and future descendents with fiat they can't do that anymore. charles: 20 seconds to go. some critics won't go away. they are talking the energy, and for folks on defense. i won't put you on the spot, how do they ignore the noise? >> don't know anyone who has studied bitcoin for a thousand hours who is against it. the more you learn about it the more you understand money in general, the more you appreciate this is the best engineered money and you want a piece of it. you want bitcoin when you want it, not when you need it. charles: you have been fantastic on this. you never wavered. people who listen to you were worried big time. have a great weekend. >> you too. charles: over to ashley webster. ashley: thank you, appreciate

it. good afternoon. we begin with fox market alert. as we kick off the final hour of trade as investors expressed concerns over inflation, cautious ahead of the fed meeting and markets pricing in 99% chance of a pause. traders will be listening to fed chair jerome powell's press conference, with any hint of a rate caught timeline. don't hold your breath on it. what else is driving the declines? big tech is another one taking a breather under pressure for rising bond yields. microsoft, amazon, salesforce, cisco, ibm, all those names are lower at this hour. microsoft down 2%. let's look at the creative

software player adobe, on the nasdaq and s&p after providing week quarterly revenue guidance. that will always do it, stock down 14% or close to it. adobe taking a bit of a beating today. with today's retreat, the s&p and nasdaq dipped into negative territory. look at the dow, pretty much on the even line, it will be negative for the week and the s&p down slightly. what is going on? let's get straight to the floor show. joining me is jpmorgan asset management chief strategist david kelly. great to see you. as we head into the st. patrick's day weekend, is luck finally running out for the markets? or is this a temporary breather as we went to the fed meeting next week? >> it is a tricky time for markets. there is a risk.

we've seen somewhat higher-than-expected readings. the risk, the summer of economic projections, we can only take 19 members of the committee, the supply forecast, only four of them have to change their minds from three rate cuts this year to four rate cuts. that is scaring markets a little bit, the fed might back off of its timetable but if you zoom out of this, the story is really good. what we've got is an economy that remains strong, they gradually come down slowly. if you take cookies out of the oven and are cooling, not as quickly as we want. that is what is going on. it is cooling down but not as fast as investors want and that caused a little bit of nervousness. ashley: are i am thinking about now is cookies.

you say bar some sort of shock, environment or geopolitical, no reason we can't continue this upward momentum. >> that's right. we are in a post-business cycle, doesn't mean the economy is not vulnerable, of course it is. we settled into the groove and 27 consecutive months where the unemployment rate has been at or below 4. 0%, first time since the 1960s that has happened. inflation towards 2%, the economy is growing close to 2% this year. it is trucking along at a healthy pace. unless something shocks that we don't see huge gains in the bond market with a healthy economy, the stock market could add on some gains here if we have a calm environment, good growth and inflation coming up.

ashley: it is sticky but with labor market relatively tight, wage growth is propping it up. it's hard for the fed to get to their target? >> you have to look beyond this. i know the immigration situation is chaotic, but one of the remarkable things is had 2 million people received work authorizations, and they are beginning to flood into the labor market. with leisure and hospitality and restaurants, day care, that is filling up some of that. that's preventing wage growth going up more. it's coming in normal fashion with an immigrant surge going on and it is chaotic. the way it is happening is wrong. and they are holding down wage

growth holding down inflation. neil: profits are pretty flat last year. a lot of analysts say if this event next, it will pick up. you are not so convinced, are you? >> analysts must be smoking something stronger because if it's coming down to 2%, that's 4. your sales can grow. it is 4%. it's very hard to get double digit profit growth with 4% revenue growth. that is okay. it can still support stock market gains, some stocks are overpriced also. ashley: it seemed like for a couple years we were talking about can the fed manager soft landing or hard landing.

