administered across the united states to increase. vaccine supply is set to double in the next couple of months. the white house press secretary -- >> by the end of may, we will have 400 million doses. by that point, there will certainly be a larger swath of people eligible, who will be able to have access to the vaccine. in terms of when every american who wants a vaccine can get a vaccine, we will have enough doses by the end of july. mark: according to a bloomberg analysis in june, the number of vaccines delivered should rise to over 30 million a week by summer. that would be enough to give 4.5 million shots a day, almost three times the current total. in texas, the electric reliability council says it has returned to normal operations. still, the impact from the energy crisis is just being

realized. winter storms could cost the country as $50 billion in damages and economic losses. the estimate includes heating and oil costs, damage to homes and businesses, among other factors. republican ted cruz has returned to texas after a highly criticized family trip to cancún . senator cruz jetted off while texas was dealing with the widespread power outages. he told reporters he did it because his daughters were called, but says it obviously was a mistake. the united states says it is willing to meet with iran to restore the nuclear deal. iran says, not so fast. it first says it wants the united states to rejoin the 2015 agreement. donald trump pulled the u.s. out of the deal in 2018 and also imposed sanctions that infuriated other world leaders. global news, 24 hours a day, on

air and on quicktake by bloomberg, powered by more than 2700 journalists and analysts in more than 120 countries. i'm mark crumpton. this is bloomberg. amanda: i'm amanda lang. welcome to "bloomberg markets." matt: i'm matt miller. amanda, happy friday. i'm glad we are joined by our bloomberg audience is -- bnn and bloomberg audience is -- audiences. a big freeze, big damage.

in just a moment, we will speak to the ceo of cantor fitzgerald. we will talk about the robinhood hearing and the continue to boom . we will hear from the cofounder and ceo of 3d printing manufacturer desktop metal. they just announced a new acquisition. amanda? amanda: we are watching markets just a little bit. they have been in positive and negative territory. back in negative territory. it is industrials that are really the focus today. caterpillar up 4%. then applied materials. all trading higher on results. applied materials up 6% today. still some believers.

markets are still close to records even as they try to little bit weak here. keeping our eye on the news flow they have to face. lately, it has been earnings. a bit of a selloff in the price of oil maybe on the hope and expectation that things are improving -- improving in texas. for oil companies, it may be slightly more complicated as they review the damage that has been done to their operations. are there other factors that have been at play in the volatility? nobody better to ask than alix steel. it has been fascinating to watch how oil traded, even before the situation in texas. powering higher here and lots of volatility going on. alix: setting the stage for you, you said things were definitely getting better. this map shows you the power plants and also the temperatures. it is kind of hard to see, but you can see a lot of blue.

it is definitely quite cold. in terms of what we are seeing, you have a lot of options traders in the market. on the flipside, we turn to the demand lost due to the shutdown. refiners are not going to be working particularly hard because they also cannot start up and that is weighing on what we are seeing when it comes to oil prices for the short term. matt: i wonder if you think there are retail traders driving those huge options moves. is that what we are seeing? i've confirmed by calls and puts on wti via robinhood. alix: it is completely possible. this is the option call momentum.

the volume is really spiking and they are hedging or protecting against or betting on that $100 oil price level. if you get the speculators in there. it is worth checking in on the structure of the curve. upgrading their forecast for the back end of the curve. we will see a flattening. you will not see as much of a difference between prices today and in a few months because the back end is going to move. you will have more demand kind of coming out of all of this. in order for that to happen, you have to have hedgers stop hedging the back end. they will have to lock in their prices for next year and then stop and get out of the market. matt: thanks so much for joining us. no one knows the energy market better than alix steel. reminder, you can check out her

program thursday on bloomberg television at 1:00 p.m. new york time -- "bloomberg: commodities edge." coming up, we will speak with the cantor fitzgerald ceo and get his take on a number of things, including the firm's latest blank check company and his latest take on the gamestop hearings that we endured yesterday. this is bloomberg. ♪

amanda: welcome back to "bloomberg markets." matt, i know we were all watching closely the hearings, as we continue to do, and the potential fallout around the gamestop, robinhood, reddit debacle. what do you make of what you saw

and what you are seeing in terms of what might come next, if anything meaningful? matt: it definitely seemed like a lot of political theater yesterday. representative patrick mchenry was asking vlad tenev why customers could not own a piece of robinhood. he seemed to misunderstand how private companies work. he clarified that he was trying to make a different point and did not quite get it out. alexandra oak osseo cortez was asking why traders on robinhood can't expect the same quality from their free trades that others do for trades that they pay and she also seems to be asking why customers can't share in the revenue that robinhood has. she wants the money from flows to go back to users. i was worried we would not learn anything, but we did get a lot from ken griffin when we got into t plus 2.

