." from bloomberg world headquarters in new york city, good afternoon, everybody. here is what we are watching at this hour. fed minutes show for going and notl interest rate hike was a unanimous decision. we will hear from james bullard in a few minutes for an exclusive interview on the fed rate hike timeline and the state of the u.s. economy. and could apple shares be worth double their current valuation? we speak to the analyst who made that call. with a just one hour away from the close of trading on this wednesday. remy: i'm looking at the graphs right now. we saw a leg down right after

fomc minutes did come out, but right now, we are back where we started at that 2:00 p.m. mark and then some earlier. the nasdaq is also back where it was about an hour ago, of by 1% or so. the dow, similarly, the laggard of the day, but still up about .3%. with all that said, we are also on track to break two days of falls we saw on monday as well as tuesday. let's take a look also intraday on the dow just to see how exactly we fared. you can see that for the most part during the day, we had in nearly as much, hitting the 17,700 mark on the dow. 2:00 p.m. mark, you can see a leg down and another letdown, but at the 3:00 p.m. mark, we are pretty much right back where we started an hour ago. let's also look at what is happening with the 10-year yield.

details impacting bonds as well as savings, so we can see yields are taking a leg up right now. the yield is up 51.75%. it had been up by as much as 1.70 8%. let's also take a look at what is happening with fed funds futures. this is the pricing in of a potential rate rise, pretty much every single month. see a rate rise go higher than 50% until about 54% chance so with a or so, but from september onward, we see a little bit more of a 1% fall or so. the dollar? bout we did see quick moves there. remy: we did see a move down after the minutes did come out. after 2:00, you can see that fall, but we are also right back where we were about an hour ago with the dollar down by about

since october,t staying negative against a basket of currencies. let's look at oil. best day in three weeks. lower stockpile as well as optimism about a potential boostingtroduction that. carol: mark crumpton has more from our news desk. mark: don blankenship was sentenced to a year in prison for his role in the deadliest u.s. mine disaster in 4 decades. blankenship was ceo of massey energy when one of the company mines exploded in 2010, killing 29 people. turnout for tuesday's primary in wisconsin exceeded expectations unofficially. percent,as nearly 47.4

easily topping the 40% predicted by election officials. voters came out in the biggest numbers since at least 1972 when george mcgovern won a crowded democratic primary and richard nixon was seeking a second term. hundreds of residents of flint michigan filed a racketeering lawsuit targeting governor rick snyder. it stems from the lead contamination of the city drinking water, one of many suits that came from the decision to switch flint from the detroit water system to the flint river in april 2014. there has been no comment yet from governor snyder toss office. the obama administration is transferring leftover money from the largely successful fight the zikabola to combat virus. the cdc is focused on vaccines, treating the infected, and combating the mosquitoes that spread it. global news 24 hours a day powered by our 2400 journalists

and more than 150 news bureaus around the world. carol: thank you so much. we are now going to head to , who was there with the st. louis then president, james bullard, who is, of course, a voting member louis fed -- with the st. fed president. kathleen: thank you so much. i would like to welcome our television audience to our interview with the president of the st. louis fed. james: thanks for coming today. kathleen: breaking news from the fed -- there was a heated debate in the meeting in march about moving on debates are not. some people are surprised that the push to make the rate height ashike was still as heated

it was. what does it tell us about the potential debate at the end of this month? bullard: did the members -- did the minutes say it was heated? we read the back and forth. you did not all agree. bullard: people are passionate about their positions, and they should we. i do not think we actually get that much out of the minutes compared to what you just read in interviews and speeches that people give. you pretty much know everybody's .iew the same types of arguments are made at the meeting, and it goes both ways. people cite different data and so on and have different interpretations of current events. kathleen: there's a lot of concern about the impact of the global market turmoil. debate about inflation -- were temporary factors boosting core inflation or not? but you are right -- there were

some important data points. you, for example, said that a strong april jobs report could make the case for a move in april. we got the april jobs report -- good payrolls, participation rate rose, but we saw the average weekly hours did not rebound. there was concern about average hours worked in the concern they are sending about the strength of the economy. what is your view on that report? bullard: i thought it was a good report, but it is consistent with a long string of 30 good reports. even blips one way or another are relatively minor. you are basically seeing steady improvement in u.s. labor markets. i think the issue is probably growth more than labor markets. growth has been somewhat tepid. first-quarter growth, tracking now being marked down.

