welcome back to squuk "squa the street." material standing out as the best on the s&p 500. a number of steel stocks based on recent underperformance. keep an eye on those shares. let's send it back to the nyc for the start of "squawk alley." back over to you guys. good morning, it is 11:00 a.m. at amazon's new bookstore and 11:00 a.m. on wall street. "squawk alley" is live. ♪

good morning. welcome to "squawk alley." sarah eisen, mike santelli. joining us this morning, farhat manju. and also jason calicanis, ins e inside.com founder. >> shares hitting all-time highs this morning. third record in a row. jeff bazos speaking at the company's shareholder meeting. now is not the time for complacency. there is no rest. we can not rest on our laurels. the competition is as fierce and challenging as ever. speaking of not resting, amazon plans to open the door of a brand new bookstore in mid-town manhattan on the site of what was once a borders book star. farhat, one of the questions is, are they trying to make money? are they trying to rub it in to

these book sellers that they helped put them out of business? what's the goal here? >> i don't think they are trying to rub it in. they are trying to make money. that's what they do, sometimes. stores are good for discovery, looking at electronics. they can try out lots of experimental things with the check outli list store they are trying in seattle. amazon, they are most experimental of the big companies, the most willing to surprise and this is another one of those surprises. i wouldn't have guessed a few years ago that they would have opened a huge retail operation and they are. i'm looking forward to seeing what happens. >> jason, this can't be about selling books, right? if it were about selling into some category, wouldn't they be

selling clothes or something. isn't this about the ecosystem going, you can buy an echo or a kindle? >> farhad issing wron th wrong experiment. it is a deliberate program, online retail. there are a number of people that haven't become a prime member and haven't played with the kindle. this is amazon's way to do on-ramp retail and relationship retail. if you look at what apple did with their stores, you come in, hit the genius bar. you don't know how to use the icloud service or photos and you are not sure what apple tv is. they educate you. it services the people who are very specifically fans of your product and deepens and strengthens that relationship. it also serves as an on ramp to your entire ecosystem. if you look at amazon prime, if they were able to john board two

or three dozen people per day in the store, which seems pretty doable. they can offer discounts on the books you get there at that moment in time. you are talking about generating tens of millions of dollars per store if you could convert 50 people to amazon prime. we all know the ltv of an amazon prime member is low thousands of dollars. consumers are embracing physical books again, which is a counter trend to the social media cacophony of idiots. peel want substance so they are buying books. >> this is an occasion to remind everybody that sears started out as mail order and became nothing but physical. we don't think that's the case. it is a reminder that even though it looks like an exception on the retail strategy of amazon. as a company, they have massive amounts of physical assets. they have huge warehouses. it is not a little virtual business that runs on software

alone? >> oh, yeah. amazon is a huge software company but a massive presence in the world physically in a way that google is not and facebook is not and microsoft is not. they have real stuff in the real world and they know how to manage it. >> i mostly agree with jason. the reason i start it an experiment, a lot of things in amazon start out as experiments. they try stuff out and they are willing to shut things down. i'm not quite convinced that they are going to have hundreds of stores at this point. it is still at a point where they are testing out dozens of stores and seeing how it works. it could end up huge like aws or something. it could also be like amazon fresh, which they have run for a long time in select cities but haven't made a huge thing at this point so far. >> it will be really interesting to see if they can beat some of these brick-and-mortar stores.

another rough morning for uber. they say they plan to repay millions of dollars to new york drivers due to a calculation error. another key executive exited the company. this time, it was uber's general counsel for europe, middle east and africa. then, there is this, ham iish douglas says he thinks the ride hailing service has less than 1% chance of surviving over the next decade from his comments at the annual stockholders and financial advisers conference in sydney. >> it is constantly losing money and its capital raising strategy is a ponzi scheme. we have reached out to uber for comments. jason, you know this one is going to go to you. a ponzi scheme for investors? respond. >> i think it is kind of laughable. if hamish would like to make a

long bet with me for $10 million, i'll bet my entire net worth that uber will be here and thriving in ten years. it is a silly comment. you can replace uber with amazon or google or sffacebook and tha will be as laughable. on the issue of new york drivers, i put this in the bucket of good news for uber. if you look that the case and that instance, you have uber making a mistake on calculating -- each market has a different calculation of how they tax and each service has a different tax. what uber did was they made a mistake in one market on one service and they quickly are making it right. i put this in the bucket of good corporate citizenship and owning a problem and being transparent about it and working quickly to solve it. a company that's reached tens of millions of dollars in bookings,

