good morning it's 8:00 a.m. at roku headquarters in los gatos, california it's 11:00 a.m. on wall street and "squawk alley" is live ♪ it's so sad to think about th good times you and i ♪ ♪ cause baby now we've got bad blood you know we used to be mad love so take a look what you've done cause baby now we've got bad blood ♪ ♪ now we've got problems and i don't think we can solve 'em ♪

good thursday morning. welcome to "squawk alley." i'm carl quintanilla with morgan brennan and jon fortt at post nine nasdaq is on a five-day win streak and is set to have year-to-day gains above 6. apple another all-time high in the session, inching closer to that $1 trillion market cap. interesting, the gains for the ndx have been impressive this month. >> yeah. >> a lot of it due to a handful of very powerful names. >> apple in particular a lot of people didn't expect the numbers that we got from apple to result in the moves that we've seen. there was a sort of thesis around the iphone being long in the tooth or replacement cycle not keeping up, the iphone x being a disappointment the iphone x wasn't a disappointment and apple is showing steady results in this,

and that's enough to give the stock a lift match is up after results, in a way partly owned by iac. >> who we'll talk to this hour. >> we're going to talk to this hour, roku as well you see these smaller, perhaps lesser loved stocks. the team behind the netflixes, behind the googles of the world still doing very, very well. and so as that story flushes out, i think we'll be able to understand better where technology, in general, is headed. >> ndx is up 5% so far this month. every time you get apple hitting a new all-time high it's moving that much closer to that trillion dollar market cap mark we've been talking about for months now. >> nvidia will be a key test as well added $18 billion into market cap the past five sessions take a look at roku. better than expected earnings. anthony wood, of course, is the ceo and joins us this morning.

anthony, it's good to have you back. >> thanks. it's great to be here. >> stock is back to levels we last saw in march. streaming hours up 56. active accounts up 47. what does it say about the conversation we continue to have about direct to consumer in some of these legacy media companies? >> yeah. well, i think, you know, we are in the midst of a big secular change in video distribution that's moving from legacy tv platforms to screening and it's disrupting the industry. and it's creating a lot of opportunity for streaming companies like roku. our platform business, which is advertising and contribution distribution doubled in the quarter. things are going great. >> anthony, can you tell what is really driving loyalty on your platform can you break that down for us a bit? a third of the streaming hours on roku are netflix. you can sort of get netflix everywhere these days with cable

providers, like our parent, comcast. but you are finding something that's causing your results and your growth to really be driven. isolate that for us. what is it >> yeah. so netflix is popular. like you said, netflix is not that hard to find as a consumer. there's over 6,000 different app s, streaming channels on roku. huge selection anything you want to watch and so as consumers move their mainstream behavior from watching traditional tv to streaming, they're watching a wide variety of content and diversity of viewing is growing tremendously streaming is a better way to watch tv and that's driving a lot of interest in roku, the leading streaming platform active accounts is how we build scale. that was up 47% year over year in the quarter, driven by two things one, we sell a lot of roku tvs license the platform for them, which is doing really well

one in four smart tvs sold in q1 were roku tvs, and we sell streaming players as well. >> anthony, given its exclusive deal for smart tvs with best buy, amazon, friend or foe >> well, amazon is a friend and a foe. you know, they're a big partner. we sell a lot of partners on amazon.com we're a big distributor of amazon instant video we do compete with them on the platform said but we're doing extremely well we're the number one streaming platform we expect to sell more roku tvs this year than we did last year, through all channels, including best buy the main thing that's happening in sort of the platform side of our business is that in tvs, tv manufacturers are moving away from their home-grown built solutions to license solution. we think that means virtually

every tv company will end up licensed in os, just like smart phones have an os. it's just a great position to be in. >> every time you're on, anthony, we try to convince you to get into the original content game you always say no. has the argument for doing that gotten even weaker, given the amount of money others are spending and some would argue the level of crowding we've seen in content in some of the areas? >> you know, one of the cool to great things about streaming is that it's giving consumers a lot more choice. there's more money going into originals. we're seeing more original content, more options for consumers. that's why consumers are picking streaming as a way to watch tv i mean, we -- our focus as a streaming platform is to bring as much content as we can on to the platform we do that by partnering with companies. one of the biggest ways that we've innovated recently in

