>> from bloomberg's world headquarters in vermont here in london, i'm caroline hyde. taylor: the question is, "what'd you miss?" caroline: the mania for certain individual name is also down. gamestop with its biggest gain

ever, soaring more than 19% during the day and it continues to soar higher in late trading, thanks to influence from elon musk. gamestop is not the only one. pitney bowes and amd rallying. everyone is getting a little bit of love online. all this market hubris comes as the u.s. economy sees rising rates and global covid cases hit one million. we will start on the market side of the story. gamestop remains an epic center of this mania. joe: an extraordinary day, you mentioned a huge move, up 90% at the end. and of course today was the day that all the billionaires felt they had to act cool and participate in the move early in the morning.

one guy bought calls in the morning and that set the action going. and then you add elon musk, and today was kind of a watershed day. romaine: we'll talk a little more about this. i want to draw our attention to the fight to get more vaccines out. getting headlines at the biden administration intends to order 100 million more doses of each the pfizer and moderna vaccine. an effort to speed up shipments to states. so they will purchase 100 million each from the two main vaccine companies. joe: for more on retail mania, let's bring in brandon, the author of a great piece this week on the real story behind wall street and gamestop. how far do they want to ride it? in your view, is there any into this or is it just to keep

pushing harder and harder? brandon: i think they are going to keep going until it breaks. it's an interesting sociological experiment there were all getting to witness here. the loose conglomeration has made this work so far, and how long will they stick together, that is the question. but there is a very clear path with interest remaining high that there is no reason to stop now. caroline: with elon musk, it's funny that he's piling on as well with his support. is this something that

fundamentally viewed investors are going to have to start factoring in brandon: yes, absolutely. it's purely looking at the short interest and saying how far can this go? talking about a gam a vortex that's being created right now. he's staring at the short tape all day and saying there's room to run. there is plenty of room to run, apparently. romaine: we have to point out that some of the names had very low valuations. there was a fundamental case being made at some point here is to why those prices should have been higher. the general idea is people were actually trying to make real

assessment about the value of the stock. now you just have folks tweeting out about a headphone company or something else and everybody piles in. as long as they are not the ones left holding the bag, it doesn't matter. brandon: 100% true. gamestop, blackberry, it started with smart thinking toward this. what you're seeing is basically the masses just jumping on. which is something that is not strange in hedge fund land either. we saw this with fangs for half a decade. how this ins, a lot of people with smaller amounts of money, smaller but vastly growing amounts of money.

people will start saying i don't want to be the last one holding on here. joe: i want to go back to an important point that you made. the gamestop trade which started with the fundamental -- if you watch that initial pace, it looks like something you would see in a zoned events talking about breakup value and underappreciated durability of physical retailing in games. it wasn't always this sort of -- brandon: you are exactly correct. you can go back and read these analyses out there. if it came on a hedge fund letterhead, you look at it and say that's the hedge funds case. that's where it started, and those people, by the way, they were kind of yelled out and ridiculed for a long time on

there, but they stuck to their guns. then once it was proven that they were right -- everyone realized these people were right and there's no turning back now. and they've just been riding it. caroline: in terms of -- is it just read it? the russell 3000 or which portal should they be looking at? brandon: the way i would look at this is what is the easiest part of this that is going to get copycatted? i think it would be the low market cap, heavily short

stocks. people are not going to be sophisticated at this stage of this as they were at the beginning. it will take some time to get back to that was some of these other ones. right now i think you will see people jumping in and trying to copycat without doing all the due diligence. to me that makes sense. that would be the way to look. just general small caps might be -- it could be a play on you can invest in short caps now. that might be the way to get a little bit ahead, just out of a straight copycat move. caroline: what an amazing space to be writing about. many might say it's kind of like betting. you look at the executive shakeups going on over at las vegas sands, still mourning the loss of sheldon adelson, and now

naming a new ceo that will be robert goldstein, incoming chairman and ceo. patrick dumont will be named president and coo and a new cfo is named. romaine: will be talking about this for quite some time. remember the old days, they have ng up. will have a voice from ubs joining us in just a moment to break down what to expect from the fed. this is bloomberg. ♪

romaine: all this talk about gamestop and all these other penny stocks, people forget about jay powell. do you think will see a 200% jump in stocks? joe: i hope the first question is what is he going to do about this outrageous speculation going on. people are wondering about the future of balance sheet policy, people wondering about another taper tantrum and how they're going to stop that before the eventual normalization of policy. who knows, when it could be something more and more people are thinking about, but still more action is expected here. joining us is our guest, thank you so much for joining us. what is the most likely way the

