good morning it is 8:00 a.m. at amazon headquarters in seattle, 11:00 a.m. on wall street. and "squawk alley" is live ♪ ♪ good monday morning. welcome to "squawk alley." carl quintanilla with morgan brennan and jon fortt at post 9 of the new york stock exchange we begin in washington and

update on shutdown talks for more, ylan mui >> reporter: good morning, carl. three sources are confirming lead negotiators of the shutdown committee are trying to resuscitate talks. top two democrats, top two republicans in that committee are planning to meet later this afternoon. that's scheduled to happen at 3:30 p.m this is supposed to be a private meeting. i'm told not to expect them to hash out details of dollar funding or of i.c.e. detention beds, but this is a chance for them to get together, come back to the table, agree to move forward with talks once again. that's because lawmakers are already playing catch up i'm told they originally intended to announce a deal by noon today in order to comply with procedural requirements in the house and senate to get a deal passed before friday, february 15th. now i am told there's still time for something to come together if they really want it to happen, if there's a will, there's a way here on capitol

hill the fact that the meeting is bipartisan, is bi-cam rera, tha' good >> it is not just wall money, it is other issues. we'll see how it turns ylan mui in washington. major averages on a win strike, the nasdaq coming off the seventh straight week in the green. index trading near correction territory. let down by faang. good morning, guys good to see you. >> good morning, carl. >> anthony, trying to unwrap the puzzle of what happened to faang relative to the rest of tech the last few weeks >> yeah. i believe that the market is struggling to try to get comfortable with margins and investment if you look at the faang stocks, starting with netflix, they

raised guidance. amazon, talked about '19 investments, alphabet seeing margin compression, i think that facebook struggled with this going back to last year, you have a question of what's morn important to the market, revenue growth which google accelerated or are faang stocks going to get a pass given their dominance, given their track record to invest more for revenue growth i think that's a theme i hear a lot from tech investors on the faang stocks. >> i don't feel too bad about a lot of technology stocks i look at a lot of them up 25% or better over six months. is there another story happening here that perhaps you're feeling on the ground in silicon valley as well? >> look, i think generally as the market expands and economy

continues to be strong, people spend on technology, it gives companies a competitive advantage, whether twilie or elastic. by using their product, companies create growth and earnings the fact more technology is being used isn't surprising. the difference between faang and midcap and smaller tech companies has to do with those, the big ones have more global exposure and there are global kern concerns, but tech is riding a strong wave. you look at the public sector or private companies we tend to invest in, across the board you're seeing strong momentum in the underlying fundamentals. as a result of that i think we're going to see continued growth for the time being, particularly if the u.s. economy continues to perform >> just to dig in more, given that we have a number of large tech unicorns so to speak expected to go public this year,

the criticism is many of those could come to market, they're already mature, maybe their best growth is behind them. you think what >> it is pretty interesting. i would say there's a little bit of a dichotomy between some consumer companies that are coming public this year and some companies that do more enterprise software. the consumer ones tended to wait longer to come to market, as a result are more mature and growth has slowed a bit. the enterprise ones tend to go public earlier, being public is helpful selling their products to other corporations. i think you'll see a dichotomy where the consumer companies will probably come out, meet some level of expectation, find a plateau level where stocks will be, and i think the enterprise companies may grow a little because they're smaller and inherently more skewed on the growth side. but look, there's a lot of expectations, some of these companies are iconic, whether you talk uber, airbnb, these are

businesses their names have become essentially the category. i think that generally speaking they're going to be well received when they come to market. >> anthony, big week regarding u.s. and china trade as mid level talks continue my question for cramer this morning was if you got news that xi was coming to mar-a-lago in march to sign something, what would be the first bid you make? do you have a list, shopping list ready to go if that happens? >> good question i think it has been a little bit of an overhang, by and large, those names don't operate in china. amazon has some exposure to china. i think any relief there, maybe an opportunity to own amazon i know there are a host of other headlines to think about in terms of that one, but basically i think facebook, google, amazon faang names, listening to mike, they're reasonably valued. they're market leaders they have revenue less cyclical.

