it is an 11:00 a.m. on wall street amid a major market selloff. the dow is close to 400 points in negative territory. los to touching a low that it saw in the futures market. we have been down all morning. the s&p down by 2.75%. it all is happening as the price of oil continues to stay below $30 a barrel.

we have also been in the red all morning for oil. currently down more than 5% and currently slipping. some of your biggest losers on the dow? intel, chevron, disney, and microsoft. intel, of course, falling after earnings. we will get more on that a little bit later on, but welcome to "squawk alley." carl is off today, but with me for the hour, john fort, simon hobbs. guys, what a market we are dealing with today. let's get more on the markets. dom is live on the floor. >> kayla, as we talk about this down day, yes, we are approaching now back towards the lows we've seen in trading early on at least. if we take a look at a bit of a deeper dive into what's driving the action here, perhaps no surprise that the sector that's performing the worst in today's trading is the energy sector. again, as oil prices continue to slide down by about 4%. technology and financials, financials very much a focus because of earnings from the likes of big banks. also, black rock. the as the managers. technology, a big one here. technology financial. always good to point out that they're the two biggest sectors in the s&p 500.

industrials down by 2% as well. as you take a look at the ten-year yield, certainly a lot of talk about that today as at one point below that 2% mark, we are now slightly above a 202. 2.02% the last trade for the ten-year yield, and that, of course, is putting certain other sectors in focus. the relative outperformers today, the interest rate sensitive ones, the ones that pay higher dividends, utilities. you can see there. yes, they are still down, but they're down 1%. not like the overall market. consumer staples companies that also have heftier dividend payments off by 1.38%. as you talk about the overall broad market, where he, all ten sectors are lower. the relative out performers, the more defensive less economically sensitive names, the more cyclical ones like tech and financials and, of course, energy helping to pace the declines. i will also point out at least for -- the new york stock exchange, are you talking about 391 million shares to the down side, again, in terms of volume versus 20 million to the up.

just goes to show you, kayla, guys, just how much pain there is on the down side in today's trade. back to you. >> how few bullish voices we have heard amid all of this. dom, thanks. meanwhile, black rock chairman and ceo this morning, larry fink, telling ""squawk box"" that markets could see another 10% decline leading to broad negative economic effects nationwide. here's what he said. >> i actually believe you're going to start seeing more layoffs in the middle part of the first quarter. definitely the second quarter. if we don't see some swift rebound. as i said, i think we are going to have probably more pain before we have that lift. i do believe by the sect half of the year, the market is going to be higher. >> market is currently touching the lows of the session, down 400 again. touching that point before bouncing back just a couple of points. here at post nine now, ubs director of floor operations art cashin. we broke through 16,000. that was the level you said earlier this week.

we had to watch. how do we get there so quickly? >> well, we got there quickly because of oil. the large part. in fact, it's quite disappointing. often when you have a purge opening, the selling exhausts itself in the first 45 minutes or so. that's not happening here because crude is under increasing pressure. it's moved below 30 in both brent and wti. that's been the story of the week, and it's the story of the day. >> can i just point out that we're now 400 points down on the dow, so the selling and the markdowns are clearly feeding on themselves at this stage. >> yes, they are. we'll have to watch out this afternoon if there are any signs of potential margin calls or other things weighing on the market. >> art, what's the volume telling you this morning? especially as we compare it to what we've seen the rest of this week and since the beginning of the year. >> well, the problem in looking at the volume today is it's an expiration day. it gets distorted by larger than

normal openings and we'll hopefully see a larger than normal close. you can't actually take today as a good example, but it has been 25% to 30% above normal during all the selling that we've seen in two weeks. >> it's worth pointing out that monday is a public holiday in this country that isn't a public holiday elsewhere around the world. there is an event risk. if you are in this market as to how world markets will react on monday, and you will in many senses be locked out of that. people have to position presumably for that. classicicly you were telling me the biggest risk is to be short. >> absolutely. >> and this environment, you don't see much short covering.

skwlo it doesn't give you a lot of optimism for earnings season too. you had a very solid quarter from jp morgan. even it didn't stay in positive territory for all of yesterday. then citigroup, which should have been treated like a big win, most profitable year for the bank in nearly a decade, down 5% today. >> yeah, the tide is going out, and it's taking all the boats with it. that's more than a little problem. we'll have to watch the balance of the day as i say.

