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welcome back to squawk. we're getting the final host from our guest host, howard wilson and howard ward. >> economy is getting better, capital chase returns and stocks continue to trend higher

although there's profit taking here and there. >> okay. we'll take that to the bank. the key question about europe. it's all about credit quality. >> who do we have to worry about? >> spanish, italian and greece. >> you're very worried. >> people have to start doing their work. europe never did the work of fixing bank solvency in the first place. >> gentlemen, thank you for being here. >> happy monday. >> that does it for us today. make sure you join us tomorrow. right now it's time for "squawk on the street." ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ welcome to the last week of the first quarter. good morning. welcome to "squawk on the street." i'm carl quintanilla with melissa lee and jim kraker. futures reflecting the relief of the cyprus deal. a similar picture in europe where the italian tenure is now below where it was before those italian elections and a mixed

picture in asia this morning. the nikkei up about 1.5%. the road map begin with the eurozone that did not collapse over the weekend so naturally the s&p is expected to bust through the all-time closing high and what's next for cyprus' hobbled economy. it has received two competing offers from carl icahn and blackstone is the initial $24 billion offer from silver lake in jeopardy. saying the blackberry 10 launch has been tepid in their words and it sees only a 20% share of success. >> and dollar general beats handily as the retailer continues to steal market share, but are rising inventories a reason for concern. >> we begin with the markets as the s&p 500 stands within nine points of the all-time closing high after the eu finance minister was struck over the weekend and it was the second largest bank and inflicts heavy losses on deposits with more than 100,000 euros.

cyprus will receive $13 billion in financing, but guys, the conversation is already beginning from what's to stop them from keeping the money and what do you make of it? >> i always want to see the sanctity of the smaller deposit. when we had the savings and loan crisis you just doesn't stick a lot of money in the $257 cd. i think this is a much more equitable decision and i don't think it will create the negative ripple effect and i do think the euro is not where you want to be, though, the currency. >> protecting the insurance is the crucial aspect. just respecting the letter of the lay and getting rid of or punishing those with balances above 100,000 euros, the right size is the banking system and that was the big money. russian billionaires, oligarchs whoever, park money in cyprus and they kept it there. punish those people and get the

banking system to the right size because that was the heart of the problem in the first place. >> if the solution now targets debt to gdp you're removing the sweet spot of the gdp and there's a lot of discussion about capital controls and guards on the borders making sure people don't funnel out cash illegally. this is far from being truly fixed. >> right. two euros now. suddenly we have a euro that is not accessible, a euro that seems much less redeemable and when i hear that who else can have a second-class euro and i do think the bank stocks are trading up not just because of a relief rally, but a recognition. send it here and at least you'll be preserved. oh, man, they're brimming and our banks are the winner here and i think it's okay to start thinking that after last week and how well our markets handled the turmoil. >> do large depositors in italy and spain take this as a cautionary note or not? why should they not? at a certain point you're

running a gigantic company located in milan, for cash management purposes let's send some money over to j.p. morgan. let's put our money into some of the more solvent banks. look, citi is a more solvent bank and sydney is there if you want to put it there. >> that's true. you have to wonder if the companies are saying, we're here in the u.s. and we're not having the problems. you can park your money here if you want. >> just make a good will tour. we have all these branches in your countries and they're terrific. we guarantee them, but not only that, but we're better than we used to be. here we sit within a stone's throw of the s&p and bears are angry, bulls are scared and that's been true for a while and is it still true today? ao monday morning they tend to

fade and you have a better shot at that point. i like what's happening in that it's the end of the quarter and there are people that will want to preserve gains and there are sectors doing quite well and however an up opening chase has not been a good thing. how are we doing on mondays just in general? >> mondays have been generally not so hot. interestingly, s&p down 3.5 points last week, the second worst week of the year shows you how strong and only the second losing week of the year. >> looking at the charts over the weekend. i thought the kimberlies would quit. there's a reevaluation, and i was premature. no. forget that, i was wrong. premature is what you say when you kind of don't want to admit that you're wrong. folks are doing a great job. look at pepsico, that stock has been a real winner and then we

hear of filing, okay. right? trion, now we hear that perhaps they should be looking at modeling and i don't think they should given the fact they spun of a, but this group just doesn't want to quit and i am so old that i remember when coca-cola passed the valuation with general mores and people said how ridiculous that is and the coca-colas are getting another reha-evaluation. >> there's a re-evaluation of companies about the blue chips and then companies left for dead earlier on this day. look at best buy. it keeps on chucking. today barclays raises the price target and the analyst love continues for a stock that was getting killed by amazon and all of a sudden it's a darling on wall street. >> remember when bed, bath and

beyond was being killed? dollar general, that was 50-cent general and dollar corporal and now look at that, they crushed the numbers. i didn't will expect that to happen and the stock was roaring and the gross margins which were such a problem, no problem. rta, the retail holders, 52-week high on friday and i thought the consumer was beat. there's still a lot of date left in the week and personal income on thursday and not friday. >> a lot of retail earnings coming up this week, too. meantime. let's talk about dell. retailer confirming it received separate buyout offers from carl icahn. they have determined both bids can reasonably be expected to result in superior proposals from $13.65 a share offer by michael dell and silver lake partners. his committee intends to work diligently with all potential acquirers to have the best possible outcome for dell shareholders.

we've seen dell trade above the dell offer for quite some time and we're all thinking what's coming out of the woodwork? >> remember dell was at to 9 before this pdz, why? because the fundamentals were faltering and the pc business had slowed and the idea that they'd moved out of areas of the tech food chain seemed to be not working and now there are three buyers. again, i come back and i want to pinch myself. how could everything be so darn good? i mean, really. it's america. it's almost like -- i remember maybe 2007 when you would wake up and you'd see europe down and you'd think we'll have such a bad day, such a bummer and there's always tomorrow. now europe, so what? there are buyers of dell. i would have sold dell if there was no buyer. listen, that thing's going down and they're going to miss the quarter. who wants to be in that? instead, three buyers. next, what? am i going to buy hewlett-packard? >> do they get one chance in the go shop to launch their initial

offer. the chances that they do that even though people have been telling them to do it for weeks? oh, these are very smart people involved in this, and glen hutchins, a buddy of mine from law school is by no means a guy that fell off the turnip truck. he is the most shrewd evaluator of tech companies and then, listen, this is worth a lot more. maybe icahn doesn't like michael dell and that school yard crying game. >> strawberry on a sunday? >> i tell you that. from's there's so much money. the fact is we don't want to talk about the $100 billion vodafone deal. what the heck is happening that a year ago all we cared about was whether -- whether italy was going to go over 7%. now we're thinking this dell deal and three buyers, maybe they paid 15 because they're getting a very solid pc company.

personal computer? what do i use? i have hewlett-packard to get in the mix. i'm on a dell. maybe that's the thing. we're keeping them a float. >> i know there is a rival station that has another name in front of it. i wonder if you peel it off if it's dell and it's a sub move by dell. >> i never watched that station. >> you get caught. >> let's say you're a dell shareholder still. you sell now or you wait. >> i thought you sell at $14. i am out of the running of people who can say what you should do with dell. i thought that even at the last minute these guys would drop out because they would do channel checks and see that dell is not doing that well. it doesn't seem to matter. i mean, is the private market for dell so much better? is dell really worth a lot? >> what are we missing? >> what are we missing? >> there is the cloak of private

ownership that allows you to do things that you cannot do. >> i guess they can fire more people? >> they're really smart guys. >> i'm really impressed. >> look, dollar general. that went private and it came public at the right time and it had a little stumble and maybe people feel they can come in and split the company in two, perhaps and bring it public two years from now and hope springs eternal. >> meanwhile, there's blackberry and shares down in the pre-market and goldman receiving the smartphone maker cutting the rating to neutral and cutting friday's u.s. launch of the z10 and at&t disappointing. its retail checks revealed a surprising lack of marketing support and poor positioning of the product. they said they had a 30% chance in their view of success and they lowered it to 20. kind of the ron johnson granularity. >> they should use 19. we were joking, carl, that the

thing came out, okay? and immediately i said that's a disappointing launch and it had been out for a minute, but you know what? it turned out that that was what they looked at. was it really a shock that it wasn't being supported aggressively? >> i don't think so. i think that it goes by customer demand and they probably didn't get much of a sense of customer demand. why would you dedicate a whole wall to the blackberry? >> right? >> that's true. you have the countries that will never go. indonesia. a lot of people in indonesia and i don't mean to be too x xenophonetic. >> they wouldn't be surprised given how many they fired and then people come back and say the device and remember morgan stanley said forget about the device call will? and lasalle services and a core zero value to the devices side. >> hats off to goldman and added it on november 29th of last year

and shares are up 34% since that time. s&p is up 22% and they should hear about it. >> there was someone who did radioshack. now they downgraded and it turned out it was again, they had downgraded it higher and upgraded it really, reallily. the street is not completely off here in a lot of stocks. >> it really did, it was a bad job and i see an analyst sell for some of the stocks that aren't doing well. i like that. the valuation sells i don't like because pepsico. you make a valuation who says sell pepsico and it comes in and buys the stock. wham i going think? >> heinz. >> i think heinz. >> here are some of the other stories that we're watching ahead of the opening bell. the sec approved nasdaq's $62 billion offer to compensate for

the loss back in may. it strongly endorses jamie dimon retaining jamie dimon as both chairman and ceo. just because it's spring doesn't mean the snow's gone away. a snow is taking aim at the east coast after blanketing the midwest. springfield, illinois, was hit with a record 17 inches of snow. look at the white-out conditions. amazing. >> our hearts are going out to people having trouble getting around the middle of the country today. >> some thoughts from a silicon valley insider and former yahoo coo daniel rosenzweig on the push for the sales tax. what impact will that have on retailers? you'll want to hear his answer this morning and first, why dollar general can make some sense for your portfolio and take one more look at futures this morning. looking at a pretty decent open for a short workweek this day as we have good friday off here. live from squawk on the street from post 9 when we return. your big picture. but e

