August but mostly, especially the Fourth Quarter, has been knocking it out of the park. We do know that today and for the week it is a holiday shortened week and what that means for volume. Take a look at the volume chart i am showing here in my terminal. Given that it is a holiday shortened start everyone but me is on vacation, volume is down 50 from the average. The biggest drops in volume, healthcare, real estate, and utilities, the safety sectors are not being traded today. Youre getting a broadbased risk on sentiment. For me in San Francisco it is all about amazon and Consumer Discretionary is really leading the way. All of the other sectors are only up about one half of 1 . But take a look at amazon leading gains after posting another big holiday season. Billions of items were shipped, tens of millions of amazon devices like the echo. Were sold. And if we flip up the board is mostly risk on with crude and copper rising. Haven, alsofe catching 8 10 of 1 . That is a look at u. S. Markets. Listening to a special edition of Bloomberg Businessweek, live from our bloomberg directive broker studio on Bloomberg Radio and bloomberg tv. There we are, the equity average records. So many record highs, 30 record highs weve hit on s p this year alone. Arent some major catastrophe over the next four trading days. This is going to be the second best year this decade and the fourth best year going back three decades. It istty remarkable pretty remarkable. And we finished premuch for highs at than the session. Higher, 338names and one hunter 59 lower and eight unchanged. Themajor Industry Groups in s p 500 for the day overall, we can see that everything was up. At the top of the pack, Consumer Discretionary, Communication Services and i. T. Health care the laggard down 1 10 of 1 . What are you watching . You mentioned amazon, the biggest percentage gainer in the s p 500 but the biggest point contributor as well. Apple had another alltime high, up 80 on the air. One year ago people were talking down apple saying this pivot to services was not going to work, people were not buying iphones and what a difference a year makes. If you think about a year ago and the Christmas Eve meltdown and then stocks trading lower into that day as well, such a different tone and sentiment and a lot of worries about the interestrate environment, the earnings environment, the corporate environment. One thing i want to mention, stock definitely had quite a run up in todays session. It crossed the 1 billion market cap at the close. That is pretty amazing. The first time that happened in the year. Exactly, that stock taking off today. It has more than doubled over the past six days. A real turnaround or the anticipation of a turnaround. And we had asked her card coming out, spending on strong Holiday Retail sales might be one reason we saw a right aide sheet higher. Intel, tesla, visa at record highs today. Qiagen down 20 . , a lot of folks piled into the stock in october, pushing the shares up 70 and the company saying no, we are fine as a Standalone Company and investor saying no, we will go elsewhere. Fall,n shares continue to down 5 today. They are down 26 from the peak they hit december before the the adersy that over some people found out of touch with the times. And a lot of folks were shorting the stock even before that add. That advertisement. And some of the marijuana plays, a stock that was a to hunt 14 per share closed today blow 17, 214, closed today 16. 55. 90 inright aid is up todays session. Percent. Lets bring in our economics editor who wrote a great story taking a look at bubbles. Yes, we sit here talking about all of the stocks being up and we say a good thing, up is good and down is bad. Yet if you are in the market to buy a house, and 70 said the prices are way up, i do not think people would be tearing about that. Yet most would be cheering about that. Most of us are in the accumulation phase will bes to want to be buying stocks and the lesson you want to do is buy some thing overpriced. So why is it when it comes to stocks, suddenly it is a good thing that prices are so high. To be the worry is we are setting ourselves up for a fall, that the next move will be down. , priceearnings ratios getting high. Advocate, devils people would push back and say we knew at past bubbles in hindsight, there were clear demarcations as when we crossed that rubicon into high valuations and absolute absurdity. Those lines in the sand do not seem to be there with you could talking about credit quality or read relative valuations everywhere in the dotcom bubble. The idea that there would be a moment that will sort of appear are some folks would say, wheres the evidence . This piece i wrote for the magazine is not primarily arguing that we are in a bubble now. I think there are some red flags we could point to, like covenant life loans which are more common. The share of Investment Grade ratings that are at the very bottom of Investment Grade. The fact that argentina was able to float eight 100 year bond a couple years ago shortly after having defaulted. Now greece to borrow for 1 for tenure debt. For 10 yrr debt debt. The yields unsafe securities are sternly low, particularly in europe and japan. Living in a Global Financial market and Global Investors are looking all over the world for where they can get a return. It cannot get a return in europe and asia they come here. What fascinated me is the whole idea you posed is that in order for a developing nation to have growth, do we have to create some kind of bubbles in the process . Leavy from aavid drum leave he Forecasting Center for being that genesis of this column. He has a great piece out i recommend, called bubble or nothing, where he talks about the idea that governments are ling with oversized ballot