how much of that is residual seasonality? i think that will be a good topic for the fed meeting. kathleen: the atlanta fed production had been well over 2% just over a month ago, but now it's down. bullock: you have this puzzle where the first quarter seems to be weaker and if you do a seasonality analysis, you will get extra seasonality in the first quarter, so what is going on? you do not want to see 1%.t-quarter gdp under bullard: it's very tough. kathleen: does this mean that all things considered, this meeting is not one where there will be a debate over the april increase as much as over the june increase? >> i do not want to prejudge the meaning. we will see how people feel when they come into the meeting, how they assess the data.

it is fair there has not been all that much data since the march meeting. it has been mixed in various ways. you could draw your own conclusion from that, but i kind of do not want to be in the business of trying to predict what the committee may or may not do. kathleen: what is your sense that go seems to me you are someone who would have been ready to make the case for april, but i really am curious -- something shifted. slowlypropriate, go strategy that janet yellen described so well a couple of weeks ago, just last week at new york economics club -- that this is something that slows you down even more. bullard: the committee has had a go slow strategy. even before the first rate hike in december, we said it would be gradual and data dependent. we are trying to follow through on that in an appropriate way. in a way, this is kind of

hairsplitting as to what gradual really means and exactly how fast. i think we have been very we want toin saying be slow and data dependent. that is one reason i do not to really try to predict exactly when the committee will go. you want to wait for data to accumulate and let the meeting unfold as appropriate, and i think that is where we are. kathleen: what is most important to you? what are you watching? inflation expectations, payroll? been concerned about inflation expectations, and when i talked in february about the floor, that got me kind of nervous, and i started to flag of those. they have recovered probably back to december levels, and i find that comforting, but you

would actually like to see those numbers even somewhat higher than they are today because they were somehow the credibility of and its ability to hit a long-run inflation target of 2%. kathleen: but you are still watching bpce over the regular c po? year-over-year inflation numbers have been stronger. definitely coming up toward the 2% target, just as the committee predicted, so this is one of the crosscurrents. slow growth, but you do seem to get inflation moving back toward the target. kathleen: we will continue our conversation with jim bullard, president of the fed here in st. louis. i am kathleen hays. this is "taking stock" on bloomberg radio and television.

carol: looking forward to more of that conversation. still ahead, we will head back to st. louis. find out when james bullard the next great height. kathleen digging into some of the details about fed policy. this is "bloomberg markets." ♪

carol: quick check on the markets. we are pretty much holding on to highs. let's look at the numbers. we are looking at a 1.3 percent gain on the nasdaq for a gain of 64 point. the s&p 500 up 17 points.

at thelso take a look dollar, erasing its gain after touching the weakest level against the yen since october 2014. oil, though, surging, having its test day since march 2016. we have seen some movement back into oil. joining us right now is joe weisenthal. what was your major takeaway of what we got? joe: i think it was interesting. there has been this huge debate about where the fed is on its inflation target. he says he is comforted by what he sees in the direction of inflation, also market-based measures of inflation. i think it is really important because that seems to be the last piece of the puzzle. we are starting to see more signs, some of the measures are taking up, especially if you look at some of the non-headline measures of inflation.

as long as that is building, i think it's going to be hard for the fed to keep pushing up that hike too far in the future. jim bullard pass comments -- how does that contrast or confirm what we are getting? joe: i thought that was kind of interesting what he said, not really much new information. i think his view is reflected by some of the markets, which we had this fairly dovish yellen commentary recently. the market has been pushed out into expectations of when the fed is going to hike. going back to the march meeting, i think he might be right. how much fresh information there is, really. healthy is this for the market, that we get the minutes saying there was debate, fed speakers coming out with this comments, hawkish comments, janet yellen going up ease by peace through everything -- how healthy is this for the market? joe: sometimes people worry

