CNBCfix - Fast Money Review

[CNBCfix Fast Money Archive — January 2021-December 2020]

Anthony Scaramucci 3 times says bitcoin is a ‘monetary network’

Well, it was quite a week on the Halftime Report, what with Lee Cooperman saying "bulls---," Herb Greenberg suggesting "foreign powers" might be trading GME and a hedge funder apparently complaining to Judge that he didn't know GME short interest was 125% despite the fact it was discussed on Judge's program ...

One question we always ask (or want to ask) bitcoin bulls is, What is a bitcoin?

The bitcoin Wikipedia page labels bitcoin a "digital currency," which doesn't answer our question, plus in various places, "software" and "code."

Now we've got a new one.

Recent bitcoin bull Anthony Scaramucci, the star guest of Friday's (1/29) Halftime Report, referred to bitcoin as a "monetary network."

Then he explained that Amazon.com is a "retail network" (most people just call it a "retailer") and said if you bought AMZN when it was 12 years old and the price seemed high, you still got a "64-to-1 move in Amazon over the ensuing 12 years." (Translation: Even though bitcoin in the last couple months has gone up like GME, there's apparently still meat on the bone.)

We couldn't help but wonder, isn't Amazon.com just as much a "monetary network" as a "retail network"? Money goes from the customer to Amazon to the supplier and to the employees.

What kind of "networking" does one enable by owning a bitcoin?

"This is a monetary network that is institutionalizing before us," Scaramucci said, suggesting "a 1-3% allocation could really help somebody's portfolio."

Addressing the story of the week (in case you've been under a rock), Scaramucci opined on GME/Robinhood, referring to a curious "network" of a bygone tech era.

"The trader now through the Palm (sic presumed intended as upper case, not palm of hand), you know, the smartphone, is getting all the same information as say a Goldman Sachs prop trader in the mid- to late '90s," Scaramucci told Judge.

Scaramucci also asserted there was a "pyramid scheme on the way up" in terms of "leveraged buying" in GME and other names.

Jim called January in December

On Friday's (1/29) Halftime Report, Jim Lebenthal told Judge, "I think we'll get to a full correction, 10%."

"I don't like this market right here," Jim added, saying he wants to let the "dust settle."

Well, ignore that advice at your own peril, because Jim astutely predicted on Dec. 9 that "risk-on sentiment" that was evident in the market, "this late in the year, usually goes through the end of the year and into the middle of January."

Jan. 25 may not be the "middle," but it's pretty close to Jim's implication that the market would be hot through the early part of January.

Steve Weiss said this isn't 1999, rather, "This is a blip. This is like Occupy Wall Street."

Kari Firestone offered an interesting breakdown of how brokerage accounts work, saying it needs to be "addressed" that Citadel handles "the majority of the shares" traded on Robinhood. Investors/traders may think the trades are free, but "they are paying for every single share, because the market makers and the platform take a cut of every share traded."

Pete Najarian indicated there's more to come, stating, "It's not just a GameStop story ... There's a lot more targets out there, Scott."

Pete tried to explain why option prices on some names are soaring. Steve Weiss said he agrees on the calls, but not on the puts, at least in GME. "They shouldn't be up 25% as they are today. And that's what they're up, the $10 puts. In March 19," Weiss said.

Pete countered, "I would disagree with you again." (If we could find our copy of How We Trade Options, we'd tell you who's right.)

Addressing the double upgrade of BA at Morgan Stanley, Jim said, "I think the investor sentiment is way too negative. ... I think this is Boeing's year."

Lee Cooperman says
‘bulls---’ on live television

On Thursday's (1/28) Halftime Report, Rob Sechan really made an interesting observation about trading the financial markets.

Sechan stated, "Just because you throw the Hail Mary pass in your backyard and it's caught for the touchdown and the win doesn't mean you're Tom Brady. Just 'cause you hit the putt at the municipal course does not mean you're Tiger Woods."

Totally true.

But it doesn't seem a particularly good parallel to the field of money management. Some guy who has bought nothing but AAPL stock for the last 20 years is almost certainly ahead of any account that could've possibly been managed by a financial professional. That's entirely possible. There's no way you can say the same guy throwing TD passes in his back yard is better than Tom Brady. That's just not possible.

Now, is that guy who hit it big in stocks skilled at "risk management" or "diversification" or assessing a person's goals or "risk tolerance"? No ... but how much does that really matter if his account is higher ...

Underscoring that point, Judge said Gabe Plotkin and other short sellers "may be the most brilliant people on this planet and can still have arguably the worst risk management that some have ever seen."

But star guest Lee Cooperman wasn't quite going there. "I'm not prepared to condemn his risk management," Lee said. "Listen, you guys were burying Bill Ackman 3 years ago. ... The press tends to jump on people when they're down."

Still, we gotta say, if a guy makes a single trade that puts his firm in trouble during a white-hot market, then ...

Kourtney Gibson said GME's trading Wednesday had "incredible implications" for the broader market.

Jon Najarian opined that some people on Wednesday were "getting nervous," wondering "Who's watching this market and so forth," which caused that day's sharp selloff.

Rob Sechan said the last few days have been a "casino-like environment," and it seems we're in the "infancies of uh, a, a building excess that is happening."

Meanwhile, Lee Cooperman, who twice mentioned the tired Bill Parcells "record" cliche, really got going on the subject of Joe Biden and typical Democratic slogans of taxpayers paying their "fair share."

"I hate that expression with a passion," Lee bellowed. "What does 'fair share' mean."

"This 'fair share' is a bulls--- concept!" Lee thundered.

Rob Sechan said he likes people to be interested in the markets, "But what I don't like is this almost pump-and-dump methodology that targets a certain institutional investor asset class."

Judge refers to the Winklevoss twins as ‘Winklevi’ (a/k/a wondering if Chamath will call back Thursday) (a/k/a GME traded at 67 while Herb spoke Monday; he should’ve bought some)

It's already been quite a week — and we're only through Wednesday.

Early into Wednesday's (1/27) Halftime Report, Judge said he spoke the previous night to a hedge fund manager who tried to short GME on Tuesday, "and that lasted about 15 minutes."

Judge claimed, "This person said to me, 'If I knew that it was 125% short, I wouldn't have done it in the first place."

How in the world did a hedge fund manager try shorting GME and NOT know the level of short interest after Steve Weiss mentioned it on Monday's show???

Can't this person afford a copy of Barron's?

Stephanie Link even said Wednesday that GME short interest was 144% as of Dec. 31.

Anyway, the star guest of Wednesday's show was Chamath Palihapitiya, who has rapidly become Judge's sparring partner/foil and began his telephone commentary telling Judge he wanted to tell "a little story."

We're not sure what the "story" was, but Palihapitiya said he's donating $500,000 in his GME profits to the Barstool small-business fund. (And who couldn't think about that Johnny Paycheck classic, "Barstool Mountain.")

Chamath asserted that "a lot of these kids" trading GME were in school during the 2008 Wall Street bailout and wondered why retail investors got left as "the bag holder." (So apparently, they've waited 12 years to take revenge on ... Bear Stearns Goldman Sachs Dick Fuld ... Andrew Left.)

"This retail phenomenon is here to stay," Palihapitiya said. As for traditional hedge fund analysis, "That edge is gone," he added.

Judge insisted, in a line of reasoning he kept trying to get Palihapitiya to acknowledge, that retail investors ultimately will be the "bag holder" in GME. He also suggested Chamath and others are the "pied pipers" and even referred to "one of the Winklevi (sic) brothers."

Palihapitiya responded, "Where was that message in 2008, Scott? Really? That's a joke."

Chamath asserted that he and "every single retail investor" was right about TSLA and that "every single hedge fund" was wrong.

A couple times, he complained about a hedge fund's "prime broker" (Zzzzzzz).

Questioning Judge's concerns about regulatory clampdowns on this kind of activity, Chamath actually claimed that by limiting what retail investors can do, the result will be "entrenched poverty."

Where Judge really got irked was in Palihapitiya's comment that GME is a "reasonable business."

Judge argued that GME should be valued "based on what their earnings are" and kept trying, in vain, to get Palihapitiya to admit the stock is not moving on any fundamentals.

However, Palihapitiya had a valid counterpoint, which was, how does Scott Wapner or anyone else really know why a stock trades where it does. "Who says that?? Who says that?? Are you- Do you wanna make the same argument about Tesla? It's gone 10x in a few months. You don't know what it's worth, let's be honest," Palihapitiya said.

Judge insisted there's no "fundamental" reason for where GME and AMC are; rather there's a "momentum cohort" behind them.

Eventually, Judge, frustrated, declared, "What I'm saying is, someone's gonna get screwed. ... It's gonna be a retail investor who gets screwed."

We get Judge's point. But then we also wonder exactly what he's concerned about ... is the next big threat to the stock market someone interested in paying $700 for a share of GoPro?

Judge opened the show asking Jon Najarian about the TD Ameritrade rules on GME trading. Doc pointed out that "in many cases," holders of GME deep in the money calls "do not have the capital in their accounts" to exercise them. As a result, Doc said, they're selling options "below parity ... across the board." (And if you ordered a free copy of How We Trade Options (just pay shipping & handling), you probably knew that that's a good situation for buyers.)

At one point, the CNBC graphics crew listed a chart of Doc's March/April put-spread positions in GME. Doc indicated he could lose $45,000, or make "2 or 3 hundred thousand." (Of course, he could buy a Powerball ticket, and either lose $1 or make $20 million.)

In the race to charity, Doc added that he already made a donation Wednesday morning to the Barstool fund, telling Chamath he did it "even before I heard that you did."

Joe Terranova decried the leverage in stocks such as GME and faulting regulation or something like that: "There's no reason behind that."

The man & the brand

Last year, a nephew of Jay Sebring released a documentary not so much about the tragedy but the life of the celeb hair stylist. It's worth a look. Sebring was self-made. He grew up in Detroit, served in the Navy, jetted out to California, changed his name and turned the typical $1.50 men's haircut into a $25 procedure simply by washing the hair and using scissors and installing chic mirrors and chrome around the salon. According to a reviewer, "Sebring's Hollywood salon became the go-to place for male celebrities, and he expanded his empire to include haircare products and franchised salons in cities throughout North America and Europe."

A couple of years ago, during a Fast Money discussion about whether the financial markets would prefer to see a Mike Pence presidency, Karen Finerman opined that the Republican base gets far more excited about Donald Trump's political statements than it does about Mike Pence's political statements.

What do those paragraphs together mean?

Recently, the Associated Press put together a nice article — not too wonky, just some basics — that outlined the debts faced by Donald Trump's business empire and of course the less-than-ideal current conditions for hotels and resorts.

This page has no doubt that as long as Donald Trump is running this operation — or at least serving as its figurehead — it will find cash. Some banks or financiers, whether Deutsche Bank or someone else, will lend him money indefinitely.

The key word there is "him." If Donald Trump were no longer involved in Trump Inc., we'd have to think the interest in his products on the part of both financiers and customers would be sharply less than it has been up until his presidency. (This page wishes Trump continued good health.)

What Jay Sebring and Donald Trump both achieved is a premium for a business that would not be particularly interesting or lucrative if not for the frontman's personality. It's a little like somethin' outta nothin'. (This page is NOT suggesting that everyone likes Donald Trump or his products.) For most corporate titans, the product sells itself, and the business thrives even if that founder/CEO is no longer running it. WMT, MCD, even today's WYNN among a host of examples. We're not sure that's the case at all with Trump properties. Would anonymous developers of similar properties have the same wherewithal to secure some much-needed refinancing? You might want to ask Karen about that enthusiasm for President Pence.

Herb Greenberg suggests ‘foreign powers’ might be manipulating GameStop

GME trading is such a big deal, Judge even brought in to Monday's (1/25) Halftime Report former CNBC senior stocks commentator Herb Greenberg, whom we haven't seen on this show in literally years.

In recent years, Herb, the Miami grad, has delved into the short side (snicker) of market analysis. Herb admitted to Judge that this market is "the least amount of fun I think I've ever had." But, Herb thinks it's creating a "great opportunity" for "specific types, uh, of stock-picking-type shorts (snicker)."

Herb took issue with Pete Najarian's indication that GME players are "traders," stating he thinks it's not "traders" but "speculators" or even "gamblers."

Judge claimed that Herb tweeted "the other day" that "this is going to end badly." Herb insisted, "I never said it was gonna end badly," rather, when it really does end, "It's gonna be something out of left field that nobody was expecting." (OK. But that "left field" thing won't end "badly.")

In a curious assertion, Herb said "every bone in my body" wants to believe GME is a "bell-ringer," but those same bones also know, "There is no bell."

