good morning. it is 8:00 a.m. at twitter headquarters in san francisco, california, 11:00 a.m. here on wall street. "squawk alley" is live. ♪

♪ welcome to "squawk alley" on this thursday morning. joining us henry blodget, founder, editor and ceo at business insider. good to have you here. >> great to be here. >> jon fortt is here as well. we have a lot to talk about from twitter to the overall markets but we want to start with the horrible tragedy which just gets worse as we learn new details of that tragic plane crash in the alps. phil lebeau is live in chicago with new details just emerging this morning. phil. >> these are details that a lot of people are hearing for the first time and saying really? i cannot believe this happened. that is according to the prosecutor in france, says it was a deliberate act by the co-pilot of the germanwings plane to fly the plane into the mountains. he had a press conference this morning which revealed a lot of information according to the cockpit voice recorder. the prosecutor said this was a deliberate crash, the co-pilot

alone in the cockpit after the captain had gotten up left to go to the bathroom. the do automatically locks but he kept the captain from re-entering. he says you can hear shouts towards the end of the cockpit voice recorder before the plane crashes clearly an ipdcation as the captain was banging on the door people within the main cabin realized they were going to be crashing and those are the shouts that could be heard. what about the co-pilot? what do we know about him? his name, andreas lieu bits, 28 years old, 630 flight hours. joined germanwings in 2013. as investigators look into his background and what motivation he might have had for flying the plane into the mountains, questions are coming up about why germany's protocol does not require a flight attendant, somebody from the flight crew, to go into the cockpit whenever one of the two members of the flight crew leave the cockpit. this is video from air bus of the a-320 showing the reinforced door there.

essentially what this shows you is that after one of the members leaves, there's a keypad on the outside of the door so that if they need to get back into the cockpit they can do that. however, we should point out that keypad re-entry can be overridden by the pilot inside the cockpit and according to the french prosecutors, that's what the co-pilot did in this case. here's the ceo of lufthansa a few minutes ago asked about whether or not germany should change its pro po call and require a flight attendant to be in the cockpit so nobody is ever alone in the cockpit. >> there is regulations in some parts of the world including the one you are coming from, the u.s., but only small numbers of airlines in europe, no, but airline for sure none of the big airlines we work with. >> and you can bet that protocol will be under scrutiny now that this incident has happened. again, here in the u.s. if a pilot leaves the cockpit, guys,

the remaining pilot is never left alone in there. there is a flight attendant in there at all times and i suspect that we will immediately start to hear some calls in europe for their protocol to be changed. back to you. >> gordon bethune former ceo of continental airlines raised the point last hour and said when you have only one person in the cockpit you're at the mercy of that one person. it's not normally a problem. it's a problem in this case because now we're learning more about what may have been a fragile emotional state. how would an airline screen for something like that? >> well, they do emotional screening and mental screening of all of their applicants and if particular their pilots, but this is a really -- a very tricky area, kayla. how do you determine that somebody might at some point in their career decide that they're going it try to commit suicide while they're flying a plane. i don't know the answer to that. i think most people would tell you in the aviation industry they're trying to do as much as they can to screen their pilots but that question is going to get a lot of scrutiny here in

the weeks to come as we look further into andreas lubitz and why he did what he did here. >> we still don't know what happened to the first malaysia flight that disappeared but there's been speculation that perhaps the pilot did something in that case as well. has something changed over the past few years in how pilots are treated, in how pilots are screened, that would account for this relatively new it seems to me concern about what pilots are intending to do in the cockpit? >> well, i don't think it's relatively new, jon. pilot suicide has been fairly consistent in terms of if you look at the statistics going back over the last 20 years, it does happen. we don't hear a lot about it because we only hear about those instances when it's a commercial airliner and a lot of people are talking about the egypt air incident in 1999 as the last prominent example. are the pilots overworked? are they stressed too much? clearly it's a high stress job

when flying hundreds of people a couple hours and you're responsible for their lives and they do work what many would believe long hours. however, at the same time, there's no way of saying things are different now compared to what they used to be and, therefore, the pilots are under greater stress. although as i mentioned earlier, all of this is now going to be reviewed. >> phil, we appreciate your perspective as always on this tragedy. phil lebeau in chicago. joining us on the phone with more is robert francis, former ntsb vice chairman. vice chairman, it's great to have you on the cnbc news line. i'm wondering, with the new details that we have as of this morning, your thoughts on this situation? >> well, my real thought is that i'm the not sure much can be done to prevent this kind of thing from happening. i mean, obviously pilots are very carefully kreend and very -- screened and very

