good morning it's 10:00 a.m. at o'hare international airport in chicago, 11:00 a.m. on wall street and "squawk alley" is live ♪ good thursday morning. welcome to "squawk alley." i'm carl quintanilla with morgan

brennan and mike santoli ceo of business insider and recode's executive editor, kara swisher. shares of 20th century fox hitting all-time highs, comcast sets up a possible bidding war for the bulk of the company, offering $65 billion, 35 a share for those assets, which includes fox's movie studio, fx, net geo. it it does represent a 19% premium to disney's offer made in december. brian roberts talked about all of this on a conference call last night. >> when i think about fox, it's rupert murdoch, his family and what they've built, one of the world's great media and entertainment companies. their work as strong entrepreneurs and prudent acquirers bears significant similarities with comcast's own history. >> let's start with you, kara. how interesting is this setup here do you have a road map to where

you think this ends? >> seems as if comcast is the big bid. it's a lot of money. i don't know if rupert murdoch comes with the deal. you get him when you come in it will be tough for disney to compete with it in terms of money and power to do it that said, rupert murdoch is the one who benefits here, most of all. essentially, people are bidding to make him richer than ever. >> that's right, and that is a huge premium not just in the 20% but all cash don't forget why fox is selling. it doesn't like the future now you're rinsed of any responsibility for the future. you take the cash. you're done. so, it's a huge premium. i assume disney has a tough time matching that. >> yeah. because he would have to own pieces of disney and if he wants to stay in the entertainment business but you take all that money and he's focused on his tv station and fox news and things like that. >> and the other thing that's very interesting here is the bet that murdoch is making is exactly strategically the right bet about the future of television and media, which is

if you look at what will sustain itself in linear television, it is news and sports it's what's happening now, turn it on, fill me in. for everything else, anything that can be watched after the fact, the netflix model and direct to consumer is vastly better he is just shedding the stuff that's in trouble. if you're disney you can, through scale, wring more out of it but strategically this is a good move. >> netflix trading at record highs today. amazon trading at record highs today as well. on our air yesterday, argued that these are defensive mergers. are they defensive mergers is this going to actually address the fundamental change in the media landscape >> they still don't own the distribution of the future that's the one part. they own cable but you really have to get into digital heavily. you know, netflix is up. it could be bought, right? it could be a target and not necessarily -- >> and so huge now.

>> so huge these are big companies. you wonder, what will google buy? >> we've been talking about it forever. who would buy who and who would own who? because we talk about this, are they media companies, they're all media companies and they're all tech companies you have to think about it that way. >> just to challenge the idea that this is a surrender by murdoch, he's 87 years old, he seems to have made the determination that if you can make it in this business, you have to be bigger. he doesn't have the scale. the legacy of being the single largest individual owner of disney is not a terrible one if that's the one you're going to leave and disney, he wants cash. they have lots of access to cash they may prefer to give cash versus their own stock at these valuations. >> it's taking the chips off the table and having the ability to invest them in much better strategic long-term stuff. it's easier to do that with

cash combining makes sense. it's why the stocks are up it is good the only way to compete with this if you're a legacy media company is through enormous scale, being able to offer direct to consumer and a package that people feel like they have to have. that's the only way to do it you have a better chance of that if you have more of it. >> he can get cash but not this much cash. i don't think he wants to go to a premier of a marvel movie. what's the plus of being a big shareholder at this point unless you think disney is going up >> look what he's keeping. sports and news. those things will survive. >> what's the value of cash to an 87-year-old man >> are you kidding >> james mclaughlin will now go to invest it in other stuff. >> he's pretty lively. i never turn my back on rupert murdoch. >> it's best to cash in your chips, right those who acquire these assets now will have to -- time warner, at&t will have to deal with

balance sheet issues, right? >> yes. >> credit ratings, agency concerns is that a loser's game then? >> no, and difficult talent. >> the price of talent. >> look what happens with samantha bee this is going to happen all the time where you have to deal with that that's the future. you have to be part of this. you have to own media assets. >> it's why the anti-trust case was just ludicrous you're fighting a 1990s war. >> in the government's case? >> absolutely. it's ludicrous look at who the real players are now. they are google, facebook, amazon, apple. massive, massive company the idea that this will somehow corner the market is crazy and then you look at it and say they have so much market power and they're going to strip away all the time warner shows. if they did that, their financials would collapse. they can't change it strategically that much or the whole business collapse. >> they don't have a big internet asset it's run by google, facebook,