bringing content to consumers is the roku channel in which we aggregate free movies and tv shows and that's doing really well. >> anthony, where does music come in? at the same time as you are making this push in streaming video, there's this other thing going on with spotify and amazon, familiar names among your competitors in that space in the past, even on cable platforms we've seen streaming music channels do you expect there to be any kind of tie-up between streaming video platforms like yours and streaming music, whether it's bundles or some other go-to market that ties these together for consumers? >> well, we do see a lot of our customers using their roku to listen to music, even though it's a tv. often the tv is the only speakers in a room or the best speakers in a room streaming services is very popular on roku. audio is an important part of

the tv service one thing we announced is that we're going to make it easy to add audio to your tv roku controls the software in the tv and with the speakers, we'll control the software in those speakers by controlling both ends it's really powerful. it allows us to deliver a much easier audio experience making audio on your tv better and easier is something that we can do to make our tv platform even better. >> i want to go back to your earnings for a moment. you did post a loss, though. it's a narrower loss than a previous quarter the plan is to grow the number of active accounts by offering deep discounts on dongles and other streaming products how does that play out on the path to profitability? >> you know, we've said that we are, you know -- we're aiming to operate the company on a brea

break-even basis because we want to keep growing as much as possible into this opportunity the world is moving from traditional tv platforms to streaming is a huge opportunity to be the world's largest streaming platform we want to be sure to keep our eye on that ball in terms of lowering prices, we do have a strategy of bringing down our hardware prices so we sell more units for our players but one of the things that is great about roku, we've built a purpose-built platform for tv. we have the only purposeful operating system for tv. one of the results of that is that we put a lot of effort into the lower costs. we can sell it with excellent performance and make a positive gross margin when most of our competitors subsidized into getting to that price point.

we think we're in a good position of driving scale of our active accounts and price is one of our leverages there. >> finally, anthony, this chess game between disney, comcast and fox, do you have any interest in seeing it turn out one way or another, or any prediction about it >> disney, comcast and fox are all big partners on roku they all have apps and channels on roku. they're great partners i think the big picture here is that, again, the world is moving from legacy tv to streaming, causing big changes in the industry legacy players are repositioning. >> that, they are. we just don't know how yet anthony, thanks so much. good to see you again. anthony wood of roku, talking to us after the company's earnings. jon? >> when we come back, the government announcing a list of companies approved for drone testing. we'll tell you who made the cut and who, surprisingly, was shut

out. major averages as we head to break are up better than half a percent. the dow up 156 s&p up above 2700, 2713. we'll be right back. [whistling]

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mr. elliot, what's your wiwifi?ssword? wifi's ordinary. basic. do i look basic? nope! which is why i have xfinity xfi. it's super fast and you can control every device in the house. [ child offscreen ] hey! let's basement. and thanks to these xfi pods, the signal reaches down here, too. so sophie, i have an xfi password, and it's "daditude". simple. easy. awesome. xfinity. the future of awesome. >> welcome back to "squawk alley. the government announcing who they will participate with in their drone-testing programs.

mainly universities and either local governments or local government agencies but they're partnering with companies like google, qualcomm and microsoft who are all, through this program, making the cut. the company that did not amazon they've been pushing for approval to deliver packages via drone for commercial use this comes, of course, as president trump has waged a feud with amazon, at least on twitter, and jeff bezos, repeatedly making claims that the u.s. postal service is getting a raw deal for delivering its packages. drone use, investigating, collecting data, how these could be put to use around the u.s but certainly the fact that amazon is not one of these partnerships, worth noting also dji, the chinese drone maker. >> maybe the president can put in a good word and amazon can deliver its own stuff via drone. >> seems like they may be

working on stuff like that we'll see. >> it's also worth noting that fedex is one of the partners in this we've seen on the drone side with package delivery on the side of u.p.s. first time with fedex. walmart announcing that huge acquisition, $16 billion for indian e-commerce company flip cart what former walmart u.s. ceo bill simon told us on this program. >> they've been enomerred by the digital capabilities that flip cart has maybe there's some of that ability to take that technology to other parts of the world. they see the value in it or otherwise they wouldn't have done the transaction. >> let's bring in robby raj, now the ceo and co-founder of passage ar good to have you back. welcome. >> thank you thanks for having me on the show. >> appreciate your insight it's a fascinating deal.

