levititch was designed with up-and-coming riders with u.s. markets and china and india in mind. >> someone in new york city that wants to zip around, have the nimbleness that this electric bike delivers, but in cities all over the world. as we see urbanization being a trend and obviously appealing to millennials, live wire is right in the sweet spot of that. >> he says live wire still likely years from coming onto the market. one reason the company is not disclosing the cost, asking price will depend on the evolution of lithium ion batteries which are still so expensive to manufacture and right now only offer a limited battery life, in this case, only about 53 miles per charge. the new 2015 models are also geared toward this noncore customers. analysts are watching sales of those bikes very carefully. guys, back to you. >> morgan, let me ask you one question very simply, did you like it? >> i did like it. but i've ridden on the back of a lot of bikes. i don't actually have a license, but this was a really smooth,

pretty bike. i would like to zip around on it. >> that's very important because you're the target audience. >> exactly. >> it's quieter. it's nicer. we'll send it over to you, carl. >> it is 8:00 a.m. google headquarters in mountain view, california. 11:00 a.m. here on wall street. "squawk alley" is live. ♪ good morning morning. welcome to "squawk alley." kayla is off today. the johns, jon fortt, john steinberg beginning a new job today at the "daily mail."

but we have you for the hour. >> absolutely. >> there's a look at the markets. dow within 17,000. first up, speaking of stocks, still trading lower but we're still very close to 17k. how have some of the biggest tech names performed since dow 16k. dom chu has some answers on that. >> good morning, carl. the match to dow 17,000 is so close to being complete. if we do hit it, it would have been about seven months since the dow first crossed around that 16,000 mark. and tech stocks have been doing their part in helping this latest move higher. so let's kick it off with a check of dow components like microsoft. the software giant got a new ceo back in february and is now in the midst of a campaign to gain more traction for its surface pro 3 tablet computer. buzz is already surrounding the future release of its windows 9 operating system, possibly sometime maybe next year. now, since november of last year, which is when we were at dow 16,000, this stock has gained 12%. very respectable. so microsoft, a nice move there.

then there's cisco that is well off its tech bubble highs. but it's also been on a bit of a tear since november of last year. since then, it's gained 16%, but the stock is relatively flat for the year. now, the stock has been picking up steam more recently just in the last three months. that's where the bulk of the gains have come, just 15% there over the last three months. it's, again, flat over the last 12 months. and that stock carries a dividend of around 3% at current levels. then there's, of course, the biggest tech standout in the dow since we first crossed that 16,000 mark. that semiconductor giant indell. it's gained a whopping 23% during that same time frame which also makes it the third best performing stock in the entire dow since the 16,000 level. now, investors are also finding reasons to be high on this stock, especially on the more recent side of things. shares are already above where the average wall street forecast for price is. so the question is, will analysts find reasons to be even more bullish on intel? also with a 3% yield.

now, for bulls, the nice pop in tech shares is encouraging. but for the dow, those stocks don't care as much weight. remember, the dow places the most importance on stocks with high prices like ibm, like 3m and caterpillar, not so much the $20 to $40 stocks like intel, microsoft and cisco. >> price-weighted index, dom. interesting picture of tech. i'm most fascinated by microsoft this morning. best performing component of the day. we hit 42. we've gone the past decade wondering when it could get out of the 30s. >> who thought that it would take this? everybody was saying oh, if they pick an internal candidate, the stock's going to tank. they did pick an internal guy who's been there for decades. and it's up. you've got to wonder where it goes from here, though. microsoft, cisco, ibm, indifficuintel, all of these facing problems whether it's software to find networking, mobile or arm. >> mojo back? yes or no? microsoft? >> absolutely. i think absolutely. i looked at a bunch of the tech

names since the december 20th cross of 1600 which was the time it crossed after the point that dom pointed out. you've got apple up 15%. google up 3%. facebook up 17%. microsoft up 13.6%. here's the one that really blows me away. twitter down 34%. so that's the real standout since the beginning of the year. if you're looking for what's really happened since 1600 to 1700, that's the one that's scary. >> speaking of names that are competitive with microsoft and others, google, the owner of nest, the maker of smart thermostats and smoke detectors buying dropcam. nest, of course, was acquired by google back in january for $3.2 billion. and we talked to ceo greg duffy last month. he had some interesting things to say about google and nest. take a listen. >> when it comes to google nest, i definitely think in the next few years we're going to see them wanting to get into our space and see us wanting to get into their space. that's okay with us. we think cameras are actually one of the most complicated

