at ally bank no branches equals great rates. it's a fact. kind of like shopping hungry equals overshopping. good morning. it is 11:00 a.m. here at goldman sachs headquarters in new york city, it's 11:00 a.m. on wall street and "squawk alley" is live. ♪

good wednesday morning. we are live from goldman's tmt leveraged finance conference in new york city. jon fortt and kayla tausche have things covered back at post nine. we'll get to you in just a few moments. we begin the hour with a special guest joining us here at goldman headquarters, gary cohn, the president and coo of goldman sachs. great to see you you. thanks for having us. >> thank you for being here at our leveraged finance tmt conference. we've got 500 great clients presenting today and i know you've interviewed a few so far and thank you for being here. >> what does it say that you put a whole conference together on leveraged finance in tmt. >> yep. >> what does that say about the time we're in right now. >> it says how important the tmt franchise is to goldman sachs and the economy. technology continues to drove

our economy. there's's quite a bit of debt out there. a lot of companies presenting today are established companies, companies that have been in the technology space for 10, 15, 20 years, have enormous amount of debt and continue to borrow in the market to expand their businesses, expanding their business means creating new product and growing jobs and growing the u.s. economy. >> we're in a period speaking of debt where the picture is very strange to a lot of people. jeff gunlack saying $2 trillion have negative yields. does that freak you out? >> yes, it does. yes. when i think about the big concerns i have in the world today, negative interest rates, throughout a lot of europe, it concerns me a lot and as we look forward, you know, the prognosis is we'll continue to have more negative interest rates as we've just started down the path of quantitative easing in europe. >> how sustainable is that? what negative externalities come? >> it looks like it's quite

sustainable. what european central bank has em banked on in their descriptive quantitative easing plans and where interest rates have started and they're just starting their buying program, as they continue to buy, they're going to have to keep forcing rates lower. they have a minimum threshold where they're willing to buy now which is the overnight deposit rate minus 20 basis points. many front end curves are minus 20 basis points which means they will be forced farther out of the curve so much more of the duration and curve will get more negative over time. which is a concern to me. it's very hard to be in the insurance business in the asset management business, in the pension business, when you can't get a return on your capital. >> and the aftereffects on institutions like the fed, with the big meeting next week, you've said their in a very tough position. >> we haven't seen the real unwind of quantitative easing. can qe be unwind, be unwound in the united states while it's just starting in europe? how do you look at these

interest differentials between major g-7 countries around the world, can one central bank tack away from where the other central banks are. we don't know. these are all new problems, all new opportunities that we've never seen in really the history of central banking. >> that's all happening, even as our own jobless rates go into 5.5, some say sub-5 in the second half. bollers in the ft saying era -- end of zerp is overdo. what happens next week. >> that's a good question. i think the fed is in a difficult spot. i completely understand janet yellen and her view that zero interest rates were emergency measures, and that she would like to have a higher fed funds rate. that would give her the latitude or the ability to lower rates if something dramatically bad happened in the united states. so intellectually i get that argument. it makes enormous sense to me. if i were in her position i would love to have that latitude. but she has to deal with the

real realities of the world. the realities of the world, we have a soaring dollar, and the effects on that soaring dollar, are just starting to be felt. you know, it's going to make u.s. exports more expensive. so what does that mean for u.s. manufacturing? what does that mean for u.s. jobs? it's not going to be positive. you know, u.s. companies sell a lot of products overseas. when they sell those products an those dollars come back what does it mean for u.s. earnings? what does it mean for rate differentials? as i said a minute ago if you need positive yield in the world today, you almost have to come to the u.s. to buy u.s. securities. i think we're going to have enormous pressure on the forward rates in the united states as people need to buy. where is the u.s. economy really? are we really growing that fast? we have a 5.5% unemployment rate but our participation rate last month went down. so the amount of americans seeking employment is not going up. there's very little to no wage price inflation, so in many

