good morning, it is 8:00 a.m. in menlo park, california, 11:00 a.m. on wall street and "squawk alley" is live ♪ ♪ good thursday morning. welcome to "squawk alley." i am carl quintanilla with jon fortt at post 9. morgan is off. we start with facebook

a big beat after a beat on revenue and earnings julia boorstin talked to sheryl sandberg and joins us with more on the quarter and highlights from the interview hey, julia >> carl, facebook having the best day since january of 2016 shares are now up 13%. it is tracking for the best month since july, 2013 facebook earnings come after another scandal, apple accusing facebook of clear breach of policy policies, banning an app that paid users to track mobile activity >> in this case, people that chose to participate in this program did, but we definitely have work to do and we've done it, we're going to continue to do it. as soon as we realized we weren't in kplienls with rules on that platform we pulled it. the important thing is people involved in the research project knew they were involved and consented. >> apple also pulled the plug on a number of internal apps used by facebook employees. facebook says it is working with

apple to resolve the issue amid all the scandals, sandberg saying facebook is committed to change to improve the security and safety of the facebook platform. >> we learned we need a different approach to running our company. we need to put so much effort into preventing harm so that harm which is done by small people but risks drowning out the good because what we see everyday on facebook and this quarter shows people see are people connecting and sharing and using a product that matters in their lives and we need to protect that experience. >> bolstering the stock today. analysts are optimistic facebook can focus on new opportunities, making money from the daily active users of stories, growth of watch video platform, and potential in commerce. find that interview on cnbc.com. back to you. >> a lot of viewers should watch

that thank you. joining us with more, victor anthony, analyst at agis capital and mike santoli we were talking during the break, a lot of analysts had facebook as the top pick of the year you were defending your target when everybody was complaining about facebook >> right i made it my top pick, amidst all the scandals last year that's for 2019. >> what explains user growth in the face of that >> i think that users find a platform compelling. there's no alternative in terms of a platform where you can connect with friends and family on a massive scale all over the globe. there's no alternative to facebook now, which is why you see the user basis sticky and advertisers are following. >> expenses, they reiterated guidance, so why are investors thinking of it differently.

>> two reasons went from 217 to 123 in five months there was a lot of negativity built into it. two, i think all of the financial impact is decisions management made. in terms of performance of the actual platform, advertiser demand, user iengagement that drives what the financial model will do was intact numbers told you that, that costs are up, they told you costs would be up. took 3 percentage hit to gross margins, they told you they were going to do it it is not something unintended effect >> is reality priced into the stock, is this 170 where it is now where it should be trading or is there still some reputational discount that investors should be thinking about? >> i think stock should be up 20%, surprised it is not this is the story facebook told last night, no pun intended. >> the story won't disappear.

>> 2.7 million users, that's 45% of the world's population without china. 7 million advertisers on the platform, up from 6 million advertisers third quarter. they added a million advertisers in the face of scandal after scandal. that speaks to their effectiveness of ad platform when you return to advertisers you talk about instagram, called it out as a strong contributor stories as well. i think stories will become bigger than news feed. based on my own personal usage, it will be bigger as an advertising unit as well versus news feed. then you have what's app and messenger. billion user platform, still early from modernization

and opex, reiterated, you should get increased after 2019 and margin expansion it should help the multiple. a lot to like about the model. >> is cambridge and this privacy scandal going down as another bp oil spill but for facebook people took it too seriously from a stock perspective >> maybe in terms of immediate vulnerability of the company i still don't think it necessarily means never mind you still don't have people, particularly willing to say they love the platform or everything on it. i come away with the idea it is an on-going issue for facebook to fight for its reputation and fight for integrity of the platform it is not we cleaned up the

spill, we're fine. >> do you have probabilities >> there are risks for the platform, i admit that i think positives outweigh the risk i'm not expecting large scale scandal like in 2018 i don't know i do expect bad actors to continue to exploit the platform, that will continue almost indefinitely. you may see smaller things that create headline risk, then you have regulation risk, there are risks which i acknowledge. i think the positives far outweigh the risks that's why it is my top pick for the year >> one of the changes from some viewpoints, they're on the offensive from a product development standpoint what could that look like? what could they come up with that we haven't seen. >> they are investing aggressively, he made that point on the call, in spite of health and safety, they're investing in product development.