about divisions at the fed or the idea that janet yellen or whoever is the chief at the time, has lost the fo in c, but i do not think people are concerned at this point. you will always have hawks and doves. it does not seem like the split is dramatic enough that people that the janet yellen, stanley fischer, people really driving policy will somehow lose the plot in some ways. we get so much information at this point. joe: there's a question about if there is too much transparency. all of the fed speakers, i think after all these years, people are struggling to know what to think of. i think people are concerned, but you look at where the fed is on its goals, and it is hitting its employment target. inflation has not been a huge problem, so it does not look

like they are doing too badly. carol: if you had a question for jim bullard, what would you ask him? joe: you are putting me on the spot. i would have to think about that. carol: we are heading back to st. louis in just a moment. joe wiesenthal is sticking with are going to kathleen hays to continue her conversation. kathleen: thank you so much. i want to welcome back our viewers for a very special interview with jim bullard, president of the federal reserve bank of st. louis. so, jim, i want to get back to this slowdown in gdp. you have a 2% to 2.5% gdp forecast. is there concern on your part that the economy is stalled out a bit early in the year? bullard: i would not be inclined to give it that interpretation at this point, especially with the fairly strong jobs reports that we have had.

probably again, residual uncertainty or residual seasonality in the first quarter of the year, which we have seen quite a bit over the last 20 years. if it is like past two years, that will be made up in later quarters. kathleen: how does the global economy look to you now? what indicators do you watch most closely? jim: i do not think it has been -- i have not added to my weight on global factors compared to what i had before. i have not really seen anything thatwould indicate to me this is particularly salient at this point compared to what it has been over the last several years. you can talk about china risk, but we live with china risk every day.

you can talk about the dollar, but the dollar is about where it has been, about zero. big movetainly was a in the dollar in the second half of 2014, and those effects do ripple through the economy, but those are fading at this point. our that has been that as those effect fade and as the effects of the decline in oil prices -- as those fade away, that inflation will go back to target and that is, in fact, exactly what is happening. reports: if the jobs remain strong, would you urge a rate hike at april, june, whichever it might week, if inflation expectations are still low? theyrd: they are low, but are the same as they were at the december meeting. i felt confident they would head higher and inflation itself was going to head higher, and then i would be happy to advocate for a rate increase.

kathleen: how would you gauge that? i would have to assess the situation when we get to it. kathleen: what are you looking for in terms of inflation more broadly? when do you think we will get to the point where we say "that's it?" up.ard: inflation is moving and a lot of these measures. core cpi is above 2%. the dallas fed has moved up close to 2%. core inflation, 1.7%. i think we are going to see higher inflation going forward, and it's not that those are such bad numbers. they are close to 2%, but that is in the context of a policy rate that is still very close to zero, so i think the idea has we continue to see

stronger price movements, that we should probably continue to normalize the policy rate. i guess i am thinking of homer jones. we have markets responding to the fed and the fed responding to the markets, janet yellen noting the markets have acted as an auto stabilizer, sort of. the market reaction provided some extra stimulus. does it concern you that the fed is saying two interest-rate increases? is there still a disconnect between the markets and what the fed is trying to communicate? bullard: there has been a longtime disconnect and i have worried. i have said so many times, that i'm worried that gets reconciled in some kind of violent way where there's a lot of turmoil caused in markets because of changing expectations of what the fed is going to do.

i think the committee gives its in what theynt think will happen and where they think the policy rate will go. it's not clear to me why the pricing should be very different aom that unless markets have much more pessimistic view of the u.s. economy, which is certainly something you could if you look at the forecast in the private sector of how the economy is going to evolve, those are materially different from what the fed inks. i'm not quite sure why we need this constant sort of disconnect. kathleen: simple kind of language question. people talk about a live meeting, and markets seem to think you're going to argue for a market rate increase. should the markets understand now that the fed saying it is a live meeting, if they look at any meeting, simply means it is within their purview to make a

rate move regardless of if there is a press conference? that the fed can just call a press conference last minute? is that something people should understand right now, that that is within the fed capabilities? bullard: of course it is within the fed has capabilities. specialactually had meetings and moved at those meetings. you can do a lot of things. on not saying i'm planning that or anything, but the committee certainly reserves the right to make a move at any time. kathleen: and a live meeting is just a meeting where you can debate, right? bullard: well, we debate at all meetings. kathleen: we are going to continue this conversation with jim bullard. we are live at the federal rerve bank of st. louis. we will continue on bloomberg radio to ask more about. plots,

