for any decline that's happening on the hardware side, plus the capital return and share repurchasing, it's nice for now, but it shows that there's a lack of investment ideas. so no to apple. lauren: they also spooked the market when they said they weren't going to break out the unit sales anymore. okay. i know you're positive on amazon. you were talking about services with apple. alexa is expected to be a tremendous part of amazon's future and their overall revenue. how bullish on amazon are you? >> amazon is up there in my top two picks. if you want to have a company that's going to be around for the next 30 or 40 years, you really can't do any better than amazon. lauren: netflix? >> netflix, you know, i'm concerned about netflix. i'm going to give it a no. i know it's having a strong day today but they are pumping in money in their own content and when you get in the content game, you are always dependent on your next hit. lauren: it's billions and billions of dollars of expenses. what about alphabet? many of the tech companies, there's a lot of privacy issues and perceived bias, anti-conservative bias. what are your thoughts on google? >> you know, i look at alphabet, i think about google and say to myself is there any other company possibly outside of amazon that has the human intellectual capital that google has been able to amass and has the current revenue streams and future revenue streams, and i say no. this is a company that has eight products with over a billion users each. you see near term revenue streams from their current product stream, you see future revenue streams from their ai, from their driverless cars, from youtube tv, a whole suite of products. they are incredible at producing software that adds value to our lives. ho, ho, ho. lauren: we have regulation, perhaps, coming down the pipeline. you got digital taxes. these are certainly headwinds for google. >> they are. they are. google does a much better job about being transparent about what it does. you get these products quote unquote for free, but there is a value exchange that's being done. you are the target of advertising and that's alphabet's business model. i think they do a better job of transparency than, for instance, facebook. that has been disappointing consumers. lauren: microsoft has been the winner this year. it's one of the only stocks that we were just talking about to not fall into that bear market territory. what is microsoft doing so right? >> you know, microsoft is focusing in on its core audience. it's not chasing down after the consumer market, which it did very much so under the former ceo, steve ballmer. it's trying to play to its strengths, the corporate marketplace. it's been more strategic with its acquisitions. historically, they have got a lot of blunders linkedin has absorbed well and it fits in with that culture. if you believe in the global business environment, you want to be an investor in microsoft. ho, ho, ho. lauren: colin gillis, great day for you to come on and check in with us. the closing bell is ringing in nine minutes. we have a market that is showing 4% and 5% gains across the board. looking at the major averages here, plus the russell 2000 as well as the dow transports, let's go downtown to kristina partsinevelos on the floor of the new york stock exchange. what do you make of this bounceback we're seeing in these final moments? reporter: look, it's 1500 points we have seen actually change from the negative on monday to the positive today. boxing day as it's known in the uk and canada. big sales day for retailers. seeing a lot of positivity right now. i asked traders around me what is causing these markets to move, and it seems some are just completely baffled by the movement. yes, you can attribute it, i know your guest just talked about retail sales and 5.1% higher for the holiday season, amazon doing really strong, the fact that there was kevin hassett earlier today, white house economic adviser, stating that jay powell is safe, he can't get fired. the president is not going to fire the chairman of the fed. there's also another factor, too, that hasn't really come up enough. pension rebalancing. you have pensions that are rebalancing, those stock equities, often it happens every single month or every single quarter. here we are at the end of the year, so that is contributing to the movement. on your screen right now, look at that. marathon oil. i want to talk about the energy sector, too. much higher today. we are seeing a little bit of an uptick in oil price. i was talking to one trader earlier this morning who said it was in oversold territory because if you look at oil going from $75 in early october to all the way down to below $45, that's over a 40% drop, so some potential pickup there, but going to be difficult to hit those $80 marks. so again, those are some of the leaders that you're seeing on your board right now. retail always coming through, consumer discretionary, technology, some strength on the dow, and then with the nasdaq, you've got tesla leading the market, amazon again, because they released a statement even though, and you and i talked about this earlier this morning, there was no numbers in the statement. they just said they had tens of millions of new subscribers and prime deals and sales of their own products but we still don't know what those numbers were and how they compared to last year. lauren: all right. kristina partsinevelos, thank you for breaking that down for us. with that, let's bring in the president of guystone capital management and he joins us now. a lot of folks say it's the computer trading that drives the market down, but could it be driving the market up today with these sizeable gains we're seeing across the board? >> oh, i definitely think that's