respects which ever side of this equation you're on you can justify where the fed is. i think the fed is in a tough position because no central bank wants to be known as someone who slows down an economic recovery. >> others argue there are other central banks throughout who would be willing to hike but they're waiting for the fed. not true? >> i don't know what other banks are thinking. i'm sure everyone is waiting to see what happens when you see the fed move and what the intended, unintended consequences are, trickle down effects are, and how it does affect those. >> sounds like fed president cohn would vote to keep patient in the language? >> if there were fed president cohn, he probably would vote to keep patient. >> the dollar you mentioned the mediocre rise, 23% in a year, should we all start planninging our european vacation? >> i heard the quintanillas are going to europe this summer. that's part of the initiative in europe. when you look at what mario

draghi and the ecb are doing, part of creating jobs is making europe cheaper, attracting more foreign investment. foreign investment as tourism is great investment. it puts people po work. europe will look relatively cheap to a lot of the world this summer. that's good for the employment picture in europe. a lot of us are going to plan vacations in europe this summer and that's what mario draghi had e intended as he started down the quantitative easing plan. >> inventories a few moments ago, i think we hit 47 and change. you said in january, could go to 30. >> i said it could go to 200 and 30. they both could be correct. >> okay. is the picture any different to you? >> no. i'm very much concerned about the short-term window here in the turnaround cycle that we've got going on in the united states. we're coming out of the winter heating oil season, refineries are turning around, refining capacity to manufacture more gasoline, for the summer driving season, as they turn around

refineries they don't need oil for weeks or months depending on how long the turnaround cycle and how much maintenance they do. that crude oil backs up in the system. i'm concerned we're going to run out of crude oil storage, land based in the united states especially in the mid-continent in texas and when we run out of crude oil storage, we really plummet the front end of crude oil. the forward prices could stay relatively stable, but the headline may read, you know, we've got $30 oil in the united states and i think that, again, going to have a fairly big impact on consumer sentiment which is positive but going to have an impact on the fed. it's hard to raise interest rates potentially when you see deflationary oil prices. >> nasdaq 5,000. important psychological number? was it the people who sold on that day are they geniuses? >> i don't know if they are or not. today they look smarter than not but who knows what they will look like tomorrow. it's a number.

people like big round numbers in the world. 5,000, it's a relevant number because last time 15 years ago when the nasdaq really rallied up, it was a number where we stalled out and we retrenched for 15 years. we're back up there. it's an interesting number. the composition of the companies in the nasdaq and the multiples and the earnings of nasdaq 5,000, look nothing like they did 15 years ago. >> used to say tech heavy nasdaq, even that doesn't mean much anymore. >> it's a real index of american companies and you look at the multiple of the nasdaq today versus the multiple 15 years ago. look at the revenue, the real revenue, the earnings, the roe, the epps, it's different nasdaq today than 15 years ago. >> valuations, especially private valuations, here's a quote from mark cuban talking about private market valuations, you will love this. in the tech bubble it was broadcast.com, aol, net scape,

today it's uber, twitter facebook. why is this bubble far worse than the tech bubble of 2000? because the only thing worse is a market with no valuations and no liquidity. why is he wrong? >> i think he's wrong because those companies that you happened to name right there, are companies that were all using every day of our life. so i -- we're standing over here a few minutes ago talking about uber and how many haves used uber to get to work and surprisingly or not surprisingly people used uber to get to work this morning. we're using these companies, these companies have become part of our everyday existence. we depend on these companies, we rely on these companies. these companies have real cash flow. they have real ability to grow and they're showing you how they can grow, how they can create market share, how they can disrupt and grow in size. and we can't live without them. you know, when we hit that button, we expect that car to show up and we get in and go where we're going. when we go to that drop box page

and we want to share that spread sheet and work with someone in india and in the middle east simultaneously we expect it to work and we want it to work and we have no doubt that it's going to work. so, you know,s these valuations represent products that we use every day, and that become part of our everyday existence. i don't think we can live without them. >> you did uber's convertible in january. >> yes. >> aren't some of these companies, not uber specifically, aren't they being priced as if they are going to execute flawlessly for five years. >> that i don't know. i mean, some people would say they're being priced, just going to continue to grow and they probably are going to continue to grow and if you look at the model so far, in every round that uber has done, they have outperformed their projections. >> that's putting money where their mouth is in your view? >> yeah. >> you interviewed tim cook. >> i did. >> at the convenience, goldman conferen conference, last month. reflections on their market cap, their size relative to peers,