some macro fears have probably proven to be a little overblown. they have competitive notes and reasonably valued. they're more than the late stage union cor unicorns mentioned earlier strength and fundamental bodes well for them, it is a dotted line, not direct regardless of china talks, there are headline overhangs, macro fears or china pressuring faang and tech market broadly and i think that created perhaps opportunity here >> the economist says looks like the bubble may be deflating when it comes to tech growth. is he wrong? is there not a bubble when it comes to tech? >> i don't think there's a bubble forthe large publicly traded tech companies. the reason i say that, they're pretty reasonably valued on earnings and free cash flow.

a lot of cases, google, 140 b d billion dollar company, i look at the stocks and go back to prior cycles if you want to say bubble, i think of 2001. i don't think the stocks are very overvalued. i don't feel like there's a lot of speculative excess in these stocks we can go to smith cap land and seeing high multiples, but when you look at the dominant free cash flow generating tech stocks, i think the market has them fairly well valued. i don't see a bubble here. >> good way to start the hour. good discussion on a day tech is in focus see you soon >> thanks for having me. the fight between jeff bezos and "national enquirer" making headlines over the weekend after the amazon chief accused the tabloid and publisher of blackmail in a blog post "the wall street journal" taking

it further, writing a piece jeff bezos' journey from private family man to tabloid sensation. amazon responding saying i didn't realize "the wall street journal trafficked in warmed over drivel from supermarket tabloids and kara swisher's column, jeff bezos isn't afraid of total disclosure how are you doing? >> good. >> this story gets curiouser and curiouser. you raid an interesting point in the piece you wrote. what i took from it, jeff bezos could use this incident as an excuse, a motivator to protect everyone's privacy differently versus just to check mate his information opponent >> i don't mind if he does that, it is "national enquirer" and there are issues around how they collected this information if it turns out to be criminal, he has every right to look into

that but i think there's a bigger issue, privacy of most citizens, they aren't the world's richest man, don't have the ability to hire the fanciest investigators and the most lawyers and have such a global platform i think one of the issues going forward is privacy, violations of privacy, misuse of people's consumer data, including by companies like amazon. what are the rules of the road and what should they be going forward. i thought i would use the opportunity, his story which is a bit salacious, but isn't, to talk about other issues. >> very salacious. everybody is talking about it. unbelievable that jeff bezos finds himself in this position do you see any further reputational damage for amazon or is this just hey, jeff bezos is just like the rest of us, makes curious decisions and people keep ordering whatever it

is they order on amazon. >> yeah. i think the question is, does it move into other areas. i don't think so i think there's jeff bezos the person and jeff bezos of amazon and jeff bezos of "the washington post. what's interesting is he did link some of it to "the washington post" and to donald trump and to all kinds of things, so he's definitely entering sort of -- putting it out there, so to speak i don't think it has a reputational issue for amazon, there's arguments over the headquarters that continue it brings more attention to him as a personality but at the same time, he is the world's richest man and runs amazon of course he is going to get attention. >> kara, sonnenfeld said this is a warning plan to make a succession plan. do you agree >> i don't know. i suppose. i don't think it is a warning. i don't think he has done anything wrong in this instance, he is just defending himself, he has a family

having these photos leaked is problematic. i don't know about that. but they should have a succession plan in place obviously. it is very hard with a lot of the companies, most of them are founders of the companies, whether it is facebook, at google they pulled that off relatively well, and at other companies they have to think about doing it most of the internet companies are run by original founders or original founding team >> yeah, but i think his point was amazon ex-bezos is largely personalist. we tend to infuse the companies with personalities, we don't have a lot to work with other than andy jasy and studio executives should they make more effort to say this is a team, a starter team >> actually the amazon team has been together a long time. again, it is not just jeff bezos, andy jassey has been there. i can't remember everybody's name, because they're not as