people believed both were possible. has the fed so far been able to make this a soft landing, haven't seen any sort of deep recession by any means. and the fed done a good job? >> i don't think they need any credit for this. it didn't cause a spike in inflation. that had to do with the pandemic policy response ukraine. it had to do with the backing of inflation. there's only one mechanism they could have done that. the only way the federal reserve can slow inflation is slowing down, slowing the economy down. the economy sped up the second half of last year. no evidence at all the federal reserve manages to slow the economy down. it didn't slow the economy down, they were there when inflation came down. they are doing a decent job, a good job in terms of communicating.

abnormal interest rates distorts financial markets, it's a bad idea, i don't think they deserve as much blame or credit as they get. lauren: 1 will give them nothing. there you go. have yourself a great st. patrick's day weekend. does a four day work week actually work? after one year of trying a 32 hour week schedule, with no loss of pay, companies in the united kingdom are sharing the results. according to the 61 companies who took part in the study, 89% will keep the structure in place for at least a year, with 50% seeing a positive effect on reducing staff turnover.

bernie sanders of vermont wants to bring that philosophy to the united states, holding a hearing yesterday on his four day workweek bill. when pressed about the impact to businesses by fox business's hillary vann, senator sanders had an interesting reaction. hillary, bernie met his match, tell us about it. >> reporter: has this novel idea that everyone would get a three day weekend every weekend. republicans say that would be a business killer because it would require businesses to pay people for 8 hours they are not working every week. we tried to ask senator sanders how this would work and if businesses can really afford it. can i talk about the 32 hour work week? it seems like, fox business. seems like democrats want businesses to be taxed more. >> really?

is that what they think? excuse me. >> reporter: didn't get to ask you a question. >> hold it, okay. we held a hearing on the 32 hour work week, because what we have seen is over the last 50 years, despite a huge increase in worker productivity, almost all of the wealth has gone to the top one%, 60% to people living paycheck to paycheck. many of our people are exhausted. we work the longest hours of any people in the industrialized world. it is time for change. >> reporter: it seems democrats want businesses to be taxed more. pay their workers more, lower prices, pay people not to work. >> i would like to see -- >> reporter: how are businesses going to survive that? that is the question but how can businesses survive those proposals? >> jeff baeza an effective tax rate lower than the average worker, we have a problem in system.

billionaires have got to start paying their fair share of taxes. >> reporter: senator sanders singling out jeff beto's but my question was about how everybody else, other business owners are going to survive all these ideas that democrats are pushing but if senator sanders had his way we wouldn't be at work right now. ashley: exactly right. that is not what made this country great. you don't want to mess with hillary. on the other side of the door, go out the window. thank you very much. dollar to reset to close a dozen stores, shoppers are on the hunt for new budget spots. former toys "r quote us ceo jared storage joins us with potential retailers stands to benefit. and it is affecting the sector. we go to the consumer

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ashley: american confidence in the economy fell this month. consumer sentiment index slipping to 76. 5 from last month after reading of 76.9, the reading coming in below expectations and dropped for the second month. it is a sign consumers are less optimistic about the country's economic outlook as we battle inflation and higher interest rates. that said. someone who sat in the c suite

of one of the most popular retail chains in the us, the ceo of storch advisors, great to see you. consumer sentiment slipping a little bit, what is the psyche of the consumer right now? >> look at the numbers we got this we, the cpi inflation went up by 3. 2% year-over-year. retail sales, 1.5% year over year. sales were slower than inflation. the consumer taking home less stuff. when they have that is being stretched, they can purchase necessities like food and other items they must have, not leaving a lot for the fun stuff in life. they are clearly stressed, going deeper in debt. we are starting to see this

play out in real time. neil: what does that mean for the retailer? will they drop prices? the margins are slim as they are? >> that is not the direction most retailers are headed. after the pandemic margins and supply chains were squeezed we are seeing a lot of retailers have negative same-store sales growth which is the number one measure of the health of the retailer. and a slew of retail earnings report, and lowes was negative, nordstrom negative, kohl's was negative, and home depot negative. most retailers have lower sales. somewhere positive, walmart is doing okay, they sell a lot of food to t.j. maxx, tj x is the parent company. sporting goods reporting a slight gain.