i can't sit there and use my crystal ball to say what they'll come up with but i anticipate they will in the next two, three years. >> interesting story shares aren't up 20, but up 13%. >> let's bring in doug andmouth from jpmorgan chase. >> thanks for having me. >> what jumped up about the results, is there a read through to alphabet? >> i think there are a few things that jumped out first quickly engagement being incredibly stable and ticking up in the developed markets i would say revenue which really didn't decel from third quarter, and really, seeing a company that looks like it can moderate spending more in 2020, that puts them on a path to good eps reacceleration in 2020 i think the other important thing to argue is facebook is

back on the offensive more by that, i mean they are focused on other issues in terms of safety and security and data privacy and content review and obviously elections over the last couple of years now you're seeing them reengage on product, and entering a heavier product cycle which we'll see play out the next couple of years. >> doug, how should investors think of reputational risk where facebook is concerned? is that just the danger of regulation which sheryl sandberg talking to julia boorstin talking about regulation they may see here in the u.s. and other places or is it around just costs, that they have to spend more if there's more reputational taj to convince people they're doing something about it >> i think there are multiple elements of reputational risk. it is important to the company, there are multiple

constituencies in terms of maintaining strong engagement which looks like they've had they've done that, the advertiser base also, which there are doubts in the last few or several quarters, but what we have seen is that advertisers are really not moving dollars away because of the negative price cycle. the scale is still so strong and good it is difficult to put dollars into other places. so they're clearly focused on regulatory they're also not opposed to regulatory going forward if it is done the right way. we have seen it obviously in europe it had perhaps short term impacts around the business in the middle of '18, but they rebounded from those and it is probably less likely to see something as strong in the u.s. as we have in europe >> doug, if we go along and agree they're working from renewed position of strength, what does it mean for twitter and snap specifically? >> in terms of what it means for

twitter and snap, i would kind of look at each of the businesses independently to be honest i think the most important overall take away is even though you have higher online penetration of total ad dollars which is certainly north of 40 or 45% in the u.s., probably 60% plus in the uk, the online ad market is growing nicely in our view, there are still more dollars to take. over time it happens more from tv you can look at twitter and snap, twitter is another one of our best ideas coming into the year, and the ad dollars at twitter are still small. we're talking a few billion, and we think it is a business that can grow this year in the high teens and they're making good strides with large advertisers around video which accounts for more than half the revenue snap is in a different position. clearly had more turmoil and say

changes among the management team there, and they're in a tougher competitive dynamic with facebook and the various platforms. >> doug, netflix had a good report i'm looking alphabet and amazon are up more than 2% after a facebook report. is the faang trade back? >> look, is the faang trade back, i think you're seeing that people continued to have good confidence in names. certainly you need to see more from the numbers and strong growth rates can continue, so facebook is certainly helping. we saw it with netflix i think amazon, while there can be choppiness to it, amazon is our other favorite idea here, and that will also be good as we go forward, certainly over a longer term period i think there's good growth here and we like those names. >> we'll see how good that pick

looks in the morning, if not later tonight. doug anmuth. coming up, stephen roach will join us as day two of trade negotiations between china and the u.s. continue in washington. meanwhile, keep an eye on the nasdaq, on pace for the biggest monthly percentage increase since october of 2011 as the dow is down 55 back in a montme [cell phone rings]

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you made it clear you don't want to be permanent ceo. >> that's right. >> why is that >> as we talked before, i love my job i have been a cfo for a long time i'm never too terribly worried about what the middle initial is in my title, and i think this company deserves a phenomenal ceo and i'm very excited about working with him or her once it gets determined to make this special company that i have been fortunate enough to join, to make it even better. our input to the board is take the time necessary to get somebody great and in the meantime, we have a wonderful management team and 107,000 committed employees that are extremely focused on delivering for our customers so we're going to be just fine in the interim, but i do expect and hope in the near term, i don't want to put a

time frame on it, near term, we'll have a wonderful new ceo >> well, less than a week. that was newly minted intel ceo bob swan here on "squawk alley" last friday after earnings, intel naming swan the permanent ceo. earlier this morning, he was serving as interim cfo and ceo i was on the phone with him moments ago, asked what about the discrepancy, what changed over not being interested and now being ceo. he told me i said at the time and reiterated that i wasn't interested, at the time when he took the interim position. what changed was number one, he went from loving his day job to loving the company, and then he said the second thing that changed, i was asked the board asked him to take the job. i tried to press on the time line behind all of that, curious. normally companies put in a cfo to signal to external candidates the job really is open, that