well known as jeff, but the team is largely the same team in place a very long time it is sort of akin to apple in an odd way because that team had been together a very long time, and facebook, same team. i'm not so sure, i mean, they should think about it, that's the job of a board, but i don't know this incident brings that he is young, vibrant, full of vision i don't think that's necessarily an issue here. >> how about the other argument that this episode, kara, illustrates how much bezos cares about the studios itself, and production, in ways we didn't realize before. >> in production how so, meaning that he cares about -- >> the journal story reaching out to toll kin estate to make sure lord of the rings franchise would be taken care of he likes being in the movie business. >> who wouldn't like it. there's selling toilet paper and hanging out with celebrities, it is fine. all these people tend to go to

that once they get their first billion i guess, i don't know. i don't know what i would do, carl, what would you do? i would buy st. barts. whatever they have interests in other things he is interested in space, elon is interested in space, larry page doing hover cars. they end up doing not what they started doing. it is not unusual. and i think amazon has a big business in entertainment. they're obviously making big bets there >> kara, i wonder are there other either founders or prominent ceos that you heard from or heard about that are taking lessons from what jeff bezos is going through now do you think it is changing anybody's practices around privacy protections they set up or what they expect from tabloids or fringe media >> i think they have already especially one of the things they do take time on is security, the physical security. pretty much all people i cover

have very elaborate security systems around them. i think they have to think of digital security and if they're not, i don't know what they're doing. they shouldn't wander in a similar way, these thing are vulnerable and for everybody, but for them in particular they don't just have personal information, they have corporate information, all kinds of things i imagine most of them are robust in the cyber security area >> probably more fans of encryption than ever out there, kara thanks, good to see you. >> thanks so much. coming up, the president and cio of van guard, greg davis, joins us from the largest etf conference the s&p is flat to the down side, the nasdaq is just barely hanging onto gains, up 7 points. more "squawk alley" after the brk. ea ♪ driverless cars. all ground personnel please clear the hangar.

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where the global economy is going. the man that gave the keynote joins us greg davis, cio of vanguard. a little worry some news but you have a message on global growth, it is not as strong as people think give us your outlook >> in the u.s. we expect growth to be 2% we are expecting growth of a percent in europe, expecting china to slow to 6%. there's a possibility that you get a quarter with a five handle on it. >> this worries me this is lower forecast than six months ago the eu had this, bank of england had depressing commentary last week seems like the united states is one of the only real engines of global growth. >> the stock market had a good run after the close to bear market fourth quarter of 2018. if we look forward the next ten years, our expectations on u.s.

equity markets is 5% annualized return the next decade. >> that's lower. >> the next ten years, 5% annualized five years ago would have been 8% >> i am worried about the market now. you have zero percent earnings growth crowd, recession crowd, saying negative growth two quarters if you're at zero percent growth, the market is like 17 forward earnings that doesn't seem like a good idea for markets. >> if you look at where we are relative to beginning of 2018, beginning of 2018 we were 18.5 times forward earnings but to your point, we think we're the high end of fair value, muted growth. >> are you expecting zero percent earnings growth? >> we think mid single digits.

>> you're more optimistic. >> more than we see folks expecting zero percent growth in that time. >> in this kind of environment, fees matter. vanguard is famous for pounding, fees matter. you saw a great chart that showed bond funds, most when you extract the cost, the fees of bond funds, almost no managers ever outperform, number one, and number two, the alpha goes away, no outperformance. the point being when the low environment goes low cost fees as you can have. >> we looked at intermediate term bond funds, government bond funds and corporate funds. for intermediate funds, once you take fees in consideration, the alpha disappeared. there were some marginal amounts left over. >> low cost is critical, dealing with active funds or passive funds, and active fund managers