it is laughable to say it is not a company. the hundreds of thousands of drivers who collect checks would differ from our friend from down under. >> it is getting close to the point that uber is taking so many hits and not dead yet. we just had linked in saying people really want to work at uber despite all these negative headlines. the alternative is lyft. they haven't overtaken them. do you think that uber is in this for the long haul? >> it is in it for the long haul. the question is whether riders and drivers stick with them. jason could be right. this could be a completely innocent mistake in new york. i am inclined to believe it is an innocent mistake. the trouble for uber, there is no sort of -- no one is willing to give it the benefit of doubt. there is no massive good will for uber. that's the difference between uber and amazon and google and

facebook. we all know these other companies are big companies an they make mistakes and sometimes they may not do things in the interest of consumers. generally, we sort of like give them the benefit of the doubt. they are like, well regarded by customers. i think i don't recall another tech company that is as big as uber that is so vilified by even loyal customers feel kind oficy about using it sometimes. >> i think it is fair they have had a rough year. when you have this much bad news, i think people are kind of piling on now. what it is doing is making the management team more resilient and focused and it has created a massive culture evolution at the company. based on my knowledge, i have a little bit of inside knowledge. i am more bullish on the company and more bullish on the

management than i have ever been. when you are getting this kind of microscope on you, it really makes you focus. if you look at facebook, they went through some really tumultuous times, including the largest fine in the history of the fdc and a 20-year audit. this isn't unprecedented. microsoft was the most hated company on the planet for a period of time when they were going through their anti-trust. what's important is how does the management team respond? they are getting there. i think they are getting there and making progress. i'm super bullish and massively conflicted. >> yes. thank you for reminding viewers and listeners about your investment in uber. >> finally, you had an interesting column on what you called the frightful five tech companies. we call it fang, apple, microsoft, facebook, amazon. if you had to, which would you drop and in which order? what did you learn from this exercise? >> i learned a lot of people would drop facebook first.

i am not sure whether to believe them. almost 60% said they would drop facebook first. i don't know if they are just saying that and they are completely addicted to instagram and facebook. google won for they would drop that last and google and apple and amazon were pretty close there. i can believe that. >> i would drop google first. it has the most analogs. there is something else i could use. probably the last one i would drop is apple. >> because you love your consumer products. >> yes, i use them every day. >> john is right that google has microsoft and apple as contemporaries. it is easy to give up google.

when the majority of people saying, they would give up facebook, that's like lena dunham or rosie o'donnell say they are going to moving into to canada. completely fake news. >> microsoft, maybe. i could get another word document. >> in the corporate environment, microsoft is pretty indispensable. >> do a brackett where you put them heads up. would you give up amazon or facebook. google versus amazon. you give up google. i think amazon wins the day in a brackett system. they have the most unique product. >> they are the last ones i find it the hardest to give up amazon. >> yes, me too. we would have no way to get toilet paper. we have to leave it there. >> farhad manjoo. jason cal ac jason calacanis. our kayla tausche is in d.c.

to set that up. good morning. >> this is the score for the house health care bill that passed three weeks ago by just four votes. it is going to be a material development for the path forward on health care reform and the overall republican agenda. the last time the cdo weighed in on the most recent or i should say the previous rendition of this bill, they showed that the house version at that time would see 24 million fewer people insured but premiums falling by 10%. the deficit reduced by $150 billion over the course of the next decade. since then, the house has made some key changes to the bill. they added funding for patients with predesh -existing conditiod letting insurers charge higher premiums to older people. the states allowed to seek wafer to opt-out of coverage. the house might have to vote on it again if the cdo finds it

doesn't reduce the deficit by $2 billion. house speaker, paul ryan, said that he was optimistic about the bill, even though he didn't want a repeat of this saga, of the way they have gone about doing health care. he acknowledged that there is difficulty in the path ahead. >> the rubik's cube is hard. i assume the senate will change the bill. that's how it works. our members have traveled a long journey in the last few months to realize you can't get everything you want. >> senate republicans for their part have said they need to see today's score before structuring their own health care plan. the fear is that any increase in the number of people uninsured or a decrease in savings would give fuel to democrats trying to obstruct the plan. remember the argument of the white house has been to question the legitimacy of the cdo and in the past, they said the cdo's estimates, they are good when it comes to numbers but not so accurate when it comes to

people. >> when we come back, mark field is out and jim hackett is in at ford. what are insiders saying? bob lutz will weigh in. we speak to an early investor in companies like netflix, air b&b, and netflix and go daddy on the state of tech. call it the last waltz. walt mossberg is hanging up his gloves and will give us highlights on his long and storied career. back in a moment.