the watch? is the public's fascination with them justified because of their size? >> i uniquely interviewed tim cook the day their market cap went through $700 billion. in fact the minute. i was, of course, interviewing tim cook on my ipad and my news flashes from cnbc were coming in across the top and, of course, i got the flash that apple stock went through $700 billion. i told tim that his stock went through $700 billion and always remember where you were when your stock went through $700 billion. it was a unique moment in his corporate being. tim talked a lot about what they're providing, what apple is creating, the products that, again, the products you and i are buying, the products that you and i could not think about living without. he spent a lot of time on the apple watch. he picked on my watch. >> which is not an apple watch. >> but my wife gave it to me so it's a very important watch. he picked on this watch because it says -- he said look, your watch does one thing. and one thing only.

i think it does two things. tells me the date and time. he says your watch is obsolete, my watch does hundreds of things all of which you need and went on to describe them. i think tim is proud of the watch. the watch is one of the products thought of, created, engineered and designed on his watch, no pun intended, and he's very proud of what it's going to do and he thinks it's going to be a game changer in the world to have the functionality of a phone in your pocket or in your briefcase or purse and be able to do all the functionality literally on your wrist and go to your phone only when you need it. >> only a couple minutes. u.s. m&a running ahead of last year. three quarters of it so far has been in billion plus dollar deals. is that sustainble? >> i think it is. corporates are still in a position where they've got fairly good confidence, consumers are spending. the one thing we've seen with lower oil prices is the consumers in the united states are using the disposable income and spending it. confidence is high. availability of cash is great.

in fact, you know, as cheap as we thought borrowings costs were last year, look at what's going on in europe. a lot of our companies are moving to europe to borrow money where it's cheaper. put those pieces together, and mergers still make sense because it's been tough to grow top line. so you're not going to see the huge growth emergers but you will continue to see the billion dollar highly synergistic companies. >> c car you're not going to give me anything on what we'll get this afternoon because you don't know. >> okay. let me tell you everything a i know. i'm done. >> the first round there was this sense among some that goldman is a laggard relative to peers. no opinion on that? >> no opinion. i think we're very proud of the way we have run the firm. i think we're very proud of the capital we have built. proud of the liquidity we have built. we're proud of the shareholder returns we have created.

our roe is tops in the business and we continue to run the company we think very efficiently for our shairnsd we'll continue it to do that. >> talking to you is always a go ahead ride. thank you very much. >> thank you for being here. >> gary cohn of goldman sachs. coming up a great show this hour. flip card valued over $1 billion and india's answer to amazon. two of the company's top executives will join us. google opening its first ever branded store in the middle of london. a sneak peek inside. the sensation sweeping social media, meerkat, the app that lets anyone post their own live stream via twitter, see one we're running right now inside san francisco meerkat's ceo will join us this hour when "squawk alley" returns. [ male announcer ] at northrop grumman,

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our next guest revolutionizing the commerce industry in india with a billion dollar round of funding in july, $700 million in december, more is on the way for flipkart so what is next for the company? the chief project officer and muconcern is head of the commerce platform, good to see you this morning. >> good to see you too. >> let's talk product first. the company is turning eight years old this year, moving into furniture, on-line advertising. what does flipkart look like in year eight? >> you know, be first of all,

flipkart is a very, very large company valued over $10 billion and traded almost $2 billion last year. a key thing is to make sure we have a lot of focus otherwise we can go in a lot of directions. i think india is a very, very mobile centric economy, almost 80% of all transactions happen on mobile. it's important to think of products in terms of mobile, how people will use it on a mobile phone and so i think experiences in e-commerce always being desk top oriented will make sure we can think of ecommerce and revolutionize it in building a fully mobile interface. you don't shop of talone most oe time. it's important to think about what social mooed means for e-commerce. we'll have to spend a lot of time thinking about how they will use the phones for the first time, who they will have along with them when they use these devices and buy things, and then all the other verticals we want to go to over time. it's going to be exciting.