part of it but recognize this is a very prototypical oversold bounce. we had 50% of the market after monday was trading at 52-week lows and only 10% were trading above their 200 day moving average. that's a tremendously oversold market. it was due for a bounce and i think we've seen a lot of portfolio managers positioning in the year end trying to pretty up their books and i don't know that this is going to carry through for a long period of time, but today it does make sense. lauren: david, the dow was just up -- it is up 1,000 points, 1,006 points. kristina partsinevelos, come back in. no complaints, but these are huge numbers. reporter: they are huge numbers. just the fact it was oversold territory and i agree with that. still, it's fragile, that was a term used here on the floor, a fragile growth environment. so yes, you're seeing people buy on these dips, you are seeing rebalancing across the board. but going into the next, 2019, you have q4 coming out, the expectation we know is that earnings are going to be lower. they are going to still be growth, but growth is decelerating. so that's a major concern. we have these retail sales, but what about the fact that consumer debt is still really high? corporate debt is still really high. with interest rates going higher, that's going to be bad news for a lot of people. lauren: this reminds me of the good old days. i actually hear activity and shouting and chaos on the floor with the traders behind you. describe how it feels. reporter: but i think it's a group of people that actually just walked by, so i feel like -- however, today, i will admit i don't know if they think nobody is here even though it's quite crowded, people have been yelling and shouting throughout the day. their machines have been going off, they are having a lot of fun. you can definitely see a vibe change here. i guess people are a little bit happier. lauren: let me go back to david. before we had this massive rally, we booked you to talk to us about some of the feel-good investments that you can make right now. you want to share some of them with us, david? >> i would. we seek to support the physical and emotional well-being of society. we do so by investing in companies in our portfolio that are consistent with that objective. and excluding companies that aren't consistent with that. a name we would like here, a name we do own is medtronic, a company which produces a lot of different medical devices that aid in quality of life, and they are very good at pricing. their pricing structure has always been very fair. another name would be nestle, a global consumer company producing all kinds of food products. they are known for promoting safe and good working conditions and they have got very transparent policies in place to alleviate child these are companies we feel like with those objectives promoting physical and emotional well being. lauren: let me bring in kyle. extreme volatility certainly into the month of december. look into crystal ball. 1040 point gain on the dow. wally sized gains on nasdaq turn into equally sized losses tomorrow? >> volatility moves both way. we're seeing whipsaw price action. see it to the downside. we're seeing it to the upside. but let's continue news we got from amazon, news driven by consumer retail should kick us through until 2019. lauren: do you think, when kevin hassett said earlier fed chief jay powell was safe on the job, do you think that was the catalyst for the up tick? we're trying to pinpoint exactly what caused these markets to rally the way they are? >> this market is so short-term oriented. i'm sure it had something to do with it. plunge protection team and trumps comments on powell created downturn on monday. i hope he is safe. he is doing his job. he has a dual mandate, full employment, price stability. they're where they need to be normalizing interest rates and balance sheets. so i don't think he deserves the criticism he is getting and i hope he is safe. lauren: we're watching the price of oil. this certainly made a comeback. in the after-hours it continues to trade higher, well above $46 a barrel right now. phil flynn, what a rally for the price of oil! >> oh, it is. oil producers across america are going yippee, thank goodness because they have been under a lot of pressure here for the last couple of days. i already heard from producers all over america saying donald trump, quit tweeting about oil. demand is good and you're killing the price, we will have to cut back. with the stock market bouncing back. confidence is coming back into the oil sector. i hope it is not too hate for some of these producers. i think already they made decisions to cut back on some production and spending after that big drop. so it might be too late to impact production next year. it might be too late to save it but at least if these prices stablize it will be better for everybody. lauren: let me give final thoughtses to you, colin. final thoughts. we only have a few second. >> today was the day we were most worried about. it was a wonderful rally. let's end the year off. here is to a good 2019. lauren: thank you for your insight, riding out the wild session with us. [closing bell rings] mostly a wild session in a good way. we're looking at 5% gain, almost up 1100 points for the dow, almost 6% gain for nasdaq composite. with that i'm handing a good finish to blake burman and susan li. susan: 1000 point gain for the dow. stocks agreeing across the board pulling a massive selloff on christmas day. four digits, 1000 points. almost up to 1100 snapping a four-day losing streak. subpoena 500, nasdaq soaring. major averages down 10% for the month. i'm susan li in for melissa francis. blake: i'm blake burman. good to see you too. we needed that after the last week or so