debts, and that stock popped 24% on may 9th when we talked last to tim. >> lead insurmountable. >> 24 points in one day. >> that's daunting. >> remember the atlanta falcon, never know. >> that's true. >> thanks for watching "power lunch." >> "closing bell" starts right now. have a great weekend, everybody. inside joke. ♪ it's -- i tried to do a rendition earlier, bill. >> oh, trust me, hers was creative. ♪ my house anyway, welcome to "closing bell, everyone, i'm kelly evans. >> i'm bill griffeth, housing play for home depot is a leader in the market today, and while it seems like the only reliable retail stock for investors

lately, we have a debate with a bull and bear on whether home depot's fortunes can last. that's coming up. this is a catchy tune, though. i'm kind of digging it. >> it's a good one. it may help mortgage place, lending tree, it's up more than 50% this year. the ceo joining us to talk more about that on a first on cnbc interview coming up. >> by the way, don't adjust the sets, i'm wearing my gene simmons kiss platforms today. that's why there's a height difference. the latest from the white house, some members of the republican party concerned about what the president trump told russian officials. we'll look at why u.s. stocks don't seem to be phased by all the drama coming out of d.c. these days. starting, though, with a new bank of network report that's calling the most crowded trade in the world right now, the nasdaq. tech heavy index, of course, as you know, hitting record after record, in record territory right now, as a matter of fact,

and the latest 13 filing shows hung fund managers are piling into names like alphabet, apple, and amazon. eisman of the big short fame told "fast money" last night, he's long facebook. amazon is one of his favorites. >> let's talk about it. steve grasso is at poersz nine and rick santelli at the cme as well. kim forest, starting with you, you like technology but do you agree with it right now? >> i love technology, and i do agree that it's a crowded trade. maybe not add to the positions, but always have technology opinion it is thee thing giving

you productivity. facebook, i can argue can subtracts from productivity, but that aside, most of the other things actually give human beings productivity. we love it. >> by the way, i have to say, facebook for small businesses has been phenomenal, maybe that's one place it helps. sandra, what about you? technology affect you right now? >> well, it's funny because it's not like these names just appeared in the last six months. i mean, these are names you should have been holding for the last few years. quite honestly. if you have not, you missed out. these are long term stories. i would argue that, yeah, right now, i would not be adding to the positions, but i'm hoping for somewhat of a pullback so i can get some new money in, but at the end of the day, to me, facebook is a little bit of an older story now. i think it's more of a mature model versus a name like amazon

which is clearly overtaking so many different industries. it started out with books and got into retail, now groceries, now it's cloud, cloud storage. it's a continuing growth story. i don't find facebook to be in that same category. i think it's a little bit more mature. that being said, you got to have some of these core positions. if you don't have money in them yet, you missed out. >> making the case of warren buffett on amazon. >> one of the top, by the way? >> what would that be? >> back to that in a minute. we have to bring it up. >> okay. >> i can't remember the last time someone talked about callaway golf or anything golf. pursuing the nasdaq right here. i mean, traders would call it overbought, but, you know, i think we can agree on that, but

for how long can it stay there, do you think? >> sure. you can unwind an overbought status, bill, as you know, if you look at the faang stocks still, do you buy them here? over the last couple months, we saw so much money try to capture the rally, but if you really look at it, i think it's the continuing conversation. passive versus active management. look how many funds own those stocks. how many of those overlap? how many funds actually require those stocks to be bought on a daily basis to be accounted for in each funds. there's multiple funds, multi. positions becoming this chasing of the tail type event. if you try to thread the needle when this selloff happens, we all think the market is overbought, but we turned blue waiting for that. >> that's for sure. >> meanwhile, rick, there's a selloff in the u.s. dollar today

down about 98. we got to 103 or so. it's basically, we've unwound the entire bull run on trump's la election, right? >> well, yes and no. i guess technically that's correct, but the best way to put the dollar index in perspective is to really they closed at 102.20. i have a chart ready of the last day of 2016. since then, spent a total of three, maybe four coming one at 221 in positive territory, and all the days were in early january, so, yes, technically after the election, but also probably before he was sworn in. my guess is the dollar's just weak, and if you want to have a discussion about how long to stay in tech stocks, and even crazier discussion to have is bank of england, european central bank, bank of japan, china, tinkering, stimulating, quantitative easing. we're in a tightening cycle, and our currency is the underdog. there's a lot of strange mixes

going on in this world between central banks and no alternative, but i say at the end of the day, know how long to hold on your nasdaq, how long mario draghi keeps the monetary policy. >> we'll get back to you on that. meanwhile, d.c. drama to the equation. stay where you are. this is eamon with the latest news from the white house meeting with officials last week. >> reporter: we heard from the white house press secretary spicer minutes ago, not briefing on camera so we don't have the sound, but briefed on the record, and on the record declind declined to say whether the intelligence partner that shared the information with the united states government was israel as reported. he did not answer, but said the united states values its intelligence sharing relationship with the nation of israel. he also wouldn't say whether or

not the specific information that the president shared with the russians last week was, in fact, classified, and spicer went on to complain about leakings of national security sensitive information saying that it appears that whoever leaked the information about what trump said to the russians in the meeting has a political agenda. meanwhile, we heard from the president today for the first time on camera, himself, talking about that meeting. he was asked about the russians, and here's what he said. >> we had a very, very successful meeting with the foreign minister of russia. our fight is against isis as general mcmaster said. i thought he said, and i know he feels we had actually a great meeting with the foreign minister, so we're going to have a lot of great success over the next coming years, and we want to get as many to help fight terrorism as possible. >> reporter: so for now, bill, the line from the white house today on all of this is just whatever it was that the president shared, whether it was

classified or not, they will not say. it was wholly appropriate to share that, and it was based on the judgment of the president and senior officials in the room at the time. >> all right. thank you very much. to our panel now. i mean, steve zbragrasso, start with you. you watch the market minute by minute every day, it's not just today's news, drama from washington, but lately, we are not seeing any response in the market from anything coming out of washington here. what do you think of that? we're making too much of the drama or the trump trade is out of the stock market right now? >> no. i think when you say "the trump trade," i counter that and say, you know, we've tried to put it in this neat, nice little bucket of a certain number of sectors. for me, the trump trade has been the entire market as a whole because if the trump trade was over, the market would have turned around. if you look at when he was elected, up 12%, 13% from that

point, i think the market, i've underestimated the ability for the market to price in lack of new regulation. i thought you needed to pass something. i thought this market would turn back around. truth is, you have a friendly government, a 1600 pennsylvania avenue, steve wynn said the other day, you can better plan for your corporation knowing you're not running up against head winds, maybe that, just that, is enough to keep this market on track. >> what do you add to that? >> oh, i think i'd add that even a little gnat looks large under a microscope. >> sandra, are you trading with trump policies in mind or just the administration's agenda in mind, and if so, any changes? >> absolutely. we've been telling you the last few times we've been on that we are making our decisions based on the direction that trump and his administration wants to take

the market and take the economy and take the country. that being said, the reason why the market is not reacting, what professional -- we're like racehorses. we got our blinders on. we're not paying attention to all of this noise around us. we're keeping our eye on the prize, which is the path to get to the finish line for our clients, and all this noise is just that, political rhetoric, and it has no bearing on what his policies and what his outcomes are going to be to get this country to move forward, and the corporations know that. that's why they are doing what they are doing. >> get ready to defend your callaway position in a minute, but, fwiirst, kim, what do you add? >> i'll pile on. investors are very pragmatic, and i just think they ignore anything that does not have to do directly with the economy or a particular company. so we just kind of maybe we look at it after 4:00, but not