sensors in the home, so we have a really good head start on what it takes to give you perfect home awareness. >> apparently google agreed, gogot all up in his space. >> in retrospect, he is trolling you in that interview. it's clear. i think it's absolutely the year with hardware. the google watches, the apple watches and actually today, quirky, a company we've had on the show which does a lot of crowd source hardware, they announced a platform called wink, which is home automation. ge, buzzfeed advertiser, is an investor. home depot will roll it out into their stores. this is a theme this year. >> there are cameras in everything. i think some people would scratch their heads, why buy a camera company? doesn't everybody have a camera? there's a camera in your phone, laptop, ipad. dropcam figured out a way to do this so that it's simple for people. there are lots of numbers to crunch on the back end to make sure that video gets delivered. apparently nest felt like hey, we can do this faster with them.

i think the question is in a year and a half, what does nest look like? is there some sort of a bigger platform for the digital home, or do they tie all these pieces together some other way? i've been trying to tease those details out of tony, but he won't tell me. >> a lot of the coverage today centers on all right, you've got a home products company and a digital media company. privacy concerns at the intersection, right? the ability to stream video of your house? >> yes. >> are those legitimate or not? >> someone brought this up. there's a book out called "the circle," which is all about google. and it's all about these cameras that people wear around their neck to photograph their lives. the dropcams look suspiciously like kind of the way this unit is described. there will undoubtedly be privacy concerns. we've talked about there being mobile desktop cars and home. these are all places these hardware and software layers need to be in so everybody has to compete in it. >> i've heard from nest's end of things that there is a firewall between them and google and they're very comfortable with how that's gone. they were very careful in this release to say dropcam is

getting acquired by nest falls under nest's privacy guidelines, not google's. so they're conscious of that concern. >> the skeptic stuff that i've read today basically argues, turning the switch on in your house is not a complex act. does it really crave innovation like this? >> i think it does. i think there's a huge pot of money here that we all spend on electric bills. you know, we are all concerned about what's going on in our home. are the kids there? what time do people enter and leave? one platform could tie all of this together in a way that ads, convenience and saves people money. >> i agree with jon. i think we're going for low-hanging fruit right now, burglary and are the kids home. ultimately you have no idea how much electricity is burning. you have no idea if the air conditioning is on, the water. it needs to be as diagnosticable as your car. from one deal to another, oracle finalizing a deal to buy microsystems. it sells web-connected cash registers and the software.

it's the biggest deal since buying sun back in 2010, i believe, for $7.4 billion. take a look at how both companies are doing this morning. fbr is out with a note saying oracle transitions to cloud, they need to go, quote, on the deal warpath. and with $39 billion in cash, they can do some more. >> they sure could. this is a big one, though. it's interesting. one of micros's big competitors is ncr where mark hurd used to be. he knows some things about that. oracle doesn't like to pay huge multiples for acquisitions. they're not paying a huge one here, but they're in a space with point of sale, with hotel bookings are people are trying to crowd in. oracle, if they're quick in integrating this into their organization, they have an opportunity to jump ahead of the others. we'll see if they can. >> three times forward sales, relatively cheap. i was in cannes last week at the ad festival. it's amazing how local not cracked by google, not cracked

by google or microsoft. the cash registers, the point of sale, if you think about oracle trying to flank microsoft or ibm, this is a place where they could be successful. you can do some of that through chains and fran sizes. but it's a battleground. it seems like an interesting place to go after. >> dow jones this morning, oracle has averaged nine acquisitions over the past ten years. 11 of nothose, $1 billion or mo. can you get more aggressive than that? >> you can. as i mentioned in the last hour, i was mentioning to mark hurd a few weeks ago, you guys used to do multibillion-dollar acquisitions on a cadence every couple years. they got off of that. now we see -- >> yeah, but some of those lessons were hard won. the people saw that going on for years. >> it did, but even dave dufffield who didn't want to let go of peoplesoft admits that oracle has done a great job managing that business. they haven't done a big one for a while. now they've got one. we'll see if they keep doing

them. >> some of these acquisitions have been much more successful. if you look at the double-click acquisition very successful, android, we spaumall, skype, relatively successful left-alone-type acquisition. i think they'll say there's so many hard-won lessons. maybe for a systems integration type software play, yes. but we've seen more success in the past decade than we've seen before. >> you think pulling the strings at oracle, a mix? >> he's got the strings but he's giving mark hurd and katz room to run in the areas where they are. i've called this sort of a dream team in enterprise tech. really highly competent people here. and they know their roles. >> that's exciting, going to be fun to watch. when we come back, from games to investing in pot. the co-founder of zynga joins us to talk about what's being billed as the shark tank for legal marijuana. jeff bezos.