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shares of dollar general rising in pre-market tradex clueding items that yrms 97 cents a share, beating wall street forecasts and revenues essentially in line with the company benefiting from increased food sales and jimmy, you touch upon a lot of highlights and higher consuma e

consumables, i.e., food and they were higher across the board. >> i know family dollar were critical pieces and one of the things i find incredible is the last quarter was abysmaabysmal. american companies have somehow within a quarter period been able to readjust, get the right mix. i was worried about tobacco. i was worried about a price war. i was worried about california and all of these worries disappear as if somehow in the quarter the company readjusted and did well. this is the target and the costco and the walmart and remember when they had the bad february and they righted themselves. can we praise the companies for getting it right. >> is it tax season that people are feeling flush. >> remember the tax concerns are delayed and some of the companies complained about that. i looked at dollar general and i always liked their business model and there was a sense that

dollar tree was going come after them and it looks like whatever price war that was going to happen didn't happen. >> if the consumer is strong and say the economy manages to turn up in the back half of the year, do names like dollar general, dollar tree, any of the dollars get hit. that's always the conundrum with these and they do better in a worse economy. >> what's the relationship here? >> when things get better, we're supposed to sell them. >> yeah. what retailers do you sell other than jc penney? every retailer is doing so well it shouldn't be happening and one of the things i find during this period is things shouldn't be happening. these are bull market things, not fraud necessarily, but things that you say, you know what? when the stocks go down whether they be ross stores which were supposed to be terminal and i mentioned the bed bath, the best buy, people say, you know what? it's not as bad as you think and

they come back. dollar general had more of the expectations and then they beat the expectations and the stock went from 48 to 43 when they failed to meet things and there were a lot of people including me saying how could that happen? it can't be that good and then it is that good. >> we'll see. per store inventory up year over year and there was some reason for worry. we're going to get two indicators on confidence this week and both conference board and michigan and we'll see maybe, if it's not the job market, jim, that's making people feel better and maybe they're seeing the value of their neighbor's house go for more. >> it was fed and they're extraordinarily strong. i think that people underestimate what it feels like to have your house go up. you want to go to lowe's. you want to go to target because you feel like if you buy something at pier 1, you buy something for your house it's not a waste. i was looking at williams-sonoma to see how great the quarter

was. they had an expensive new site egrarium.com and you want to close the shades and say i'm a loser. expensive plantars, for heaven's sake. >> we'll talk about your own seed wors. >> i had an email conversation with frank blake and he was telling me, listen, don't forget the cede. you know what? two ways to win. >> true. >> as we kick off this start of the trading week, what are the best ways to go long. we'll take his mad dash and "squawk on the street" straight ahead.

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♪ ♪ six minutes until we kick off the week. let's kick off jim's "mad dash." >> this is getting disconcerting to me, carl. we're seeing a series of downgrades. i want to mention that this is the first one that directly said kroger coming in and trader joe's. this is a place where you get very good cheap stuff and it doesn't last at lower prices and kroger moving in against these guys. have they lost momentum?

piper says deteriorating same-store sales and maybe this is a growing tired stock. i know they did triple the number of stores that they want in. there's too many negative analyst comments for me not to worry. >> we've known about it for a couple of quarters, right? this growth stock is ready to run again like so many others that have managed to switch course and do right. >> trader joe's, and i did some shopping at whole foods this week, my sister did and we were kind of struck. here's what we were struck by. it's not as exciting as it once and was that could be by comparisons. i find i go to my king's, and i think whole foods -- ahh, versus kings. they need new initiatives. >> goldman reinstating with a buy sees 14% upside to 47. >> yes. and j.p. morgan. this is where people might say, wait a second, where have they

been in the answer ask they have some banking to do. this area of the economy whether it be time warner and whether it be viacom and charter or time warner. their actual cable business and these have been big winners, carl, and i think a lot of it is housing and you buy a house and you have household formation and you bring the cable in. >> yes. >> this is a rising tide, wind at their back story. i like it. i've got to be careful again because we do work for them. >> of course. they say q-1 will be challenging for nbc, but "the voice" tonight with shakira. >> they have usher. he happens to be the few people in america that i'm taller then. not cooler, but taller. >> i think almost cooler, too. >> e on, geez. >> when we come back, could today finally be the day? could they take aim at the all-time closing high. three and a half minutes.

you're watching cnbc "squawk on the street." the opening bell set to ring in 30 secondses. the number to watch today

1655.15, once again. the s&p record watch continues despite all of the craziness in the eu over the weekend, over the past ten days. i mean, people think there's something perverse about that, jim, for better or worse. >> feels like the '90s. i would come in and there would be a guy at goldman sachs who would say, world dutch is up. >> i mean, who cares? there is the opening bell and here at the big board. the provider of electronic payment processes and services celebrating their first year as a publicly-traded company. over at the nasdaq, fight colorectal cancer and an association raising awareness and helping patients and caregivers. nice cheer, and one of the youngest bell rings and are that baby must be barely a year old with a tiny little tiara. that will do it on a monday morning. >> you tweeted something

best-performing s&p stock since the 2007 all-time closing high with netflix. isn't this incredible? >> true peter lynch, the great magellan manager and people like netflix and they've been suspicious of netflix and amazon. someone lets buy what we like and i find myself catching up with them. >> have you launched it? >> no. my sister does. >> you do that over the weekend. >> i liked it. >> you can't deny it. >> it was entertaining. very entertaining. >> have you seen the show "the following." no. there is a huge ad in the paper today. >> instant nightmare. instant nightmare. that's why i like to watch nbc, instant nightmare. i want you to be careful if you watch it. instant nightmare. you have to balance it with something like "the voice" to feel better about yourself. >> the other guys are too scary to watch. >> dell is the second biggest s&p gainer.

>> incredible. >> and i think scott wapner managed to reach one of the big shareholders, i believe. >> yes? talking about the -- what they call a major up improvement and the special committee won't view any of those as superior. >> i'd like to see a major improvement in the fundamentals and maybe i'm so old-fashioned i'm focused on the fundamentals and maybe they like the chart. >> i'm being facetious and that is the most challenged part of all technology. we keep seeing that, although, look, maybe micron and the g-rams were good last week and someone makes that case. >> what happens is once somebody wins the bid what happens after that? how much of an ability will they have to leave the company to spend money with a deteriorating balance sheet and your hands are tied there. >> do people just need to put money to work and this company's for sale? >> michael dell has done a pretty terrific job of trying to turn around the company that is

frankly, in the end, stuck with a business model that involves the personal computer at the heart of it. >> apollo is a huge gainer and we don't talk about it often unless herb's on the case and they did have 34 cents a share and the journal saying there appeared to be some positive thing goings around this much-maligned name. >> this was selling at two times ebitda. >> this was -- a lot of the smarter hedge funds that i do speak to were telling me you have to get bullish. are you kidding me? until i see the university of phoenix in the final four it ain't happening. >> the florida gulf coast would be -- >> that's the thing. if we've learned anything that university of florida might be in the sweet 16 next year. part of the gulf coast. >> georgetown. just craze pep. >> how about lasalle, the explorers? >> yeah. just like the old days. >> do you know anybody whose

brackets are still intact. >> i'm still in. ohio state, bearly. >> after harvard last week. >> mcgraw-hill indicating it will use a portion of the proceeds to re-start its repurchase program and that's what a lot of investors have been waiting if are. you see a nice bump in the stock there, and if we can look at blackberry one more time. it wasn't just goldman sachs. blackberry is down 8%. it wasn't just goldman sachs out with a note today and citi reiterating a $6 price target saying that you'll love this, jim. internal checks indicate that sales have dramatically slowed of the z10. they just started. >> maybe the weather was bad. >> tomorrow people love it and they'll come back and people are looking for a stock that's down and the stock is down for two

straight days and that means a buying opportunity and look at these housing place. do they ever stop? i had them on the show and this thing is just screaming higher. >> it's a 52-week high today. i find also just tweeting back and forth with governor christie. >> really? and the money still hasn't started flowing to new jersey. so they have a lot of stores and we still haven't seen that come back to the economy. i think that infusion's going matter. this is the united states centric market now and we're not sitting here trying to figure out the atms and cyprus. >> that's true. >> as important as it is to keep in touch with the story, but smithfield isn't a huge mover, but this thing to weigh strategic items is that another company is looking to explore transformational deals. >> we wanted to do a break-up value and the break-up value we

got was 27 bucks. we were using the old way of valuing things. the pre-dell way. the pre-2013 way. everything seems to have a new face on it. i looked at smithfield and said what am i missing and the answer is too bearish. too bearish using raw multiples and not understanding how buoying things are. >> i think there are people who forgot why mcgraw-hill got hit. a very complicated lawsuit. now, i like mcgraw-hill. they'll win that thing and they're fine. it is the forgiveness rains. >> it's the amnesia market. >> yes. >> amnesia. we're going to check out 1.7% of the decline here. remember on friday they announced they're giving away

simple touches if you buy a nook hd tablet. the nook hd tab slt $269 and you get a $79 simple touch for free and the idea is you give it away and you buy more books and that will help their digital revenues. are you telling me that simple touch's sales were disappointing even though they were giving it away. that was new twist. blackberry, you had to pay for it. here, people are not willing to take the giveaway. >> talk about loss leader. >> wow! that's interesting. that's a little negative. i also thought the war with simon & schuster was never a good thing. >> that's a negative. it's good to find a negative. and be more in sync with what the atm lines and cyprus, russian oligarchs all over the place not faring that well and the nets don't look that good. >> talk about getting your money out of the country. let's go buy something in

jersey. >> that's a maytag spin cycle. i happen to like the nets and i happen to be near the barclays center and geez, the rugs have a lot of money. there's a shocker, right? the rugs have a lot of money. putin never seems to figure in these, but he's got to be the world's richest man. he's a private kind of guy unless he's strutting around without a shirt. >> the olympics will be amazing. he made a lot of the oligarchs kick in money. >> the word is they will spare no expense. they will make london look like a -- >> will you be able to go? do you think there's a sdmachan. >> did you see the article about brazilian hotels. there are countries that are doing well that we ought to offset and they don't fit in as easily and spain. i'm obviously wored about spanish banks after today. do they want have to ask for aid

and they're crushing some of the banks and it's not affecting our banks today which are viewed as safe havens. >> morgan stanley up by 1 1/3% and the favorites in this rally continue to be the favorites. the stock's been stalled for a few weeks. maybe people go back to jp morgan and there was nothing horrible j.p. morgan. you go to the museum of natural history and they had the monument to j.p. >> oh, that's a well. i find that today is the day when joe, one of my absolute favorites behind the scenes guys does not have to have the suite team fire. it's not a 12-alarm fire today j.p. morgan and they're not in the papers and it must be a great day today. >> let's check in with bob pisani with more on what is moving this morning. hi, bob. just three points away from the all-time closing high. 1562 is where we are. 1565 the all-time closing high.

