Looking at the hang seng and nikkei up. Shanghai composite took a dip overnight. European equities, pretty much a green picture across the board. Mostly marginal with the italian ftse down a bit. Wti crude, where were now hovering at 51. 17. Todays the day donald trump will give his first News Conference as president elect. It is scheduled for 11 00 a. M. At trump tower. You can watch the conference on cnbc at 11 00. The mexican peso tumbled to historic lows since the election because of concerns that the president elect could take measures that would weigh on mexicos currency. Former exxonmobil ceo riler son facing the Senate ForeignRelations Committee in his confirmation hearing. First trump responding to new unsubstance yated claims that russian intelligence operatives have compromising information about him. Eamon javers has the latest. As this election season goes on, the bar continually gets raised for what can be shocking. As we hear more and more. Yesterday completely filled that requirement in terms of where you just shake your head and go this cant get any more bizarre or insane. I watch it i watch jake tapper i dont know why i was on cnn, but watching it. I saw breaking news, breaking news, weve been working on this for a while. Unbeknownst to me, it had been around. Everyone had seen this stuff. Next thing you know the actual document is published by someone, probably a normal News Organization wouldnt have done that. Then its all out. Then it goes to the twitterspere and everything is broken. Unbelievable, is it not. I cannot think of an analogy in my career covering washington other than when the drudge report put out material about Monica Lewinsky and the president of the United States in the 1990s of the internet changing the news distribution pattern. Let me tell you what we can tell but this astonishing 12 hours in american politics. Lets start lets do there backwards. Lets start with Donald Trumps tweet last night and tell you what hes saying about this. This is what he put out about nine hours ago. He called it fake news, a total political witch hunt. This is what i can tell you about the intelligence situation. Nbc news is reporting that briefing materials prepared for president elect trump included information that initially circulated among trumps opponents, that is presumably republican opponents and the Hillary Clinton campaign. Trump briefing included damaging allegations about his dealings with the russians. The allegations themselves now have not been verified by u. S. Agencies. The nbc sources would not comment on the nature of the specific allegations that were, in fact, briefed to donald trump last week. Talking to some former u. S. Intelligence officials last night, i can add a bit of color to that in that the sense that im getting is the thinking among u. S. Intelligence agencies in presenting donald trump with these allegations, even though the intelligence agencies themselves had not verified the allegations was to go to donald trump and say this is the type of information that the russians likely or absolute i will have on you. They did not deploy this during the election season in terms of negative Campaign Information about you. Therefore that adds to our argument, the u. S. Intelligence community would say, that the russians favored you over Hillary Clinton during the course of the campaign. That would have been the logic of why that material would have been included in that trump brief. In talking to a longtime former cia officer last night, i was told that it is Standard Practice and expected among intelligence agencies that russian intelligence will, when american businessmen or western businessmen are visiting moscow, will try to deploy honey pots, sexual temptations for american executives in general who are going to moscow and participating in highlevel negotiations. U. S. Intelligence understands that to be a standard tactic of russian intelligence when dealing with western Business People. Ill leave it there. Except to say the kremlin this morning has put out a statement in which they are denying that they harbor any information about donald trump at all or Hillary Clinton calling all of this pulp fiction. Being used to damage u. S. russian relations. It read like a novel yesterday. A shady British Intelligence agent that was being employed by Opposition Research on the republican and democratic side. Right. Its been around for months. If i had it, i certainly would have used it before november 8th if i was opposition. And so its right. The guy has been guy or gal has been credible in the past. Like james bond or something. What is it . M5 . Mi6. Im told the expectation among some who are familiar with this is that much of the material in the dossier will turn out not to be true but that the person himself who put it together is viewed as not incredible, that is a credible person who has experience, but a lot of there will not prove to be true. Our job as journalists is to go very carefully with this material and establish what we can socalled journalists do not. But we are, but its important to establish what we can establish as true fact and sort through this. There are wild allegations out there. Its our job to parse it. Eamon, heres the question, as journalists, i think about this a lot. Are we supposed to have a conversation about it . Because theyre unsubstantiated claims that we cant substantiate, should we be having the conversation at all . Reporting on it, absolutely behind the scenes. We have been. We have been, but shouldnt we only be bringing those things forward when and if we have them . So we shouldnt go to the lowest common denominator, buzzfeed, we should not go to the lowest no. But this becomes once us out. You have to talk about it. They posted the 35page report. They posted the entire dossier. You read it, right . I read it. You must have been going no. Its bizarre. Its insanity. To shock us with this last year over the election to shock us at this point takes a