there's a legitimate race here as opposed to putting someone in an operational role that's heir apparent he had four priorities going forward, one was execution we heard from microsoft last night that one of the issues in the personal computing division, including windows and pcs was supply con stranstraint, not en chips for oems to supply the demand seen from customers that's on intel. bob swan said we dramatically expanded the role we play in industry, making sure we don't constrain the growth by not having the product when customers need it. guys, sometimes they say i'm not interested but become interested rather quickly >> jon, that's interesting, what we heard from you talking to swan it kind of goes along with the

question we were asking, which is wait a second, how does a guy going from saying that with you and others on tv not longago t taking the job permanently my understanding is additionally he didn't think he was a candidate, when he first took the job, with that unexpected departure at the time, perhaps was sort of trying to cushion the possibility of his own rejection by saying he was not interested they did get down the path far i am told with one particular candidate, it did not end up happening, that was fairly recently, they went back to him, to your point, he was asked, and then said yes. i guessyou can square the two, but it does have an odd look to it >> when i did that fort knox interview, you can see that on cnbc.com and youtube on the fort knox channel, after that an analyst contacted me and said it is interesting in meetings with analysts, he seems more open to the job. what's that about. i said i put the whole interview

out there. what you know is what i know what i know is what you know make of it what you will >> what i also hear from somebody close to the board that made the decision, they were very impressed with what they felt was his ability to build credibility with customers and employees, beyond just the financial community where we already had decent currency as cfo. >> the other thing, cramer was arguing this morning a company like this needs a chip designer, not a financial guy. what do you think? >> i think they had one, an engineer's engineer, a guy who was very familiar with chip process, what did they run into? they ran into a chip process problem and not having the ability to produce those chips they need execution. they seem to think they can get

that from bob swan, based on how he performed during this interim period, getting them on track. they expect the next generation of chips end of this year, that's what customers want to see like we had at the holiday. >> new chapter for intel starting today meantime, the president is tweeting on trade as representatives of china and the u.s. meet in washington for negotiations kayla tausche has the latest on that big day today. >> reporter: it is day two of critical negotiations between the u.s. and china according to sources briefed by each side, one thing under discussion today is potential meeting between president trump and president xi to take place at the end of february, after president trump holds his second summit with kim jong-un of north korea. notably, this meeting is currently under discussion to take place before the march 1st date after which u.s. tariffs go up to 25% from 10%, but location of the meeting, the final date of the meeting and details of

any deal to come before the meeting are still under discussion those are the sticking points, to get the u.s. side to accept the invitation from china. china originally proposed this to take place on chinese soil, but i'm told that obviously the optics of having a u.s. trade deal announced on chinese soil, that would be bad. also one of the sticking points, allies are nervous about president trump meeting with kim jong-un and president xi back to back, dictator,authoritarian leader without injection of sensibility from what allies in the region want him to say in ee either of the meetings china wants to shelf that hard stuff, with the expectation president trump might be willing to reach an easier deal than his negotiators would at the table today in washington. and u.s. wants commitments before we have seen the president essentially confirm he will take the meeting. he tweeted this morning, no

final deal will be made until my friend president xi and i meet to discuss and agree on long-standing more difficult points he calls it a very comprehensive transaction, but says the u.s. is looking for china to open markets not only to financial services which china is already doing but also to manufacturing, farmers and other u.s. businesses a white house official tells me currently the u.s. is focused on substance, not next steps, although we have a next step we're watching president trump will receive the vice president this afternoon. we'll see if we get announcement then carl >> that sets this up beautifully. thank you. kayla tausche outside the white house. and the president's tweets add to it. commerce secretary ross said the two sides are miles and miles away, while the nec director larry kudlow is upbeat on

progress will the two sides get a deal before the march 1st deadline. stephen roach is joining me. good morning good to have you with us >> hi, carl, how are you >> i'm good. given everything kayla gave us on framework, did the hill we have to climb to get a deal by march 1st just get taller? >> well, i think the president's tweet this morning is sort of classic in terms of his desire to personalize the deal, the ultimate rise to the top of the mountain as you put it i think the deal will be a weak deal, carl it will be mainly trade, china opening up its wall, committing to buy l and g and soybeans. but the tough structural issues the president was alluding to in

his tweet i think will not be resolved they may come to agreement on framework to continue to discuss them i think these issues are too tough to do in the next 28 days. >> but you think the so-called purchase and promise where they agree to buy some goods and shelf harder issues for later, you think that's potentially possible in the next four weeks? >> yeah, i do. i think there's a reasonable chance of that type of framework, but i don't think it is going to get to the essence of the complaint lodged by u.s. trade representative lighthizer in his 182 page section 301 report that was published last march, a report that i have spoken to you about before, i think is seriously flawed. whether it is flawed or not, that's the essence of the complaint, and it requires major