i've always wondered why we don't go direct, but he pointed out that would be difficult for a lot of firms. we ended up learning some interesting things. amanda: we did, indeed. matt: let's bring in our guest in new york. you sent us some great pointers after the meeting to wrap up what the focus was. i think really we understand how flow for orders work, but may be american people didn't and maybe a lot of people in congress didn't. now, that is a lesson learned. >> it is a lesson learned. one thing we also looked out was payment to order flow was more than 50% of robinhood's revenue. the free trading model, there is a real question on how much it works. at the end of the day, we knew that robinhood did not have the $3 billion of capital on hand it

needed one volatility really blew out. i want to bring in somebody else , the cantor fitzgerald chairman and ceo howard lutnick. thank you for joining us. howard, given that robinhood did not have the money the morning of january 28, when the markets really blew out, is there something that really does not work about the model? howard: what happens is companies need to post enough money to take care of their business. if you think about it, each company has to put up enough money to make sure when you buy and sell stocks you have the money to pay for them. you can't sell someone's stock if they don't have the money. robinhood never imagined the scale and scope of people trading $200, $300, $400 stock like gamestop. they need to do have the money to pay for them. they have to be able to put up the money.

all of us on wall street had to put up way more money the next day, but robinhood had to put up $3 billion and it took them a whole day to raise it. that was pretty impressive. sonali: a good base of support for robinhood. the other thing i thought was interesting is there is the robinhood side and the reddit side. reddit said they would be monitoring software providers more. they had a data science team looking at more message boards for retail traders. i'm really curious here. you have a big hedge fund client base. how are they looking at this retail crowd? how are they scouring to find for where they should be investing next? howard: look, we all learned -- wall street has always said when you short a stock, you only made a certain amount of money. but you could lose an infinite amount. i just don't think most people thought about what an infinite

amount means. that is like when gamestop one from four dollars to $400. they lost 800 million dollars, which is unbelievable. i think learning to watch retail investors, learning to understand retail investors. it may be news to these people, but it is not news. what it goes to show is that they have such power and such excitement. with all do respect, why was tesla up 6.6 times last year? it is because retail kept buying it. why is bitcoin where it is? bitcoin keeps buying it -- retail keeps buying it. gamestop was bitcoin and tesla. it is all the same. matt: howard, shorting is there for a reason, right? in order to keep markets efficient, shorting stocks is a great way to keep companies in check.

why didn't we see more pushback against short sales yesterday? howard: look, a short sale to the public sounds mean, right? you have them betting against you. look, it is part of an open marketplace where people can make comments for and against, but those make -- to make comments against have much more risk and suffer much more risk than someone betting for a company. betting on a company going up, that makes sense. betting against it, there was a lot of risk and those people got crushed in this risk and that is a good lesson. that makes sense. if you bet against a company and that company hits it big, for whatever reason, you better have the money to stand there. what we have all been taught is there is a big lesson to be learned when you short against a stock. matt: you mentioned bitcoin.

i wonder what you think about the digital asset. there have been some big wall street names, paul tudor jones, jeff gundlach, and some big companies as well, starting with paypal, mastercard is another 1 -- what do you think of it at cantor fitzgerald? howard: bitcoin is an extraordinary retail product that people are buying it and investing in it and they can't really use it yet. it is just sort of a trading thing. it is kind of like tesla. tesla is not the world's greatest auto company. elon musk is not the most brilliant person in the world. retail is driving that stock up and retail keeps driving bitcoin up and it is exciting, but, you know, does it have a place and what is its worth? i have no idea. i will tell you what it is. it is exciting, it is in the hearts and minds of a lot of

people, and that turns value. retail investors can drive value. it is exciting and it is great for great business. that is part of our franchise. giving retail a chance to invest in much earlier stage companies. that is an opening for retail to invest in these earlier stage companies. amanda: an opening for them to invest and an opening for them to get hurt. i'm curious for your take. we look at the facts and we say it is an old model. it has just exploded and we have seen a number where we question the valuations, who is being drawn and, and whether it speaks to a top-heavy market. howard: it is a big change. early-stage companies could only raise money through private equity. private equity earned 2% and 20% on the profits. they are taking those companies

into the public markets, which are 75 times bigger. on tuesday, cantor fitzgerald's third stack of this year took a company public in laser detection and ranging. that is going to be in the front of your car starting 2024. these lasers like "top gun," a targeting system. that is going to be in the front of your car. it will stop you from hitting pedestrians. it will stop you from hitting dogs. these kind of things will change the way we do our business. they have a company that is totally cool. the public it could never invest in that before. it was only private equity. general motors invested in it. subaru invested in it. the public can do it now. it is nice the public gets to

see this as well. amanda: it is nice, but it is also worrisome. i guess i would challenge you but those of us who have been watching the market a long time say that at the top of the market there is so much liquidity that you start to see private equity slipping, you see new things created -- not that some of them don't work out, not that they don't democratize, but that maybe there is a little danger because there is a sign of a lot of look at it he looking her home. is there a lot of value? howard: many of them are earlier companies than normally would go public and ipo. is tesla worth more money than every auto company in the world? come on. is bitcoin worth $50,000, $60,000? the whole point is give retail investors a chance to bet on what they want to invest in, to invest in what they want to.

