hi, everybody. good morning. you're now watching "street signs." i'm louisa bojesen. very glad you're with us today. our headlines, strong gains stateside putting a spring in europe's step this morning as basic resources power higher. china shrugging off a negative rating from moody's. mario draghi raises hopes of further stimulus this month, but one board member warns the consequences of negative rates. the sunglasses maker cuts its guidance and skraps its dividend. >> i'm going to be very good for

the world. i'm going to get along with the world. you're going to be very proud of me. even you will be very proud of me as a president. >> donald trump marches ever closer to the white house after a big super tuesday win, as the democratic front runner hillary clinton sweeps the south. good morning, everybody. welcome to "street signs." we've got an hour together. quite a lot going on today. a lot to get through. let's kick off by showing you what europe is doing. we just hoped an hour ago on our equity markets. we're higher by shy of a percent right now on the broad based index. indeed, all of our european equity markets are also trading in positive territory. you have gains somewhere in the region of half a percent to 1% or so, give or take a little bit. just showing you some of these main markets. you'll see for yourself what i'm talking about. ftse mib there on the right-hand

side of your screen. you get the picture. we're very focused on what's coming up next. that's just the way we are. mario draghi has warned the march meeting will take place against the backdrop of increasing downside risks. in a letter, the ecb president told the european parliament that inflation dynamics were weaker than expected. he reiterated that the central bank has, quote, no limits on how far it could go within its mandate in order to achieve its targets. now, at the same time, the ecb board member says he's well aware of the threat negative interest rates pose to european banks especially. but in a speech in frankfurt, he added that negative rates complement the ecb's bond buying program and that they're studying the use of such policies in other jurisdictions too. he also questioned the banking sector's narrative, that their main challenges stem from

monetary policy. now, moody's has cut china's credit outlook to negative from previous stable amid concerns over beijing's capacity to drive through reforms. despite this, the shanghai composite closed the session sharply higher. sri is in singapore for us. talk us through what we need to know heading further into our trading session. >> yeah, this was a big, big risk-on move in the asian markets. really led by japan and north asia, mainland china markets. i can't help but feel that we've seen risk on, risk off. it's almost like mr. miyagi and "karate kid." underlying stresses in our region have not gone away, largely external challenges and the pressures there. i continue to maintain these sort of gains are going to be fairly temporary, fairly illusory for the broader market. i don't think they can be sustained. anyway, let me talk about china. we saw a big move there.

4% plus for the major indices in mainland china. it was really down to the external forces. wall street was stronger. the u.s. data was stronger. the oil price was firmer as well. so a big move in resources. let's not forget what moody's did today. the ratings outlook downgraded because of the debt situation. the corporate credit and corporate overhang in terms of the debt is quite sizable. i had somebody tell me in the region about 160% of gdp. herein lies a problem. when the economy is making this transition towards the consumer, away from an investment-led growth, there's going to be bumps along that process. there's going to be defaults. there's going to be unemployment. it's going to be quite messy, in a word. there's going to be more debt being brought into the system. i think the market's arguably a little complacent. they seem to be riding on the coat tails of the stimulus

effort of the pboc. nikkei up by 4% largely thanks to the rebound in dollar-yen. i think it comes down to the u.s. data. payrolls at the end of the week. if it's a constructive number, that could help the dollar and weaken the yen. that could be constructive for the nikkei 225 amongst others. that's where we stand. back to you. >> sri, good to see you this morning. thank you very much. the price of oil, you might have noted overnight, we're currently just seeing a little bit of weakness, a little softness in both brent as well as wti crude. there is this data suggesting a big build in u.s. crude stockpiles once again. we've been looking at this the past couple weeks. jeff and hadley join us once again from abu dhabi. the oil price very much in

focus. >> yeah, absolutely. for those tuning in for the program and missed us on "squawk box," we're at the abu dhabi forum, where you get a convergence of money, power, politic, and oil. the oil story has dominated. >> oh, absolutely. what's interesting as well, while the uae has very much taken this on board in terms of the oil prices going lower, they've really been able to kind of skim the surface pretty well as opposed to what's happening in saudi arabia. they are taking a hit. we're talking about taxes in this country for the very first time in its history. so big changes coming online for these folks. >> yeah, absolutely. some concerns in international debt markets that may be the gcc debt load is too high and is going to be difficult to service if headline oil prices remained low for a lot longer.

