500. the sector is down about a percent, standing out as the worst-performing sector of the s&p, lagers include netapp, cisco, adp and micron technologies keep an eye on applied materials. that does it for this hour of "squawk on the street. let's head it down for-tto the w york stock exchange for the start of "squawk alley." >> it's 11:00 a.m. on wall street and squawk alley is live. good thursday morning, welcome to squall "squawk alley.

john ford has the morning off. we start with this big story about big business and the white house. two of the president's advisory councils disbanding after multiple ceos dropping out citing the president's response to the violence in charlottesville. among the ceos speaking out, jamie dimon, jeffrey immelt, mary barra, etna ceo mark bertoli bertolini. i think we'll talk to bob crandall in just a moment, guys, but we're all trying to process the dramatic decision, how it went down, a lot of good cnbc reporting on that and what the significance of this move is going to be. in practice and also symbolically in the statement that it sends to the president and the white house. >> we clearly haven't seen anything extend into the administration and markets are down half a percent or so but over the course of the last week as a whole, we're up about three quarters of 1% for u.s. indices. >> reuters now has the headline

quoting a white house official that gary cohn intends to remain in his position as director of the national economic council. nothing has changed. >> that might give some investors only relief. >> that's reuters quoting a white house official. >> he really wants that fed job. joining us on the cnbc newsline, bob crandall former american airlines ceo. bob, as we've been trying to process these ceo defections from the white house council, how significant is it? >> well i think it's a pretty significant message, sara, that says, look what the business community needs is a careful mature management. business demends on being able to plan and being able to understand that the future is going to evolve rather than represent a revolution and that -- and it also depends on the president projecting what the business community would

perceive i think as reasonable and mature judgment. and those things so far haven't happened and the consequences, a lot of these people have simply decided they don't want to be associated with that kind of behavior. >> you're a major "fortune" 500 ceo, a major corporate leader. when you here in that position, did you consider donald trump as an equal in the business world >> he was in a completely different kind of business he was a developer in new york at one point he wanted to buy american airlines but he decided that was a bad plan and went away. >> but in terms of, you know, getting these major listed ceos into the room with him and being alongside of him, is that something you think he considered as important to him will he hurt personally from what's happening in the last 24 hours as well as politically >> well, would he be hurting

personally i -- who knows what -- i don't know the political reaction is pretty clear. i think the personal reaction is unknown except to the president. >> bob, you've been, i would argue, alternately critical of the white house at times but you were definitely in favor of certain policies like the privatization of air traffic control. how would you characterize the rest of the agenda did anything change this week in terms of likelihood of passage because of these councils being disbanded? >> well, i would think, carl, that once again -- you know, on your own show you have people arguing for one type of tax and the next day advocacy for a different kind of tax. so i think the -- what the business community really is is concerned about here is the --

in the effects maturity and the care with which governance is being approached because the advocacy of explicit objectives is always going to be different according to different parts of the different outlooks of particular people in business so that's what this is about. but i think this is a significant issue and it needs to be dealt with and i think we all need to hope that the president will take this as a message that suggests that different kinds of behaviors are more appropriate. >> i was just going to say, does it create a slippery slope, though, bob, where the next time he says something that is sort of morally ambiguous or they don't agree with they feel that they have to speak out on? i mean, this is whole new uncharted territory for ceos to devil into these kind of issues of conscience and morality and politics even. >> well, i think that's true, sara, and the simple reason for that, of course, is that if you're a ceo you're in effect a

guardian of other people's wealth so you are expected and will do your best generally to run the business in a way which is consistent with your business objectives and try and stay away from the political issues about which you and your customers might disagree i think in this particular case that the behavior with so egregious, or regarded as so egregious that the business community both as a whole and as individuals felt they had to speak out. i don't think it's going to be a slippery slope i do not think most chief executives want to be involved or feel they can be involved in most political issues. >> but just quickly going back to the way that this developed over the last two or three days in terms of how ceos made their decision to step down, do you commend them or do you feel that for most of them it took it until they were a group and doing it together to make the decision and therefore is decision of, gosh, if everyone

else is doing it i've got to do it, too? >> well, i -- i think that's a bit of a reach i think the business community acted in this case very responsibly. i think in our kind of political system you've got to have pushback when one or the other aspect of the political structure gets out of line, the rest of the community has got to say wait a minute, that's inconsistent with what we regard as appropriate behavior and that's what happened in this case and as i say because we all want responsible governance, i hope the president will sit down and think carefully about what kind of a message has been sent. >> ban crandall, we'll leave it there, thank you for weighing in. >> my pleasure. >> the former american airlines ceo robert crandall.

