tv Power Lunch CNBC March 4, 2020 2:00pm-3:00pm EST
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that does it for the exchange i will see you on "power lunch." and welcome, everybody, to "power lunch." we're glad you are with us i'm tyler matheson as you see there a major rally on wall street as we are seconds away from the release of the federal reserve's beige book, this at a moment when the strength of our economy is up for debate the dow is up 800 points. diana. >> the u.s. economy expanded at a modest to moderate pace over the past several weeks according to most federal reserve districts with only st. louis and kansas city districts reporting no change, but there was significant concern across all districts about the coronavirus. the word coronavirus came up 48 times in the beige book release and covid-19 came up nine times. this data was collected on or before february 24th now, consumer spending generally picked up but growth is uneven nationally and there were mixed reports on auto sales. there were indications that the
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coronavirus negatively impacted travel and tourism and that while manufacturing activity expanded in most regions, some supply chain delays were reported due to coronavirus. in cleveland specifically firms noted weaker demand because of the 737 max production stoppage and concern over the coronavirus impacting supply chains. in boston one retailer said inventory levels were being impacted by the virus, which slowed production at some cheese manufacturing plants also in cleveland a number of manufacturers reported weaker demand from china weighing on commodity prices in st. louis contacts were concerned about what impact the coronavirus will have on commodity prices and agricultural purchases several districts said producers feared further disruptions in the further weeks. in richmond there were concerns about coronavirus lowering imports of inputs and retail goods from china in the coming months only the chicago district noted little affect to date from the virus. now, employment increased at a slight to moderate pace but
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hiring is still constrained by a tight labor market and lack of labor delayed some construction projects tight labor continues to put upward pressure on wages most districts reported modest growth in selling prices, manufacturers were optimistic that the phase one trade deal with china would reduce prices on goods but some were still struggling with tariffs and were concerned about how the coronavirus might affect prices. while retail prices were up mostly some retailers reported lowering costs due to improved trade conditions oil and gas prices fell across the country again attributed to weak demand from china due to the virus. a bright spot from the new york survey on real estate, home sales were firmer since the last report and after falling pretty dramatically prices for condos and co-ops finally leveled off looking ahead outlooks for the near term were mostly for modest growth with the coronavirus and the upcoming presidential elections cited as potential risks. back to you guys. >> diana olick with the highlights of the beige look
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a lot of discussion of the impact of the coronavirus and even the boeing 737 delays steve liesman is here for reaction the market is taking it in stride. >> i think it's in line with what the market may have expected diana did a nice job counting the use of the term coronavirus and covid-19 when we were in the throes of the trade wars and tariffs, that word appearing 50 times or more in the beige book was something that was pretty common and we were counting tariffs and trade and all that stuff by the way, when it gets up to in the 40 or 50 range it tends to be something that affects policy you know that the trade war affected policy last year and it's already affected policy this year, but let me step back and maybe give the more important analysis here which is that if i put the beige book calling for modest and moderate growth together with the ism service number this morning, together with the adp number, i
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think it's undoubted we are going to take a hit here i would say we're in pretty decent shape with which to take it i think that's an important place to come from i think the economy is probably ex-boeing and ex-corona would be running 2% if we are lucky here and i don't think it's a crazy thing, to think about getting a 1% hit from coronavirus over a couple quarters with a bounce back after that, it would not be the worst possible outcome just, please, i'm not talking about the human tragedy that befalls people, i'm simply talking about the economic numbers here but it's a good thing to see we are going into this with pretty decent help certainly in the service sector, manufacturing sector still going to be experiencing problems from the trade and the tariffs which are very much still in place >> all right steve, are you going to stick around would you? >> sure. >> if we invite you. >> are we going to talk to bob. >> we are going to talk to bob bob pisani is at the new york stock exchange >> i think the important thing everything said in the beige
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book still applies, february 24th was a long time ago, ten days, we've moved 10% in the markets as we have factored in a lot worse outlook and earnings numbers are plummeting here and going down dramatically over in europe a little reaction to the beige book but that's fairly typical for the s&p. the important things is the big movers are health care, biden's -- biden's victories lessening bernie sanders' chances. united health 20% of the gain, pfizer contributing, anthem, humana and cigna also. no bounce at all for the banks flat as we talked about that triple whammie where you not only have interest rate issues, you get potential defaults going down the road and no loan growth, no reaction here at all, pretty modest from the banks coronavirus with the markets are bouncing but travel stocks also still not doing much still seeing, for example, rental car companies continuing to decline as are the cruise