intensely trained and how you're going to be able to find out that one of your pilots can be suicidal at some given moment in his life or her life, i'm not sure i see a quick answer to that. nd and i hope that -- and i'm sure that as the industry reacts to this, that there will be thoughtful reaction and not some kind of visceral efforts to do things that may not make any sense. >> yeah. mr. chairman, i just -- vice chairman, i want to offer this fbi statement that we have that just came in a moment. the statement reads, the fbi has offered assistance to our french partners who are leading the investigation into the crash of germanwings flight 9525. we stand ready to fulfill any

requests for information or assistance by crash investigators as we work with partner nations whose citizens were impacted by this tragedy. want to get that out there. henry? >> that's absolutely a appropriate. i think that was -- whoever wrote that knew what they were doing. >> and robert, after 9/11, there was a lot of talk about how we needed to reinforce cockpit doors, pilots had to be able to seal them off from an attack inside the plane. seems here that is completely backfired. do you think that will be reviewed given this situation? >> i don't -- i don't see how it can be reviewed and maintain the security of the cockpit. i mean, if you -- if you try to work out some way that a pilot or somebody else will be able to get in, that's not going to be any big secret to the bad guys and they're going to figure out a way to deal with that.

>> and is the u.s. policy where the flight attendant has to go into the cockpit is that designed to prevent a pilot from going insane? or are there -- is there other thinking there as well? >> that's a good question and i really hadn't thought about that. but i think that it is designed probably to have somebody who is trust worthy in the cockpit to be able to let the other pilot back in. the question then becomes, is a flight attendant more secure or safe than the second pilot? i -- i hope nobody jumps at a quick answer to this because i think it's complicated. is there any example of this

having happened previously? not that i can recall. there may be, but i think when one very, very unlikely situation happens, you want to really give thought to what you're going to do to prevent such an unlikely thing from happening again. >> mr. francis, we appreciate your thoughts this morning as new details emerge in this situation. >> okay. >> thanks. >> robert francis is the former vice chairman of the ntsb. a quick check of the markets at this hour. all major averages are coming off of their lows of the session, climbing up towards the flat line. dow down by about 67 points. s&p is lower by about a third of 1%. the nasdaq is down by just ability 21 points. of course all major averages are coming off of a fairly brutal week, especially considering the volatility that we've seen. if we did have a triple digit move today this would be the

tenth in 11 sessions for the major averages. the worst day in nearly a year. well coming up, move over meerkat, twitter is joining the live streaming video game. we'll hear from the ceo of twitter's newest app, periscope. the galaxy s 6, we will show you exactly what it can do a little later on. should silicon valley still be on bubble watch? especially with the correction apoots in the markets. top vc venky will weigh in in a few minutes when "squawk alley" returns.

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welcome back. on the heels of popularity meerkat, twitter is jumping in with its new app periscope. here it is. jon steinberg is giving a tour of the daily mail offices right now. meerkat did comment on this launch saying the fact that now live video is part of the conversation, is most exciting for us and we don't think there will just be one winner. it's healthy for there to be a lot of players involved for it to become mainstream. julia boorstin talked to the ceo of periscope and joins us live in l.a. with the details. julia? >> thanks so much. the big question here is whether periscope can catch up with meerkat's advantage. we are periscoping right now. my twitter followers started a public live stream. differentiating from meerkat only live public broadcast periscope videos are available

for 24 hours. they can be saved to a personal library and the option of broadcasting privately to just a small group. the ceo says that periscope is faster than meerkat making posting comments or sending more engaging. >> if you're watching me broadcast and i'm giving you a tour of my office you can say take me to that room over there and two seconds later i take you there. that makes you as a viewer in the director seat makes you feel like it's not a live stream, it's like a teleporetation device. >> plus periscope has the advantage of twitter's deep pockets. says live individual is a natural extension of twitter's real-time network. >> we think periscope can be like this real-time visual pulse of what's happening around the world and to me, that's what twitter is but just through 140 characters rather than live video. i think when we realized that alignment was there, we realized that, you know, the marriage of these two companies could help us make our vision a reality much more quickly. >> periscope is launching