(shouting) more power tools. more power suits. (shouting) more power... chords. with customized loyalty programs and data-driven insights, synchrony financial can help bring more... power to your business. >> the congressional budget office and wall street economists think the next decade will be more of the same. >> we reject that pessimism and say we should have gone in and assumed 3.5 to 4% growth that. would be aggressive.

>> if we don't bring

we are following the ceo shake-up at ford. joining us now, bob lutz, who also held senior leadership positions at ford and bmw. great to see you. i would love to get your take on this ford ceo transition. it seemed a few months ago, we were talking about north american auto sales with a record. we are going to be bringing production back to this country or keeping it here. now, this ceo moving into seems all directed at some future that seems to be coming a lot faster. what's you initial read? >> my initial read is despite good performance at ford, the stock price was stagnant. they have had to cut some production. so the board was getting increasingly nervous. i think what you have got nowadays is with this future of autonomous vehicles and

geomapping and so forthcoming at us. it is not so much what a ceo actually does in the way of day to day performance. i am sure that mark field, with decades of training at ford and who has held responsible positions, he was great & old-fashioned automotive ceo, typical harvard school graduate, steady as she goes, very well balanced between long-term and short-term. there was no excitement coming out of the company. it is all very well to say, well, we're working in the background. we don't want to make it public but nowadays, if you don't sell the sizzle, you're not going to be able to market the steak. a nice contrast in that is' l e musk who is out there visionary making statements and promises mostly not to be fulfilled.

it doesn't matter. his actual performance as a ceo measured in terms of profitability is an f minus. look at the stock price in the ceos that are managing the business and going about it the right, old-fashioned way. they are not projecting a vision of the future. they are not projecting magic things to come. wall street doesn't tolerate that anymore. therefore, boards can't. >> bob, are you saying you don't need a ceo who really knows how to run a car business to have a successful car business these days? stockholders want flash and sizzle? >> both. a good ceo has both. the last one i remember like that very well was lee iacocca, who was not only a brilliant experienced automotive executive and on television all the time and had the nation believing that chrysler was much more capable, more powerful, et cetera, et cetera, than the

vehicles actually merited. so, no. a ceo who sits in his office, visits his operations, conducts good meetings, makes balanced decisions based on data but doesn't project the image of the company in an exciting way to the public is going to fail. where as, so far, my view is still that tesla is headed for big trouble but you can't convince the share holders of that. >> well, bob, we'll see if jim hackett can convey that sense of excitement and urgency when he formally takes over. thanks very much for your time. >> sure, you're welcome. when we come back, we top the state of tech with an early investor in companies like facebook, netflix, air b&b and zillow. with the dow up 21 points and the nasdaq and the s&p hanging in positive territory and not too far way from record highs. looking for balance in your digestive system?

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welcome back to "squawk alley." check out shares of buffalo wild wings. they are moving higher. they are voting for actress nominees bergen and mcguire. they have made a compelling case for change. we'll have more coming up after the break. keep it right here. we'll see you in a couple minutes. s through usaa is so effortless, that you feel like you're a part of the family. i love that i can pass the membership to my children. we're the williams family, and we're usaa members for life.

good morning, everybody. once again, i'm sue herera. your cnbc news update. british police raiding an apartment in the center of manchester. they arrested three more men in connection with the concert attack. the manchester police chief saying it is very clear it is a network they are investigating. first lady, melania trump visiting a vatican-owned children's hospital in rome. she met with 15 children where she sat and drew pictures. as you saw, she also took some selfies and greeted young people in the pediatric cardiology department. some incredible video of a fuel tank or truck exploding in flames. it happened tuesday in atwater, california. it was carrying about 9,000 gallons of fuel when it overturned on a ramp next to a gas station. the driver unfortunately was

killed in that accident. the mysterious millionaire who purchased a $24.1 million lotto ticket in new york city has been found. the individual claimed the prize yesterday just two days before the winning ticket was set to expire. the winner said the news coverage about the ticket prompted him to search his home where it was located among other older tickets. that is one lucky guy. that's the news update this hour. back downtown to "squawk alley." sarah, can you imagine if it expired and you found it? >> no, but i can imagine losing something. i sort of understand. >> he is a lucky guy. >> glad he found the winning ticket. >> let's get to sema modi. >> a mixed session in europe. what's notable are the gains in the uk stock market. the ftse erasing yesterday's loss following the bombing in manchester. the european off its low for the