this is quite disappointing that they haven't circled the wagons here. >> people will be sitting at home licking their lips for the opportunity here to pick -- i mean, the question is for how long -- inevitably, how long does this last? how much further do we go down is this do you have a sense of that? larry fink is talking about 10%. other people have called for greater losses hand that within the last hour. >> i would lean with larry. 10% to 12%. yeah. >> so your correction would be 20% since the start of the year? >> a little bit more. maybe 21%. >> don't you normally go into a bear market over that bear market only suffer 30% to 35%? if you are going into a recessionary environment, if that's what we're now talking about. >> you know my feeling. i think the fed made a mistake, and i think they'll get pushed into undoing that mistake. hopefully before we get into a full blown recession. >> what do you make, looking at intel, it's down now a little better than 9%. you would think that they missed on the top and bottom line.

they didn't. or at least that their guidance was terrible. it wasn't. it was just that their growth unit didn't grow quite as much as people had hoped. is this a signal of just overall pessimism that's affecting things that, you know, might not be a part of the overall pessimistic story? >> you have the pc's and the smartphones and whatever, and the market is concerned who will the winners be and how will they stand up through it all? bank's reasonably good perform wrans doesn't save you. >> let me take you back to one of the key dynamics in today's trade that is bill dudley, the head of the new york fed, has chose tony make the speech and has somedayed decided not to give the market anything in the wake of stanley fisher saying

there will be four rate rises this year. he silenced too many people. you said just now that you feel they made a mistake, and you feel that they'll undo that. isn't the lesson that the world has changed and when, for example, in the fall janet yellin said i'm not raising rates because i'm worried about china, the market actually fell. if they came back and reversed the rate rise, wouldn't that send panic through global markets? >> well, i don't know that it would calm everything down, but step away from the market for a minute, even though it's our livelihood. they've got to worry about what happens with the economy, and they can't really allow us to slip into another recession because to some degree their gun is empty already. i think they might in desperation cut back and go back to zero in hopes of saving the economy from slipping into recession. >> but to pick up your point, the markets are down very

heavily. do you see an economy that really is hurting that badly? i mean, through the prism of the markets, it looks horrible, but actually you can argue that growth is really quite robust. the employment data has been really robust recently. >> well, again, i don't want to keep arguing the same case, but if you look down underneath the data, it's not quite as robust as you think. over 35% of the household surveyed, 485,000 jobs, went to people under the age of 19. only 3%, 16,000 jobs, went to people between the age of 25 and 55. that tells me that robust employment number you saw was a lot of holiday hiring. >> you have said that we would see zero percent on the fed funds rate before we see 1%. are you now thinking about rates maybe going negative, like dudley seems to be insinuating. >> we're seeing it in europe. i would think that they would try as hard as they might not to do it here. i think if they get to zero, what they may have to do is

resort to more qe to see if they can get that work. >> does that work? does qe work? >> no. >> can't we see from europe that it's clearly not working? europe is engaged in massive qe, and the markets are falling, and lending isn't coming back. isn't the qe tiger dead, a paper tiger? >> not fully. certainly bernanke believed in it, and i think he convinced many of his associates. >> art, put this in context for us, how big a deal is it? of course, we see the dow down more than 400 points again at these levels on a day like this. we get excited.

>> the markets have gotten crazy here, and they are worried that if it continues to go down -- and it's doing so even as we speak -- that it might be headed towards something like 25, and that might explode the entire high yield bond area, and you could see two-thirds of the operators there go bankrupt, and they're worried about the contablingconta contagion that we've seen in the past. will it go to high yield like subprime did? they're still living in the last crisis. >> then there's the vix that's been waking up from its long winter slumber. it doesn't always react to a selloff or to a slide in oil prices. spiking above 30 today. obviously, people are expecting more volatility, and as our eric