without ads but potential for brands to interact or pay to promote their streams like they can pay to promote twitter accounts or tweets. it will be interesting to see what happens next. >> definitely. thanks, julia. speaking of periscope, top vc and major twitter investor chris sacca talked a about the new app with us yesterday. listen to what he had to say. >> it's been an incredible service and what we're going to see is more users coming on there and that individual is going to be not just -- individual not just compelling and drive monthly active users on the service but one of the richest troves of monetizeble data we've seen on the net. >> i mean, guys, is meerkat dead? look at the quality of this stream here from periscope, is pretty good. i've had people, you know, joining my periscope whatever you call it, at this point, subscribing, when i haven't done anything yet, because of twitter's viral effect. i mean this is pretty powerful. >> twitter is helpful. this is real time. the issue for these folks is

there enough stuff cool to watch on live stream you can aggregate a big enough audience. maybe the strategy is it's not going to be huge, not millions watching one, but millions of people doing it and five people will watch each one. okay. . could be interesting. can you monetize that to advertisers who want to buy your stream of your living room or your tour of your office? >> it comes down to how exciting john's life is and what he can deliver to the people excited for the promise of what they might see on your feed. we don't know exactly how that will go. >> nobody is going to make any money off my periscope stream for sure. >> it's interesting, though, because yesterday at fa julia spoke to mark zuckerberg off camera and he talked about people are sharing richer videos, circular individual and you start to think okay, maybe live video is the next wave of content, but who's to stop facebook instagram and all these other companies, henry, from piling into this space and effectively blocking out some of the smaller players? >> that's right. i think one of the most interesting things about periscope is the fact that the

videos are preserved because so much stuff, you don't actually have to tune in and it's convenient not to tune in. you can watch it whenever you want. so the fact that they're keeping it is good. to your point you're right nothing magical on the technology side here. if they can build a platform with millions of users before anybody else gets there you have a blocking mechanism hard for anybody to break. >> more of a bolt on service, bell or whistle, than stand-alone -- >> i think that's right. i think distribution will be critical. twitter has a big advantage. whoever gets on facebook and captures that market fast. >> the single biggest monetizeble opportunity for twitter? >> i don't see that. i have to say, again, i think you have to think about what do people want to watch? is the problem the reason we're not watching more live video is because there aren't enough cameras out there? there are 500 channels tv ratings are going down, we all have tons of stuff to watch all the time. we can watch it when we want to watch it. we don't have to tune in at particular time and interrupt what we're doing.

there's a lot of convenience to having stuff be saved and video compelling video is actually tough to produce. it's why you've seen netflix have many strikes before they hit the grand slam home runs that they have and sure they're political speeches, riots you might want to see? protests, events you can think may be very compelling but there aren't millions of them at any one time. i think some skepticism of how big this can be is warranted. >> twitter up 1.5% today. it's had quite a run this week amid a pretty brutal tape for other companies. >> it is. their owe an a roll. >> we will literally see as we watch the live streams and see where they go. >> you will have millions of people watching you. >> i don't know. we'll see about that. >> giving you enough free publicity right now. follow jon on periscope. >> always good to have you. >> we have breaking news with scott wapner. >> thank you so much. we have news regarding the hedge

fund manager leon cooperman, the chairman and ceo of omega advisors. cnbc has obtained this letter in my hand here. it was sent by mr. cooperman to his investors revealing that the firm has received a subpoena from the u.s. attorney's office for the state of new jersey and the sec asking for information about the trading of certain securities. inside this letter mr. cooperman states that the investigation is in its very early stages and that the firm is cooperating fully. he goes on to say, we look forward once everything is on the table to be able to being able to report back to you that the matter has been successfully resolved. i spokespersonly with mr. cooperman just a short time ago who gave me the following statement which i'll read for you now. we are cooperating fully with the government's request for information, he says. there have not been any allegations of any wrong doing at omega. we have conducted ourselves properly at all times and are confident that when the government completes its review it will come to the same