day shaking off the concerns about moody down grading china's credit rating for the first time in 20 years. let's talk financials. deutsche bank is near lows. democrats on the u.s. house financial committee have written a letter to ceo john ckreon seeking whether president trump's and his families bank accounts had any connection with russia. mario draghi saying there is no reason to deviate from the policy path put out by the bank. euro zone activity is at a 60 or high. the tech sector has its groove back p amo. among the biggest gainers, the fang stocks, facebook, amazon, netflix and google with double

digit gains. netflix leading the pack. joining us now exclusively, one of the company's earliest investors. founding general partner as technology crossover ventures whose roster hits include air b&b, facebook, and netflix. good morning, jay. >> good morning. glad to be here. >> first of all, give me your take on the overall tech ecosystem. farhad manjoo calls it is far five. is that good for innovation and the start-up ecosystem for investors like you or is that bad? >> i think broadly we are the back drop to technology. i have been doing this since 1982 back when dinosaurs seemed to roam the earth. the growth and profit potential in technology is phenomenal. devices get better, faster, cheaper, super smart

entrepreneurs take advantage of it and figure out new applications to disrupt industry and grow really big businesses. the large cap technology companies today are great examples of that. that's what gets a lot of us up in the morning to try to identify the next generation of those leaders. those are all phenomenal companies you mentioned, very well positioned for the future, have shown ability to have visionary ceos and constantly innovate as public companies which is something that is often underestimated. >> one thing that puzzles me sometimes. these huge tech giants with all this cash are spending money opening up retail stores including bookstores and buying content from media companies. are they out of ideas? stha that's supposed to be the dinosaurs from 1982. they are spending their money on that now. >> i can't comment too much on opening of bookstores. it does feel a little bit like back to the future. i would say in the case of amazon, a lot of the technology applying to the bookstores is

quite different than the old line stores. generally speaking, the large technology companies, the top 25 in the world, have over $1 trillion of cash that is sitting there today not making much in terms of interest rates. redeploying that cash in new growth initiatives to me makes total sense. >> i wonder a little bit about the political environment. part of what has helped them, jay, is that we haven't had very strict anti-trust law in this country. nobody has gone after some of these companies as monopolies a little bit in europe. you also have president trump who campaigned on a lot of ideas that these companies are against. is that a material threat in the longer run for some of these companies even if they do continue to post blowout numbers and disruptive ideas? >> i think broadly speaking, there are always threats to market leaders and generally speaking on public policy

matters, those that speak that trying to evaluate it speak with much more confidence and insight. >> not to sort of return to the possibility a lot of these big companies are out of ideas, they all seem to be converging on some similar big ideas and i am thinking about mobility, self-driving cars and things like that. companies are finding themselves investing if that particular area. does that tell you something about the state of what the next big thing could be and how complex it is? a lot of the easier big problems solved? >> i guess, john, not to be argumentative but i take a little issue with are the large companies out of ideas in areas to invest in? if you look at a lot of the initiatives in facebook we don't know about, they are tremendously forward thinking. mark zuckerberg talks about things that will not be impactful for ten years. google has a whole variety of areas they are investing in, including autonomous vehicles. amazon, there is an example ten

years ago when they launched their cloud effort, people thought they were crazy. i think they are investing across a wide swath of areas. so the basic tennant that they are out of great ideas to invest in, i'm not sure i buy. >> i just wanted to ask you finally, on artificial intelligence, it is the new cloud, big data, buzz word, how do you pick what kinds of companies you invest in that have significant difference ys? >> it is an area applied to current businesses. when you see something in the facebook news feed or when advertisers are buying advertising, there is an a.i.

xoent a component. it is one of many things. in terms of big, independent companies who are a.i. leaders, to date, we have not seen them emerge as independent entities. jay hoge, lots of insights. many thanks. >> thank you. as we head to a break, a number of names hitting new all-time highs, southwest, adobe systems, nvidia and some travel related. shares of deutsche bank falling this morning. democrats sending a letter to the bank's ceo. maxine waters will join us next. e trader offices. steve, other than making me move stuff, what are you working on? let me show you. okay. our thinkorswim trading platform aggregates all the options data you need in one place and lets you visualize that information