Herb told Judge, "I'm surprised I haven't seen a headline on a story that says, 'Short selling is dead.' And I'm just so hoping we see that one soon, because we know, we know what that means." (Well, we know that trading headlines typically means not making any money. But whatever.)

"Is that the bell?" Pete chuckled.

Steve Weiss finally got a word in, telling Judge, "I'm a reformed short seller. I used to short as much as anybody. But here's why I don't do it anymore. It's too difficult. Markets go up 90% of the time." (Usually he says it's something like 80% of the time, but we can't remember exactly.)

Weiss pointed out that in GME, "More than 100% of the float is short ... that's a flaw in market regulation."

Then Jim Cramer joined the show; his presence re-engaged Herb in the GME debate. Jim said GME buyers are the type that "target large short positions." Herb brought up the word "target" and questioned whether it's "manipulation." Jim said an analyst putting a $250 on GME is protected by the First Amendment. Jim said if the "group" trying to bust the shorts is not a real group, "it's gonna be very hard for the U.S. attorney to do anything."

That prompted Herb to actually say, "I don't even know if there are foreign powers at work here." (Uh oh. Scratch those congratulations to Homeland Security and Facebook for apparently making the last election interference-free after everyone in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania was apparently brainwashed in 2016.)

"Will you stop!" Cramer demanded of Herb.

Apparently taking a dig at all stocks with supposed lofty valuations, Herb mentioned "aggressive accounting," one of his longtime favorite subjects. Herb then complained that managements won't be able to "justify" (snicker) their share prices.

Weiss said Herb and Jim Chanos are "2 short sellers." Herb protested, "I'm not a short seller." Weiss continued, "No, but you put out short research ... So, everybody's talkin' their own book."

Weiss buys GME March, April puts

We figured we'd start the week breezing through a routine type of Halftime Report episode on Monday (1/25).

Instead, we got a lot more than we bargained for — and that's BEFORE the appearance of Herb Greenberg, whom we haven't seen on this show in literally years.

Judge opened calling the activity in GME a "mania," a curious term given that it's not like the thing is AMZN 1999.

Steve Weiss said the GME situation "is the craziest I think I've ever seen," which seems an overstatement.

"There's no there there," Weiss said of GME, but he thinks the spiking share price is only a "manifestation" of bubble stocks, not bubble market.

"I'm more concerned with SPACs frankly," Weiss said, because it seems like there's "10 new a day."

Weiss predicted "80%" of SPACs will either go "belly up" or just be "flagging stocks."

That alone would be headline-worthy on this page. But back to GME. Pete Najarian said it's "traders" rather than investors involved in the stock on Monday and reported, "They started raising the borrow costs back in December."

Pete mentioned seeing Snapple in 1994 (that's really going way back) do "something similar" to GME.

Judge noticed that Pete bought AMC calls. Pete said he'd rather be in the options because "I know my risk/reward." (As always, as far as we can tell, the risk is that the calls go to zero.) He said he's not buying the stock because "that's where I think you can get burned."

Apparently assuming the role of stock analyst, Judge wondered "How can it not end badly" in BBBY, M, OLLI, DBI.

Well, "You don't really make the money until you sell it," said Bryn Talkington. Bryn said something like GME is not so much a "short squeeze" but "dislocation" in which market makers have to buy the stock after selling deep out of the money calls.

Judge a couple times referenced John Spallanzani writing a note about people "running and gunning" a stock like GME and then moving on to the next.

Joe Terranova said he doubted anyone on the panel would advise viewers to buy or short GME, saying there's something "obviously wrong" and calling it reflective of the "gameification of Wall Street."

"We've always had these short-squeeze stampedes," said Mike Santoli.

"Nobody's making money" trading GME on Monday, Santoli contended, noting the open price.

Later in the program (Judge did a 40-minute A Block before the first commercial, barely leaving any time for ETF Edge or Futures Now), Weiss revealed, "I just bought a load of GameStop puts far below the market goin' out to March and April ... Reality's going to hit that stock, and it's gonna come down hard." Weiss said he bought those puts "literally just now."

Joe Terranova, who had another quiet show, bought MCHI, saying he wants more exposure to Chinese equities. (He would've gotten a LOT more airtime if he said he bought GME.)

Steve Weiss: ‘I don’t believe in bitcoin,’ Chamath has ‘maybe a fraction’ of his money in it

Judge opened Friday's (1/22) Halftime Report stating that most of the day's panelists see an "overbought" market with a "pullback" or "correction" ahead.

Nevertheless, Steve Weiss, who owned the show Friday, affirmed, "I'm staying long."

Jim Lebenthal said he doesn't want to buy the market or single stocks right now, the plan is to "be patient and sit." Jim even mentioned a "market top" but said it doesn't mean "crash."

Jim said he's 12% in cash but wouldn't wait to reinvest on a 9% pullback.

Judge asked Chris Hyzy if a correction is imminent. "Who really knows," was Hyzy's answer.

Jenny Harrington pleaded the case for IBM. Weiss disagreed, urging, "Get out of this company. The CEO is gonna be replaced within a year. ... If you look at the board, there's not one tech person on the board."

Weiss said he tried to buy an IBM product, and it involved a "ridiculous" amount of "red tape."

Even Judge said of IBM, "The money is just going elsewhere." Jenny insisted on IBM has her final trade.

In the day's most provocative commentary, Weiss said he got out of GBTC, admitting he was "playing momentum."

Weiss then revealed, "I don't believe in bitcoin. There's no way that it's going to be a currency until the volatility stops. You can't walk into a grocery store with a hundred dollars of bitcoin in your pocket and by the time you get to the cash register, it's worth $50. That just doesn't work. So to think that somebody whose name escapes me who we don't even know exists invents this whole currency that the world's gonna glom onto is absolutely ridiculous. ... It'll still be a spec trade, but that's what it is. Call it for what it is."

Judge wondered why "so many notable investors" are into bitcoin.

"Maybe they see a better future for it than I do," Weiss shrugged, adding, "I guarantee it's not the core of their portfolios, with the exception of one."

Weiss continued, "But Chamath is a believer in it. Where's his money? Maybe he's got a fraction in bitcoin. Let's not overstate that."

Weiss said he wouldn't be in GME because of the enormous short interest, but if he had to take a side, he'd be short the name.

Judge and Jim had a curious late conversation about AAPL that quickly got a little tangled. Jim predicted $145 "in about the next 2 weeks." Then Judge questioned Jim having a "trading position" in AAPL on top of a "longer-term position" and then selling from the trading position. Jim kept stressing he's got a 5% position in the name. Judge said, "I hear you, but you had already bought it ... you're in seller mood on it. That's- That's my point, right."

Josh Brown’s speech about companies preparing for a digital future was longer than Joe Biden’s inaugural* (a/k/a another day of battle between the March 2000 Never Agains and the March 2020 Never Agains)

As he often does, Judge on Thursday's (1/21) Halftime Report tried suggesting that there's a growing number of "bubble" warnings. Joe Terranova, who was otherwise practically shut out on the program, said United Airlines gave us a "sobering reminder" of the "long road still ahead." Joe went on to paint a somewhat negative perspective and suggested COF, DOCU and TSCO as names to potentially move to the "sidelines" (this writer is long DOCU), but overall, "I do not see a bubble."

Judge quoted Jeremy Grantham from an earlier CNBC appearance stating "The market's in a bubble with 'very seldom-seen levels of investor (sic redundant) euphoria.'"

Judge also aired a clip from a day earlier in which Jim Chanos, who bashed UBER to smithereens a year ago (this writer is long UBER), grumbled about reopening plays being worth more than they were a year ago.

Around the 8-minute mark, Judge asked Josh Brown about Chanos' comments. Brown said a lot of companies have benefited from record-low financing and have reinvented their businesses for a new economy; also, nowadays, Brown said, most of the assets of the S&P 500 are basically intellectual property types and not like cement of the 1970s. Then Brown went off on a rant about previous valuation doomsayers citing P.E. ratios moving from 14 to 16, which we happen to agree with 100%.

Judge stressed that the "bubble" pessimists "are not saying, 'Get out of the market today.'"

"So it's conversation???" Brown demanded. "They're implying that they're smart and everyone else is stupid."

If Judge is correct that these Grandpas are not making short-term calls, does that mean an episode of the Halftime Report airing Jan. 21 is really meant to provide advice for ... July?

Rick Rieder pointed out, "We're financing companies at 50 basis points."

Rieder even suggested a 7 GDP handle this year and posed the issue of the Fed having to "taper back" (snicker). Judge stated "everybody agrees" that tapering isn't an issue for January 2021 but that the market has written it off for the entire year, and "if there is a taper, there's gonna be one helluva tantrum."

(So either we're in a massive bubble ... or there's going to be so much growth that the Fed will sink the market. One or the other. According to Judge. #sellnow #ornot)

(And remember, the "bubble" folks are NOT saying, "Get out of the market today.")

Rick Rieder suggested "an 8-to-12% return in equities" for this year, but "I think the tail risk is higher." This page will take the liberty of saying Rieder sounded a lot like Ed Yardeni recently on this subject, declaring a modest projection of stock gains for 2021 (basically the same type of return that almost everyone predicts every year) but indicating that he might really be expecting a lot more.

Tiffany McGhee called Cathy Wood a "rock star."

Jon Najarian said he's out of NFLX stock but is still able to "participate" with $20 call spreads "that have a lot less risk." That's always an interesting concept to us. How does owning a time-decaying call spread carry less "risk" than owning stock that has basically an unlimited amount of time to go higher?

* Not literally, but figuratively. It was 3 minutes, 32 seconds long.

Judge hectoring Joe again about big-cap tech, for no reason

Oh my. Judge is really light on material these days.

On Tuesday's (1/19) Halftime Report, Judge asked panelists about owning FANG, which was fine, but then he started badgering Joe Terranova about "why don't you own any of these big megacap techs?"

Joe chuckled and stammered. Judge insisted it's "not a trick question." Joe said he owns AAPL and MSFT and would buy GOOGL if he had to buy one of the FANG.

"I'm not pickin' on you," Judge assured Joe, stating he's just looking for a "broad theme" (yeah, right) about Joe's tech/non-tech views.

Joe said, "You're right to be critical" about why Joe hasn't bought GOOGL though he talks it up; Joe said he's focused on an "equal-weighted strategy" (snicker).

Jon Najarian astutely pointed out that if FANG really has been on the short end of a "huge rotation" rather than just a "pause," then "it would flood the market with all that capital."

Josh Brown trumpeted LYV, a stock occasionally mentioned by Karen Finerman before the pandemic, as a breakout candidate.

Special guest Mark Fisher contended that "the easy money's been made" in energy futures.

One panelist, as she typically does, said she sold a stock, or several stocks, because she was "taking gains."

Josh Brown said he bought GM during a "breakout" in the 30s, now he's made "50%," for those wondering whether it's still going higher.

No Halftime scheduled for Wednesday (1/20) due to CNBC's inauguration coverage.

The last time there was a presidential inauguration, Judge had an interesting day with protesters

Time really flies.

As we noticed CNBC will be preempting this Wednesday's (1/20) Halftime Report and other shows to broadcast the inauguration of Joe Biden, we recalled 4 years ago at this time, when there was no pandemic and Judge was dispatched to Washington to uncover whatever news was occurring on the parade route.

With live cameras rolling, Judge ended up in a semantical debate after he confronted two fellows and asked, "You say you're peaceful protesters, but yet I've seen you physically restraining people from going through. Why?"

"But are we physically attacking them?" one of these individuals responded. "Is there a difference between restraint and attack; are you trying to pose that question to make us look violent?"

"Why are you restraining them when they're- why you're physically restraining them," Judge responded.

"It's not restraining. Look up the dex- look up the definition of 'restraint,'" the fellow demanded.

"Why are you here today" Judge persisted.

The man refused to answer.

"That pretty much says it all," Judge shrugged.

Weiss ‘a little nervous about the market’

In a mostly ineffective and not-particularly-watchable (ouch) (just being honest; it wasn't terribly exciting) episode of the Halftime Report on Friday (1/15), Steve Weiss did get our attention at the top of the show.

"I'm gettin' a little nervous about the market," Weiss said.

(See, it's whatever the market's done in the past hour, and Friday wasn't a particularly great day.)

Weiss said that because he finds the market "extended," he bought some put protection for some of his favorite long positions.

Weiss revealed that to obtain those puts, "I reached out to Pete yesterday," because Pete apparently is his unofficial adviser for option-buying.

That's not totally what got our attention. Weiss predicted AAPL, SWKS and QCOM could "go up 5- to 10-fold over the next 5-10 years, because of 5G ... I thought short term, let's get some protection."

He said he didn't want to sell "and trigger tax events."