and which celebrity is apple going for for its next major product? we've got some answers on that. "squawk alley" will be right back. in a world that's changing faster than ever, we believe outshining the competition tomorrow requires challenging your business inside and out today. at cognizant, we help forward-looking companies run better and run different - to give your customers every reason to keep looking for you. so if you're ready to see opportunities and see them through, we say: let's get to work.

because the future belongs to those who challenge the present.

life is all fun and games after revolutionizing the gaming industry. now focusing on disrupting technology in the marijuana industry. joining us from the silicon valley for weed as they call it is the ceo of serna, tom

ballach. good morning. >> good morning. >> industry obviously has been turned on its head, basically being created before our own eyes. walk us through what the potential is and where the potential lies. >> oh, the potential is everywhere. i mean, this is -- if you think about it, this was exactly the way it was at zynga, an evolving industry that we get to be at the ground floor. i mean, it's, you know, kind of all bets are off right now. who knows what's going to be the big thing, really? >> so where do you see the opportunity to change the way this market works? i mean, beyond the market, you know, macro, we see that some laws are changing, what can you do that's innovative? >> well, i mean, we're really focused on, you know, tackling the really big problems. climate's one of them. that's what we started with. power is a huge problem. water is a massive problem. in this industry. we feel like, you know, we're an

engineering firm at the end of the day. so we're going to attack those first. >> tom, you know, what's interesting is in light of the maureen dowd column that came out about a week ago that she took too much of the clohocolat and was in her room totally paranoid. instead of people being excited, everyone now is worried about it. do you see that sentiment change? is there a possible regulatory reverse that could go on now is this >> no, i mean, probably -- almost certainly what we're going to see is more regulation. and that's what's needed. the fact that you can just take too much too easily, and everything, you know, kind of looks like a candy bar. it's kind of hard not to overeat. >> are you tackling those problems? is that something you're working on as well, the labeling? >> no, we're really focused on the engineering and growing. >> tom -- >> growing the plant itself. >> -- is the opportunity in the

infrastructure, the accessories, the delivery mechanisms, or is it in the actual drug itself? i mean, is this a product story or more of a biochemistry pharma story? >> yes. all of it. >> give me an example. >> like i said -- well, i mean, for -- i mean, you see everything evolving, right? people who are actually trying to dial in how you're going to feel. so, you know, you take this gumdrop, and you're going to be happy for 20 minutes. or you'll take this one over here. you know, you'll get sleepy. i mean, it's all over the place right now. for us, it's all about infrastructure. but i feel like the pharmaceuticals are going to come in pretty strong. >> tom, switching gears to zynga now, when you think about what it takes for these mobile gaming companies, whether it's a zynga or a king to be a successful studio, to be able to be what a

disney is to this space, what do you think needs to happen, and what are things you would have done differently had you still been at the company at this point? >> well, that is kind of changing gears. well, honestly, it's -- you almost want to think small. probably what's happening is you have all of these guys that are thinking too large. they should almost slice their company up into small studios and kind of let them run independently. i think that -- to me, that's how you get your next big game. >> taking it back to your business for just a moment, why are you specifically focused on pot? you talk about engineering. you talk about the agricultural challenges. there are lots of agricultural challenges across the world. the market is big. why focus on this one in particular? >> well, it's because this one can pay for everything. so when you have a product that's $2,000, $3,000 a pound, you can really start applying

some cool technology to it. when it's 10 cents a pound, it's hard for it to pay for research and development. actually, probably what you're going to see is that the price of this crop is going to create so much technology, they're going to be able to take that back into lettuce, tomatoes and everything else. and then everything will grow probably similar. >> finally, tom, i mean, we all know the story in colorado. we know the story in washington state. but the data's still coming in on the societal effects. you mentioned more regulation after the maureen dowds of the world write columns like those. what's the likelihood does a regulatory snapback and all of this essentially shuts down and everyone is getting into the industry is walking into a dead end? >> i just don't see that happening. all of the states are pulling -- over 50%, i believe they even said texas is polling over 70% right now. i really think texas is going to go sooner than most people think. i'm originally from there.