essentially. maybe apple, amazon. that's the war that's happening. that's the real competition. and then we'll see. >> do you think that what we've seen in terms of the anti-trust precedent that was set this week with this court ruling that that is something that would stand up if, say, an amazon, alphabet or one of these tech companies that are increasingly coming under scrutiny for getting bigger, do you think it would extend to them as well or would they come under a tighter look >> we'll see. >> the remaining companies, comcast and disney, are now pretty ig. if apple tried to buy disney, is there a strong anti-trust argument there i certainly don't see it. >> we'll see if they do it their efforts in media, by the way, have been terrible. look at facebook's watch don't, because nobody does so, you know, they've got to somehow move into this space because things -- entertainment and this content is going to be part of the future. >> what's been the best example so far that you've seen of that?

is it amazon premier league? they've not made a giant effort to do this or do you consider aa studios or prime tv? >> everyone loves to dump on facebook we're only a year or two in. netflix is 15 years in to longer form content everyone thought it was a joke when they said we're going to go ahead and make sure -- it was a joke they came in with "house of cards. it started badly, exactly. amazon incrementally -- first they licensed stuff, they they start making stuff now they're moving into sports it's becoming incredibly powerful bezos' insights is that the media business is fundamentally different than tech. number one gets 95%. everybody else fights for the other 5% media is not like that it's a huge market you have to get a little bit more every year and it's a great business. >> netflix and amazon. you'll see the others. i'm not sure about facebook.

they've had troubles over the years with media and don't have the right executives in place to do this. they need more they need much more. >> comedy tv. >> they need a real commitment to it in a way. >> what about apple? >> it's interesting. they've tried. i think they're moving more into ar and that's entertainment, too. that will be a kind of entertainment. it seems -- they've sort of done some they're backing jennifer aniston, reese witherspoon and others so, yeah. >> everyone thinks they have to own it to benefit from it. they don't apple is in a good position being neutral, going to the content producer saying okay, we would like that. we like that we can write a lot of checks they don't have to make it the moment they start making it, a, it's hard and, b, suddenly they get flamed for stuff they're not getting flamed for you have to have a thick skin being a media producer everyone throws rocks. >> and music is the perfect example. >> it's not like they're funding

bands and licensing. they're just licensing the music itself. >> right. >> international we haven't touched on but india remains this crown jewel that doesn't get spoken about. >> yes, yes. it's important for comcast to go global i think that's really behind a lot of this. and some of these assets are truly global and i think that's an important thing. it gives comcast more impetus to want to do this and disney, obviously, is a global company. >> that's right. it's a profound difference of what's happened in tech and media as compared to the big media of the 1990s it's not country by country. these are fully global brands. google, apple, facebook, amazon. and now the media companies are having to adjust that. netflix has pioneered it it's so dumb of netflix to try to go to latin, are they crazy ten years later, look at the growth it's astounding. so comcast has to do that. >> has to. >> you guys are good together. i like this. >> we go back.

we do go back. >> we do. >> we do. >> kara swisher, henry, thanks a lot. important day. a lot more on the battle for fox. we'll talk to mark mulhaney and new note on amazon today, outlining potential challenges for that company possible china trade war looming. we'll talk to one of the largest trucking companies on how he is preparing. and later on, the windy city gets subterrainian, making a deal with elon musk's bores company.

if you're just joining us this morning, the attorney general of new york state has sued the president and three of his children, alleging persistent illegal conduct at the president's charity, trump foundation, seeking dissolution of that. the president has now responded. the sleazy new york democrats and their now disgraced and run out of town a.g. eric schneiderman, are doing everything their office for almost two yeaeverything they c to see moon on foundation that took in $18 million.