OK, we're trying to figure this out ... if he seriously thinks these stocks could go up "10-fold" in 5-10 years, why is he spending money on put-guessing? Why not just hold the stocks for at least 5 years and reap the gains?

Sigh.

(Note: By no means is this site opposed to trading and trying to make fast money. But what Weiss is attempting to do sounds way too complicated. If he's "nervous" about the market, why not just short the S&P or the Nasdaq or the Q's?)

Meanwhile, panelists took a stab at NFLX and the supposed streaming upstart, DIS.

Judge said DIS has "stolen all the thunder" in terms of recent headlines. "Who's talkin' about Netflix on this program lately?!?" Judge demanded. (Actually, nobody's really talked much about Netflix for a few years, even though the stock has done well.)

Weiss made the argument that maybe some of Netflix's subscribers "peter away" as the economy reopens, so "why not go to Disney," which has the "bonus" of a play on a reopening economy. That sounded like one of those "have it both ways" mistakes that young math students tend to make. If some of the streaming audience (presumably Disney's as well as Netflix's) is going to "peter away" with the reopening, then 1) isn't DIS just as vulnerable as NFLX, and 2) shouldn't people be shorting both against longs in pure reopening plays such as cruise lines and airlines? (This writer is long several airlines.)

‘Euphoria’ is quietly mentioned, with no follow-up, but then again, Judge won’t bring up Einhorn’s Sept. 2 peak after gushing about it months ago

Viewers of Thursday's (1/14) Halftime Report heard Steve Liesman point out that "The Fed is doing an average inflation targeting machine right now."

Nancy Davis said that regarding assets of any kind, "It's time to buy now" because "inflation is cheaply priced."

Not everyone was so giddy. Jim Lebenthal opened the show saying he's trading out of CAT, explaining that the decision is "portfolio manager's perspective" more than a market call.

Judge wasn't convinced of that rationale, stating "it feels to me like you're somewhat making a call on the overall market."

Jim insisted it's just "selling high, so I can buy low."

Kourtney Gibson also confirmed she sold PTON. Judge claimed, for some reason, "It surprised me."

Judge reminded Kourtney, "You threw some shade at me" in their last conversation on the name (without explaining to viewers that the only reason Kourtney "threw shade" is because Judge on MULTIPLE occasions mocked Peloton).

Kourtney, extremely classy and stating she'd never throw shade at Judge in a bad way, explained she likes the space, but she got a "huge bump" from selling at 163 after buying under $100 recently.

Not only that, but, "They are not responding to the customer," Kourtney said of PTON and its slow deliveries. Judge said he just wants to be "up front" because Kourtney is on LULU's board and LULU has a "competing type product." Kourtney said "I have to obviously be careful on what I say," but she loves the Mirror acquisition by LULU; "they are really responding to the consumer."

Meghan Shue said you can look at "any area of the market" and find that it's "short term, in, in a place of perhaps euphoria."

Jon Najarian was clinging to his defensive positioning that he mentioned days ago, claiming that by switching to call spreads, and "that trade has worked out really well quite frankly." (Translation: Like most panelists on the show who predict pullbacks that don't happen, he's right, no matter which way stocks had gotten, he'd claim he's right.)

Jim Lebenthal threw some shade at RIG, stating he likes MPC and KMP and XOM and CVX, but "There is no value in a Transocean other than the scrap value of its rigs."

How come Judge hasn’t brought up Einhorn’s ‘enormous tech bubble’ that supposedly put a top in on Sept. 2?

Wednesday's (1/13) Halftime Report was so sleepy, the highlight was a discussion about ... INTC.

Jenny Harrington said she's "proudly" (snicker) holding INTC shares. She said INTC's CEO hire "totally ruins the baloney claims" that there's a "brain drain" there.

Judge told Jenny he's sure the new CEO has a "good brain," but he "doesn't bring with him lost market share."

Playing this one as even-handed as humanly possible, Pete Najarian said he bought calls in INTC on Tuesday because of unusual activity, but he's trimming the stock now because, "It takes a little bit of time to turn these big battleships around." (Translation: He's right whether it goes up or down.)

Sarat Sethi trumpeted QCOM, stating, "The bumps are behind it."

On the 5 p.m. Fast Money, Steve Grasso said he's "definitely" not a buyer of INTC, and not only that, "I wouldn't be a buyer of tech."

Jim wasn’t around to tell Joe about the land wars in Asia

Also on Wednesday's (1/13) Halftime Report, Joe Terranova said, "I heard someone on the show a while back say that Apple should go out and maybe buy Ford or GM. That's not out of the question."

It is if you ask Jim Lebenthal, who said after Josh Brown (that's the "someone" Joe was referring to) suggested AAPL make an F purchase that it would be like "getting into a land war in Asia."

Judge told his panel that "all FAANG multiples have expanded," insisting he's not trying to say it's "justified."

Discussing AFRM, Kari Firestone said, without any hint of understatement, "There's obviously great demand for stocks."

Joe said he "rang the register on Best Buy." He's taken a new position in ADM and bought more of BG, plus he bought IEMG and RRC and more EQT.

Bill Nygren, always a fine guest, made the value case for KKR. He also touted FISV, calling it "cheap if you account for the cost savings that they're likely to record in just the next couple of years." (See, that's the thing. A lot of people will talk about how bad high-P.E. stocks are, except for the ones they like, which will always make the valuation — 83 P.E. right now — somehow look "cheap.")

On the 5 p.m. Fast Money, asked about corporate America's halt of political donations, Steve Grasso said, "I never think it's wise for a corporation to play politics ... you never wanna offend anyone on the other side."

If everyone’s waiting to buy the dip ...

In a fairly sleepy Halftime Report on Tuesday (1/12), Ed Yardeni happened to say something in a manner that got our attention.

Yardeni explained he has a 4,300 target for 2021 and 4,800 for 2022, which would be decent but not explosive gains for stocks.

Then Ed may have revealed to Judge what he's really envisioning. "I would become a lot more concerned if we get there a lot sooner. And I have to admit to you, Scott, this uh, this market's been stampeding over the bulls," Yardeni said.

So that sounds a little paradoxical. He would only get concerned if stocks steeply outperform his healthy targets. It's kind of like saying, "I'd really start to wonder about the Chiefs' offense if they blow out the Packers in Super Bowl 55."

Nobody on these shows ever talks about some Pavlovian basics, which include that all those people burned in March 2000 are never going to fall for those multiples again, and all those people selling on March 23, 2020, are never going to get caught selling at the bottom again.

In the clash of those 2 sentiments, the latter is winning.

Judge tried to make the point, true in conventional markets, that everybody talks about wanting a 10% pullback, and then the 10% pullback happens, and people suddenly are leery of buying stocks.

In this market, getting even near a 10% pullback would be rather astonishing.

Yardeni again told Judge again he has been bullish "since March 25th, in the morning," for those keeping score.

Judge at one point mentioned a "big little burst (sic contradictory)," then corrected himself to say "a big burst."

Jeffrey Gundlach: ‘Bitcoin to me is now in sort of bubble territory’

The star guest of Monday's (1/11) Halftime Report was Jeffrey Gundlach, which means we were expecting to hear "Boy, was I right" several times, but that didn't actually happen.

We did get something close. Gundlach said he was taking to Judge back in 2017, a time of epic low volatility, and he said his highest-conviction idea at the time was the VIX going above 15. Laying it on thick, he said he was "derided" by other guests on CNBC who claimed "the VIX would never ever go above 15 again." (We don't recall anyone on CNBC ever saying the VIX will never top 15 again; if Gundlach has any names and dates, we'd like to know.) (One call that likely wasn't high-conviction was Gundlach saying on March 5, 2020, "I think Joe Biden is completely unelectable.")

Gundlach said the CPI by May or June could have a 3 handle. And he said his top equity trade is emerging market Asia.

His most provocative statement concerned cryptocurrency, which he seemed to endorse on some level but not necessarily at these prices. "Bitcoin to me is now in sort of bubble territory," Jeffrey said.

Jim Lebenthal had opened the show suggesting that 1.35% "is where the market might say, 'Hey wait a second.'"

But Shannon Saccocia suggested it might be closer to 1.5% where "markets start to get a little nervous."

Steve Weiss shrugged that when rates get to 2%, it'll be "so ingrained in the market, the market's not really gonna care." And Jeffrey Gundlach also suggested that Jim's 1.35% is probably low.

Weiss asserted that "we're in a new generation of ... what drives industrial economy." Which he says is "technology, pure and simple."

Anthony Noto: ‘I think we’re all responsible’ for what happened Wednesday

After a day in which Shep Smith went about 6 straight hours without a commercial, you'd think Thursday's (1/7) Halftime Report would've included more than a few revenue spots.

But, with only a couple small breaks, Judge practically went wire to wire with Chamath Palihapitiya, Anthony Noto and Brad Gerstner about Palihapitiya's SoFi SPAC.

It was at the 19-minute mark when Judge finally brought up "the events that everybody witnessed yesterday."

Noto said he was busy with SoFi business and was watching TV with the sound muted and thought he was watching footage of Berlin or the Soviet Union until he realized it was real-time U.S. Capitol. "I couldn't believe it. It's just unacceptable. It's intolerable what happened yesterday," Noto said.

Judge asked Noto if Twitter was "responsible in any way" for what happened Wednesday.

"I think we're all responsible," Noto said. "We had a free election. We elected an administration. We made that choice. We're now suffering the consequences."

Later, Jenny Harrington, in a curious round of remarks, said, "What we got yesterday was clarity."

That made us think she was going to mention the Georgia races being called. But Jenny seemed to refer to COVID, which was not part of the headlines Wednesday. "The gradual progress that we've made over the past year is un ... believable. We've done so much. We've done something that's never been done in the history of humankind before. We brought a vaccine to market within 12 months of the first symptoms of a virus. That's amazing. We had U.S. presidential elections during that- during this pandemic."

OK. We're not sure how there was any new "clarity" on those matters Wednesday, but whatever.

And then Jenny incredibly said this: "We are actually en route to a smooth transfer of- of power, on Inauguration Day. And yesterday we had clarity."

Meanwhile, Chamath Palihapitiya said there's no reason to be "selling things that work" such as TSLA or AMZN. Chamath then quoted Bill Gurley, "When the music's on, you gotta dance."

Judge said, "I should note for you that somebody else, uh, by the name of Chuck Prince made a similar statement pre-financial crisis, and, and not that long after that, I don't think, the world nearly ended. So be careful of what you say."

Palihapitiya said of bitcoin, "It's probably going to a hundred, then a hundred and fifty, then 200,000. In what period, I don't know. Five years, ten years. But it's going there."

Judge asked Palihapitiya about selling a stake in SPCE. (This writer is long SPCE.) Palihapitiya said he didn't sell as much of his stake as Judge indicated and that it was "literally just to make sure that I had the right liquidity to do all the things that I plan to do in 2021. But I really believe in that business."

Judge said some people saw the sale as "maybe a lack of belief" in how things would turn out. Chamath said, "If and when, I think it's probably more when than if, I have 10 times the capital that I do now, I'll be able to manage my liquidity in a different way." (Shouldn't he just put it all in bitcoin if it's going to $200,000?)

Palihapitiya said social media companies should be "dealt with as publishers."

Not a word about Carl’s ‘mispriced’ stocks and ‘Look out, below’

Well, this turned out to be a little bit chilling.

Just as Judge's Halftime crew was optimistically opining on clean energy and other stocks, Donald Trump was unleashing an angry group of folks on the U.S. Capitol.

The Halftime Report and the riot just missed converging in real-time.

That sobering backdrop aside, we couldn't help but notice that high-P.E. stocks were back in favor Wednesday (see, stocks that OTHER people own are "frothy") as Steve Weiss touted clean energy, his new favorite of the month/week/day/hour, and likened industrials to the mall space.

Weiss touted VWDRY (P.E. ratio of 59) and BEP (negative earnings) and shrugged that if you're not on board with clean energy, "You might as well go back and own Radio Shack."

Jon Najarian had just touted energy as the outperformance space of 2021, so Judge tried to spur a debate. But Doc wouldn't bite, listing the alternative energy stocks he's long and stating the more demand there is for fossil fuels, the more demand there is for clean energy.

Doc touted CSIQ and FCEL and PLUG.

Weiss also GBTC his Final Trade (what's the P.E. ratio of GBTC), stating, "I think bitcoin just keeps going higher and higher."

Gorgeous Karen Finerman
stuns in black turtleneck

While buckling knees in a new outfit on Tuesday's (1/5) 5 p.m. Fast Money, Karen Finerman provided a little insight into her household grocery shopping.