silicon valley is also reacting facebook's mark zuckerberg says it should be obvious that neo-naziism is wrong and the platform will continue to monitor for hate speech and threatening posts. apple's tim cook announced the company would donate a million dollars to the southern poverty law center and anti-defamation league and will match employee's donations on 2-1 basis other platforms like twitter, spotify, uber and paypal refusing to service white supremacists, neo-nazis and other hate groups. joining us, henry blodgett the "business insider" chief great to see you. >> great to be here. >> on one hand, they're caught between a rock and hard place, they want to argue for these things they're going to get some becomeback from customers who disagree how do they handle it? >> some. but i think as mr. crandall said, there's a lot of personal decisions there saying, yes, i understand i have a business to run but i want to stand up for what's right and what is

american, frankly, and i think a lot of them are coming forward and doing that and we have crossed the line here. you have companies like cloud flair, an internet service provider making a decision they've never made before. this is a serious decision, we are talking about censorship and yes, we did it but we should think about this but you're seeing the same thing with facebook and others. these platforms are going to take responsibility for what's on the platform. >> and how do they assure people that it stops with hate speech, that censorship doesn't creep into other areas. >> well, look, silicon valley loves to talk about hey, we're just an open platform. they have already made lots of decisions about what is okay on the platform facebook does not allow child pornography, neither does youtube. they have always been stamping out hate speech and so forth so this is nothing new but there's a clear extension to something that as we know the president of the united states seemed to suggest was okay. >> in terms of how they decide, these tech firms, of what to

step into and make a statement on, for example, very strong statement from tim cook of apple even though he wasn't on any of trump's forums be s but decidedo make a statement, compare that to the big issue a year ago where they wouldn't create a back door against a potential terrorist issue. how do they make a decision about what is something they have to go over the line and make a clear statement about and what isn't relevant? >> it's a very good question and with technology changing the way it is, a lot of these moral and political issues come up and we see companies very much struggling with them and the reaction to facebook, the reaction to youtube with some of the recent advertising controversy is going to be an evolution, but the idea that media and communications platforms take responsibility for the kind of content and communication exchanges, that is nothing new. look at radio, look at television, look at newspapers there has always been a decision process. same thing is happening -- >> though social media you could argue and the whole growth of

everything online, mobile, everything, has really created a bigger and louder platform for hate groups, for these types of groups we talked to the godaddy ceo, thinking of our conversation earlier. he took off the daily stormer after they violated the policy and became violent they hosted them to begin with because there's such a thing as free speech. how do you draw that line. >> that's right. and it is not clear and that's what cloud flair talked about yesterday, who in the stack -- you've got literally 10 to 15 different entities that could decide where to sensor, including the browser, so forth. so who's going to do it? questions aren't easy at all on the other hand, these are private platforms, this is not a guaranteed right -- freedom of speech does not give you the right to put something in the "new york times" or say something on cnbc, they are private platforms, they have every right to say you know what not on this platform. >> twitter >> same with twitter

and look you could arguably say with twitter one decision that facebook made early on that was a great decision that was criticized and c shl at the time was real names we want people to speak under their own identity, twitter said no and i would argue it's hurt them because one of the biggest blowbacks for twitter for years was just unpleasant to be on the platform with people shooting at you all day. they've gotten better about that lately. >> it certainly made it easier to create an account. >> user metrics look nice but people who used it aggressively would say "i don't want to deal with it anymore. and in twitter's credit, they've gotten better. >> i still get a lot of hate tweets. >> some of the president's tweets have caused big reactions, some take offense from them. should those tweets be sensored? >> i don't think so, to me that's an easy call. this is the president of the united states. he's basically putting out a press release or getting in front of a press conference every time he says something, it is absolutely newsworthy, everybody should know what the president of the united states is saying publicly, it would be