i think these early-stage companies, if they are great technologies -- this is great technology, general motors, you wouldn't have subaru, you wouldn't have these great companies investing in these companies unless they thought this was the future. yes, on valuations, you could argue and evaluation is too high and an evaluation is too low, but let retail make their choices. institutional investors are backing all of these. all of these companies come out of the pipe with institutional investors who back that company at that valuation. so it is not just retail driving it. retail gets to participate, where only private equity used to do. there used to be an ipo and there used to be private equity. now they are taking a huge bite out of private equity. companies that would ordinarily be backed by private equity can

be backed by public company, institutions backing at first, but then retail can play in it as well. that i think is fun and it is working now. it is really working. matt: howard, valuations have gone really high. we are starting to see a lot of the old bears come out of the woodwork. i've heard a lot from rosenberg lately. rib beanie was on with tom. are we in a bubble? are we in a bubble that is about to burst? do we need a correction? [laughter] howard: no. i find this all fascinating. we are in a pandemic. i don't remember the pandemic being over, do you? the stock market has this way of looking forward. it is always looking forward. do i think it doesn't shock me? of course it is shocking. but i think it shocked everybody. everybody.

if you said, again, all the companies that were up double last year, apple, microsoft -- if you would have told me they would all double and the pandemic and the stock market would be at an all-time high, when many, like california, are still shot -- it is extraordinary. the level of stimulus coming out of our government is extraordinary. the government is talking about injecting $1.9 trillion. who has ever thought about that before? interest rates in america r0. who has ever thought about that before? matt: [indiscernible] rates are rising. howard, we are looking at 1.35 percent on the 10. larry summers said he thinks the fed will raise it sooner than later. do you disagree? howard: i agree. when was the last time you and i thought 1.35% on the 10-year yield was a high rate? come on, that is curious for a

company. this is a market, yes, are they moving higher? of course they are moving higher. if the economy comes roaring back after the pandemic -- should rates be higher? of course. if the economy is growing, rates should be higher. this makes perfect sense. if the fed doesn't raise rates, what tools do they have if the economy falters? cutting below zero is like silly , totally silly stuff to me. amanda: regardless of what it looks like, the economy is doing well, investment banks have record high clients, we have reported that cantor fitzgerald is looking to build a whole new team and technology -- what is your plan this year to build a team? howard: we were number one in spac starting in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019.

we have been in the spac business for quite some time. we are just really good at what we are really good at. i think we will continue to grow. cantor fitzgerald, we are not everything, but we are really good at what we do. and we keep growing that step-by-step. i'm really happy. you look at cantor fitzgerald in the 20 years since 9/11, it is extraordinary. the group is almost 13,000 employees. it has come back so strong. i'm so proud of the company and how well it has done and how well it has built. we are going to keep building step-by-step and to be a little bit better at being cantor fitzgerald. amanda: all right. howard, you've got 20 or 30 seconds here. what would were you? what would worry you about these markets? howard: look, you guys have been

right on the target. valuations continue to grow, the markets continue to grow. when the government is done with the stimulus packages and the world gets back to normal, this growth rate has got to slow down. and you can't have the markets going up and up and up. if it stabilizes around here and takes a good, long breath, i think we would all be happier. it might not be as much fun to talk about for you guys. amanda: fair enough. howard: i mean come on, what is better than this for you guys? amanda: fair enough, howard. matt: howard, thanks so much for joining us. it has been a great conversation. howard lutnick of cantor fitzgerald. bloomberg's superstar reporter. thank you for joining us. amanda, i want to wish you a happy friday, a happy weekend, i hope we all get a little bit of sleep. amanda: you too.

we will see you back monday. matt: this is bloomberg. ♪

caroline: it is 2:00 p.m. in new york. this is "bloomberg markets: the close." reflation has the russell 2000 on a tear. s&p 500 erodes is gained. deals keep climbing to the highest level in a year. talking a recovery, texas's state agency returns to normal operations. new details about the damage that could top $50 billion. and the $1 trillion mark. bitcoin crossing the threshold for the first time. it is up to $53,000.