fed could make news tomorrow? >> i think the most likely way would be chair powell directly answering the question with some timing about when there might be a taper. i think his objective is going to be to focus on near-term softness and his caution about the outlook for the economy. is far too soon to even start to talk about tapering. i think that's what they are going for. if he actually puts in a time horizon, it's probably going to make a lot of news. caroline: will there a? tantrum no? matter what when tapering does begin -- a tantrum no matter what? seth: at the december meeting they put in those words, substantial further progress and

then this month, they just started talking about their own personal views about when it might happen. but they all agreed it wasn't going to be anytime soon. so i think their strategy is going to try to make it so well anticipated that the actual news of the taper is not something that causes a reaction in the markets. romaine: we joke a lot about some of the ridiculous mous we seen in stocks lately. i think someone will ask him about market valuations and the general euphoria out there. what does the fed look for when they look at the market and say we need to do something here? or do they just kind of let it play out and say the market will course correct on its own? seth: i don't think they ignore what's going on. they touched on this somewhat obliquely. they said if they came to the conclusion that their monetary policy was fueling financial instability that subsequently would get in the way of them

meeting their macroeconomic objectives, that would be sufficient for them to change course. but that's a pretty high threshold. they would have to include that with their own policy that is fueling things. then they would have to view that it would come back to haunt them. so i think for now they are comfortable enough to watch what is going on and try to figure out how much is fundamental and how much is them. joe: economist seem to be jacking up their forecast for growth this year. people getting more and more optimistic with the vaccine, with the reopening and further stimulus. could you foresee a moment in 2021 in which expectations for when that first rate hike comes get pulled significantly forward, and sadly people are like wait a second, we might be getting to precrisis levels of activity sooner than we expected? seth: absolutely, and the market

will keep testing that question. we've had a forecast for over 6.5% growth this year. a pretty punchy number, but not out of line with some of our competitors. we do think a lot of that increase in gross arts to happen in q2 once covid cases start to fall more aggressively than they have so far. each time we get a new release of payroll reports, consumption spending reports, they are showing five or 6% annualized growth, that's going to cause people to start to scratch your head's a little bit about when that rate hike might be coming. the other narrative, people are going to start to look back at the previous tapering episode and say after the fed got their qe down to zero, how long was it before they started hiking again? that could make people pull forward their expectations for a hike.

caroline: around the growth prospects comes inflation. is that something you are factoring in within 2021, whenever it comes close to the 2% level? seth: we are really on the low side of consensus with our expectations on whether underlying trend of inflation is going. there will be some headlines for year-over-year inflation in april and may when you are building off april and may of 2021. prices have fallen dramatically. doesn't look like a really strong couple of months, but that's really just arithmetic. after that you're looking at pretty soft inflation, one point 7% core inflation for this year. that's on the low side and there's a lot of mechanics that are holding things down. even over time, what we've seen, especially in the last business cycle as the economy recovers, people come back into the labor

market. that's going to go a long way to hold down some of those inflationary pressures. so i don't think a 2% inflation target will be a concern for a few years. romaine: we're getting sort of a change in voting membership at this meeting. do you anticipate that will actually change the outcome of what we get as far as the policy statement? seth: i really don't think that will be first-order important. when they are writing the draft of the statement that will get voted on, the weight normally works is somebody on the staff circulates the draft and then it goes to the chair and then it goes to the whole committee, whether it's a voter or non-voter and everybody gets to weigh in with their views. other time and actually gets to the table and they are voting on things, it's pretty much a consensus document even though there is formally a specific set

of voters. romaine: we will have to leave it there, seth carpenter, chief u.s. economist over at ubs. all eyes tomorrow will be on what jay powell in the fed say. right now all i seem to be on gamestop. caroline: no one's going to be talking about -- tom keene stays up from 2:00 in the morning all the way through, he will be pumped up and happy. who is the next big name to come in on gamestop? joe: it's like we've got everyone. i don't think warren buffett is going to be tweeting about gamestop anytime soon. in terms of billionaires who

tweet, we might be reaching the limits. caroline: meanwhile, let's dig on -- dig in on what is happening with president biden, how they are tackling covid vaccines as well. will discuss the rollout with our health reporter. we've already got the headlines that have rolled out in terms of doubling down on buying the vaccine from dharna m -- fromoderna. is this going to be enough to get into arms quickly enough? here is president biden. >> to dad like to update you on where we are. -- today i would like to update you. tomorrow we are going to begin briefings that will occur on a

regular basis. we are bringing back the pros to talk about covid in an unvarnished way, any questions you have, that's how we will handle them. we will let the science speak. i would like to update you on the aggressive steps we are taking to meet our goal of administering 100 million covid-19 vaccine shots within 100 days. and to ramp up the vaccine supply as fast as we can. this will be one of the most difficult operational challenges we have ever undertaken as a nation. i've said that before, but i must say it again because we're going to do everything we can to get it done. but a lot of things can go wrong along the way. as i've said in the past, i want to give credit to everyone involved in this vaccine effort and the prior administration and the science community and the medical sphere.