chemney points out, oil is now lower than the vix. last time that happened was march 2009. the market bottomed. >> that shows you the amount of concern that's out there. >> there would seem to be a disconnect from what's happening in the market versus mainstream. we talk about, yes, there are issues on main street, as you mentioned. the swrobz number doesn't reflect what's going on. i don't get the sense that people on the street today are really that freshly concerned about the economy like people in this room who are looking at what the indexes are doing. >> certainly they were more concerned during the great recession, if you would, because primarily it affected the banks, places where they had their own assets. they became more animated. they don't really know how a panic from the oil market will affect them. you're not going to see main

street react too readily. >> we've seen the markets take the elevator down, stay on the ground floor, but are there levels down here that you would watch? >> what you want to do is take a look if the market weakens appreciatably further. if you want to look at the low from august in the s&p. we could be around 1857. you get down there. if you don't hold that, then you might be seeing a whole new round of selling. >> art, thanks so much, as always. art cashin here at post nine. >> intel still under pressure today. despite reporting a fourth quarter earnings beat after hours yesterday. the stock has been down and made concerns over a slowdown in data center growth. a couple of things were behind that, and one, asia is slow. we all knew that. two cloud providers slowed their buying in q4, which is their busy season. i would say there were two major themes on the call. one was we're not staking the future on pc's at all. intel basically said pc's provide cash. we're going to continue to iny e

innovate there. the real opportunity is with the data center. it could mean whatever you want it to mean as long as you agree that it's going to be huge. here's what intel has going in its favor, though. the company was cautious about the consumer business as it plotted its course forward to here. now it looks like a smart nonbet. now with altera, that's gone through that acquisition. it has one more tool to try to make custom chips for cloud providers who don't want off the shelf parts to run their clouds. what intel is trying to do in the data center is similar to what arm and qualcomm pulled off with the smartphone.

>> awe market map focus odd that piece of data center story to date, though. they're focused on slowing growth. >> thank you. very much john. that's the view on intel. wal-mart is also i a key focus today. sarah has more on the floor. take it away. >> wal-mart making news announcing it will be closing hundreds of stores. that got our attention. the stock is down a percent amid a steep sell-off, which is a lot worse than that. we want to bring in patrick mcgehee joining us on the cnbc newsline to talk about the significance of this, patrick. obviously, wal-mart is a huge employer. 16,000 jobs are at stake here. what does it say about where wal-mart is in its turnaround. >> i think it says that wal-mart is still not there yet in brazil. they've been trying to fix brazil for a number of years now, and it just doesn't seem to be working. closed a little more than 10% of

their stores in brazil. another thing it says is that there is a limit to the store size. wal-mart can't get too small. the wal-mart express stores that they're planning to close, there are 100. just over 100 of them. they are about 15,000 square feet. they haven't shared a lot of detail in terms of the financial performance of those stores, but it seems like it's just that concept is not working for wal-mart either. >> which i would think would be disappointing for investors. yes, they're closing 154 stores, as you say. the small format express concept was a big part of one of the pillars of their turnaround strategy from doug mcmillan. it's just not working? >> small format is definitely one of the pillars. e-commerce is another pillar, and, of course, the core super center business is another pillar. i don't know that it's not working. it's want working at that size. it's not working at the 10,000,

15,000 square foot size. i think it's working fine when you get up to 40,000, 45,000 square feet. those are the neighborhood market stores which they're closing some of those stores, but they're still planning to open a large number of neighborhood market stores in 2016. that concept is working. i just really small stores just are not for wal-mart. >> patrick, perhaps the big story here and what's notable about wal-mart is the resilience of this stock and this company at 2016. it's the only dow component that's actually positive for 2016 by about a percent. now, the cavat is it was the worst performing dow component of 2015. how do you read into the recent relative strength that we've been seeing? is it just overdone last year? >> i mean, i think some of it's just defensive. more than, let's call it, 60% of their business is grocery and consumables.

>> wal-mart has the a price target of $63. >> up next, still watching these markets with the dow down just shy of 400 points. now counting down, of course, to the european close. the next big catalyst for today's market. we'll bring it to you live in a few minutes. don't go away. ♪ there's a lot of places you never want to see "$7.95." [ beep ] but you'll be glad to see it here. fidelity -- where smarter investors will always be.

if only the signs were as obvious when you trade. fidelity's active trader pro can help you find smarter entry and exit points and can help protect your potential profits. fidelity -- where smarter investors will always be.