we're all having to learn more about investment rules in india and then sort of what it means for walmart and the race with amazon internationally versus domestic domestically how do you see this playing out? >> if you look at the e-commerce or retail in general, they're saying the top three e-commerce countries will be u.s., china and india. in the u.s., amazon has the lead and walmart has a play in terms of acquiring jet.com in china alibaba so number three is still up for grabs and so amazon and walmart

are having a turf war over there in india and flip cart, depending who you ask, flip cart is number one and amazon is number two pretty, you know, close. and by acquiring flipkart, walmart has a chance to become the leading e-commerce provider in india. >> ravi, in the u.s., amazon built out this network of distribution centers, this logistics operation that hadn't been in place before that enabled them to have strategic advantage over other e-commerce competitors. is there going to be an equivalent in india the next five, ten years that they're going to need to build out, say, with amazon and walmart with flipkart, what infrastructure needs to be built out strategically to win

>> yeah, there already is. and it's going to get even better in india. but what amazon has done, and flipkart as well, they've made distribution and supply chain work for indian conditions in rural areas you have people delivering products on bicycles, right? so -- and then you have all these kiosks in villages where you can place an order and it gets delivered there and you can go and pick it up. so both of them are taking models in the u.s. and making it work for the indian market. >> ravi, as the co-founder of passage ai, given the fact that there's a meeting between companies around artificial intelligence and lawmakers in the trump administration in d.c. today, what are you looking for out of that meeting and how do

you think this plays out in terms of future regulations? >> great question. we're an ai company. interfaces using ai. we're big believers in ai. you know, if i told you five years ago that your car would drive itself to the airport, pick up your mom and bring her home, you would have said, you know, i'm crazy. right? but that's the reality so things like self-driving cars, drones that deliver packages even things like cure for cancer and drug discovery, they're all being driven by ai ai is here to stay you know, there are no two ways about that we're definitely big believers in ai. >> certainly getting the focus of the white house today and this ai summit which we'll be watch iing. appreciate the help on this ravi look forward to talking to you soon. >> thank you. >> ravi raj helping us out with

walmart/flipkart ceo of match group responding, saying his firm will win the dating wars. he joins us to make his case stocks up 3.5% "squawk alley" will be right back when it might be time to buy or sell? with fidelity's real-time analytics, you'll get clear, actionable alerts about potential investment opportunities in real time. fidelity. open an account today.

welcome back to "squawk alley. dow is up, officially moving into positive for the year and look at facebook, moving back to precambridge analytica selloff. it's climbed back. we are watching that question is whether it's truly forgotten. we don't know. >> all it takes is a couple of earnings we'll see what happens for now let's get to seema mody at hq with the european

close. seema? >> the bank of england announcing that it is holding rates steady and cutting its growth and inflation projections for this year and 2019, just when we thought things were improving, take a look at the pound falling to a four-month low, continuing its decline following a string of new uk economic reports mark carney says he believes momentum will bounce back, adding if this happens a modest adjustment of interest rates could happen in the future take a look at stocks, the ftse has been rallying on the weaker pound, up 6% in the last month, just recognizing that inverse relationship with the pound. and speak of the uk, royal bank of scotland rising after it agreed with a $5 billion settlement with u.s. regulators over its sale of toxic debt. telecom announcing plans to cut 13,000 jobs as part of a restructuring and cutting its outlook for fiscal 2019.

let's finish with politics that's weighing on italian stocks former prime minister berlusconi says he won't stand in the way of the far-left with a five-star movement stocks are down in italy as is the italian five-year yield. >> thank you, seema. when we come back, the dating game is heating up as facebook enters a contestant joey levin joins us to talk about how they'll compete. "squawk alley" is back after this your company is constantly evolving.