>> he just talked about the temptation to go in every direction but the need to have focus. as you grow, you've said that flipkart could be the first $100 billion internet company in india. how do you resist that temptation? >> i think we just focus on commerce, we can be a billion dollar business. retail in the country is over $600 billion, next five years $1.2 trillion, and there is hardly any off-line organized retail, more so the growth in the country happening through on-line, brands are becoming on-line only. last few years we have seen many of the off-line stores have stopped expanding off-line and, you know, becoming on-line, in some categories as much as 10 to 15% of market share in the country, and in many ways we are still in the early days of e-commerce. the whole of e-commerce is powered by about 25 million people. we see that number growing to 250 million over the next few

years. by only focusing on commerce we think we can be a $100 million organization in a few years. >> i want to talk about what brings you to flipkart from google. over the years, i've probably talked to dozens of executives and entrepreneurs with an indian background and you were educated both places. you're a career growths has been in silicon valley. you're building a technical team in silicon value, indian entrepreneurs and executives i've talked to have considered going to india, building a company there. what is it that makes you want to build a technical team in silicon valley? i assume it's because the u.s. experience is important. why? >> a lot of people ask me this question. it's pretty interesting. i was born and brought up in india and spent a lot of my time in the u.s. i have no personal reasons to go to india. i am going there because it is

the best professional opportunity out there at this point in time. i think the country is exploding going to go in many different ways and if you are going to take 20% of the world's p population and take them to the next level what could be a better opportunity. that's how i thought about it when going through the process of evaluating flipkart and the opportunity. once you start working on it you realize there's a lot of different aspects of how we'll have to build the tech start that can't be just centered around india. our market focus will be on india, but in terms of our presence we're going to actually build up a presence here in the valley. we're going to staff it with all sorts of amazing product design, engineering, talent, data sciences, data analytics, recommendations and what not. this is the way globalization is going to go. we're going to have to tackle all sorts of markets across the world and then we'll have to come back and build presence here and employ all sorts of amazingly smart people. it's a very compelling opportunity. it's an opportunity to change the world.

india rises the rest of the world will rise with it. it's an opportunity to see how, you know, lots of the unorganized retail and commerce in india become organized and start seeing some of the benefits that we here in the u.s. have been seeing for, you know, decades now. >> you know, you guys aren't the first company looking to capitalize on the engineering talent in silicon valley as well as the growth inherent in the indian market that is just growing exponentially. i'm just wondering how you view the competitive landscape immediately after you guys announced your funding in december. amazon came behind you and said we're deploying $2 billion of capital in our in fa structure in india. do you feel alibaba and amazon close by in the competitive landscape? how do you fight that off? >> yes. so indian e-commerce space is heating up. it's growing rapidly, over 150% year over year. at flipkart we have 50% of the market share and we'll be able

to hold on to the market share. we've been aggressive in the market but really not made any dent to our market share. last year was one of our best years. we raised $2 billion also last year. we also have been in the space for last seven years so we understand the market really well. we have by far the most trusted brand in the country. very loyal customer following. entire supply chain from scratch. in india a few years ago not possible to do cash on delivery. most parts of the country. painstakingly build all of that, now with the addition, we're building a strong product. we are in a position to build our products from scratch for indian context, mobile only, versus fablets and desk top is a little bit dated in the context. we are confident about our position. we do expect around the world to be present in the indian market.

