Going to be most interesting is how the stocks react and what was already built in or was this just kind of a big trade into big cap growth and were not really talking about the quarterly results. Its just a placeholder type investment or are we really banking on great numbers from the likes of facebook and the others . I mean, microsoft is really interesting. Flawless quarter, stocks getting a nice bump, but its not running away whats amazing to me is just how big these companies have become if you look at the numbers and the actual earnings, i like to look at the earnings,theyre not that great earnings from the Technology Group are down this quarter. Earnings from the Technology Group are down in the Third Quarter. The semiconductor has been generally bad with a few exceptions and yet people keep buying these stocks and they keeptelling me well, theres nothing else to buy in growth. Semiconductor index, the smh, weve talked about this before, 2 from historic highs horrible commentator from the Second Quarter horrible commentary for the Third Quarter. Everybody says, oh, well, its the 5g story we have to buy it, because its the 5g theres always this eternal hopeium, i know ive overused that word out there on the horizon, some kind of savior how long does that last its amazing how long you can make it last considering the numbers have just not been very good this year overall so youve got Automotive Industry going to turn around, oh, thats going to help the Semiconductor Industry internet of things will keep growing, 5g will keep growing dramatically so theres always on the horizon, theres always the belief these companies are consolidating and theyre better able to withstand downturns, a certain narrative that builds up around this, even as the estimates, the actual earnings numbers keep going down for the second and Third Quarter mike, 22 of the tech stocks that i cover closely hit 52week highs in the past week, including adobe, amd, ebay, cisco, intuit, microsoft, shopify, Texas Instruments i mean, its across different areas of tech. It seems almost indiscriminate it is across most areas i do think that the emphasis, it has been software, anything you can try to sell as a platform of any sort even if its not even in tech, right . If you look at last weeks alltime high list fidel ty Information Systems and the exchanges, the msci the security exchanges. Exactly. So anything varisk analytics. Thats the emphasis along with the kicker of massive branded companies. We have been talking a lot about the f. A. A. N. G. S which have led the market rallies, but have we been paying enough attention to the payment space visa has risen 36 yeartodate. Paypal up 40 yeartodate what are you expecting from these names . Especially when theres a lot of questions in the space youve got libra, youve got the Federal Reserve looking at this realtime payment system. Are there risks if you added up all the market cap of those companies, of the visa, mastercard, paypal, all of the other kind of related payments company, you really have to wonder if theres enough to go around, right . In terms of very longterm growth, in terms of who gets the share of which everyone agrees will be more electronic and Digital Payments so its a very good question i think visa is one of these like, buy it forever and hold it for some people. And for other people, its like, i lack imagination on anything else i used to think, it was hard to find the bear case for visa, but you have all of this big disruption happening in the space. And im interested in hearing what they have to say about libra. Because visa and paypal are part of this libra association. But what does it mean for their earnings isnt the action this year telling you that they are investors are not, for the moment, concerned this this libra thing is going to be massively disrupted. One element of it, though, is the criticism of libra is that, oh, its only these private Companies Getting together and creating an association. Thats how visa started it was the banks that got together and it was a cooperative and it wasnt some governmentchartered thing that said, now were going to have this is the way were going to process credit card payments im more concerned about the weightings of these things i know i pound away on this every week, but you look at amazon, you look at facebook, you look at alphabet collectively, its 8, almost 9 of the s p 500 by weighting now. And people keep piling into these sectors. So essentially, ten stocks are over 20 of the s p. The other bottom part. And whatever happens whats the historical moves its been that way there have been times in 2000 when but it tends to be more like what thats pretty concentrated. The top ten stocks thats a good question if you go back like into the 70s and 60s, it was ibm, at t, general motors, standard oil you have had but they werent all tech stocks no, they were not all from the same industry. Unusual high concentration. Do you think that im looking at amazon on thursday. Do you think that they come out and talk more about the antitrust scrutiny that theyre facing its really been their strategy to sort of sit back and just let the results speak for themselves or talk about their thirdparty merchants. Do you think they have to be a little bit more proactive . I dont know if they have to be dont you think they would default to what they normally do, which is focus on the 24 things they list as their accomplishments in the quarter at the top of the press release . Their twitter account has been a lot more can i have they used to say nothing now theyrereally hitting back against politicians, Elizabeth Warren and others who are making, trying to drill them on some things. I wonder in the q a, from analysts and stuff, if that becomes more of a threat i think being proactive and taking them on a little bit more, youve got to lay out if you dont, all of a