and it's sort of texas goes, i feel like the whole nation is going to go. >> well, tom, we're going to keep our eye on you and everyone else in this space, even though people give us a hard time occasionally on twitter. tom, thanks. >> all right, thank you. >> talking disruption in the pot business. when we come back, after amazon launched its own phone last week, jeff bezos had an interesting message for one iphone customer. we're going to tell you what he said in just a moment. plus, everyone watching, this is your chance to be a part of "squawk alley." we'll ask questions that you can vote on and then see the results live on your screen. all you need to do is head to cnbc.com/vote on your computer, phone or tablet. get involved. the questions are coming soon. "squawk alley" will be right back. ♪

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if you're a current or former military member or their family, get an auto insurance quote and see why 92% of our members plan to stay for life. welcome back to "squawk alley." we don't see moves like this very often in the market. parker vision shares are down about 60% in today's trading. now, a judge has thrown out a $173 million patent suit

decision that parker vision had won against semiconductor maker qualcomm over wireless networking patents. parker vision says it will appeal the ruling, but the shares are off their session lows. still, carl, down 60% in today's trade. back over to you. >> thanks a lot, dom. in case you miss it had, after amazon's fire phone event last week, jeff bezos invited a few lucky numbers back to hq for a catered lunch and some drinks. bezos showed up and walked around, introducing himself to people. when one customer asked him to sign her iphone, he had a great response. upgrade time? signed, jeff bezos. we've looked on ebay. we haven't seen this for sale yet. a comment on the iphone itself, i guess. >> yeah. why wouldn't you sell that? i mean, you can't keep using it because if you actually hold the back of it, you're going to smudge the -- i don't know. that's great. maybe you frame it. what do you do with that? >> it's going to be a very exciting fall. we'll have the iphone 6.

god knows what samsung will have. it's upgrade time for everybody come fall. it's just a question of what you're going to get. >> right on the heels of stories that said we've already added as many bells and whistles as we could handle. samsung was getting more simple. >> i think we probably have added as many bells and whistles as we could handle. i think is all about the services. beyond that, i mean, more cameras, 3-d. >> holograms. >> on the services layer, you're really going to have to go back to being a mac or pv person -- a mac or google person. you're not going to get everything out of your iphone if you have a mac and you won't get everything out of your android device if you're not auto google services. it reminds me of when you were in high school, is that a mac or a pv disk? >> david faber's documentary "amazon rising" premieres sunday night beginning at 9:00 p.m. eastern right here on cnbc. that's going to be great to watch. a few minutes till europe's

close. simon's here to wrap up their monday. >> quite a bit of red around europe. it's moderate but red. the pace of recovery appears to be slowing in europe. if you look at the purchasing manager's index that came through for both manufacturing and services today. it dropped down to 52.8 which is a bigger drop than most people expected. within that, france is actually contracting. that's perhaps why we saw mario draghi over the weekend quoted in the press as reiterating the four-year low rates guidance. in other words, rates will stay low for four years in the eurozone, and the possibility of qe next year. the other thing i need to point out to you is that peripheral europe or greece had sold off quite heavily today. you might not have seen it. there was a run on ia bank in bulgaria at the end of last year. apparently that's not the greeks because the greeks have exposure there. a lot of the italian banks are notably lower today. there you go. some of those were in negative territory. finally, we seem to have a

resolution on alstom going to ge for $17 billion. and a series of joint ventures, of course, with the french government. the big surprise was that france went through with a partial renationalization of alstom. and they've completed that over the weekend, at least on paper by buying back 20% of alstom from the billionaire. that's the big news there. jeffrey immelt gets what he wants. you see alstom slightly lower. mary mentioned this earlier, ge continues to sell out of its -- ge machine, the consumer finance unit, which is going to spin off here. they sold the operation in sweden, denmark and norway to the spanish giant for the best part of a billion dollars. and one more, we're still waiting for resolution on bnp paribas and the fines for tl deliberately hiding the money in sudan for so manyccording to re billion probably to be announced