breakthroughs on the market opening initiatives that the president alluded to and also the thorn ee issue of technology, transfer, cyber and state sponsored industrial policies i think those are much tougher to break through >> if the deal is weak as you expect but we get one, do we get stability in the u.s., china relationship do tariffs entirely come off and threat of tariffs? can business then move forward >> well, john, i think that the quid pro quo is if we get a deal, the u.s. will stand down on the threat to raise the tariffs from 10 to 25 or expand them to another 267 billion as the president has threatened from time to time. but i think given the intractability of the technology and intellectual property and cyber issues, conflict is long

lasting. some like vice president mike pence called it cold war 2.0, and i don't think that's an unreasonable way to assess what could be a long-standing and protracted struggle between the two super powers that's going to be problematic for corporate america to continue to make decisions in that type of on-going struggle >> we often ask you to help us understand the chinese mindset in these talks how are they thinking about huawei an extra digs there and challenges of 5g and separately our own internal domestic challenges, the president's poll numbers. does that inhibit or enhance their willingness to talk in any way? >> look, i think the huawei

issues, we said repeatedly we want to segment or put fire wall between what we do with huawei and broader trade negotiations i think that's unrealistic when we're going after one of their top or the top technology enterprise in china, i think we are being naive if we think this doesn't effect the sense of what the chinese believe to be our aggressive intent. this puts them certainly on the defensive in that regard does cast i think more of a shadow on the negotiations than we would like them to do i don't think they're paying a whole lot of attention to the shutdown and disruptions and other issues the president may be focusing on

the bottom line for china, carl, is that they have their development aspirations over the next 20 to 30 years that she jing ping laid out in public statements to the part congress and others they don't want to compromise on that they recognize there's a lot of push back from us, so they've got to negotiate some of the tho thorniest areas of push back to think they'll back off on core policies i think is naive. >> i want to go back to the cold war 2.0 statement which you said maybe isn't that far off reality. it seems to me if that really is the framing here that this relationship with china could get a lot worse. i mean, whatever the equivalent of containment policy is, i mean, we've still got ceos in the u.s. talking about the future belonging to u.s. and china and importance of working together that's not like the cold war was

between the u.s. and the ussr. >> no, exactly i think that's a real problem. the chinese relationship with the u.s. has been one of challenge and opportunity over the last four years and in a cold war 2.0, it will be more challenging. hopefully it will not involve the type of military confrontations we had repeatedly with the former soviet union from 1947 to their demise in 1991, but i think the thing to think about in cold war 2.0 is that our economy is not nearly as strong today as it was during the 1947 and 1991 period i will cite one number our domestic savings rate during cold war 1.0 averaged about 8.5 to 9%. today it is less than 3. so we don't have the saving to

fund the buildup of innovation and infrastructure and human capital that we need to really match china the way we matched the former soviet union and ultimately crushed them by the end of cold war 1.0, and that's a very different perspective that we need to have deeper appreciation >> we're going to wait to see if we get a readout on the oval meeting today, stephen it will be an interesting afternoon. talk to you. thanks >> thank you, carl and when we return, shares of ge surging after a big beat on revenue one of the s&p's best performers shares are currently up 14.5%. more on ge's quarter next. first, look at the worst performing stocks in the dow in

today's session. microsoft down 2.3%, intel down nearly 3, and dow dupont off 8%. more "squawk alley" to come. don't go anywhere. to have a hundred percent renewable energy goal. if we don't make this move we're going to have changes in our environment, and have a negative impact to hawaii's economy. ♪ verizon provided us a solution that lets us collect near real time data on our power grid. ♪ if we can create our own energy, we can take care of this beautiful place that i grew up in. ♪ ♪ ♪ our new, hot, fresh breakfast will get you the readiest. (buzzer sound) holiday inn express. be the readiest.

good morning i am sue herera. this is a pileup after a snow squall caused whiteout conditions on the highway. it is part of the polar ver techs impacting 120 million across 27 states public school teachers are expected to hit picket lines as union leaders and district hold another round of contract negotiations big sticking point is higher pay. without a deal, teachers could walk off the job in bangkok using drones to fight pollution.