crazy that twitter would ban him for some reason, he's the president of the united states president obama's tweet in reaction became the most-liked tweet ever pretty quickly. a couple questions, does that surprise you and the number of it, three million likes, the most-liked tweet ever is like a percent of the users, quite low. >> i believe strongly that americans collectively ultimately do the right thing. we have a lot of tough conversations, a lot of different opinions go into that but i think you're seeing in that lots of americans are standing up for american values, the diversity of the country and i think that was very encouraging to a lot of people. >> i told you, if it was katy perry or justin bieber it would have gotten more likes. >> you say that but -- >> they have more users. >> but ariana grande's tweet was the most liked and president obama's overtaken her so there we go. >> bots aside, those metrics are a little dicey, henry, thank you. >> great to be here. meantime, activist investor

bill ackman is hosting a web cast over the future of adp. i know you've made progress as we spoke to you last hour, leslie. >> we've reached the halfway mark with this presentation. two hours in, we're on about page 105 out of 168. not as much commentary recently from bill ackman himself he's defer add lot of this to his two portfolio managers in charge of the investment but one thing he has called for consistently throughout the presentation is a smooth improvement to the company it's important to emphasize he's not looking to add additional leverage, not looking for a spinoff or merger situation like he sought to do with positions in the past and the market is skeptical. as you can see shares are down more than 3% they've been that way throughout the entirety of the presentation, and largely that's because the first half of this presentation centered around

pershing square making the case as to why adp is underperforming competitor competitors. that's what we're getting to right now. he's showing inefficiencies that the service organization is overstaffed, he says there's a lot of bloat within the sales force. the infrastructure, the technology the back office infrastructure, he says that's outdated and the sales force productivity is declining so hopefully mrp fiore fire in the. >> absolutely as we watch the shares, leslie, down 3%. thank you for the update on bill ackman's presentation when we come back, a good day for jack mott as shares of alibaba got higher then chuck robin sounding off on hate speech and the president's relationship with the country's top ceo. and later the former ceo of

bloomingdale's is taking on the president, corpotemecara ari and more when "squawk alley" returns.

for years, centurylink has been promising fast internet to small businesses. but for many businesses, it's out of reach. why promise something you can't deliver? comcast business is different. ♪ ♪ we deliver super-fast internet with speeds of 250 megabits per second across our entire network, to more companies, in more locations, than centurylink. we do business where you do business. ♪ ♪ getting news to the white house, let's get to ammon jabbers in new jersey. a white house official saying gary cohn is going to remain in his position at the white house. here's the statement from the official a few minutes ago saying "gary intends to remain in his position as national economic council director at the white house.

nothing's changed. there's been so much speculation in the role with the president at trump tower on tuesday. throughout the morning the white house declined to say anything about gary cohn on the record. now, though, now we're getting our first statement saying he will remain at the white house we'll see whether we get a similar assertion about steve bannon remaining at the white house, that's been the other official, there's been rumors swirling about that. there's been a lot of decisions made here with the trump team today. we are in new jersey where the president is continuing his working vacation throughout the rest of the week. >> the winter white house. >> summer white house, wherever we are. >> eamon, thank you very much. the dow is down 77 points. plenty of people reaching out reportedly to cohn with advice both directly and indirectly but

not the only one yellen has been getting advice from people as well. steve leaseman is covering that angle as well. >> just quickly on the cohn story, interesting that the white house felt the need to come out and say that, there were some reports out there and even speck tlagsulation that thi the market is because cohn was departing so interesting the white house felt the need to issue a statement. great reporting by ammon javers. on to this jelyellen story a half hour ago there was a tweet that donald trump should reappoint yellen but yellen should refuse the appointment. he tweeted "being appointed by trump means that at least implicitly that you approve of his goals for the u.s. i am lucky enough to know yellen well and i know her vision for america is highly distinct from that of trump's. accepting the fed chair from him would send a signal she would

regret and possibly deeply." he suggests a new alternative which is that yellen announce she's going to retire. i called the fed, no comment from the fed i think yellen would like to be reappointed but a reappointment from donald trump would be a complicating factor. >> but steve when we talk about this moral duty or whatever else and you weigh that against the point of being in the room, having the ability to influence the future direction of a country you massively care about, with gary cohn, with janet yellen, that's very different from being on a business grouping that met twice in eight months. >> i think that's right but i also think that, you know, janet yellen would have to stand next to donald trump during that reappointment and how would you feel about that right now? >> i don't know, steve the fed is -- ceos don't want to be political then the federal reserve really doesn't want to be political, they want to be seen as independent. they never want to be seen -- even though it's an appointment by the president, you know this,