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ships. all this volunteering tilt is helping the market makers and exchanges. avertu numbers for the first two months much higher than expected tremendous amounts of market volumes help out these market makers and the exchanges like nasdaq and the intercontinental exchange which owns the new york stock exchange guys, back to you. >> the ten-year yield still under 1% today rick santelli is tracking at ks. >> whether it's politics and some of these super tuesday results, whether it's a little more balanced with regard to coronavirus or looking past what many believe was an overly aggressive federal reserve or many other kentrell banks that have cut, hong kong, saudi arabia, canada, but there is some consolidation look at a two day of two year the right side of course today much flatter, more orderly although we did move down to 60 basis points as a low versus 62 yesterday. a two day of tens, it also tried to challenge yesterday's low at
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90 base points but it held and it's also very firm, tens minus boons took a huge hit as our rates continue to accelerate this flight to safety went from the high 180s to the low 150,currently at 162 tens minus twos year to date zoom all the way up to 35, maybe that was one sidebar of a positive with yesterday's fed action but a lot of negatives we've been discussing on finally the dollar index, let's go all the way back to 2017 and you can see when you take a wide view looks like the failure of 100 is something that is more technical in nature of course we know there's solid global demand ongoing for the dollar during turmoil such as we have, we're going to monitor this break against unchanged which is still unchallenged, dollar index still up on the year tyler, back to you. >> rick, thank you. let's get more reaction to the beige book and what it says about the economy, to do that let's bring in paul mccauley
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former pimco chief economist, also with us torstel slot. good to have you both here you've heard the summary of the beige book, you heard that it was based on data collected up to february 24th paul mcculley, what would the beige book have sounded like if it were up through yesterday >> i don't think it would have been a lot different i think it would have been tilted in the risk direction but i think it's important to understand that the economy was in a good place at the beginning of the year, not robust growth, but good sturdy growth and monetary policy was in a good place as well and we got hit with a shock, a material shock, and i think that the incoming data flow and most importantly fed policy is reflecting that material shock so i think i'd like to give a hat tip to mr. powell. >> if we're going to take any
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kind of hit to gdp in the first quarter into the second quarter it's not bad to be taking it now when the economy on most measures is in pretty good shape, employment growth and so on and so forth. do you agree with that and do you think that the fed did the right thing yesterday? >> i completely agree with what paul just said it's very important here to remember that adp this morning not manufacturing was showing that the economy still rated to be strong. what is a bit worrying in the facebook here is that itlooks to be widespread, it's not just only on the west coast, it's not just only in those areas where we heard something up on to february 24th. it's a little worrying that it is a sentiment issue across the poured but it is clear the fed is trying to get in front of this and we also expect at the next meeting they will be cutting again 50 basis points. >> there is a lot of talk about, i don't know, maybe the nixon question here, what does the fed know and when did it know it the idea that somehow they panicked the market by cutting
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rates. i'm wondering if you can think about, since you're so good at this sort of idea, what is the fed looking at here in terms of gdp impact, what kind of outcomes do you think that it's worried about and thinking about here >> i think the fed is really focused on risk management, steve. i think all of us are trying to crunch the numbers to try to figure out how many basis points of growth and what sector and so forth, but i think the key thing for the fed is they know the direction and the direction weaker and they also know that they're below target on inflation so, therefore, this shock is deflationary so, therefore, it's incumbent on them to ease monetary policy. so i think the first 50 was simply a reaction to the shock both in the real economy and on wall street and i think they will probably be a little bit more fine-tuning oriented going forward with further easing, but
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i think the first ease was really a risk management ease as opposed to a bottom up bean counting of the impact. >> i just want to throw at you the latest fed probabilities that i get from my source here, 92% of a 25 basis point at the upcoming march meeting and a 92% chance of another cut in april so that's another 50 in my book 50 and 50 is 100. tiler is laughing, maybe he has different math than i do what do you think of that? do you think in the near term in the next couple months a full percentage point taken off the feds funds here. >> absolutely. i think there are numerous speeches, working papers an reports from the fed saying once you begin to see risk coming in, once you go inn to deal with unquantifiable risks such as this one you have to get rid of it rather quickly. you have to do it immediately so
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that you get down and then you can always reverse that if you want to, but i think a very important lesson we have learned over the last five, ten years is repeatedly the fed has said once there are risks like this we do need to do something that is why you should expect them to move in our view 50 basis points in march. >> steve, just to go back to what you just said, there is a 92% chance of a rate cut in march. >> the march meeting, the one they didn't even have yet. >> right, the one they were -- >> yeah. >> but also there's # 2% chance of a rate cut in april does that mean a 25 base point by april in other words, it could happen in march or april or another one? >> it could be march or april in the sense that the april contract is bet to close with a 92% probability of an additional 25 basis point rate cut which by the way in my opinion raises the next question which is if they've done 50, per' going to do another 50 more, is it time to start thinking down the road to a zero interest rate again by the federal reserve.