oversized Balance Sheets that are topheavy with assets and liabilities and the only way you can overcome that is by cutting rates lower. So they get lower until now they are as low as they can go. Does not credit bubble and isnt that easy way to pop the bubble to get rates out from under 1 . That would be easy and also very damaging. It is a great story and i recommend every to go to bloomberg. Com and check out peters story. Our economic editor of Bloomberg Businessweek exiting taking a look at the bubble environment and maybe why it happens. You are listening to Bloomberg Radio. The United States has dropped its demand that south korea pay five times more to hostess military personnel. The move comes days before a troop funding bill was set to expire. South korean media first reported the u. S. Softened its stance after saul promised to buy more american weapons. They reportedly also offered to step up its presence in the strait of hormuz and help u. S. Efforts to protect oil flows in the region. President trump says turkey is trying to turn to curb the violence northwest syria but it efforts are being undermined. On twitter the president accused russia, iran and the Syrian Government of killing thousands of civilians in the province of italy. Idlib. He says turkey is working hard to stop the carnage. Senator perkowski is concerned about the gops plan to expedite President Trump impeachment trial. Men therepublic alaska republican Lisa Murkowski says she is disturbed by the effort to coordinate with the white house in planning for the trial. We have to take that step back from being hand and glove i heard defense and so what leader mcconnell had said. Hasppen to think that that further confused the process. Senator murkowski added she felt that House Democrats had made a mistake in forging ahead with impeachment so quickly. She feels their case could suffer without potentially valuable testimony from some current and former white house officials, like Mick Mulvaney and john bolton. Ukraine and the russian backed breakaway regions of donetsk and luhansk are planning to conduct a prisoner swap. Says vladimirper putin and president zelensky agreed on an exchange of prisoners held it piste during peace talks held in paris. Is unclear having people will be included in the exchange. Large crowds across southern asia turned skyward for the eclipse today that could be seen on a path from india and pakistan to thailand and indonesia. The previous annular solar clips in deborah, 2017 was also his will over slice of engine asia. Over a slice of indonesia. Global news, 24 hours a day, and on quicktake by bloomberg, powered by more than 2700 journalists and analysts in more than 120 countries. This is bloomberg. Was the top stock in the s p 500 today as the online retailer announced recordbreaking holiday sales. Another year, another record . And yet it really does not mean that much. 4 , but ifk today up you look at what they announced, it was not much. Every year they set a record. Ecommerce sales are growing 15 per yell at at per year. In these press releases they do not want you to read too much into it. They said 5 million customers signed up for amazon prime in one week. Last year they said tell million. They do not want us to compare these things so theres nothing that surprising other than that amazon had a good year. They talked about tens of millions of amazon devices being formainly the echo dot, example. I would point out that tens of millions is a vague number so it does not tell us a lot. Is that 10 million or 90 million, we do not know. The other thing about amazon devices is people primarily by them on amazon and amazon controls the price, so they discounted heavily over the holiday season. Putting aside my skepticism, clearly the echo and other devices in the ecosystem continue to be a hit. People are buying them despite privacy concerns. A skeptical brad stone, i want to take a look at a chart i am showing inside my terminal because i am a markets person. We can see amazon has been meh till about the Fourth Quarter and then getting a big boost above the 200 day moving average. From what you hear in the markets as we go into 2020, what is the sentiment around amazon . It was not one of the top picks among analyst i speak to, what did they say . I think it as optimistic as it is ever been primarily for two reasons, one, the Cloud Business continues to grow 40 per year at a huge scale,. Amazon is leading the cloud movement. The other thing is next day delivery as a lever for increasing volumes and the velocity of amazons business. People seem to be responding to the added convenience. Amazon now controls its own destiny with transportation and last mile delivery. So seeing another round of growth tied to that investment in one day delivery. Thank you to bloomberg technologys brad stone. From San Francisco, this is bloomberg. You are listening to a special edition of Bloomberg Businessweek. We want to talk now about what has been going on in hong kong. The protest their continuing over the christmas holiday, demonstrators targeting malls. Clashes left two dozen people injured. , are bloomberg daybreak asia anchor, shery ahn. Pretty bad with tear gas all around. Various areas in hong kong including kowloon bay. And it was during Christmas Day also boxing day, that after where your zynga holiday in hong kong. We continue where ye are also seeing holiday in hong kong. Protesters want the visibility that would come with shutting down stores but also appealing to, perhaps, a few mainland Chinese Tourists still going to hong kong. Thosee seen the impact of plunging numbers of mainland tourists coming from china. For bloomberg terminal users, you can find a chart showing retail sales suffering a record contraction in