don't outperform >> that is correct >> everybody wants to know about the recession, recession in 2019 >> no. we upgraded risk of recession in 2019 because of policy uncertainty from 30 to 35%, we see risk rising into 2020, expect it to be 40 to 50% chance of recession in 2020 >> okay. inflation is relatively muted. >> 2%, u.s >> and europe? >> about a percent, percent and a half same for japan. >> 5% returns, all of us used to talk about 7, 8, 9% returns, what does that mean for people going forward. >> great question. investors need to keep in mind we have lower expected returns going forward. again, you probably have to save more, save longer, ultimately control what you can and that's costs. >> greg davis, pleasure to see you. people always show up to hear the keynote address.

appreciate your insight. >> thank you very much. >> reporter: i am here all day at the biggest etf conference. talking to paul tudor jones at 3:00, why he thinks environmental, social governance funds should get more influence on the investing public. guys, back to you. >> bob, thank you. thanks to greg davis as well shares of nvidia are lower after receiving a downgrade at bernstein, cutting price target on stock following guidance preannouncement last month with us now, the analyst behind that downgrade, stacy rasgon great to speak with you. >> good to be here. >> why the change of heart on nvidia and why now after that pre-announcement >> that pre-announcement was sobering spent the last couple of weeks going through our model, thinking through the different

sce scenarios and where things are going. at the end of that where we come out, i have a hard time even with giving the benefit of the doubt, seeing plenty of recovery, hard time seeing more than $7 in earnings in a couple of years i think days of putting 30 to 40 times on earnings numbers are over for now and if it turns out they're not deserving of the benefit of the doubt, there will be more up side once you take time to scrub through things, seemed like the right call so we downgraded it today. >> stacy, how much is nvidia specific and how much is sector wide >> i think it is both. they already had a fairly sizable step down in november. remember, original guide anances 700 million off the street that was overhang from crypto bubble and had significant inventory flush associated with

that that was painful i can live with inventory flush, those rebound after awhile i think what's going on now is different. they have a piece of this attributed to macro in china, that's everybody's situation, and also the new high end gaming architecture seems to be weaker than they were hoping. i think that's a change versus where they were three months ago. that's entirely nvidia specific, i don't know that that resolves next quarter i don't know we'll see where things go. >> stacy, investors in these names have almost silos of worry, data center, auto, crypto, gaming for nvidia, which is the deepest silo >> there's two silos the first in gaming. the big question is what is the true run rate of the gaming business this is a business run rating a billion a quarter. all of a sudden spiked to 1.8 billion a quarter,

coincidence with the rise in crypto currency pricing. the question of where it should normalize to when the crypto bubble is through is an open question should be a billion and a half or should it be back to a billion, nobody knows. that's one silo of worry the other is data center this is a business still growing. sequential growth last knew quarters has been getting less and less, starting to cause a little angst seeing a shortfall in q4, arguing economic situations and push outs, but the question of what the recovery will look like in the context of new competition coming in, headline risk which is always there, which you can maybe forgive when the business is growing. the question of what the run rate of data center is, how big the opportunity is, what it can do in the face of competition, that's probably the second silo.

>> stacy, thanks for joining us from bernstein as we head to break, look at the worst performing stocks in the dow so far in today's session. united health, walt disney, pfizer, mek.rc more "squawk alley" is ahead don't go anywhere. your finances, your future. how do you solve this? you partner with a firm that combines trusted, personal advice with the cutting edge tools and insights to help you not only see your potential, but live it too. morgan stanley.