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>> that's what i'd like to ask paul mcculley. the president has repeatedly made the point that interest rates in his view in the united states are way too high and are not competitive with interest rates in other countries arguing that not only would we be more competitive if we had a 0 rate or something very close to it, but it would also weaken the dollar which would make our exports cheaper. does the president have a point on that? is he right? >> i think d right, but i don't think that the fed really wants to go to zero again they will if they have to, but i think they would like to stay away from that zero lower bound because the moment you hit that then it triggers a lot of other policies that have to come into play and also i think it's important to note -- here i would disagree with my friend torsten a little bit is they can't reverse
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whatever they do right now back in december chair powell promised there would be no tightening until they actually realized their 2% inflation target so once they come down then they're down for the duration until you get inflation back up. so i don't think they want to get too close to zero. i think they would like to get two or a little bit below where the yield is on the two-year note and get a normally sloped yield curve and they would feel more comfortable as opposed to where they are right now, but i really don't think they want to test the limits of conventional policy right now and if they went to zero they would and then that raises the whole issue of qe and monetary fiscal policy cooperation and all of that stuff. >> but, paul, i just argue one footnote to that which is i think the timing and magnitude of federal reserve interest rate cuts is going to be highly contingent this time around on fiscal policy. i believe behind the scenes and also i think the whole essential
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banking community and the g7 is going to be pushing hard against the fiscal authorities to step up here. i think if there is a large fiscal policy package which i think could be warranted in this case that you may have central banks and i think what they want to do is do a little bit less and hold on to the dry powder they may have and let the fiscal side take the lead on this. >> final thought, paul, quickly. >> i would very much agree with steve in that we need a fiscal stimulus, no question about that, but i think the fed would like to have it done without them getting to zero first >> right >> all right gentlemen, thank you very much thank you. >> coming up, robin hood the free trading app experiencing an outage at the worst possible time 10 million customers missing out on monday's record rally the latest on the situation is next. and a whole lot more on the market rally, health care surging, united health and cigna
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can your internet do that? xfinity xfi can because it's... ...simple, easy, awesome. [ barking ] welcome back to "power lunch. stocks are coming back with a vengeance today, the major averages exiting correction territory after yesterday's big selloff partly due to former vice president's surprisingly super tuesday. we are talking about joe biden of course predicted now giving
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him a roughly 80% chance of becoming the democratic presidential nominee while senator bernie sanders' chances dipping below 40%. they have fallen in the past 24 hours. let's bring in market panelist david katz and jack mcintyre guys, i want to unpackage this move a little bit. david, obviously in the health care stocks there is a big effect from politics but do you think that effect is translated to the rally broadly here? >> we do biden is clearly much better for the economy and for business and for the stock market than bernie sanders would be, so the fact that bernie sanders is less likely to win is a significant positive we've just got a lot of cross-currents going on, but in terms of the politics absolutely last night was very good for the economy, very good for the stock market. >> how would you build a portfolio given, again, there is a lot of dynamics here, there is the risk on risk off related to the coronavirus, risk on, risk off related to politics. in i cooped of strategies that
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come to mind >> yeah, we think that you're actually able to buy some great businesses with very good yields right now with very low risk that's what we would focus on. as from the last week it's impossible to figure the market out on a day to day basis. we buy stocks on the big down days and we would focus on building a portfolio good businesses at 1 or less times earnings with a 4% or better yield. companies like a cvs or adve ar wonderful businesses you can get 1% in a ten year treasury or 4.5% on these yielding stocks, we think that's a great way to go. wells fargo is yielding 5%, we think that's absurd. we think the financials which have gotten beaten up in the last two days on lower interest rates are still making a lot of money. we would be buying those stocks as well. >> jack, has the market been acting rationally? >> that's a great question, tyler. i think it actually has. i think we're trying to sort of
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price in uncertainty this is a lesson in investor psychology 101 it's fear and greed. we are seeing fear, not today in equities, but take hold. that's certainly explains why ten year treasury yields got down to 90 basis points. there was a lot of fear priced in the treasury market right now. >> is there more money to be made moving against the market right now, jack, than moving with it? if you understand what i'm driving at >> i do and actually i rely on the concept of value i'm going to focus on treasuries a huge disconnect between the value of treasuries when you look at inflation versus where they are from a price standpoint and that's the fear component. i think the fear will subside a little bit and i think treasury yields are going to move higher. it's not off to the races but i think we've got extreme movement in treasuries right now that should probably be fading. >> david, would you agree with that >> we absolutely do agree with