between 9:30 and 4:00. >> kim, real quickly, after 4:00, are you a buyer of urban on any weakness? you mentioned it a favorite in the past. >> yeah, i mean, i like it because it's understored, it's not in malls. there's unique kind of targeted segments, and we need stores. sorry, i don't think i'm ordering everything from amazon, a lot, but not everything. >> okay. so to sansandra, the golf indus in disarray for a decade, what -- i can't remember the last time i talked to anyone who owned shares of callaway's company. why do you like it here? >> that's right. well, we like it. we've been following it a long time. i mean, one of the overall arching seats is for the company is to invest in, you know, first, second, third place companies within their sector, and callaway is that. i mean, it is number one in

almost every category of golf that you can think of, be it balls, equipment, et cetera, and, you know, they have strulged in the last couple of yearsing but through that all, they've gone into emerging markets, they've had some changes in management, and they are now seeing the fruits of that, and they are now guiding up earnings, and so we think that -- >> okay. >> it's been a struggle. we held it awhile, and now it pays off. we think it's a $16 stock at least in the next year. >> and 13 now, maybe it's another trump trade, bill. >> yeah, in that regard, yes. >> a lot of people have more money to spend on golf. >> yes, they do. if that's where the money's going. >> thanks, everybody. >> his first name? >> yep. >> always learning something. 45 minutes into the close, dow is negative by seven points, stated the session higher, of course, lower now, s&p down by two, nasdaq hanging on to a gain

of a 11. forward looking to reignite sales and making difficult moves today. that story is coming up next with ford. >> sap, expanded partnership with google, and the ceo joining us in an exclusive interview coming up. we, the device loving people want more than just unlimited data. we want unlimited entertainment. so we can stream unlimited action. watch unlimited robots. watch unlimited romance. if you are into that. but we also want more like... unlimited hbo. can i stop dying now mark? no can't do mi amigo. it's unlimited. besides you are really good at it james. don't settle for any unlimited data plan. only the at&t unlimited plus plan comes with hbo included at no extra charge.

with ford stocks stalled, they are looking to cut 10% of the salaried global work force. >> salaried the keyword there. phil lebeau has more. >> lost in the reporting in what we have done and others have done is the fact this is different from other cutbacks that ford made over the years. typically, when u tauto makers e ford say there's a major job reduction, the reason is overcapacity and as a result, you see them shutting down plants, primarily hourly workers. in this case, ford is coming off the second most profitable year ever in 2016, and the profit, while they are down compared to last year, they are still relatively strong. there's decent demand in the market here as well as china,

but this is a company feeling the pressure to justify the investment that it's making in the future when it comes to autonomous and electric vehicles, mobility systems, and that's why it's making the move in terms of reducing its salaried head count worldwide. >> i mean, is it nothing more complicated than just this is the response to the pressure they get from bill ford and the board to do something about the declining market share and the problems they face this year, last year notwithstanding? >> that's part of it. i think the other issue here is that ford, to certain extent, is in a box here because it has been making investments. mark fields and others within the company as well as the auto industry believes that autonomous drive vehicles, electric drive vehicles will payoff. there is profit at the end of the rainbow. the issue is, when do we see the profit? when can investors say, okay, i see how much this is going to contribute to the bottom line. that's what is vague right now,

which is why the stock is under pressure, so mark says, look, until we can show that, and he does believe they can show they will be profitable, they tighten the belt strings a little bit. >> phil, if imptous is on stall ri workers, is this administrators opposed to the assembly ryan? >> right. it's not hourly. right now, capacity is right sized worldwide. that's the difference between this job cut action compare the with seven, eight years ago or recession times. that's driven by overcapacity and too many vehicles being produced, and they cut the number of hourly workers who are building the vehicles. that's not the case this time around. >> all right. stock trading at a five-year low right now, as a matter of fact. thank you, phil. see you later. >> you bet. >> phil lebeau, 40 minutes to go, dow down five, s&p's down 2, and nasdaq, any higher today

would be another record, correct? >> that's right. >> we hit highs earlier in the session as well. kind of following oil, slipped back below, that did a lot to knock the wind out of the sails here. russell's down two points. meanwhile, a scene from the movie, hackers demanding booty -- money -- for the pirates movie. what's it mean for the stock? coming up. dwayne "the rock" johnson may throw away being the hottest paid actor for a run at the white house. the possibility next. meta appetite control...

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welcome back. nasdaq looks at another record close here, up 13 points today, and everybody else is lower by small amounts, so dow down two, s&p down two, and same for the russell. how about twitter? it's higher today on news the founder is returning to the company, biz stone, and returning full time in a couple weeks with the focus to jive the company's culture. twitter shares up 1.5%. >> i used to think there was a guy named sky david, popular back in the '90s in the technology world, had the greatest name in technology. but biz stone is the greatest name in technology. another great name, the disney ceo, bob eiger, saying hackers claimed to have an upcoming new release, they stole a digital

copy, holing the movie for ransom. according to the hollywood reporter and other publications, the hackers demand a huge sum to be paid in bitcoin, not surprising, threatening to leak the film in chunks if disney does not pay. they would do this before the movie's release on the 26th, so far, iger has not disclosed the name of the film, but disney refuses to pay at this point. deadline is reporting that the movie in question is the new "pirates of the caribbean: dead man tell no tales," the fifth installment in the series and opens, as i said -- >> only two major block busters this summer is that and the new "cars" movie, expected to bring in hundreds of millions worldwide. that leak could undermine them. >> there is skepticism whether the hackers do have the copy, right? >> exactly. this came up, told employees about it, it was not just as if people got wind of it and

reported on it. reminds me of, by the way, dwyane "the rock" johnson. >> i'm trying to make the connection there. >> yeah. this is percolating for some time, and i don't know if it's because he has "bay watch" movie coming out, but more and more, talk about the hollywood person most likely to run for president it's bob iger and dwayne "the rock" johnson, and he's not tamping down the speculation either. the national review has a great long piece on "the rock," stands, brings people together, appeals to male and female, a great work ethic, pro-family, all this stuff, and cuts across the lines. >> anymore? i believe anything now. >> weigh in on policy one way or another. run for president and win. you know what? he should be trump's spokesperson. if he's a unifying kick, send him out in the press room. >> we have a campaign song for him as well, right? >> i do love it. >> roll that again.

it's in there somewhere. ♪ what i felt was right ♪ like a rock >> there you are. >> oh, good. ♪ like a rock >> you're welcome, dwyane johnson, you're welcome. >> this was the ford commercial song, right? >> yes. bob seger song. >> we are keeping tabs on the race for 2020, whoever ends up in it. watching nasdaq, up 12, everybody else weaker today, nasdaq off a record high, yesterday, s&p as well closed above the first time. ibm's watson faces new competition. that company's ceo will have all the details. also, lending tree stock is up 50% year to date, not too shabby. what's behind the move from the online lending exchanges ceo coming up.

dow is unchanged now. unbelievable. he's the 11 sectors now in the s&p that they track here. technology leading the way with nasdaq still at all-time highs, financials strong as yesterday, up today, and material stocks are higher.