in july. more heads rolling according to the report. a big question for many, carl, will be whether or not they're suspended from -- there you are -- suspended from some operations and money transfers for any period of time. i think that's still up in the air. >> part of our financial discussion earlier this morning. simon, thanks. when we come back, samsung getting ready to launch a new android-powered smartwatch. apple obviously targeting one big celebrity to promote their own. it brings to us the part of the show where we'd like you to vote. we're asking the question once apple and google enter the smartwatch market, would you buy one? all you have to do, head to cnbc.com/vote. let us know what you think. get ready. that question and more going live on the other side of this break. the dow is down 29. with all the opinions about stocks out there, how do you know which ones to follow? the equity summary score consolidates the ratings of up to 10 independent research providers into a single score that's weighted

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♪ welcome back. samsung reportedly planning to introduce its first android-powered smartwatch at google's developers conference this week. it follows separate reports that apple's close to launching a smartwatch of its own. joiningous discussion by going to cnbc.com/vote. let your vote be heard. once apple and google enter the smartwatch market, would you buy one? and that's really the only question we need to know. are consumers going to be interested in this? >> i hope so. i hope it's sexy enough that we sort of have to have it. but i haven't worn a watch

consistently for years. so -- >> because why? because the watch is right here? is that it? >> yeah, if i want to know what time it is. i wish there was something that gave me enough value that i put it on. >> unless you're a hardcore geek, you don't know that you want this until you see it. it's like the henry ford, if people asked me what they want, i'd say faster horses. they don't know they want it until they see it. i can't believe people are voting no on this. it blows me away. we'll see after this week. i'd love to re-run the survey after this week. >> we had a big discussion last week about whether or not it needs to be a health and fitness data aggregator or something more. lance, i'm thinking back on this program last week, said health is great, but people don't want to know about their health every second of the day. >> especially if you're not that healthy. it's ends of the spectrum. if you're really unhealthy, you want to know. in between, you're like i want a twinkie. i don't want to think about that. >> i think the problem, an easy

way for people to get calls and messages without having to be socially disruptive. it's the whole thing that google glass is supposed to do. unfortunately it's so socially disruptive just wearing that it that alleviates the -- >> the other thing i think is interesting, walt on the show saying it's not going to be about the watch. the watch is going to be a signpost to the other products that eddie q says are the most exciting he's seen in 25 years with the company. >> yeah, i hope so. i hope so. this really needs to be like cool sunglasses where wearing it makes you feel and look cooler. kind of like the opposite of what google glass is doing for a lot of people. it's like what's on your face. it needs to be, like, oh, what's on your wrist? >> well, that's the vote. 44 yes, 56 no. speaking -- i know. >> at least it mauved up a little bit. but we're right on the bubble there. speaking of apple's watch, they're working with professional athletes. los angeles lakers' kobe bryant among them to test its fitness

capabilities. let us know what you think. does apple need a celebrity endorsement on this product? i'm thinking back to think different. it wasn't tied to one living personality at least, right? >> for this, i say absolutely, the same way that they needed musicians to give them cred moving in with the ipod for this. it's not so much about an endorsement. it's about show me that it actually works to measure the things an athlete needs to measure. it's not like lebron's face on there with samsung. i don't know if lebron knows anything about smartphones. this is about telling me, you know, for measuring my oxygen, heart rate, giving me a better workout, i'm a pro athlete and this is great. i want to know that. >> i think this is a fundamental change in advertising. we had a period of time where everyone wanted celebrity endorsers, then a period of time where people said it doesn't matter. you don't need them. they're a waste of money. people had blackberrys and not using them. i think the pendulum has come back now. and people recognize that if you have influencers and celebrities using the products and explaining how simple they can be to use and you do it in kind

of a broad way, samsung has this program called white glove where they give out tons of phones to lots of people and they set it up. these phones can be very powerful in terms of word-of-mouth marketing. >> basically evenly split, 47 yes, 52 no. we'll see what strategy apple, going through its own marketing changes as we speak, which tact they'll take. >> speaking of celebrities and wearable tech, black eyed peas singer will.i.am is rumored to have his own watch. we cornered him on that last month. take a listen. >> will, you're wearing something else. we've gotten just a small glimpse. it's a black band on your wrist. you've been saying in some other interviews a little bit vaguely that that is your phone. i'm wondering if you can tell us what it is and what we should expect from you where wearables are concerned going forward. >> i don't have nothing on my wrist. just kidding. >> oh. >> there's things that i have been in the curtain up my sleeve or on my wrist that i'm going to