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that there is no way in the world if you are an individual you want to be buying ten year treasuries right now if you have any sort of time horizon. who would want to lock in 1% a year for the next ten years? the flip side of that is if you can turn the volume down, not worry about the next week or month or quarter, u.s. businesses are going to continue to do well, we would buy those businesses, get that 4% plus yield. historically when you've done things like that you've done quite well >> jack, what have you been doing lately just hanging out what have you been doing >> hanging out -- well, trying to get to get swept up in the day to day sort of emotion which is kind of tough we actually have been moving money outside the u.s. you've got to make assumptions in this type of world. we are looking at china as a potential roadmap. obviously part of the problem was a supply shock and demand shock. i think the next couple weeks will be kind of critical it looks like china is getting back on line, moving in that direction from a production
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standpoint so that goes a long way towards alleviating the supply sort of constraint i like some asian fx right now, they've gotten beaten up, and i think the general dollar we could actually start to see it start to weaken in here. >> wow all right. gentlemen, thanks. david and jack, we appreciate it and as stocks make a come back this week if you want to try any of the strategies they are talking about robin hood has left many of their customers out in the cold. kate rooney has the latest for us. >> hi, kelly investors tell me headaches for robin hood are far from over and going forward there's no room for error. two days of outages, after that there's a new risk of litigation and reputational damage as well as potential m&a implications. robin hood has 10 million clients, many of whom are first time traders and took to social media this week with threats to pull their funds remember, free trading is now industry standard, not just unique to robin hood
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the twitter account has 6,000 customers. the sec declining to comment after morgan stanley buying e-trade robin hood value at $8 billion was widely seen as an m&a target but analysts tell me that may have affected its attractiveness pitch book adding its two most t this week. others in the industry i spoke to are sympathetic, call it growing pains, user growth may slope but this let's them refocus on infrastructure. one long time fintech vc calling the outage inexcusable he says they've built a phenomenal company but now have to live up to that valuation. >> thank you very much, kate kate rooney in california. coming up, a major shake up to the presidential race michael bloomberg dropping out will he throw his billions behind biden billions for biden plus general electric
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lunch. i'm seema mody general electric says the coronavirus will hurt its first quarter cash flow. here is what ge ceo told cnbc this morning. >> we see some free cash flow pressure here in the first quarter, probably in the 300 to 500 million dollar range, 2 to $3 millions of operating profit pressure but we didn't take a view with respect to the rest of the year what we don't know at this point clearly outweighs what we do know. >> despite the hit in the first quarter ge did reaffirm its 2020 targets. so let's discuss with boris slossberg. is this still a stock you want to bet on? >> i've been a long turnbull of ge ever since it's been in single digits. ge's business for infrastructure and power generation as everybody moves towards renewables remains unchallenge
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this is really an existential problem short term not a fundamental problem to their business there is one risk here, however, if the coronavirus situation really dominates the story for the rest of the year and we have a credit market seizure where they're going to have cash flow and financing problems that could be a much more serious problems for ge just a survival tactic from a purely business point of view it remains to be a buy the dip stock and in i kind of move downward probably going to be reversed as soon as the coronavirus story goes away. >> j.c., the stock down 1.2% we can debate what multiple this industrial stock should trade at, but the fact that it's above its 200 day moving average do you think that's a bullish sign? >> i think that's key. ge stock chart is a great example of a chart that's undergoing, you know, a positive trend change one way to monitor that is just looking at the slope of the 200 day moving average 2017, 2018 negative slope ge was trading under that now we're starting to see the
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200 day slowly push higher to me that's an indication of a positive trend change and we will use that 200 day as our stop we believe with the tailwind provided we could see 1250 for ge here. >> we will see what's in the cards for ge gac and boris, thanks for joining me today for more "trading nation" head to our website or follow us on twitter. ahead on "power lunch," it's crude crush. oil sitting out today's rally. look at that, it's not even -- it's down 1% today, down more than 20% for the year. a lot of opec talk today, will they step in to relieve the pressure or not? also mike bloomberg is bowing out, the former new york mayor ditching hopes for the white house in order to back joe biden. all this have when "power lunch" returns. >> announcer: and now the latest from tradingnation.cnbc.com and a word from our sponsor.