the unmanned aircraft will spray water over the capital city. a fire tore through newark airport. at least a dozen cars destroyed in the blaze no one was injured flight operations were not impacted investigators are still looking into the cause of that fire. you are up to date that's the news update this hour let's get back downtown to "squawk alley. jon, back to you >> thank you, sue. european markets just closing minutes ago. seema mody joins us with today's action, a fraction of friction, right? >> that's right. despite an upbeat session in asia, stocksin europe closing mostly to the down side with the exception of france and the uk the uk market helped by positive earnings from royal dutch shell and diageo then some economic data, italy reporting it officially entered a recession. its economy shrinking 0.2%

second quarterly contraction in growth the italian prime minister blaming weak growth on the u.s., china trade war. in response, the two year hitting the lowest level since mid may last year. the recession in italy weighed on the wider eurozone which grew only 0.2% in the last quarter of 2018, finishing the year growth of 1.8%. sharp drop from the growth rate in 2017. despite growing economic concerns, several earnings reports brushed off concerns around a slowdown in global growth ferrari, in china double digit sales increase in china. shares of ferrari are up more than 10% today on the flip side, shares of swatch, blaming a slowdown in asia to end 2018

there are some winners and losers when it comes to that market carl, back to you. >> thanks. seema mody. why shares of microsoft are slipping this morning and busy week for tech earnings will continue tonight names like amazon after the bell wel lk'lta about what to expect when "squawk alley" continues. stay with us

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shortages impacting the windows operating system more personal computing in the last three months of 2018, saying shortages will likely continue to hurt sales in the months ahead joining me, keith wise good to have you with us >> thank you for having me >> stock is down 2%. it rallied more than that yesterday. was this bad overall or in line with microsoft's continuing momentum >> sure. the core parts of the microsoft story, long term investors are interested in the commercial part of the business commercial momentum was really good in the quarter. you saw commercial cloud bookings accelerate to 22% growth, a leading main indicator we look to some of that was taken away by transactional elements it took away some ref knew up side and eps up side for long term guys looking at this as a good secular story in front of cloud, you're really on board with this story, you're

not too discouraged. actually you're encouraged by last night's print it is the near term focused guys looking for earnings outperformance, they're the ones disappointed. >> 74, 75% in the commercial cloud category equal with what we saw last quarter. that's good. >> yeah. so you're talking about the azure business the cloud business sustains 76% growth, dead solid from q1 that's one of the core secular parts of the business. a lot were worried about the ability to sustain the growth. you saw a lot of components suppliers talk about weaker shipments into vendors like microsoft with azure or amazon with aws but you didn't see those fears realized, and the management team sounded comfortable in terms of durability of that demand going forward >> how are you looking at jitters on cloud overall as the quarter has been going on. >> sure.

we're pretty confident in cloud demand trend we look at demand indicators like cio service, conversations with partners like systems incident gr integrators and they're confident. we see platforms and people are shifting production work loads into those environments. we think the demand will be stable the tricky part for investors is understanding the chunkiness of the supply equation, of the components of the clouds microsoft gets better utilization on the underlying hardware and can sustain good demand from the supply side, you see chunky shipments into public clouds. >> microsoft is trying to tell a story like ground warfare, going vertical by vertical, this wa

walgreen's deal -- >> i think in our survey work and conversation with cios, we see potential for microsoft to catch up with aws. aws had the early lead when it came to developers, guys in silicon valley and hardcore engineers. when it comes to solving problems, mainstream business problems, microsoft starts to get more advantage for two reasons. they have assets in the public cloud and -- >> amazon says they have that too. they're shipping servers soon. >> soon. but today on the ground, microsoft can today and they have the legacy of doing that. >> microsoft has permeated the enterprise space in ways amazon has not? >> yes they had the technology on premise. they have people comfortable using that technology, and importantly they have the customer relationships they understand how to work with someone like walgreen, they

understand the procurement processes to get the big companies up and running on technology >> what does aws need to say tonight? >> aws needs to see continued on the cloud side of the equation, needs to see continued trend lines. they need to talk about expanding out enterprise presence, being able to do better with on premise environments and progress they're making with new servers they're looking to ship and need to convince investors that they can solve business problems as well as microsoft can. that they can build those relationships, get the domain expertise, what's the problem that walgreen is trying to solve, not just the technology problem that developers and engineers have. >> assuming amazon doesn't -- it supports their story there may be a pick up second half because cloud players continue to be

hungry. >> definitely. if you see the continued strong cloud demand you're more likely to say for suppliers it is more a cycle where cloud vendors ingest and digest technology that they're shipping. >> thanks. >> excellent and up next, we head out to freezing cold chicago for rick saelelli with the ntli exchange stay with us question. was it necessary to create a luxury car more teched out than silicon valley? with a cockpit fit for aspaceship. hang on. radar that senses things the human eye can't. busted. and the ability to make a thousand decisions before you even make one. was all this, really necessary? what do you think? ♪