we see homebuilders's little bit higher and now that cyprus is sort of done, reducing volatility on the markets and the focus will shift to the fundamentals and what's going on. you know the bulls' argument and we have reasonable valuations and accommodative central banks and two things are worrying me and is the commentary last week and it was terrible. bell weathers like fedex, caterpillar, tibco software coming out with very poor commentary. i think that's a real worry for people. nobody's worried their overall commentary and we're expectation 10% increase in earnings for your 2013. another issue is the whole seasonality thing and i know sell a man, go away and sounds like an old wives tale. it's not, folks. there's been tremendous buy-in to this concept in the last several years as the numbers have become more supportive that on the idea that the period from november to april outperforms

may through september. may often has been the start of some weak months. on cyprus, it's good and bad news. the good news is targeted pain on bondholders better than paying on everybody. bad news is we have capital controls now in a european country. they voted on friday to give them approval to make the deal without a vote. the german arl amount has to approve the deal. the cypriot government does not have to approve the deal. is that not weird it you in the biggest worry to me is the effect of this whole union of the think banking commit pep steve liesman was talking about it this morning and i think he's right. there will be people slowly moving deposits out of the higher risk countries and maybe into the u.s. and the uk, as well. here's what to look for. april 4th and that's the ecb meeting. watch what mario draghi has to say about that and that he'll make liquidity more available to

banks. remember those ltros that they did about a year ago. don't be surprised that they dragged those things out again and everybody was talking about the weak top line growth. there is the company that has to be the envy for everybody looking for top line growth. their projected sales for 2014 and 10% to 12% increase and take out all of the new stores and same-store sales growth, 4% to 6% and those are really good numbers and that stock's up today sitting at a six-month high and i want to see a big welcome to people on the floor and we have ice traders on the floor and intercontinental exchange and they have 40 new traders in the blue room and they'll be trading futures and they'll be trading coffee, cocoa, cotton and sugar futures and this is not part of the ice nyse deal and it's not contingent in that and the new york board of trade and ice bought that several years ago

and i want to go over and say hello to everybody. we have some new people here and add more life down on the floor. finally, guys, 1563, just about two points away from historic closing high. guys, back to you. >> that was great, bob. dollar general and the envy is right. they're expanding to california. this was a remarkable turn from just the previous quarter. let's shift to bonds and the dollar. rich san tory at the cme group in chicago. >> down on this floor there are a lot of analogies. at one point there was an iron curtain and now there's a teller wall with regard to the banking in europe. the deal seems to be pretty much done and the markets don't seem to have a lot of net movement over this which is really telling and look at the two-day chart of the tenure rates. remember, during the questions about cyprus late last week. friday we had a yield high of 194.

well, we're back testing that. we're back in friday's range and boon no different and the 30-year-old high on friday was 139. certainly, they saw a bit of a reversal. let's look at how that looks from a relationship and these spreads will tell you a lot between you're and the u.s. if you're look at boon's, that is now a year to date chart and it closed last year in the low 40s and we're three months chart of a three-year high. make it over a dozen basis points is a pretty big return. let's switch gores to the euro currency and it will be maybe future issues will impact equity and whether it was from the euro dollar, the euro versus the yen or the euro versus the pound and

those three charts are telling me that the positive nature of the cyprus deal will be very limited in terms of market impact. jim, back to you. >> oh, thank you, rick. >> i hope you have a good weekend. let's check out the latest moves in commodities and go to jackie deangeles at the market. >> we're watching the energy complex and it is higher after the deal between cyprus and the e kwushgs regarding its bailout and that is driving momentum in the crude trade. it's about the highest level that we've seen it in a month. meantime, the metals complex are mixed this morning and we're seeing the weaker euro pushing gold under $1600 an ounce. seeing that rotation out of safety back into the riskier assets and that's not surprising traders down here, but also might see some extra volatility in gold today as it is options expiration. melissa, back over to you. >> thank you, jackie deangelis. a crisis in the country averted, and the s&p 500 sitting

tantalizingly close to new highs. jason tanerd will join us after the break. as we take a look at the s&p 500 over the past year and what a run we've had. stay tuned. name and not a numb? scottrade. ron: i'm never alone with scottrade. i can always call or stop by my local office. they're nearby and ready to help. so when i have questions, i can talk to someone who knows exactly how i trade. because i don't trade like everybody. i trade like me. that's why i'm with scottrade. announcer: scottrade- proud to be ranked "best overall client experience." otherworldly things. but there are some things i've never seen before.

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>> take a look at the s&p 500. weir one point away from the all-time closing high and about one point away from the s&p 500 so we are at the edges of our collective seats here to see whether or not we can cross and certainly a help in today's session. the participation of apple. apple shares are higher by 1.4% and ubs adding apple to the most-preferred stock list. adding some juice to the run toward the new high. >> it's probably milan vich at ubs, and i haven't seen reasons for that most preferred. imagine seeing that in the middle of january, jim. >> people are looking for something that's down.

excuse me. i was doing work on caterpillar. i could understand find a single reason to recommend it. so i figured i would come in today and just because people are looking for things that are down. you were talking about the financials and they rippled off of cyprus. cyprus is now part of the a.m. market. >> the amnesia market. >> i see the big international companies being revalued in front of our eyes. it's breath taking. >> and people are saying you're changing your mind. i say, look, i'm a cautious bull and cautious hasn't worked. being cautious hasn't worked. >> you trade the market you have. >> at the same team you havor beingael and after its dismal earnings report. no terms have been disclosed and

presumably it's a fairly small deal, but still still, oracle is not finding any love out there. >> no. your broader point about cautious not working. cashin comes on here time after time and says it's not quite a hold your nose buy signal and it is a forced risk buy, is it not? >> i never want to do that. that's a level of complacency. let's take nike last week, carl. here was a company that a lot of people told me they didn't have it. they have a big china business. this was an extraordinarily good quarter. intraquarter again. they managed to address some of these concerns. i am just in awe of some of these american companies that said we screwed up. we'll fix it. what do they do? the day after the quarter and they say listen, here's what we did wrong. i goes so. i look at what starbucks was able to do and the stock was that was at 49 and go up -- yum,

face book to some degree. there have been a series of mea culpas regarding both wounds self-inflicted and not, right? >> i feel like i was saying on twitter. i had thought it bottomed because i thought it would be a part of the rosy u. caterpillar and whole foods, but in general i come in and find myself saying nothing happened at exxon and that stock's having a big move. nothing happened to travelers's, but that's up again. allstate was upgraded and that stock's been high. i guess what i'm saying is that in the '90s you'd say that stock hasn't done anything for three days and let's buy it. we are in that market. let's go buy walmart. remember the memo, the february memo saying we're doing so badly with walmart? i wish i were doing that badly. costco mentioned positively in the whole foods note saying

costco is moving into stuff. >> costco, has it even skipped a beat? >> even when comps were there for a series of the quarters or months. >> when we come back, they're below the all-time closing high on the s&p. something you've all been waiting for. coming up, take a look at this. those dolphins know what's happening next and they're rushing to make sure they don't miss it. six stocks in 60 seconds when "squawk on the street" returns. recognize me.

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the algorithms are definitely dancing around this one. 1655.15 is the all-time closing high on the s&p. an important change below that. we'll see if and when we hit it today, jim, what happens after that. >> i keep thinking there will be we, but at the same time there will be the end of the quarter and there are people trying to preserve their quarter because it's a tough quarter to keep up with the averages. >> good point. >> in the meantime let's get to "six in 60." lulu lemon. >> baird says that recall won't hurt sales. i'm with them. i was way too hard on this

company last week. they owned up to it and they won't skip a beat. >> cnook. this is the reevaluation of the chinese oil companies, and maybe they're more like the majors than we realized. >> finish line. hold the sell? >> i thought this was a surprising call. they have a good footswear analyst. i want to be careful. >> merrill pushing arm holdings. >> yes. the ceo transition and it looks like this has been one that intel should have bought years ago. >> morgan stanley raising the price target on yahoo. i think the analysts are way behind and they're still hoping that china will impact and they missed the boat. >> con downgrade of jcp. >> this does have a lot of sales and the sales are going away from jc penney to other companies, particularly macy's. >> what's coming up tonight? >> i have a company called american water works. one is about the tremendous problem in infrastructure, okay?

oh, separated from louis ck and this guy. and lennon. this is a growth area and i'm looking for one to play. there were some others that i liked that have gone up too much and this is a very interesting situation and i do want to talk about how there's so much infrastructure to build here. if we ever stop giving money away from our country and we have natural gas and there's a very interesting natural gas tie-in and marcellus and our roads and a lot to build and rebuild and this would be great to have the country embrace infrastructure. >> welcome back. >> yes. busy week kicking off and simon hobbs is here to tell us what's coming up at 10:00. >> nice to have you back. as we prepare to look at the s&p and we'll look at strategy and what the launch of z10 has done for blackberry over the weekend and next time there's a big crisis, how safe is your bank account? for the next hour, "squawk on

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welcome back to "squawk on the street." we will begin with the markets and the u.s. getting a nice bounce from the deal in cyprus and the dow hitting yet another all-time high moments ago. and s&p just about a point away from the all-time closing high of 1865. is today the day history will be made? >> plus blackberry z10 as sales are officially in the books. were the numbers better than expected and what can we expect ahead of earnings thursday? barclays clocking in as the latest firm to up its target on shares from 28 to 20 citing management's turnaround and is it finally time to get back on the best buy bandwagon? >> wean d >> we know the bailouts of cyprus and potentially 40% once those beings are at some point, unfrozen. what does this mean moving

forward? >> dino cost is the head of regulatory affairs and he's the former executive vice president of the new york fed. importantly, you spent 20 years at the fed. good morning. >> good morning. >> so ups deputy head of global economics in london. contagion risks are alive and well, wherever croixesis comes along, bank depositors are bound to ask is my money safe and the only stocks will probably be no. is he right? >> this was the big risk that they took. when they put the question of depoz tor safety at risk last weekend by saying 100,000 in euros. any time another country faces a problem, faces a probe lem and potential bailout and they'll say do i, can i keep my money in the bank? a lot of them would say no. i need to move my money elsewhere. >> what would you have done?