changes at the fed, the role of markets, and where he sees the economy heading, not just in the u.s. but around the world. let's send it back to bloomberg television with cal massar. i'm kathleen hays. this is "taking stop" on bloomberg radio -- this is "taking stock" on bloomberg radio. is stille weisenthal with us. i was just looking at equity markets. it looks like we got another bump up. we could have our first act to back increases in the s&p. latenot seen that february. should investors read anything into this? i thought that last question was really interesting about what a live meeting is. he said all meetings are live meetings. it's pretty clear people do not really seem to believe that.

for now, people only seem to think that the rate hikes that a press conference -- in a press conference meeting. i remember when the fed could surprise us in the early morning. have they lost that capability? joe: it is possible. seem to beal banks more interested. others think being predicable at clear, hammering independence -- it does not seem like that kind of bad at all. carol: we've got to run. thank you so much. still ahead, biotech. we will take a look at that as we head to the nasdaq. ♪

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carol: from bloomberg world headquarters in midtown manhattan, you are watching bloomberg markets. let's start with a check of the

headlines. mark crumpton has more from the news desk. mark: hillary clinton has unleashed a new round of attacks against her rival, bernie sanders after a string of primary defeats including last night in wisconsin. she is questioning him on his truthfulness, his readiness for office, and his ties to the democratic party. kasich will be talking about the strategy for continuing his presidential campaign and battling for the nomination at the convention in cleveland the summer. the only contest governor kasich has one so far was in his home state, yet he continues to compile a modest number of delegates that could be crucial .n a tight race the world health organization says diabetes is on the rise. aging and population growth drove a fourfold increase in worldwide cases over the last quarter.

422 million people were affected in 2014. diabetes group around the world but increased in africa, the asia. east and an icon of country music is dead -- merle haggard celebrated outlaws and demonstrated an abiding sense of national pride. bout ofh follows a pneumonia. haggardlegend merle died today on his 79th birthday. dayal news 24 hours a powered by our 2400 journalists in more than 100 d news bureaus around the world. carol: markets are closing in just about ready minutes. abigail doolittle is live at the nasdaq where she is looking at two movers starting with ebay. : ebay is one of the top performers on the nasdaq today bullish comments saying

the proprietary work suggests that first quarter is tracking ahead of consensus. i reached out to an analyst who is an industry expert. his thought here is the stock is theing on the fact that company is launching a shipping store that could close the the stock is bullishly back above its moving average. and other outlier i know you have been looking at -- listen to this. >> every great short, there have been shorts that were run over in the beginning. at this price, if you have never looked at it before, we saw some capitulation after they lowered the numbers. then people probably just that i don't want to open this anymore. , it is aprices today

little lower. and i know you have been watching this as well. bearish there's a high-interest short on tesla but just yesterday, elon musk tweeted he thinks it is probably unwise to short shares of tesla. ,hen we look at the stocks ipo elon musk has a point. the stock is up more than 1000%. here with thends hugely successful launch of the model three and study order demand for the model s. this could be a tough one to short and patients would be needed. about 10d tesla is up points so far this year. the latest fomc minutes show

policymakers debating an interest rate hike at their recent meeting. the odds of an interest rate hike are currently at 19.6%. for some insight, let's bring in diane swung for more reaction. minutes, you follow the fed and you know the market, anything that may be different from a bunch of fed officials? you saw the division about timing. it's going to be june, it looks like and the pushback to say april would make us look more urgent than we are when the fed reduced the number of rate hikes from two to four for the year. the april meeting does not have the press conference and forecast accompanying it, so you

would have to put chair yellen in the position of calling a special press call to explain why the fed moved in april or you might have the fed trying to creep rates up to quickly. the only time china has not been focused on was right after the fed delayed and they did not talk about it as much but the interesting issue is how much chair yellen emphasized china as a risk. important that you saw her isolate that risk when you see other people who clearly do not see as much of a risk and that division. i think chair yellen will dominate that for a reason, but it is interesting. jim bullard from the fed was talking about the live