utilities, the classic sbra iic rate play and telecom laggards today. kelly? >> thank you. i'm on the floor with gordon, why does so much depend on the price of oil still for the market? >> well, i mean, if you look what happened yesterday, certainly the move yesterday was directly correlated, the move in energy, materials, the fact they held today is also a good sign, the market stabilized as well as the price of oil. heading into the most important half hour of the day, though, what we see is today's trend lines sort of continuing, seeing a little of red as we head into the closing bell, so it looks like we're a little bit better to sell. >> is it true the trading day is more like a barbell because of the etfs, so much more activity, especially at the close because of that? >> well, you know, open and closes have been sort of our stock and trade in the last, you know -- for some time now, and, obviously, those are becoming more and more compressed, but i think the interesting thing is

just the overall market, the way it just completely ig fored, socially, the macro news from washington, something the guys were kind of leery about today, but, obviously, it was something the market shrugged off, so, again, we are just coiling at 2400 in the s&p, and the question will be which way we break out. as i i said, we continue to go to the upside just the way the capital raises and formations have been going. >> okay. >> and guys into the markets with it, based on market conditions, may have one or two moves by the fed this year, but nothing that looks to derail what we've seen as a trend. >> the spring has sprung. >> yes, ma'am. >> for the markets, too, thank you so much. >> pleasure. >> bill? >> all right, thank you much. time now for a cnbc news update with sue, sue? >> bill, this is what's happening at this hour, everyone. the u.s. military says that iraqi forces have surrounded isis fighters, and now control about 90% of western mozul. in a joint iraqi and u.s. news

conference both say all of mozul will be liberated. >> the enemy is completely surrounded, fighters are being killed and resources destroyed. the enemy is on the brink of total defeat in mozul. texas senator has taken himself out of the running to be fbi director telling the top administration that he would stay in the senate. cornyn was interviewed after trump fired comey. french officials decided not to give sharapova a wild card entry into the tournament because of the doping ban. the tournament begins may 28th, she's attempting a comeback after a ban of using performance enhancing drugs. that's the news update this hour, bill, back downtown to you. >> thank you, ma'am. >> you got it. >> see you next hour. latest data shows whole move sales, fastest pace in a decade in a quarter, good stuff there, but the housing starts number

disappointing this morning. we get the jerky numbers on housing, but how is growth helping the online loan marketplace? joining us right now is lending tree's founder and ceo doug l z lebda. stock up 50% year to date. certainly you are doing better than the home stocks, home builders and others now. why are you doing so well right now? >> what's happening is we're witnessing a trend from people doing lines from offline to online. because of that, all the lenders applied a lot of technology, meaning that now the m moneyization similar to search business, there's enough that the lenders pay attention, market, tell consumers to save a lot of money online and comparison shop, and that's what they are doing. >> integrating all new platforms, whether it be, not the greatest example, but all the other -- the other ones who started as more of the

marketplace lenders. going to the lendingtree.com, find in the traditional banks, but everybody? >> you got it. that's the premise, anyone who lends money, prosper lending club, local mom and pop down the street, or the largest banks in the country, we work with basically everybody in over 500 lenders, and help them save money on orange natie i originay day. >> what about the small lend er you talk about? >> there's a regulatory burden. the good news is housing is coming back and helping them a little bit. you have good news for banks is home equity comes back. home equity in the second mortgage market with lower costs and helps too. >> what is the number one thing people look for on lending tree these days? >> basically to save money and probably still in mortgage, but the fastest growing thing is home equity, small business, and credit cards. >> small business? do tell. >> very, very small. signs of life are happening where we're going to standardize

small business lines. second to mortgages 20 years ago when i started lending tree, this is the biggest opportunity for people to save money. >> you also released a list of the top customer rated lenders out there right now. there's a bunch of them. what are the criteria that this is based on? >> based on customer ratings and reviews. something we started 20 years ago when the early lenders were people nobody heard about. we wanted to give borrowers online confidence to deal with lenders they might have never heard about, in geographies they never heard of. some are now household names, but because of the ratings and reviews, that's a self-reenforcing way to ensure lenders do a good job and customers get a good deal. >> customer service, ease of ice of the website. >> ease of use. pricing. it's not rocket siengs. i say, if you're responsible with a good price, good service, and you're also responsive to the reviews that happen, so if something bad happens, fix it, which is a big part of the

lending business, then you win. >> i'm curious now if people are looking for any kind of return on -- we know there's a lot of cash sitting in a october of accounts, and people are not getting great rates on it. are they coming? shopping around and going to ally bank, and the goldman sachs upstart, one of the key places where you can get, you know, something like 1% return on your money. >> that is so true, so on the personal loan side, goldman sachs, a startup there, and the deposit side, i think later on in the year, what i understand and hear from banks, ultimately comes to the switch, but they want loans on the books. they have to put deposits on the books as well. that's not happened yet, but we see it could. >> they could give better return, but they want people to be on the lending side. >> they need that. there's everything in this world i found is a balance of supply and demand, and right now, they need more loans than deposits. >> speaking of which, though, the fed expected to raise rates next month. what do you think happens to these smaller lenders as the

money becomes more expensive for borrowers out there? >> i think they'll be fine, regulatory burdens aside, and regulation impacts housing as well, but small lenders will be fine. they were in the forefront, many of them, of adopting online technology, and having great service, and i think a lot of them will do great. >> all right. >> i did not realize that. >> good to see you, doug, thank you. >> thank you very much. >> doug lebda, ceo of legending tree joining us here. 23 minutes left in the trading session. the dow, look at that, unchanged right now, up a point. >> now the nasdaq's up. quarter percent gain when nobody else moved. that would be another record high. the white house tried to quell the latest uproar today from president trump's russia meeting, mnuchin tries to keep the economic agenda on track with a meeting with retail ceos. what nay are talking about when he woman back. uber and lyft fight it out on the streets every day.

who came out on top of cnbc's annual disrupter 50 list. quite a gap between them this year. stay tuned. >> yep. so you miss e big city? i don't miss much... definitely not the traffic. excuse me, doctor... e genomic data came in. thank yo u can do that kind of analysis? yeah, watson. i can quickly analyze millions of clinical and scientific reports to help you tailor treatment optis for the tient's genomic profile. you can that? even way out here? yes. even wat here.

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that move higher this afternoon. even though the other averages remain largely negative, but the dow is looking to fight in the positive territory as we speak here. again, about a 16 point gain, the nasdaq 6166 is your level to watch there, any higher close is a new record. shares of tjx and dick's sports goods go the other way today. hit hard after earnings this morning. both retailers missed on revenues, dick's fell short on same store sales. that said, stock is down 16% now. tjx down 4%, also a bit of a light trend on its comps. >> retail, retail, retail, what a tough market right now, huh? >> see how urban does, the big to report after this one. >> big one tonight to watch. meantime, the trump ads mrgs's attempt to keep its economic agenda on track, the treasury secretary mnuchin meeting with ceos today, and we have more on that story, ylan? >> reporter: bill, retailers have been making their way across washington today, first

meeting with treasury secretary mnuchin in the morning and then to capitol hill. there are over a half dozen executives here on capitol hill meeting with lawmakers right now, including executives from autozone, tech smart, and ikea. they just left a meeting, and i caught up with some ceos afterwards. >> i do have some concerns about the border adjustment tax. look forward to the continued debate and we'll see where that goes over the next several weeks and next several months. >> reporter: i'm told retailers meeting with treasury secretary mmunchin was constructive. supporters are not giving up on the border tax, arguing retailers are just defending an outdated and broken tax code and there's broad support for this, pointing to poll showing 6 it 2% of the voters approve of this.

the house is scheduled to hold a hearing on tax reform, the first one in a series of hearings starting this week, so, guys, the debate is far from over. >> ylan, who do you think the key players are to watch now, aside from, you know, the of course, the senate piece of this, as well, in terms whether the border adjustment tax is going to happen? >> reporter: well, i think that one thing you're seeing is that it's not only losing support amongst republicans in the senate, but also some republicans here in the house as well. so if this is even included in the draft legislation, the house and just coming up with when you finally pull together a tax reform piece. again, broad principles the white house put out does not include border adjustment, yet the president keeps talking about a reciprocal tax. what's that mean? something from a trade perspective more than a tax perspective? all questions that are swirling around here, and trying to figure out what exactly tax reform looks like.

