Weak so far. The dow and s p 500 even with those losses on wednesday are on pace for the best week in five nasdaq with the biggest week in seven weeks. In morngs ding dow futures up b5 points, s p up by 3, and the nasdaq up by 6 overnight in asia, the nikkei ended up just slightly. Up by 27 points. The hang seng by a half percentage point in europe this morning, with some of the early trading, it looks like the dax is up by 0. 3 the cac in france up bay half percentage point stocks are slightly weaker in london, but italian and spanish stocks are in the green. Also look at crude oil prices. Crude jumping on wednesday by 2. 1 , setting a 2. 5year high. It was sitting at 58. 02. This morning were up again, 63 cents higher to 58. 65. A couple of corporate stories were watching Teva Pharmaceuticals will lay off thousands of employees in israel and the United States they will be reportedly sending termination letters to 10 of its 10,000 employees earlier this month we heard teva said it would be missing its 2017 profit forecast due to falling prices of generics in the u. S. Market and weakened sales of its multiple sclerosis drug a danish executive was appointed to the ceo role in september new details out yesterday about ubers massive data breach the company said it discussed the breach with soft bank before it went public with the details on tuesday uber said it had a duty to disclose the data breach investigation to a potential investor even though the information was incomplete Dara Khosrowshahi learned of the data breach two months before the company disclosed it really . He was the one saying this was unacceptable look, these data breaches, always a question of what do you say, when do you say it . When do you know things that is disturbing i was always looking at him as being not involved, somebody who came in later. This is more complicated. Not only was there the breach itself, but the payoff to the hacker er ers to keep the breach secret if i told me that on monday i dont know that it could r wowom two months to tell you, but thats a long time. And what data was breached. Its like 53 million, but not credit card information, but for the the600,000 drivers, it was license information. Also but in this morning, uber and mahindra announcing a partnership in india uber will be using electric car vehicles in india it has been slow, by the government pushing for all cars to be electric by 2030 the car company will be providing financing, insurance and Vehicle Services for the vehicles they will Work Together to set up charging stations in target cities cbs and dish network resolved a dispute over carriage fees that ended a threeday blackout that affected customers from watching the cowboys chargers game yesterday thats playing high stakes, not letting you get your football. It did. Sources tell the Associated Press that lawyers for former National Security adviser Michael Flynn have stopped working with President Trumps legal team flynns attorneys made that decision known this week its a move that could signal flynns willingness to cooperate with special prosecutor Robert Muellers investigation into russia interfering in last years president ial election there are other reasons for his legal team to potentially stop cooperating with trumps team, including concern about future conflicts of interest. If you watched preet pa bs twitter feed, he has a viewpoint on this. Jamie dimon said this on wednesday, he expects donald trump to be a oneterm president. Dimon told the Economic Club of chicago that he expects a new u. S. President in 2021 and advised the Democratic Party to come up with a pro Free Enterprise agenda for jobs and Economic Growth. Dimon also commented on foreign affairs. He said we should never be rude to a neighbor like mexico and warned that political weakness of german chancellor Angela Merkel is bad for all of the u. S. I read his comments a little differently. Not that he necessarily thinks donald trump is a oneterm president. He said if the democrats do not put up someone pro Economic Growth that he will be yeah. The headline came out that way. Then i read deep near it. My read of it, it was a warning to the democrats if you put up an Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders that makes more sense to me given that he runs jpmorgan and the business roundtable, which represents the Largest Companies in america my read of it he was saying to the democrats, you could potentially take back the white house in four years, but not if you put up somebody who does not have a pro economic agenda im so glad you read on thifing what ththi thanksgiving what this all meant. It didnt jibe with me. It was much more nuanced than the headlines make it seem it was more of a warning, if you go with Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders, you will see pru President Trump get reelected it will be interesting to see, his further comments as he moves on right i think he would probably be surprised by some headlines that came out of that ill have to go back and read it now the official start to the Holiday Shopping season is now under way. Courtney reagan this is like an annual ritual for us. It is she joins us from the woodbridge mall in woodbridge, new jersey good morning good morning. Its an annual tradition for me, its been this way since way before i covered retail as a reporter i always used to go out shopping with my aunts. It was a family tradition. Im not alone because between 30 and 60 of American Consumers will be shopping on black friday the real action kicked off last night in the stores. Early evening hours is when you see the door buster sales at walmart, target and macys walmarts chief merchant saying foot traffic was great the Online Shopping action