>> you have the sanctity of the deposit insurance needs to be maintained. you're a bank or government official or finance minister you cannot put it at risk because now people will be afraid of it going forward. >> so this is a major watershed? >> look, when the europeans said we will never have a default. well, greece, defaulted. then they said we will never threaten deposits and so right now we're in a position where people will not know what's next. this crisis three years old now, right? we've had the spring of 2010 is when the greek crisis erupted and three years later after each bailout and each summit, the europeans have said crisis is not over. we'll have the issues play out. >> and it's now over to the ecb to prop up these banks as it promised to do. what does it do? does it literally fly millions of euro paper notes into those

bank accounts? >> without getting into the gory details of mechanically how it's done and there are different facilities they have through something called ela, emergency lending assistance. they are able to deal with these banks to deal with the potential deposit run. if you're a cypriot depositor and you've had your money threatened, when will they open, will you run and get all of your money? >> there will be controls? >> there will be controls on withdrawals and there will be different controls and they will be able to control this, but what demonstration effect does this have for other countries and other situations? >> right. right now we're focusing on what's been going on, and it's almost reich ripping a band-aid off when it comes to the heart of the problem the fact that the banking system was oversized and it will punish them, but will also inevitably drive them away permanently.

what does that look like down the road and what does it look like at cyprus where there isn't that source of industry and that source of business coming in to the economy. >> for cyprus, this is bad news. for cyprus, this is bad news. i think what it says as a strategy going forward is we don't have a growth strategy for europe yet, right? this is right now you'll have contraction in cyprus. you'll have the economy under pressure and the periphery will stay under pressure because the pressure is about austerity and in new york, the strategy there was austerity, as well. >> there is nothing that i've seen here that says we're going to start growth going over and until you get growth restarting you don't get non-performing loans coming down and you don't have the product stabilizing. >> this is the bailout. -- >> the bailout started three years ago. it's been a while, but there's no end in sight. >> i just want to ask you a very important question. you've worked on the inside of a

lot of these very stressful situations. "the financial times" is reporting today that the relationship now because of cyprus was so bad between imf and the rest of europe that there is now a potential irrevocable split in the way that those people deal with each other moving forward. how do you lead through that? >> right now is not in, so they're hoping that they come in so you can see that there's disagreements among the policymakers. will it be fixed? of course, it will be fixed? is that tough sometimes? >> oh, absolutely, but it will get fixed but the point being that there are group feelings are bruised and it will take a while to fix those. >> you know, it's good to see you. >> thank you. thank you very much. >> now let's get some more on cyprus and the securing of the $13 billion bailout and our own international correspondent and michelle caruso-cabrera is on

the ground in nicosia, cyprus and she has the latest. michel michelle? >> this whole crisis, the worst of which has been averted started when this country turned to the european partners and said would you help us bail out our two big sick banks. the european partners turned and looked at them and said no, we're not going do that. instead they came up with a brutal answer and they'll down size them dramatically. in the case of one of them, they'll be resolved and the bank will be resolved and that led to thousands and thousands of people taking to the streets all through the weekend and even last night as a result in protests that they know will be coming job losses as a result of the solution coming up here. it doesn't include the most controversial thing which was to tax the insured deposit, but the uninsured deposits will be --

and the ongoing relationship with germ no. i spoke with him earlier today. he had a number of criticisms about the bailout and he's highlighted that he's deeply critical of germany. >> i think the other thing about the cyprus bailout is that before, the way the decision was reached. we had the german finance minister telling us where the molds are wrong and has he been there got see what people do? because we have big banks? we can make them better ask instead of building resources and the club partner which is the great european visions told, it just seems that this time it was germany dictating to the little guys what to do. >> throughout all of this, even though germany puts up the most money, they are still the bad guy. guys, back to you.

>> isn't it typical? thanks so much, michelle. michelle caruso-cabrera. the s&p edging even closer to a new high. i want to bring in jason 10er. jason, this new high will probably happen while we're speaking. we're less than half a point away. do we put all of the macro stuff in a drawer and stop thinking about it? >> we've gotten to that point a while ago. we listen to our lients and as you know we had a washington, d.c. office and right now policy, there's an enormous amount of policy fatigue and people, like myself included have stopped saying listen, let's stop worrying about the policymakers and it's pretty clear what the playbook is which is ever more liquidity and let the good times roll. it will end badly and the chances of them stick the landing on this eventually are about one in a million, but for now, for the here and now it

seems like that's the order of the day. >> in terms of runway here, then, is it a multi-year platform in which to play this game? >> you're probably in a sweet spot now. given bernanke's comments last week, we believe that financial repression or the the idea that you'll keep real rates negative for a long period of time is the most dominant theme in finance which seems that central banks are essentially closing off the exits and we're saying there's tina, there is no alternative except equaties and to a certain extent it's also true for the dollar. all of these things ironically are on causing essentially good news for the dollar for u.s.-based assets right now. >> it must be like the matrix where you know this is real. you're being programmed to think something in the back of your head and you have no choice, but to respond to your stimuli. >> i will say, before, there's no pro-growth strategy in europe

that will remotely look like capital formation. >> which addresses that directly sxsz are we being lulled into a false sense of security. jason jess up is quoted as saying that the situation is weakening by the day in europe and we are going have much higher spikes in volatility moving forward. >> i would say it's right and since draghi said it is enough and i think the euro has to be significantly weaker and that's the only escape valve europe has right now. there's nothing else going and no private enterprise will move there and people giving up their french citizenship to become russian citizens. >> that's too -- come on. those aren't exactly billions. >> that is certainly a bad sign, wouldn't you say? they got rid of the 75% tax increase and that marginal tax

rate. >> small things first. >> they have to have something that actually again gets -- i think you need a european ronald reagan and this is my own political point of view. we need something to stimulate the public sector at the expense of the private sector. >> one of the interesting things of michelle caruso-cabrera's point and the people protesting were the bank employees and they weren't the investors. tla there's something off here independent? >> do you think pol ronald reagan can come through for the politi politics. this is almost impossible. >> right now, we'll see. >> they're not moving to the right. >> so bottom light, in a tina market, what sectors do you want to be invested in? do you stick with what has been going up? what have been consumer staples and which are historically stretched valuations that the point or do you go into technology materials and even though you don't believe in the fundamentals of this market.

>> i am more inclined to go for the stocks that are providing what the fed is taking away and i know consumer staples is expensive, but by the same token financial repression will be with us for a long period of time. i would avoid it if i were in the more cyclical places and go more for capital spending and that means technology and industrials to a certain extent look particularly interesting to me. >> talk about hold your nose and buy. >> let the good times roll. >> we've heard echoes of that before, jason. >> thanks for coming in. >> thanks for having me. >> blackberry's z10's weekend of sales are in the book. were the numbers much lower than expected. plus dell, blackstone and that's next. with the market covering those all-time highs and what are the vital levels to check this week?

we're looking at technicals a little later on as weir away from the s&p's closing high. stay where yous. eir live webina. hello?

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you never bought into the hype of the z10 from the get go. what do you see in terms of sales. >> the stock has been going up and it's been up year to date and a lot of hype around the company and we found that it's extremely difficult because the competitive nature seems to be getting more and more fierce. we found the initial launch to be disappointing. it was good in europe and good in canada, but in the united states most of the store reps weren't even trained and most of the sell through was not what people were expecting. >> and that echoes what goldman saying they did channel checks of 20 looks and found the spend wasn't there in terms of promotion and the positioning wasn't there in the stores. at the same time, jim, when you were thinking about black berry is you're thinking of a comeback. if blackberry simply sold z10s

or q10s to existing users could that be enough to put blackberry on the path to recovery here? >> that's if their product was very compelling and the rest of the competition wasn't one-upping them. for example, the z10 has two cores and many phones out today have four cores, better resolution and are faster so we're finding that installed base that you correctly referred to are simply gravitating toward other products and that's a problem for blackberry. >> what does this move down to $6 look like? as you alluded to, the stock has run up so you've missed for your clients a 25% run in these shares. >> that's right. to be honest, year to date the stock has run up 25% and a lot of people expected this to be a home run launch. it's not looking like that way. we've had a sell rating on the stock for many years so long term we feel we're positioned correctly.

that's for sure. the stock has run higher. we expect it to come back further and lower into the single digits and that being said. we expect the douchl continue to lose market share and that's a combination, simply put, we don't want invests on to put money into. >> i am just curious that when you talk to clients out there who are institutional investors and what is the incentive as the stock has defied a lot of expectations posting the best run and one of the gainers in the s&p 500 so far. >> the problem is year to date it's been remarkable. lots of promotions and lots of carrier support behind it and we're just not seeing it in the core market in the united states which is unfortunate. so a lot of investors were coming into this upon anying much better sell-through, much better promotions and it's not turning out to be what it was expected. a big market day in the rally and we're seeing the opposite

for blackberry shares. >> great to speak with you. jim suva, sit i. >> we're checking out apollo group. the owner of the university of phoenix reports a better-than-expected profit and apollo also said that student sign-ups fell for the four straight quarters. the analysts tell me the stock was oversold so any positive performance was reason for a pop. we are likely also seeing short covering. a pol so up about 9% right now. carl, back to you. >> can i ask you a quick question. we learned the powerball ticket dollars jersey $228 million. is there anyone who is noticeably absent. >> no noticeable absence that i

can report right now. >> when we come back. a silicon valley insider talks about the push for an internet sales tax and will it affect the e-commerce names. daniel rosenzweig joins us later on. plus dr. copper on what it means for the markets this week and we'll get technical analysis on that straight ahead. departure. hertz gold plus rewards also offers ereturn-- our fastest way to return your car. just note your mileage and zap ! you're outta there ! we'll e-mail your receipt in a flash, too. it's just another way you'll be traveling at the speed of hertz. ♪ [ male announcer ] it was designed to escape the ordinary. it feels like it can escape gravity. ♪ the 2013 c-class coupe. ♪

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lots lots of developments when it comes to best buy. this has best buy continues to get even more love from the street today. barclays is raising its price target from $20 to 20. allen riff kin. is in to see you back. good to see you. >> nice to see you, too. >> this train has been in motion, why hop on now? we hopped on six weeks ago when we raise our rate to a buy after being negative for six years and it's not exactly brand new to us. >> you say strategic initiatives driving sales profitability and increased confidence. can you be more specific?

what are they doing right? >> sure. there were 12 reasons why we upgraded the stock six weeks ago. number one first and foremost is the company's ability to cut expenses. while the company set $125 million earmarked today we said they can can cut $25 million worth, and that would translate to an incremental earnings revision of t10 cents and after spending time with management and hearing their fourth quarter conference call we've increased confidence there. number throw, we think their sales are accelerating. number three, we think that mr. schultz joining the board and not working in tandem with the current management team is a clear positive. dick schulz has rock star status in best buy. they are shedding more assets and name three well china

operations as well as in europe and lastly i would say it's terrific vendor support which continues unabated. >> hey, allen, i have a question for you. i was reading a competitor's note and one stat stuck with me that best buy gets every year a billion visitors to their online site and they're only able to convert 1.3% and what sort of leverage does best buy have in terms of conversion rates and how much do you think same-store sales can be lifted that best buy can put into place, possibly? >> you're right. the numbers are staggering. 1 billion eyeballs go on the best buy site a year. 600 million people walk through the doors of a best buy store annually. quite frankly, best buy has done a poor job of converting those people. what we have said and you're right, 1.3% conversion rate to

earmark that against competitor, amazon has a 4% conversion rate. for every 1% that best buy have on conversion rates you're talking about an incremental $250 million in operating income. so it's huge. >> let me return, allen, if i may to your central notation that cost savings will go up to $200 million. we are learning that retail is very much an art. you see it with gap and you city with jc penney and what johnson is or isn't able to do. do you not worry if you take $200 million out of the best buy business, you may destroy people's reason for going into the brick and mortar site and they may not deal with an assistant to deal with them. >> the bottom line is best buy has been drunk on growth for the past ten years, at a time when they should have been retrenching. their simon, there are 7.foo on the domestic business alone. it is a mere 1.3%.