conclusion. you should know we have reached out to the u.s. attorney's office in new jersey which would neither confirm or deny that an investigation exists. the sec has yet to return our phone calls. most of you know by now who lee cooperman is, a frequent guest on this network, titan of wall street, with a track record that speaks for itself frankly over the past 20 plus years. as a participant on wall street but that again is the news that leon cooperman and omega advisers has sent a letter to its investors revealing that it has received a subpoena by the u.s. attorney's office for new jersey and the sec, asking for information about the trading of certain securities. any more information we'll bring it to you. guys? >> all right. thank you, scott. >> up next, the jury still deliberating in the ellen pao discrimination case in silicon valley. live outside the courthouse with an update. 6-year-old start-up selling to a 160-year-old insurance giant in a deal worth at least a quarter

billion dollar. the ceos of learnvest and northwestern mutual are with us in a moment. "squawk alley" is going to be right back. at mfs, we believe in the power of active management. our teams collaborate around the world, which leads to better decisions for our clients. put our global active management expertise to work for you.

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welcome back. we're getting closer to a verdict in the ellen pao/kleiner perkins trial with the jury continuing its deliberations today and scott cohen is live outside the courtroom with the latest. scott? >> hi, john. the jury is about to begin its first full day of deliberations. they met for about five hours yesterday and this case, which has captivated silicon valley and beyond and divided people among gender lines is being decided by a jury evenly split, six men and six women and they have heard vastly different pictures of ellen pao, the former junior partner at kleiner perkins. was she the brilliant, driven partner who was held back by the boy's club at the venture capital firm or the notoriously difficult partner always in it for herself and only plotted

this lawsuit when it was clear she wasn't going to get ahead. the jury has all the evidence, four weeks of testimony in the jury room with them and boils down to this jury verdict form, which is fairly complicated. seven pages long, but it boils down to these basic themes. what was the substantial motivating reason for the conduct taken toward ellen pao? was it to discriminate against her based on her gender or retaliate after she complained? did kleiner perkins take all reasonable steps to prevent gender bias? we've heard that the firm didn't have a human resources department per se, but the law doesn't require that. would kleiner perkins have done the same thing anyway? they say she was a poor performer. would she have lost her job anyway and if she was harmed what were the damages? those last two points are critical because it is entirely plausible based on the way the form is laid out, that they could find that she was discriminated against but no

harm she would have lost her job, how do you score that as you look at the gender situation in silicon valley. >> all right. thanks so much, scott cohen, with the latest in the trial outside the san francisco courthouse. the nation's second largest life insurance company northwestern mutual is buying on-line financial planning start-up learnvest on top of gaining the benefit of learnvest's financial planning software the 158-year-old northwestern mutual is likely making a play at millennials. i talked to northwestern mutual ceo and chairman john schlifske and alexa von tobel and began by asking how a deal game together between the insurance giant who has been a strategic investor in learnvest. >> northwestern mutual, john invested in learnvest last april and we have been big fans of their company and lots of

conversations and a about four months a ago john and i had an honest conversation about the future of our businesses an the rest is history. >> this had to be going through your mind when you were making the investment some day there might be something more strategic than just putting some money into one of the fund-raising rounds? >> i'm not sure if we knew what was going to happen. it happened much faster than i thought it would but it's a powerful combination. i'm so glad it happened as quick will as it it. >> why is now the right time for you to be getting into the business that alexa has built? >> if you think about it, two incredible companies coming together. northwestern mutual, great products, one of the best trained fields for forces with planning merging with learnvest which has wonderful technology around planning that's going to allow us to accelerate our growth. >> your company is six years old, 1.5 million users, about 10,000 premium clients. what does this do for your scale and how quickly can your products scale under this ownership? >> what john and i are excited about taking our financial

planning software, amazing interface for clients and planners, and not only helping through learnvest but taking that software and, you know, introducing it to the incredible scale of northwestern mutual which is 4.2 million households and clients and then about a field force of about 16,000. so it provides some incredible scale for learnvest while letting us grow our business. >> how will you integrate this company into what you're doing? >> so learnvest will continue to operate as a standalone company but what we're going to integrate is the technology around planning. we're going to create a planning tool more robust, simpler, more engaging for the clients and have both companies working together to do that. >> there's been a question over how you market learnvest over the years. >> yep. >> you started as a product and a platform for women, you branched out into men, it has been traditionally more millennial focused but how broad, john, can you actually take this product? >> well, financial planning is the right thing for anybody whether you're starting out as a young adult or in or at ors past retirement, so we think this is