meeting. we assume the fed won't do anything but he said all meetings are live meetings and we need to remember that. that's right and he's making a point the fed wants to get to. every meeting like in the past, the fed could move or lower rates. they want to get the sense that it is not just anchored to press conferences. but when things have not then terrific, i think it's more wise when you are splitting hairs that six weeks is not going to matter in the scope of things and i think it's important to have it with a press conference into 2017, we should expect the fed to move if of press conferences, nothing else, just to get markets used to the, -- that it could be any meeting they move at.

what is going to be historic is not that there are two dissents by presidents who wanted to move in april but everyone who has the biggest voice at the fed is now a woman. carol: what is holding back the fed the most at the moment? they're watching inflation and we got that, but when you hear someone like janet yellen, they cover so many other things like the global environment. do you think needs to happen to see the fed be comfortable about raising rates? some are already comfortable with raising rates. i think she would like to see more persistent wage acceleration. there's an issue that is interesting in terms of her experience in the 1990's. she saw what it was like when you allowed unemployment to go below what full employment was in an inflation environment. she has been validated by that view in recent months and sees

an opportunity to engage the unemployed and underemployed and the way she couldn't. christine lagarde and the comment that we have seen improvements but it has not been enough. that is showing up in our election cycle as well. all of that combined is where chair yellen is. other members of the fatter much less concerned about getting to does levels of employment and are concerned about what they see as dry tender in an environment where wages accelerate with little productivity growth. you will see interesting debates emerge at the fed this year. take: what is it going to to see more productive economic growth? diane: i think the fed does not have as many tools to cure what ails us. i think we need fiscal reforms

and tax reforms and responsible andastructure development long-term sustainability, which we don't hear any of the presidential candidates talk about. issues and il think there are some real problems. we will see gdp that is weak in the first quarter. some of that is a measurement problem and we have not funded them in a way to keep up. retail sales are antiquated compared to how we consume our goods. move to the second half of the year. what does it look like? average.think 2% on we will continue to see gains in employment. i think it will dip down to about 4.6 percent and that is welcome news because that will be on the heels of increase participation, which is much

needed at this date of the game. i think it's going to be overshooting again in terms of what they are doing in 2017. carol: always great to get your perspective. coming up, what we are going to talk about apple getting another vote of confidence from wall street. we'll talk with the analyst to just initiated coverage of the -- we will have the details when we come back. ♪

carol: this is bloomberg markets. i'm carol massar. it's time for look at some of

the biggest business stories in the news right now. it may value the second largest stock exchange operator at 1.8 billion dollars, more than twice the expected valuation. an error in trading software stopped its shares from opening property -- properly. a class-action suit has been filed against folks wygant coming in u.s. district court from the northern district of illinois. ity alleged they were fraud by the devices and diesel cars. the controversy over the panama papers has spread to canada. the royal bank of canada says it has a team investigating and documents suggest number of politics -- politicians and celebrities used offshore accounts to hide their fortunes.

apple is near its high of the day after there was a strong i rating and price target of $150 a share. joining us is the analyst behind that call. lots of folks are concerned about apple's slowing growth. yourus the thinking behind recommendation. guest: they're smart phones being created in the average price of an apple phone is $700 versus android at 300. all of the wraparound create apple walk-ins. our survey says the average owner stays in the ecosystem for eight years which sounds like a subscription business to us. especially in a fickle consumer world where people move from product to product.

is that your thinking? i would say it's about the global platform and apple having the dominant, wealthy aspect of that, but it has margins higher than the walt disney company and earnings higher than facebook. if you strip away the hardware label, it would trade at $200 a share. what about global growth? that's a big part going forward. about 40% of the world does not have smartphones yet. that adds up to the million units to apple. carol: even though they are considered the higher end? we talked about the chinese domestic makers and less expensive phones that are out there. where do you see the chinese consumer ending up? saw, in the first

quarter, china was the primary driver. people by apple and then android has the lower and price phone. is often people adopted cheaper smartphones and the average american uses it 20 times a day. as you use it more, you say you want everything to work and you wanted to be seamless and take it into a store and they pay more the second time. carol: why do this now? i think what is happening is there's an intersection between social and mobile. i think there's a real opportunity to buy apple cheap while hardware guys are focused on device sales.