>> 62% of the public in favor of that? >> surprising. >> very surprised of that. aren't you, ylan? >> reporter: sorry, bill, what was the question? you're breaking up. >> the public opinion poll, 62% of the public in favor of a border adjustment tax? >> reporter: so this is the poll that was conducted by a center from harvard university and harris poll showing surprisingly large numbers of of people supporting it. i was surprised 62% of americans knew what the border tax was much less support it, but it was a poll independently done. >> very, very interesting. >> we got to look at that again. if they support it, is that weeding out the people who heard from it and not? >> who wins? the public or the lobbyists who favor -- who represent industries that would not want this to happen? >> feels like it's the exporters versus the importers right now. >> thanks, ylan. >> interesting. >> we're still talking about it. >> 62% of the public favors it?

that's why we talk about it. >> absolutely. >> right. >> 15 minutes to go, dow positive now, slightly, nasdaq up 17, another session high. >> summer's almost here, says -- as a matter of fact, 90 degrees in the city tomorrow. unbelievable. the home buying season can't be far behind. that's good news for likes of home depot and lowe's or you'd think. we have a bull-bear debate on that topic coming up. ♪ it's not just a car, it's your daily treat. ♪ go ahead, spoil yourself. the es and es hybrid. experience amazing.

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shares of home depot traded higher today, the company reported earnings that topped street estimates benefitting from a stronger market for home renovation, clearly. >> the stock has been amazing. >> yep. >> no other way to put it. even if look at the chart, just this smooth upward trajectory lately. as retail rallies, can home depot continue its performance? joining us now, david, more bearish on the stock, and david from consumer edge research. so, david, why don't you like home depot here? >> i could talk about the overvaluation. i could talk about the riskiness of chasing stock, top of the

cycle, buying the stock price, and i think the most important thing is best to note it's 50%. 50% of the sales are now public from online. what's that mean? 50% of the business is liable to go right to amazon. amazon depot. it means 50% of the sales, they don't care about the lack of service that they may find or think they are going to get in the stores, and, finally, all those investors look for one retail stock that's noninternet related to pile into could be mistaken. >> you have it rated as an outperform, what do you think of what he said there? >> so respectfully, that's half of growth, not half of sales. it's a nice balance to the way they are growing the business. this is a company growing top line between two, three times faster at the comp store level than most retailers, return on capital of about 60% better than the rest of retail, but it trades at 19 times next year the group trades 18 times, slight

premium for real top tier performance coming from a behavior shift making it less cyclical. kelly, you talked about the charts smooth. the business is smooth, and the reason is, home depot invested around pro and consumers are empowered to find pros, to find small pros to do a smaller job or large pros, and home depot does that well. as consumers age and are more tech enabled, it drives transition to the probieprobusi. it's a slight premium for an above average company in our view. >> not caught climbing those stairs, would you? >> that's a great look in the rearview mirror, but the question is, is it the company, or is it the fact we have super low interest rates, and we have very low unemployment, and we're at the top of the cycle? look at the focused competitor, lowe's, they are doing better. it's not the company, but the market cycle. >> you could argue, though,

david, not making the argument for yourself, but as rates rise, that's the argument to cocoon more in renovating your home rather than buy something else. >> it could be. but this puts brakes on real estate prices, and that's the number one factor. people say, is it investment if i help maintain my house here or throw good money after bad? >> david, you know, there's part of this issue here as well simply becomes the amazon effect, you know, whether they go into furniture, ultimately decide to spend all the resources going into home furnishings, you have to imagine at some point they decide to do that, and it is going to be tougher for home depot and lowe's, right? >> it's a great question. this morning on amazon.com, a rubbermaid 50 gallon wheeled trash can was 12% more expensive than home depot. why? these are hard to shift from a

cubic and value perspective. not meaning amazon will not keep doing a great job in every space they attack. they will. there's embedded advantages to taking a palette of the product, putting it close to the customer paint, doesn't shift, you can't do it of the there's some protections around the business, depot has diversified, i think, tremendously. the rearview mirror comment, it's fair. low interest rates has been the reason or maybe higher interest rates are a reason to be concerned forever. i think 20 years, and home depot has a return on capital, and i agree, if people stay public are rates going up a bit, there's more projects. >> david, do you like lowe's better than home depot or like them both? i mean, doesn't have to be a zero-sum game, right? >> you certainly can like both. at the current time, we're overweight and equal weight lowe's. home depot has a denser real

estate portfolio, closer to downtown, we see americans moving back closer into the cities. that's number one. the focus is more developed. lowe's has a different exception set doing good things in the merchandising side. i think you can like both at certain times. >> are you a buyer of amazon, dave? >> well, we think that amazon looks to crack in terms of fundamental business. i think anyone who thinks longer term will be able to underprice jeff bezos, be kaurkcautious. >> you're the bear, but you like amazon at lofty levels here? >> certainly, i like the business. i mean, they don't have to have all the stores, and i would point out that without lowe's and home depot, they are new geographically challenged to expand. what's the step between the two? trying to undercut each other, different prices, that does not bode well for profits going forward. >> david, finally, any danger from an environment where interest rates start to go up

and the excitement over housing or home equity loans we know are so plentiful change a little bit? >> if our other guest can predict when the housing and economy rolls from higher interest rates, i'm happy to dial up after the call. it's fantastic call to be able to make. it would be absolutely harder. we do a series of predictive analytics work around the consumer and around housing at consumer edge research. that work still looks very good for the visibility window we have through the balance of the year and planning period. >> all right. david dietz, david, good to see you both, thank you for joining us today. we'll come back with the closing countdown. i'll just mention art cashin told me the market on close orders is a nonevent. never heard the bias to the sell side by $50 million. >> is it 12? >> practically just pairing off at this point. >> and the dow moved negative

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here with the dow up some change. show the nasdaq. that's where the action is now, record territory still, technology stocks, the faangs doing so well, so we're setting a record today again with any positive close on the nasdaq, stro stronger towards the close. there's twitter, which popped today on word that the cofounder biz stone is coming back to tcoy on a full-time basis. frankly, i'm showing the chart because i like to say biz stone. welcome back. wti, ever slightly a pullback from the big gapes seen in the last week as we now await the next group of inventory reports. it was last week's inventory report that showed a huge draw down, and we're right now at $48.60 as we wait for inventory reports. a slight pullback in yields on the ten-year as well, especially after the weaker than expected

housing starts report came out, so we got back down to 232 last i saw, and that's where we are now. now, bob, awaiting the next retail earnings report, and we know how those go lately, this time urban outfitters. >> guess what's at a 52-week low today, urban outfitters, as well as macy's and bed bath and beyond, auto zone, chronically difficulties. home depot, the do it yourself market, lowe's, all doing great. >> you know what that's about. >> we saw tjx, a discounter everyone loved, but they are having problems to the full price stores, having problem selling in stores themselves. overall, not a bad day, but retailers the weak point now. by the way, banks up today even though temperature-year yields down. >> right. >> they are rallying a little bit, despite the fact that as you chronicled, we can't seem to

get the yields on the ten year moving some people, picking up the bones from that. >> within trading range, for sure, thanks, bob. nasdaq record territory, stay tuned, now, for those important urban outfitter retail earnings coming up on the second hour of "closing bell" with kelly evans and company. see you tomorrow, kell. thank you, bill. welcome to "closing bell," everybody, i'm kelly evans. nasdaq easily closing at another high today, in fact, only index up much of the afternoon. everyone else drifted lower. that's what we have on the bell herement the dow dropping under four points to 2978. s&p 500 dropping under two points at 4400, the russell 2,000 did squeeze into positive territory there to close to 1394, away from the all-time high over 1400, and the nasdaq,