we had dan on from ihs earlier. he was making the point he thinks the recent price action may suggest we are getting to a watershed moment in this recent cycle. >> absolutely. and it's interesting as well looking at what the sovereign wealth funds are doing. the abu dhabi investment authority, the sovereign wealth fund of the uae, they closed their london office recently. we're talking about everyone really focusing on what's happening at home and trying to rework these economies so they can survive this over the long term. >> so dan's point that maybe we will see a recovery now back towards the $45 a barrel level because the saudi oil minister appears to be on side with some kind of production freeze. then overnight we learned that president putin met with the

heads of the companies and the message there seems to be we have budget challenges as well in whose interests would it be for us to continue to lift output here. the russians as we know are producing now at soviet levels of production. i mean, we're back to the heady days when they're getting this stuff out into the market as quickly as they can. i think president putin is saying, you know what, if there is international agreement on some form of freeze here,en this maybe we should buy in. >> it's interesting because it's so easy to wrap this within the larger geopolitical narrative. iran versus saudi arabia. but when i speak to saudis, they're saying losing $250 billion a year just to punish iran or punish russia doesn't make any sense. logically t does not make sense. >> louisa, we're going to send it back to you for the time being, but we're closely

watching markets in part of the world. looks like you have a risk rally. we are going to keep an eye on how the markets in this part of the world trade as well and whether they can benefit from some of this risk taking behavior. back to you. >> a tough couple months for the middle eastern markets. guys, thank you very much. as i say, we will be crossing back out to abu dhabi within the next 50 minutes or so. for now, janet henry has joined us, global chief economist at hsbc. good morning. you put at some research where you basically talk about 2016 policy implications for a whole range of oil price scenarios. maybe you can summarize what you're looking at. >> yes, of course. things have moved on quite a lot over the course of the last few months. everyone's become a lot more bearish about the outlook. we've obviously had a subdued outlook for the global economy for some time. but we tend to get a little

nervous when everything becomes very, very consensus. i think given the oil price of the moment, i could paint a number of reasons as so why oil pricesing fall a lot further. i could also suggest why we might get supply cutbacks and get the oil price to rise. so in this environment, we thought, well, let's take a look at what the implications would be for all of these other central banks, and the bottom line is that some of them obviously help the growth, the inflation outlook in different regions. but then they would have more negative implications for elsewhere. >> so we're not sure, then, whether or not the global economy is going to slow down markedly and whether that's going to have a knock on impact on the price of oil. is that kind of where we're supposed to, you know -- what we're supposed to take away from it at this stage? >> in terms of where the oil price goes from here, most oil analysts will tell you we should see some cut back in non-opec

supply. demand growth hasn't been spectacular, but last year was the strongest year for several years. we are in this period of uncertainty when it's clear the global economy is still slowing but we're not quite sure how much, the extent to which the financial tensions we've seen since the beginning of the year is going to weigh on growth elsewhere and whether it's going to be demand, global growth that takes us down from here or whether actually the supply cutbacks are going to raise the oil price. >> we have some of the oil price scenarios up on screen now. so a squeeze on real wages from a supply sharp rise, fed reverses tightening, potential next eurozone crisis. this is summarized as well. is there anything that stands out as being the wild card for oil, or is it really an amalgamation of everything? >> if we take the oil price rise scenario, i suppose the most optimistic one for the global economy would be that china and the u.s. rebound very strongly in the next year or two, that

you get this real demand-driven rise in the oil price, that inflation moves back towards target and these country, that the policy could be normalized in the way the fed has been trying to tell us they're going to raise rates four times over the course of the next year. even that kind of scenario might have implications for elsewhere. actually, if you think about the eurozone at the moment, while mr. draghi is probably going to have to deliver more stimulus, and i think he absolutely should, the fact is this environment for the eurozone might be as good as it gets. 1.5% growth, hopefully 0% to 1% inflation in the coming year, more qe for the next few years. it's keeping spreads reasonably tight. but actually, if it looked like there was taper talk again, the prospect of the eurozone crisis could come back. in some scenario, maybe we get taper talk from the bank of japan. >> yes. i'm simply not smart enough to

be able to see through what the longer term implications of negative interest rate environments are. i simply cannot figure out where we are in ten years or 15 years or 20 years if we continue down the path of stimulus and of negative rates. do we at all know what we're doing with regards to the ramping up of stimulus? i know we've been doing it for the better part of seven years, but when do we stop? when do we say the economy has to finds its own feet, they have to find their own solid ground to stand on? and if it's not working, it's not working and we need to do something else. >> that's a very good question. we've never had a country that's even exited successfully from qe. here we are looking at templates elsewhere as to how negative rates have worked and suddenly everyone's becoming an expert on san die scandinavia. >> well, i'm from there, and i can't figure it out anymore.