for many of those retailers began ear early, predawn on thanksgiving day. Adobe says sales online are up 17 year over year, that was on thanksgiving day just until 5 00 we dont even have the full day yet. Captifi says the most searched for retailers so far today are best buy, number one, followed by walmart, kohls and target. Wiser has realtime survey data they are saying 81 of consumers will shop on amazon, but in addition to other retailers. Only 19 are going there exclusively. Amazon says that mobile is really strong for it, especially on thanksgiving. So on thanksgiving day, amazon saw its mobile orders increase by 50 over last year. Lastly, catch point is watching different websites for us to see the performance, the speed h m has gone down twice now. Once between 5 30 and 6 30 p. M. On thanksgiving and again this morning at 4 30 a. M. Thats going to cost it some money. Back over to you guys. Thank you well see you many times throughout the day i have a selfish he can for dana i thought i was supposed to wait until monday for cybermonday for all of these online sales to take place but i already am seeing all sorts of sales taking place online i havent even gone to the store yet. What am i supposed to do buy what you want to buy and when you want to buy but im the cheapest person you know are the deals going to be re better on monday than oday are the deals going to be an extra 10 on monday . I think its just as good on monday weve seen the deals start almost two weeks ago yes, today is a better deal. You will get an extra 10 or a gift, the deals will be today, monday you may be getting extra, but will they be in stock . They may not have it anymore. The consumer is the king. Thats whats happening. Are you going to buy online today or in the store . Im about the store im buying in the store. I will buy online, too i may buy online on monday i was out there yesterday, too dana, heres my thing i went on wednesday night and tried to go to a carters, because i needed some things for the baby i thought, great, i can run in quickly. I went to the Carters Store thats always been there, its gone i had to turn around, go back. Made me start thinking i feel like the consumer has been king for so long, we have been able to do what we want, now you have to close some of these stores because you cant maintain all of them with fewer of us heading out. A lot of times i buy online, its not frequently im out in a store. Is the tide turning . Will the consumer not being able to do whatever you want whenever you wanted because the stores will finally have to start consolidating . Weve seen the stores consolidate this year. Were seen the most store closures in many years youll still have the best Shopping Centers get the best tenants. But they wanted me to go another 4. 2 miles which doesnt sound far when i looked up where the next one was, it would have taken me an extra 25 minutes to get there. If that center is not productive or other stores are not productive, you will not see them i have to think ahead you have to think ahead, and mo spending more of your time, you will be there, spend more there. Well talk more about this in a bit. Lets check on the markets this is a shortened trading day. Markets close at 1 00 p. M. Eastern time today weve been watching, so far the futures are in the green joining us now is christina hooper, global strategist at invetco and ed stringham joins us also. Thank you for being here ed, lets start with you lets get a sense for how consumers are feeling these days and what that means for the economy and the broader picture. One of the most interesting things is the tax cut. On the corporate front, if theres big Corporate Tax cuts, that will be very big for the economy. I think that american corporations are going to be able to invest more. That will be good for consumers. Thats also good for workers good all around. Thats what makes me optimistic. Overall, a lot of people asking me will it affect the economy much really my big criticism of the tax bill is that it doesnt go far enough in terms of the end user, the tax bill will not change much. So i have mixed feelings on how that will be affecting the economy. Lets talk about how it is or isnt affecting the markets. Were not sure it will get passed it has to pass the senate, go through conference and pass both houses the markets at this point are factoring in what percentage chance that it gets passed nfrm the markets have come to the conclusion that it will be passed that worries me. What weve seen is lofty valuations we saw that articulated in the fomc minutes released the other day. I would argue its largely priced in. Thats what we heard from tresh freshry secretary mnuchin last month. Wh what. What do you think the drop is i could see a 10 drop. Thats baked in already thats maybe a worst Case Scenario what is the timing 2017 event First Quarter 2018 if theres a honeymoon and were still in it this could be a death by a thousand cuts. Were in the midst of the sausage factory. We will be seeing this legislation evolve well get news flow that suggests chances are brighter or dimmer, depending upon the day or negotiations. We could see a market that gets taken down on negative news. If we get negative news flow, stocks pushed down and come under pressure as a welt thats a worst Case Scenario i would expect to see some tax bill passed. It may look quite different than what were seeing now in terms of either the house version or the Senate Version what is critical is to maintain the 20 Corporate Tax rate and immediate expensing equipment. If 20 backs iecomes 23 , 24e that change your perspective its still good but it is optimal if its 20 . Those impact the stock market and valuations ed . 