drop box is flying higher this morning we're still trying to figure out why. we have calls out to the company and the street earlier this week, thecompany announced updates to storage technology it's not just dropbox. look at a lot of the cloud names this year, they've been ripping higher as investors appreciate the subscription models, potential m & a. a lot of companies have been reporting, not to mention huge market opportunities in front of them flying higher. by far and away its best day since going public back to you. >> josh, thank you very much yeah, definitely an appetite for some of those smaller new tech names. appreciate it. the white house set to implement new tariffs on china as soon as tomorrow. kayla tausche joins us. >> even as diplomatic efforts continue behind the scenes, the secretary of state mike pompeo is in china today where the

foreign minister of china at a press conference addressed trade issues unprompted and said china sees two options quote, one is cooperation and win/win. the other is confrontation and lose/lose. china will choose the first and we hope that the u.s. will make the same sensible choice of course, we are well prepared in case america chooses the second option. the deal struck by the white house behind the scenes hinges on a reprieve for chinese telecom giant zte, which the white house wants to forgive the fine and stricter oversight. but the senate has moved to limit the president's ability to grant that reprieve through an add-on of the 2019 spending bill bob corker acknowledging that might make the white house's deal making complicated. >> i had understood from some of the senators involved -- and i may have a misunderstanding, i don't think so -- there had been a wink and a nod saying, look, we did what we did with the

leader of china, but if congress wants to counter that, they're free todo so now, there must be some pushback occurring from china. >> worth noting, that amendment has bipartisan support and was put forward by, among others, a white house close adviser, tom cotton, who is a close c confidante of the president's. that's being voted on right now. there's also another gop amendment that some senators are seeking to limit the president's authority to introduce national security tariffs we'll wait and see exactly where those votes come in. certainly congress is trying to re-establish some of its rule-making authority, morgan, on the trade front. >> kayla, thank you. kayla tausche in d.c fifth largest trucking company u.s. xpress going public at a time when the trade

policies are in flux, could have a huge impact on this industry eric fuller, ceo of us xpress enterprises. >> thanks for having me. >> $16 listed last night you've been public before. >> uh-huh. >> why go public again now >> well, you know, one -- for a long time we've had a pretty large debt load. when we went private in 2007, we did that with a leverage buyout. we've been highly levered ever since. so that's -- a, it's a big opportunity to pay down debt but, b, we think we're well positioned us xpress has gone through a big transformation, driving earnings improvement from a transition of more growth-oriented company to one more professionally managed that folks on metropolitan rick's, data. >> your pulse on trade we heard this latest report from kayla.

tariffs on chinese goods as soon as tomorrow. we obviously just came off that g7 meeting over the weekend. more angst with allies on steel and aluminum uncertainty around nafta i think those are the big ones this week. have you seen any of those impact goods you're moving across the country >> not from a volume standpoint. where there could be some potential as you look at tractors and trailers and equipment down the road, but from an overall volume perspective, we haven't seen anything impacted at this point. >> obviously, we can't have you here and not talk about driver shortages. >> absolutely. >> wages and your expectations for autonomy. >> from a driver perspective, probably the tightest driving market we've seen at least since -- in my career. being below 4% unemployment. to be honest with you, driving is one of the least popular jobs out there. we're competing against construction we're competing against manufacturing. those jobs are home every night. so it's a little tough to

convince somebody to go out and be out on the road for a couple of weeks at a time that's creating issues in our market but it's also creating opportunity. it's kind of keeping a moderated supply as long as we have strong demand, the market continues to be strong from that perspective. >> the promise of driverless or these convoys that can be driven by fewer drivers, how soon is that >> true autonomous, no driver in a truck, is 20 years out but we believe there will be a lot of driver-assist type technology that will come along in the next 10, 15 years we think that will make the job a little bit easier and help to hire additional people into the industry the true no driver in the truck is a ways off. >> driver shortage you've seen wages increasing in this industry. higher oil prices. we've seen a number of companies the past earning season note that they've seen higher costs tied to higher shipping costs.

>> from our perspective, we're seeing prices up we're also seeing our rates up and up substantially we see opportunity in the market for the last couple of quarters we've seen a robust rate market. >> thanks for joining us here at post nine. >> thank you. >> eric fuller, c ceo of us xpress. when we come back, we're watching shares of or acle today jp morgan downgrades to neutral, inconsistent fundamental performance, stock down 4.5% dohas new go red down 21 after a pretty good open one of the cous that you don't think about very much. it's really not very important. i was in the stone ages as much as technology wise. and i would say i had nothing. you become a school teacher for one reason, you love kids. and so you don't have the same tools, you don't always believe you have the same...

outcomes achievable for yourself. when we got the tablets, it changed everything. by giving them that technology and then marrying it with a curriculum that's designed to have technology at the heart of it, we are really changing the way that students learn. and i can't wait for ten years from now when i get to talk to them again and see, like, who they are. ♪