>> so negative rates have obviously helped to support asset prices, particularly property markets. i think that's how they'll work in the euro area. but we've also seen the impact on concerns about bank profitability in particular. while mr. draghi tells us that actually for the ecb their mandate is to lead 2% inflation over the medium term, it's not his job to worry about bank profitability or insurance company profitability if the negative rates affect the credit channel and affect the availability of funds and the ability of credit to get into the real economy. that means he will not meet his inflation target. so my feeling is we probably can get negative rates going a bit lower, but not massively lower from here. central banks have no gain to say, we've done our bit. at the moment, it's we can go more negative to try and put pressure on governments to do

their bit. so we get back to what are governments going to do about it. >> and back to the consumer as well. 13d research, which i quoted yesterday as well, they state in their latest research they're still puzzled about this belief that consumer spending is going to come back in full because of the lower oil prices. actually, people are saving a lot more from cheaper gasoline prices. that's not feeding through into this massive gdp growth. >> well, relative to expectations at the beginning of the last year, when we saw the big decline in oil prices during the second half of 2014, if you look at expectations, it did work in the eurozone. that goes against what people would have normally expected. always the u.s. consumer benefits more. because in the u.s., you did see a rise in savings rates. in the eurozone, you saw a smaller rise in savings rates. actually, especially in a world of negative rates, i think it's the german consumer that's been interesting. it's not, oh, let's borrow more,

you can get a ten-year mortgage at 80 basis points. it's, oh, we're getting negative rates or no rate, we better save more and for the future. but the lower oil price has been a net positive to the western consumer. >> janet, thank you very much for your time this morning. janet henry, global chief economist at hsbc. get involved. we'd love to hear your views on all of this. you can find us on twitter @louisa bojesen. we're showing you the e-mail address right there on screen. streetsignseurope@cnbc.com. we're also on facebook. you can find the show twitter handle as well. it's all on there. a bit confusing. you'll figure it out. coming up on the show, hillary clinton and donald trump solidify their primary leads on tuesday. mr. trump reached out to his global supporters. >> i'm going to be very good for the world. i'm going to get along with the world. you're going to be very proud of me. >> and bugati unveils its latest

model that petrol sees as a true aesthetic and engineering feat. can you guess, though, how much this little thing costs? we'll be right back here on "street signs." again, do join us. find us on e-mail or on twitter.

hi, everybody. good morning and welcome back to "street signs." i'm louisa bojesen here in london. itv shares in the red today as the broad kacaster warns about t advertising revenues in the fourth quarter. this despite reporting 2015 growth on the top and bottom line of 15% and 20% respective lip. virgin money up by 53% to 160 million pounds. the newly listed lender chimed into the brexit debate as well,

raising concerns about the ongoing situation. and china resources beer is planning to buy sabmiller's for around $1.6 billion. it's designed to help ease the regulator's concerns about the tie-up between the world's largest brewers, namely sabmill per and ab inbev. hi, sue. >> good morning. >> good to see you, especially on a day when we're looking at quite a bit of news out of some of these ftse 100 companies. let's start with itv and what we're seeing there. they're announcing revenue growth. there's a lot of speculation about whether or not they're going to continue to outperform in terms of the ad market. >> so a really good year for 2015. but a lot of people expected

that. all eyes are on the future. now, the shape of 2016 in terms of advertising is going to be quite different, really because of all the different sporting events. we take out the rugby world cup, we put in the euro football. we have all sorts of quarter-on-quarter changes, which means quart er one 2016 i going to be flat. overall for 2016, it's going to be a little more muted. you can't keep growing at such strong rates, but it's still going to be a good number. i think that the expectations are going to move more to what the company can do organically and through its acquisition strategy in terms of its content, and can it really attract advertisers through the itv brand here in the u.k. >> there's been speculation for quite a while they could team up with another player out there. would they? we haven't seen it happen yet. we've been talking about it for

the better part of five years, four years. >> that's true. itv have made a series of acquisitions over the last few years. they've got a strong balance sheet. they've been making bolt ones that really extend them and take them into international markets for their content. about 50% of their content goes overseas. that puts them in a strong position in terms of attracting businesses to come into their stable. >> then you've got virgin money and metro ipo as well. what's going on in the domestic money markets? >> these are really the challenger banks to the well-established players in the banking industry. metro has a different kind of setup. it has rather glamorous offices in prime locations. >> very clean. very blue and red. >> that's right. very dog friendly apparently. but quite expensive. so they're not making money yet.