>> want to get in one last question. there's a flood of low cost cell phones, many of which you guys are selling with your partnership with xiaomi and motorola in the past. how does that influence the way that you are building your product and what kind of opportunities does that open up as the smartphones for under 2 hnds u.s. start flooding into india even more? >> it's a phenomenal trend. what we're doing is bringing hundreds of people in the position of a smartphone with internet connectivity so more supermarket and more will come from these folks and it has a huge implication of how we build product. these will be devices with low processing power, low memory, et cetera, so we need a lighter version of our products which work on the smaller bandwidth, smaller device, and part of our product will ensure we have the right for these devices. 200 million people from india who will come on-line will be coming through these devices.

>> we appreciate your time this morning. coming to us from silicon valley today. >> thank you. >> for a company that's registered to be a public company in singapore, perhaps we could see them as a public company very soon. when "squawk alley" comes back google opening its first ever branded store in london today called the google shop. we will take a look inside when we come back. say you're a finance guy. a farmer. a researcher. you used to depend on experience. the internet. your gut. today you can use ibm watson analytics. it can make sense of all kinds of data. uncover hidden correlations and new opportunities. and give recommendations with more confidence on who will buy. what to make. where to plant. which helps you make smarter decisions. there's a new way to work and it's made with ibm. e

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welcome back to "squawk alley." i'm julia boorstin. we now have timing of the rollout of sony's new internet tv service called the view. it's vue, going to be rolled out in the next 2 1/2 weeks before the end of the month in new york, chicago, and philadelphia. the company does plan to roll out the service nationwide before the end of the year. sony has not announced the

pricing of the bundle of channels it will distribute over the internet. its first unveiled the service in november saying it will include cbs, fox, nbc, discovery and fi yacom channels among others. sony is hosting press events to showcase its vue system with demos that are embargoed until next week. so we do expect to be launching in those key three markets in the next two and a half weeks before the end of the month. back over to you, jon. >> thanks, julia. they're calling it the vue go figure. feels like simon should be bringing you this. google has opened its first ever store in london. it follows a recent trend of tech companies opening physical stores part of an effort to build the ecosystem. the google shop is based in the location of uk retailers curry's pc world on london's totten court road. what's on sale? android phones, tablets, chrome

casts and wearables running the android operating system. >> yeah. it's a store within a store and a floor to ceiling google maps interface for people to use. looks like an interesting strategy in retail for google. normally at this time the european close but because of daylight saving time european markets close at 12:30 eastern instead of 11:30 normally. catch simon hobbs with the close in the next hour and we will have it back here in "squawk alley" in just a couple weeks. >> that's where you can get your simon hobbs fix. up next, the sensation sweeping social media is meerkat. the app that lets anyone host their own live stream via twitter. we're running one right now. a live shot inside our control room. hallowed ground. the company's ceo will join us when we come back. .

good morning. i'm sue herera. nearly a dozen military troops are feared dead in a training accident off the florida pan hanzal. officials say a helicopter carrying seven marines and four crew members is missing after the helicopter crashed overnight in heavy fog. u.s. banks including jpmorgan chase and citigroup are expected to win federal reserve backing to buyback more shares and increase their dividends. that decision may come after the bell today. the approvals may be as much about their financial engineering as any improvement in their overall financial

health. people in one iraqi town are celebrating after forces liberated them from isis militants. forces entered alamb to the cheers and dancing of residents. it's only five miles from tikrit still held by isis. general mills is looking to sell its green giant frozen and canned vegetable business as it struggles with weak sales in other areas of its business, specifically cereals. and that's our cnbc news update for this hour. back to "squawk alley." in case you haven't noticed twitter is being overrun by meerkats and we don't mean to moan. earlier this week we told you about an app called meerkat that lets users stream video on twitter in real time. cnbc is streaming live this moment. just go to @cnbc on twitter to watch on a pc or phone. what is it about this app that captured the attention of so

many people in such a short period? ben rubin is the man behind that app. he's the founder and ceo of life on air. ben, thanks for joining us here on cnbc. i got to ask, you've said in recent days, growth is ephemeral, never know if something might be growing today, not growing tomorrow. but this looks like it's it continuing to grow. so i want to know at this point, are you looking for technology resources, cloud resources, to really turbo charge growth here or are you still thinking this could come crashing down tomorrow? >> well, first, thank you so much for having me. we had a product before of live streaming and had technology ready. what we did, we basically took the cases we learned from the old product and started doing very specific simple product to do one thing well. one of them was meerkat. in terms of technology i'm not sure it's going to crash