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welcome back to "squawk alley. i am contessa brewer here is what's happening now denver teachers are on strike after negotiations fell through over the weekend they're pushing the school district on the issue of base pay. plans are in place to go back to the bargaining table tomorrow. schools will remain open. the truck driver accused of killing 11 people, wounding 7 at a pittsburgh synagogue faces new criminal charges robert bowers was arraigned on 19 federal charges, in addition to the 44 charges he already faces in the shooting last

october. south korean president moon wants to pay respects to president trump and north korean leader kim jong-un for their peace efforts. he held a meeting with top aides, expects their second summit to be a turning point in denuclearizing the korean peninsula. mcdonald's announced it is dipping into donuts, rolling out donut sticks nationwide february 20th they will be made fresh daily, purchased by the dozen or half dozen in breakfast hours that's the cnbc update this hour let's get back to "squawk alley. morgan, i'm on day seven no sugar, no carb, no booze kind of challenge. donuts in my news hit doesn't go over well with me. >> stick with it good luck. once we can sample them, let you know what they're like >> okay. >> contessa brewer, thank you.

european markets are closing just moments ago seema mody joins us with a look at today's action. >> europe is holding on to gains. italy is the outperformer, you can see up 1.3%. that's because of the italian banking sector those stocks are moving higher, following reports that capital positions are above levels required by the european central bank there's a number of concerns regarding italy after the latest data showed they entered technical recession last quarter. to the uk, the pound breaking 1.30 after they reported the slowest rate of growth since 2012 the ftse 100 still higher by 1%. this is after a new study from london school of economics showed british firms have diverted about $10 billion of investment to the eu, due to the brexit concerns. that gives you a sense how companies are changing plans after that, imf downgrading

outlook on europe. economists see growth to moderate from 1.8% to 1.6% in 2019 stocks in focus, smith and nephew down, on a report the medical marijuana giant, and nuvasive up. on the earnings front, a number of european multinationals report this week nissan, michelin which has in the past talked weakness in china, and nestle also reporting. back to you. >> thank you when we come back, why amazon's hq2 in new york may be in jeopardy. dow down 22. back in a minute

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here all along i also believe this city thrived for a long time, will continue to thrive, but we have to stand up for our values. >> new york city council member, a vocal critic of the decision to move hq2 campus to new york city now the e-commerce giant is reconsidering the move, amidst political and public bash lash "new york times" columnist jim stewart is here. welcome back >> thank you. >> they're still talking about this saga. >> it is an amazing story. i am flabbergasted we have gotten to the point where people are forcing amazon to reconsider the decision i can't help but think the overwhelming majority of new yorkers were thrilled. most cities would kill i mean, it came close to killing to get this deal $3 billion, if you look at it closely in the scheme of things,

this isn't a huge give away. >> other cities offering it. >> newer, fraction of the size of new york. new jersey was offering 7 billion. so i think that's not the issue at all are there concerns, of course. you have to worry about congestion, development, are people going to be displaced, but there are ways it address that if the new york city local government is worried about it, address the problems if and when they occur first of all, this is not a residential neighborhood they're moving in. think of the restaurants that will pop up, the service, the stores adds a huge boost. it is not a great area now >> isn't this a natural consequence of the way amazon ran the process in the first place? they ran it like a beauty contest between all these cities and they were the prize. now that they've announced the winner, now the real people get

to speak they didn't have a voice before. if they said we're interested in moving to new york and engaged with the community, maybe this would have come out in the process and they would have ended up in a place everybody agreed with. now it is happening in reverse, right? >> true. but i think one of the big issues about their being so public about it all is that it naturally made them a lightning rod for all of the frustrations about gentrification, technification google is building a huge new operation in manhattan, disney is moving a big operation into lower manhattan. nobody is marching and protesting, demanding they unionize suddenly it is just amazon because they have been so visible. look, these things come, they happen, they pass. i hope cooler heads will prevail. i heard some on the anti-amazon side saying nothing negotiated, nothing we will agree short of