virgin money, on the other hand, its results today show it's making more money for its shareholders. so it's been quite successful, both in terms of reducing costs within its net work, and also attracting more business. so their shares are up quite strongly. >> that was northern rock that nobody wanted to touch with a barge pole just a couple years back. >> that's right. in fact, the government had to sell it. >> precisely. the ftse 100 is off around 11%, 12% over the last 12 months or so. what are we thinking in terms of u.k. equity performance heading further into the year, especially with the uncertainty of a brexit on the cards? >> well, if we can look at valuations and earnings, we've seen the downdraft from oil and other commodities and just a slowing in global economic activity really come to bear in terms of earnings.

what we've seen more recently with the brexit concerns and lots of other international debates on relative positioning of economic growth, we've seen sterling weaken quite substantially. now, that's quite good for ftse 100 companies' profitability. all their foreign earnings are going to be at better exchange rates. that's actually improving the outlook. if we look at what's happening within commodity prices, we may be seeing some signs of stabilization in the oil, perhaps in the commodity complexes. that puts a floor under those earnings. that would allow the market to progress more positively in the next 12 months. >> sue, good to see you this morning. thank you very much. good morning to all of you. you're an active bunch today. i'm always surprised by how many

of you aren't sleeping in the u.s. it's, what, 4:00 a.m. in the morning now? you're still up and e-mailing. well, keep them coming through. streetsignseurope@cnbc.com. let's move on because a change at the top of schroders. michael dobson is stepping down after running the company for 14 years. he'll reportedly be replaced by peter harrison, who's the head of investment. they're expected to announce the change when it releases annual results later tomorrow. luxottica shares trading lower after it said it won't be paying a special dividend. i'm not wearing glasses today, claudia, but perhaps i should have like you. >> well, i tend to wear these unfortunately every day, louisa. but yeah, this eye wear producer

today is not performing too well on our market as it continues to be down. it's our worst performer, down by 4.5 percent an points after they came in with their numbers, which were quite strong. they're record numbers with almost 9 billion euros in revenues. that's an increase of 5.5% and a net profit of 804 million. that's up by 25.1%. so operating profit also up by 19%. these good numbers were a little bit overshadowed by some concerns with margins in the next three years for that eye wear group as well as maybe the dividend issue. now, dividend this year did increase by 24%. they were distributing almost half of their profits, 89 cents per share is what the distribution is. issues like the slowdown in the global economy, of course, may be of a concern, but beyond the ceo group says the growth in latin america and asia will continue to sustain sales for

eye wear products. the company, of course, is also keeping their eyes open for acquisitions. these are some of the comments that came out. governance issues also seem to be affecting how the stock is moving today. a new member announced for the board and a personal consultant. the 80-year-old founder of the group did speak today during the meeting of the company and did say, though, that management of the company will return completely to managers and that he will be becoming a nonexecutive president very soon. so that should help. but for the time being, the stock is down here. back to you. >> claudia, good to see you. yeah, i have contacts every day. contacts or glasses, otherwise it's a bit of feeling around in the dark for me. but yeah, anyway, we have to go.

thank you very much. coming up on the show, it is a showdown that's taking place on capitol hill now between apple and the fbi as the encryption debate goes on. is the tech giant getting too much attention? we'll hear the latest on what's going on there. thanks again for all your e-mails this morning. a pleasure to have you along for the ride. chills, and fever, there's no such thing as a little flu. and it needs a big solution: an antiviral. so when the flu hits, call your doctor right away and up the ante with antiviral tamiflu. prescription tamiflu is an antiviral that attacks the flu virus at its source and helps stop it from spreading in the body. tamiflu is fda approved to treat the flu in people two weeks of age and older whose flu symptoms started within the last two days. before taking tamiflu, tell your doctor if you're pregnant, nursing, have serious health conditions, or take other medicines. if you develop an allergic reaction, a severe rash, or signs of unusual behavior,

stop taking tamiflu and call your doctor immediately. children and adolescents in particular may be at an increased risk of seizures, confusion, or abnormal behavior. the most common side effects are mild to moderate nausea and vomiting. anti-flu? go antiviral with tamiflu.