she doesn't want anything to do with politics, wouldn't that create a whole stir and a whole new precedent? >> the country still has to function you can't shut the whole operation down. >> i agree, i'm not saying i endorsed kocherlakota's ideas one bit. i'm saying it's a way he is suggesting the fed could announce or suggest its displeasure with things the president has said i think they would never do that but it is a complicating situation. >> interesting, he's responding to questions about this. people asked him "if you were still on the feldd, would you resign?" he said "no, but i don't see reason for any member of the board to resign unless they're getting pressures i don't see. >> interesting i don't think this makes sense it's interesting a former fed president made this announcement

or made these statements at all and it just suggests the issues of being appointed that will exist by a member -- by anybody to the federal reserve board. >> steve, thank you very much, given the pace of various appointments, it could be a huge backlog for his rationale. >> i would say the opposite in your question about pressure, the big fear going into the trump presidency is that he would tweet about the federal reserve, influence the fed, he was so outspoken on the campaign trail about janet yellen being critical and that would be a big worry to markets. >> he likes yellen. >> he hasn't intervened too much he talked about wanting a weaker dollar but so far so good on that front, i would say. >> and the lower interest rates seems to be sticking for at least six or 12 months >> same thing with the weaker dollar. still to come here on "squawk alley," shares of cisco under pressure after a mix

then the former ceo of bloomingdale's joins us. his take on trump and e thstate of retail when "squawk alley" is back in a couple minutes

jelsz we've got a developing story to tell you about out of europe. sue herera is following that for us, sue? >> we are, sara, thank you very much basically we are hearing from the barcelona police department that a "massive crash" has occurred from a van which apparently drove into the city's center they are now saying, some guidance, the van that crashed into dozens of people in barcelona's city center, that's from the local newspaper there barcelona police say there are several injured from that van crash. they are asking people to stay away from that particular area and emergency services have put out a tweet asking people to stay away from the city center what we now know is that a van has crashed into what they are

calling dozens of people in barcelona's city center according to both the barcelona police and the local newspaper we're waiting on video from that particular area and as that develops and comes in, we will be back to give you an update on any injuries and the situation as it continues to develop in barcelona. sara and everybody, back to you. >> all right, sue herera, thank you. stay close and keep us posted. 'lfollow this developing story for you, "squawk alley" will be right back

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europe closing as we speak let's get to seema modi at hq we're keeping a very close eye on the story out of barcelona. meantime, the decline is being led by a selloff in the banking sector after yesterday's release of u.s. fed minutes raising questions as to whether the central bank will raise rates again this year. tis istoxx index down 1.5%, the euro falling to its lowest levels in the month following the release of the minutes from the ecb's july meeting minutes they show policymakers expressing concerns about a possible overshoot in the eurozone currency which could impact the ability to boost inflation. look at the uk because britain's chamber of commerce out with data indicating exporter confidence softened due to

currency fluctuations and a shortage of skilled workers post-brexit. as for consumer uk, retail sales up 3%, matching a downwardly revised june figure. food and household items were the only sectors showing growth. the pound at 1.28 against the greeneback kingfisher down 4% after europe's largest home improvement chain, not the beer company, posted a revenue miss because of sluggish demand for garden furniture and other summer products. stock down 4% and we finish two companies from denmark heading in opposite directions, starting with vestas, the wind system system posted weaker-than-expected results but novo nordisk is on the rise up 2% a late-stage trial showed the company's once-weekly diabetes drug met its main goal of reducing glucose levels in patients carl, back to you. >> seema, thank you very much. there's a lot to watch in

retail we had the earnings in walmart along with the discussion of how ceos are responding to the political divide we're joined by michael gould, former bloomingdale's ceo. great to have you back, good morning. >> good morning. >> we got good retail sales numbers. the guidance has been good but even those companies that have decent results are overshadowed with this concern that amazon could swipe in and steal their business how is the story evolving, do you think? >> i think if you look at walmart's earnings today, i think they were terrific i think from a point of view of the sales line i read the food business was the best performance they've had in five or six years, the online business which they are really going after was up over 60%. we were on holiday last week up in maine at a family house and i walked into walmart in augusta, maine, three times over the weekend and their improvement of the way the stores look, the assortments in the food area,