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all right, everybody, welcome back to "power lunch." we are really right at the highs of the session the dow industrials pushing on a 900 point gain up 3.4%, the nasdaq the laggard today by a little bit but it is very close to a 3% gain. time for the power movers and we start with a look at one sector that is rocketing higher and leading the market, the health insurance stocks. united health is up more than 10% now, the best performer in the dow. cigna and humana up double digits and joe biden overtaking bernie sanders in the race for the democratic nomination is easing some fears about the future of these stocks. campbell's soup is higher today after beating on earnings and raising guidance people are stocking up on canned goods like soup. campbell's also has a nice
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dividend stock up 7.5% the ceo is coming up on closing bell at 4:00 p.m. we end with urban outfitters the company's earnings were hit by mark downs and coronavirus hampering their china deliveries down nearly 9% today oil despite this market rally no ra el in crude today giving up its gains from earlier in the session. brian sullivan joins us from the latest down about half a percent. >> thanks, kelly of course, oil had a huge rally yesterday, huge rally for oil, any dwa up i guess is a huge rally for oil. let's talk about it because you have the opec meeting tomorrow and then the opec plus meeting on friday. so let's walk you through now the top four opec story lines heading into tomorrow. number one the market, they really want a 1 million barrel a day cut or more from opec. top story line two, the market really wants a 1 million barrel a day cut. this is not an accident, i did this on purpose because that's it when you talk about a market
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that has been falling these are the story lines that matter. of course, there are a couple others, you can't really do this unless russia plays. what will russia ak vladimir putin because all the decisions go through him will they participate? if they don't even if opec does that not sure it matters all right. also by the way i'm standing in front of a plasma not on a street in vienna do you know why? a lot of reasons but no media, tyler, that was one of the things in fact, they are not -- you are not allowed inside, no more of that stairwell down to the basement that is because the coronavirus. there will be media outside but they're going to live stream it. by the way, all of this comes down to demand i want to show you guys something kind of cool you know the gps company tom tom they have a congestion index, they track cars and figure it out. this is in shanghai, pick the biggest city in china, here is why, this is a week long this is the average traffic congestion level throughout a
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day period these are the rush hours in the morning and rush hours at night. look at the wuhan virus it took out half of the traffic congestion in shanghai people simply weren't on the road this is the weekend basically so you didn't have anybody moving as much, but look at this, guys, we have seen according to tom tom a bit of an uptick in traffic congestion i think it's probably the first time ever, tyler, that we have looked at traffic congestion as a positive, but there it is. >> it's a very interesting thing -- way to look at it and it's really where the whole situation meets the road so to speak. it's a great illustration. what we're hearing from people on the ground in china is that things are sort of starting to come back a little bit to normal brian, you're going to stick around and join us for our next conversation as we dive deep noor the energy slide and whether the big opec meeting could head off the oil gluch joining us is kevin book managing director of clear view
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energy part officers good afternoon. >> how much oil needs to come out of the market to balance supply and demand because there has been a tremendous amount of demand destruction >> well, you heard brian talk about the 1 million barrel mark. i think it's easier to think what the demand destruction could look like in terms of magnitude. month or so of 2 million barrels a day disruption to china there's pretty much one of those in the world governments shutting down flights into and out of countries probably won't last long if all the countries are getting sick because what would be the point a rolling global trend of national sick outs and stay-cations could be a serious demand killer. if you break it down gasoline and diesel fuel in the top ten oil consuming markets half of the world 200,000 barrels per day of two week of sickness for 20% of the population getting seriously sick and 50% of them getting infected those are the numbers, ballpark numbers we are