hi, everybody. welcome back. you're still watching "street signs." i'm louisa bojesen. your headlines this morning, strong gains stateside putting a bit of a spring in europe's step today. china shrugging off a negative outlook from moody's, closing 4% higher. mario draghi now raising hopes of more stimulus this month. one board member warning, though, of the consequences of negative rates. and as you just heard, luxottica falls out of fashion after the eye wear maker cuts its outlook

and scraps its dividend. >> you're going to be very proud of me. even you will be proud of me as a president. >> and donald trump marches ever closer to the white house after a big super tuesday win. that's as the democratic front runner hillary clinton sweeps the south. all right. welcome back to "street signs," everybody. i want to get you the latest data that's just hitting our wires at the moment. we're looking here at the u.k. construction data showing us that construction growth hit a ten-month low. we're also continuing to see weakness in house building itself. so the february construction pmi falling to a ten-month low of 54.2. that's versus a january reading of 55 even. we were looking for a level somewhere in the region of 55.5 according to the latest reuters poll. so that data coming in quite a

bit weaker than anticipated. it's the lowest level seen since june of 2013. that via reuters, quoting market cips. so february construction looking very weak out there, if you are interested in house builders here in the u.k. blipper, an artificial intelligence app that lets you recognize any object just by pointing your phone at it, has now raised $54 million. the british start-up is positioning itself alongside the likes of google and yahoo! as the next big source of information. how does it actually work? the ceo at blip. -- at blippar is with us. let's start with what exactly it is. what does the app do? we've set up a little demonstrating corner. maybe you can just talk us through what it does. >> sure. what the app does is it's a visual browser that uses the

phone's camera. it opens up the camera on this mode, and whatever it looks at, it starts recognizing it. we have a bowl of salad, which i got this morning. as you can see on the screen, it literally is splitting apart the salad and saying it's got onions, carrot, tomato. >> all those little white things. >> if you open up any of them -- in fact, if i just remove this salad and put this random fruit, which we know is an apple. instantly, it calls it an apple. i remove the apple. i put this movie poster in front of it. it will recognize that. if you open any one of those bubbles, it literally gives you a world of information. the awards the movie has won, where you can buy tickets. >> all of these little bubbles here, they have information about whatever the object is that you're looking at. >> exactly. >> so "i" is just general

information. what are some other examples? >> so instagram or videos. what's happening on twitter about that movie. some reviews and quotes about it. the list goes on. >> so the idea is that it recognizes an object and then it gives me a whole bunch of different avenues of information i can tap into. whereas with google, i have to be a bit more specific. this gives me what kind of apple it is, where i can buy it. >> the goal is we're not trying to compete with a search. it's has a different value proposition. we believe when we're out and about in the world and we get curious about every random thing, we don't have the vocabulary or thought process times to describe everything we look at. just like looking at a plant, you can't define what a plant is. you can't even google it will in

a way. so if you can visually recognize the world and get instant information about it, like a wikipedia of the physical world, that's what we're building. >> and one of the biggest challenges i feel for this is user adoption. how do you get people to stop the habit of going to google or yahoo! for search, taking their phone out, and starting to blip things? how do you convince people that's the way to go? >> so i'm not anticipating people will stop going to google or yahoo!. what i'm predicting is an evolution. so between almost 1995 and 2015, people really got used to the behavior of using search engines and browsing the internet. what they're not doing is browsing the physical world. we have to find those unique use cases for, like focus on things like clothes or plants or food which a lot of people are every day curious about and get a lot of content associated with it. then go horizontal and literally tag the whole world. >> how does your business model work? how are you making money?

you said you have brands such as heinz and coca-cola on board. how do you make money? >> the biggest immediate why in the world is their products. so billions of coke cans or pepsi cans are on theplanet. we're allowing users to engage with those products and get instant information. that information could be something fun, interesting, or highly utilitarian. >> in terms of where you see the company going, you have made a couple acquisitions already. how inquisitive are you going to be this year as you look to build out the product? >> i'm a big believer of it's not build or buy. our goal is to reach our goals as quickly as possible. we certainly have an appetite for more acquisitions. >> what's the end goal here? are we looking at an ipo? we've seen companies such as google and microsoft swoop in for u.k. artificial intelligence start-ups. where do you see your company going? >> i mean, we'll see in the future. i really can't comment on that.