people - especially athletic apparel -- continues to be great. amazon continues to grow. most retailers are trying to make the most of every dollar. higher-margin rates, and higher prices, cutting expenses across the board. ashley: dollar tree announcing closure of a thousand stores. what is your take on that? >> the same phenomenon. hard to be a dollar store, sell things for a dollar when inflation is going up. they can't. so they have to raise prices above that. meanwhile the consumers, especially lower income consumers are distressed and that is why we see poor performance out of them. dollar general which is doing better when the report came out, we are seeing a struggle in the value segment because

that's the poorest of americans and really at the bottom is where we see the strain i'm talking about. ashley: one thing we talk a lot about its shrinkage which means theft and that's a big problem for the retailers, is that the issue? in this environment not only are you not selling products, people are taking them for nothing, that is a big hit for retailers. is it still a problem? >> it is a still problem, one of the reasons they closed stores. a lot of inner-city are areas, it pushes you over the fetal -- we are seeing more people agree crime is a problem. there's a long debate. it's hard to d9 all of the organized crime rates the keep getting busted.

something is going on and you see in blue states and red states everybody says this is a problem. hopefully there will be progress. it was treated like a petty crime, companies are rich, let people steal stuff. we are all concerned, and consumers are scared to go shopping. ashley: walmart and target say they will make changes to the self-help, self checkouts to minimize theft, target will unveil the self checkout lines for 10 items or less across the board. seems to be those types of self checkout registers are good for stores, and the problem with

theft, they eventually sold it. >> dollar general, trying to force people to use the human cashier as much as possible. checkout is fantastic, it is slower. you have control when checking yourself out. it is hard sometimes, if you want to be honest which most of us do, hard to get it right. that i scan that one already? human nature, you are on the side of maybe i did, it is clear the theft associated with self checkout is higher than advertised by the companies that sold these devices. everyone is pulling out on self checkout. neil: sounded good in theory but reality, not so much. i could talk to you all day.

thank you, gerald. chicago will turn its river green tomorrow for st. patrick's day and a new innovation is helping bartenders make the beer flow even more freely. we are headed to the land of lincoln for a look at the superspeedy subs. while we do that let's look at how beverage stocks are trading today? are they half empty, half-full, most are half-full. anheuser-busch moving lower, boston beer moving get higher. we will be right back.

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neil: it is st. patrick's day weekend as americans flocked to the pub to celebrate, bars in chicago are going from the bottom up of the new tax system. let's go to schiller park, illinois, tough assignment, take it away. >> reporter: st. patrick's day is sunday. it is green in chicago, in chicagoland, everyone is getting ready. i have a green beer in hand. bar and schiller park is not directly connected to the

bottoms up beer system. look like i'm about to do a dj set this year. this is for you to choose what beer you want. i will put this coors light down so i can show you how it is done. we have these glasses here that have the bar's logo on one side of this magic. i can pop it out right here. i will tell you what to do to throw it in. that's not going to work. the logos facing off, good morning. we are going to pour one of these coors lights hands-free, look at that, six seconds, so cool. the interesting thing, it saves a lot of beer for these bars because bartenders are not perfect. they lose 25% when they do it traditionally so this is saving a lot of money but other than that, while you are hands-free you can do other things, talk to customers, take orders,

check ids. >> every place you go that is fun has a tendency to become not fun because it is too busy and you can't get what you want. we exist and this exists to a lemonade that. >> reporter: i heard you like blue moon so i will fill one up for you. the interesting thing is this is a normal pint glass but where's the action for you? if you want to try one of each of these beers you can do that. you can fill up and do mixtures as well. it will be a fun weekend in chicago. ashley: thank you. if you can put your hand through the screen, i will take it. that is wonderful. great story. interesting stuff. just in time for st. patrick's day weekend. let's move on.

fox business alert for you. shares of digital advertising platform gaining 72%, up $5, $6 to $14. the company reported its core earnings since 2019, guided for double digit growth this year. with various financial institutions including jpmorgan, bank of america and wells fargo to round their bank rewards program. it's paying off. take a look at those shares, they are down 4.3% after the cosmetic retailer provided a disappointing annual profit forecast, blaming higher supply chain costs and increased promotions during a competitive holiday quarter. and also experiencing increased competition from growth.