you pulling out. which struck me as not a very constructive approach. there has got to be a middle ground. >> i can't help but think the bigger issue around all of this, that politicians and the like are not getting to is this idea of how high the taxes are in new york new york state says they have $2.3 billion budget shortfall. you have other companies besides amazon that have seen incentives over the years you don't have to necessarily offer all those incentives if you find a way to balance your budget and make the area a little more business friendly in the first place, no? >> i agree with you on that. also, i think you bring up another point. what does it say that other companies that might be thinking of expanding or moving to new york city, and if they did would be contributing to the tax base, helping to ease pressure on everybody else what message does this send about how welcoming new york is going to be to somebody that wants to hire a lot of people and come here and employ them and pay a lot of taxes

it is a terrible message it is extremely visible. i think if they pull out, it's going to be a disaster for the economy of new york city. >> is there any reason to believe they're being more combative, amazon, because of turmoil regarding ami and bezos now? >> i doubt it. i mean, i assume these are on completely separate tracks but i guess one thing implicit in your question is whether the ami, you know, sensation is spilling over into decisions and management choices that are going on at amazon headquarters. and i think that's the one thing about all of this that shareholders should keep an eye on by the way, i think bezos should get the benefit of the doubt i don't see any indication, no sign that he is behaving in a strange way. we're not talking about a tesla type situation here. all accounts are he is on top of things, he is making decisions, he is acting in the best interest of the company. and i don't think there's any sign his personal life has

spilled over on the other hand, we have to watch. there's a track record of ceos that get into divorce type situations and it has effected business decisions of many of them. >> so investors should enjoy the details and focus on that issue of bezos and management? >> absolutely. i think they should -- i mean look, of their own personal interests, i don't care what they read or focus on. as investors they should relentlessly focus only on what does this mean for his ability to run the company the fact he goes to red carpet events, amazon is an entertainment company. i don't fault him for that you want to make money in the entertainment business, you have to get out there and do that i don't see any sign of problems they have been successful in the entertainment business more power to him, if that's what it takes. stock is doing well, earnings are doing well, capital investments are. i don't know how this fits into his day and owning "the

washington post" at the same time, but if he can do all of that, good for him on the other hand, if we start hearing, and we will hear immediately, there will be leaks, if he starts behaving in a bizarre way, not attending board meetings, jetting to strange places, we'll hear about it >> jim, thanks see you soon >> jim stewart. coming up, a prieview what t expect from ibm's think conference first, rick santelli, what are you watching >> i am watching our yields, not on lows of 2019 but on the soft side europe's rates are much lower. what does that mean for you as an investor? we'll talk about it after the break. flows in the cloud. this changes everything. you're right sir... everything. no not everything, i mean you're still blatantly sucking up to me gary. brilliantly observed, sir. eft ef

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scott walker here's what we're working on debating what the market's next major move will be, jim cramer is here for the hour to help us do that. also following the chip stocks one firm jumping off the nvidia bus, wonder if it is time for you to do the same how about the tesla upgrade, do you think it can hit 450 bucks a share? we debate that on the call of the day on the half at noon. see you in less than 15 minutes. looking forward to being with jim today. >> sounds good, scott, can't wait let's go to the cme group to get the santelli exchange. >> good morning, carl.

wasn't long ago we looked at 2s, 3s, 5s with the yield curve in version. i was on the air that afternoon on "closing bell" exchange, and after i was off camera, e-mails and blogs and stories the next day because we all know when investors talk and eventually see inversion of the curve, all investing thoughts lead to the possibility of recession of course, that continues to be an issue today not so much because of the curve. we still see inversions, albeit flat with wider curves the point of this conversation, europe on friday, their 10 year traded as low as 10 basis points while that's going on, our spread has been widening

you see 2.53 currently granted, that's not the widest it has been, but it did reverse. open the chart up to 20 years, you'll see the widest it was was july of 2016 very close to 280 basis points we are only 27 away from that on a closing basis. you look at boom yields on a 20 year chart, you'll see in 2016 they did go negative for awhile. the worst level was minus 19 basis points in the summer of 2016 now, how can we relate all this to recessionary barometer? my feeling is that the more the relative value trade drags our rates down, the more chance we're going to have that the wider curve will do what the short curve end has done, get flatter, and potentially invert. that's something to pay attention to what can mitigate that, two or