my personal appetite for it and the board's appetite needs to match. >> but the consumer who uses this is another type of consumer than the consumer who goes to google, i'm assuming. >> no, this behavior already exists. one thing amazing, we don't have to train people to point their phone's camera at things. that behavior is already in society. >> also music. >> exactly. >> i guess i'm thinking -- i can't imagine i would point my phone at something to get more information about it unless i had a very specific target in mind. because there's information about everything. you could spend a gazillion hours getting information about stuff that is good to know, but do you really need to know it, and is that your time best spent? >> there is an aspect of attention span. so in the human search evolution, before mid-'90s, people were happy with the information they had.

they asked their grandfathers, went to libraries, or went to school. certainly when we got access to more information, our appetite for information went up. that evolution is nowhere near complete because we've got the whole physical world on tap. everything in this room we look at f you ask someone spontaneously to describe it and give me instant information, there's no results or solution out there today. >> you're absolutely right. whenever we, in this position, research things, you know, it's fascinating. l.e.d. lights or whatever. i agree. thank you very much for coming in to show us more about how blippar works. and welcome back from your latest tech travel. >> lots of new gadgets. >> you can show me more later on. you're all over that stuff. thank you. now, hillary clinton and donald trump are projected to have won the most states on yesterday's super tuesday.

that's according to nbc news. the republican and democratic candidates lead in alabama, georgia, massachusetts, tennessee, virginia, arkansas. trump, though, appears to have lost out in texas to rival ted cruz. now, this as hillary clinton looks to have added the lone star state to her haul. speaking in florida, clinton slammed the divisive nature of donald trump's campaign. >> the stakes in this election have never been higher. and the rhetoric we're hearing on the other side has never been lower. [ booing ] trying to divide america between us and them is wrong, and we're not going to let it work. >> now, meanwhile, at a press briefing in florida, donald trump countered, promising to bring the republican party together, and he launched a thinly veiled attack on clinton's e-mail controversy.

>> look, i'm a unifier. i know people are going to find that hard to believe, but believe me, i'm a unifier. i'm going to be very good for the world. i'm going to get along with the world. you're going to be very proud of me. once we get all of this finished, i'm going to go after one person. that's hillary clinton. on the assumption she's allowed to run, which is a big assumption. >> well, nbc's tracie potts is with us out of washington, d.c. tracie, a huge day for the u.s. yesterday in terms of the primaries. trump projected to win in seven states then? >> reporter: right. he's the projected winner in seven states as of this morning. ted cruz picked up three states, which was actually a really big night for him. he was expecting to win his home state of texas, which was the largest state. he also picked up oklahoma. then we learned this morning alaska. what that means is -- and that final state, by the way, went to marco rubio. what that means is donald trump still has to look over his shoulder.

it's not a done deal yet. there are a number of winner take all states coming up that could still change the dynamic of this republican race. he's the clear front runner now in terms of polls, in terms of states, and in terms of delegates, which is eventually what it takes to get this nomination. but like i said, it's not a done deal yet. ted cruz hoping to remain competitive. now he's pushing everyone else, rubio and the other two candidates, to get out of the race and unify so he can focus all of the republican party's attention and all of the republican voters' attention on trying to, as he puts it, beat donald trump. >> how about the democratic camp and the lead that clinton now is in over sanders? >> reporter: well, when you take a look at the number of states that she won, seven, to his four, sanders' strategy actually worked. there were five states he was really targeting that he thought he would be able to win. he won four of those. but it's just not enough

delegates, which eventually is what it's going to take to get to this nomination. hillary clinton now almost halfway there. she's got almost 1,000 delegates to just under 400 for sanders. again, could this all change? yes, it could. but it puts her as now the clear front runner in a race that in some states had really been going back and forth and raising questions about how competitive he was going to be. he is now clearly the underdog, and it's going to take a massive effort for him to overcome that. what we have shaping up now is hillary clinton and donald trump. you can see in the campaigning that they're each now targeting each other. >> tracie, thank you very much. tracie potts joining us live out of washington, d.c. the deputy head of political risk at ihs country risk is with us here in the studio. john, good morning. what do you make of super tuesday? >> well, it's a big night. definitely a big night for

donald trump and hillary clinton. i think that one thing to take away is also looking at the republican race. ted cruz did well in oklahoma, in alaska, in texas. that allows him to have a second breath. if he had lost texas, i think he was looking at possibly exiting the race. now we look forward to march 15th. for the democrats, i think you have to say hillary clinton had a great night. certainly bernie sanders pulled out some states he needed to pull out. certainly the delegate math is really starting to eke its way into her favor. >> brent, our resident american in the newsroom, was saying one of the outstanding factors is how poorly rubio performed. >> didn't do too well. i mean, he did have his one state. he did get minnesota, which is a plus. he's at a place now where the establishment hasn't been able to coalesce around him in a way that's really actually producing delegates for him. that's his problem. he's looking ahead to march 15th as well and the florida race. if he doesn't win florida, and that's a winner take all state, it's going to be really tough.