competition is taking a bite. evmaker rivian is rising a bit today, 3% to 4% after piper sandler stop the weight, the firm raising its price target to $21 per share from 15. shares of us chipmakers falling on the bloomberg report that china is urging its evmakers, in response to us curves on chinese chip technology and expected to hurt on semi, all those moving lower from 1 to 3%. it is a big company you probably never heard of, the ceo will be here to talk about how oil and natural gas prices are affecting the manufacturing

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following revelations both were in a romantic relationship. the latest on that, nathan wade stepping away. to the story, a rough 2024, a mild winter cause reduce demand, prices hurt by the biden administration with the department of energy saying this week it plans to launch a framework by next year to measure and verify greenhouse gas emissions, natural gas exports. one company affected by natural gas and oil prices, they use these products to make plastic. in a fox business exclusive, peter, great to have you here. should be and is, how is business right now? >> good question to start with. i would say business is

starting to improve especially when we are talking about a business environment in europe, us has always been steady in its development but other regions were a challenge last year. ashley: you made quite a few acquisitions. you've got a 35% stake in the saudi arabian based gnat fed and california recycling plant, you opened a new manufacturing facility in houston. what do these moves need for your business? >> let me go back one step, capital markets day, we presented our new strategy centered around two pillars, the first is upgrading our workforce. we digested what we consider the derivatives business and reinforced what we consider in

that space, the acquisition of 35% share in saudi arabia. the second strategy is building off the solutions business. they are extreme going into the sorting of plastic waste as well as downstream and making sure we have different solutions, mechanical recycled solutions that we can provide our customers. and the strategy is of creating, stepping up performance culture and we are moving from a singular focus towards a more enhanced focus on value creation. ashley: and to create a greener

business. what does that involve? >> that's the second or third we have over the strategy. we believe the future and a big part of the growth of the future will be circular growth so the company that has been strong in terms of technology, research developments, we have leveraged our opposition, the company has been based on nobel prize winners, one in germany and one in italy. we have that as part of our dna, we developed a new technology which is a collateral -- catalytic recycling technology to take different recycled plastic waste, go through that technology, that process and of

feedstock to produce new plastics for circular solutions. the second thing we are doing is we have an advanced focus to a low carbon footprint so we have advanced articulated targets to reduce our own emissions, by 42%. in addition to that we want to reduce emissions coming out of the usage of our products. by 30%, that's in the space that we are transforming our old refinery in houston towards leveraging the assets to be part of the strategy. ashley: lastly, peter, who is better at recycling?

i believe europe has a better recycling mentality, but is it getting better in the united states? >> i think with the right regulatory environments, acting as an enabler, i believe we can encourage people to recycle more. i've seen numbers from the epa that around 8% or 9% which is low compared to europe, around 40% right now but we have a good regulatory environment. i'm hoping we have consistent regulatory environment, in the context on a global basis, being negotiated. ashley: we need to recycle. thank you for joining us. best of luck.

>> thank you very much, ashley. ashley: now this. everyone is electrical on st. patrick's day. today's countdown closer is here to share his luck of the irish stock picks, isn't that great? the island etf, it's ticker, is up 20% over the past year. we are coming right back. (grandpa vo) i'm the richest guy in the world. hi baby! (woman 1 vo) i have inherited the best traditions. (woman 2 vo) i have a great boss... it's me. (man 1 vo) i have people, people i can count on. (man 2 vo) i have time to give (grandma vo) and a million stories to share. (grandpa vo) if that's not rich, i don't know what is. (vo) the key to being rich is knowing what counts.