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working with what is 200,000 barrels per day? it may sound small in a weak market you still have the overhang of trade war and with supply still surging takes nine months for it to slow down that's not a particularly well balanced market. add on top of that these government interventions and a million might be nice. >> but i'm also hearing, kevin, there is some skepticism that coronavirus will be a long-term destruction story from you is that right? if you are opec should you then kind of overreact to this and help to tighten the market or not? >> well, kelly, it's not going to be a long-term dis corruption in terms of government intervention i think the underappreciated side of the story is people getting sick for two or three weeks at a time and staying home not congesting the roads as brian described that could continue happening throughout the year, maybe even into next year until there is a widespread vaccine and immunization in the population. >> if so if people stay home it kills even more demand
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>> yes, it's not a trivial thing. absolutely. >> let's even take coronavirus out of it, i know it's hard to do, but let's do it, okay? >> happily. >> libya is almost completely offline because of basically effectively a coup, civil war, libya is going to come back on line iran has been whacked by the coronavirus as much as anybody in terms of percentage of population, their output will pick back up iraq effectively has no government opec is looking at these things as well. when libya -- if everything stays the same or demand even increases a little bit, but libya comes back on line, iraq goes up, iran goes up, all of a sudden you have too much oil because, remember, the additional marginal barrel is worth exactly zero. >> we have had headlines today about the division, i guess, between russia and the rest of opec over how much to cut. can you just kind of take us behind the scenes brian a little
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bit? is the most important factor now to watch russia in terms of getting them on board with a million barrel a day cut. >> yeah, and there is a funny video going around, it's foot bumping because they don't want to shake hands here is what is amazing, that video shows them foot bmpg the opec meeting doesn't start until tomorrow, russia doesn't go there until friday. what does that mean? they're already there. they're already talking. there's a floppy haired beatles-haired gentleman, that's novak's translator i've meet these guys and see them every couple months they're hanging out which means they're tacking and if russia gets on board -- because as kevin know the permian is starting to slow its production. >> i have been told by several people that, kevin, the entire
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oil space is overcapitalized is any of the oil -- where is there the investable place in the oil world right now? where is it? is there one >> well, you can find pockets of opportunity anywhere in any sector when it's down, but if you just count the btus sloshing around the world, the amount of energy sloshing around the world there is not a lot of good energy recommendations you could find at an oversupplied world and a slowing demand environment. ordinarily you would say the refiners profit when you have a low oil price, but that generally relies on a robust demand, discretionary demand in the western world taking up those vacations those trips those extra activities not so much hate to use the word coronavirus compatible as an investment thesis. >> a lot of these companies in the permian and elsewhere they bought a lot of money, how many are going to consolidate is the consolidation rate going to be huge over the next three years. >> foerster. >> inevitably that's the consequence. >> $86 billion in debt due in the next two years, tyler, many
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of these companies can barely make -- i'm not wishing for anybody to struggle -- >> at these prices they're going to have more and more and more trouble. >> they have to keep pumping to pay the cash flow. the biggest oil conference was supposed to be next week they shut it down, there's travel off -- i was -- usually i go to vienna because i was going to houston i didn't go to vienna now i'm not going anywhere so i decided to go to chicago because i was so sad that i wasn't going anywhere we will see how many people are on the plane the mathesons don't invite me over anyi don't remember. >> you may not even be able to go to a rockets game. >> i have a terrible time in houston as you guys know. >> don't know anyone down there. >> kevin, thank you very much. brian, i hope you get out somewhere. >> happy to go to the mathesons. >> you're welcome anytime. >> the million dollar kitchen has been finished. come onover. another huge move for stocks today, right now the dow is near session highs up, let's see, where is it, up 800 points
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thereabouts. 883 points, almost 900 record gain on monday of course you remember that. so you need help making sense of these wild swings? join us tonight at 7:00 eastern time cnbc special report markets in tmouril we will try to make some sense out of it all. and in life. i'm very fortunate i can lean on people, and that for me is what teamwork is all about. you can't do everything yourself. you need someone to guide you and help you make those tough decisions, that's morgan stanley. they're industry leaders, but the most important thing is they want to do it the right way. i'm really excited to be part of the morgan stanley team. i'm justin rose. we are morgan stanley.