♪ light piano today i saw a giant. it had no arms, but it welcomed me. (crow cawing) it had no heart, but it was alive.

(train wheels on tracks) it had no mouth, but it spoke to me. it said, "rocky mountaineer: all aboard amazing". >> the dow is currently down 379 points. just below 16,000. 29 members of the index are in negative territory. were led by intel. down 9%. microsoft and wall disney. >> lots of red, indeed, simon. stocks continue to fall, but the nasdaq, the worst performer so far with particular bad performance in biotech. bertha coombs is there with that and more. >> yeah, this looks an awful lot like it. not a whole lot of green to be found. in fact, electronic arts is about the only component in the nasdaq 100 that's been higher all day amidst a sea of red.

strong performance for the star wars video games, but you take a look, nasdaq down 3%. nasdaq 100, nasdaq both off 3%. chips are off about -- i'm sorry. the small caps are off about 3% as well. things that traders are watching for are signs of a bottom are where these indexes stabbed in terms of their august crash lows. small caps, the russell 2,000, they took out that level of the last couple of days. the nasdaq is now within 5% of that. take a look at the chips. the felly semiconductor index is still about 6% above that august low, but today it is leading the decline. not just with the disappointing intel warning. that's a huge drive in the sector.

>> it's down over the last couple of days, and it's getting no boost from the jp morgan health conference this week. normally that's a boost for biotechs. a lot of investors still worried about the pricing environment when it comes to biopharma this year. the rhetoric, all of that in an election year. take a look. it's down 16% in two weeks we're to date. back to you, guys. >> yeah. that year-to-date chart for even when, berth yashgs as you mention for so many of the stocks though tha we check, is really not pretty. bertha, thanks. >> some breaking news. let's go to morgan brennan back at headquarters. >> hey, kayla. the usda reporting the first piece of highly pathogenic birth flu in poultry since june.

this is affecting a commercial turkey flock in indiana. now it is a different strain of the avian influenza that we saw really just decimate parts of the poultry industry in the midwest last year. however, this is a very highly contagious strain of bird flu. what's notable here is that the poultry industry was really just starting to sigh a breath of relief because everybody had been anticipating that we would see more bird flu cases in the fall. we didn't get any, and now this case comes here in january. this could be sounding off the alarms for the poultry industry. that's the reason why you're seeing stocks like pilgrim's pride, tyson, sanderson farms, and hormel foods all plunge. poultry producers plunge on these headlines. the one stock that is actually the outliar here is the top egg producer, and it's getting spiked today because we've seen that benefit from bird flu in the past. back to you. >> if only the rest of the market would spike. morgan, thanks very much. we're down 373 points on the

dow. just above 16,000 for the year now. the s&p, this is two weeks, the s&p has lost 8%, and the nasdaq 100 is down 10%. joining us from boston, scott griffith, former zip car ceo and executive in residence with general catalyst partners. thank you for joining us on cnbc. >> my pleasure. good to see you too, simon. >> this is rough. these are very rough markets at the moment. what do you think is going on. how do you see things? >> would i say this is a knock-on affect in the private sector, the private capital world as well. especially at the late stage. people have talked about unicorns, and i think that's going to continue. there was i think some optimism held out that maybe the ipo market would still open up this year. you know, some of these trends this week certainly don't bear well for that hope.

on the other hand, at the early stage in the venture markets, you know, life is good. series series b companies are doing fine. they're less impacted by these kinds of trends. i would say that the underlying good news, if you are sitting in my seat looking for more companies to put talent into or invest in and maybe even operate, the companies at the growth stage that were really over valued for a while. i would say almost for a couple of years now. those multiples now in the private market are starting to progress. we've heard about down rounds and that growth end of the market. even if you're not a unicorn, per se, there are a lot of good companies out there that are going to need to raise capital, and the multiples are coming down. if are you in the investment side, pre-ipo, growth stage, i think pricing is starting to come back into trend. that's the sort of silver lining inside all of this if you are in the private side of the world. >> what about the public, scott? i mean, you will keep one eye on that. that's part of your job, i guess. probably part of how you are