three factors. maybe china and trade, post brexit maybe we see a scenario on worst case that we experience in real time that won't be as bad as many investors prepared for, but in the end, there's not much because what's going on with rates reflects their slowing economy, and that dynamic seems firmly in place. at the end of the day, uncanny as some history is said about inverting yield curves, i contended it is due to manipulation, but that dynamic isn't going to change as we see weaker and weaker global data. that interpretation of the curve will be more real to investors morgan, back to you. >> rick santelli, thank you. after the break, some big news to get to concerning reddit "squawk alley" continues after this break what do you see? we see a billion more people breathing free.

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welcome back reddit just announcing a big new funding round this morning julia spoke with the ceo this morning and joins us with more >> reddit has raised $300 billion from an 8 point valuation. this reflects a valuable user base on the social discussion platform 330 monthly active users half of whom are between 18 and 24 years old

the company says it doubled its ad revenue last year to a reported $100 million. we spoke with the ceo. >> we are reinventing on the technology side and our ability to sell it and create a friendly home for users and brands alike. we have made steady progress on all of these fronts over the last year. i think we feel pretty proud of where we are we're seeing a lot of attention from both brands and investors >> after drawing criticism since its founding in 2005, they can assure advertisers they won't be connected with user misbehavior. huffman says with the cash from this investment the company will be better equipped to compete with the giants. >> we're talking about competing with ad dollar, we're talking

about facebook and google. when we think about our competitors we're competing with anybody or anywhere people spend their free time. >> the new investor is chinese tech giant putting in $150 million. r reddit is banned in china. they have invested in fortniet afortniet -- nite and other games >> many categories that are popular on reddit. we are the only company at our scale that's still a private company. we've had a lot of investor attention in the last yorear. we found ourselves in a good

position >> the biggest opportunity for growth is overseas their first focus is making the platform more welcoming and accessible for users and advertisers. back over to you >> julia, this 3 billion dollar valuation, that's 30 times ad revenue and reddit is not a new company. it's not like it's been an hockey stick growth trajectory what do you think it says a bout the investing climate right now? >> valuations are very high right now. if you look at the growth in the company's valuation since 2017 i also think it speaks to demand from advertisers to alternatives to face bobbi kristina and gobo. if they can really monotize their 330 monthly active users, the fact they are so young that they are not reachable through

the likes of television, this could be a valuable platform if they could ensure that the platform is safe that's where i think the real opportunity is going forward if do yyou look at that revenue number, their revenue was up over three years growing quickly but still relatively small come tepared de giants >> thanks. dow down 44 points as the dow tries to aidvo a fourth straight day down. we continue in a few moments valerie: but we worry if we have enough to last. ♪ cal: ellen, our certified financial planner™ professional, helps us manage our cash flow and plan for the unexpected. valerie: her experience and training gave us the courage to go for it. it's our "confident forever plan"... cal: ...and it's all possible with a cfp® professional. find your certified financial planner™ professional

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welcome back coming up tomorrow, ibm's conference kicks off in san francisco. good names on the agenda joe montana, at&t john donovan, chelsea clinton among others we'll break out the latest dw s developments a hot start to the year an basic collusive with ibm ceo tomorrow right here on squawk alley from san francisco at

11:30 p.m. eastern >> i hear a name like joe montana, i can't help but think he's to be part of the discussion >> all the people you thought, tom brady must be next if ghets arou -- he gets around to retiring he'll be 65. let's get to the judge and the half >> i'm scott wapner. it's the most important question for your money what's the current state of stocks aftof the rally after the december lows. it's 12:00 noon and this is the halftime report. the dow, nasdaq rustle the s&p, six out of seven. are stocks rebuilding themselves or is it time to worry about another drop are we going