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it has happened more than 200 times in 5 years. dianne feinstein and a new generation are leading the fight to pass a new assault weapons ban. say no to the nra and yes to common-sense gun laws. california values senator dianne feinstein good morning once again. i'm sue herera with your cnbc news update. president trump to meet with kim jong-un. he will meet in singapore.

hostages held in north korea returned to the u.s. and were greeted by president trump >> they are really incredible people. >> china's commerce ministry says the china and the u.s. are still in communication over details over the next round of trade talks. you're up-to-date. that's the news update at this hour back downtown to "squawk alley." jon, i will send it back to you. >> thank you, sue. iac out with quarterly results. shares have been under pressure since facebook's mark zuckerberg announced that they are entering the dating game. iac's earnings call say iing we

have a 23-year head start and several months advanced warning and we're going to take advantage of all of it iac also releasing a statement right after facebook's unveil saying come on in. the water's warm their product could be great for u.s./russia relationships. iac ceo joey levin joins us now. that's a good line, joe. >> we're just trying to have some fun. >> in the dating game you have to try to have some fun. so my question is, there are certain worlds people want to keep separate. do people really want to date on a platform where their mom and grandma are also do you think that's going to be an issue for facebook? >> we have a pretty clear point of view on this. i think people like to separate their dating lives from their other lives. this has been consistent for a very long time of course, people can meet on social networks and have been meeting on social networks since they came into existence

people meet in bars, restaurants. all these things are great places to start relationships. in terms of a platform, what you want from a true dating platform, people like that to be a dedicated place to do that and doing that as a hobby, doing that as a side thing, i think it will -- it can have some traction for some people but it's not a market changer. that's always been there. >> isn't that sort of what facebook is offering what makes them different in terms of getting into the dating game is that they'll be able to connect people through shared events and that that doesn't exist currently? >> that doesn't exist currently on facebook or in the world? >> on dating platforms. >> no. that -- first of all, i think there are lots of ways people can connect. that does exist on our platform. people can have common ground in all different kinds of things, whether it's a religion or having visited the same place or having friends in common, things like that. all of those things can pull people together. these are things that we have optimized for, literally, 23 years. it's hard.

it's complicated it's complicated to figure out what the right way to show a match is, or what the right way to handle customer service is, or what the right way to make sure customers are finding successful relationship outcomes that's all we do all day, every day, help our customers find successful relationships we see what people do when they try to do these things in side jobs and it doesn't work i talked about our shareholders on earnings, yahoo! coming into the space when yahoo! was yahoo! and ao coming into the space when aol was aol they were going to make a big deal and take over the world and that ultimately both of those companies ended up partnering with us. they cared about helping people get successful relationship outcomes and we're able to do that that's what we're passionate about. >> is that something he would be open to on facebook? >> of course we would love to do something

like that. >> there's nobody who has done the portfolio approach in the internet digital space like iac has. and i'm wondering if in this age of mobile and as we're moving into ai, are you finding ways to take advantage of that scale from an engineering perspective? and how exactly do you do that while allowing these various properties to maintain their independence and their focus on their verticals? >> right we don't believe in synergies. it's kind of a dirty word at iac. we believe in cooperation, in sharing best practices we believe in helping each other out but we don't force those synergies. ai is a great example, marketing is a great example or areas where we found what's a great place to get talent, what's a great way to organize this what's a great way to -- what are problems that ai has solve for the record angie's list that maybe could apply to match or vice versa >> maybe a plumber dating site.