♪ just saw some new highs there. all but one of them big nasdaq stocks nasdaq itself is up close to

two-thirds a percent with the dow slightly negative. s&p 500 up .2% this follows along with the theme, nasdaq and technology stock outperformance i've been looking at, guys basically a lot of echoes that some people are citing, anyway, from the late '90s i got a piece on cnbc.com about this if you can set the scene a little bit, starting to hum. at the first part of the expansion it was slow and disappointing and now it's gone to a full employment condition stock market near or at new highs. the fed tightening but not enough to restrain capital markets, risk taking just yet. this performance of growth in tech stocks have people wondering if it's getting a little bit, you know, overheated in some pockets. i guess i would say it all does rhyme. i think this is where we get to at a point of late cycle action if, in fact, we're very late in the cycle. also emerging markets wobbling yet tech stocks getting the

dollars coming out of the more vulnerable parts of the world. that all happened, let's say, in the '97 and '99 period i do think it feels familiar to a lot of folks who were around back then. >> you just laid out how it feels familiar how is it different? >> i think the magnitude is very different. back then the largest nasdaq stocks were kind of concepts my favorite example is aol there you see the performance of the s&p excluding technology. >> good jim paulson. >> yeah, he put this together. '95 it started to be all about tech this is more modest. the trajectory is not quite as sharp. we're not to the same extremes at&t when it bid for time warner had a $220 million market value, 20 million subscribers never really turned a profit facebook has a $550 billion market cap, $16 billion in profit last yeerks 40 billion, 1.6 million market users the strength of the companies,

microsoft 60 times earnings then, 20 times earnings now. a matter of degree 500 ipos in 1999 average first day gain, 70%. >> wow >> does that feel like where we have right now >> nowhere near. >> no. we may not ever get there. the point is, it's much more about the general position we are maybe in sight. >> the domestic economy, looking at tracking gdp numbers from jpm, barclays. em is maybe a persistent cough we'll have to live with for a while. >> exactly that was the source of all these kind of little scares and gut checks and market setbacks, back in that period of '97, '98 that caused you the overheat and maybe the bubble toward the end there. again i think if we're going to get there, we have a ways to go. >> it's a good analysis. it was a huge day in europe, of course, with draghi and the ecb. to seema with the european close here hey, seema.

>> european stocks are rallying as the euro suffers its biggest one-day decline in eight months on this big news out of the ecb meeting. central bank announcing plans to discontinue its bond buying program at the end of the year and keep rates at record lows, at least through the summer of 2019 mario draghi spoke about the decision recent data indicating a slowdown in growth. >> it says something about the environment in which we took this decision when news are still good but they're not as good as they were a quarter ago, but are still solid. so, we see increasing uncertainty. we see -- i think i saw that quarterly gdp growth moderated to 0.4 0.4 is less than 0.7 but it's still high growth. >> now, analysts at barclays say they strongly believe that the

ecb will not alter the monetary policy path laid out today as a result of the volatility induced by that risk in italy. german ten-year yield falling today. and bank of japan's monetary policy tomorrow. unilever missing out on today's rally, saying it's extremely unlikely to remain in the ftse 100 after it moves its headquarters to the netherlands. also issuing a sales warning, citing a trucker's strike in brazil that stock down about 3% mike >> all right, seema. thank you very much. when we come back, elon musk going underground in the windy city that's where we find our phil lebeau. >> mike, thousands of people who make the long trek from downtown chicago out to o'hare airport, this say miserable, miserable trip elon musk's boring company says they can do it in 20 minutes and it will work all the details and what's at icake for the city of chago

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♪ the kenya tea development agency is an organization that is owned by tea farmers. every week we sell this tea, we get paid in multiple accounts. we were looking for a bank to provide a safe and efficient technology platform to pay our farmers.