so best buy had unwisely continued to invest for growth that never materialized. so right now there's tremendous excess and the one thing best buy should not do is of course, cut back on payroll at the store especially during a time when we believe the same-store sales are poised to increase for the first time in years. >> all right. allen, we'll watch the target at 28 and thanks for coming on and allen riff kin over at barclays. just one more day left in the quarter and how should you position for the trading week and should the s&p 500 position today. you might notice the crowd moving in next door is a few decades younger. we're headed to boca to the people flocking to the retirement communities. that story straight ahead. ♪ [ cows moo ] [ sizzling ] more rain... [ thunder rumbles ] ♪

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one hour one hour to trading and some of the stories we're squawking about at ten ti10:32 on the wes coast. and shares have fallen 25% so far this year. different story for walmart, home depot and hp. they're the biggest gainers on the dow. meantime, target, tjx and williams sonoma among the

retailers hitting new 52-week highs. melissa? >> ever so close to an all-time high. let's take a look at what the charts are saying. mart mutin from execution partners. the s&p 500 has backed away a bit from 1565.15 which is the level oui watching. you're taking a look at a chart that a lot of technicians have flagged to me as being a canary in the coal mine, if you will when it comes to this rally and that's an s&p 500 versus copper, correct? initially, we'll take a look at the s&p going back since the 2000 highs and as you see, things have been resilient and we're coming close to highs that we're seeing in both 2007 and in 2000. it's not necessarily a green light to buy stocks as we move to new high territory and there are fewer and fewer stocks making new highs and europe peaked a few weeks ago and that's started to fatter and you see triple top on the s&p.

we barely got above the highs in 2000 before reversing and just because we're at new highs isn't necessarily a green light to be long stocks. >> that is one of the reason yes this may not necessarily be a reason to buy at this point. >> that certainly is one reason and the s&p over the last couple of months has continued moving higher with copper which is a good correlation and has diverged and it's been dropping over the last move. >> you have copper here and the s&p 500 move this way. >> at 1565 and copper has dropped down toward the low over the last couple of years. >> how do we know that copper won't go higher, that the divergence won't be closed by copper making a move up. >> that's potentially what could happen. right now the dollar is quite strong and we're seeing weakness in lots of different metals and a lot of people are saying the economy is slowly getting better with copper hitting new lows, that's certainly one warning sign. >> we don't have your chart on

apple and carl and i were chatting and saying apple's finally participating in today's rally and that seems to be helping the s&p 500 make the move higher. what do you see in this chart? a couple of things are important and it's gotten toward the downtrend line and the stock fell 40% and now it's set to make new six-week highs as of last week and it's starting to show better relative performance to the s&p and at a time when everybody is looking at stocks at new highs and my bet is it's a better bet and i'd rather be long apple and out of the s&p. my thinking is the s&p likely has another 1% to 2% on the upside and we should see a top in mid-april and stocks like apple which have already been very weak, i think, are a better place to be after this pullback. >> mark, great to see you. thanks for coming by. >> simon, over to you. >> thank you very much. yahoo is on the move and let's

send it back for a market flash. >> the news, yahoo is buying summly, delivering snapshots of stories billed as the technology that reaches mobile users that want information on the go and the transaction expected to close in the second quarter and the founder created the summly app and he'll be joining yahoo and up 2.4% right now. thank you very much. >> there's a lot of anger and emotion in europe and the cyp s cyprus, 11th-hour deal and we'll look at that economy and what it means for the european banks and therefore for american investors. plus, march madness is going digital and a look at twitter's impact on the big gains. monday morning on cnbc.

>> it's been a bitter, tense, angry weekend in europe with cyprus reaching a deal with the

e.u. and imf and what is it specifically on the banks. he is an analyst at an independent research firm and he covers the top 1,000 global banks. good morning to you. >> good morning. >> it's interesting, isn't it? because the banks are different from the u.s. banks in that they hold a huge amount of sovereign debt. what does this deal mean to them? >> it doesn't mean much from a sovereign debt, and i've been spending most of the day talking to traders in frankfurt and all of them are not even looking at the cyprus banks and that's done for. it's finished. they're looking at the spanish banks and the greek banks and portuguese banks and they'll need to be recapitalized in the next five or six months and outside investors and third-party investors, as it were are probably not going to be as keen to get into that and we'll see a tremendous amount of

pressure that needs to be recapitalized and that includes the italian banks and this is a game changer and we'll have to see how it will materialize over the next few months. >> are you sure it will play out? >> i appreciate that we can argue and this is a game changer and you can also argue that cyprus is quite unique in that the depositors had to take the hit because nobody else could. >> if you look to spain or italy, where else might the axe fall? it could be backed by sovereign debt and it could be -- the impact could be on the bondholders? >> it could be, and it will be, but also the actual account holders are going to be affected by this. europe is about setting precedence and we were talking about cyprus and just because they were scared about what was going to happen in spain and they were scared about what can happen in italy and we will see outside investors, bondholders will suffer from the banking industry, but we're also going to see high account holders and probably people with over 100,000 euros are probably going

to be affected as well which means we're seeing spaniards, portuguese and greeks all talking about should i keep money in the bank and that will add to the huge amount of pressure the banks to recapitalize from the government. >> as jim o'neal pointed out earlier, a lot of corporations and audit committees will also have to now look at where exactly they keep their funds. so just bottom line it for us, if you would, what should you not hold at the moment? how precarious do you think it could get? >> i think from a buy perspective, we're looking at global banks situated in europe. these types of organizations generate 50% of their money outside of europe and they have the ability to move money back into europe if necessary and will dominate. the small to medium-sized banks in spain and the small to medium-sized banks in germany and italy are huge risks right now because we're not sure how they'll get additional fundings because the appetite from a

government perspective is waning and we don't think it will happen over the next six months and they'll have to find money and from an investor perspective i'll get to see them. >> ralph silver from srn research in london. for more on cyprus' $13 billion deal and the action from brussels i want to bring in kelly allen. good morning. >> good morning from brussels. the way europe has handled the cyprus issue has undermined faith in the eurozone and frankly, that calls into question just what will happen in the future. nevertheless, ministers leaving here in the wee hours in the morning seemed pretty pleased for themselves, happy is the way the finnish finance minister put it as she walked out last night. he pointed to the lack of a near-term market reaction last week or when we saw things start to trade in asia last night as evidence of their success. >> there are still major questions that need to be resolved on both with regard to

europe, and to some of the point our guest was just making and when, in fact, the cypriot banks will reopen. we caught up with cyprus' finance minister and asked him this very question and here's what he had to say. >> i cannot say that -- i cannot say that it's always a mistake to say something like this when you are not completely sure. there is a lot of work to be done, but they will open very soon. >> that may not offer much comfort to the cypriots. nevertheless, again, when we asked people leaving this meeting if they were worried about a bank run in cyprus or in other parts of the euro zone, they emphatically as you might success said no, famous last word, perhaps. >> we will find out when those banks re-open, kelly, as we know they will at some point. kelly evans in brussels, thank you so much. we want to take a look at facebook. the six-month high was back on

january 28th and that was 3251 and we are now down to 2549 and shares down 20% since the beginning of the year. cyprus, cyprus, cyprus. up next, rick santelli will take a look at the country through the prism of time after the eak.k.

now let's get to the cme group and rick santelli and the exchange. >> this wild ride for cyprus is eye-opening not that it's necessarily market-moving in a way that's catastrophic, but it's absolutely very important. so let's read something that was put in "the boston globe" over the weekend. a restaurant owner in cyprus and let's read some of the comments that he made. i find this so fascinating. so let's put it on the screen and restaurant said it's been cash only here for three days. the banks have been closed. we don't really know if they will reopen and all of our suppliers are demanding cash, even the beer companies. all right, in their own words let's do cyprus back to the future. let's start out with the following quote, and this, of

course, is from the previous head of the european commission. the head of the ecb and here's what jean claude said. i can find it. i have quite a few notes here, but what he's saying is what's going on in the eurozone is going to be just spectacular. they can't wait for all of this to happen and this was said back in 2008. he said that the -- for a small open an economy like sign rushgs the european adoption provides protection from international financial turmoil. oh, my goodness. how things have changed. now, this is the european union commissioner barroso, and here are some of the things he said the day cyprus became one of the club members in the european union currency. cyprus has adopted a strong and stable currency which is helping europe to withstand global, financial instability. the euro company by the right economic policies helps create

growth and jobs and keeps inflation within limits. he also went on to say cyprus is today more than ever a proud and independent island. it has spemented its place at the heart of the eu and embraced the economic potential and influence. wow! whether it's in this country and whether it's in sign sxrus whether it's in europe in general, aren't you starting to get this vision that political leaders, bureaucrats, bureaucraa lot of things and maybe they do have the best of intentions but just think about that store owner, that restauranteur that made the statement, we have to have cash, even the beer vendors need cash. i guess what i'm getting at is, as honest as it turned out to be with regard to the future of cyprus sharing the euro, being a member of the club, let's think about how it's going to be for the next five years. forgetting all the issues of the treaty of lisbon or the european

commission, and just think about it from an economic policy about growth. we don't hear anything about that. and when we do, i think i would classify it under the same category as these words spoken in '08. they made great sound bites. they were great press conferences, but very little reality. back to you. >> thank you very much, rick santelli. we do want to take a check on the markets because we have really backed we away from the highs of the session with the dow and nasdaq dow in the red. the s&p 500 just barely holding on to the green. further away from the all-time closing high. what we have noticed happening overseas is the euro is now down by .8. below the 200-day moving average. we're watching the names like deutsche bank down almost 3%, barclays down 1 1/2%. and that in turn is taking its toll on u.s. financials here which have turned to the red and a lot of big cap technology

stocks here in the u.s. are also turning lower. so this is something to watch, especially as we had been marking the points to the s&p 500 record highs we're now well off of those levels at this point. >> footnote. the one thing we haven't spoken about is how the russians are likely to react what's been going on. they now have the money trapped in the banks of the money that is closed. they will lose 40% of it. the prime minister is talking about europe plundering. plundering the loot. and even the french finance minister saying they don't know how the russians will react but it's very harsh, indeed. >> their interests are still where they were before the deal was struck. who knows if they come up with a bilateral loan at some point. the week is weird in general because there's so much options activity, it is the end of the month, it's the end of the quarter. in turns like we are seeing today might be seen again tuesday, wednesday, thursday. >> the expectation was that we would rally on window dressing until the end of the quarter. >> at the very least we did hit

the levels. we came in within, what, a third of the point of that all-time closing high? cramer's point this morning was that what's more likely to happen is there's a firm bid under a certain level by which people don't want to go into the quarter with losses bigger than that. >> okay. focus back on that in the next hour of the program. meanwhile, deutsche going digital, the high-ing the initiatives behind march madness, as well. stay with us.