for getting the program off the ground. that credit is absolutely do. but it is also no secret that we have recently discovered in the final days of the transition, it was not until the final days we got the kind of cooperation that we needed. once we arrive, the vaccine program was in worse shape than we anticipated or expected. i think the press found the same thing, even before i took office i announced a new vaccination strategy that centers on execution for the whole country. that's why i directed my covid team to go to work immediately on how we could step up the vaccination efforts and the vaccinations, i'm pleased to

announce, the first progress in network today, on day seven of my presidency. first, after review of the current vaccine supply and manufacturing plans, i can announce that we will increase overall weekly vaccination distribution to states and territories from 8.6 million doses to a minimum of 10 million doses. starting next week, that is an increase of 1.4 million doses per week. and you all know that vaccines are distributed to states based on population. so the smaller the state, the less vaccine, the bigger the state, the more vaccine they get. this will allow millions more americans to get vaccinated sooner than previously anticipated. we have a long way to go. the second thing, we are increasing the transparency with states, cities, and tribes and

local partners when it comes to the vaccine supply. this is something we have heard over and over again from both democrats and republicans, state and local leaders, that they need a plan, they didn't know what they had to plan on. jeff had a meeting with the governors on zoom and others and i think we are getting this coordinated in a way that there is increased cooperation and confidence. until now, we've had to guess how much vaccine to expect for the next week and that's what the governors had to do. this is unacceptable. lives are at stake here. this week forward, god willing, we will ensure that states, tribes, and territories will now always have a reliable three week forecast with the supply they are going to get, so they will know three weeks ahead of time what's going to be there in the third week. this will help make sure

governors, mayors, and local leaders have greater certainty around supply so they can carry out their plans to vaccinate as many people as possible. so we will both increase the supply in the short term by more than 15%, and give our states and local partners more certainty about when the deliveries will arrive. these two steps are going to help increase our prospects of meeting art seating the ambitious goal -- meeting or exceeding the ambitious goal of 100 million shots and 100 days. i also want to be clear. 100 million shots in 100 days is not the endpoint. it's just the start. we are not stopping there. the end goal is to beat covid-19. the way we do that is to get more people vaccinated, which means we have to be ready after we hit the goal of 100 million shots in 100 days.

it means somewhere between 60, maybe more or less million people will have it because it requires two shots in many cases. so today i'm directing the covid response coordinator to work with the department of health and human services to increase our total supply of vaccine for the american people. we believe that we will soon be able to confirm the purchase of an additional 100 million doses for each of the two fda authorized vaccines, pfizer and moderna. that's 100 million more doses for each. 200 million more doses than the federal government had previously secured. not in hand yet, but ordered. we are expecting these additional 200 million doses to be delivered this summer. some will begin to come in early summer but by the midsummer,

this vaccine will be there. that increases the total vaccine order in the united states by 50%, from 400 million ordered to 600 million. that's enough vaccine to fully vaccinate 300 million americans by end of summer or the beginning of fall. i want to repeat, it will be enough to fully vaccinate 300 million americans to beat this pandemic. this is an aggregate plan. it doesn't leave anything on the table or anything to chance, as we have seen happen in the past year. i've said before, this is a wartime effort. when i say that, people say wartime? yes. or than 400,000 americans have already died in one year of this

pandemic. more than all the people who died than all the americans who died in world war ii. this is a wartime undertaking. it's not hyperbole. as such, i directed the team to be ready to exercise all the authorities i have under the defense production act and expedite these vaccines. we're using the defense production act to launch full-scale, wartime effort to address the supply shortages we inherited from the previous administration. we will be working across a government with private industry to ramp up production of vaccine , protective equipment, syringes, needles and gloves and masks. everything that is needed to protect, test, vaccinate, and take care of our people. we have already identified suppliers and we are working with them to move our plan forward. the biggest problem, i hope you are all asking me by the end of the summer that you have too

much vaccine left over. you have too much equipment left over. that is not my worry. these aggressive steps to increase vaccine supply, on top of the steps we took last week to get more people vaccinated for free, create more places for them to get vaccinated, and to localize more medical teams to get shots in people's arms. we directed fema, the federal emergency management agency, to stand up the first government supported community vaccination centers and that network is underway. we are working to make vaccines local -- available at thousands of local pharmacies, beginning in early february. that will in normally expand our reach. last week i also signed a declaration to immediately begin reimbursing states 100% for

getting the sites set up and using some of their personnel to administer some of the vaccines. i think that it is something that democrats, republicans and governors alike have called for. we are also expanding testing. this will protect the most vulnerable. and we formalized the health equity task force. to make sure that the people most significantly damaged have access, change, we have to move in a direction for those communities that are hard to get to. the brutal truth is that it will take months before we can get the majority of americans vaccinated. months. the next few months, masks, not vaccines