an important thing that really reflects any age demographic. you need planning to be financially secure and that's what we're going to do together. >> millennials are notoriously bad at saving for their futures and investing for years and decades down the line that they can't envision right now. did you need to do a deal to access what will eventually be a valuable market for you? >> we've been in the financial planning businesses for years. delivered 400,000 plans to our policy owners and clients. >> for millennials? >> i'm not sure they're worse at planning than any other group. we sell to millennials. this will augment our engagement and expand the customers experience. this is about everybody across the spectrum. >> i would add that learnvest right now is servicing any household, so, you know, whether you're 25, 55, 65, getting a financial plan is what we've been doing and we're seeing that it's really broadly generating across america. >> as the audience has changed who is your average user right now some. >> our average user right now is someone around the age of 40.

it's a household, a couple, making over $100,000 and to john's point they don't know what to do with their financing and they're trying to get a road map as quickly as they can. >> that was alexa von tobel the ceo and founder of learnvest with the ceo and chairman of northwestern mutual which john is a private company so doesn't have to disclose the price tag of the acquisition but fortune is reporting more than $250 million in cash. and very competitive market. >> that's a lot of money even with all the talk of unicorns going around. meanwhile coming up, should silicon valley still be on bubble watch or is it just boom watch? we'll ask one of the top vcs in this country, venky ganesan in a few minutes when "squawk alley" comes right back. (trader vo) watching. waiting.

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i'm courtney reagan. here's your news update. the families of victims of the german wings jet that was crashed into the french alps have arrived at the crash site attending a memorial service. investigators are still searching for the second of two black boxes that were on the plane. the fbi has offered its a assistance. the u.s. and iran have resumed talks over tehran's nuclear program. secretary of state john kerry met with iran's foreign minister in switzerland and both sides home to reach a framework agreement by the end of the month that would lead to a final agreement by the end of june. the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff general martin dempsey met with south korea's president in seoul. his three-day visit a aimed at

further strengthening ties and reinforcing u.s. commitment to the region. a tornado touched down in oklahoma last night, knocking out power for thousands of residents. it followed a similar path to a tornado from may of 2013. fortunately this was much weaker, though one person is reported dead with several injured. that's your cnbc news update for this hour. back to "squawk alley." thank you very much, courtney reagan. let's get back to one of the top stories which is, of course,s the plane crash in the alps. officials say the co-pilot brought down the plane intentionally. nbc's claudia labona near the crash site with the latest. >> kayla, this is certainly shocking news for everybody around here. i mean the locals, all they could say to me when i asked them about it was incredible, but certainly this came as a coincidence, that news, that confirmation, it was the

co-pilot that possibly downed the plane came at a time when the families landed in marcel and then arrived here about two hours later. about half an hour ago they got to the location here where i'm standing, the closest town to the crash site, attending a small ceremony and memorial ceremony in the makeshift, now they are at a very small village in a mountaintop from where you can see in the distance the crash site. some will be given the option of flying over the crash site to take a closer look to know how many will take up on that offer and also the town has mobilized to give hospitality to whoever wants to stay here for the night. all the families, about 100 families are opening their doors to say if you want to stay here, sleep here for free but we don't know how many will take them up on that offer. >> all right. live in the french alps today, we appreciate it. joining us on the phone now is airline safety expert former

ntsb investigator and author of "air safety investigators" allen diehl. good to have you this morning. >> thanks for having me. >> knowing what we know now, there's been a lot of questions, alan, a about what airlines can do to screen their pilots, perhaps more rigorously. is that possible and how would you do that. >> absolutely. first of all, they normally go through an initial screening process that while it may not be called a psychological test, there are questions that probe the mental stability of applicants and they also establish employee assistance programs to monitor health and then we do have recurrent physicals. normally every six months for airline pilots in this country. lastly, there are -- there is a thing called crew resource management which tells other pilots to look and challenge any odd behavior on the part of their fellow flyers. there's a lot we can do an are