be doing in the future like soon. >> okay. we know will.i.am has his ear to the ground. beats is a great bona fide, so to speak. >> yeah, it kind of cancels out some of that other camera stuff he was doing. >> stocks still down today. dow is down 42 points or so. still within striking distance, though, of dow's 17,000. bob pisani is on the floor with more on that for us. >> the important thing about today, we don't hit dow 17,000, at least not yet. however, we've been seeing fabulous rotation, and that's why the market keeps moving towards new highs. let me show you what june looks like. in june we've had had two sectors move to the floor. energy stocks have been great performers and financials have been great performers. and then there's been other months prior to here where tech stocks have moved ahead health care has been a market leader at one point or another. then fell back. so you keep getting this rotation, and that's why the market keeps holding up so well. as for today, commodity stocks is what you want to look at because the china pmi data was very strong today.

australia was probably the best market in asia. closer to china, pmi data. there you see some of the commodity stocks moving to the upside. housing-related stocks, excellent. may existing home sales numbers, up 4.9%, above expectations. bigger percentage gain since august 2011. by the way, we're going to get earnings reports this week. kb home reporting on friday. menard reporting on thursday. of course, we'll be looking for new orders. the most important is pricing. we'll get an update from both companies later this week. gold stocks hit 13 -- when gold hit 1300 the other day, moving up there. gold stocks are following through today. allied, goldcorp, el dorado, all on the upside. airlines are weak, even though oil isn't doing too much today, airlines have been on the down side a little bit. they've had a terrific run recently. we've got within shouting distance of dow 17,000. we may make it today. guys, back to you. >> bob, thank you very much.

when we come back, including the current conflict in iraq, the use of a private internet is growing across the globe. we're going to tell you how that's leading to a big jump in popularity with one former "squawk" breakthrough. first, rick, what are you watching today? >> we're going to be talking about how the too-big-to-fail banks and many of the larger institutions that used to buy and sell securities, well, they're not doing so much of that anymore. so how would a hiccup in liquidity affect some of the big markets? that's what we're going to talk about right after the break. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance. yeah. everybody knows that. did you know there is an oldest trick in the book? what? trick number one.

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coming up, top of the hour on the half, stocks marching higher but some names being left in the dust by this rally. the traders reveal which plays could catch up. and a match made in college? wait until you hear what the ceo of match.com is doing for the children of his customers, i.e. match babies. when he joins us live. and some harley-davidson fans are not in hog heaven over the company's new electric motorcycle, but can it make investors happy? that and much more straight ahead on "the halftime report." carl. >> melissa, thank you very much. in case you missed it, an update for a "squawk" breakthrough. the ft highlighting the private internet app fire chat growing in popularity in iraq. it doesn't require a central internet provider, sets up a

local network between your device and all of the devices near you. back on this program back in april. >> this app will help people in countries where also there is very poor connectivity or where internet is lacking. so it's really, i think, bringing more people to connect together all around the world. >> whether it's that, whether it's sort of the single data point communications like yo that get laughed at in developed countries but around the world where the internet is much different, people feel differently, right? >> yeah, i can imagine they're laughing about yo in many different languages. in this case in a war zone, you completely see the use for this. you see what happened in turkey around the elections and various services getting messed with. it will be interesting to see how many other services there are that can get around these roadblocks that governments and sometimes service providers might want to set up. >> yeah, i was skeptical of fire chat just because you need a mesh network. you basically need everybody next to each other to pass the

natural along. i can understand how in a city that would work very well. we highlighted this when the first nsa stuff came out last year how there was going to be so much investment and opportunity around security and privacy. and i think this year the next set of snapchats, the next cloud services we see, this is going to be a huge kind of priority in everything. whether it's the app itself or it's the infrastructure. >> interesting. we'll watch it closely. meantime, let's get to the cme group, check in with rick santelli. >> hi, carl. you know, if we look back at the press conference that we had last week with janet yellen, there were two areas that i found most interesting. actually maybe three. the first is fair value pricing for equities, but let's move that aside. the second was steve liesman asked the question about inflation. and many thought that janet yellen's answer really didn't typify the amount of attention some would like to see ahead of the biggest world central bank have towards potential developing pricing pressures. but the third area was quite clear. and the third area was a