it's the one sounding the record, i sound like a broken record with the gain there for the tech heavy average. we're showing urban outfitters, meanwhile, hitting a 52-week low ahead of the earnings report due out any moment now. about $20 and change for urban outfitters. those results as soon as we get them, and see if urban bucks the retail down trend we are seeing. s&p holdings global tex conference, announcing expanded bipartisanship with google cloud, talking to the ceo, mr. bill mcdermott in a cnbc exclusive. join iing me today is our kmoent a timer, michael, as always, welcome to you, and wells fargo asset management, and mark harris from rbc capital markets. michael, talk to us about this nasdaq, man. >> the nasdaq? it's almost like default mode. not a lot of other drivers in the market. showed a little lack of imaginati imagination. okay, might as well shove more

money in the big growth stocks. the nasdaq 100 is about half tech now. tech is the entire story, but a dominant one. i look at the s&p 500 which is just idling like you almost never see. closed at 2400, the ball balances on the seal's nose. it stays there because the seal supports it. >> a great image that i just want to hold there for a second. ann, what about you? you know, earlier, we suggested the s&p was coiled like a spring just waiting to move one way or another, but, again, you know, in the meantime, the nasdaq is happy to move higher. >> you know, i think q4 was a tough quarter for technology, and you certainly saw reversal in q1. it comets to be strong this year. it's a difficult area to find relatively cheap ideas, but there is one name we really like for net. i think the ceo was on your channel earlier today. it is a stock that's trading discounted relative to the other

software security stocks. we really like it, obviously, because of the external environment that's so strong. new viruses out, new hacking out, the ceo's top priority and top spending in any firm is with security software, and so we like it for those reasons and also internally, margins down the past four years. that's going to reverse in 2017, scene we believe that scenes execution is going to improve. internally and externally that's a good name in the technology space we like. >> i like the passion for fornet there. rattle off stats that i think some of the market today, as mike said, even though we are hanging in the balance there, very, very different. a lot of dispersions beneath the surface, bed bath & beyond trading at year lows, macy's trading at six-year lowe's, and simon property group trading at three-year lows, and you can

imagine trading at highs, including candidates like visa, big cap names we talked about, and, you know, even pepsico, marriott, so this market is in the process of sifting out the winners from the losers, and we're about to hear from urban outfitters. do you look at a name like simon managing the retail property, ultimately it benefits from this or should they be getting swept out with the brick and mortar eggs? >> i would not necessarily, you know, try to over generalize simon. simon is a high-end eight plus mall set of properties. they are not as much dealing with some of the words you are seeing hitting the tape over this period of time. i mean, to me, one of the most fascinating things going on right now is taking a look at the volatility in the vix, almost at all-time lows, at ten, so -- >> can i be honest? >> yes. >> this is an unpopular opinion. i'm not interested in the fact that the vix is low.

feels like this happens every time you're in a bull market. >> it does. >> well, at least there's short stretches when it's like this, and i think the key -- talking about the vix, you talk about one-step removed from the reason the vix is here, which is the market, itself, day-to-day, has been the least volatile stretch seen in a decade or more. >> yeah. >> so that's dragging the vix down. the question has been to be, what's keeping the actual real stock market in the holding pattern? >> mark, what do you add? >> it's a simple underlier. the vix, that's right, it's the sentiment, but the reality is, we got low risk of recession. we got -- we got stocks that, frankly, decoupled on correlation, look at the utilities, reits, telecom, decouple the rest of the market creating low volatility and everything else goes up. no recession risk. bonds decouple from the rest of the stuff, and what happens?

the rest of the market values up. hitting highs. nothing to stop it on the high side, and nothing to drag down the low. >> you're not part of the chorus that says vix is low, there's a problem. >> nope. >> hey, there's a reason why, you know, the coast is clear, and i'm happy to buy. >> absolutely. we are definitely on the other side of this, feeling like there's a lot of good reasons for the market to just be helium rising up slowly but surely. >> ann, asking you the same question. it's interesting how bearish stock market investors continue to be the entire way up. you know, maybe it was less true during what we call that early trump rally, but for the most part, it seems like the wall of worry is with us day after day after day. even when you're worrying about how well the market's doing. >> it is really, truly a hated bull market right now. you know, i think the fundamentals are what we try to pay attention to. we just got off finishing ending a really strong earnings season. i think that sends good signs out there for where we're --

where we can go, and a lot of the -- more of the macro numbers, too, continue to show strength. industrial production numbers, for one, a lot of areas in the market still show strength, and so i think the economy is in a good place despite all of the fear. >> glad you brought that up, mike. we know the atlanta gdp tracking figures for 4%, but usually works its way down, but the innovation figures this morning, we were in a recession for that part of the economy going back to the oil collapse, and now they are starting to beat again. it was weird, though, a lot of motor vehicle production. >> it was, yes. restocking in motor vehicles, seems at this appointment, but it's part of the theme of deep investor recession. you're in a good spot now in the comeback pass. i don't know that it means the market has not figured it out yet because it seems like the mosaic people focus on, but it shows you one of the reasons why there's a lot of agreement that at least right now fundamentally

things are okay. the market is not hated. if people are so stressed out they don't get why it's here, look at surveys, everyone says it's overvalued, but they are wrong. there's more life to it. >> all right, hang on, everybody. we'll come right back, urban has earnings out. courtney? >> a miss across the board on this three major metrics we look at. urban outfitter looked for 16 cents, first quarter, revenues also coming in light at $761 million, the street looked for $768 million, and the same-store sales, comp store sales, street looked for 2.7. they were down 3.1. that's all together store online, and all of the brands. if you look into the brands themselves, there was a slight positive, 1.5% comp at free people, but both urban and anthropology were sharply lower. urban outfitters, what you see with many of the retailers,

where the online sales see double digit growth, but the in-store sales are negative. no guidance here at this urban outfitters press release, but jumping on the call later and let you know if we hear anything then. back to you. >> sound right, anthropology sales down 4.4%? >> yes, exactly, yes. >> they are smaller than the name sake brand, but, yeah, that's not a great number you want to see, free people was down 5, but that is probably the smallest of the major brands. >> courtney, thank you. stock down 2.25%. we spoke with kim forrest last hour, a buyer on weakness, one of the names less exposed to the mall. still could benefit, online presence. >> it is less exposed to the mall, it is urban, mostly in the areas where people are walking the streets, and, you know, traditionally in college towns and things like that. the stock was down 1 st% in less than a week.

when the entire retail complex was melting down in the last week, it participated on that, right near the lows from back before they bought the pizza shop. do you remember that? that was the time to buy when it was there. why would they do that? >> forgot about that. by the way, looking at the urban comp here and the miss, you know, does this -- what's this make you think about prospects for, you know, brands in retail as much as the department stores that we know are so challenged? >> the brands definitely matter, and the one thing about urban is they do have three very strong brands, you know, strong real estate as you already pointed out, and they also have their really good balance sheet, zero debt, $250 million of cash on hand, and it's a less capital intensive business than it used to be, to cap x should be moving down. all in the right direction begin the secular struggles they have, so i think these numbers -- i don't know what guidance looks like, but i think these numbers are kind of what the market expected. i don't think they are too

surprising. >> they don't make your designated survivor's list here. >> no. seems like the market is basically almost universally bearish on traditional retailers other than every category, one, the anointed. home depot and lowe's is a general category. best buy in electronics really had a good run. seems like it's the one that might last. ross stores, tjx counterpart, both on relative basis okay. ulta specialty, a broad area, but, again, all about that leader in that one piece of retail that seems to be working. >> ann, a buyer of the names like everybody else here? >> you know, i -- we're a little bit cautious on retail sectors in general, but i think urban, because of the things i stated earlier is a better relative pick than many of the other names. >> all right. we got to go, mark, but what's your best idea right now? >> i think along the idea of the same thing, how about taking a look at dollar tree right now? we got a catalyst with dollar