"I have Oatly in my refrigerator right now. Yeah. I have 2 kids who are vegetarians, they love Oatly," Karen revealed.

Dan Nathan said, "Karen just mentioned, 2 of her, you know, young children, or, or I guess they're in their teens or whatever, you know, don't eat meat," as Karen was heard chuckling off-screen. "This generationally is a thing." (The "guess they're in their teens or whatever" easily ranks as Dan's funniest comment in the history of the show.)

Karen also complained later in the show about ... yes ... P.E. ratios, of semiconductors.

We’re still waiting for the April 2016 ‘Day of Reckoning,’ when the U.S. needed to borrow more because ‘a country is not a company’

The star guest of Monday's (1/4) Halftime Report wasn't even on the air.

Judge opened the program revealing he had just talked to Carl Icahn and that Carl spoke of "wild" rallies in "mispriced" stocks and said no one knows when the correction will happen, but when it does, "Look out below."

Well, that helps our planning.

Carl apparently wouldn't reveal his overall positioning but told Judge he's "pretty well hedged."

Judge asked his "Investment Committee" for reaction. Jim Lebenthal suggested Carl is talking about "pockets of the stock market" being overpriced rather than the market overall.

Jim suggested some "software stocks" and "renewable energy" names (including TSLA, of course) are in "bubble territory."

Bryn Talkington mentioned ZM and PTON as being in pockets of "froth," though she pointed out ZM is down nearly 50% from its peak. (Apparently it's still in "froth.") (This writer is long ZM.)

Talkington mentioned AMZN's "full-round trip" from $5 to $131 to $5 from 1998 to 2001. Which means ... that apparently stocks can go up and down in extreme moves.

Pete Najarian agreed there's "frothiness" and mentioned software stocks (no names) and ZM (of course) and said there's "a lot of different names" that have rocketed up ... but then there are the stocks he likes, materials, banks. (See, the stocks people don't own are often too high or even "ridiculous," but the ones people are long, such as FCX, who cares what the P.E. ratio is.)

Even Judge mentioned "Zoom-like stocks."

So why isn't everyone on the "Investment Committee" shorting this "frothy" ZM?

Joe Terranova opined that the market may be fearing politics, stating there's a "very big event risk" ahead in Georgia. (Actually, it's not really "event risk," it's more like, once it's over, regardless of what happens, stocks go up.)

Judge claimed the market "hasn't seemed to be ready" for Democratic wins Tuesday. And we couldn't help but wonder, what in the world does that mean? That Democrats (according to Judge) are going to win, so the S&P should've dropped 200 last week?

Then once Judge brought up Tom Lee suggesting the "bubble" is in bonds and not stocks, Pete yet again knocked these mysterious high-flying "software" stocks but said "there are certainly full sectors that I think have plenty of upside." So basically, we can agree with anyone who says it's a bubble, and we can agree with anyone who says it's not.

Got it.

Bryn Talkington did some even greater parsing, stating she's been in MTUM "for a couple of years" and added, "I think it really depends on how you define 'momentum.'" Bryn said MTUM is screened by 6- and 12-month momentum and is rebalanced and that Joe's ETF has a "different definition." (See, basically, the stocks that have gone up for other people are "frothy.")

Jonathan Krinsky asserted there are "very select pockets" of the market that are "parabolic," and he thinks "momentum" buying has gotten "extreme" and will no longer be "rewarded."

The Halftime Report
2020 Call of the Year

It always takes up a decent amount of time library-searching, just at the time of year where we'd like to be taking it easy.

But it's worth it.

As always, a lot of interesting stuff took place on CNBC's Halftime Report and Fast Money airwaves during 2020.

Here are the best calls (you have to get to the very end of this post for those), the worst calls, and the otherwise memorable moments of the year, beginning in no particular order, with some "old" studio pictures tossed in (remember when they used to produce these shows at Englewood Cliffs and Times Square? ...

2/13 — Add zeroes: Richard Fisher says he was in England recently and had dinner with a "senior member of the central committee" in China (or "senior political figure"), and that person said to "add two zeroes to the numbers they're reporting" of coronavirus victims. Fisher said he'd add another zero. Guest host Sully, sounding alarmed, assured viewers, "This is just somebody's sort of offhand comment, whether or not it's true or not."

10/27 — Bubble top: Judge quotes David Einhorn as writing in a note, "We're now in the midst of an enormous tech bubble," adding the top was Sept. 2. (The call has not been mentioned on the show since.)

4/8 — "How in the world" can this market go up? With the S&P at 2,749, Judge says Dubravko Lakos is predicting another 700 on the S&P by next year. "How in the world are we gonna do that?" Judge demanded. Lakos cited an "unconstrained" policy response to this economic crisis.

1/22 — Doc's "big" NFLX short: It's not often you hear someone of Halftime Report/Fast Money announcing a FAANG short, but Jon Najarian does just that, stating the "alternative data that we cite all the time now" indicated "it was gonna be a bad quarter for Netflix." It was $326 then; $540 now.

2/5 — Oh, those lofty valuations: TSLA champ Cathie Wood sits in with Tyler Mathisen's guest-hosted Fast Money and put the stock's 5-year "base case" at $7,000. (It's presently, split-adjusted, about half that, and up five-fold since that date.) Karen Finerman asks what kind of "valuation" does a $7,000 price involve. Cathie says, "So, in 5 years, again, we- we don't really operate like that, we're just trying to figure out the cash flows and then do- discount them ..."

6/10 — Judge's favorite trade of the year: The June 6 Halftime Report opens with Judge announcing that Joe Terranova had unloaded his AMZN stake ($2,647 then), a trade Judge continues to question for weeks months.

3/19 — Ah, but you could've been: Jim Lebenthal invokes the original Fast Money cliché popularized by Jeff Macke: "I don't think you need to be a hero right now."

9/11 — "I've completely gone back to my gym": Pete Najarian predicts a "big slowdown" for PTON ($84).

12/22 — Anthony Scaramucci gushes about bitcoin in terminology that makes some think "peak": "This is an asset that could go up 2 or 3x from here in our opinion ... If anything, it's the 1st inning ... Once you get to that $100 billion number, it sort of goes up exponentially from there" (Note: This site is highly skeptical of bitcoin but is NOT rooting for Scaramucci or other bitcoin bulls/investors to take a bath.)

4/27 — Going parabolic: With the S&P 500 at 2,878, Jeffrey Gundlach tells Judge, "All of these markets are looking quite tired these days" and said a retest of the March 23 low (2,191.86 intraday per Yahoo finance) is "very plausible."

3/27 — Judge slams Jim Lebenthal's ALK recommendation ($29.87 then) as "awfully dangerous" and potential "gigantic mistake": Jim says, "I own Alaska Airlines, so obviously that's one I recommend," and for whatever reason, that comment lit a fire under Judge, who says, "Look, just because you own it, are you sure you're recommending it to our viewers to buy it just because you own it." Then Judge says airlines are among the "garbage" stocks in the market and were up 30% in a week and concludes, "You're telling people that you can go buy it, that it's safe to buy, today. That sounds, that sounds awfully dangerous to me, Jim."

10/28 — fair-weather-dom? Judge claims, "The Dodgers are my team."

5/28 — Pete says he couldn't talk anyone on the panel into buying DIS at $100: But Joe Terranova claims, "I bought Disney down at a hundred dollars." Pete Najarian says if DIS gets to 130, "I'm probably gonna take that off." Joe agrees that 130 might be "rich," but he'd buy again at 105.

3/18 — Bill Ackman uses the term "s---show" on live TV (no word of FCC fines): Not only did he famously warn of armageddon while announcing he knew the virus was trouble back in January or February, and not only did he accomplish some nifty short/long investing, Bill claims that during the pandemic, "I did stuff I've never done before. I've never had more than like 200 bucks in my wallet, OK. I went to the bank, and I took out a large amount of money in cash, because of this concern ... more than a month ago."

8/19 — Joe Terranova says he'll buy CRM (then $255) if Judge will give him "a nice big loan": "I don't have room in the portfolio right now," Joe says. But then he bought it 11/30, only to sell it 12/23 because he bought it "too agressively, too high."

11/24 — Back and fill: Ed Yardeni states, "I did turn bullish on March 25th."

2/20 — Morgan Stanley's bad timing: Josh Brown says E-Trade is a "gigantic iceberg" that's "floating on its way into 60-degree waters."

11/6 — Not done yet: With S&P 500 at 3,509, Amy Raskin suggests the top's in because of all the "win-win scenarios" she was hearing.

4/7 — Disbelief: With the S&P 500 at 2,659, Judge grumbles that a V-shaped recovery "just seems impossible."

7/15 — Greatest ax fears revealed: Steve Weiss for the umpteenth time brings up his top Cabinet concern, stating, "Elizabeth Warren as Treasury secretary, I mean, that's like Lizzie Borden, you know, to, to banks."

3/23 — Al Michaels' roller coaster: The FAS, the favorite long-term trade of this famous Halftime Report fan, hits $14.25 at the market low. (It's still down for the year though.)

4/13 — Still not convinced: Karen Finerman on Fast Money tells Brian Sullivan, "I think the market now (S&P 2,761) after the run we've had is so much more expensive than it was at 34 hundred, at uh, 3,400 given the uncertainty that we have ... I'm not adding new things here because I think this market is really expensive."

6/15 — Scott Minerd suggests S&P 1,600 according to Lee Cooperman: "He appears to be bright," Lee says (S&P at 3,066), "but I don't see 1,600 in the market," adding he heard Minerd use the term "bubble."

1/22 — Joe boots NFLX from FAANG: Apparently disheartened by the earnings report, Joe Terranova said Netflix "doesn't belong" in the group of tech-stock giants.

3/20 — Brad's workout routine: Tennis great Brad Gilbert, live from Malibu, bemoans that in his "Chuck Schwab" account, as of Feb. 20, he was already up 17% year to date, "I was on fire," but since then, he was down 7%. Gilbert says that to cope with this plunge, he's doing "6, 7, 800 pushups a day." He says he was up to 77% cash and predicted Dow 12,500 or perhaps even 10,000.

4/2 — Jim Chanos calls 2020 a write-off year: He spent a lot of time knocking UBER (shares then $23.68), arguing the trick to it is not having the drivers classified as employees. A November California referendum took care of that. (This writer is long UBER.)

3/23 — Tepper says it's OK to "nibble" on stocks: They would've been fine as the main course.

4/9 — The "A" word: Chamath Palihapitiya asserts, "Some form of austerity may be required after this period of flagrant spending."

3/11 — Overachieving: Judge says "we wouldn't even have any sort of vaccine, cocktail or otherwise, for a year to a year and a half, and that is according to health experts."

3/3 — It's all the Fed's fault again: Guy Adami leads the Fast Money chorus against the Fed's rate reductions, stating, "Downturns are a natural part of the cycle. You need them to happen. You have to allow it to happen." Karen Finerman starts to say "I feel badly for Jerome Powell, right" before adding, "I don't agree with what he did."

3/2 — It was just a little bit of falling out of bed, like every other year: Steve Weiss says it's "ridiculous" for the central bank to cut 50 or 75 basis points "because the market's fallen out of bed a little bit, as it does every other year since 1950."

11/2 — Bullish, or bearish? Robert Shiller tells Bob Pisani that the recovery in stocks since March is not justifiable, but, "I'm not sounding an alarm," because the market is "driven by narratives."

1/24 — Not so fast money: Karen Finerman says China-related stocks that are selling off over the coronavirus, such as Yum China, are oversold and represent opportunity. "I really think this will blow over very quickly. I don't think this will turn into a worldwide contagion at all."

3/17 — Weiss says pandemic is "worse than '08": Because now, he says, "there's no demand out there."

3/2 — Tom Lee hangs a 3,600 on year-end: The regular bull, if that's a fair term, tells Judge that markets are, or will be, past this in a hurry. "We're looking at potentially 3,600 by the end of the year for the S&P," Lee said.

10/2 — It wasn't Yogi, either: Steve Weiss says Davey Johnson managed the '69 Mets.

6/24 — It's supposed to be millennials who don't know what they're doing: Kari Firestone states, "33% of people 65 and over sold all of their stocks at the end of March. Big mistake."

3/5 — 81 million votes later ...: Jeffrey Gundlach asserts, "I think Joe Biden is completely unelectable."

Halftime Report Call(s) of the Year (in descending order):

No. 6 — 3/26 — John Rogers, "Once in a lifetime": It was a comment not made directly on the show, or would rank higher. While haggling with Joe Terranova, Judge states, "The investor community, in- in- in some cases believes that we have bottomed." To bolster that, Judge plays a clip of John Rogers talking about a "maybe a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to buy stocks at bargain prices."