19 , 18 . If it starts going up to 23 we might as well give up now we need simple lower taxes there has been speculation that if the state and local Tax Deductions go away, it will be a p problem in places like oregon, california, new jersey, new york, connecticut. What do you see about states jumping to this position. Im crying in my coffee because my taxes are going up. Lets just talk about what it means from an Economic Perspective for those dates. Its basically shifting taxes around the Corporate Taxes part is good the problem that i have is that its not much of a tax decrease. When you see that, you say well increase taxes on certain states, decrease taxes on certain states thats not something we should be getting excited about the Corporate Tax issue is good. We should be lowering taxes. We have internationally way too high taxes compared to all other corporations in terms of the average person, some up, some down the reason youre not seeing a big net decline in taxes overall, i guess, is because the senate rules prohibit it you have to find pay forces and getting rid of state and local taxes is one of the pay forces this whole revenue neutral thing this is not revenue neutral i know, but even its 1 150 billion o tax cuts i think thats pretty measly at the end of the day the government is taking in twice as much revenue as they were ten years ago to say well decrease is by 150 billion is not much. Annually. Right over ten years, then the numbers add up its not clear it pays for itself its so small, its 1 of gdp. The government has been increasing spending so much. Were talking about a trillion dollars more than ten years ago. Now were saying well decrease it a bit its so small. Theres no conversation about Infrastructure Spending on the spending side and no conversation about entitlement reform on the other end. That also is a huge issue i think we have a spending problem. You cant look at one side of the equation government has been spending more and more dollars in the economy. The more we do that. The less we see corporations invest, individuals going to the shopping malls were talking about and thats really what we need to be concerned about at the end of the day, theres a malaise in the economy and i almost think its i impossible to claim a full malaise, but when you think about the bifurcation and the extent that theres problems with this economy, its hard to argue at that point in the ball game that its a function of the Government Spending too much money. Im not saying were in a terrible situation but we need to be going more in the direction of the promises we were given just a year ago well see meaningful tax reform. That will make the economy strong yeah things are good. Things are much better than a year, ten years ago, five years ago. I think at the end of the day its slightly underwhelming. We need to be going more in the direction of the promises we were given i would argue its about more bang for your buck cbo does a lot of Great Research about what has the most impact in terms of multiplier effects. The multiplier effects that are most powerful are Infrastructure Spending, tax cuts to lower income americans, and this tax bill has a lot of elements in it that dont have high multiplier effects, particularly the estate tax repeal there are ways to massage this, make it a more impactful tax bill im sorry, i reject this whole multiplier model that you take a dollar out of the economy, thats bad. Give it back to the individuals, that the okay. It doesnt really matter where it is. You dont think it matders which type of individual you give it to well have that monday spent depends on the person, it will be spent on a different way. But the idea that the government needs to be micro managing well spend it on roads, thats more valuable than General Motors or tesla spending i reject that whole its an outdated mindset but hold on every economic model always suggested if you build a road or airport, the multiplierordosh do it this way if youre making 35,000 a year, and im giving you an extra 500 or 5,000 or if youre making 0 10 million a year, you dont think i can guarantee you the 5,000 gets spent from the 5,000 gets spent from the fellow making 35,000. If youre making 10 million, its hard to see what youre going to do. I will reject the whole every economic model assumption. Thats common among some economists, but tons of economists reject this mindset give it to a corporation, theyll invest it. Give it to the yacht person that you will talk about. People will spend that money its not disappearing. Infrastructure spending is the most impactful you could argue that based on research its not just the shortterm impact, but youre also creating capex. Think about the Works Progress administration in the 1930s. We built an awful lot, including laguardia airport, the high school my mom taught in were built by the wpa, it was not just putting people to work and stimulating the economy for the shortterm, these were infrastructure elements used for decades since. Thats something that has not been talked about, but critical. I do think its bipartisan, both sides would say you need more Infrastructure SpendingPresident Trump said that himself. I will have to just beg to differ on this part. Why are we so concerned about roads when there are so many other things in the economy that matter investments in commuters, investment in new technology thats been included in Infrastructure Spending. Im talking about private investment rather than having that money go through this big public works sector. Its just a different approach i say put that money into the private sector, give it back to the consumer give it back to the worker you want to see a huge stimulus . Let people keep their money, spend their money, invest their money