>> i'm not sure that plumbers want to date other plumbers but if they did, we could help with that that is to the point of synergies. just because they have a large common shareholder doesn't mean the businesses need to work together it does mean we can move talent around and they can learn from each other and it does mean you can have full access to information from somebody else in the category. if we called up a business, you know, anywhere in the internet and said hey, give us all your conversion data for the last 20 years, of course, they're not going to do that you can do that with one of our businesses. >> isn't the whole episode, though -- i mean, this happens in retail. it happened in this case, where a giant can make a footstep into some area and everyone believes it's going to crush -- >> yeah. >> -- the existing residents of that space. >> yeah. >> how dangerous is that >> again it's very hard in the market to compete with a press release. that's what we're really talking about right now. big companies, we'll all recall

when google went into social networking when facebook was smaller. that didn't work that was a side show we're focused right now on just deliveringa better customer experience we deliver a better customer experience every day those giants don't worry me. we deal with giants in every single one of our businesses, in angie home services today. amazon has done press releases google has done press releases what we're trying to do is make sure our customers are happier, that our customers keep getting a product that they love we have two-sided marketplaces in a lot of our businesses in angi home services we hav consumers that need to be happy to get their jobs done and that's a really hard thing to pull off that's a full-time job for that business, in that case for 1500 employees. that's what we're going to keep doing. >> i want to get into your earnings a little more. >> yeah. >> first, one more question about a facebook effect.

tinder users basically got booted off of the app because of their log-ins with facebook and the privacy overhauls that took place on that site and the connections there. has there been a broader impact in terms of some of these changes made at facebook >> no. i think it was a very short-term, temporary glitch i don't recall if it was on our side or facebook's side but it didn't have an impact on our business and had no broader implications that's not something we've spent time thinking about. >> in terms of your earnings, you called vemio one of the most underappreciated stocks in your profile. why? >> angi home services worth $5 billion or something if you look at match group we own 81% of that. that's worth, i don't know, $8 billion or something and we have cash too if you add that all up that's bigger than iac's market cap

today, which is remarkable i didn't assign any value to vemio there or value to our applications business that just did 25 or $30 million last quarter. those things are all in there that have real value vemio is in a huge category, recurring subscription revenue, unbelievable loyalty among that's customers, staying, on average, five years in vemio outside of iac, somebody would say that vemio has incredible value. they would be putting some crazy multiple on it, raising money in the private markets. that's why i say underappreciated it's valued somewhere in a pile of negative $2.8 million. >> you seem to be making an argument for spinning it off. >> one thing that we think about in the context of our business is how do we show the value in these things on vimeo, it's our fault

we didn't show statistics on vimeo. we released a lot more statistics with our earnings yesterday on vimeo we'll start to highlight that and we have a great management team with vimeo who will get out and start telling the story andpeople wiand people will get to meet her. that's another path, too structural remedies are always available. >> quite a story have to be careful telling it on wall street. it's quite a story joey levin of iac. thanks for joining us. >> thanks for having me. breaking news this morning on apple let's get to josh lipton for that josh >> these headlines just dropping from the journal that apple and goldman sachs are planning a new joint credit card. the planned card would carry the apple pay brand. it could launch early next year and apple would be replacing its longstanding rewards card partnership with barclays.

of course, this would be part of apple's emphasis on that faster growing, higher margin services business, which surprised investors with those better than expected results the last time apple did report and tim cook, remember, made it clear that apple pay was part of that better-than-expected performance. partnersh partnership of apple and goldman still hash iing out the benefits of the planned card, including the perks for customers. thank you. >> josh lipton, thank you for that north korea returned those three american hostages overnight. plans continue for a summit between the president and kim jong-un even as this seemingly good news is happening, cnbc has learned that north korea is still evading sanctions. michelle caruso-cabrera has that story. >> detailing how the north koreans are still violating u.n. sanctions to illegally import