carol: what about other products? does it not need to diversify? what we have found is a halo effect and all say they are likely or highly likely to buy another apple product. carol: which is what i did. guest: some of these super fans have six vices. carol: do you want to see other products in their ecosystem? guest: i like some of the software things they are doing around privacy. they are going to get a percent of that. issue of thehis battle with the justice department that seems to be solved at this point, are the brand taking a hit? apple got the best of both worlds.

it did not have to litigate and let people know we're not going to rake into your phone. interesting to hear your thinking behind that call. thank you very much. initiating coverage on apple today with a strong buy. the close of trading is about 12 minutes away. the s&p 500 having its best day since march 11. the nasdaq is up 1.5%. could be the first back-to-back 1% increases we have seen since late february. ♪

carol: this is bloomberg markets. markets close in just about 10 minutes and now ramy inocencio has your markets check. ramy: now at session highs after

after the fomcn meeting came out. look at where we stand, the s&p 500 is pushing higher and the nasdaq is up by 1.5%. look at the nasdaq right now intraday. high for the whole entire year. if we hold on to that, we will be at a high for this year. take a look at commodities and with oil. oil seeing its best day in three 5.25%.up by more than some optimism about a potential

freeze in reduction from opec member countries. let's look at what is happening with halliburton and baker hughes. u.s. government suing over the deal it wants to do because it takes out of competition 23 services and products within the oil industry. both companies saying they will contest that action. allergan, pfizer right now is the biggest lift on the s&p, up by nearly 5% and at session highs, its biggest jump since october. that in version rule actually will not affect the sale of allergan's generic is this company. looking at shire and backs alto, the deal will stay in tact.

shire up by 4.5%. sinceseeing its highest january. all in all, we are at session highs. we will see what happens with all the drug companies. let's get more on the markets with the release of the latest fed minutes with danny berger joining us. you have been looking at short interest at the highest level since 2008. we are coming out of two recoveries from corrections and that label -- that level is persisting very high and people are asking our people more pessimistic and the market itself would lend you to believe? carol: why is this happening? guest: you have pesky problems that keep coming back like global growth and we have the fed saying we are still

concerned about global growth. a lot of people are not willing to commit to this market. cory johnson and i like it when the contrarians are out there. some are saying this could be good. this. the uber bowls love s&phighest level for the for the year. which couldave this frighten some people. happens if there is a short squeeze. that could push this even higher. people look at this and say look at the short interest rates here. this means the rally has legs. carol: anyone making a bearish case out of this? guest: when i spoke to the

analysts that bank of america, they said before we had the rally off the february lows, they said we are going to have these shorts. who knows if we are going to see that anytime soon? one of the interesting ones is a study done by jpmorgan. they looked at short versus long positions when the s&p is tilted one way or the other. , ithe current environment means people are more likely to react to positive news. that means the market is going to go up higher when there is good news. when there's not so good news, the movement may go down, but not as much as it would go up. carol: anytime we hearken back to 2008, we wonder if there is

any kind of similarity, but the environment is different. guest: investors realize that, but it's a very strange environment that we find ourselves in which is why the short interest looks the way it does. carol: i'm glad you pointed that out for us. that is going to do it for this hour of bloomberg markets. miss" coming up. up .6% on the dow jones industrial average. and check it out, we've got a 1% gain on the s&p. this is bloomberg markets. ♪

scarlet: we are moments away from the closing bell. joe: i'm joe weisenthal. alix: i'm alix steel.

[closing bell ringing] closing hire,cks rising the most in almost a month. joe: the question is "what'd you miss?" scarlet: the s&p 500 remains stuck in a 15% range swinging between the highs and lows of that range. we have a technical outlook. cost u.s.has companies $18 billion between 2010 and 2015? we dig into the pricing of corporate bonds. alix: and we will go to amsterdam to discuss how it could influence the limning runs brexit vote. scarlet: a temp down and volatility may be making a comeback