the quality, the service, the friendliness, i tell you something, dramatically different than a year ago and that was better than a year before that so when i look at walmart or home depot, better than 6%, both their sales were up, the number of transactions were up, tjx also strong is. there's a lot of good spending out there, just in different kinds of places. >> when you say different kinds of places, michael, for the bricks and mortar retailers that you know very well from your position of bloomingdale's, which subsectors should they focus on where can we see a fightback for the high street names as opposed to online retailers. >> well, listen, everyone's been saying there's too much space in stores and certainly too much space devoted to the apparel business but look at what happened to the handbag business it shot up like a rocket ship and it came back down. it will come back a little i don't think there's any one in particular i think it really is what we've been talking about

every time i've been on the show, what we read about the papers and magazines it's about experience. i read an article the other day that people are spending disproportionately on the home and travel it's all about the experience, you can't look at home depot and say that's an outlier. they have created something, their service is better, it's a little bit like a treasure hunt. i have a 19-year-old son walking through walmart, he never walked through a store with me ever, i said "why are you so happy?" he said "dad, it's a treasure hunt." people are looking for things that are different. >> i still find treasure hunts in apparel and i guess that's not very popular the feeling is apparel would come back, designers would give us something good and bring people back to the category and it would start to see better pricing and more excitement again. that hasn't happened is this more permanent structural shift than just the way millennials are shopping

that they're not as interested in apparel and what do you do about it if you're a department store? >> well, i don't think that's the case i really think the case is that the stores have become so safe the buying structure in the stores does not reward taking risks so they're all risk adverse. so what suffers the most is apparel. i believe -- and this is my opinion, i've said this many times before, the department store model is broken, as we have it today it's broken so when people say the apparel business is tough, it's not tough at gucci or ysl or vuitton, so people are doing business but people are doing business by taking risks, having newness on a constant flow that's part of tjx's success there was an gnarl the journal a couple months ago turning their inventory 15 times if you look at the department stores, they're turning stocks less than three times in the course of a year, three, maybe 2.8. how do you compete with that

you can't compete with that. so i think what happened to the department stores, it's too safe, not enough newness and flow of activity on a regular basis. that to me is the bigger issue much bigger than the dotcom business, much bigger than people saying there's too much space. there's not enough newness and people are not taking the risk and the customer knows. >> it spoken like a true merchandiser michael, we're in this environment now. companies have had to navigate political firestorms but is it different when you can be threatened by a hashtag, by the threat of a boycott and have some of these ceos responded the way they should have >> well, listen i know the question is asked what would you have done? i think those ceos that went on those two commissions or committees, i think listen if you don't have a seat at the table you can't get your view point across you can't logically try to convince others of doing things

or develop different kinds of programs so i would be supportive of people that went on any kind of a committee my issue, obviously is that over the course of 23 years as ceo of bloomingdale bloomingdale's, i had three ceos i reported to at macy's fed rated, many times we would argue about policy we would talk about what i thought was best for bloomingdale's and most of the time we were okay, every once in a while i'm sure i lost my debate on a policy, but that's not -- that was never an issue but once you lose your connection with people on values then you lose all respect and that's why i think they stepped down and i think they're supported by their customers. when you think the head of walmart, the ceo of walmart makes that statement he made, there's no company in america today in my mind that represents more of america than walmart cuts across how many people shop there on a weekly basis. >> although there's a piece in

the "times" today about walmart's reaction and one of the quotes from a shopper is if you want to be a political pundit, go on cnn. that's what walmart is facing today. >> well when you have 300 million people and probably 200 million shop at walmart in a given year, if you took 1%, you'll still have two million people but you'll always have an outlier. it's always nice to put an outlier in there but the fact of the matter is, i respect those that declined because they declined not that they couldn't affect policy but they had a disagreement on values and that's who we are at the end of the day we look in the mirror and say are those my values and the values of many i company at the end of the day, it's the values of 2 company that will survive. so whether it's warren buffett or peter drucker or whomever has written the stories of success in america, it's all about trust of leadership, quality of company and the values you stand for and those are your people are, who your customers and associates are i'm not going to get into a