sudden, the zeitgeist, the narrative is, theyre evil how did that happen and how did they just sort of act wquiesce o allow that to happen four years ago, googles motto, dont do evil was the default. Now four years later, everyone assumes theyre evil they better start a counterattack, because theyre losing the pr warright now that seems pretty obvious to me. Theres a lot of advice for google comps these days. Lets get to Data Protection both google and equifax reaching settlements with the ftc over data and privacy issues. Meantime, this face app continues to receive congressional scrutiny over its own data sharing practices our next guest says in our latest oped, does russia want more than your old face . And debates how domestic how domestic big tech is already bree breaching our own data joining us on the phone today, recodes editor at large, kara swisher. Good morning to you. Hey, carl, how you doing . Good. Where do you come down lets do face app first. This was a topic of discussion where you were recently. Mmhmm. Yeah, i was at a security conference in aspen. And it was all of the big security people in Foreign Policy and obviously, you know, theyve been talking about the incurs n incursions, especially from russia for a long time, and have been concerned about it, and especially concerned now about china. And so at the same time, this face app thing pops up, which i think is not the kind of thing that they consider serious at all. And in fact, a lot of security analysts have said, this is not theyre not sending everything back to Vladimir Putin so he can look at your old face, but it still brings it into the Consumer Sector this idea that there are companies that are not based in the u. S. That have a ton of data about you. And that might be concerning, from authoritarian regimes kara, my issue with the whole face app craze is i didnt get the sense that people were thinking about it. Just like people put smart speakers in their homes and dont necessarily think about the fact that theres an open mic to a big Multinational Corporation there. The fact that people were taking facebook quizes and not necessarily thinking about how their data was being populated it seems like were not learning, necessarily, to go, wait a minute, who makes this app . Where is the data going . Lets read the fine print and then decide whether we should be using it or not. Yeah, absolutely. It was interesting, though a lot of people seem to know about the russia angle and theyre like, oh, wait, its owned by russia. I heard from a lot of people its interesting when it moves into the consumer space in a more significant way but, yeah, nobody thinks about it at all. Typically, if they do think about it, theyre like, what do i care, they have my old face. But this one seems to resonate a little more. Even though candidates are getting involved and the democratic candidate have said warned not to use it if they were, i cant imagine any of them were, and some of them dont need it and so its just an interesting question of when does the penny drop for consumers that theyre giving away their data and it could possibly be dangerous to do so kara, you brought up an interesting point in this article, you said, if people are worried about face app, what about an application like tiktok, which is from china and which a lot of kids are using. They have a lot of data. Do you think that especially given whats happening in the trade war between china and the u. S. That this app could receive more scrutiny . Well, its interesting, they got a little bit they had to pay a fine because of the way they were marketing to kids, or Something Like that. But i think most of the people at the security conference, the overwhelming attention is on china, not so much on russia everybody was sort of, russia is a bad actor in the digital space, but china is the real challenger here, not just as a bad actor, but as a country thats going to outinnovate the u. S. And thats a problem an admiral who runs the whole area of china and that area was essentially saying within by 2050, the chinese are going to overtake us in the region, from a Military Point of view and he thought the investments in technology were critical in this country to keep up. So where do you go from there, kara . Do you have this sort of digital berlin wall that you talked about in your article, or do you get a less open, a less free internet, eventually is that a bad thing . Well, will there be two internets . Will there be one . Is it going to be an internet of these sort of clouds that are owned by Different Countries it was just really interesting to think about the idea. I cant imagine, you know, the open internet has been such a benefit and created so much wealth and created these massive companies. So you dont want to really go to a closed system in any way. But in a lot of ways, you have to think really hard do you want a really authoritarian censor, heavy data following you internet or do you want a different kind of internet . So they may not be mutually exclusive, but it was really interesting to think about the idea of a different kind of internet and paying attention to your privacy. I just think people will continue to use these apps, no matter what. But to be thinking about where theyre from is really important. Finally, kara, a couple of fridays in a row now, weve had an ftc story regarding big tech in the washington post. This time, its google we never seem to get a hard picture of what happened or whats happening do you think that changes when google reports this week i dont think google will say much about it. The ftc, i was meeting at some people with the ftc, and theres a push inside to be more transparent and to say what happened and what they went through, which i think is a great idea to understand how they came to these settlements i think these numbers are so small, even though they seem