No. 5 — 10/20 — Josh Brown calls UBER at $36 "one of my No. 1 plays in a reopened economy": There is probably some hometown bias here (this writer is long UBER), but Brown's even stronger call came later when he suggested there are "no sellers" over $42; indeed, after Election Day, this stock jumped from $41 to $48 in a heartbeat.

No. 4 — Autumn/Winter — Steve Grasso's SPACs & more: Under the pandemic radar of 2020, SPACs quietly roared as Wall Street's Story of the Year. Nobody seemed to identify this like Steve Grasso, who throughout the autumn touted on both Fast Money and Twitter SPCE, LAZR and BFT while hitting home runs with several other stocks that quite possibly were NEVER mentioned on the Halftime Report in 2020, CPRI, OLN, TSE, CHWY and SONO. (This writer is long SPCE and had been previously long a couple others.)

No. 3 (tie) — Approximately 11/16 — Kourtney Gibson buys PTON under $100, mentions Beyoncé; Tiffany McGhee buys more PTON at $105: None other than Scott Wapner derides these trades, even stating once that Peloton is going to make microwave ovens, only to get his lunch handed to him on 12/21 when Gibson points out that he said "ha ha" about this sensational call. (Judge attempts to sidestep the issue, protesting that his job is to "play devil's advocate" and telling Gibson, "You can do that to me all day long ... I used the Beyoncé example of trying to talk about whether there was froth in the market ...")

No. 2 — Autumn — Steve Weiss trumpets JMIA in the teens, MRNA in 80s: In a normal year, this would likely be more than enough to win. They're both so good, it's too hard to choose between them. He did waffle a bit on JMIA in October, doing the usual I got out of it/I got back into it, but this proved an absolute monster. In November, he called MRNA in the 80s a "gift" and touted the stock in the upper 90s on 11/20.

No. 1 — 3/17 — Ricky Sandler says to "refinance" the house and "buy some stocks": Yes, we now know that everyone was bullish on 3/23, and this call was a few days early, but this was the most emphatic bull statement of the year.

Joe’s going to distribute the ball; Weiss is ‘gonna give the ball to me’

For the 2nd straight day, Judge on Wednesday's (12/30) Halftime Report went back to the well on this supposed massive bearish market positioning and sought a comment from Pete Najarian about brother Jon's massive put-buying observation a day ago and Thomas Peterffy's comments about options traders for the first time that he's seen being "net short."

Pete explained in lengthy discourse how people are hedging after great gains, but, apparently thinking Pete is downplaying this crisis, Judge countered that Doc is "fairly negative in the near-term" and taking appropriate measures.

Pete responded that it's nothing more than "Jon just showing discipline." (Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.) (If that's true, it wasn't worth opening Tuesday's show with it. #overpromise #underdeliver)

Joe Terranova, seemingly invoking the 1992 Dream Team, curiously opined that this market is like being a head coach of a basketball team and being "very confident" of a victory, "but I'm not sure how I'm going to really distribute the minutes."

Steve Weiss, on the other hand, seemed to be in Bob Cousy-1970-Cincinnati-Royals mode, stating that he's "gonna give the ball to me, I'm gonna be the player-coach and just stay with what's been working for me."

Weiss gloated about not being in ZM or "any of those" that have had "ridiculous runs" in 2020. That apparently doesn't include Jumia, which was his Final Trade. (This writer is long ZM.) Then he got around to — you guessed it — 5G.

"I don't really care where stocks have come from; I only care where they're going to," Weiss claimed, which isn't really how momentum trading works. Weiss said he's not a fan of energy.

Judge said some people are "confused" about where the puck is going. Is there ever a time, ever, where everyone knows where the puck is going? And then isn't every trade priced in?

Leslie Picker reported that Bill Ackman is set to make "nearly 70%" this year. (But she said nothing about why Bill isn't trumpeting this great year on Judge's show and hasn't appeared since March.)

Joe Terranova congratulated Bill on a "very solid year" and said human hedge funds "are outperforming quants."

Judge told Weiss, "A lot of people, uh, wrote Mr. Ackman off. That's just a fact. You were not one of them."

Weiss said Ackman decided he was "tired of the press, it's a major distraction." OK. A good way to avoid the press is not to do a special Ira Sohn presentation on an HLF short and trumpet it for years after ... Or trumpet a JCPenney turnaround ... or trumpet Valeant ...

Pete Najarian bought calls in M and TJX, though he "probably" doesn't believe in M longer term. Steve Weiss called BABA "uninvestable" for the longer term but said he's in it now for a trade. Shannon Saccocia said she'd buy BABA on dips for the long term.

Pete said unusual options activity in FCX had "hit twice" before the show.

FISV, one of the long positions at Jenny’s shop, has a P.E. ratio of 85. Is that one of those ‘crazy’ valuations that you’ll have to ‘hope and pray’ it’ll grow into?

With just a few days left in 2020, Judge on Monday's (12/28) Halftime unleashed his Multiple Contraction Heroes on viewers like those pods in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."

Jenny Harrington was the ringleader on this day, comparing reopening stocks to the valuation of TSLA (what an awful trade that's been) and saying, "There is really a lot of stretched valuations out there that give me a lot of pause. Those are what I'm nervous about."

That got the Spider Sense tingling. Why is Jenny "nervous" about these stocks if she doesn't own them?

Ah. We get it. A bunch of knuckleheads with $5,000 Robinhood accounts are going to PAY ANY PRICE for tech stocks with little to no earnings ... and then it'll crash the market and stop everyone from buying Honeywell or JPMorgan.

Minutes later, Jenny, who seemed well-caffeinated, hailed how GS has "room for the price to grow into the fundamentals," which is better than "the other ones" in which "the price is already here and now you need to hope and pray that the fundamentals, that the earnings, that the revenues grow at- at crazy levels to catch up to the price."

One place that seems to have not much room to grow is Jenny's disclosure of long positions shown while she spoke. We counted 102 stocks. If you're going to own 102, why not just buy the SPY instead?

From beginning to end of the program, Jenny at least 3 or 4 times (no joke) made reference to prices growing into fundamentals as opposed to earnings growing into multiples.

Per the disclosures, Jenny's shop is long DIS. (See, the high multiples are bad IN THE STOCKS WE DON'T OWN; THE ONES WE OWN ARE OK.)

The thing you as a viewer need to know from this program is, HIGH-FLYING MULTIPLES ARE GOING TO CRASH IMMINENTLY AND THE ONLY WAY YOU'LL EVER MAKE MONEY IN STOCKS IS BUYING JPMORGAN.

And also, if, as Jim Lebenthal stated on the program, this time of year is basically ONN territory (that's a reference to Dennis Gartman's ONN/OFF ETNs that Josh Brown likes to criticize) ... then shouldn't people OWN high-multiple stocks now?

Steve Weiss, whose momentum-based opinions can twist in the wind, said it could take "a long time" for the valuation of SNOW to get to a "reasonable level." We're just wondering, when did AMZN, NFLX, TSLA and CMG reach that "reasonable level"?

Even Josh Brown mentioned the "froth on these multiples" of some stocks. Fine. Short them. Look for unusual activity and buy some puts.

Weiss mentioned 5G for probably the 70th time this year.

Jenny shrugged off cryptocurrency. "There's no intrinsic value whatsoever to bitcoin," Jenny said.

Judge didn’t know what question to ask Josh about STOR even though it was printed on the screen

Asked to opine on STOR, Josh Brown on Monday's (12/28) Halftime said he's a "mega-long-term shareholder" before relaying a Brag Trade from prices in March that is no longer possible for most viewers. (That holding has got a P.E. ratio of 39, plenty of room for the price to "grow into" the fundamentals, we're sure.)

It took Judge about 3/4 of the program to utter a "good stuff," but he did supply "in and of itself" twice in the time before that.

Next time we see this obnoxious Christian McCaffrey Amazon Web Services commercial on CNBC, we’re changing the channel

On Wednesday's (12/23) Halftime Report, Momentum Man Joe Terranova said he wanted to hear more about Jim Lebenthal's "land war in Asia" had to sell CRM, but it's not because he thinks it's not a good investment, rather, he needs the cash to buy ST, CNX, COF.

"I bought Salesforce too agressively, too high," Joe explained.

"You've just sold some growth and moved into value," Judge observed.

Joe referred to "Treasury Secretary-elect (sic) (snicker) Janet Yellen."

Brad Gerstner talked about the state of companies going public. Steve Weiss asked Gerstner a question involving lockups and other issues that took about 5 minutes, and Judge correctly joked about it, but it was indeed a great question/statement with several quality observations about the IPO process.

Jon Najarian endorsed DIS and said it has a "bright 2021 ahead." (Translation: High P.E. ratios are terrible and always doomed for imminent multiple contraction — except in the stocks we like.)

Jim says AAPL buying F would be like ‘getting into a land war in Asia’

Tuesday's (12/22) Halftime Report overachieved on content to the point we had to render Anthony Scaramucci's bitcoin venture to 2nd place (see below) in the day's posts.

Near the top of the show, Josh Brown suggested AAPL buy F, "that's the alpha move."

We're sure Tim Cook's eager to wade into the Detroit business environment. Among the ramifications, Brown said Apple could "immediately retire all of Ford's debt" (that must be high on the list at Cupertino) and then "renegotiate" with the UAW (even higher) and tell it, "Let's make you guys not only hourly workers but shareholders in this new venture."

Jim Lebenthal bluntly countered, "There's one point that Josh kind of glossed over but this is where it's like starting a land war in Asia, uh, which is the auto unions. I mean there are decades of experience of the auto unions wrecking companies and wrecking managements."

Jim did suggest, though, that "maybe the auto unions would say, 'OK, Look, we'll get paid in Apple stock' (snicker) (double snicker)."

Nevertheless, Jim reiterated, "It just feels like getting into a land war in Asia, not one that you'd win." Though Jim said he'd be happy if AAPL did this type of acquisition and picked GM instead.

Then CNBC's Phil LeBeau, who was apparently messaging Judge during this conversation, jumped in to say "it's not happening for a whole host of reasons. ... That company is gonna be run by the Ford familiy for the foreseeable future."

"It's not goin' well," Brown shrugged.

Phil continued, "I hear this all the time from people, why doesn't Apple buy XYZ, GM, Ford, Fiat Chrysler ... It just does not make sense. The legacy costs are so great."

Jon Najarian offered that if AAPL has a "breakthrough battery technology," then "that is a game-changer" that would drive the stock to $160, $170, "at least."

Anthony Scaramucci: ‘If anything, it’s the 1st inning’ for bitcoin

Nothing really exceeds Jim Lebenthal's "land war in Asia" in the category of Halftime Report headlines, but longtime CNBC friend/frenemy/guest Anthony Scaramucci's bitcoin venture planned for Jan. 4 for outside investors certainly came close on Tuesday (12/22).

"We would've loved to have deployed the fund 3 or 4 months ago," Scaramucci told Judge, but "we're still in very, very early innnings, Scott" of the bitcoin craze ... actually that's a good question ... if it's not a "craze" or a "mania," what is it ... "interest" ...?

Scaramucci said his shop has done research for 2 years and immersed itself in "a ton of SALT talks" on the subject, and it became clear that it needed a "client-friendly product" with a $50,000 minimum for the "mass affluent" or "RIAs" to access.

"It's in an LP structure, which makes it easier for RIAs," Anthony said. (We wonder if that brings the dreaded K-1 form into play, but we don't know.)

Honestly, it sounded like the longer he spoke about it, the more Scaramucci was inflating this concept with helium. "This is an asset that could go up 2 or 3x from here in our opinion," Anthony told Judge. "If anything, it's the 1st inning."

Then, "Once you get to that $100 billion number, it sort of goes up exponentially from there," Anthony said.

Judge asked Jon Najarian for a soundbite. Doc said, "We've been teaching cryptocurrency trading over at MarketRebellion" and said he's apparently "launching" his own crypto/bitcoin hedge-fund venture in 2021. Doc said he and Anthony have "talked a number of occasions about trying to get a bitcoin fund up and going between us," but apparently they're doing separate projects.

Josh Brown didn't dismiss bitcoin but said RIAs won't want to have to deal with clients when there's a 50% drop in bitcoin's value and that his shop doesn't want to be "at the forefront" of putting clients in bitcoin. "We don't have tons of clients asking us our advice on that," Brown said.

Judge, who sort of boasted a day earlier that his goal is "to push you guys," didn't ask Scaramucci or Najarian or anyone else to demonstrate what a bitcoin is or how it's any different than investing in software. (That's not the part that matters; what matters is inviting guests on to say "Bitcoin $25,000" or "Bitcoin $40,000" or "Bitcoin $100,000.")

Scaramucci conceded there are "still skeptics" as to whether bitcoin is a "store of value."