citi was the only one that was able to ensure that this was done seamlessly. and today, at the touch of a button, all the farmers are able to get their money, pay school fees and improve their standard of living. with citi, we see a bright future for our farmers and their families. ♪ hello, everyone. i'm sue herera new york's attorney general barbara underwood is suing donald trump, his foundation and several of his children, accusing them of violating laws regarding new york state charities and making expenditures to directly influence the outcome of the presidential election. the suit seeks $2.8 million in

restitution and the dissolution of the foundation. the president responded by saying he will fight the case. new jersey's governor phil murphy placing the first legal sports bet in the state. this at monmouth park racetrack in oceanport new jersey won a u.s. supreme court ruling last month that cleared the way for all 50 states to begin to offer sports betting. the university of chicago will no longer require sat or act scores from high school students, becoming the first top ten research university to join the exam optional movement russia has deployed thousands of police to the 11 host cities to deal with rowdy soccer fans and other security threats. russia kicks off the tournament with a match today against saudi arabia you're up-to-date. that's the news update this hour back downtown to "squawk alley."

carl back to you. >> sue, thank you. elon musk inking a deal to bring high-speed underground travel to chicago. that's where we find phil lebeau. >> hey, carl, you lived in chicago. the blue line from o'hare to downtown chicago, a trip takes about 40 minutes it's over an hour if you drive to downtown from o'hare. now the boring company has inked a deal to build a high-speed, rapid transit tunnel system from downtown to o'hare here are the details announced today. high-speed transit this is not the hyper loop basically hyper skates that will take pods of people back and forth, cuts time from o'hare down to 12 minutes, and estimated costs $1 billion now what's important about this for the city of chicago is that the boring company is going to be paying all of the cost to

build this chicago is not risking any money here the boring company will theoretically be able to collect revenue once the system is up and operating, whether it's through advertising or other means. a trip will cost $20 to $25. the details still need to be worked out guys, if you look at this from both elon musk's perspective and from mayor emmanuel's perspective, this is a win/win they'll be announcing it this afternoon here in chicago. he can say, look, we're real we're actually building a high-speed transit system in chicago out to the airport and if you're mayor emmanuel, you're running for re-election, you get the shine of saying i inked a deal with a visionary like elon musk by the way, taxpayers will not be footing the bill. not a bad deal if you're mayor emmanuel we'll see if we have a chance to talk to elon musk at that time. >> that video you just showed us

made me feel like i was on a virtual reality amusement park ride boring is digging a tunnel nearby and you do have that loop test tube also down the street in hawthorne. >> reporter: right. >> in many ways for elon musk this is a combination of tech and synergies from tesla and spacex you have a lot of the tesla tech, batteries, chassises, et cetera. >> yep. >> that will go into this project. i can't help but think in many ways the hurdles will be less about engineering and more about regulatory, the lack of data as we've seen in l.a., whether residents will want to see tunnels dug under their neighborhoods. >> reporter: yep. >> and also what this will mean for unions in places like chicago if they bring supply chain in-house. >> reporter: morgan, you're absolutely right the biggest hurdle will be regulatory

keep in mind, already in l.a. there are neighborhood groups that are suing the boring company, to keep them from building a prototype tunnel that will go through their neighborhoods. now here in chicago, the deputy mayor, who shepherded this project all the way through to the deal being announced, he's a former d.o.t. official he is well aware of those regulatory hurdles make no mistake, none of the details have been worked out yet. it remains to be seen when they start digging next year if they can actually get this done and how quickly they can get it done. >> good stuff, phil. meanwhile, we're look at tesla at 353 and change, right in the neighborhood of long-time resistance if it gets to 360, you're talking october of last year. >> exactly and people thought it would be stuck around 300. that's been the battleground level. that's why it's hard to short any stock. they have the ability to change the storyline. that's what they've done, with the cost cutting and musk buying more shares. >> phil, thanks to you

we'll look for more this afternoon. our phil lebeau, obviously, in chicago. amazon and netflix 52-week highs today. added discounts for prime members of whole foods, expansion of the private label there may be, though, early signs of potential growth plateau at the e-commerce giant. that's from analyst mark mahaney who joins us this morning. good to see you today. >> good morning, carl. >> we discussed your note in the 9:00 a.m. with cramer. it got a lot of attention. what do we mean here the term peak and amazon don't go together often lately. >> no, you're right. this may have been one of the least bullish notes i've written on amazon in about 12 years. this is the sixth annual consumer survey we've done, just in the u.s obviously there's limits there a lot of amazon that's outside the u.s. we did see continued record high kind of penetration of number of u.s. consumers, about 90% of them, they'll pick amazon over