>> what happens next for the republican party? there was a great piece written by benji sarlan talking about that breaking point, where there's either a civil war, breaking the party, or it destroys it completely. >> those are tough words. i don't know if we're at that point yet. but i think we're starting to see a schism there. the question is, is how deep does this go? we're starting to see some individuals, of course the senator from nebraska saying he won't support donald trump. we're seeing some people on the state level also beginning to say that. however, most of the senators we've been talking to say that they're still with donald trump at this point if he gets the nomination. i don't think we're at a schism yet, but it doesn't look good for the republicans. and how are they going to be able to coalesce this message into the convention and onwards into the national election? >> but all the delegates have said they would back rubio. even if they have, we haven't seen it translating in the

polls. >> we haven't, especially in the south, where i think maybe he thought he'd do better. especially in the north where you have a lot more moderate republicans. trump really ruled the roost in several of these states where i think rubio expected to have a big showing. i think really disappointing for him, of course, was virginia, where kasich took a lot of votes from him and probably cost him the state. >> so kasich and carson. where are they now? >> kasich is waiting for march 15th as well. he's waiting for that ohio primary. another winner take all, big state. if he doesn't win that, it's possibly time for him to think about what he's doing staying in this race. carson, at this point, he had some questions last night as to whether he was going to stay in or not. some people say he is. again, it's one of these things. certainly there will be pressure put on him to reconsider whether he stays in or not. he's also an ideological candidate. there's reasons for him to stay in, get his message out, and be a presence on the trail. >> john, interesting as always. thank you very much. we continue to follow here from

europe. now, the american astronaut scott kelly and a russian koz -- koz ma naught returned to year after a record-breaking year in space. they traveled 144 million miles through space. they circled the world 5,440 times. and they experienced almost 11,000 orbital sunrises and sunsets. that's almost a little too much romance, isn't it? >> i don't know if i could handle it. >> no, but spending an entire year in space. >> i guess you get to know yourself. >> not sure i want to get to know myself anymore. the rolling stones have announced they'll be performing a free concert in cuba on the 25th of march, making them the biggest act to play in the

country since the cuban revolution in 1959. the band's show will take place in havana just three days after president obama visits the capital. we've got more after the break to come here on "street signs."

welcome back, everybody, to "street signs" here in europe. well, apple and the fbi both testified on capitol hill last night in the latest round of the fight to unlock the iphone belonging to one of the san bernardino attackers. apple was represented by its legal counsel, who argued that building a program to help the fbi would actually put the security of all iphone users at risk. >> the fbi has asked a court to order us to give them something that we don't have, to create an operating system that does not exist. the reason it doesn't exist is

because it would be too dangerous. they are asking for a back door into the iphone, specifically to build a software tool that can break the encryption system, which protects personal information on every iphone. as we have told them and as we've told the american public, building that software tool would not affect just one iphone. it would weaken the security for all of them. >> the fbi director james comey argued that only apple can help it to hack into the phone used by the san bernardino attacker syed farook, but acknowledged a ruling against apple could set a precedent for other courts. >> there's already a door on that iphone. essentially we're asking apple, take the vicious guard dog away, let us try and pick the lock. the u.s. markets, we're setting ourselves up for another session where we could be looking at a slightly mixed open. flat to a little lower for the dow jones. the nasdaq a couple points to the upside. i call that a relatively

flattish open. we had a huge seesaw session yesterday for the u.s. as well. the dow jones rallying towards the very end of trade. our european markets here this morning, we were called a bit higher. we're hanging on to those gains. some of the smaller markets have gone a little negative. norway, belgium both trading off by a tad. the main markets, as you see here on screen, up by around half a percent. speaking earlier to my colleagues on "squawk box," the global equities strategist at goldman sachs suggested it will all even out in the end. >> the idea here is you have, in all probability, an outcome this year for equity markets, which is a wide volatile trading range but a relatively flat return. the reason is in recent years, most equity markets have gone up a lot, mainly because of valuation expansion as interest rates have moved towards zero and qe has come through. so this started with a relatively high valuation. we think profit growth will be positive but not that strong.