Judge questioned if Anthony's fund isn't "a little late." Anthony said to the contrary, we just might be at the "precursor of an avalanche of institutional investors heading in."

Scaramucci addressed something few CNBC guests do, the quality of their picture/glamour shot that CNBC displays in the commercial breaks before the person appears on air. "Thanks for putting my high school picture up before the commercial break," Scaramucci told Judge.

Judge chuckled, "Your hair was a little big, but, uh, we'll- we'll- we won't go there for right now; we'll talk about that some other time."

Late in the program, Judge introduced Jeff Kilburg for Futures Now, and Jeff diligently began his report, but then Judge inexplicably talked over him, stating, "Well, we can see Jeff, but obviously, we can't hear Jeff."

Obviously, a producer informed Judge that the whole world was hearing Kilburg. Judge explained, "Apparently everybody could hear you but me."

Judge gives curious explanation of his job description, gets manhandled in PTON conversation

Here's something among many, many things we can't quite figure out.

Judge and his "Investment Committee" spend literally every episode speculating as to whether a bull run might end while missing what should be the real excitement of any trading show: Stocks are moving extraordinary amounts, both directions, in the short term, which makes for an awesome trading environment.

One such example is PTON, which on Nov. 16 traded under $100 for a day or 2. Kourtney Gibson on Monday's (12/21) Halftime reminded Judge that he sort of mocked her PTON buy around that time (we heard it during that broadcast but apparently didn't write it down on this page) below $100, when she brought up Beyoncé and Judge, according to Kourtney, said "ha ha." (On a later day, he also cracked in a different conversation with other people that PTON is willing to sell microwave ovens.)

Judge, in this revealing comment, told Kourtney, "You can do that to me all day long ... The whole point of this, is to, at least where I sit, not where you guys sit, where I sit, is to play devil's advocate. To push you guys. As to why you're recommending stocks at particular times that you are. I used the Beyoncé example of trying to talk about whether there was froth in the market ..."

Kourtney said her reference to Beyoncé was "one of many" reasons for buying the shares.

"It's all good," Judge told Kourtney.

However he frames it, Judge basically mocked the trade that left shorts in face-ripped-off land.

The beauty of PTON is the opportunity ... if you thought it was overpriced in October at 130, you could've shorted it to $100 and made Fast Money. If you thought it was underpriced at $100 in November as Kourtney did, you could make a 40%-plus upside in a month.

Yes, you can be on the wrong sides of those trades too. That's life. The point is, for delivering alpha, now's as good a time as virtually any in history.

So, about that "devil's advocate" and "push you guys" ... was Judge being a "devil's advocate" later in the program when he brought in Mike Mayo for the umpteenth time since 2009 to tell us how awesome the banks are? Did Judge attempt at all to "push" Mayo into explaining why he's been making the same argument for a decade, the stocks have done little in the way of excitement and why Mayo doesn't shift over to fintech names instead?

No.

Steve Weiss, who always talks about airlines as though they're JCPenney (except when he's trading them long), said the market realized that airlines and other "reopen" trades "didn't stand a pra- uh, chance of being sustainable." Sure. If a trade doesn't work for a week or 2, it suddenly has no chance of "being sustainable." (This writer is long AAL, UAL and SAVE.)

"I disagree on the airline trade," said Sarat Sethi, who said he's long DAL.

Weiss said that to own DAL, you've "gotta believe that you get a normalization of their business." Really? Maybe it's trading on virus cases, which could actually go down at any given moment.

Sarat asserted, "I think people are gonna fly as soon as they get the vaccine."

Kourtney Gibson sided with Sarat and shrugged at the opinion of Weiss as someone who simply trades the stock.

Weiss then claimed, "The airlines have done away with change fees." As if they're not going to be able to replace that once flight traffic returns to "normal" levels. (Oh, right, we forgot — rich fliers in business class and first class aren't going to fly anymore, but then again, ZM is way-way-way overpriced too ...) (This writer is long ZM.)

Judge asked Liz Young about David Rosenberg's "bubble" observation regarding bitcoin. Liz suggested bitcoin is still in a "price-discovery phase." Judge didn't "push" anyone to explain why bitcoin is not an imaginary investment.

Weiss claimed stocks in general should be "somewhat vulnerable," saying some names have moved "too aggressively."

Barron’s profile of Josh Brown doesn’t mention CNBC’s Halftime Report

We always find it newsworthy when the financial media notices someone on CNBC's programs; such was the case this weekend when Barron's offered up a 2-page profile of Josh Brown and Barry Ritholtz.

The word/term CNBC doesn't appear in the package. The writer, Leslie P. Norton, is far more interested in the blogging of Brown and Ritholtz than on TV questions (such as, how come Barry hasn't appeared regularly on CNBC since about, oh, 2010), nor does Norton appear interested in Ritholtz and Brown's assessment of P.E. ratios.

It's a fine transcript. Regular readers of Barron's know these Q&As are one-source articles designed to elicit market/industry calls/trends and not Vanity Fair-type material, but we gotta wonder, why didn't the author simply dial Judge and ask "What does Brown bring to the program that others don't," or better yet, call Steve Weiss to opine on Brown's philosophies.

A few things caught our eye. 1) Why are Brown and Ritholtz hanging out at a lake on a 30-degree day. 2) The breakout text at the top left of the second page that says Brown and Ritholtz "speak and write about investing almost as much as they actually engage in it," and the related final question is "How do you have time to manage money if you're blogging, podcasting, YouTubing, appearing on TV, and talking with Barron's?" 3) Brown touts direct indexing as "probably the future of active management" and says later that 70% of the next $100 million they raise could end up in direct indexing, then adds, "This is for multimillion-dollar households, not $100,000 accounts."

Here we go again. The really good stuff is only for the rich people.

Judge puts together curious
combo of sweater-jacket

As "1999" came up (again) on Thursday's (12/17) Halftime Report, Judge came really close to asking a great question.

But he didn't. So we will.

If this market is the 1990s, which year is it? (Keep in mind that stock-market years don't "repeat" or "rhyme." But whatever.)

Tom Lee, though predicting some kind of pullback (snicker) in early 2021, wasn't thinking it's 1999, hanging a 4,300 on the S&P for next year (and to think we've been wondering this week if we'll have that by next month.)

Jim Lebenthal, who insisted he's highly bullish though his targets are quite modest, asserted, "It's not like when Time Warner bought AOL. ... The market overall does not look like 1999."

We did hear "Pets.com" and "Webvan" during this discussion. Those names will never be forgotten, though they haven't been relevant to anything in 20 years. Lee made an outstanding observation, of the amount of resources in 1999 spent on fiber and on luring talented investment pros to dubious startups. Lee claims the latter is not happening (we're not sure). We do know that no one gives a hoot about fiber optics, and there's no question that a big cause of the 2000 bubble was the curious fascination with Internet infrastructure stocks, Cisco, Lucent, Intel, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Exodus Communications (oh my, some of those really hurt).

But consider the differences in today's world ...

No. 1? Smartphones. In the mid- to late '90s, a lot of people were on their first desktop computer with Internet access. Most people wouldn't do credit card transactions on their computers. No. 2? TINA. By Y2K, Treasurys still had a ton to offer. No. 3? Virtually no social media in 1999. That matters, because it's time spent by people on their computer rather than reading a newspaper. No. 4? The sharing economy, which is still kind of in fledgling status and mostly limited to ride-share and home-share and food delivery but has proved far more resilient than Pets.com, has demonstrated serious demand and has already dealt serious blows to long-established business models.

Anyway. As for which year of the '90s, yes, government borrowing can't continue at the current pace forever, but given the global euphoria you're going to see for at least a half-year or more when the virus lifts, and given the extraordinary precedents (including one mentioned recently inadvertently by Barron's which we'll get to later) set by central banks in the last year, we don't see how this is 1999 or even 1998.

Jon Najarian astutely suggested that without Disney+, DIS would likely have been under $100 for a much longer time this year, and it would more likely be at $120 rather than $170.

Doc said he thinks he'll be able to get ROKU in the "250 to 270 range" next year.

Judge gets more than he bargained for trying to defend a Cramer press release

On Tuesday's (12/15) Halftime Report, Judge opened by quoting Jim Cramer as stating the stay-at-home trade is suddenly back on.

Tiffany McGhee said she doesn't want to go "back and forth" between stay-at-home stocks and reopening stocks.

Josh Brown agreed with Tiffany, saying that trading stocks like it's a "vaccine week" or a "work-from-anywhere week" is just "bad investing." (Translation: They're both basically saying that determining precisely when these trades are on or off is impossible and that the lines between those trades are kind of blurred.)

Judge asked Brown about the "so-called stay at home trade" and mentioned ZM and CRWD and others, and that's where the conversation got a little bit off-kilter. (This writer is long ZM.)

Brown said, "I'm not in almost any of those stocks," and then said, "I'm not in those stocks."

But moments later, Judge said Brown is in CRWD. Brown responded, "Dude, it's not a work-from-home stock."

Judge said, "It has capitalized though, on, on, this period that we've- we've been in, right."

Brown said, "So has Amazon, but that doesn't make it a work-from-home stock."

"I understand that," Judge said.

"I just, I disagree with the premise," Brown said.

"How do you disagree with the premise," Judge said, somewhat in disbelief. "I mean, you've made the case on this program about-"

"Crowdstrike is not working on a vaccine and it's not delivering pizza. It's literally software security," Brown said.

"Is Zoom? Is Zoom working on a vaccine? Are they delivering pizza? Is Okta doing that?" Judge rebutted.

"No. No," Brown said. "Some are more associated with that trade than others."

As for Cramer's call, Brown ripped the "in-out nonsense" and again mentioned Dennis Gartman's ONN and OFF ETNs (Brown said "ETFs," but we think they were "ETNs") and said, "We laughed at it then, it's still stupid, 9 years later."

Jenny Harrington told Judge, "It's a stock-picker's market." But Judge told Jenny, "You can't dictate to the market what stocks you think should work." So if there's a "rotation" into stay at home, why not "ride that wave" even for a short period of time, Judge asked. (Translation: Judge will defend any Cramer call, no matter how dubious.)

Jenny wondered, "How short must your time frame be," and she asserted that PTON, DOCU and ZM are "already at extended valuations ... they've paid forward like 20 years of earnings growth." So A) why not short them? and B) If we're only trading P.E. ratios, why not just buy an algorithm that buys low P.E. ratios and sells high P.E. ratios? (This writer is long DOCU.)

Judge said 3 months is "not an insignificant period of time." (Apparently, that's how long Jim thinks we're in for the stay-at-home trade.)

‘We also have to throw out the old rulebook on these valuations’

High P.E. ratios certainly took a verbal beating on Tuesday's (12/15) Halftime Report, at the hands of star guest John Rogers and Jenny Harrington.

Judge reported that Tiffany McGhee bought DASH on the open market and got an allocation of ABNB.

Regarding the first of those names, Josh Brown said some stocks' growth is being accelerated by the pandemic while some stocks are only doing well because of the pandemic, and regarding the latter, he doesn't think the country is "lazy" enough to keep using food delivery at pandemic levels.

But Tiffany said that post-pandemic, if she wanted something on a weekend night from her favorite restaurant, "I'm gonna pay the 6 bucks."

That we agree with. Despite Brown's opinion, people are going to think more about food delivery post-pandemic. But it was another comment from McGhee that raised our eyebrows.

Tiffany said her office bought DASH because they had conversations with clients, "and they wanted to be in that name." (If clients are picking their own stocks, why don't they just open a Robinhood account?) Is McGhee indicating that her staff did NOT want to be in those names?

Tiffany also said, "We also have to throw out the old rulebook on these valuations." Judge took notice of that comment and asked Rogers about possibly changing attitudes toward market multiples. Rogers described himself as an "old-school value investor" who deems it a "warning flag" every time he hears someone say, "This time it's different."

But Rogers' specific complaint with this market is with the 6 leading megacap tech names, telling Judge it's "a tale of 2 markets." Specifically, he sees small- and mid-cap value having an "enormous amount of bargains."

He continued, "Eventually, inflation is gonna rear its ugly head. And that's gonna cause higher interest rates ... as rates inevitably go higher, P.E. multiples will compress."

Hmmmmm ... we've been hearing about inflation-around-the-corner for about 11 years. Anyone trading on higher inflation for the last dozen years has surely been, at a minimum, disappointed.

Rogers touted MSGE as his "favorite stock right now." Judge made the joke we knew was coming, about how bad the Knicks are. Rogers also touted NLSN and NTRS.

A money manager advocating for value stocks is not at all unusual. However, we started to wonder about the timing here when Jenny Harrington urged viewers to read Rogers' "letter" in the Wall Street Journal, which Jenny quoted as saying, "What worked over the past decade is unlikely to work over the next."