vital oil and he wants international insurance and trading companies to help put a stop to it this highly secure nondescript office in new york is the headquarters of the u.n. panel of experts, led by hugh griffiths. he and his team of investigators monitor compliance with u.n. sanctions imposed on north korea, sanctions meant to convince north korean leader kim jong-un to abandon his nuclear weapons program. recently, as north korea has agreed to talks with the united states, it has stopped nuclear tests and ballistic missile launches, the most obvious sanctioned activities. griffiths says don't be fooled, north korea is still trying to outsmart the u.n. >> while those are not currently occurring, we have other sanctions violations that are ongoing. >> such as >> ship-to-ship transfers of petroleum product. >> reporter: north korean ships buy desperately needed but prohibited oil from others at sea, like this ship-to-ship

transfer caught by aerial surveillance photos. >> transferring petroleum product to this north korean tanker. >> key trick ships use to avoid detection? shutting off their ais signal, their automated identification system, maritime version of gps. >> you know down to the second when that vessel was transmitting and when they went dark. >> griffiths says the trading companies can do a lot to stop this activity. he wants them to insert clauses to say the ais signal must be on at all times if it is turned off the ship's insurance will be null and void. if it doesn't have insurance, it can't pull into a port and trading companies won't let them ship their commodities you can see the entire story on "power lunch" later this afternoon. >> it's fascinating. what kind of software are they using to do this work? >> winward out of tel aviv,

which has interesting backers, general petraeus, lord john brown as well. it can instantly tell you, carl, when a ship turns off its signal, when it does one of these ship-to-ship transfers, if there's a transfer happening between a ship that has its signal on it but bu doesn't seem to be shipping to anything else out in the middle of the ocean it's really useful in the east asian waters where this is happening. >> any sense on whether these companies are going to comply? >> they already reached out to one international trading firm that has helped them come up with the wording for the clause and they are definitely on board. griffiths didn't want to tell me any other names because they're sending out the letters. if they don't, he will put out in the next report that the u.n. investigating team puts out every six months which companies are being helpful and which aren't. >> nice exclusive. as michelle said, a lot more on line michelle caruso-cabrera.

trading app that is surpassing e-trade, we'll talk to the ceo of robin hood markets are hanging on to some nice gains s&p up almost 20 points. global markets,t of the rhythm of the world. but to us, it's the pace of tomorrow. with ingenuity, technologies, and markets expertise we create the possible. and when you do that, you don't chase the pace of tomorrow. you set it. nasdaq. rewrite tomorrow.

i'm scott wapner on the top of the hour on "the half time report," a call that

jim cramer says is all wrong and can cloud back it up with its earnings report? it's all at the top of the hour. morgan, we'll see you in 15 minutes. >> scott, thank you. now let's get to the cme group, rick santelei with the santelli exchange. rick >> thank you very much dr. lacy hunt, along with van huizenton. dr. lacy, thank you for joining me. >> my pleasure, rick nice to be with you. >> in your latest writing you bring up slower ms, as in m2, one of the many fundamentals many pay attention to. we stopped paying close to the

ms like bitcoin the effect is the same run us through about why you're nervous about the retraction in m2. >> i think what's taking place is a very pronounced monetary desensitization. the fed has engineered a significant reduction in the reserve aggregates, putting significant downward pressure on both sides of the bank balance sheet. the asset side is declining in terms of its rate of growth and so is the liability side and a sign that the monetary deceleration is becoming more and more significant is that we're getting a major flattening in the yield curve which undermines the profitability of all those that are borrowing short and lending long and so monetary conditions are becoming increasingly restrictive. >> all right another part i found highly fascinating, on a day i'll be

doing the 30-year bond auction at 1:00 eastern, is all the debt whether it's the spending bill or just the notion of the last president and this president not really addressing rising debts, mainly from entitlements you write about being law of diminishing returns. explain. >> well, when factors of production are overused relative to other factors of production, output arises initially, but continued excess use of one of the factors results in dimini diminishidiminis diminishing gains of output and then negative returns and overuse of debt is clearly having that effect that's why the economic growth rate since our period of extreme indebtedness in the late 1990s has been so poor with our long-term operations it's a continuing problem. it's not obvious every day but the u.s. economic system is not performing nearly as well as it has historically and that's the

culprit. >> excellent dr. lacy, appreciate your thoughts and look forward to your next quarterly review we'll go back to morgan. >> rick, thank you for bringing us that. rick santelli. when we come back, the trading app that's giving companies like e-trade a run for its money. robin hood's valuation has quadrupled and its users have doubled over the past year he mat when it might be time to buy or sell? with fidelity's real-time analytics, you'll get clear, actionable alerts about potential investment opportunities in real time. fidelity. open an account today. fidelity. the sun goes down. you did a million things for your family today. but speaking to pnc to help handle all your investments was a very important million and one. pnc. make today the day.