integration, why people hated the name because of the concerns about the border adjustment tax and products from china would be t taxed, but now take a close look. there's plenty money to take from that integration of that particular transaction, and it's, frankly, stock picking -- pick catalyst driven names. >> absolutely. cool. dollar tree there. year to date performance up just a tad. thank you, both, for joining us, mark, kicking things off this hour. >> well, the man behind the big short in banking stocks head of the financial crisis has changed his tune in a major way. all those details next, and mark cuban gave predictions for the blue collar jobs of the future, and they will surprise you. coming up, later israel reported to be the source of the classified information that president trump shared with a russian official. despite all the media attention on this latest controversy, the market seems unphased. will it eventually impact the

ability to enact trump's economic agenda? we'll ask. you're watching cnbc first in business world wide. it's all yours. wow! record time. ♪ at cognizant, we're helping today's leading life sciences companies go beyond developing prescriptions to offering subscriptions with personalized, real-time advice for life-long, healthy living. honey? you almost done? nope. ♪ get ready, because we're helping leading companies lead with digital. rumor confirmed. they're playing. -what? -we gotta go. -where? -san francisco. -when? -friday. we gotta go. [ tires screech ] any airline. any hotel. any time. go where you want, when you want with no blackout dates. [ muffled music coming from club. "blue monday" by new order. cheers. ] [ music and cheers get louder ]

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welcome back. first one up is "big short"

shorting banks today saying the economy is actually safe from them too. take a listen. >> there's not in, in my view, systemic issues. for example, citi group was levered 35:1, today, it's 10: 1. that's discussing the difference of mercury to pluto. you can have a problem in subprime auto, it's not a systemic problem. there's not enough leverage in the system. >> no big specific issues in the market. is he right? >> certainly, the banks are not in position to be that transmission mechanism for any problem. he's right. the mart figured that out. if anything, the way banks are valued, they are big, dumb, borgiborg i boring financial utilities, and they want regulators to change that, take capital out. >> ten years out. >> exactly. next up, catching my attention, he's right, mark cuban says tagging data is the blue collar job of the future.

someone's got to do the grunt work. >> it's true. there's going to be some kind of a manual-type behavior you're going to have to -- jobs have to exist, and the bigger thing to me is stuff that even today you can't anticipate is going to be kind of part of the basic work of the -- >> why i love this is because it's suggesting there's not a blue collar, white collar divide in the physical and digital economy. of t in fact, the physical jobs are high scale. you need training and education and expertise, and a lot of the stuff you do in digital land needs to be plugged in. >> it's true. i hesitate to say this is now going to be the way -- go back to the '60s, going to trade school to learn how to keypunch operated mainframe stuff, so, yes, there's transitional jobs. i think we really have to break away from the idea, though, of, you know, assembly line, working out, getting dirty. >> i e agree. next biz stone goes back to

twitter which he co-founded to work on corporate culture, he says. is that worth 2% of the stock, but only 1.3. >> not too bad. i don't know that that in itself is worth it. i mean, what's interesting to me is it did not occur to me that twitter needs to go back to its origins to find what it needs right now to fix itself. in fact, if anything, the company's culture remains a little too wedded of that kind of -- >> i like that. >> early mission of days of we're going to be a platform for the world. >> chosen. >> opposed to making a product from it. >> good point. finally, instagram today going full snapchat, launching copy cat filters basically saying it's a glimpse of the augmented reality future to which i say, snap should have called themselves an a.r. company in the filing, not a camera company. >> could well be. i'm on record looking for diminished reality, not augmented reality. i'm not sure this is really appealing to me. >> facebook comes out, this is

our look at augmented reality. snap could have said that. doing the same thing they did. >> it's what a concept of what a camera's going to do. raises questions this is not changing the world stock. this is, like, little diversionary distractions throughout the day at this point. >> there's directions -- holding -- if happapple has a glass-backed phone -- >> it's a -- >> intelligent enterprise software that works with watson, we are discussing details next. also, the annual cnbc d50 list is out today. we'll tell you more about it coming up. i count on my dell small business advisor

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sap holding annual sapphire now global tech conference in orlando, florida today. the company making two big announcements there. first, it's introducing sap leonar leonardo, combining machine learning, internet of things, blockchain, and analytics, and second, expanded partnership with the google cloud pat form. the ceo, bill mcdermott, is joining us now. thank you for the time and welcome. >> thank you very much, kelly, appreciate it. >> i hope you can help me understand the significance of the announcements today, especially the first one with leonardo, how does it change the way companies do business?

>> companies now need to connect people, things, and businesses. so you see the evolution of big data take full form, where our customers need to have a single view of their customers, and really drive overall performance. we have the system of records which ana and our cloud, and now we have the system of innovation, which is sap leonardo, which is enabling companies, literally, on the fly, to develop new business models for incremental growth. >> so, bill, there's a lot of other companies making big efforts including ibm with this wa watson, for example. are you collaborators? competitors? frenemies? this is a space where relationships evolve day by day. how do you describe it all? >> well, we're happy to collaborate in partner with

companies like ibm. we've been partners with ibm now for four and a half decades, so that'll continue, but what's unique about sap and leonardo is we are controlling the data of enterprises. we have, if you think about 22 trillion in economic value in the erp system. we are the system of records for the best-run businesses in the world. those businesses now need to take that data with amazing speed and agility and adjust to this new economy, this economy where everybody is on the fly, shopping in different channels, some are on the device doing direct, others go through wholesale retailers, other websites. for example, in a realtime sense, you have to connect these people to the things as well as other businesses. the internet of things is really here now, and you need a system

of innovation that connects with the system of records to really make it come true, so sap's approach is really through intelligence business application that connect with the consumer on the demand side and the supplier on the supply side, all on one platform in realtime, and if others are, you know, joining the party to collaborate with us, we warmly welcome them. >> bill, you're talking about the virtues of being a huge repository of all this customer, you know, data and information, yet at the same time, there's a lot more narrowly focused kind of cloud based enterprise software utility tech companies that make virtue of the fact that say, hey, look, in this new world, you don't need a big one-stop shop. you can be a smaller vendor, approach big-time customers in the i.t. market, is that something you run up against? is that just an argument floating around out there? >> no, i mean, it's a national argument, right? if all you have is that one

slice of the puzzle, and that's all you can do, i would expect that same story line, right? what's unique about us is our platform is open. it is significant to 350,000 companies around the world, and it is global and in multiple industries. the breath and depth of what we do is extensive, which is why companies like apple form a partnership with sap and how we envision beautiful applications in the cloud. there's companies like google saying i want to do machine learning and enterprise partnership with sap because it is significant. you are also seeing companies jump out as a first mover as our go to market partner and really move out in a speedy way with the company because there's so much opportunity here. this is really big. >> yeah.

>> you say it's sequencing for the enterprise. bill, not much bigger than that. thank you, again, for joining us with the announcements today. that's bill mcdermott, the ceo of sap. former united health official blows the whistle on how he says the company games the medicare advantage payment system. that story and the fallout next. apple may be hiring. the tech giant reportedly looking to add a cheap programmer to lead its original content efforts. is that enough to compete with the likes of netflix and amazon? that's still to come on "the closing bell."