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the dow is up about 30 points. goldman sax is adding the most to that. let's get to the cne group, rick santelli and the santelli exchange. good morning, rick. >> thank you, sarah. we had senator alan simpson on yesterday. he gave us a full rant, didn't he? basically, for those that might not have seen cnbc.com might be a good place if you want to see. what he said was he doesn't like anything about this budget but it wasn't specifically about the hot, political issues of the day but it was more because imagine a nice, big, blueberry pie. what he was upset about is that the slice we are talking about

making all the cuts is a very small slice. the bigger part of the pie, things like social security, are off the table. now, that's the issue i am really trying to address today. let's go to the board. what he is so angry about for the most part is that it needs to be morphed so that more of what it pays out will be in balance with what it takes in. you have active workers and it basically goes into a fund. is there really a fund or are they just ious? it almost doesn't matter. it is important to realize that fund has to take the money, in this case, the government, and pay it to retired workers. it all sounds good except for it isn't good. at some point in the future, it is not going to be solvent. i'm not going to talk about something so abstract. we are going to get right down to it. the most recent edition in chicago city wire had something interesting. for 2016, the chicago teacher's pension fund paid out $1.5

billion. it has 20,000 retirees that get those benefits. it made 7.8 million. it is even worse. let's see that asterisk. they had $35 million in expenses. they lost $28 billion. well, let's continue with this. i went to wikipedia and looked up what the definition of ponzi scheme is. there is no intent. let's take out fraudulent investment. an investment or operation where the operator, individual or organization pays returns to its investors from new capital. where did that money come, whether it is social security or the chicago teacher's pension fund. for all you teachers still working and tax payers and they paid that to the people, the new investor money to the people that are retired. they paid that to the people

retired. i'm not saying this is anything illegal, because it isn't. i just know one thing. the media has great power. this is a powerful story. why isn't there any outrage? i think i hear crickets instead of big headlines that this isn't right. it can't go on forever. all the madoff movies, maybe we need a chicago or social security movie in the works. robert de niro, are you available? back to you. >> a social security movie. i can see the teasers now. thank you, rick. coming up, ranking member of the house financial service committee, representative maxine waters is next on that letter to deutsche bank and trump's finances. deutsche shares are falling. "squawk alley" is back after this. (shouting) more power... chords. with customized loyalty programs and data-driven insights, synchrony financial can help bring more... power to your business.

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edgar brownman jr., how his second act to improve the planet. "squawk box" tomorrow 6:00 a.m. eastern, cnbc. shares of deutsche bank are moving lower this morning. this as house democrats seek new trump-related russia records from the bank. in a letter to ceo john cryyon, minority members say the bank's, quote, pattern of involvement in money laundering schemes with primarily russian participation, it's unconventional relationship with the president and its repeated violations of u.s. banking laws all raise serious questions about whether the banks reported reviews of the trading scheme and trump's financial ties to russia were completely thorough. joining us to discuss this, the committee's ranking member and author of the letter, maxine waters. thanks for joining us. >> you are welcome.

>> tell us what you are after from deutsche bank. >> well, we sent a letter to the chairman of the financial services committee, mr. hinchman, asking him to help us to get involved with understanding the reviews that have reviews that had been done by deutsche bank basically dealing with a transfer of about $10 billion converted from ruble to u.s. dollars, and who was involved with that, and there was another review that was done about trump, and his involvement with the deutsche bank and whether or not they had information that could help us to understand whether or not russia, the government, was involved in any way in guarantees loans, what was the connection between trump and the kremlin, you know, with the russian government. so we have not been able to get

any answers or any help from hinterland in doing this, but we finally got the same letter that we sent to him right into deutsche bank, and we're hearing from them that they want to know how this he can perhaps cooperate with us, because we're saying and making claims about the fact that deutsche bank has some real deep involvement with mr. trump in guaranteed loans. they were dealing with them and when no other bank will deal with him. deutsche bank has a reputation for not having controls that will deal with money laundering. so there's a lot of information that we think is important to the way this president is being looked at and his connections to russia and the kremlin. >> so you're referring to the mirror trading scheme --