doing. the question is, was germanwings doing enough of this? >> alan, phil lebeau told us that there hasn't been -- that he's seen a marked increase in pilot suicides but i'm wondering in the differences between how european airlines might handle something like this and u.s. airlines, of course we know in the u.s., if a pilot leaves the cockpit, a flight attendant is supposed to go in so that there's never one person alone in the cockpit. are there other differences between the way europe handles pilots and the way the u.s. handles pilots for those who are wondering what the chances are of this kind of thing happening here? >> well, of course that two person rule came out of 9/11 and germany was not, you know, was not struck during 9/11, so i think that may be something they'll have to consider now. i -- to answer your question, i've worked with the lufthansa people in past years. they're extremely professional.

they -- they don't cut any corners that i've seen, but i guess this is one area they're going to have to revisit that requirement for the second person in the cook pilot at a all times. >> alan, this morning the ceo of lufthansa said this is an isolated incident. but that's what makes it so terrifying is how unpredictable something like this could be. what advice would you give to frequent fliers who are thinking this might be something that could happen on their flight? it's so unpredictable? >> well, in that book i wrote i talk about how infrequent accidents are, one in every 8 million crashes. let me just say that pilot suicides are rare. airline pilots suicides are almost unheard of. now it happened in 2013 in mozambique. it was a prequel, if you will, to the germanwings situation. a regional jet, in that case the captain locked out his first

officer, committed suicide, 2013. 1999, we saw the egypt air situation where a co-pilot crashed a boeing into the atlantic and in a '97 we saw an indonesian captain lock out his co-pilot and commit suicide. you're talking about once a decade. this is not something you should stay awake worrying about. we always say the most dangerous part of the trip is the drive to the airport. this is not something that people should seriously worry about. now we do need to look at how we can prevent these things, but this is not a big cause of accidents and flying globally is still extremely safe and in this country we haven't had a fatality in six years and the accident rate is down by 90 plus percent over the last 50 years. so we shouldn't have to worry about flying. your viewers should not stay a awake at night wondering about a trip they have to take on an a

airliner. >> the rarity, though, alan does not make some of these images we're looking at easier to take but we appreciate your time this morningp alan diehl. >> thanks, folks. >> let's get a check in on the markets just about two hours into trading. we're still in negative territory on the major averages but we are well off the lows of the session. some would say we're looking forward the flat line with the s&p down by just about 1.5 points right now. we saw, jon, the ibb, the biotech index, down nearly 5% yesterday, go into positive territory at least twice this morning. so it does seem like investors are starting to put a little bit more money back into the market although with some trepidation? >> yeah. we were down triple digits and now just about 21, 20 points on the dow. >> that's right. >> all right. well, should silicon valley still be on bubble burst watch? several successful investors are predicting a death for many of the unicorn private companies that have been garnering sky

high valuations. some others say there is no bubble. venky ganesan is managing director with menlo ventures. we had an interesting discussion yesterday about is there a bubble, is there not a bubble, is it just a boom? how do you define when things have gone too far and do you see any signs of that or just little pockets of craziness out there? >> i enjoyed the discussion you guys had with sam altman and wondering if any of you will take him up on his bet. i just don't see -- i see there are pockets of exuberance but for the most part i see great companies growing fast and a fantastic time to invest. >> venky, we also after sam we had chris sacca of twitter and facebook investment fame on and he said yes, there's some diligence that's cratering on the lower end of the market but he would be a buyer of uber at $40 billion. he didn't say where he saw the cracks in the diligence. i'm wondering if you could give

us more information about where you're seeing diligence breaking down, if at all. >> so kayla, i think the challenges are the late late stage, you now see companies raising huge amounts of money, bigger than they can raise in the public market, with limited diligence, and the danger with that is that they're going to be isolated incidents where people are going to end up investing in companies at higher valuations than they should but that is going to be the exception, not the rule. look at the companies at menlo today we see so many companies growing fast. we have a couple companies growing in terms of revenues over the last three years. that gives us confidence in what's going on. >> venky, how much of this is kind of a consumer at phenomenon of those getting really high valuations, versus other things? i don't hear a ton about kind of pure enterprise start-ups getting sky high valuations, unless even they have some sort of a consumer edge. is one pocket a bit more overvalued or at least highly valued than another?