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♪ ashley: well, wall street is betting that the senate will punt on banning tiktok in the u.s., but perhaps hoping for a big m and a heyday if bytedance is, indeed, forced to sell its u.s. assets. what's going to happen next? the man who nose ahead of everybody else is -- knows ahead of everybody else is charlie gasparino. >> you mean if the man who thinks he knows who talks to people who think they know, or because no one really knows. [laughter] but based on my intelligence speaking with tech analysts, investment bank bankers in the last 48, 72 hours, it looks like

the senate's going to sit on this for a while, maybe indefinitely. at least that's what wall street's predicting. they think chuck schumer doesn't do anything now, maybe not until the election. this is that what they're saying. dan ives, the noted tech analyst, ashley, who i'm sure you know gives it a 25% chance of being signed by schumer or. he's pretty good, and he's got good contacts. i actually have a different view. i think this thing is going to get signed, there's going to be a ban bill put in place in front of president biden soon. he's going to sign it. and then this thing is going to be stuck in litigation as wall street gears up to try to buy it. now, you know, here's the thing, spinning off tiktok, you know, in and of itself the u.s. subsidiary, which is a portion of a bigger global, you know, short video app platform that all the kids love and increasingly entrepreneurs like is not that easy, as you know. it's taking it out and getting the u.s. part separate and sold to a u.s. company, there's going to be some buyers.

oracle, microsoft, steve mnuchin, the former treasury secretary. we'll talk about him in a minute. that's to not oozy. but on top of that, you've got to get the chinese to buy in and to sell the algorithm which is the spyware and the secret sauce of the platform which is, you know, getting people to -- getting your likes, and they know what you want to look at. so that's a very complicated thing. i don't think the chinese are going to go for that even if this thing does get signed. so this is kind of a mess. a likelihood is at some point thing is going to be banned. that's my view. wall street is looking differently. then again, wall street is all about, you know, they looked at this from a different lens. they probably look at this as, you know, a tech company that is, you know, vested heavily, has american wall street back even though it is owned by the chinese. susquehanna's in it, general atlantic is in it and many others. so they're looking at this thing as being low odds being spun if out, and if they do, there's going to be people lining up.

one thing about my knew chin, the former treasury secretary -- mnuchin, he's known to raise money from middle eastern resources including the saudi pif. that poses an issue if this thing is ever sold with cfius in the u.s. you're essentially trading to chinese ownership with potentially the saudis having a look. and i wonder if that -- if he's going to have to do this purely with u.s. money. that's not where his fund raising strength is. it's in the middle east, to be honest with you. so it's interesting, mnuchin getting involved, whether that is going to pass cfius which he basically -- i think he chaired cfius, because the treasury secretary is the chairman of cfius, when he was the treasury secretary for trump. he has not returned our call for comment, but as you know, i guess the best way to put this, ashley, it's a mess. it's going to get messier in the days to come. wall street thinks it's going to be punted by schumer. i think he's going to sign it, but we'll see what happens.

back to you. ashley: very quickly, charlie, on the algorithm, the secret sauce, the spyware, whatever you want to call it, if bytedance doesn't want to give that up and just basically shuts down tiktok, that is a possibility, right? because they don't want that proprietary algorithm in the hands of someone else. >> shutdown here in the u.s. like, you wouldn't be able to get it from the apping i -- apple istore, right? not that i'm a big tiktok user. it's on my phone only because i cover it. i don't use it. [laughter] you don't believe me, right? is that what you're saying? you're laughing -- ashley: i do believe you, a although you said yesterday you were going to do some dancing on it -- >> yes.. i'm going to do polka dancing on it. [laughter] you know, so if you believe the algorithm with. is complex, and this is what i'm hearing from bank ors, i'm not an algorithm expert, embedded in that algorithming is, both the secret sauce that helps curate

the stuff that you want which makes it a powerful app, right? on top of that is the spyware. abby: yep. >> so do -- ashley: how does the chinese extricate the spyware? if you believe there's spyware. they say there's not. there are, there's been understand the of reporting that looks like there is. i mean, buzzfeed did a big story about this not too long ago. ashley: yeah. >> so, you know, pick your poison here. listen, it's a fascinating story. i just want you to know, i broke the story in 2020 that the trump administration putting pressure on bytedance and tiktok and microsoft was interested in the deal. it was a serious merger or purchase, acquisition negotiations, and we're still talking about it now. ashley: yeah. >> and it is interesting, an election year. and still another election year with. ashley: yes, we are. never a shortage of news. and charlie gasparino all over it. thank you, charlie. appreciate it. have a great weekend. appreciate it. okay.