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welcome back stock trading app robin hood has announced its $363 million round of funding now valuing the company at $5.6 billion. the company offers commission-free stock trading and recently expanded its cryptocurrency trading for bitcoin. now unicorn at five times over the co-founder and co-ceo of robin hood joins us now. thanks >> all right >> so, the number of broke eschage accounts has doubled in the past year. in light of this recent round of funding. the company is now valued at more than quadruple where it was a year ago why? >> so, we've had tremendous growth across our user base over the last 12 months, we've doubled our users. and over the last six months we've launched three brand-new products, robin hood for web and robin hood crypto, which allows

you to trade commission-free and we've originally gone from a stock trading app to a full-service, financial services company. >> now, break this down for me you don't charge a commission for most of activities taking place on your platform to customers. but as we've learned here on this show, for the last couple months covering facebook and other software companies, there's really nothing for free. so, how are you making money here >> so, we make money in a lot of ways that a traditional land brokers do we make money off of margin, off of robinhood gold and customers and securities that they hold. so, we've managed to build a business that is orders of magnitude more efficient than our competitors' this one issue that comes to mind to illustrate this point, today, we've crossed over 4 million brokerage accounts on robinhood, compared e-trade.

while e-trade has a workforce of 3.5,000 employees we've able to offer that at 200,000 employees. i think that speeches to efficiency and automation that makes our business so unique and so different and allows us to operate at a totally different cost structure. >> how do you guard yourself against robinhood getting the reputation of its most reckless users. one thing to grow when the market is up people are happy they own bitcoin eherera, et cetera. >> it's something that we take a step back and look at what our mission is to make the finance system in our country more accessible to the audience of people and really weighing the next generation of consumers that

otherwise would have waited on the sideline for ten years before they started investing and saving in the stock market getting those people to invest sooner and markets go up, markets go down, but we think it's important for people, especially of this younger generation to be a part of this system earlier in their lives. and, you know, there's a lot of research that shows it's better to have the gains and losses early and be able to go into the later part of your life with a better understanding of how investing works. it's a large new piece of audience participating and really happy to have so many people engaging this way >> some viewers want to know what the balance is, between crypto options and stocks what percentage of trades go to each? >> so, we just started rolling out crypto we're in ten states. we announced three states last week another two this week.

so it's still rolling out to our customers. the percentage of people using the three, it's still in flux, so it's probably not the right time for us to talk about that but suffice to say, we're seeing healing adoption of people signing up for just crypto and vice versa one of the things we've been happy about with robinhood is the adoption that we see of new products with existing users >> yeah. >> for example, when we announced robinhood crypto, we went from that morning when we announced it, over 1 million people had signed up for it in the first 24 hours >> thank you for joining, co-founder and ceo of robinhood. robinhood was number 43 on the disrupter list we'll take a look at the dow up 200, officially in the green for the year

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hour, dow positive for the year, up once again, almost 200 points apple, all-time high

facebook, post-crisis high s&p hanging in well above 50 today. >> it's like the tech investor has a freakout a couple weeks ago about all of the things that could go wrong and it's like now, ah, it's fine >> and this is despite the fact that you had the ads released on the russian bot just earlier today. >> let's get to the judge and the half welcome to "the halftime report." i'm scott wapner the top trade this hour, tech's great, return, sector certainly surging again on the market's most important stocks really to resume the run with us today, joe terranova, the brothers, and josh brown and let's begin with the return of tech, the sector up for a sixth straight day from chips to the fangs to almos