lot. And it did. It does. You would think we would have been hardened by the 2016 election cycle. That said, what i can tell you right now is what i just reported, which is that nbc news is saying this material or some material was presented to donald trump in terms of damaging allegations about his dealing with russians. Right. They presented that to the incoming president elect. Thats news and thats a fact. You can check whether cohen was in the czech republic. I dont know if this is confirmed, apparently he was not. According to a tweet he put out last night. He said he was never in prague. Never in prague. That seems easily verifiable. Some things are verifiable and some things are not. My sense of whats in the dossier is some will prove not to be true. But the question is which will prove not to be true, our job is to sift through that and figure out what is true and not true and not just repeat allegations. We dont know if any of it is true. We dont. Plenty of paying for Opposition Research. It reads like pulp fiction, completely. Thats what the kremlin is saying this morning, they dont have information damaging on donald trump. Trump called it fake news. U. S. Intelligence thought there was something here worth telling the president elect about. They told him about it in that briefing last week or they included it in the briefing materials last week. I would want to know it. You would. If you were donald trump, you would want to know about it. Hes known for weeks. Certain entities are saying even the Intelligence Service has an axe to grind. And they were only too happy to consider the voracity of this stuff. Look, this comes at a time when theres an enormous rift between the u. S. Intelligence community and donald trump who has been openly mocking them on twitter. So this comes at a very, very sensitive time in the relations between that community and the incoming president elect. You would expect and hope what u. S. Intelligence agencies will do it the responsible and correct thing to do here. You could be talking you could be delving into a big argument about budget reconciliation and which way be happy that you are talking about stuff that, you know, it doesnt get crazier. It doesnt. Thanks. Eamon javers. The s p 500 posting a flat session for the first time in nine years, politics and earnings season likely to be big drivers for the week. Joining us now is steven reese, global head of equity strategy, and j. J. Hannigan. The nasdaq posted its fourth Straight Record high. The s p is within a half percent of its record high. Do you think that we have hit the stop . Do you think that you missed out on the rally if youre not in already . You are seeing evidence in flows from the Retail Investor that thats the feeling theyre getting. Its kind of interesting if we put out our imx on monday and it shows our retail traders sold last months a lot of stocks that you would expect they would be buying, particularly apple. Apple is the number one held held stock for the third month in a row. They also sold higher dividend paying stocks, like exxon and ser chevron. The stock they rolled out of from apple is to facebook. The other interesting thing since the trump election is bank of america has been a big buy. I think one of the reasons, three months in a row our clients bought bank. I think theyre using it as a proxy for financials in general. For a retail trader, this is an affordable stock. Low share price. Yeah. Low share price. Very liquid. Participated well. One thing back to your question, particularly retail traders have to be careful of, its never too late to get involved. Dont get all in. If you get n get in partially. If we go down, its an opportune opportunity. Of the 15 most traded securities in 2016, bank of america was the only individual stock. All the others were etfs. In terms of where you see the markets in 17, you say 7 to 8 base case. Base case. All coming from corporate Earnings Growth. We have not felt this confident in Earnings Growth in some time. You have to consider the Financial Sector and Energy Sector alone will contribute five points to that growth. Were confident earnings can take the market higher. I think its easy to feel like we missed it given the year we had last year and how we started this year. We had 96 alltime highs in the market since the financial crisis. You could have been saying that all along and sat out. We recommend clients phase n look at what you have in your portfolio, compliment that dividend exposure with more cyclical exposure and small cap. Its interesting because if you look at the s p 500, the top line number looks almost the same for a very long time. But the rotations within have been very, very strong. Healthcare up 3. 7 . Biotech up 8 . Docontinuincontinuing . I think so. I think we may see selling into the more cyclical areas and areas that lagged like healthcare. That area was negative heading into this year because of the lack of news flow and optimism around potential reform. More positive on cyclicals, more cautious on the bond proxies, one exception is telecom. Thank you. Thank you. Good to see you. When we rirn, stocks to watch. The biggest movers, plus a close look at Trumps National secure er ers picks, jeremy bash will join us next to talk about it. Some stocks to watch today. Ford confirms it will be less profitable this year than in 2016. The company is on track to report 10. 