>> it really is. i think part of what's happening in consumers is we are in a unique time. what's unique about today a consumer company can be global on day one. for the first time if you have an app like we have companies like glide they can be on the app store and android and available in 160 countries in day one. that's unique and allows consumer brands to grow faster than ever. i think when people talk about valuations they're talking about the balance sheet, look at the income statement. are the revenues growing also and that's what makes this time different. those are four dangerous words. i see the income statements growing as much as the balance sheets. >> and every time people say this time is different we think maybe just the fact that we're saying that means it's not different. venky, i want to ask you about the financial services space. we just spoke to the ceo and founder of learnvest alexa von tobel ability that company's acquisition by northwestern mutual for a reported $250 million or more in cash.

you guys are in betterment and this space has been talked about as crowded, maybe there's not enough room for betterment for wealth front for learnvest and that company now will have access to a lot of scale at northwestern mutual. how do you see this space shaping up with that deal now done? >> we are super excited about betterment. that's a great example of what i call a company a technology company going to the financial services space and completely disrupting the incumbents. if you know anything about betterment it's about giving you lower fees and better returns. what they are able to do is make sure that you can get significantly better returns by actually passive investing as opposed to active investing lowering your fee. look at that market it's huge, trillions of dollars. i think there's plenty of room if you look at the data on how betterment is doing, they're growing their asset base so fast all on-line. there are no human brokers trying to call people and get the assets. we think that's going to be one of the stars in our portfolio. >> well, maybe it gets a little

easier to tell that story with learnvest getting taken out the way it has today. venky ganesan, managing director of menlo ventures thanks for joining us. >> thanks for having me. >> all right. samsung is giving us a first look the at samsung galaxy s6 and s6 edge, the battery has had notable upgrades such as embedded wireless charging technology, as well as a power save mode that allows users to talk and text for 24 hours after the battery is at 10%. the phone is going to be available for preorder tomorrow. it will be available for sale on april 10th. it's going to be at best buy, costco, target, walmart, among others. so the big question, though, is, is a flashy phone in and of itself going to spark sales now? i talked to htc this morning also about the m9, they've had a critically acclaimed phone for a couple years now, is that really going to move the needle with

apple gaining share on the high end and then with these low-end players at the bottom end dragging down prices? >> this is samsung's bet on the high end. how much does this cost? >> you know, i'm not sure exactly how much this costs. the edge is more expensive than the s6 at the standard $650 outside of contract. typically they've been charging about $100 more for the extra premium tier and the ceo of the mobile group told me at mobile ware congress in barcelona he's most excite the about this because of differentiation. manufacturing wise he doesn't believe the competitors can do this edge. but will are practical questions too. i'm asking about samsung's ability to put a case on the edge. >> sure. >> where you can still wrap your finger around it and get that edge effect. >> yeah. that's interesting. or perhaps they could have an offshoot market with, you know, cases that don't have sides to them. what else is available on april 10th. preorders for the apple watch. >> yeah. >> consumers could have a lot to shell out for in a couple weeks.

>> a busy day. whether you're an android or ios. up next, apple ceo tim cook with a huge announcement this morning. we'll bring it to you in just a moment.

coming up at the top of the hour we're all over this market sell-off with rob sechan and the traders are here too. michele caruso-cabrera on why the situation in yemen matters more than you think and the chip sector getting hammered. sandisk down almost 20% today.

we auk to the top analyst who downgraded the stock and what it means for everybody else coming up in about ten minutes. kayla? >> we'll see you there. appreciate it. let's get over to the cme group in chicago. rick santelli has the santelli exchange. >> thank you, kayla. today we will talk about various forms of exit strategy. the first, is x it. today we had david stockman on and mainly he was talking about gap accounting. when you submit various forms to the sec, you use generally accepted accounting principles. then there's another avenue that's taken that many investors, of course, look at through research and that's earnings x items. x items. what we're going to talk about here is, these nonrecurring one-time charges are recurring a lot and not just one time and have huge effect on many of the ways we assess the multiples of stocks, earnings, and the general richness or cheapness of