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welcome back. another record setting day on wall street for the nasdaq, leading with a 20 point gain, closing at 6159, an increase marching higher. meantime, everybody else, you know, russell closed in positive territory by a point, shy a record, this record that has those earlier, and s&p negative overall today, down one and two points today, 2400 on the button for the s&p. urban outfitters reported earnings this hour. stocks now moved up 1%, i don't know if that's tim's buying, but originally down 2.25% after

earnings miss. time for a cnbc news update with sue. >> kelly, this is what's happening at this hour, everybody. the former national security adviser, susan rice, has strong words for president trump's approach to foreign policy and diplomacy speaking at the center for american progress ideas conference in washington. >> instead of escalating between wreckless saber rattling and downing kim jung-un a smart cookie, we should steadily apply increased pressure on north korea while protecting our allies and our homeland. >> across the pond, queen elizabeth and prince phillip host the garden party. the duke and duchess were at the event, a much coveted social occasion for people of all walks of life. despite joking he'll never

get asked back to the academy awards, jimmy kimmel set to host the 90th oscars next year, announcing the decision now because they want to keep the momentum going in 2018. that's the news update this hour, back to you, kelly. >> pretty early for them -- >> very early. >> yeah. >> the tony's needed somebody like two months in advance. >> booked warren bette and -- >> you know, they should. they should. >> we know how that worked out. >> clear the air, come together, do it right this time. >> it's a redo. >> all right. there you go. thank you, sue. >> sure. >> whistle-blower at united health, and we have the details. >> a long running case, and at the heard of it is the allegation of the nation's largest private medicare insurer boosted billing codes in order to get higher reimbursements rates. united health care shares seen today biggest drop since last

february when the whistle blower launched by former executive was unsealed. today, the department of justice is officially joining up the case, and the lawsuit, and in it, in an interview with the "new york times," the former united health care executive said his old firm made a practice of inflating medicare patient diagnosis to take advantage of code with higher reimbursement rates under medicare rules. shares of the humana under pressure facing similar suits, also unsealed in february, and last year, the dental accounting office identified more than 14 billion dollars in medicaid overbilling by the industry in 2013 alone, and some estimates put the long-term dollar amount in the tens of billions of dollars. now, united, for its part, actually sued the center for medicare and medicaid, alleging

the rules are not clear here, and, today, a spokesperson telling cnbc that the company is confident they have complied with medicare advantage, in fact, calling them policies mur murky, adding they will contest the charges vigorously and expect to win in this case. kelly, this is something that the industry is dealing with and everyone is dealing with, just exactly how do you uphold things and whether, you know, you're trying to eke out a little extra too much payment for a service that should perhaps be reimbu e reimbursed at a lower rate. >> stay right there, bertha. mike, you know, if we take the claims at face value, the best united hopes for is effectively everyone else is guilty too. >> yes. this is an industry practice, and, you know, reminded of what charlie said at the first annual meeting to becky, the overtreatment of the dying is really a societal scandal, so, yes, if you basically say there's a huge layer in there of

friction, extra payments to insurers, and yes, that means -- the question is, is there any scrutiny on the system or just one-off? >> also, bertha, if that's the case, the insurers basically dole out the medicare advantage program to so many people, it's not -- who else do they turn to if there is wrong doing here? what sense is there someone else comes in to change the system? >> well, and on the other side, people argue as well that this system is trying to move to a fee-for-value so rather than, perhaps, just focusing on codes, we have to focus more on the outcome. there are some programs that are trying to do that, but you got a $3 trillion industry. it's very hard to change all of it at once. >> still every bit helps. thank you. helps explain it to us. united with a poor day today weighing on the dow. security issues and russia dominated talks in the white house today as officials deny reports the president shared classified information with

russian officials despite a media fire storm. markets unphased by what's been happening in the last few weeks inside the beltway. can we say the same about you, jimmy, unphased? >> i'm cool, calm, and collected always. that's my modus operandi. >> the question is the agenda one, right? it's not so much that particular, but it's what happened to health care reform, what happened to tax reform? >> listen. you know, an ideal world, the white house would be providing, you know, guidance and leadership to a republican party that is divided on which direction to take with health care and taxes. the president would be out there on the bully pulpit, pushing need for reform, and that's not happening. i don't think congress -- the public and congress expect that to happen, but i think they believe they are on their own, and maybe then they'll find that liberating that they don't have to worry about what's going on in the white house, but start to proceed, ad hoc process going on in capitol hill right now, and

on health care, and eventually tacks, and this -- this is a health thing -- but i think it does pull it down somewhat. they are going to proceed on both fronts, though, obviously, we are talking 2018. >> would you agree on that? realistically, talking about mcconnell in the interview this morning, talking about the trump white house. this is clearly taking up a lot of what's happening in washington. >> it is. it's a matter of attention span. it's a matter of just so many days in the legislative calendar, and really what's the -- right? last november, the false assumption was the president was somebody different, not as if congress was gear up to just set spark to the plans that would happen on corporate tax reform, for example. no one thought in ten months they get it done. without that direction from the white house pushing them in that direction, maybe there's not much momentum. >> jimmy, has the timeline is pushed out, it goes to the process of major losses in the

elections for the republicans. >> let me be clear, they are trying to get health care done this year, taxes in 2018. >> right. >> the clock is ticking. i think there's expectation that there is a better position in the house, you know, after that, and they need to get this done so there is -- there is a time factor involved. you know, like i said, it would be great if they got some guidance in the white house here. it's not going to happen. listen, treasury secretary has been talking about august for tax reform, and, obviously, that's a fantasy, and, again, you know, there are only so many days left, and it seems like, you know, there's plenty of time, only silting here in may. >> no, no. >> they really don't have a lot. >> can they flip now and decide, okay, we're going to do taxes and save health care for, you know, next. can they switch the order or too late? >> i think -- i think at this point it would be very difficult for them to do it. i don't think there's any talk of doing that. i think really ultimately more for political reasons. i mean, there are talks going on

in the senate about moving health care forward. i don't think there's a lot of progress made, and on the tax side, the fact they are not -- this side, the border adjustment may not go through, and that makes the process more difficult, but they have a long ways to go on both. >> so why is the market just kind of sailing through all this? you know, if you listen to those who say this, you know, steve grasso said last hour, look, this is a market that likes a friendly white house, it likes deregulation. is that enough? do we need to have these major initiatives too? why do you think they are taking it in stride? >> well, i mean, i think in an economy that's continued to heal, low unemployment, the big macro factors near term are more important, but your long term five to ten-year case in the u.s. economy, being more robust depends what they do in washington right now, so the markets may not be focusing on it, but if we don't get tax reform and all we get is the

wall, i think that will have a market impact. >> all right. >> german market up 9% in three months. nothing to do with the strong legislative agenda. it's a world move on macro. >> right. >> i'm happy to perry. >> slowly, hanging on for dear life. jimmy, thank you. >> you bet. >> appreciate it. we have to talk fast food. earnings alert on jack in the box and red robin. >> two big movers. jack in the box, earnings beating expectations, 7 cents beat, revenue in line, sales disappointing at q'doba as well. with respect to q'doba, interestingly enough, the press release said it was apparent that the overall valuation of the company is impacted by having two business models. as a result, we retain morgan stanley in the board and valuation as a potential alternative with respect to q'doba as well as ways to

enhance shareholders' values. we'll see what it means. we get on the conference call in a second. jack in the box seeing gains of more than 10% here. watch that name. pushing off to red robin, a strong beat, 89 cents adjusted, street looked for 57 cents, revenue topping expectations as well. guidance looks good. response, shares of red robin shooting up in extended trade, up more than 15%. kelly? >> holy moly. >> i know. >> this is great. thank you. so i get the jack thing, because q'doba -- >> that's the optimism on jack. >> yeah. >> red robin is down a lot from the highs a year and a half ago. >> oh. >> i think it was probably a little benefit of low expectations. it's the restaurant space all about who has the right price point and promotion in the stretch of time seems like red robin maybe sit-down burgers is the the next thing, i don't

know. >> is this a chipolte play? is it about just consolidating that business? >> i think it might be. i think a spinoff of q' doba is the best way, but everyone loves spinoffs. it's buyable. i don't know if part of the consideration. >> interesting. wow. all right. red robin and jack in the bux double digit movers to the upside. may the ride be with them. in the battle of car wars, annual disrupter 50 list, up next, which one has the disruptive force with them. then, housing is strong, but it could be better for millennials, and the culprit is what you're looking at, a avocados. we'll explain coming up. you always pay