march madness is getting high tech. a number of companies are going digital to cash in on the basketball madness. brian shactman who knows more about brackets as you will ever know. >> that's true. georgetown going all the way. march madness, unique quality to it. florida gulf coast, can capture the nation's imagination even though no one heard of them five days ago. of course, it does this through the traditional, tv, web, twitter, like everything else. but this year on the danlg tall side they're trying some new things. ranging from the modest tweak to a whole new way to watch. google, the search giant trying to chip away at sports giants

espn and cbssports.com and making it less necessary to make the extra click to get to those other sites. it's incremental but clever way to get good numbers, keeping it in google's own pocket. at march madness, in conjunction with the rights owner turner broadcasting, video highlights on twitter during the game. up to 120,000 followers executed by snappy tv, video start-up. >> we view it as a win for the user, brand advertiser, you get to take your brand advertise that you're putting on tv and really put it into this social environment where you're users are engaging with the content. >> and then there's bill simmons, one of the star pundits of espn, doing live webcasts on youtube with friends. you get to hear his thoughts on the game in realtime. espn didn't sell ads, admitting this is a test run. they've committed zero dollars to ncaa rights and it's a low

cost production. easy money. >> that is a business model right there. a lot more still to come. tweet time. could texas be getting ready to hoard some gold? lawmaker wanting them to allow the state and texans to store gold at its own facility with protection of the state. if passed, texas would be the first state to have its own ft. knox, essentially, allow ting it to be protected by the tenth andment. if your home state could make its own protected depository for anything, what would it be and why? tweet us at squawk street and we'll get you responses in the next hour. >> in the meantime, interrupt. i believe we know why the markets have turned south. the head of the eurozone group, what we've seen in cyprus is now a template for future bailouts or bank restructurings. the market is taking that to mean there won't be losses

potentially for depositor or senior bondholders who rank at the same level in the pecking order. it's really just confirming the fears that we've been talking about during the course of the last 60 minutes. >> right. >> meantime -- meantime -- >> hard to know what you're going to talk about tonight. >> i know. the markets are no in flux. we do have one strategy at citi who says the worst is yet to come when it comes to cyprus and its impact on the markets. of course, fast money madness continues. >> oh, yeah. >> so if you haven't filled out the brackets check it out at fastmoney.cnbc.com. you can also tweet us. >> i was impressed with your level of -- not to be con descending or anything. >> i will be. >> you're into it this year. >> you know, the fast money madness i -- >> that's what it is. >> you're over here -- >> i was very excited. i didn't watch the game. but i was excited for my own. i would never have guessed that. no offense to harvard.

>> good for them. it's an exciting time of the year, if you like basketball. we'll see you tonight. see you in a fuew minutes. >> i'm starring in the halftime report with the european close. >> okay. here's what you missed if you're just tuning in. welcome to hour three of "squawk on the street." here's what's happening so far. >> european has done what they should have done all along, credit mistakeses for banks, depositors of banks above the insurance level which is a policy manner is the right way to do it. >> each day the markets seem quite calm about it all. i guess you can tentatively go down this path. it really ensures or suggests to people all over the world that, you know, to for a higher return, there is obviously some risk. >> i think that our banks, not that they need more capital, but our banks are the winner here. i think it's okay to start thinking like that after last week and how well our markets handled the turmoil.

i thought that even at the last minute these guys would drop out because they would go checks and see that dell is not doing that well. it doesn't seem to matter. i mean, is the private market for dell so much better? is dell really worth a lot? >> what are we missing? >> what are we missing? >> there is the opening bell. >> after beach bailout, after each summit the europeans have said the crisis is now over. well, it's not over. there's more to come. we're going to have these issues play out again in the future. >> a lot of investors were coming into this expecting much better sell through, much better promotions and it's simply turning out not to be what it was expected. a big market day today and a rally and i think we're seeing the opposite for blackberry shares. good monday morning. live here at post 9 at the new york stock exchange. we have taken what was a 50-point rally on the dow and turned it into a 61-point loss.

we moved directly into the red. s&p, of course, was less than a point away from its all-time closing high. it's now down by 3 1/3. nasdaq is down nine points as well even as apple continues to hang in there. whole foods in the red after piper downgraded it from neutral to overweight. the firm citing accelerating same store sells trends. and dell received two additional offers before the end of the go shop. activist investor carl icahn and blackstone of course both making the bids. let's get the road map for this morning. the markets were flirting with the new highs. s&p 500 backing off. the dow did hit an all-time high for the ninth time this month. is there still cause for caution or is now the time to start buying? plus, the silicon valley insi insider, former yahoo! ceo of retailer chegg. executive pay and the state of peck overall. monday advertising the world of online news. news credit just raised $15

million in funding and booked a high-profile client. the co-founder and ceo will join us right here at "post 9" to pell us what's next for the company. europe, cyprus reaching a deal with international leaders for a 10 billion euro bail out for the island nation. michelle caruso cabrera is live with the latest where the story is from from over. good morning. >> no, it is far from over, carl. yeah, if they hadn't reached this deal it would have meant a catastrophic collapse in the banking system and the economy here in cyprus. still, the so-called solution does still feel catastrophic to the cypriots. what leaked out over the weekend and what we learned this morning is when they turned to the european partners and said, please help us bail out our banks, the europeans said, no. not this time. the choice this time is we're going to dramatically downsize your banks.

in fact, of the two sick banks that they asked for help, one is going to go away completely. and in the other one, the depositors are going to suffer severe losses. dip setters in both are going to suffer severe losses if they have an account that has more than 100,000 euros in it. that is an event that is unpr unprecedented in modern economic times in so-called advanced economies. it would be a shocker in the united states and it is a shocker here. the losses will be dramatic as well. it could be anywhere from 30 to 70%. they still haven't done all the math yet. cypriots cannot believe this has happened. >> i was shocked that they're doing this. it is sad. how can they accept this? it's a destruction of the country. >> i just seen my worst nightmares coming true. it's amazing what is happening. the country is collapsing.

it's like -- it's a typical case what is happening now. >> remember, 50% of the economy here, the financial sector. that was the country's businessed model and it is being reduced dramatically. at the behest of the europeans, this is what they wanted. another story is brewing here, carl, that we're going to start pursuing because we haven't heard an official announcement yet that the banks are going to reopen. philosophically there's no reason they can't. the ecb had a demand, have a plan in place by close of business today. that was achieved in brussels last night. it may be that the mechanical implementation of the plan could hold up opening the banks. that would be problematic. back to you. >> as country continues to deal on a cash only basis by what you've been telling us, michelle. thank you so much. >> exactly. turn to the markets on all this news. the major averages of course negative after earlier gains on the cyprus news. s&p came within less than a point of the record close.

btig chief and neil hennessey with the hennessey funds. guys, good morning to both of you. so much to difficult zest in such a short period of time this morning, dan. we have the dutch finance miner is saying this deal is now a template for the eurozone overall. what's he trying to say that there's going to be more of these to come? >> he's pretty much screaming fire in a crowded theater to peripheral depositors. there's no reason if you have anything above the insured deposit limit to keep your monk any in any bank that is sus sect. you're guaranteed up to a point and beyond that you're at risk. we're going to see some behavioral changes going forward and it certainly increases the risk of more destabilizing crisis going forward. to echo jim cramer's point. man, have u.s. investors handled this pretty well? >> yeah, in fact, you're point, given what happened over the weekend, is that this entire thing has been a lesson learned for traders who, i guess, a

couple years ago could take bad news out of europe, shoot and then ask questions later. >> that's right. to paraphrase what jason said earlier, i would agree with what he said in the sense that our clients are saying we have seen this movie before with greece, with spain, with italy. and response in u.s. markets is increasingly less and less. the italians elections didn't matter, for lack of a bett eter word. to the point now where we barely get a 3% decline over the span of hours. >> neil, i wonder what you're telling clients who say, you know what, i would love to be part of any rally at this point. but i don't know if i have the stomach for this kind of stuff. >> well, i think you've got to bring the cyprus situation home, first, carl. h is what companies in the united states are dealing with to a certain extent and i agree with dan from his comments. but essentially you got companies sitting on $3 trillion in cash in short-term investments but they don't know what washington's going to do. either in levy more taxes, put

in more fees, more regulations. and so we're dealing to a certain extent in a financial markets exactly what cyprus is dealing with in their banking crisis. but overall, the markets are in very good shape. the downturns, you know, maybe get a 5% correction, doesn't halt the bull market that we're in. and we hatch to look at price of sales. when i start to look at price of sales of market is cheap in the price of sales standpoint, the dividends just on the dow jones alone, those companies are covered on average of 3-1. so you're probably going to see a lot more dividend hikes in the future that's going to continue to fuel this market until the economy starts to pick up. and then we're really off to the races. >> neil, i know what you're saying. people might say how can they possibly square with what's going on overseas? is there no scenario bad enough to where the strength you're referring to somehow becomes un -- once again, couples to the weakness in europe?

no, i don't think so. just taking the dow jones, carl, the yield is 2 1/2% on the dow jones versus ten-year treasury of 1.9. our banks are significantly more capit capitalized and in better shape. you're going to see a lot of foreign money start to go into the jpmorgans and the citis and things like that that are global oriented companies. >> dan, you agree with that? is the safe haven theory now magnified? >> well, i don't know. i think -- the important point here to remember is from a u.s. perspective, the u.s. economy has never entered a recession due to an event. we had the earthquake in japan. while there are destabilizing homes and period of times in the stock market, it hasn't been persistent. so all of these opportunities have been opportunities to buy the dip, so to speak, although i

hate that phrase. so i agree generally with the idea, but i would just remind people that the u.s. market was not particularly unattractive at the peak in 2007. if you go back and look at what people. >> reporter: were saying at time, the fed were cutting interest rates, attractive on forward earnings and the stock market fell 60%. i'm not saying that'sing what go to happen now but cheap can become cheaper. >> true enough as we look back to that '07 high earlier this morning. thanks so much, dan, neil, see you next time. when we come back, silicon valley insider, former coo of yahoo! and ceo of chegg here to talk about sales packages and executive pay. first, though, rick santelli is working on something for later on in the hour. rick? >> hi, carl. welcome back. yes, ben bernanke, the most powerful central banker on the planet will be speaking in london around 1:15 eastern. several hours from now. and his topic?

what should economists and policymakers learn post-crisis? you noah we're going to talk about at the bottom of the hour with arty? this is way more important. think about the words of those press conferences with cyprus joined the euro i read earlier. what should we think about their comments? you'll want to hear. acceler-rental. at a hertz expressrent kiosk, you can rent a car without a reservation... and without a line. now that's a fast car. it's just another way you'll be traveling at the speed of hertz.