2 billion in pretax adjusted prompt. Ford will be pressured this year as it increases spending on emerging opportunities. United airlines is raising its Fourth Quarter guidance. Citing stronger bookings in november and december. Boeing will conduct a round of layoffs of engineers this year as it seeks to cut costs amid throwing aircraft sales. The cuts includes dozens of jobs eligible for voluntary layoffs in california, South Carolina and washington state. Boeing cut more than 10,000 jobs last year. Confirmation hearings scheduled for several of president elect trumps nominees, including secretary of defense and cia director. Our next guest knows the inner workings of the cia and defense department. Lets bring in jeremy bash, the founder and managing director of beacon global strategies. Thank you for being with us. I want to talk to you about these hearings coming up and what it means. Thats probably the most substantive part of this interview that well have. I do want to ask you, since we have you this morning to react, if i will, to the news that weve heard about these intelligence briefings, and how you, at least, think about thos those. We have to drive under a caution flag. We cant race ahead of the facts, we dont know all the facts. But we know the russians had a clear preference for trump. They liked to use information to gain leverage and tried to gain leverage in our american political system. So we know that. Thats a fact. Thats what was pit out in the Intelligence Report declassified and publicized last friday. We think we know that intelligence officials briefed trump about this, briefed obama and senior congressional leaders, because theyre worried that russia will try to use leverage over the United States. I think this is important, not to see the us in the frame of democrats or republicans, because next friday donald trump becomes the 45th president. President obama said last night he was freely and fairly elected. If a foreign entity, foreign Intelligence Service has leverage over our president , that affects all information. What we dont know is whether the underlying information this dossier or set of memos is true. We have no idea. How often in your experience were you presented with information that ultimately was not true and might have been labeled as such from moment one . To prove a point, if you will. Its rare you see things that are total fabrications, but sometimes 90 of the truth is 100 false. It depends on which aspects are accurate. To me, when i looked at the information last night, the things that i think are the most serious are not about what somebody might have done in moscow during moonlight hours. What i think is actually really important to focus on is that there are discussions about conversations between advisers to the campaign and officials in moscow to talk about policy issues. To try to figure out how russia could influence an incoming administration. That is very serious. Thats something i would think that the fbi will be taking a close look at. If that were true, jeremy, the time frame theyre talking about is five years. Thats what scared me. When i went to bed, thats what i was worried about. Not the salacious stuff, which, you know, it was this stuff prior to that that for five years there this been a relationship cultivation, supposedly. That russia was involved with trying to elect donald trump for five years is what thats why to say some of it might be true, but some not. I dont know. Theres now scuttlebutt that the whole thing theres a blog site, i dont know whether this is true either. I dont know whats real. Its impossible to know. But there are some things in there that we now know are true. A lot of the document that was posted was about the fact that russia was trying to disparage clinton and preferred trump and tried to influence our elections. Thats been put out by 17 intelligence agencies, briefed to the president elect and president and released to the public last friday. We know that. Thats really not in dispute anymore. Its some of these other ancillary issues. But russia doing that and being complicit with advisers and trump is a leap of faith. Total leap. Thats a totally different set of allegations. I agree. Thats what i would characterize as things we dont know. On things we do know, we know congressman mike pompeo has been nominated as cia director and will be involved in a hearing this week. If youre him this week, given this news what are you thinking and how are you preparing for this hearing . Its challenging. He participated at the trump tower with the intelligence officials. He will be asked about it. Whether he can say anything about it in open session or if hell have to do that in closed session, i dont know yet. His fundamental job is to present the president with information about threats to our country. And hes got to have intelligence troops. As you saw from the last two weeks, there is a lot of tension built up between the new president and intelligence officers. Intelligence officers are not political. Theres not a political bone in their body. They call it like they see it. Pompeos job here is to defend them and to get trust built up between the boss and the icntel pros. We had reports that general mattis team is perhaps unhappy with some of the people that trump has tried to appoint underneath him, infighting within that department. Pompeo obviously has to deal with the russian situation, police some comments that trump made about others in the Intelligence Community. How big a deal is this . Or is this par for the course . Thats the piece that i think us laymen dont necessarily understand. I think its more par for the course. I think pompeo will be confirmed. Hes highly credible. Hes capable. I dont see big issues in his confirmation. General mattis is one of the most decorated, venerated Service Members that weve had in a generation. I worked with him closely at the pentagon. He has great vision, is well liked. All right. Im confident hell be confirmed. Yesterday, did you get to see much of the sessions questions . That devolved into a parity as well. Mike bloomenthal is that his name. Richard bloomenthal . Yeah. Not mike. Do you have any awards, senator sessions, from the kkk . Have you accepted any awards from the i dont know if theres any reason to think he was awarded anything by the kkk, but verbalizing the question shows the level and depths sometimes the other side will go to to plant that seed. Sessions was like then another award he accepted, Lindsey Graham had the same award and so did joe lieberman, but accepting an award