so you get a relatively flat return, but lots of trading opportunities. >> jeff and hadley rejoin us out of abu dhabi. so peter there talking about how we should anticipate relatively flattish returns for the rest of the year. i wonder if that goes for the middle east as well. >> louisa, it's been a difficult 12 months, as we know. if you look at the indices here, everybody's in negative territory. in fact, abu dhabi one of the better performing markets on a relative basis to the oil price. but even this market is down, what, nearly 12%. >> absolutely. they're also talking about taxes for the first time in the country's history, which is really a big, big psychological shift for most people here. >> yeah, absolutely. but the growth rates are not bad. i mean, okay, it's not the stellar sort of 5% to 6% that maybe a lot of countries in the gcc region would want, but if they do 2.5%, 3%, that's

reasonably respectable in an environment where the oil price has declined 70%. >> absolutely. it's interesting as well, you have to remember that saudi arabia isn't alone in trying to diversify their economy. they're trying to use these lower oil prices in this very uncomfortable environment to actually make a big move towards being a non oil-based economy. but at least they're moving in that direction. >> we have some interesting things coming up over the next 48 hours here, louisa. i'd encourage our audience to stay with us here at the financial forum. we're going to be speaking to the head of the nigerian sovereign wealth fund tomorrow. we'll also catch up with -- and here's a blast from the past -- the former greek finance minister who is apparently now advising the labor party on policy and how to go about their politics. so we'll have both of those gentlemen with us tomorrow on squawk on the road. >> definitely an exciting guest

list. we'll also be speaking to a cnbc favorite. also, the president of the national bank of abu dhabi. >> yeah, louisa, on that, we'll send it back to you in london. >> guys, what's the overall impression in terms of business? sometimes when you go to these yearly events, it feels a bit more quiet. other times it feels like markets are kind of coming back or investor sentiment is coming back. what's the sense this time? >> i think there's a lot of excitement, actually, in this room. despite these low oil prices. >> yeah, the challenge, as we know, let's just pull out here. this is a part of the world that provided liquidity and funding for other parts of the world, right. recycled petro dollars found their way into infrastructure projects in north america, europe, and asia. so there's a lot of people still coming down here to the middle

east, looking for some of that money. perhaps there's not as much of it around and available as there was. but that's not to say there's not business activity taking place here. i think actually for the first time, many of these states are thinking about how they need to work harder on infrastructure locally and recycling what petro dollars they have into their own domestic economies. >> absolutely. and for the first time, they're really talking about investment from abroad. they're talking about what the chinese are going to do and not just the uae but also in the broader middle east. we now about $55 billion has been allocated by the chinese for the middle east region. so some different players in the region now. >> yeah, louisa, i think there is, as hadley's saying, there's definitely a buzz in the room. you can hear conversations taking place. but perhaps it's going to take a little longer to get some of those deals over the line given where we are on the headline energy price. just to reiterate part of a

conversation that we had earlier on here, dan continues to make a point he feels we may be basing here on the energy price. as long as there's progress on a global output freeze, that may be progress of sorts in terms of providing an underpinning right now for crude. >> exactly. >> louisa, we'll send it back to you from abu dhabi. >> great stuff. more to come, as they say. tomorrow's programs as well. thank you very much, jeff and hadley, live from abu dhabi. before we go, we were talking about how much you thought this new bugati costs. well, the result is a jaw-droppijaw-drop ing 2.4 million euros. basically only for those of you with very deep pockets. many of you are excited about the unveiling of this new bugatti car from the geneva auto

show. so that's been taking place. loads of you have been writing in today. thank you very much for your messages, for your e-mails. raymond says, maybe if we stop coverage of the primaries as a horse race and covered what vision or politics the candidates have, trump would not get such free publicity. maybe the coverage, not only by cnbc, has contributed to his electoral successes. you might be right. we try to cover kind of what's going on, but you might have a point there. listen, that's it for today's show. i'm louisa bojesen. "worldwide exchange" is up next. do stay tuned to the channel. loads more to come. we'll see you tomorrow for another "street signs" right here out of london. take care.

good morning. the race for the white house, hillary clinton and donald trump dominate super tuesday. >> a market rally in asia overnight despite a moody's downgrade. >> and new this morning, ex-chesapeake energy ceo indicted. a pioneer of the u.s. shale boom charged with conspireing to rig bids. it's wednesday, march 2nd, 2016. "worldwide exchange" begins right now. good morning