any other online retail site when it comes to where they want to shop. that's consistent the last three to four years where there was a little bit of negative surprise was satisfaction scores amongst amazon customers intrinsically high but maybe suboptimal quality controls may be causing a bit of a ripple there. that's something that amazon may need to fix. the other point that was a surprise to us, negative surprise, was that prime seems to have plateaued. that's in contrast with what the company said in its shareholder letter i acknowledged that. we acknowledged that that's what our survey shows 74 million subprimes in the u.s. they may be hitting the point that they've got most of the people they're going to get on better shipping, faster shipping, more music, more video, et cetera those are some of the wrinkles we saw overall, though, we continued to like amazon. it's not one of our top three picks but we continued to like the story. >> mark, the things that you said that amazon will have to do

to get prime moving again all sound like costs to me out of amazon. >> yeah. >> they don't have the issue of i have this tremendously high margin business. they've run it always kind of close to break even. does that change the financial story for amazon over time >> it could, mike. there's two advantages that amazon shareholders and amazon the company has today. these two really large businesses that are growing exceptionally well for super high margins aws, which is now well above 15 billion a year revenue run rate. and this other thing called ams. amazon marketing services, probably about 7 billion a year, revenue run rate with also high margins. 20, 30% operating margins versus the core business. it just allows and gives amazon a lot more air, much bigger room in which to invest aggressively. my guess is that we'll see this new investment cycle in terms of

shipping, behind prime program, whole foods integration and the third thing, building out of shipping with amazon over the next couple of years i'm watching for that investment cycle. amazon shareholders, the advantage they have today, is that this high margin can help subsidize that in the way they couldn't have done in the past. >> shares of etsy surged this morning because they're raising transaction fees on some of their customers, some of their vendors. >> yeah. >> tied largely to shipping fees is that something we could see at amazon as well? >> possibly. morgan, that was a pretty sizeable move by etsy in terms of changing its fee structure to sellers. they're justifying that by saying they'll take the proceeds and further build out tools for sellers, put marketing dollars behind the platform. momentum seems to have really reversed the last year or so does amazon have that kind of pricing power? absolutely, if you take a look at what they did with prime,

raising that by 20 bucks and every year they seem to toggle up, slightly pick up the prices they charge to sellers. as you create the largest platform, they get the value, the power of the platform increases for both consumers and sellers. it does give them pricing power. i wouldn't be surprised to see them do ongoing increases like that maybe not as big as what etsy pulled off this morning, but i would expect that from amazon. >> we have to take advantage of your universe here because of the companies you cover. netflix, all-time high today, has officially doubled for the year twitter, three-year high we all know the squeeze that's been on snap how do you process all those what are your three top picks right now? >> yeah. so, carl, facebook first, expedia second and google third. i know there's a conversation earlier about where valuations are. the advantage you have with stocks like facebook, expedia, too, and google, these are pe stocks with premium, consistent growth rates and very nice free

cash flow generations. that is -- we never saw that in '98, '99, 2000 these are stories that only could have been created in the last ten years and have been created. valuation stories are better and there's a little bit of wall of worry on facebook that doesn't need to exist. they still have new monetization we continue to like netflix. that stock is pretty much at or a little bit above our short-term price target. i think the stock can go higher. it's a small buy for us here. >> what do you think in its collective wisdom the market is saying with all the media combinations happening just keep it simple and they're all fighting netflix and why not buy the real thing >> you know, mike, i think there's an interesting interpretation i think jim was on the call yesterday on cnbc, talking about whether these media mergers should be viewed as broadly defensive. i think that's absolutely true

i'll give you one data point this is the year in which digital advertising will surpass tv advertising in most gdp markets around the world there's a freight train coming towards traditional media companies. you know who those companies are. it's net fliks, google, amazon it's facebook. they've got the cash they've got the consumer appeal. and they've got a lot of innovations into which really cause fundamental risks for traditional media companies. if you think through what these mergers are telling you, there are companies like netflix that companies need to compete against and figure out how to do it they're doing it from a weak hand therefore, buy the strong hand buy netflix. >> mark, good report really fascinating everybody should take a look at it thanks for your time, helping us put some color on it mark mahaney. >> thanks, carl. when we come back, adding to softbank portfolio we'll dig in on that dow remains down, subdued after a nice opening rick santelli, what are you