Indeed. We looked up the article, co-written with Mellody Hobson, and realized that Rogers during his CNBC appearance had been mentioning many of the points in the article. (At least he didn't claim Airline stocks are good/Airline stocks are bad, as Steve Weiss did a day earlier.)

But we didn't find it fully convincing. The article mentions the Nifty 50 (a term that always foreshadows a complaint about large-cap growth stocks) and asserts, "This period is eerily reminiscent of the 1970s." We don't think it's reminiscent of that time, unless we're looking at a decade ahead of runaway inflation and gasoline rationing. The article says, "Perhaps a better cross-section of big business in America would be a newly constituted 'S&P 494.'" That's fine, but remember that the Big 6 Rogers questions are basically grabbing market share from many of those 494 every day; you can buy something at Nordstrom or something at Amazon.com; you can order a Nokia phone or an Apple phone; you can spend an hour watching Comcast or an hour on Facebook.

The overriding argument: "Ten years from now, we posit, value shares will have trounced growth," because ... "we experience a healthy dose of mean regression."

Maybe we will. We don't see the catalyst for this to happen at this time, especially on a day when Judge is suggesting everyone heed Jim Cramer's stay-at-home stocks call for the next 3 months.

Pete Najarian said he bought XOM in the last month and said of Big Oil, "You trade it, until you start to see something turn." That sounds like good old-fashioned Momentum Investing.

How come every time someone says it’s 1999 again, they never recommend, ‘Buy AAPL/oil/coal/fertilizer stocks’?

Over the weekend, we plunged into the latest copy of Barron's, and the lede sentence of the Grandpa Randall W. Forsyth column was, "Maybe this time is different."

And we couldn't help but wonder, if the stock market is indeed going to do another March 2000 again, then isn't oil a massive buy? Gold? Treasurys? Apple? Research in Motion? Fertilizer?

Oh, forgot — it's a "stock picker's market," until it isn't.

Weiss says airlines are going up (but if you’re a ‘big equity holder,’ then apparently they might go down)

He oughta be a politician.

Because long, short or neutral, Steve Weiss managed to tell you anything you might've wanted to hear about airlines during a curious, elongated statement on Monday's (12/14) Halftime Report.

Kevin O'Leary happened to say about 3 times during the show that he doesn't expect anyone in the world to get on a plane again he thinks many things about daily and business life have changed forever, and he's shorting airlines and aircraft companies because nobody is booking events and shows next year.

At one point, O'Leary said, "I'm thinking, this is the new way we're gonna live."

Weiss, in one of the most curious statements ever heard on the Halftime Report, said he agrees with O'Leary on airlines "a thousand percent." Then he said his long positions in JETS and DAL are "small, speculative positions" and that shorting the market "is a very difficult thing to do. ... I don't think they go down, the airlines or, or JETS, which is the airline ETF, goes down much, and I think it's an option on going higher."

But then again, Weiss added, "And the airlines, you don't wanna be a big equity holder there because they're basically insolvent, and they've diluted you to kingdom come and they're gonna keep doing it."

Count Judge among the confused. "I don't understand, why do you still own the airlines?" Judge asked Weiss.

"Because I think that the market is going to look through that, and that the, the path of least, uh, of, of least resistance is still going to be higher."

Weiss added, "If I were to short, I'd short the cruise ships."

OK, so if you just own a "small, speculative position," then airlines are going as high as an option might go ... but if you own a lot of 'em, then they're "insolvent."

Got it.

What’s JMIA’s P.E. ratio?

On Monday's (12/14) Halftime Report, Steve Weiss practically quoted from this page (see below).

"There are clearly excesses in the market," Weiss said, pointing to the latest boogeymen, DASH and ABNB, which he said are "driven by momentum buyers" (which is basically what the show consists of). (Translation: Any red-hot stocks that I don't own are overpriced.)

Then Weiss declared: "It's gonna take them years to grow into their valuations." (See our assessment of this quote from last week.)

Weiss said a Morgan Stanley analyst likes ST, "And the reason why he likes it, is because it's only a couple of multiple terms above its historical valuation." (That's always a great catalyst: P.E. ratio. What else does the analyst do?)

Kari Firestone suggested the prices of DASH, ABNB and CRWD have gotten "way too high."

Nevertheless, Kari compared NFLX favorably with DIS and said NFLX's multiple "has come down relative to some of the others." Joe Terranova even backed up this call in his Final Trade. (Translation: High P.E. ratios of stocks that we like are OK and not crazy.) (And when did NFLX ever "grow into" its multiple? Does Karen Finerman know about this?)

In a statement that most days could easily headline this page, Jim Lebenthal told Judge, "I'm not cautious," suggesting there's consolidation that "sets up the leg higher" in the stock market.

Who knew? You can bid on a lunch with Bill

On Monday's (12/14) Halftime Report, Judge mentioned Ackman for the first time in a long time, stating Bill is an investor in WeCommerce.

That company's co-founder, Andrew Wilkinson, explained how a couple years ago, he bid on a lunch with Bill that was auctioned, "and I figured, Hey, I'll go for lunch, it'll be interesting no matter what happens, and if I like him, maybe I'll buy more stock, and if I think he's a jerk, maybe I'll sell out. And uh, I really liked him. We hit it off, and we spent 6 hours together."

Judge asked Wilkinson for the "best piece of advice" that Bill gave. Wilkinson said, "Bill, Bill really just thinks long-term." Indeed he does. Whether it's MBIA, Canadian Pacific ... or JCPenney, Valeant, Herbalife (short) ...

The thing is, Wilkinson really gushed about SHOP. We looked up SHOP on Yahoo Finance and found its multiple is 654. Isn't that going to take the company years to "grow into" its valuation??? How come Weiss had nothing to say about that one?

Speaking of high P.E. ratios, Joe Terranova said, "McDonald's has failed to define itself to a younger generation, which is exactly what Shake Shack has done."

Joe referred to "President Biden-elect" (sic reverse order) in a discussion about banks.

Karen Finerman on the 5 p.m. show said with a straight face that what "freaked me out the most today" was the cyberattack on the Treasury Department. Anyone (besides us) recall when Karen was saying that EFX was a no-touch because it was facing an "existential" threat from the breach (about 100 points ago)?

On other matters, "It's more likely I think than not that rates are meaningfully higher in 2021," Karen Finerman said. (We've heard that one before. Many times.)

Grandpa Dan Nathan on 5 p.m. said NVDA's valuation is "not sustainable."

A lot of times, the folks on the air at 5 p.m. sound like they’d be more at home trading Treasurys

Even though CNBC's Halftime Report is supposed to be just an intraday version of Fast Money, it's curious how they often come across as 2 entirely different franchises.

Because for whatever reason, the folks on Halftime appear to perform Momentum Trading like there's no tomorrow ... while the grandparent types on Fast Money constantly shake their heads at P.E. ratios.

On Thursday's (12/10) Fast Money, Karen Finerman was talking about the latest boogeyman, ABNB (superseding DASH after just a couple days), declaring, "I don't get it, at all. It's crazy, I mean, it reminds me of 2000, it reminds me of, you know, ridiculous first day, you know up- things up 1,000% that ended up going to zero. Not that I think this is. There's real value here for sure. There's real value in Doordash. This much real value? I don't really get it."

Moments before that, Finerman gushed about the quarter posted by LULU, but complained ... yes ... that the P.E. ratio is just too high. (This writer is long LULU.)

The idea that someone who bought ABNB after it started trading Thursday is "crazy" strikes us as harsh. (This writer has no position in ABNB.) And actually, why don't panelists inform viewers as to all the "crazy" prices they see. Is $11 for Macy's "crazy"? Is $11 for GE "crazy"? Is $373 for SNOW "crazy"? Do tell.

Anyway, we started taking a back-of-the-envelope inventory of The Most Commonly Bashed P.E. Ratios On Fast Money Since The Inception Of The Show In 2007. And here's what we came up with:

No. 1: AMZN. No. 2: NFLX. No. 3: TSLA (It would be No. 1 if we were only talking the last 4-5 years). No. 4: CMG. No. 5: NVDA. No. 6: UAA. No. 7: UBER. No. 8: BABA. No. 9: TWTR. No. 10: SHAK. (This writer is long UBER.)

We get that some professional investors don't want to own stocks with statistically high valuations. Fine.

What we don't get is this weird disgust that there is higher-than-typical demand for stocks of exciting companies.

What we also don't get — make that, what we have seen no proof of — is that P.E. ratio is a catalyst of stock-price movement.

Rather ... as far as we can tell ... P.E. ratio is only an effect, not a cause.

We also don't get this slogan of, it'll take forever to "grow into that multiple." That statement implies that the end game for EVERY stock is a "market" multiple. When does this end game take place? When is every stock going to trade at the same multiple?

The stock market's just a merry-go-round. People are free to ride it for seconds, for decades, or not at all. It doesn't all culminate in some neat natural logarithmic thingy or whatever.

It seems like anyone eliminating stocks strictly on P.E. ratio is dismissing a lot of the world's greatest companies, including ones capable of delivering the biggest returns. That's like a baseball GM saying "We're not going to pay any player more than $3 million a year, no matter how good he is."

‘Investor demand cannot be overstated’

Thursday's (12/10) Halftime Report was practically giddy with gushing about the bull market, even though stocks were having a tepid day.

Josh Brown opened things by touting rotation and declaring, "Investor demand cannot be overstated right now."

Kourtney Gibson said she agrees with Brown "a thousand percent." Gibson asserted, "There is a ton of pent-up demand."

Jenny Harrington did try to dial things back a bit, taking issue with the term "super bullish" and saying the market needs to be looked at "more granularly."

The star guest, Dubravko Lakos, who Judge said is the most bullish on the Street for next year, said it's "one of the best environments for equities, uh, you know, in a number of years." Judge said he basically agrees with all the market conditions outlined by Lakos, which makes him wonder if everyone is too bullish.

The 5 p.m. Fast Money crew discussed DIS, whose P.E. ratio is apparently dandy. We can't figure out why DIS needs any kind of investor updates or earnings calls other than posting a sign with the real-time Disney+ subscriber total like McDonald's used to do with hamburgers.

Gorgeous Karen Finerman’s
pet pooch noted by Dom Chu

Before we get to Wednesday's (12/9) material, we should note viewers of the 5 p.m. Fast Money on Tuesday got a treat when the pet dog of CNBC superfox Karen Finerman wandered through her sensational-looking living room and caught the eye of guest host Dom Chu.

"He or she looks like he's having a good time," Dom said.

"Oh. I hope he's not doing something embarrassing," Karen chuckled, beaming.

That, folks, is broadcasting in 2020.

Jim: Risk-on environment typically lasts into mid-January

Judge opened Wednesday's (12/9) Halftime Report assessing JPMorgan's downgrade of Zoom, Crowdstrike, Docusign, Cloudflare and Okta, and Jim Lebenthal presented a contrasting set of opinions. (This writer is long DOCU.)

First Jim said Fastly was the canary in the coal mine for high-flying tech stocks, and he said ZM is "off about a third since then," and that's "a bubble starting to deflate, if not pop."

OK, so we've got a "bubble" in the process of deflating.

But then Jim referred to what he sees as "risk-on sentiment" that he said "this late in the year, usually goes through the end of the year and into the middle of January."

"Everything I own is doing well," Jim said. "Let's worry about putting out the fire in mid-January ... It's just realistic."

But there's a bubble "starting to deflate" right now.

Then, it wasn't until the 35th minute that Judge got to DIS. Jim, citing "sum of the parts," decided that Disney's streaming is worth the same valuation of NFLX's $225B, and DIS' total market cap is $280B, so therefore, that means "every other business (is) valued at 55 billion," which he said is a 3 multiple on those businesses.

"Sum of the parts completely supports being long Disney right now," Jim said.

OK. So it's risk-on until mid-January, and there's no bubbles in streaming, but there's a bubble "starting to deflate" in non-streaming tech names.

Got it.

Judge asked Pete Najarian about the JPMorgan downgrade: "Is this trying to pop the bubble before it gets too big?"

"I would say yes," Pete said, adding there's "room for a pullback." (Translation: None of these JPMorgan names have seen unusual options buying; otherwise, they'd be "goin' a lot higher.")

Nevertheless, Pete disagreed with Jim Lebenthal on DIS, telling Judge it "feels like it's a little bit lofty to me," based on forward P.E.

(The thing is, when Pete was on the 5 p.m. show, he told Mel he likes LULU, even though "the P.E. looks stretched." So basically, high P.E.s are the death knell ... except when they're in stocks that we like.)