question about exit fees. now, the whole notion of exit fees, many on this trading floor, and there's some pretty sharp people that have been trading for many years, thought it was a balloon floated. that exit fees could stem a real mass exodus, for example, of positions in bond funds should things get dicey. but let's go to the core of the real issue here. many believe that there could potentially be a bubbleicious credit market developing. if we look toward the past, it demonstrated that when you had had a high concentration of counterpart risk to one substitution, whether it be a bear stearns or a lehman, that should things unravel, it's going to be a problem. but something funny has happened since then, of course, and that is this overbearing regulation that has tried to take the large institutions, the too-big-to-fail banks, the primary dealers and basically create a structure in the

marketplace, whether it's through capital controls or regulating proprietary trading, that has taken some of the big players. you know, when i used to cover corporate securities hedging in the '80s and '90s on this trading floor via the treasury markets, many of those positions were because these large institutions were constantly dealing in corporate securities. so the real issue then becomes accumulation versus liquidation. if we have a credit issue developing, the accumulation phase is what we're going through. lots of players that have now taken the baton from these large institutions, and they have become more active. so, you know, the volume used to be in the cash markets for treasuries. then it was next in the derivative markets like futures. and the third was always extraneous like etfs. the latter has ballooned of late. so really the issue becomes this. that should the accumulation ever quickly turn to liquidation, we can obviously see that the central banks'

concern by even floating the idea of exit fees. but the real notion is as markets get quiet and complacent, another area of contention to many regulators, it really does portray that you'd better be careful if you're holding large positions in things like etfs because it could be that musical chairs game. when the music stops, who's going to be willing to take your position? back to you. >> all right, rick, thank you very much. rick santelli. cloud economics. oracle earnings to their latest acquisition. we're talking to a private company on the next wave of storage. ♪ ♪ ♪

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our next guest simplified enterprise data for its clients and announced a $100 million round of funding this past march which puts its valuation over the billion dollar mark. let's bring in the ceo of actifio. thanks for joining us. you're in copy data. i guess the concept is your technology allows people not to have to make so many different copies of the data that they have and spend a lot of money on that. but instead, deal with more of a virtualized version and save money that way. what's driving that, and did i even explain it correctly, ash? >> yeah, i think the notion, what we've done is to bring this notion of copy data virtualization which virtualizes how you keep copies, manages all those copies throughout their life cycle. the most important benefit for

the users is to enable access to any information from anywhere instantly, which turns into a pretty compelling -- from a business benefits benefit, access to information becomes one of the critical items for agility and actifio drives that in an unprecedented way. today, we sell to large enterprises in 34 countries. that's been the foundation of what we have done over the last five years. >> so we see sandisk buying fusion io. lots of movement in this space. what is driving your business right now? is it the trend in big data and analytics where people want to try to figure out what's going to happen in the future? why do people need so much access to so much data from your perspective? >> yeah. so three big trends. you think about it. one, there's a democratization of i.t. there's so much information available, whether it's things, you saw nest, dropcam or the

components across byoe that's happening around i.t. organizations. second, there's a commoditization, compute, network, storage. it's pretty commoditized. then there's the virtualization of core services. there's the adoption of cloud or specialized functioning that people organize. so you have i.t. organizations that are now driven by skrooutc based i.t. results, less allegiance to infrastructure but more driven by what the outcomes are. and so in this big theme of lots of information, lots of data, completely separated out from, you know, what kind of infrastructure you have really doesn't matter anymore. you have actifio making sure we virtualize, move it to access for these applications and the work flow that manages the entire life cycle of this data. and this is big because -- go ahead. >> i'm sorry, ash, when you look

at cloud data virtualization, what are the consumer front-end technology companies that stand to benefit the most from this move? is it a microsoft? is it an evernote? is it a box or dropbox? how will people in the enterprise be actually accessing and leveraging this data? >> yeah. it depends on the kind of data we're dealing with. if it is a consumer kind of data, certain kind of platforms are appropriate. if it's enterprise class data, it's different kinds of platform that are applicable. the idea is to continue to figure out what's the right service that's dependent upon the outcome and not platform obviously works for everything. >> lots of companies in this space are selling out. you mentioned nest. you mentioned dropcam. i mentioned fusion io. what do you have to do to remain independent up against some of these giants, or do you even want to? >> no we absolutely feel that there's a very clear separation going on. you talked about sandisk and