tomorrow. but yeah, it's been super exciting and we see more and more people watching more hours a day. and the team cannot be more happy with that. >> ben, give us some of the statistics behind the growth because this was a side project for life on air and it was just eight weeks old when you said scrap everything else we will go full throttle into meerkat. what sort of growth led you to make that decision? >> so michael and i did that in eight weeks. and we put it out on february 27 and three weeks -- three days after we started seeing more and more usage and frankly the statistics are that 20% of the people who watch a day, 20% watch minimum of two hours, 8% watch minimum of three hours, and another -- that's on top of it and on top of it, 4% watch

four hours. so you got around 30 to 35% of the people watch who watch acume laytive of four hours a day. between two to four hours a day. that blew our mind and i just -- we just made a decision in the team to focus everyone just on this product. >> well, ben, that's amazing engagement. the sorts of numbers that vcs salivate over. i found out about meerkat in the madrid airport and saw steve senod ski who is a vc, i started streaming also. i can only imagine investors are trying to hand you millsens of dollars. are you going to take more money? if so, what are you going to use it for? >> so our main focus right now, and we have great investors, our main focus right now is to continue the growth and duplicate and try to find more use cases.

so we're going to south by southwest, we're going to meet people there, and trying to find more and more sports use cases. we've seen churches using it for worship services. so our main focus is more use cases making sure that product is not -- is going to be solid and working, that every time you press that button, people will be tuning in and it will just work magically. >> if facebook offers a couple billion will you sell it or twitter for that matter? >> no. we're just focused completely on making this something awesome. i think the community still is amazing and it's still small and i think that if we really want to make a change we need to have a bigger community and more people that are using the product and engaging with it and understanding it's time to be solved that line between watchers and broadcaster and we try to do something that, you know, watchers are part of the content and i think that's what -- that's the mission that

it's more important here than to sell a company or not. >> ben, the comparison have been drawn to snapchat, whether it's the simplicity of your logo, the color yellow, the icon in the app store or the video disappears. do you think that's a fair comparison and what do you see as the future for disappearing content? is that going to be here to stay? >> i think snapchat is an amazing company and that's a compliment to get. the reason we did the content to disappear not because we believe in ephemerality, we believe that when we were kids, we took pictures and we had cameras and then software came as a substitute and instagram and we had the habit to take pictures and instagram came and it was a natural transition to software, but we don't have this habit of streaming live video. it's something that we don't naturally have. i think for us, the mission is to make sure that everybody

feels comfortable with that. so in order to make this -- and this is the real goal for us, to make sure that everybody is comfortable for going live and live stream their experience and for -- to make this comfortable, we decided not to keep the streams lighter, but we do like to keep it on your phone and do whatever you want with it later. we're if the business of participation. we're in the business of live and in real-time experience. >> all right. well, meerkat founder and ceo ben rubin you're going to south by southwest looking at growth t even for a couple billion dollars. thanks for joining us on "squawk alley." >> thank you very much for having me. >> when "squawk alley" comes back, will apple end up buying tesla. a few shareholders asked that question to ceo tim cook at the shareholder meeting yesterday. we'll bring you his response in just a moment. but first, rick santelli, what have you got your eye on today? >> you know, you remember that great movie made in '83

"christmas story" where the lamp comes and darren thinks it's from italy because it says fragilee on the box, we will talk about the fragile of markets and liquidity. if oil makes gears there's not a lot of oil on what used to be the deepest, most liquid kappel tall markets in the world. we'll talk about that after the break. there's nothing more romantic than a spontaneous moment. so why pause to take a pill? and why stop what you're doing to find a bathroom? with cialis for daily use, you don't have to plan around either. it's the only daily tablet approved to treat erectile dysfunction so you can be ready anytime the moment is right. plus cialis treats the frustrating urinary symptoms of bph, like needing to go frequently, day or night.