Judge asked Joe "215 stop" Terranova, "What do you do" with DOCU?

Joe reaffirmed "I've got a stop in place" (that would be 215, based on Monday's show) because he agrees with both the JPMorgan call and the "narrative" that Judge has been "communicating" for a couple weeks about "sky-high valuations"; we didn't know Judge had been making valuation calls on stocks.

But, Joe said, if these stocks correct, it doesn't mean the whole market's going down, citing GOOGL. Judge insisted that's "2 different conversations."

Judge pressed for an opinion on DOCU, stating that "a stop alone" doesn't erase the issue of a stock being overvalued. Joe went on to credit Judge again for being "very accurate in communicating this over the last couple of weeks."

Joe at the 10-minute mark brought up the "absolutely ridiculous" valuation of PTON. Judge said with a semi-straight face that Peloton will sell microwave ovens.

But even though Judge has supposedly been "very accurate" in predicting a tech high-flier collapse, Joe said he's concerned that Airbnb is "gonna get away from me as well."

Liz Young indicated that being long this market now is the right call, stating that valuations always matter, "but they matter less until long-term rates go up."

Liz agrees with Jim that it's not time to take risk off the table, but she's "a little skeptical" of a year-end rally.

Judge told his star guest, Christopher Toomey of Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, that Toomey agrees with Toomey's "pal" Mike Wilson and has an "almost identically" similar view on the financial markets. (The latter basically amounts to calling market direction every 6 weeks, typically whatever the contrarian play is.)

Pete Najarian, who did double duty by appearing on the 5 p.m. Fast Money from St. Petersburg, got 3-4 questions between both shows that quickly grew tiresome about his great location. Pete on the 5 p.m. show again mentioned those companies that "have absolutely no P/Es because there is no P, uh ... or E, rather."

Now that's interesting. Imagine a company with an E but not a P. We doubt that's ever happened.

Judge provided no update on who Dr. Antik Bose is. (At least Judge didn't have to pronounce "Penumbra" again.)

Asking again, is it ‘Barunch’ or ‘Baruch’

We typically flag CNBC screen-text bungles, not to embarrass people but to point out things that get a little sloppy.

Twice in the last 6 weeks, including Wednesday's (12/9) Halftime, CNBC's graphics crew apparently thinks it's Bill "Barunch" rather than Bill "Baruch," which is what the CNBC.com contributor page says.

Honestly, at this point, we have no idea what the truth is.

No one’s going to let March 2000 happen to them again — nor March 2020 either (a/k/a Who is Dr. Antik Bose?)

Judge was on fire, Josh was on fire, and it all added up on Tuesday (12/8) to one of the best episodes of the Halftime Report in months.

Brown put together what has to be the line of the quarter: "It's very hard to be losing money in this market right now. You have to really be trying your best."

No doubt. We do think, despite the gains of November, the market isn't quite yet at the euphoria level of August. But it's somewhere in that vicinity.

As everyone seems to be saying, expect pauses or pullbacks, but it's hard to see much worse.

Why? Because tons of people were shoveling out stocks at Ackman Time in late March, and then waited weeks for the "retest" that never came, and they're never gonna make that mistake again. (Some, however, are going to unload DOCU at 215 (see below). #Momentum)

Anyway. Judge opened Tuesday's Halftime with the day's big story, the short case by Quintessential Capital Management against PEN. Judge outlined his reporting on the matter, in which 2 things caught our attention.

One was the alleged "fake persona" of one "Dr. Antik Bose" that the company allegedly crafted to review its products, according to QCM's Gabriel Grego, who took part in an interview.

The thing is, after watching this report/interview twice, we're still not sure of the significance of this Mr. Bose and/or whether his articles are posted anywhere important, affect anything or are inaccurate.

But the pictures shown on TV sure look fishy.

The other thing that caught our ear was Judge saying that Canaccord Genuity affirms a buy and 290 target, and that during Penumbra's investor call with B of A in the morning, "The issue never came up."

It sounds like the crux of the short case is that the device has enough problems as to be dangerous. That's a harder case than identifying a potentially phony Internet persona. (This writer has no position in PEN.)

OK, a 3rd thing caught our ear. Judge read and displayed the company's response.

"This attack by sleazy short sellers QCM (sic Judge pronounced it "QSM" the second time) reads like an Internet conspiracy written by teenagers. It is impossible to dispute the facts, because there are no facts. Penumbra feels very comfortable stating that none of the allegations in this short sellers' diatribe are accurate."

Some curious wording here. "It is impossible to dispute the facts, because there are no facts." Notice it doesn't say the report is "false."

Also, note the qualifying intro, "Penumbra feels very comfortable stating that ..." instead of beginning that last sentence with "None."

At least one member of Judge's "Investment Committee" thought the QCM report was convincing. Josh Brown said, "I am willing to take the vaccine when it comes out; I don't want the Penumbra, uh, version of it though. That's one of the craziest stories I've ever heard."

PEN fell all morning and hit mid-$180s shortly after Judge's show began. It rallied into the $190s by the end of the show. Afterwards, it retested the mid-$180s, then rallied late in the trading day to close above $200. So if you were buying when Judge's report began, you made 10% by end of the day.

Judge twice pronounced "Penumbra" as "Prenumba."

DOCU holds $228, hasn’t triggered Joe’s $215 sell yet

But back to the stock market. On Tuesday's (12/8) Halftime, Judge and Josh presented apparently dueling views of Ed Yardeni ... and Ed Yardeni.

Judge said Yardeni says that "the current altitude of the Buffett ratio" gives him "Icarus" concerns.

But Brown said Yardeni was on his podcast and talked about the possibility of the "Roaring 2020s."

So, it's either "Icarus" ... or a "Roaring" decade ahead.

Judge conceded "a lot of people" think the Roaring '20s idea is "legit," but "my only question" is whether these Roaring '20s "begin in 2022." (That's not his "only" question.)

Brown pointed out that small caps have gained a lot of ground "in like, 5 weeks," and materials and transports are raging, and that a name such as AMZN is still at July levels, so the rally is not just elite tech but very broad. (Rob Sechan wasn't on the show to stress that it's only the extremely early innings of the supposed Great Rotation into value.)

Brown impressively explained some of the details behind the White House/Pfizer vaccine story whose headline was trumpeted by Judge, saying that the White House response is that it didn't order a larger amount of Pfizer doses months ago because it wasn't sure which companies' vaccines would work and had to manage risk. Judge got chippy and butted in, "No one has suggested otherwise," and that's "neither here nor there."

Jon Najarian predicted the pandemic will be ending "at the end of the first half" of 2021. "I'm in all the epicenter reopening stocks, or at least a lot of them," as well as tech stocks, Najarian said, adding the composition could be described as a "barbell."

Stephanie Link admitted Trading Her Basis, in this case selling HD after a "30% gain."

Momentum Trading 101

Judge on Monday's (12/7) Halftime Report asked Joe Terranova about buying DOCU "with a catch," and viewers got a Momentum Trade that couldn't have been drawn up any better on Vince Lombardi's chalkboard.

Joe said that, despite what Judge intimated, he bought DOCU at 92 on April 1 (translation: Time-travel/Brag Trades that viewers can't make.) Joe said the earnings were "very strong" but "price is not working consistent with those earnings." So now he's focused on "risk management" (translation: Momentum not going up 50% in a month like a lot of other hot stocks) and placing a stop at $215. (If it gets to 215, we might buy Joe's shares.) (This writer is long DOCU.)

Judge also bluntly asked Joe if we'll have a "melt-up" into year-end. Joe called that a "great question" and said the answer will be found ... drum roll ... "in where the 10-year Treasury is going to be priced."

Judge asked Joe what's NOT priced in to this market. Joe said that "favorably," it's "a lot to do with the tariffs," predicting some will be "rolled back" and others "vacated," citing the "detrimental impact" of the last few years. (It's not clear what those tariffs have to do with the 10-year price.)

Bryn Talkington said basically that investors are "leapfrogging" all the bad news to drive the market up. "As investors, you gotta be in it to win it," Bryn said, predicting the S&P 500 will be "quite a bit higher" after we're past the pandemic.

Steve Weiss pointed out the market is "not that much higher" than what it was pre-COVID, though there's now a "massive" amount of globally synchronized stimulus. So he thinks the market does have "a lot of runway" ahead.

Weiss tried to claim he got all kinds of great stock tips from "a certain pro football team owner in one of our conversations."

Andrew Wellington was invited on to talk about his "concentrated" strategy. Judge said "maybe it's been a couple years" since Wellington has been on the show.

Judge opened with a statement, not a question, about the number of Wellington's trades, but Wellington went along with it anyway, speaking of the "academic research" that says that having 30 stocks is basically as diversified as having 100 or more. (So, apparently, the Dow is no different than the S&P 500.)

Wellington touted WHR and DELL. Steve Weiss hung a 200 on MRNA.

Judge apparently isn’t familiar with NFLX, TSLA, UBER, AMZN

Thursday's (12/3) Halftime Report took a page from the previous day, when Judge, in sitcom-style overacting, practically threw his hands into the air over the market caps of certain popular stocks that have minuscule or no earnings yet and wondering how such gains can possibly continue.

On Thursday, as Josh Brown vigorously defended the long-term potential of several of these companies, Judge was at it again, stating basically "I've raised the issue" of this, "I've raised the issue of that," and yet, "it seems like nothing matters. Nothing at all matters."

Jon Najarian actually claimed to be impressed. "I love when you play devil's advocate like that Scott," Doc chuckled.

Noting the gains in some hot names occurring in real time, Judge asked Brown if those stocks could possibly be a buy at that moment, complaining that just a day ago, "we were raising some alarm bells (snicker) (let's pretend it's February 2000)" and that Jim Cramer was even being "sarcastic on Twitter" about people using "catchphrases" like "TAM" to describe hot stocks. (Oh my. Buy those triple-short ETFs right now.) (That's a joke.)

Steve Weiss thanked Jim Lebenthal for nudging him into GM, "because it adds humility to my portfolio, so, not everything's going up."

Weiss said he sold F and bought PRTS.

Innovation, Tim Cook-style

We're the first to admit we missed this story by at least a month.

And now that we're kind of up to speed on it, we're a bit amazed it hasn't gotten more attention.

In October, apparently, someone at Tim Cook's Apple Inc. thought it would be a great move to commandeer the Charlie Brown Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas specials for Apple TV.

Because even though Americans have watched these instant classics for generations on network TV and come to know them as shared Americana, Apple Inc. literally has more money than any company in the world, and they'd really like the stock to get a STREAMING multiple.

Good. Grief.

Oh, sure, the rights to these programs (the sellers aren't blameless here) were sold with the caveat that Apple TV was going to have to air these specials during a brief window for free. (That's what moms and dads want to do, figure out how to do a free Apple TV trial 3 times in a 6-week span to have the opportunity to watch these shows with their kids or grandkids.)

There actually was a healthy amount of outrage and a petition that prompted Apple to allow these specials to be aired on PBS stations. However, that decision didn't occur until Nov. 18, meaning the Thanksgiving special didn't necessarily appear on cable TV schedule grids. (In other words, a lot of people had no idea it was airing.)

The reporting on this debacle has been light. NBC News appears to have gotten the story wrong in late October, stating "Apple bought the rights in 2018, according to the The (sic 2 The's) Hollywood Reporter." We clicked on that Hollywood Reporter story, and it appears Apple bought the rights to future Peanuts material in 2018, and the Apple announcement in October 2020 about the existing holiday specials implied those rights were recently acquired.

With TV/movie production emerging as probably the biggest growth industry of the 2010s and all kinds of California dollars being thrown into these ventures, it's a massive seller's market, and one wonders what other broadcast programming will be bought by either Apple Inc., Walt Disney, Amazon.com or Netflix or Facebook or someone else. "It's a Wonderful Life." Joe Biden's inauguration. The Super Bowl. The Oscars. "Sesame Street."

The tech giants have taken a lot of heat in Washington, mostly frivolous complaints about red-herring issues related to both sides of the politics of Donald Trump. Here's a reminder that there's some old-fashioned greed out there, too.

Doc: ZM could be ‘next MySpace’

On a fairly quiet Halftime Report on Tuesday (12/1) in which panelists expressed optimism but seemed to agree that there might not be much gas in the tank short term, Judge said Ed Yardeni is bullish but concerned that "so is everyone else."

Judge also said Tom Lee is predicting a "very strong finish to 2020."

Jon Najarian outlined a lengthy assessment of ZM, casting doubt on future "corporate use" of its products, and stated, "You worry whether or not it's the next MySpace. I mean, is it the next MySpace? It could be." Josh Brown offered a rebuttal about how Zoom outperformed some tech giants in delivery of its service.

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