>> that's right. >> -- where billions of western clients' money was taken out of moscow into foreign currency. congresswoman, i know you have called for a hearing on this without pretty much nowhere. is deutsche bank going to be able to turn anything over to you? >> we would like them to von materiel to turn over information to us about trump's connections to either that mirror scheme, or we do know one of their reviews was about his accounts and his involvement with the bank. if we could get it the way things are evolving, the wait 9 intelligence committees are d delving into trump and his connections, and because deutsche bank has a reputation for not, you know, taking care of what we believe is money

laundering processes that's going on in the bank, it's going to come out one way or the other. we don't have the cooperation of mr. hinterland or the rpgs, but it's inevitable it will be revealed whatever those connections are. >> congresswoman, i believe you heard you say how they perhaps can cooperate with this inquiry of yours. what kind of indication that they might want to cooperate? >> well, as of today, they got a copy of the letter and they called, and they're saying, you know, we are concerned about this, we didn't know about the letter that has been sent to mr. hinterland, and what is it you are asking of us? what can we do? what do you want us to do? let 'talk. that's as far as it's gone. >> where are you going to go if they could release this information? isn't this something for some of

the intelligence panels that are already investigating any ties to russia to deal with? >> it could be. one of the thing that's happened with my -- we've been on top of some of these issues long before our committees got serious. we had identified what we call the kremlin clan. we had named manafort, flynn, carter and a number of them, roger stone, from all being involved in some way. and we on top of the fact that deutsche bank had guaranteed loans and made a loan to help develop the hotel here in washington, d.c. so we are in advance we know of a lot of what's going on with the investigation. but yes, they certainly can pick it up and perhaps will pick it up. there may even be subpoenas involved at some point, but we were a bit ahead of them in

asking for a hearing on it. >> we'll see where that money trail leads and leave it there. thank you for joining us to talk about this story. representative maxine waters. >> you're very welcome and the other person i was thinking of was carter page. >> yes. thank you. kremlin clan. it seems that the president -- >> that's what the democrats cause it. moving on, personal computers are just too hard to use, and it's not your fault. that's the first line of walt mossberg's first technology column ever. tomorrow he will pen his last. he's retiring. walt mossberg is executive editor of the verge. i have told i myself what an fluent you've had on my career thus far, so i thank you for that. tell us, is there a moment or a product that stands out for you in this long career?

you know, jon, thank you so much, thanks. there's a number of them. obviously in this last decade it's probably the iphone, but overall, you know, i think you have to give it to the personal computer itself and then the internet. nots are the things that have changed the world. >> you've been along for the entire evolution of the pc into the smartphone. i want to show you this, of you talking to steve jobs about mobile devices. let's watch that. >> we believe that for everyone -- all the university of using a pda, 90% of them really just want to get the information out. we believe the cell phones are

going to do that. we saw that several years ago. we see the curve going look this, you're going to have to have a phone in the pocket, so that's going to have to be the device. >> that's three years before the introduction of the iphone. walt, did you think that we would have a device like the smartphone that we have today when you did that interview in 2003? >> well, i couldn't have predicted the multitouch interface, but i certainly thought apple was going to do it and presumably other people as well. interestingly, he would not admit they're doing a phone. in fact he told me and cara swisher they were not doing a phone, because he didn't want to give anybody a hint of what they were doing. he probably -- they probably were working on a phone right at the moment that you showed. s. >> so, walt, with all the of your experience it's not so much

who about what? we have the big five companies, we have companies whose names we don't even know. all these people are working on a wide variety of things that i think will come together to once again upend everything. i'm talking about artificial intelligence, machine learning, augmenting reality, virtually -- transmitting power through the air, all kinds of bioand health things. this is going to be -- yeah, i'm retiring, it's the right time for me to retire, but tech doesn't stop. there's going to be a tremendous wave coming. do we have fewer bad products than we used to? i remember 15, 20 years ago the first mp3 players, it was a big

thick chunky circle with all these buttons across it. >> right. >> we don't have stuff quite like that anymore, do we? >> well, we don't pay attention to it. it's out thereon. i think you're thinking of for instance that's creative labs and the no mmad, like a giant c player, but you couldn't open it. today i think -- no, the answer is companies are much more cognizant that they have to make people who are not techies, not engineers can use, and that's a great thing. however, anything new, jon, anything, take vr, is going to be kind of rough around the edges, clunk ary in the first iteration. an average person will not set

up an okaycolus, but eventually we'll get there. we're looking forward to that. >> walt mossberg from "the verge." >> thank you. that's it for "squawk alley." sara eisen, mike san tolli, it's been great we're going to toss to the half. welcome to "halftime report." famed market watcher robert shiller saying stake in stocks, which he believes could go up another 50% from here. with us for the hour, the brothers jon and pete, po and also with us is jim cramer and more. that jaw-dropping prediction from a man best known for his