stocks. but it's not the only x that we take out. x it out. okay. same could be said for the unemployed when we look the at things like labor force parse participation basically we've xed out a huge swath of the unemployed. when i look at the residualing of many qe programs in this country and ongoing qe in other programs they have xed out all the good collateral. the central banks have and bankers instead of lending are buying treasuries ngss, taking out a lot of good collateral. let's talk about the traditional exit as in normalization of fed policy and how this all shapes up. you've heard me say you don't go into a mall without a dot saying this is where you are. whether this is where stocks should be evaluated correctly and i'm not saying what's correct and what isn't, where interest rates should be if it wasn't for all the forces that

influence it but they do influence it. what happens is, all of these things i have outlined push us a little further away from where we're actually supposed to be. i'm not sure. so what we think the markets are going to be so logical, you know, maybe we're out here and should be here, whether it's interest rates, why do rates go up sometimes when you think they should go down or vice versa? the long and the short of this is, is that as we go through normalization, which really is just a pa fancy word for talking about exiting all the forces that are at work today and there are a lot of them, versus the good old-fashioned price discovery and market places with the idea you're profitable stay in business, if you're not profitable you go out of business, it's going to lead to a real bumpy ride because this normalization isn't only about the exit that's advertised. it's about trying to figure out a way to get this where it needs to be. because the counterintuitive moves are endless because we're not exactly where we're supposed to be so all the models for

pricing a normal strategy to exit probably are more about what we xed out. back to you. >> all right. rick santelli in chicago, thanks. tim cook is following in the footsteps of warren buffet and bill gates. we'll explain how when we come back.

welcome back to "squawk alley." to washington where john harwood has breaking news. >> we've got a stunningly rare development that has happened on the house floor. an overwhelming bipartisan vote in reform of the medicare program. something that doesn't happen, john boehner and nancy pelosi, their caucuses and a aides worked together to try to fix what we have come to know as the doc fix. it is a provision of the balance budget law in 1997 that limited the fee increases for doctors serving medicare patients. it was an annual drama where the congress, the formula called for the doctors not to get a raise, congress would step in and do it. they've done a permanent fix which raises some money from beneficiaries, raises some from medical providers, it only part of it is paid for which was key to the deal happening, but the bottom line is, a significant

problem in the medicare program has been solved in a bipartisan fashion. it will now go to the senate where it is expected to pass there either tomorrow or after the two-week break. so a rare bit of good news from washington, guys. >> yes. we appreciate you bringing that to us, john. stunningly rare indeed. john harwood with the news of the medicare doc fix. >> maybe polish off the amt while at it. >> apple's ceo tim cook reportedly planning to give away his wealth. "fortune" reporting once he provides for his nephew's college education the rest will go to various fill lan tropic causes. he is not giving his wealth away immediately. it's still a big step. his nephew is 10 years old. even though college tuition has been part of the most inflationary parts of our economy i don't think it will rise so much that $120 million net worth, $670 million in stock options, shouldn't cover it. >> probably not.

and as we know, the commitment that warren buffet and bill gates made i believe is to give away half of their wealth, tim cook, going a step beyond that, but a number of causes he says to fortune's. he's passionate about giving more attention to going forward, though he has begun to do that. >> we'll read more of that "fortune" cover story posted on-line this morning. before we hand you over to the halftime show a check of the markets which actually just turned positive. oil has been up. we've seen a weaker dollar this week. some of the traditional direction of the market has actually reversed so far today. take a look at the dow, up by just about half of 1 point so we are barely squeaking by in the green, but still notable nonetheless. you're watching sandisk. >> yeah. that has not turned positive. still down nearly 17% after warning that revenues would fall short. this is the second warning in a row. last quarter they were saying they had misjudged demand and so

that was going to be a problem for them, but it was really just a misjudgment on that score. now they're saying it's a much bigger issue. so analysts don't trust what they thought at this point causing this to be worse. >> btig slashed the price target today. scott and the halftime crew will have more on sandisk and the broo broader market. let's hand it over to them. >> all right. thanks so much. welcome to the halftime show. let's meet our starting lineup for today. jim lebenthal the president of lebenthal asset management, rob sechan in ubs one of barron's top 100 financial advisers in the united states, $6 billion in assets under management and michael block is chief strategist at rhino trading partners and dan greenhouse managing director at btig. our game plan looks like this. chipped. after a thnical breakdown and a downgrade for a key player, is the semiconductor