investing to keep one eye on the public markets. what do you think about the valuations there? clearly a lot of the big momentum names -- amazon, google, alphabet who did so well last year, even they have suffered from profit taking recently. how do you view those bigger tech stocks? >> i mean, i think we have to take a long vau on this. companies that have more exposure outside the u.s. are clearly getting impacted. there's a -- i don't quite understand why so much of this is starting to hit the tech sector as hard as it has other than they have global exposure, but i think, look, we're at the top end of a cycle of many, many years now. a lot of people -- i was with bill and others for others bill gurly at befsnchmark who said ts had to happen at some point. far be it from me to predict market bottoms or trading trends right now, but i think that we're going to say the top end

of the market probably was hit for a while. i think ipo's are going to be in trouble. that's going to hurt -- that's going to hurt the growth side of the market for quite a while until we start to see that window open up. >> you make an important point, which is to focus on the fact that the selling or the justification for the selling certainly at the beginning of this two-week period was all about china and devaluation, and then everybody is arguing back to this economy and where we are here, and what the fed might do or might not do. how do you see the strength of the economy around you in boston? how do you see demand? how do you see growth? i mean, give us a snap shot, if you would, of where we are going economically? >> well, i think, you know, boston is doing well. very well. new england overall, i think, is doing quite well. unemployment levels are at a really good rate right now. certainly moving well. there's new things happening in the market here. we'll probably talk about the ge move, and we'll talk a little bit about how that might help the ecosystem here as well.

i think overall the consumer, the b to b world. that's going to have some impact in the region. i would say on the margin probably not too much, but i think all winds here are moving positive right now. there is still concern like everybody else globally. particularly with china. companies that have exposure to china or have trade with china or have technology going to china or coming back from china. whether you are in boston, san francisco, or any part of the u.s., you're probably going to have some worry about that. >> yeah. i imagine so. sounds like you are saying you believe that there is some sense in tech that it's a little bit overdone as far as the market goes. i guess we'll just have to see for those that don't perhaps have that level of exposure overseas. thank you so much, scott griffith. let's now get back over to simon with the european close. >> okay. clearly it's rough in europe. just focus on the figures, if

you would, with a almost 3% decline in frankfurt. i mean, everybody has been hit very hard. it's broad-based selling, as you see in this country. let's just take stock of where we have traded so far this year. both in this country and indeed in europe. you'll see that here the s&p is down 8%. the european stock 60 is actually doing worse. it's a 10% fall. this is just a two-week fall that you're witnessing. a lot of today's moves kreerl have to do with oil being below $30 a barrel. certainly west texas and follow-through with the miners in particular. let's have a look at some of those mining stocks today. you'll be aware that bhp, which is unique amongst the global miners really for its big exposure to shale in this country, today took a write-down of over $7 billion on its u.s. shale assets. rio, for its part, now said it's a business that it freezes pay and curtails business travel. these are obviously companies that are under a huge amount of pressure. numura came through with a note downgrading by on average their

price target by 13% within the space today, suggesting that a lot of these names which have really focused on debt reduction are now going to have to move on free cash flow generation cutting their current expenditures and really hunker down to prove that in real-time, if you like, that business models are sustainable. numura saying they need to push harder on the cash flow. it's another reason why these stocks continue to fall. let me just give you within that is in positive territory told. casino, which is one of the big french retailers, is trading up 4% after losing half its value during the course of the last year. do you remember that muddy waters about a month ago came through? this is the short seller from this country with a very negative note questioning the huge debt pile that casino had. they today have announced that they are actually going to sell out one of their gross estate there's, supermarket stakes in thailand for $2.6 billion. in the meantime, the french regulator continues to investigate the way in which muddy waters published what it

said and the way in which it said it. leerl there's a lot of controversy. not least with the french regulators. casino one of the top gainers in a take that is pretty dire as well as here. back to you. >> meanwhile, the s&p financial sector, the second worse today just behind energy. wells fargo's conference call is just wrapping the stock is down more than 3%. the company did meet earnings estimates. revenues came in light. expenses were higher. the street doesn't usually like to see that, but here's the issue. wells was thought to be the safest bet in the banking sector. 97% of its revenue comes from the united states, so it's relatively immune to global weakness, and more than half of its revenue comes from interest payments. the rate hike in december should have benefitted it a little bit more than it did, but its bread and butter, mortgages. they're priced off the ten-year yield, which we have seen continue to fall. ing that will hurt the company's margins. it said it will improve in 2016 thanks to the follow-through from the december hike, and