fusion io. at the bottom, at the component part, there's a huge consolidation happening where the kpoep ent people are becoming system vendors. you have them becoming sas vendors and in between, how do you connect the application and the data they produce to infrastructure that is completely amorphous. we are an absolute category and we expect to continue to be a sustaining standalone company for a long time to come, creating a new market category around virtualization of copy data. >> one last question. tiger global led the round, and you had andreesen in there. how influential and helpful have they been in your company, and what should public market investors think about that when you come to market? >> it's a huge difference. when you have experienced investors trying to build company who become very strong

publicly held companies. it's a tremendous experience to bring to shaping of these companies to be very successful and sustained as a public company. so there's a very different paradigm that's happening in the i.t. companies now as companies become a stronger public company than just go public. so there's a difference between what used to happen five years ago and what's being asked for the companies like us going forward. >> interesting technology. interesting insights. ash, thanks so much. >> thank you. when we come back, is music streaming service spotify getting ready to go public? behind some new evidence that suggests the answer to that is yes.

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swelling of the lips, tongue or throat, or difficulty breathing or swallowing, stop taking cialis and get medical help right away. ask your doctor about cialis for daily use and a free 30-tablet trial. seema mody, what's going on? >> carl, we are slightly lower on the day. some of the semiconductor stocks are weighing on the nasdaq. pacific crest downgraded and nvidia, weak consumer pc demand. the analyst writing that a recent asia trip revealed that all may not be as peachy as it seems in pc land. now, sticking to the semi space, micron tech shares have been in rally mode. ahead of its earnings report,

we're looking at the stock slightly higher on the day. investors have been taking note of the rebound. goldman sachs put out a note saying semi stocks are in, quote, dangerous territory and that the market is overemphasizing the good news and ignoring the bad news. we'll have to see if the chips are due for a pause or if earnings will reconfirm the bullish case. lastly, blackberry shares move to the upside after reporting better than expected earnings last week. pacific crest upgrading that stock. we're looking at blackberry up about 27% over the last one week, carl. >> all right, seema, thank you very much for that. preparation is meeting opportunity at spotify. quartz is reporting the company is carrying out dry runs of earnings calls. a public company every three months, spotify rehearsing with investors, telling banksers from morgan stanley and deutsche, reports box is doing the same thing, of course. pretty clear the indication is spotify is preparing to go public. i'm looking at a chart of pandora for the past couple of

years. off the highs but off the lows, too. >> yeah. and they've got to learn to talk business. in cases like this. when they're even thinking about going public, it's very different from talking about your technology, especially in an environment like this where a company like spotify would have lots of costs and an uncertain prospect for growth and profits in the future. how do you talk about your company in a way that inspires confidence? >> yeah, and i think this is unbelievably common. i've had other start-ups talk to me as well. i think once you've raised, you have a board of directors, late-stage investors, every board meeting, whether you're holding them every six weeks, becomes a little bit of an earnings call. you're constantly creeping there. >> how would you characterize spotify's competitive position right now as we speak? >> i would say the streaming and value is incredibly strong and i think the brand flexity of people not totally understanding the value and how to use it, that's the challenge they have right now, i think. >> users, strong. profits, big question mark. >> as is the expense, the future

of expenses, right? >> yeah. that's exactly what i'm talking about, yeah. >> they were a big advertiser of ours at buzzfeed, and a lot of it was simplifying and explaining how to use it. >> great hour. get back to work, john. congratulations again. that does it for us. let's get to melissa lee in for the judge. >> hey there, guys. we're going to start it off right now. welcome to the "fast money halftime report." i'm melissa lee. debate it, double down. two popular retailers left out of the rally this year. is it finally time to load up on lulu or walmart? matchmaking money from ok cupid to tinder, dating sites all the rage. we're talking to the man who makes hooking up profitable. the ceo of match.com joins us. hog heaven or hell? the next generation of harley-davidson bikes, more of a quiet scooter than a hog. a sneak peek at the new electric bank. today's starting lineup, we begin with the ones left behind. not all parts of the market