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welcome back to "power lunch. we have breaking news on united and phil lebeau is in d.c. with it hi, phil. >> tyler, united airlines because of falling demand as more people have to deal with the affects of the coronavirus outbreak, united has decided it will be dropping its scheduled by 20% on international flights starting in the month of april it will be reducing its domestic flight schedule by 10% in the month of april in terms of whether or not we see these reductions hold in may, international is likely because it goes out a little bit further in terms of people looking flights. may domestically remains to be seen the way that united is doing this internationally some wide body planes will be parked on those routes, they will be reducing the number of times they are flying into certain areas. they are not out in out cutting routes but they will be flying them less frequently and that's
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the same thing that will be happening with their dominic nights as well two other pieces of news from united airlines, it is going to be offering employees unpaid leave of absence, employees defending on on what unit of company they work this they will apply for an unpaid leave of absence. united believes there will be a number of employees who will take advantage of this and take an unpaid leave of absence at the same time the company has announced it is putting into effect a hiring freeze we have seen that taking effect in terms of the next class of pilots they plan to bring in for training, now this is going to be across the entire company this is because they're seeing reduced demand, especially on the international side, especially when talking about those trans-pacific flights. as a result they are reducing their schedule by 20% internationally, 10% domestically for the month of april. guys, back to you. >> phil, we had an airline analyst last hour who was recommending a i lot of these stocks because he thinks in the long term the picture hasn't changed, the landscape hasn't
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changed and that falling jet fuel prices will provide some cushion. i'm sure that's true to some extent the request he is not even so much about united airlines but what this anecdote tells us about what's going to happen across the economy, slowing hiring, unpaid layoffs, these are the kinds of measures that frankly are why exists have taken down their gdp forecasts for the year. >> right, and when you look at the airline industry this is completely about people either not having confidence about taking a flight and either going to a meeting, going to some kind of a get ral, event, whatever it might be or they are being told by their company, do you know what, you're not going to a particular event i was talking about an analyst yesterday, that analyst said they were told by their company, nope, you're not going to that investor day, you're not going to that investor day some cases many people are being told you can't fly right now that's the case with the corporate travelers to a large extent on the leisure side it may be a case where people are saying, okay, let me rethink whether or not we want to go to a
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particular event or a particular venue, for something that we were planning on doing that's what the airline industry is dealing with right now and the question becomes how long will it take until the confidence is there until companies say, do you know what, you can go back out on the road. will it be a month, it be a mon? largely that depends on what happens with the containment of coronavirus. >> what is interesting also is that hasn't united already canceled a lot of its international flights to and from asia? >> yes. >> so they're not going there already. this is on top of that >> well, overall, in terms of what their schedule was. it's going to be a reduction of 20%. and a lot of that is china, as well as some of the other markets that they mentioned in the last couple of weeks that they're doing flight reductions. we're talking about south korea, japan. and japan right now, guys, ana announced that they're bringing down the number of domestic flights because of a drop in
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demand so there are other factors it's not just the united states and a u.s. airlines dealing with this so across the board you're looking at airlines looking at just lower and lower demand and they've got to adjust their cost schedule and that's what you're seeing with united. >> this means people will see disruption if they're looking to schedule flights it's the first u.s. airline to say they're going to have a reduction in this report at the white house instead of in chicago, as usual, because you were there to cover the airline ceo's meeting with the president and others today do you think they were looking for something that would have helped forestall an announcement like this? >> no. >> do you think they said something like this is coming? the timing is pretty interesting. >> the meeting at the white house was called by the coronavirus task force and it was called largely because they wanted to ask the ceos who are the airlines doing in terms of helping us trace contacts for
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people who have come in and may have the coronavirus that they can say who have you had contact with that's what they were asking of the ceos of the airlines this was not a case of them saying if we ask for something from the white house and they don't give it to us, we'll just put out this news. this news from united 100% separate from what was going on at the white house and one other point. i'm not sure how much schedule will be disrupted. take a look at the number of flights a day between chicago o' hare and new york laguardia. it may be that it's three or four hours in a row during the rush hour in the morning and then maybe they're going to bring down the 10:00 a.m. or 11:00 a.m. flight and that will allow them to take the flights that they still have on the schedule and make those planes full. >> what will happen if you have booked a flight that is canceled
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>> they'll put you on another flight and that's no different than any other time i've had a number of flights canceled where they've said this particular aircraft is not going to be flying at that time, we're going to put you in a flight two hours earlier or later that happens with all airlines >> phil, thank you very much phil lebeau in beautiful washington. coming up, the biden bounce. a huge super tuesday making the former vice president the front-runner to face the president in november. up next, we're follonghewi t campaign cash. stay with us on "power lunch." to infrastructure, we're creating state of the art, 21st century transportation hubs, constructing new bridges, bringing high-speed internet to every corner of the state, and committing to low-cost clean energy. with infrastructure built for the future, the companies of tomorrow can thrive here today. see your future at esd.ny.gov.