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coming up, do not miss our

interview with robert chapman about his long position in lumber liquidators and why short seller whitney tilson is getting it wrong and plus why the top ranked hardware analyst on wall street is underwhemds by the iwatch and how it might impact apple shares from here and, of course, we're going to be all over the markets as usual. that and much more straight ahead on the halftime show. we'll see you in about 15. >> thanks, scott. a news alert, let's get to mary thompson at headquarters. >> hey, kayla. we have the numbers from the new york state comp trollers estimate of wall street bonuses. wall street bonuses according to thomas anapoli, edges up 2% in 2014 to $172,860,000. the average bonus pool for wall street, rose to $28.5 billion. there is one thing to note in the report that the securities industry employment actually increased in 2014 and that's the

first time we've seen an increase in employment according to the report since 2011. the bonuses peaked in 2008. a small increase even as profits in the securities industry declined. this coming from the comptroller. back to you. >> mary thompson at headquarters, thanks so much. to the cme group. rick santelli is there with the santelli exchange. hey, rick. >> good morning, kayla. when you think to some of the periods in time where markets were bragged upon, especially the u.s. market, and i can remember clearly as the eurozone was developed and the common currency was put into trade, that the issues were they had it to build their capital markets in a likeness to the u.s. capital markets were small, they wanted them to be deeper and more liquid. i'm a car guy. if you don't have gauges and

most don't, car running hot, red light goes on, oil running low, red light goes on. they call them idiot lights and the reason is, because if you don't monitor such important things like what moves through the system of the engine like oil which is the life blood of the engine if you wait until a light goes on you're in trouble. let's look at that same scenario from a market perspective and connect the two thoughts in history and what you end up with is, that one of the most important aspects of the capital markets and the treasury markets, any market, is how deep it is and should there be price discovery fast. find plenty of liquidity to match who's holding, who wants to sell, who's looking to buy and when the price discovery happens, the liquidity is so dense, and so ever present, that you don't see lots of glitches or as we used to call them in the old days, discontinuous price volatility.

okay. now let's think about what happened on october 15th. of last year when we had such huge ranges in the markets especially the treasury market and yields. there's been many studies now that i know of that tried to explain it. it's called a flash crash scenario. the way i look at it, whether it's mutual funds or etfs especially corporate ifs the transparency of holdings gets on the light side. yesterday when i was talking to ira, he brought up a point that is the most common discussion on the trading floor and that is, liquidity versus reserves. and his notion was, is that at some point, some of these big holdings, sitting on central banks, especially central banks like the fed, are going to have to be put back in the marketplace because he need the grease and gears more now than ever before. but how is that going to work? just remember, we could see a bit of a poison in the well because they said they didn't want to sell the reserves and then maybe rates go up to 4%.

then they come back down because there are shortages out there. don't believe me? tune in at 1:00 eastern when i grade the 10-year note auction. back to you. >> thanks, rick. up next, google is reportedly in talks to buy an advertising firm in india. we'll take a look at that potential deal and what it means for google in a moment. [ male announcer ] your love for trading never stops. so open an account with schwab. and when a market move affects, say, a cloud computing stock you're holding, we can help you decide what to do. with tools that help you see how market activity is affecting your positions. so when the time comes to decide whether to scale in or scale out... you can make your move, wherever you are. and start working on your next big idea. ♪

welcome back. according to reports, google is in talks to buy indian ad firm

inmobi which would be a big deal in india. what the deal could mean for google. seema? >> hey, jon. here what's you need to know about incle mobi founded by an ex-mec kenzie executive and it's become one of the largest advertising net wroshgworks. it earlier this year said 43% of users were in north america and western europe. some of its clients including adidas, microsoft and macy's and according to the website it enables 138 billion ad impressions worldwide each month. my sources indicate it's valued at around $2 billion so if the deal does go through it certainly would not be cheap for google. but analysts say an acquisition of it would help the tech giant compete with facebook and strengthen its presence in india's advertisement market which is growing.

according to brand spent $6.3 billion on advertising in 2014, that number is expected to rise to $8.1 billion in three years. with the economy picking up and more consumers upgrading from features to smartphones that presents an opportunity for advertisers trying to get their products in front of indian consumers, particularly the under 25 millennial audience which makes up about half of india's population in general. this potential deal signals a shift in india's technology landscape from what was seen as more of a back office it support hub in what could be a larger player in the space. back to you. >> we heard the same thing from flipkart executives this hour. tech giants keep circling that indian market. thanks. coming up an apple shareholder on the investor call when "squawk alley" returns.