watching >> i'm watching yields down. we're down three basis points in tens, unchanged in twos. we had solid data. fed likes the economy. i guess it's us versus them. mario draghi and his group didn't sound very optimistic that's what we'll talk about after the break. ♪ feel that? that's the beat of global markets, 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 at the top of the hour, goldilocks is that really the case? plus our call of the day is making jim leventhal some money today. why rebecca patterson says don't fear the fed she will explain when we see you at noon, mike, 10 minutes or so away see you then. >> scott, we'll see you then thank you very much. let's get out to the cme group in chicago rick santelli is there with the santelli exchange. hey, rick. >> hi, mike. it seems so incongrunt to look up and see twos are unchanged, tens are down one, 30s are down three. this is after maybe not

stratospheric but up 4.6 to 4.8 for gdp. maybe it won't come out at 4.8 but others that try to handicap the gdp number for q2 are all crossing that 4% threshold there's some time left maybe we can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat but it still seems like solid growth so what's up with the markets? to me, it's an ongoing story that isn't going away. matter of fact it's going to get much more difficult to my opinion to handicap. okay it's domestic versus global economies impact on the markets. you look at what we're talking about with regard to our gdp then look at what's going on in europe, in japan and it just doesn't fit. so, it's very difficult for the u.s. to leverage up its growth in a global fashion the way many thought we did for a while when it was synchronized growth i remember being on record saying that the u.s. turned the market many said, it's europe leading

the way. maybe it was europe leading the investment way because when the u.s. grabbed the market and leveraged it up, the numbers in europe hadn't turned yet so, all the different methodologies to handicap how much is methodologies, the handicap, how much is left for your investing dollars return just looked juicier to you. boy did that fizzle out. sounds like the merging markets. like the dollar strength you need to be careful there so, let's even get more plain spoken the ecb. did you look at all of the things mario draghi said whether in prepared remarks or afterwards in the presser? i can summarize. he talked about uncertainty at great length risk slowdown risk to growth reform reform it's like a rocky horror picture show time warp he's still lacking crisis mode and he can't find the growth to get out of it on a sustained

basis. in the u.s. it's a completely different picture. is it perfect? no is the timing late on what they're doing? yes. but they're close to the right play and jay paul is oso pragmatic giving confidence again, there's no more thumbs on the scale but i question whether the u.s. is able to see it's rates move as high as they should be with all of the rates of global pressures brings them down carl, back to you. >> rich santelli thanks very much and cohn on the future of the space. when "squawk alley" comes right back

and soft bank reportedly back to work into wework a can deal that would value the company between $35 billion and $40 billion roughly double to where it is now. softbank had invested back in august this would make wework the second biggest startup behind uber. it doesn't get nearly the attention that would match that. >> it doesn't. it's clearer so many bets are bound on up in wework right? you have to believe in the

continued urbanization of younger people and use of repurposing of office space and all of the rest of it. and the social aspect of would >> yeah. back in april, they disclosed they committed to pay $18 billion in rent for the building leases that said, their membership numbers have sky reported-220,000 at the beginning of march, versus 7,000 just four years ago. >> which is more amazing given that the percentage of businesses startups is going down in this country not up >> they're getting all of it, seems where they need to but you're right, they keep consuming capital. like netflix, when you look at their commitments they need to raise money to spend when we come back, sakpeing of the future, gary cohn on self-driving when "squawk alley" comes back

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something is going to happen with the autonomous vehicle, just the same as on a horse. you have a better chance than when a car hits you. as people tended to evolve slower than the technology evolve, that's probably good because we tend to question things longer and longer >> right >> and so, we will continuously have issues with understanding both the positive uses and the unintended uses of the technological revolution >> sort of matches, at least on the driving part, with what an executive told a few moments ago that true autonomy and lease commercial trucking is decades away >> yeah, the technology is there. and being developed. gary cohn talked about trade and all eyes on china, and the possibility of tariffs being

leveled there seems tomorrow >> tomorrow might be the day with the central banks we'll see if that packs any punch. >> bank of japan, we'll watch that adobe tonight, one of the true stars on the s&p jim's got that >> look for that let's get to the judge and the "half. welcome to "the halftime report." i'm scott wapner, our top trade this hour is this. the perfect scenario for stocks. that is the question we're debating as the s&p paces for its fourth straight week of gains the nasdaq hitting another record high this hour. here on setwith us today to discuss all of this is jim leventh leventhal, steve weiss rebecca patterson. baltimore trust. let's begin with records that record for the nasdaq real questions now whether stock, about to take a big