the closing bell ringing, what, about five minutes from now, and all the major averages lower except for the ruth are el 2000, squeaking out a small gain of about a third of a percent. the dow k as we said, in the red. the s&p and nasdaq also look like they're going to lose ground for the week, and the dow as well, in fact. so there you go. all of the major indices down for the week. bitcoin, meanwhile, eased to a one-week low after smashing through records this week, but micro strategies making a bullish move. the crypto-related firm raising capital for a convertible bond offering to buy bitcoin for the second time in less than ten days. interesting, isn't it? micro strategy happens to be our closer's pick, oh, by the way. and joining us now is tactic wealth adviser eddie gifford. eddie, let's begin with bitcoin. okay, it's pulled back a little bit here, but, you know, we have this halving event coming up that a will make it even, you know, speaks to the rarity of

being able to get a bitcoin. and it goes to the demand -- of course, the demand is there thanks to the etfs and everything else. where does bitcoin go, in your opinion? >> i think bitcoin long term goes up. i think that we're in a scenario where there is going to be a lot of volatility around it, and that's just because there's more and more people that are kind of, like, gaveling, but they haven't really committed yet. so we see it starting to go into portfolios because of the spot etfs. we see microstrategy continuously offering these bond offerings to buy more bitcoin, so there's definitely demand. since there's demand, that does have the ability to push bitcoin up. but it is a very, very, very volatile's -- volatile asset, so it's hard to commit big portions of the portfolio because it bounces around like a yo-yo, quite frankly. [laughter] ashley: yes it's not for the paint of heart as you pointed out -- faint of heart.

let's start with nrg, an energy play, of course. >> yeah, nrg. right now if everyone's talking inflation, and a lot of that's because of what's happened with energy. we're seeing more and more demand. and we've got technology demanding it from the standpoint that we had all these cryptocurrency miners that just need more and more and and more energy. and and you're in a situation where it just doesn't seem like it's going to be pulling back at all. so the electrification of vehicles and everything else is going to put more stress the on the grid, and that's just going to push the price up. so if price of energy goes up, we would expect nrg to go up. ashley: makes sense. we mentioned micro strategy. you like that as well. >> e like it, but i like it more as a clayed trade at this -- as a trade at this point. it may end upping with a good -- up being a good strategy.

i think with the volatility you have the ability to take advantage of abnormalities. they buy bitcoin over the weekend, surges during the week, backs off on thursday and friday although it did make a turn-around. we like it as more of a trade just from the standpoint that we feel like it is a dangerous market. it's still a very, very young market, so want to make cure that -- sure that we have our stops and targets in place just in case. ashley: and then we have the etf, kmlm. why do you lie -- like that? >> what we're looking for right now because markets have pretty much gone vertical,ling you look at semiconductors, bitcoin, all these different things, but they're all a running up together. it's all a correlated. so we want something that's uncorrelated in the portfolio, something that might do good if everything else takes a breather. and that's where we like kmlm which is a managed futures etf,

you get exposure to commodities, currencies, global fixed income, and they can go long and short in all of those categories. and what they've shown historically is they've been up when markets have been down. ashley: right. >> so while i'm kind of scared of bonds for insulation because we don't know the inflation story, i think that a managed futures story like this could round out your portfolio really well. ashley: right. a lot of information on this friday afternoon. eddy gifford, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us as we head towards the closing bell on this friday if, wrapping up the week. it's been a down week for the major indexes, as you can see, the dow off 199, 200 points. that means it will end the week in the anything. same story the for the s&p, down .6%, the nasdaq down about 1%. we are out of time. have a great weekend. coming up next, the country and only larry kudlow. ♪ larry: hello, folks, welcome to

"kudlow."