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help northern china reduce its reliance on coal fire heating plants and prevent 60 million tons of co2 emissions? when emerson takes up the challenge, it's never been done before simply becomes consider it solved. emerson. in case you missed it with apple sitting on $178 billion in cash, does the company have its sights set on buying tesla? that was a question re piecedly asked of ceo tim cook at yesterday's shareholder meeting. cook responded, quote, we don't really have a relationship with

tesla. i would love tesla to pick up car play. is that a good way to avoid a question. cook said, quote, let me think if there's another way to do a nonanswer. certainly did not want to answer ta question head on. joining us with shareholder perspectives ross gerber, ceo at gerber kawasaki. >> good to see you again. >> we know you love apple, the company, but from a shareholder perspective do you want to see apple use its $178 billion in cash do a big deal or do you want that to come back to you? >> if the big deal made sense that's fine for me and i do think that they're returning a ton of capital shareholders and will continue to do so. the issue is tesla and we're a large shareholder of tesla love the company think the batteries is the story. what i see apple doing is making an investment into the battery factory and helping tesla raise capital. this is a big thing because they need to spend billions more to advance the battery development

in their factory. what apple wants to do is own every screen everywhere whether on a plane in your car, on your phone, watch, whatever, they want to own all the screens in your house, apple tv, for example, and the tesla has a beautiful screen just waiting for apple software and so i see a synergy here, i see an opportunity for a deal that i don't see it as an acquisition and apple will not be getting in to the car business, the margins are not close to their normal margins. >> you know what, ross, he could have said, we're not interested in buying a car company or he could have just said we're not going to do that. but i mean he was kind of coy about it saying i'm avoiding the question. i don't want to make too much of that but he's been more direct in the past when asked questions of that sort. >> i agree, but i think that's because we might see a strategic investment from apple into tesla not buying the whole company but maybe buying let's say 4 or $5 billion worth of tesla, let's

say 15 or 20%, 10%, somewhere in there, just so that they can own the technology for the batteries, help them get the capital they need to advance the process. so that's why i think he's being coy. i see a deal potentially happening, just not a full-out acquisition. >> we're now in day two of sort of the digesting of what the apple watch means. were you under whelmed by that presentation on monday? what were your thoughts? >> i wasn't under whelmed at all. i thought it was a great presentation. i thought that mac book kind of stole the show. that mac book was awesome and i think it's going to do phenomenally and i've been waiting to upgrade my mac air and this is a wonderful, wonderful mobile product and so i'm excited for that. the watch is going to be amazing. the main thing about a watch i've been saying this to all the haters is what does your watch do right now? it only tells time. okay. i have a very expensive swiss

watch and never seen all the inside of it. all the workmanship is wonderful but i will be purchasing the apple watch. i care about the fitness elements of it. >> sure. >> and so op and so forth. i think it will do very, very well. >> we appreciate your time this morning. we'll get more from you and see if apple watch and capital plans perhaps later april. does it for "squawk alley." back to scott wapner and the halftime report. ♪ >> thanks so much. welcome to the halftime show. let's meet our starting lineup for today. jim lebenthal is the president of lebenthal asset management, joe terranova is senior managing director at virtus investment partners jon and pete najarian co-founders of optionmonster, steve grasso of stewart frankel on the floor of the new york stock exchange for us and jason brady with us today, the head of fixed income at thornburg investments. so much to talk about today. our game plan looks like this. euro crash, how low