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♪ united states senate has passed a non-bind proposal to allow states to collect taxes on internet sellers. the taxes would affect out of state retailers who sell more than $1 million worth of online products every year. we're focusing in on the changing landscape from internet to sales tax to pay gaps if president and ceo of chegg.com, the former ceo of yahoo! and long-time friend of "squawk on the street." it's great to have you back, dan. sheryl sandberg's book, the disparity of pay between men and women, particularly in the valley. you could see this from the get-go when people just get out of school. >> yeah, chegg reaches about 30% of college students. the self reported number is that women still earn on average 25% less than male counter parts the first job out of school for the

exact same job. so for us we think that's crazy since they're 55% of college grad greatuat graduates. the real proof of that, engineering, technology, and health, they're paid the same and sometimes actually slightly more. >> you're talking to a father of two girls so this thing hits me hard. >> me, too. >> is the responsibility more on women, the way sheryl appears to say in her book, or on men, who are largely in positions of power to control pay overall? >> well, i think sheryl's point is it's we're all responsible for it. right? which is -- i'm a ceo at silicon valley. i know sheryl. when i first got on a adobe board of directors, she didn't zen send me a congratulations she sent me an e-mail with all the women that should be put on the board. so now we have two women on the board. you have to educate women that they shouldn't accept something that doesn't make sense but it is, as a ceo, male or female, you're responsible for doing the

right thing and if you're public for your shareholders, which is women represent 55% of the workforce now. so it's crazy not to pay them the same. >> is this going to make an impact, this book? >> i think it has. look at john chambers at cisco putting out a memo to his company saying they haven't done enough. not just on the pay gap but the percentage of women that are at management level. i think it's already made a huge impact. >> let's turn to this tax issue. we have seen amazon deal with it on a state by state basis. the stock hasn't really reflected the sort of lingering concern over state sales tax spp this a game changer for the industry or not? >> well, i think -- i think what's happened is this was supposed to be a few years and it's now been about 20. so i think it was good at the beginning but it's been unfair to other retailers, which is why should -- if either everybody collects the tax or nobody collects the tax. i'm not for taxes at all on

these kinds of goods but i think it's got to be fair for everybody because it hurts local businesses if internet companies can do it without tax. but for us, our agenda is we don't think students should be paying tax on any educational material. they're already overburn denned with expenses and in debt. we shouldn't tax learning material. we hope that somehow gets event. >> any feeling as to how many states will jump on board now that they've been given this all clearab by the senate? >> the state of california has a bill in front of it now. it's interesting because it's only for buying which is opposed to what we do which is renting. they're trying to make a loophole which says if you rent you still have to collect taxes. for us, we're going to keep making the point that students are over burdened already. it's a an unfair tax and we want them to be able to get the material without the tax. >> just overall, business sense, we got sort of a reprieve from washington from the near term fiscal issues. europe continues to burn bright,

right, in a bad way. but people still say, this is the year of increased cap x, that job growth will continue to come back moderately. does that reflect what you're seeing? >> i think it's going to be country and country and region by region. i do see it in the u.s. which, look, companys will last three years, have hoarded their cash. they have plenty of capital to invest t in the future. i think they see there's going to be a light at the end of the tunnel. if they don't start investing now in plants and in technology, that they're going to be behind the curve as economy starts to pick up. right now i think the economy is sort of drifting along. i think there is fits and spurts but i think everybody is preparing for the future at this point. >> in terms of your own specific business, college trends, demographics, admission rates. >> yeah. >> some positive, some negative? >> three years ago was sort of the peak of the number of students that were going to college so the demographics have changed. the challenges still remain, however, which is college tuition has gone up. seats in classes have gone down.

so there's an increased push in something everyone in the state of mississippi which i love, they're one of the ones push for accepting online courses with accredit tags. the reason for that is if you're one of these, for example, the california state school which are excellent schools you can't get into a 101 class. it's going to take you five years to graduate instead of four, it's more money. why t not take it online to get credit for it. there's so much transformation going on i think the next three or four years are going to be fascinating in education. >> we hope you will come back. >> i will. >> say hi to rachel and samantha. >> i will. >> nice getting them? >> i'm going to see my daughter next week up at colgate. i better. >> daniel, thank again. retirement communities, not just for retired people anymore. find out why, when we come right back. [ male announcer ] you are a business pro. governor of getting it done.

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welcome back to "squawk on the street." i'm josh lipton. redhat is under pressure. they downgraded that stock to market perform. saying they are a risk to the 24/14 growth outlooks. visibility remains low into its nonlenox businesses. the analysts saying contentious margin and forecasts cobb could be high. redhat down 5% right now. carl, back to you. >> josh, thanks so much. the u.s. department of justice is in the advanced stages of investigation into the jpmorgan london well traders. >> carl, we've seen since last year the justice department was looking at the so-called jpmorgan whale traders. i'm told that this inquiry has reached an advanced stage and potentially could see charges brought sometime soon. the focus of course is on whether the key players in jpmorgan chief investment office in london who handled a risky

credit portfolio which incurred $6 billion in losses engaged in criminal misconduct by mismarking the values of their poxes in order to hide the red ink. the questions were the subject over bruising senate hearing ten days ago in which carl levin accused them of things although he deferred judgment on whether there was criminal issue. jpmorgan acknowledged mistakes were made and it listed a department of justice inquiry into the cio losses among the other illegal issues it was facing at the time. lawyers for the four point men on the bank's credit portfolio in london have cle de clind to comment and justice department has declined to comment. if these cases do go forward the saga's international nature could prove a hurdle for u.s. prosecutors. they were prevented from interviewing them directly and english privacy laws have kept their names out of certain documents. jurisdiction has been an issue between the u.s. and uk over the mutual desire to prosecute tom

hayes, english former ubs trader in a libor scandal, which is a separate issue. extradition could actually prove difficult. >> yeah. i knew you were going to say that word at some point in that report. thanks, kate. kate kelly at hq. retirement communities are not just for your grandparents anymore. more and more young people are buying them because the prices are so low. diana olick has the details on that. hey. >> you're right. it's all about the prices. incredible deals on condos and a full service community with all kinds of activities and amenities. okay, so most of your neighbors are over 70 but why not? that's just what's going on at century village in boca raton, florida, one of the largest retirement communities in the nature. >> over the past 6 to 12 months because prices have been so attractive we see a very big influx of the younger retirees and soon to be retirees. people are looking at this in term of their long-term future and they want to take advantage of a low prices now.

>> so from the height of the housing boom in 2006 to the bottom in 2011, home prices in boca raton fell 53%. that's according to zillow.com. now they're heading up again. now, while you have to be 55 to live there, you can buy at any age. so, that's why the average age of buyers in the past year has dropped from the mid 70s to the low 60s. while the community offers all kinds of activities during the day, now 10% of residents there work part or full-time, like charlie, age 55. >> i bought an apartment not long ago that was valued at around $75,000 and i picked it up for $20,000. so the value, it comes in the surroundings. it comes with the clubhouse, it comes with the peace of mind that i have someplace. i know that if i need to go there i can go there. >> now, some investors are buying multiple properties and taking advantage of decent rents

as well. it does make for an interesting new dynamic socially because the communities are focused around the activity centers and social halls. most of the younger folks i spoke with said they generally keep to themselves because they're out at work all day. carl? >> yeah, no time for shuffle board. i keep thinking about seinfeld's parents, though, diana. absolutely hilarious. great story. thanks a lot. oil looking for its highest close in more than a month after a last-minute deal in cyprus. we'll find out just how high it might go when "squawk on the street" comes right back. but we can still help you see your big picture. with the fidelity guided portfolio summary, you choose which accounts to track and use fidelity's analytics to spot trends, gain insights, and figure out what you want to do next. all in one place. i'm meredith stoddard and i helped create the fidelity guided portfolio summary. it's one more innovative reason serious investors are choosing fidelity. now get 200 free trades when you open an account.

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a couple hours in trading, 8:30 on the west coast, 11:30 on wall street. apollo group is the biggest gainer on the s&p. up 7%. for profit education company posted quarterly earnings well above estimates. reuters reporting the nation's largest pork producer hired goldman sachs to wage strategic options. the euro is under $1.29 slipping below the 200-day moving average. they are saying the cyprus bailout deal could be a new template for resolving eurozone banking problems. and with that comment, bob pisani, markets did turn sour. >> thank you, very much. he did, he dropped the markets.

let's take a look at italian stocks. europe kind of tanked on these comments. this is where it made the comment about half an hour ago. everybody e-mailed me, what does a template for europe, what the heck does that mean. i think what it means is if you need to recapitalize first you go to your bond holders and shareholders and get money off of them and then maybe you go to the uninsured deposit holders before you go to the ecb. i think that's what's got people concerned right now. italian banks, the europe dropped. italian banks dropped. tessa, all down, look here, up 5, almost 6%. europe ones voicely fairly heavily hit. and yet you wouldn't know fa that you looked at the overall market. we have a little bit of sell here on the news here. the good news on cyprus is there's no broad tax on depositors. you can hear the capital controlling coming in. dpanlg to the issue of the safety of deposits in general and to the banking uniyuunion

concept, people don't trust the eu at this point in general. the next ecb meeting is april 4th. you will see if there's any comments there to try to calm some of these overall concerns. you wouldn't notice, look it here, though, have you noticed everybody is bullish? we were talking about this last week. it's all in the pool here because at this point here, goldman, morgan stanley, jefferies, deutsche bank last week all raised 2014 targets for the s&p 500. they was on our air talking about dow 17,000. black rock is going to be up 20%. alan greenspan was on our air last week. he's bullish, too, but heavens, there's no bears left practically. that doesn't concern you, well, remember 2000 at that point? so you wouldn't notice it either, the worries that are out there if you look at the vix curve. the vix is sitting down around 10. look here. going all of the way out of the vix futures, all of the way into december, you're not even at 20 going out there. i bring 20 up for a reason because that's the level where my eyebrows go up a little bit.

look, that's a pretty gradual curve that you've got here. look at the vix in the last five years. of course, this is the volatility index here. here's where we are at right now. and if you have -- the times you've been above 20 notably, look, there, of course, that last year was some of the concerns over europe. here's the -- here's the blow-up here with the issues in the flash crash. and here, of course, is the financial crisis. we were up at 75. you can see where historically very, very low volatility period. and, carl, there's no indication that anybody's particularly concerned going out months and months and months about additional volatility. >> yeah. and this is a strange week anyway. options activity, quarter end, month end? >> yes, month end options that exist that are monthly omgs options independently of the quarterly options. people trade these mondthlies ad weekly options as well. all of them tamped down. >> thanks, bob pisani.