hopefully what the bank is expecting to be four rate hikes within the fed's expectation throughout the year. even though energy is a small part of wells' overall loan portfolio, it took up the bulk of the analyst call because wells is feeling the pinch from weakness in that sector. wells chased the business following the energy boom to places like midland, texas, and caster, wyoming where pretty much all of the employment is in oil. they gave some specifics about exactly what their energy exposure is. the portfolio loss is for oil and gas, $118 million. that's a multiple of four times what the bank saw just one quarter ago. some 800 million plus loans are categorized as nonaccrual. that means the companies are not paying their interest. although, executives gave qualifiers about some of the loans still being current. executives did say it takes a lot of time for some of these losses to emerge in the sector. perhaps we need to buckle in. >> it takes time for losses to emerge. at current price levels we would expect to have a higher oil and

gas losses in 2016. we're sensitizing our portfolio based on a continuation of very, very, very low oil prices. >> that was the cfo of wells fargo speaking on the analyst call. they also said that credit for oil and gas companies is not going to be in high demand. they're already seeing that follow through. we are seeing citigroup's analyst call just getting underway. they try to have a few minutes break so the analyst and investors could swap over to the other call. the market today might be throwing the baby out with the bath water. that's according to some analysts. they say the near term pain persists for the banks, but there could be a long-term buying opportunity, but declines, you guys, as we have seen, over the month in some cases. citi down 18%. it's hard to see where that up sidesteps in. >> yeah. the key is finding out how to thread that needle between the pain and the buying opportunity, i suppose, kayla. up next, a ton of red on the

s&p. stocks continue to fall. mike santoli will read the tea leaves on where we go from here. coming up next on i "squawk alley." ♪ they may want the latest products and services, but they demand the best shopping experiences. they're your customers, and as you strive to meet their digital expectations, they're enjoying more choice and greater power than ever before. at cognizant, we're helping the world's top global retail companies face the demands of today's digital economy

by blending physical with digital to create more responsive, more rewarding retail models... ones that transcend channels and locations, anticipate expectations, and create new ways to engage consumers at every imaginable touch-point. it's a new day in retail, where a company's ability to influence a purchase decision is only as good as its digital model. together, we're reimagining the store of the future, and building customer loyalty. digital works for retail. let's talk about how digital works for your business. ♪ ♪ light piano today i saw a giant. it had no arms, but it welcomed me. (crow cawing) it had no heart, but it was alive. (train wheels on tracks) it had no mouth, but it spoke to me.

it said, "rocky mountaineer: all aboard amazing". good morning, everyone. i'm sue herrera. treasury secretary jack lu urging congressional to pass legislation quickly to help puerto rico. will he meet with puerto rico's governor, among others, on january 20th.

the u.s. territory needs federal legislation to allow it to restructure its debt. republican gop presidential candidate jeb bush has won the endorsement of south carolina senator lindsey graham. graham making the announcement in charleston this morning. >> i have concluded without any hesitation, without any doubt that jeb bush is ready on day one to be a commander in chief. >> indonesia reporting that three people suspected of plotting an attack were arrested before dawn just south of jakarta, but there is no indication the men were linked to thursday's attack in the nation's capital that killed two civilians. the islamic state claiming responsibility for that attack. japan's government has grooved the first software in cars that can change lanes automatically. tesla's model s can now move that function legally on public roads. the driver activates the turn signal and the car does the rest. that's the cnbc news update this hour. back down to "squawk alley" at the nyse. john. >> all right. thank you, sue.

>> we are continuing to watch these markets right now. take a look at all the major indexes down well over 2%. we're not showing you the russell. nasdaq is down more than 3. the russell also down more than 3%. >> joining us now is our senior market commentator mike santolli. what's going on? >> all that is going on. at least all that's on everybody's minds. i mean, i do think one of the

issues you had there is everybody is downscaling where they think, how deep this selloff can go. obviously i think broader context, this is a catch down move by the major indexes in the u.s. we've had small caps already in a bear market. most other global indexes already down 20%. we have high yield debt that led this market down, and, of course, oil. all these things have been growing for a long time. now it's a question of just how much the large cap indexes had to go down to essentially get in line with what the rest of the world was telling us. honestly, in many ways, the evidence is piling up.