october, plunging, a doubledigit decline for fourth consecutive month, in the top panel and the second thosewhere you find tourists from Mainland China plummeted. When he thing of the economy there, highend retail is a big part of it. We have done a lot of stories looking at the highend market. Salestalking about better in china but hong kong is an important market as well. When you look at this, it is key. And you understand why the protesters are doing this in terms of getting attention. Basically, they are getting the visibility they need, not only within hong kong but also with those international tourists. One of the promise problems with hong kong has been a focus on mainland Chinese Tourists. The economy needs to diversify and this is some thing we have not really seen in hong kong for the last few years. We have this great piece by a Bloomberg Opinion columnists saying hong kong is overdue for an economic makeover. We have seen Business Outlook worsening with protests going on for seven months, since june we have seen 6000 arrests. And are Bloomberg Opinion columnists telling us we need to diversify away from chinese mainland tourists and foster innovation. Interesting statistics, the World Economic forum coming out with their mobile Competitiveness Index for this year. Ranking hong kong number 26. That is behind singapore, key rival in the region. When you think about what china recently floated, about making macau a Financial Center for the asiapacific region and i think that is fascinating. Hong kong is known for being a financial sectorsection of the regionand i wonder if they have to be looking at, what is their future . Yes and it is interest in you point out the macau story. That is another territory that is had a similar background with portuguese portuguese colonists. The history seller to hong kong, but the way they have developed since going back to china has been fascinating. They have been really more for china, very cooperative tour the chinese. Cooperative toward the chinese. President xi jinping visited last week and gave a speech saying how macau could be a model for other regions as well. So the macau economy at the hong kong economy now seeing big differences. Stance exactly is the now with regard to hong kong from beijing . And carrie lam and her future in guiding hong kong . President xi jinping has been consistently supporting chief executive carrie lam. That is another interesting facet. Despite the fact we continue to see protest not going anywhere, beijing has backed the hong kong government. We have now seeing more indications coming from beijing that they could be intervening in hong kong. There have been calls by the communist Party Leaders that they are going to permit stronger measures, in order to teach patriotism to young people and government officials in hong kong. That, course, raising red flags. An idea thatseen protests are not working as much as they did in the past, in 2003, for sample, and hong kong. Yes but who wouldve thought it would be going on this long, and it does continue. Aboutalso want to talk tiffany. They came out with a story today and talked about a rebound in sales in the runup to chris in sales. I caught up with the ceo and heres what he had to say. There many luxury brands. But when you think really top luxury brands, the big mega brands, you talk about a handful of brands. Some ofose, you have those extremely successful, louis vuitton, cartier. You have other brands that are superpowerful that are not part of bigs groups, consider chanel and hermes. Seriously, i do not think that ladder ofkind of brands there is a magic formula. It could be one way or could be the other. What is crucial is that when you lead a brand like ours, that there is 182 years of history, at the at you at the end of the day have to concentrate on the legacy you receive and the beautiful product and promises you made to your customers. It is really the key of success. ,han the Financial Arrangements to be successful, one or the other. Customers care about your , about, about your brand sustainability, about the beauty of your products. This is what really makes success. That was the ceo of tiffany talking at our bluebird live event. This is bloomberg. I am taylor riggs. This is your Bloomberg Business flash. The turnaround in tesla is looking credible according to wedbush analyst, raising the price target to 370 a share. Three consumer demand and profitability are said to be on an upward trajectory. Soybeansorts of u. S. Rose to the highest since november. More shipments cleared customs ahead of the signing of the partial trade deal in january. Chinas inbound shipments from the u. S. Search to 2. 6 million tons last month, up more than one million tons since october. That was updat your update. Future,hines do in the what humans do now, a concern thinksinni rometty about. Bloomberg asked her how ibm approaches the Human Capital element of disruption. This has been an interesting journey. Ibmerseight out of 10 have skills for the future. About moving skills to the center of your this is not just education. It starts with telling people to be transparent. Will your skills be in demand in the future or not . Scarce . Undant or you lineup how you promote people against that. It is a natural thing that people want to move. You have to make career and education as easy as netflix. It is not netflix, are learning platform, but looks like it. We have 50,000 people a day taking education in that way. Worried, theot older generation . Now that we have been through the transformation, i can tell you with 100 it is ageirrelevant. People are able to move to new skills independent of age. It has changed the number one thing i higher four. The number one thing we hire for is propensity to learn. The halfl