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let's check in with rick santelli for the santelli exchange >> good morning. thank you. there's one word i heard since yesterday's fed meeting, whether in e-mails, on tv, heard it on our channel and other channels, capitulation the fed, complete 180 degrees from six weeks ago i don't know to me the real capitulation happened in my opinion when former fed chairpeople had to be data dependent whether it was ben bernanke or janet yellen, and it was a myth. it was about opinion dependency and model dependency, about waiting as long as they could to try to let the economy and their opinion create a momentum.

the problem is that the conditions that they were trying to reverse were conditions predicated on a crisis the crisis didn't last nearly as long as the policy did, and by puttingdependent, they forever in my opinion, lost trust in the marketplace then fast forward a bit. okay to yesterday was a capitulation no, i think this chairman isn't capitulating he's going from no plan to a formation of a plan. and the plan is quite simple he's dealing with the reality. you know, the tube of toothpaste analogy is always used once it's out, you can't get it back in. in my opinion there have been activities at the central bank where they would like to try to get a little toothpick and put it back in, but the reality is that the whole concept of normalization is a fraud okay because we were cater pillars, then butterflies you can't make that butterfly

turn back into a caterpillar, period, end of story we've healed over a scab what resulted is not the same economy. we've been kidding ourselves that it is yes, there's give candy away, all of that. i agree. but the biggest problem is is that there's a certain reality that has to be dealt with today. and all the arm chair quarterbacks and all the analysts that are weighing in on it, where were they in earliyer years when they should have been loudly complaining that the policy in place in the u.s. economy with the rates and the balance sheet was well past its prime. at the end of the day, perceptions are all that matters. perception of recession, this fed chairman is dealing with those perceptions because he understands they can turn into reality. and he is actually looking at data and conditions not just giving it lip service. john fortt, back to you. >> thank you, rick stay warm. still to come, tesla shares

dipping a little lower this morning. we'll tell you why after q auick break. "squawk alley" continues next. this isn't just any moving day.

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be retiring and the new cfo will be the vp of finance wall street doesn't know him well that's one reason for the pressure the other question that cape out of the call is how much tesla is relying on its upcoming plant, the one they're building in shanghai to provide model 3s by the end of this year elon musk says the goal is to build 3,000 model 3s per week at that the plant by the end of this year, in part because they need to bring down the price of the model 3. >> the demand for model 3 is insanely high. the inhibitor is affordability it's just that people don't have the money to buy the car it's got nothing to do with desire they don't have enough money in their bank account if the car can be made more afford be, the demand is extraordinary. >> all of this raises questions about tesla's ability to hit its

target for delivering between 360 and 400,000 vehicles this year for a point of reference, on the far right you see that the company delivered 245,000 vehicles last year i should point out that 360 to 400k is below what.on wall street were expecting. there's a bit of pressure on tesla shares today. >> some pointed out, phil, it seems like the shares tend to move more in the wake of an earnings print but this time not as much. phil it, thanks dow's turned positive session low down 172 not only has the s&p crossed 2700, we're seven points above that back in a minute

>> the take a look at shares of ge today, surging this morning after posting a beat on revenue. posted higher by strength in aviation the company announced a settlement with the justice department over its former subprime mortgage business wmc shares up this morning one of thes&p's best performer up more than 15% go back to late october to get a double digit print on ge. >> look at shares of avon. getting a big bump this morning after some comments from value investor bill mill who said last hour it's the most interesting stock he's added to his

portfolio recently the stock currently up more than 20%. had a rough run over the past couple years we'll see if this is putting lipstick on a stocking > miller moves names watch for amazon tonight a lot to talk about tomorrow with the jobs number let's get to the judge and the half. >> car, thanks i'm scott wapner the best month for stocks in more than three years. will the january effect keep the momentum going it is 12:00 noon this is the halftime report. >> as a freezing january comes to an end, investors look to february to see if the hot stock market stk roll into a new month with earnings and the fed seemingly at investors backs, is the dow's next stop 26,000 plus big news on intel and ge. and can you trust the bank trade? amazon reports after the bell. we'll get you ahead of the numbers. and legendary investor howard marks