>> have you so many people looking at it, and we run into this friday and we are running into lots of standard trading rules of thumb, like markets never bottom on friday. you don't want to be a hero ahead of a three-day weekend. you might like to see the volatility index, the vix go up even more than it has and spike above 30 and get that sense out there that it's very indiscriminate type selling.

it does show you the damage has been done in large part below the surface of these indexes. >> it will be interesting, mike, given what you say about the fact that it's a three-day weekend. whether there's a short covering that comes through this afternoon that lifts the indexes from where we are at the moment. in the meantime, it seems stark to the point that you are making, the relentlessness, without a capitulation, the reentlessness day after day in that selling over the last two weeks. not just that. the rotation of the selling. we started off with energy in china as a focus. we have he wanteded up now selling the financials quite heavily and consumer discretionary rel tily heavily, and then tech within that.

>> it's a lot of u.s. index investors' attention. that complicates the story of whether in fact we're sort of closer to the end of this phase of the down move or not. >> some of those quality names, morgan stanley down 18% so far this year. that arguably may be where you see the opportunity. mike, no doubt we'll come back to you as we continue our market's coverage here on cnbc. s thank you very much. mike santoll li at hq. stocks continue to sell off. we're down 385 points on the dow. rick, these are big trades.

>> yeah, they are. i'll tell you what, you know, a diploma isn't really a brain. a heart-shaped clock isn't really a heart, and a medal of valor isn't really courage. we're going to talk about the problem with wizards after the break.

>> coming up on the half tame

show, a voice of vaum within the storm. lee cooper than joins us exclusively today to talk about what he. >> meanwhile, let's get to the cme group. rick santelli, i imagine, is also digesting some fed speak. >> absolutely. i think breaking down is perfect way to describe what's coming up in fed speak. >> they knew the wizard was a fake. they saw behind the curtain, but yet, i think the irony is that they were still satisfied with a clock that really wasn't a, a diploma that isn't really a brain, and a medal of honor and

valor that wasn't really courage. they were happy with that. nonetheless -- that really is the perfect analogy for what everybody has been going through. ponder this. i think art cashin is a wise man. he has seen it all firsthand. there's nothing better than firsthand. i like to read history, and i think history maybe rhymes with what happened, but it isn't like firsthand experience. when talking to simon this morning, he thinks that we're going to see qe, and we're going to see negative rates, and we're going to see no more tightening. the neat part of that was is that like the characters in "wizard of oz" everybody knows qe doesn't really do what it's advertised to do. when simon brought that up with art, he said, but they have to do something. really? now, we've been down this road before. i got some emails that were

misunderstood. i was trying to give peter a smart man, seen a lot, write some great pieces on the economy and data points, to try to figure out exactly why the fed tightened. it's with the strengths in the economy. it just wasn't. look at 2015, look at 2014. it wasn't. i'm not saying the fed made a mistake. they have to normalize. i think it's very important if we are to understand the volatility we're going through and how that may be the best alternative no matter what. you have to understand why they tighten. to me that's integral into the argument. we know what it isn't despite what they say. we know the wizard isn't real despite what he gave the characters. in the end we're going to have to deal with a certain reality. nobody wants to deal with reality. nobody kicked santa claus out. john fort, back to you. >> stocks continuing to fall, meanwhile. intel, one name getting kicked

particularly hard. down more than 9%. currently the biggest loser on the dow. going to take a closer look in just a moment. here at the td ameritrade trader group, they work all the time. sup jj, working hard? working 24/7 on mobile trader, rated #1 trading app on the app store. it lets you trade stocks, options, futures... even advanced orders. and it offers more charts than a lot of other competitors do on desktop. you work so late. i guess you don't see your family very much? i see them all the time. did you finish your derivatives pricing model, honey? td ameritrade.