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let's take a look at the markets, which are near their session highs, pressing up toward 900 points. 3.3% what is the leader in the dow? it's united health that is probably a biden bounce because the health care stocks did not like the prospect of a bernie sanders nomination. they are more comfortable with joe biden than they are with sanders as the nominee >> that's right. huge shakeup in the race of 2020 mike bloomberg suspending his presidential run after spending half a billiondollars on ads for his campaign the former new york mayor now endorsing joe biden following
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his strong super tuesday results. and he's raking in the big bucks. we welcome in brian schwartz, politics and finance reporter. you follow the money how much of it will now flow to biden and what does that mean for bernie's campaign? >> this was a wild 24 hours for us here, as joe biden was kind of dominating super tuesday. this phone was going off at rapid succession, from funders who are getting new commitments from donors who were sitting on the sidelines. new money, new events, events being sold out and now i'm being told that ron conway, a silicon valley investor is going to be going all in to backing joe biden going forward. and i think that's very, very important. it's a game-changer. he gave a lot of money to biden's super pac, but he was close to mike bloomberg and now that seems to be changing and we'll see what happens as we go forward. it's a big moment. >> how much might mike bloomberg
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be willing to spend on biden's behalf and how does he do it >> it's interesting. he said he's willing to spend up to a billion dollars against donald trump that was when he was running for president. but he kept the door open to helping somebody else if he did not make it through the primary. so we can expect a ton of money coming from bloomberg, putting ads out to support biden and probably against donald trump, and using his tech firm also in support of biden. >> what about bernie sanders most of his fundraising has come from individual donors is that enough fire power, does it matter whether the money is equivalent, which may be a naive question to ask? but thirdly, can those individual donors pony up enough to keep him competitive with biden? >> that's what we're going to see play out will bernie sanders be able to survive with one or $2 donors. i know there are people in silicon valley that are going to
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start pushing out bernie sanders with some money. but the outside money is going to be looking at bernie sanders as a threat to joe biden capturing this nomination. so will bernie sanders and his small dollar donors be able to compete with what biden is putting together i'm not sure, particularly with mike bloomberg coming in it doesn't seem likely, but bernie does have that appeal. >> it strikes me that bloomberg had spent millions on creating oint memes that bernie's followers do because they're passionate and they love the guy. >> he has the presence on social media. his supporters also do as well and they are able to fund raise off of thaez platforose platfor. so we'll see what happens. >> where did bloomberg go wrong? was it that he didn't start soon enough did he get in late and think that he could spend his way to the top of the heap? >> that's a good question. the debate that he had, i thought that was curtains. it was not good enough the second debate was better but not great. let's call it what it is
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and the fact is he put a lot of money into the tv ads. >> maybe if he had the debate back in august or september he would have gotten the bat news out of the way we've got to leave it there. thanks very much. >> there's more on brian's piece on cnbc.com. big day for the dow. >> "closing bell" starts right now. stay with us welcome to the "closing bell," everyone, i'm wilfred frost on the store of the new york stock exchange. soaring over 10% on the resounding performance friday former vice president joe biden on super tuesday yesterday health care was the top-performing sector, about 3% for the border markets >> welcome, everyone i'm sarah eisen and let's look at what is driving the action right now. the democratic primary moving the market bernie sanders loses his front-runner status and that's propelling stocks, particularly those health care names, higher overnight.
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