jacqui deangeles is live at the nymex. >> carl, crude is continuing the gains today. risk coming on in the commodities after the bailout deal the cyprus. meanti meantime, west texas intermediate up 1%. we were above 95. we've paired back to a 4 handle. it is the highest level that we've seen wti in roughly a month. also keep in mind is addison armstrong. net long positions in nymex crude futures and options, they rose 3.2% according to the latest cftc commitment of traders report. that's the first increase in speculative net longs that we've seen in five weeks. switching gears to metals. pushing gold down but gold now back above $1600 an ounce. we could see volatility in gold because of that onyxes expiration today. traders are telling me they are not surprised to see the safe haven rotation out of the safe haven trade into the riskier commodities. carl, back over to you. >> thank you for that. why cyprus' loss could be

other country's gain according to rich russians. but first, i think we might go to rick santelli. rick? >> thanks, carl. my guest, right after the cyprus story hit a week ago friday i remember burching into you and you basically said, you know, think about sabers in this country, what's the different outside of vocabulary. can you expand upon that and the topic today with ben berbernank what can economists and policymakers learn? weigh in on all of that? >> the interesting thing is cyprus is talk b about hurting sabers. we had the situation that they've been taxing the savers with incredibly low interest rates for years and it's taxing the savers to help the housing market after the debacle. and they talk about it in cyprus like it's a new idea. we've been basically doing it here for four years. keeping rates abnormally low. the cyprus deal, i think,

brought that to a head. >> well, my question is, i agree with all that. and on this trading form particularly, the analogies to the gm bankruptcy, mg global, they're just everywhere. it's what everybody is talking about. in the end why isn't a whole lot more money coming out of the traditional banking system in europe? >> you know, i think that the view is, the view here is that everybody is too big to fail. i mean, you know, the reason that you're not seeing any kind of real big scare, one, it was a unique situation in cyprus. two -- >> in regards to dirty money. >> dirty money and also the size of the economy. so i don't think you're seeing a big exit because draghi has really kept his putter dry, hasn't done things and hasn't had to do a whole lot of him. >> let's go t to the bigger story. the bigger story to me, it's march madness, so we want to hook everything into basketball. what is the biggest sin that you think central bankers and

policymakers are committing, think politicians, think basketball. >> i think the central bankers are all sitting picks for the central -- the politicians, they're going to have to make the hard decisions. >> you talked about the grand bargaining. give me your thoughts. >> grand bargaining two years ago might have been a realistic possibility for the congress and president if rates were liar. they had the time because rates were so much lower and deficit was going up slower. in a real sense the fed buying the treasuries has made it less painful for the government. >> i'm not sure if the population that chairs the euro or those that chair somewhat with central planning with regard to the 27 countries, but my question to you is i'm not sure we're going to lose any of these countries, but on the other hand, keeping their funding and the central bankers and the banks and insolvency all in line is a full -time job.

is anybody worried about how we're growing these economies? is that the rally big elephant in the room? >> the growth hasn't phone zone up. we talked about it many times. what is the eventual exit strategy? our fed can't decide when to stop buying treasuries much less strengthen the balance sheet. >> i talked to jim bianco about the taper. this is another arena where the fed is going to paint themselves into a corner, they're going to move them up and down with every data point? in the end, they just have to say enough is enough, don't they? >> going to paint themselves into a corner. at this point i think they're kind of there. already doing $85 billion a month. and you are unwilling to stop because you don't want to stop the market. >> as we all learned about subsidies, talk to people that trade sugar. carl, back to you. >> thanks so much, rick santelli. let's send it over to josh and get a market flash here. >> hey, carl. check out family dollar in the red this morning.

analysts tell me part of the problem, dollar general, gave more details about the rollout of tobacco products and performance there was exceeding expectations. remember, family dollar got into the tobacco business about a year ago so worry there about how the company now might be impacted. family dollar now near session lows here. down 2.4%. carl, back to you. >> interesting to see them go opposite directions today. thanks so much, josh lipton. why cyprus' loss could be other countries' gain. robert frank has more on that. hey, robert. >> hey, carl. cyprus, we talked about it as a crisis but it's also become a big opportunity for countries looking for all that russian money. ochi of course, cyprus was the favorite for decadesen between 10 and $20 billion deposits were in cyprus mostly from russia. the question is where will it go now? according to one which tracks russian flows there are flee countries currently in the lead for all that money.

latvia is secretive. privacy is well protected there. it's easy to protect shale companies. another contender in second place, malta, also very secretive, very light regulation with a weak central bank. and a history of dealing with east europeans. israel is apparently big destination along with more traditional tax havens like switzerland and singapore but it's a smaller more secretive havens that are expected to be the big winners here. more than $12 billion leaves russia each year. latvia or malta's gain, back to you. >> you think about everything that cyprus represented to russians. you are removing, as someone said, robert, the bulk of their gdp strength, the sweet spot of their economy. >> kind of like russia's delaware. it was a country that even though was a separate country, unlike delaware it was where all the russian companies were sort of incorporated, where a lot of shale companies went. more than $100 billion flowed

through cyprus for russia. so, you know, it's a lot of flows, a lot of money. and so there could be good gains for these other tiny countries if they get some of that cash. >> wow, that's fascinating. thanks so much, robert. robert frank at hq. oil brief climbing $95 a barrel today. see if it can go back to 100 any time soon. also, newscred almost didn't make it. the ceo is here to explain and make a big announcement about funding.

we are live in orlando at the cup, we have iks cluesive comments from legendary investor joe louis on what currencies he's trading right now. how is the big money riding out the big volatility? the man in charge of $250 billion on investors' money for citi private bank is sharing his best ideas right now. media mogul todd wagner is our special guest. we are talking everything tech and his very big call on netflix. see you in is15 minutes or so. crude meantime is having the best one-month gain since

february 21st. helped out in part by the bailout agreement that was reached in cyprus. sterling smith is a commodities strategist at citi. he joins us this morning. sterling, good morning to you. >> good morning. >> is this the beginning of a new sustainable push? >> i don't think so. i think the truth of the matter is really lying in the products which you see are weaker. gasoline demand has been really fairly tepid here. i don't see that improving until we get out in may. we are seeing some better demand for t heating oil in the east with the cold snap but as far as a big mac kro move i don't see that being a likely scenario. >> people had been getting used to the prices coming down in recent weeks. i guess the thinking might be to come, well, maybe summer driving season, that seasonal trend is maybe starting a little bit earlier. you do not see that? >> i don't really see that. gas in the pump it around here is pushing $4 a barrel. i don't think you can really increase demand until we see chicago gas prices hit closer to

$3.25. then i think you will start to see a little bit better activity. i think what you are seeing here right now is a little bit of relief coming from the eurozone deal. i don't think we really have the fundamental drivers in the demand to push things higher just yet. >> finally, does the range, where is the range that we're going to trend in here for the near term? where does it lie? >> i think $95, $96 is extremely rich for crude oil. i think i would like to bye west texas intermediate closer to $85 a barrel. i'd like to buy brent in the $100, $102 range. i wouldn't expect that to be a big move up, maybe up to $92. >> sterling, appreciate that very much. sterling smith over at citi talking crude with us. new york start-up newscred has convinced major brands like pepsi and j and j they need to pay for news. the co-founder and ceo will join us live here at "post " to tell us how he did it. ♪

[ male announcer ] this is karen and jeremiah.

a big trend for companies. businesses are trying to attract customers by building their own content or getting it from elsewhere. that's where today's breakthrough newscred comes in. newscred delivers existing high quality content from over 2500

news sources to paying brands and customers they can use to drive brand awareness. newscred made headlines when it announced it secured a $15 million round of financing and added the nlg "new york times" as a content provider. the cofounder and ceo of newscred joins this morning here. welcome. good to have you. >> thank you. >> we were talking off camera about what you've done for pepsi in the past year and how that's used as somewhat of a template for what it is you do. expalestine. >> absolutely. i think pepsi is a great example. they've had a legacy in music for a long time and decided they wanted to premove the standard corporate website and replace it with this beautiful cop culture magazine. it's filled with rich text, articles, images, videos about music, about movies, about pop culture. they really want to participate in the conversation around pop culture and engage their audience. >> pepsi makes sense. j and j makes sense. "the new york times" as a client seems like this is something they would or should do on their own. >> yeah, absolutely.

you know, signing up the new york sometimes is a content provider for us because big deal. it shows the "new york times" is all about innovation and experimentation. content marketing is new for them. the reason why all big publishers work with us in over 1500 of them is that we find new distribution for them and new revenue streams. >> that's where your growth comes in. you were telling me growing 12x last year? >> absolutely. content marketing as a category has emerged and we're one of the leaders in the market, so you know, i have a fantastic team and they deserve all the credit. >> you started this in 2008 when clearly the economy, the global economy was about to go through a very deep crucible. does it start to feel now like the sales on your boat are beginning to fill up with air? >> yeah, absolutely. you know, the wind is right behind us now. we started in 2008. our story is all about perseverance and patience as we waited for this market to

develop. and really we've been regarded because content market as a category emerged a year, year and a half ago and now we're one of the leaders in the space. >> not that long ago. >> no. and the main reason is, you know, brands have spent a lot of time investing growing digital audiences. you know, you and i, we follow brands on facebook, twitter, go to their website and they need a way engage their audience. we help fuel those conversations by giving them high quality content. >> announce the round of financing. couple new big investors you might want to mention? >> absolutely. gave us big checks. mayfield, gray croft, and first mark are investing investor and we're thrilled to have them on board. >> to what areas of growth do you spend it? >> we plan on doubling our staff this year across two usas, both in new york and bangladesh. we want to take this international. we want to be in the eco system and doing it in every language and every country. >> are things moving at a pace

that resembles the u.s. or do other parts of the world, are they lagging, are they growing faster because of the relative size? >> there's no question the u.s. is moving really fast but the other countries are starting to pick up steam and so with want to be able to run as fast as possible to make sure we stay ahead of the curve. >> finally, we always ask the question about your own ownership and structure longer term. do you remain private or do you see yourself as a part of a bigger conglomerate? >> right now heads down, run as fast as possible. we think marketing technology companies are all the waive. marketo is probably going public this year. for now, just focused on doing our job right. >> fascinating story. please come back. >> thank you for having us. >> newscred. when we come back, news content making more news this morning. yahoo! buying a summaization

start-up. >> speaking of content, it's a classic tek entrepreneurs. yahoo! bought a start-up krrcul. you can browse through it quickly. the founder is 17 year old. yahoo! won't say how much it paid but all thinks it's priced at under $30 million. here's the founder earlier today. >> i can't say anything in terms of the price of the deal but, again, i think people will focus on the price but really what's exciting here is that the s summarization technology. >> the uk, too. he's going to work with yahoo! for a while. he says he might use it to start another company eventually. for investors, further evidence that start-up companies want to be acquired by yahoo!. look at summly backerses. ashton kutcher, lika-shing, mark

pincus. >> good point about yahoo! and desire to be acquired. keep those tweets coming. a lawmaker in texas proposing a state create a texas depository that would allow the state and texans to store gold at its own facility. if passed, texas would be the first state to have its own ft. knox. what would it be and why? tweet us at squawk street. we'll get your answers after a short break.