i work here at my namfive star auto care. in rocklin california. a lot of thought was put into the change to solar and we couldn't have done it without pg&e. pg&e is very committed to clean energy. working with five star auto care we looked at how we could make their business more energy efficient and save them money in the long run. with solar we have saved about 85% on our energy cost. with this extreme drought we're using the savings from our solar system to save every last drop of water.

if you are looking for ways to save energy, your first step is to call pg&e. together, we're building a better california. >> he was asked about these wild market eyeragses and again today. here's what the press secretary

had to say. >> most of the market indexes indexes closed somewhat higher yesterday. now they're down again today. obviously these are market movements, they watch financial markets all around the world, and you carefully are evaluating what impact they could have on a broader economy here in the united states. >> ernest went on to say the president has laid out a number of economic improvement measures, including as recently as the state of the union. he encouraged congress to join with the president on some of those. that was a little bit politically self-serving from the white house podium there. the white house doesn't really like to comment on market moves. generally they say markets go up, markets go down. this is a little bit unusual for the white house to talk directly

about market movements. think said they're not sure if the president has been briefed. >> they don't like to watch singular days of market action to determine their policy, but he did say the treasury department would be watching. >> we also know that they watch cnbc. we know from the comments that they watch cnbc. that's obvious. he is aware of what's going on. >> they have an entire facility in the base am of the treasury building that i have been in and taken tour of that monitors all global markets in real-time all of the time. they're watching for any movement that might have political significance. that's an ongoing effort. they raised that to the level of the treasury secretary, and then to the president when they think there's a significant problem at hand. ernest saying there he is not aware that the president has been briefed as of right now. >> all right. thank you. the dow dipping below 400 yet again. now at about 409 points to the negative side. shares of intel, a big part of that. falling sharply along with the broader market after slowing growth and its data center unit

overshadowed the earnings beat. is this drop a buying opportunity on the cnbc news lien? a senior analyst at bernstein, and i suspect you would say maybe not a buying opportunity at this point. $29.72, but was this call really that bad? was it bad news in the growth area and then accounting games from your perspective? >> i think it was not a clean call at all. i think there were four issues. one was overall revenue guidance to correct for alterra. data center results in the quarter were incrementally disappointing and their guidance suggested incremental caution there.

>> finally, on the accounting front, they are taking margins up and saving some costs, but it's an accounting mechanism. they are bringing the appreciation down. if they haven't done that, and it's pretty much -- their emreplied earnings would have missed the street by a wide margin. it's a combination of all of those things that have taken the stock. what would it take to lower your ratings, seeing as you already have a 29 on it. you were already sort of bearish on data center and what they said. was it what you expected, or are we nearing levels where it's worth a look? >> well, i think it depends. the cyclical call, if you wanted to make one would be pc's continue to disappoint materially, and data center continues to weaken. i think the structural quality

would not be so much around macrodemand. it would be more increased competition and that sort of thing i wonder, is the pc business really fairing that poorly? given that we already know about the problems in asia, and we know that businesses haven't started new touching session

lows. the former price to earnings multiple for the s&p is now the lowest in two years according to s&p capital iq. the banks had good earnings. we didn't mention u.s. bank corp., both of those were a beat. citi was a beat. wells fargo was a meet and a miss on revenue. you can see everything is falling across the sector. financials the second worst. >> i was going to say critical levels on the s&p. there's a fight going on at the moment. we dropped within the last few seconds, as john was finishing his interview. about 440 points on the dow. we went right down to the session lows. near basically trying to fend the level on the s&p going into the afternoon clearly. it's clearly a battle.

that would be interesting to see if you can rally from here. that's not the indication at the moment. >> mike said no one wants to be the hero going into a long weekend. art pointed out that we an expiration happening later in the afternoon. always volatile session. we will turn it over to the second half of the trading day. thanks for joining us and have a great weekend. >>. >> thanks so much. welcome to the halftime show. want to introduce you to our starting line-up for today. jim leventhal is here, along with steven weiss, josh brown, and john. we begin with breaking news on the markets. stocks plunging today as concerns over global growth and a full blown currency crisis in asia intensify. china shares down big overnight. the russian ruble getting hammered, among other currencies. crude down 5%. the ten-year yield has dropped below 2%. that is a three-month low there. steve weiss, when you look at the markets now, you do have the dow 13% off its 52-week high. the s&p