like the largest ever. But given the encouragement of not just google, but, you know, so many. Yahoo has billions of people, 3 billion or Something Like that, its really amazing that we dont know what our government is doing in terms of investigating them and its not out in the open. So the question is, if these numbers are so small compared to the breaches, why did they decide to do that would be a really nice thing for citizens to know. And maybe what more does the ftc need in terms of staff, which they have talked about, the head of the ftc has talked about this in terms of doing these investigations theyre so outmatched, its really kind of amazing mat government allows it to happen yeah. Kara, thats about all we can say about it for now but well talk to you soon thanks thank you kara swisher, recodes editor at large and still to come, is it time to sell to huawei again or not several prominent Silicon Valley valley executives are headed to the white house today taking on that very question that story is afr e eatethbrk. Equifax, as you know, being hit with the largest ever data breach fine. Lets get down to Kayla Tausche in washington, whos with the director of the Consumer Financial protection bureau. Hey, kayla hey, carl and thanks to director kranger for joining us, one of the principles who negotiated this nearly 700 million settlement thank you for being here thank for having me talk a little bit about the dollars and cents of how this figure was arrived at, specifically the 300 million Consumer Relief Fund so first, ill say thatthis settlement was a joint partnership with the federal trade commission, with the 50 states and territories that worked with us, and any negotiation of this kind really is based on the facts and circumstances of the situation we looked at, again, the number of consumers affected, talking about 147 million americans, nearly half of all adults. And so understanding the number of those individuals who would seek, would seek relief through the fund for credit monitoring and the cost of that, as well as the individuals who may be affected by Identity Theft and thinking about the claims. The fund also includes time spent on dealing with Identity Theft issues, as well as getting Credit Monitoring Services this morning, the equifax executive team said that there actually hadnt been that many people who had signed up for free credit monitoring in the immediate wake of the breach so their expectation is that all 147 Million People arent going fob applying for relief here whats your estimate of the average amount that you think each person seeking relief would eventually get at the end of the day. Well, i certainly hope that americans who are impacted do submit claims and do apply for this protection. Its a great opportunity to have free credit monitoring, both from the tribureau for four years as well as additional protection after that. Its important and i would encourage all consumers to be monitoring their credit. It can affect them in a lot of different ways and its important to catch that early, if there is any particular issue in the nearterm why not subpoena equifax executives, if there truly was a lapse at the highest level at the company . Did you find that there was not one . So i would say that, again, each investigation really is a particular circumstances that we find ourselves in. Equifax did take steps by replacing, frankly, a number of toplevel executives, as the investigation went on. And really, we you know, wont comment on the particulars. There were, obviously, a lot of negotiation both with the company and with our partners to make sure that we got the equitable outcome that we did. And finally, this is expected to be one of the investigations that was going to be put on ice with the change in leadership at the Consumer Financial protection bureau. So are you trying to deregulate or are executives still on notice that youre looking into these types of cases i have been very clear that we are absolutely going to take the steps we need to to protect consumers in the marketplace, including using our Enforcement Authority when warranted and certainly it was in this case. Director kathy kraninger, thanks for your time today thank you carl, well send it back to you. All right, kayla, great stuff. Its a big story also a reminder, the ceo of equifax is joining the closing bell today. Thats going to be at 3 00 p. M. Eastern time meantime, tech executives gathering at the white house today in an effort to relax the president s hard line restrictions on doing business with huawei. Ylan mui has more on who is expected there this afternoon and what is on the agenda. Ylan reporter well, deirdre, white house counselor Kellyanne Conway just spoke to reporters here and i asked her if the white house is considering relaxing those restrictions around doing business with huawei she said the president wants to keep up the pressure on the company. That he still views it as a National Security concern, but that hes also a big supporter of 5g. Now, no official word just yet on whether the president will drop by that meeting with interstate executives later on today, but i have confirmed that treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin and nfc director larry kudlow will be there and my colleague, Kayla Tausche and i have also confirmed some of the companies who will be attending, including qualcomm, intel, broadcom, and micron. Back in may, commerce put qualcomm on a blacklist that prevents companies from exporting any software or technologies to huawei but really has the companies worried is the potential for a broader white house executive order that would bar any transaction with huawei. And already, the administration is seeing some pushback from capitol hill a Bipartisan Group of senators, including republicans, marco rubio, and mitt romney, and democrats, mark warner and chris van h