political debate here but i clearly understand it. >> a lot of ceos -- and there's a lot of questions about the councils disbanded about the efficacy and whether there was anyone listening in the white house but i would argue that retailers came by a few times when they were protesting the border tax and then the white house said we won't do the border adjustment tax. whether they were listening to lobbyists or not, this is a group that was get hurt. >> well, i know at one time the head of j.c. penney was there at the that meeting and the national retail federation was arguing against the border tax and i think when the president and his advisers looked at what the devastation that would have done to pricing in retail stores, from unemployment that

would have emanated from that, stores would have cut back the number of sales associates and support people on the floor, i think people did and i think that was an example of just my point. you had a seat at the table. but it comes at a point in time when you may have a seat at the table, one of those committees i read in the paper this morning met twice in the last eight months and only 50% of the participants were there at any given time so you know once you can't move on policy and the values are so alien to what you stand for, what your company stands for, for the most part, you're always going to have people that are going to be naysayers, that's obvious. i respect that but then you say you move on and i think that's what these people did. >> michael, we always appreciate your candor. thank you so much for your time as always. we'll see you next time. >> i hope so have a great day. >> michael gould when we come back, why shares of walmart are under pressure despite an earnings beat, but first rick santelli, what are you watching today? >> i'm watching the euro we've been spending time talking

about the europe, interest rate differentials, all the issues central banks have been putting forth in the market. the currencies give you a good way to try to assess it, something happened with the euro this morning i wond werhat. are you wondering? find out after the break

here's what's coming up, half time report top of the hour, was the ceo exodus from the president's councils a game changer for the markets? we'll debate the d.c. drama and the new impact it could have on

investors. plus, bill ackman laying out his case for adp while an old nemesis reemerges with his own trade. robert chapman joins us live on his adp short. and the big box retailer just got upgraded guys we'll see you in just a bit we'll stick with retail. shares of alibaba up this morning after the china-based company beat expectations. let's bring in joseph burger, ceo at pacific epipooch. is this stunning growth we seeing across alibaba's e-commerce double digit growth, is it a matter of taking market share or is this market just growing like crazy >> yeah, we weren't surprised by the results that quarter based on our research on the ground in shanghai and our prix poprietar data tracking. we see continued strong

performance for alibaba over the quarter and clearly their promotion strategy helped them this quarter and we see that continuing. >>they're growing so much faster than the broader excommerce growe e-commerce growth in china, what do you put that down to? >> yeah, so from our standpoint, the way we see the market is you look at the china consumer, currently there's only 50% of the population online today and that's growing, it's about 700 million people, then you look at disposable income and you look at the sophistication of the china consumer and these factors are helping to grow the e-commerce pie and alibaba's execution to meet the needs of the consumers clearly benefitting them and they're monetizing that through their ad revenue so different than just transaction commissions. their main benefit is through their ad dollars and they're doing an excellent job of that.

>> the stock has been a monster to watch up 70% over the last year. there were questions before this year after alibaba went public about the transparency ofs and impact of being a chinese company and even the fake goods. all these sort of investors were worried about these issues with the chinese company. it seems like alibaba has shaken that off. >> certainly and i think again from the way you look at the market and the way we're delivering on their strategy and their performance is clearly indicating that and we think that's going to continue as you look forward to the second half of this year, they've got their mega promotion which is singles day in november and i think, again, they're going to deliver well against that and i think these other sort of negative issues that they had to confront or earlier are really going to go away as

they continue to deliver on their strategy. >> joseph, how justifiable is the comparison to amazon because they've got ali cloud as well, they've got their doubleal media plan those things make it seem pretty similar to amazon but are those still much smaller parts of the pie overall for alibaba. >> those are certainly parts of their pie. i think from the standpoint of alibaba, if you look at their core revenue, it's on the ad side of the business so search e-commerce search revenue is the driver for their growth and they do that through their transaction volume so different than amazon which is purely a transaction volume-based business and they get commissions from that so if i can't believe they've got-- alibaba they have a much better transaction on their side of the business and we see that growth driver for them long term. >> i wonder if amazon now faces more regulatory and political risk than alibaba did given that some of the recent presidential

tweets, joseph, we'll leave it there, thank you very much joseph burger ceo at pacific epoch. >> as we loo go to break, look at shares of cisco falling quarterly results in line with estimates but the outlook short of expectations. we talk to chuck robins not just about the quarter but about the president's relationship with ceos. >> what about over the weekend brought to a head an issue that the country needed uniting words. we needed words that would bring the country geer auntothrod what happened this weekend and i don't think we got those words chances are, the last time you got a home loan,