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at wells fargo, it's our expertise in finding this kind of insight that has lead us to become one of the largest investment and wealth management firms in the country. discover how we can help find your unlock. annual disrupter 50 list and car sharing service lyft is second, surpassing uber for the first time by a mile. julia? >> here at headquarters, as we can see the dog-friendly office. lyft's valuation is a tenth of uber and only available here in the u.s., but propelled higher on the list, and the research says lyft are more visionary and uber is protectionary.

rather than developing technology solely in house as uber is, lyft has partnered with gn, not to mention department of justice investigation, opening the door for lyft to make gains. i rode along, and asked how drivers feel about the rivalry. >> we found lyft earns are $2 more than ub rerer, stemming fr the fact that lyft has in-app tipping option so drivers make more from that. >> that was the impact of the video leaked of travis, the ceo of uber, not being very nice to an uber driver. >> for a lot of drivers, it was not a surprise because there's always been that feeling that working for uber, driving for uber feels like you feel like a disposable commodity.

>> the pain has been lyft's gain. >> there was an increase where we saw a 68% increase week over week passenger activations, but, again, through all this, we are working on our core mission, and almost everything else is just noise. >> the big wild card for lyft is when they move overseas. more from the ride-along and lyft moving above uber on the list tomorrow on "squawk alley. ". >> what dog is that on the right behind you? so fuzzy! so beautiful! >> it's amazing, kelly. here at lyft, there's so many dogs, seems like if you want to have a competitive workplace, you have to have dogs in the office. >> it's their lunch hour, mike. >> that must be just a west coast thing. i'm suspicious about the whole thing. whatever it takes to attract the right people. >> oh, julia, thank you very

much. we appreciate you showing those furry friends as well. we'll see you tomorrow on that. you should check out the whole list, by the way, i learned a lot. there's more coverage tomorrow. we have a market alert on oil. let's get back to sema, which way? >> extending losses here as weekly report shows, crude inventories rose by 882,000 barrels in the week ending may 12th, and analysts were expecting a decrease of 2.4 million barrels, which is why oil is under pressure here. kelly? >> oh, boy. thinking about the markets, not going to like this tomorrow. >> it won't, but usually, it just finds a way to rotate into something else, right? that's what it's been doing. something is hurt, it comes up tomorrow. >> so true. apple tv could be stepping up the game to compete more closely with the likes of netflix and amson and original content. that's next. on fast money, left out of the

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welcome back. apple is reportedly searching for a chief. they met with hbo's former head michael lombardo. joining us now is our reporter who broke the news, i hope i said that right. >> you did. you got it. >> doton. thank you for joining us. >> nailed it thank you for having me. >> we have a couple initiative, in front of the mocks, is apple going to get into this in a much

more serious way? >> so it seems. there is a recognition internally that they need someone to clarify their division. there is that car pool karaoke spin-off that hasn't been released yet. but they have been more up front about it. but they don't have someone to kind of signal to hollywood they're serious about this. at least internally the recognition of a programing executive or someone of that nature is kind of necessary to help move the ball forward with this initiative. >> yeah, mike, you think they should hire and build or buy? >> i think you can easily hire and build and mostly because of the nature of this business. you know, it's common to say apple is late or apple has been too slow. i don't know that that's true. it's not as if there is a finite number produced. the way you do it is you do add that central person who is trying to cure rate a group of

producers. you are still bidding forbe projects alongside everybody else. >> maybe i have this girl question for you, tom, can they be successful if they have a couple of hit series or do they need to be more of a repository for a lot of content? >> it's really not clear right now. you guys were mentioning this, so much competition right now. there may be an infinite series proud. there are not an infinite number of series that can be consume. i think that's what apple is rec coning. when you have netflix and they are doubling down on individual content. what space does apple have? clearly, they do believe they have a space in there. which is why we recorded they want someone to help create a programing slate for them. it's really td if there is a desire to have that concept delivered to you. >> they're competing with sleep now. >> that's what they say. the other question is, amazon,

we know what they are doing. keeping people sticky. netflix is an ala carte, the whole thing. so why would apple be doing it? is it to get people closer to the broader offerings of services and content that they have? or is it going to be a part of whatever tv solution that they seem to have been struggling with? >> right. which hasn't come to market. tom, maybe that's one of the things need to clarify, right? >> i think. so i do. i think that, you know, right now, they, like you mentioned, don't have a clear directive as to why they need to bring more of this on. i think streaming video and high quality video is something that's huge. it's disrupting television and apple done have significant play beyond apple tv. they're a great distributor of netflix and amazon and huh will you. when it comes to having a relationship, which is something that apple cares about deeply, video play would help with that. it's not clear how they get there with that original video. >> i was going to say, if

nothing else, it would tamp the wall street speculation of who they should buy and when. that's a favorite part of our game. anyway, tom, thanks for joining us. good to talk to you. >> thank you for have meg. >> that's tom dotan. who domp they have in common? one millionaire thinks it's the scourge of the housing sector. automatic details next. since i added futures, i have access to the oil markets and gold markets. okay. i'm plugged into equities- trade confirmed- and i have global access 24/7. meaning i can do what i need to do, then i can focus on what i want to do. visit learnfuturestoday.com to see what adding futures can do for you. remember here at ally, nothing stops us from doing right by our customers.

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. welcome back. we have a lot to say about this next subject. it's not student loans or a tough job mark, keeping millennials have buying homes. it's reportedly avocado toast according to millionaire tim verner. quote, when i was trying to buy my first home, i wasn't buying smashed avocado and coffee for $4 apiece. this was on the australian "60 minutes." >> maybe it was, maybe avocados were much more expensive down there. >> he was talking about millennials are paying too much for this and traveling too much and they're not doing the prudent thing when he was younger. >> i think you see everyoneing

look at the next generation. they weren't saving up the way they should. you had the whole latte story. everyone has a tattoo and an iphone, why don't have you money for a down payment? it gets, it really does not get at why people don't have money accumulated. it's your earnings and a sense of if you had somehow an ability to pull up a down payment. >> it's due diligence, this story has taken the world's attention, found that millennials spent $2,100 eating out in 2019, 90 bucks above the average. 300 bucks over what 65 and 64-year-olds are spending. >> it doesn't seem like an exorbitant amount t. word is substitute the word millenials. >> for? >> adults age 19-to-35. that's a standard amount few are a 34-year-old. >> we also raise the issue of bay people saying i am eating avocado toast.

why do i need to buy a house? there is not that stigma of renting. there is plenty of stock to pick from these days. >> a game changer. >> we love this story because of the debates it has sparced. be careful when you are sliceing an avocado. don't eat your hand. that's it for "closing bell." "fast money" begins right now. >> fast money starts right now! live from the nasdaq markets site overlooking new york city's time kwoos square, the traders are pete na germany, karen feinerman, guy adami. will the white house ever hit wall street? a top strategist tells us one thing that could de ra ill this rally. commodities says not so fast. we will explain why crude is done. later, getting a boost with highs as the original co-founder is making a