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we do business where you do business. ♪ ♪ more developments now on this incident and emergency in barcelona. sue herera has the details sue? >> indeed, i do. thank you very much, carl. we are following a developing story out of barcelona at about 5:15 p.m. local barcelona time a white vanly jud went into a highly populated city center. that is frequented by locals and 20 tourists alike this is the dinner hour and the plaza catalunya is in the city center we know there are injuries the prime minister is going to head to that scene

we do not know the nature of any injuries some of these pictures may be somewhat graphic we want to warn you about that as we get them in from the scene. there are reports that two armed men then entered a restaurant in the city center. this is only being reported by reuters. nbc has not independently confirmed that there are injuries it was a white van reportedly the man driving the white van left the van and ran off. we are trying to confirm the report that two armed men then entered a restaurant in the city center we do know that the police have asked people to stay away from the city center. there are unconfirmed reports that the police have also asked that rail and mass transit systems be shut down to keep people away from the city center now that is a live picture from reuters or appn.

that is off the city center having been there before but it is a highly populated area it is now about 6:00, almost 6:00 barcelona time, as the story continues, we may get more word on injuries that we can confirm for you. that is the aptn or reuters feed we know several people have been injured. we don't know what the extent of injuries are there has been a massive emergency response to this particular incident in the city center carl, i'll send it back to you when we have more we will bring it to you. >> sue, we thank you for that. on all of that news, the markets are approaching their lows of the session again. once again, dow's down 123 or so would be the worst loss in a week for the major averages. the dow's first decline in five. we'll take a short break back after this. you always pay

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welcome back to "squawk alley. it's been a big week of earnings dana chelsea joins us. good morning to you. >> good morning. >> looks like they've got earnings growth online, 60%, but not good enough. stocks down a couple percent. >> what we've been seeing

overall in retail, if the earnings are good, the stocks go down if the earnings are bad, the stocks go down the sentiment on the group was definitely pressured we're going to need this back half of the year to continue to see sales improvement in order to garner interest it's not just amazon, it's the companies themselves that need to continue to show improvement. >> we did get one or two go up earlier this week. is that purely down to same store sales growth is that the metric that the investors can gain some positivity out in terms of if they're showing some kind of turn around in their core bricks and mortar retail business >> i think it's that i think it's that total sales growth and also what the guidance is. the guidance and the go forward numbers are really the key do they meet consensus do they miss consensus and what is themargin outlook? it is definitely a wider parameter than we've seen in the past. >> dana, as we head into back to school and then eventually to holiday, what's the most important metric, right? inventory?

if that's true, how do you arrange the different players on the spectrum whose inventory is cleanest? >> i think it is inventory it certainly is your inventory growth lower than your sales growth what we've been seeing in inventories lately, we are in the midst of our back to school tours, we've seen american eagle cleaner than abercrombie abercrombie has a bit of an inventory. we see gap both old navy and the gap division look cleaner and in better position than they have in past years. >> isn't ecommerce growth an important metric why aren't investors keying into that more? 60% for walmart, not too shabby. who's doing the boast at it? >> what we've been seeing overall with ecommerce, almost everyone is double digit you're seeing companies where the sum of 20 or 30% of their sales, we have companies like the williams sonoma who's certainly been key in kwon line

sales but then you have other companies like alta who's growing their ecommerce business stau stansley i think margins are things to watch. >> dana, we have to leave it there. thanks very much walmart down a couple of percent. >> thank you. >> the market is down 0.6% >> let's go to the judge and "the half. all right, carl. thanks so much we want to gyp today with breaking news. the latest on the incident in barcelona which authorities there are calling a terrorist attack a van plowing into pedestrians in a popular tourist area. stocks here near the lows of the day. our sue herera joins us with the very latest. >> indeed, i do. what we know, scott, is about a little bit after 5:00 p.m. local barcelona time a white van reportedly jumped the curb