tv The Exchange CNBC April 15, 2020 1:00pm-2:00pm EDT
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r the rest of the week for us. >> you know, i think if we get a little bit of a pullback, we can upgrade in quality so i think you can do some selling of your lower quality stuff when you get days like this and that increase the quality trade like mohammed suggested. i'm all in. >> good stuff. good seeing everybody. thanks for watching. kelly picks it up now. thank you, scott hi, everybody. we have a selloff across wall street today as investors digest bad economic data, weak earnings and sinking oil prices look at the dow down 524 points right now. that's a better than 2% drop the nasdaq relatively solid. now when we say bad economic data we mean really bad. the empire state manufacturing index for april plummeted to a minus 78.2 reading that's a clear record low. new shipments and orders declined at a record pace.
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the retail sales report dropped 9% terrible clothing and car sales not overcome but surge in grocery shopping and spending online and homebuilder confidence with the biggest monthly dive ever. 42 points to a reading of 30 for more on the data right now on the earnings which i mentioned and that plunge in oil, let's bring in mr. bob pisani good afternoon, bob. >> good afternoon. we had the panic phase dropped 45%. march 23 low recovery phase up 27% off of the lows and now in the reality sets in phase so you saw that lousy economic data on retail. you saw the bank loan losses are very high reserves oil at a 18-year low folks, there's a lot of bad news out there. i think people start to recognize that there you see the dow just off the lows of the day. the sectors that are down today
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are exactly the sectors that dropped when people realize that things are going to be worse this is virtually identical. energy, bank stocks, small cap russell 2000 and industrials the sectors the worst performers in the last six weeks. they're the worst performers today. relatively outperforming are consumer stocks an health care that's the same thing. those two have done better than the other sectors in the last six or seven weeks here. the eat at home trend, i like when people note the big sales increases. piper upgraded general mills and campbell soup. that's no surprise the eat at home thing is working out. general mills, by the way, stocks near 52-week highs. there you see it right there "football night in america"ly note new highs today, all the stay at home crowd netflix, amazon, you got walmart and eli lilly, obviously doing well back to you. >> we appreciate it. thank you. well, the president says some states could reopen for
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business by may 1st. the white house's working on a set of national guidelines on the effort and holding phenomenon calls with leaders in industries to get their input. all this as germany's merkel has just announced that nation will begin reopening on april 20th. that's in just five days let's get to kayla tausche in washington with the latest kayla? >> the president said some states can start economic reentry in the coming weeks, the efforts will be led by states' governors with input from washington there are several groups in a hierarchy of decision making with the coronavirus task force holding the keys for the guide loons and recommendations and then cabinet-level officials convening with input of some 200 executives that are meeting on an ad hoc basis for industry
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specific advice from apple, goldman sachs, mcdonald's, labor leaders and even members of previous administrations, as well meanwhile, conservative groups are leading an effort outside the white house to open the economy even sooner. steven moore former trump adviser and close friend of many in the white house is leading that effort telling me that i have a big problem with the virus drming when our $20 trillion economy gets up an running. he says it needs to get up an running a week ago and that longer closure of the government and of business means that more federal funds will be needed to fix that problem he says that is killing an ant with an atom bomb. of course, kelly, what you cannot predict is how quickly consumer behaviors will change there's a harvard study out saying some form of social distancing is needed until 2022 to keep future outbreaks at bay. >> you know, it is interesting, kayla, because one of the main
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focuses for germany, even for the u.s. is whether to reopen schools. but i don't understand how we could even do that if you can't have child care. >> right that is one of the biggest and most critical unsolved variables, kelly in certain states and certain companies they are wanting a fraction of employees to start getting back to work but in 23 states the school systems are closed until the end of the academic year. in many cases that academic year spanned until late june. just today, two democratic senators put forth a plan for $50 billion in aid for child care to make sure to keep that industry afloat and to make sure that it's accessible for workers on the front line. the question is when the center an schools open for everybody else. >> a lot of places say we'll take the kids of teachers and health care workers but to have to expand that as many industries become vital. for now, we appreciate it. thank you. well, as i mentioned stocks
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are down today near session lows right now with the market selling off after a swath of terrible economic numbers. art cashin saying it might be time to hit the pause button on the rally. i'm joined by two guests it's good to see you both. jason, i'll begin with you have we come back too much too quickly here for the stock market >> we are trying to see what's happening here in the marketplace but what we're seeing today is a reaction to the cloudiness of the outlook. so we're seeing some bank earnings an it is really challenging for those businesses to look forward into the second quarter. the economic data's the same way. the bad data was april data. even the retail sales number was a march number affected a little bit by the end of the month so it is really to resolve the cloudiness of the outlook.
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>> you like like you say, the survivors in the hard-hit sectors like energy and financials jim, with this idea that as bad as the data gets it might call for more action from the congress and fed how would you score them on these measures >> well, so far it's taking a little bit longer than what the market's probably hoping and expecting but ultimately i think it works the fed is throwing in also the treasury throwing an awful lot of man at this and i think over time this is going to, you know, be successful but it is going to take time an within of the things that kayla was discussing just before is how long is it going to take how long for people to go to a theater or a ball game or something like that this is the issue we have to focus on here is that we don't exactly know the time but, you know, what i would argue though is that, yes, these programs are of sufficient size it is just that failure's not an
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option the government, the fed is going to keep at this and the size will get bigger if it needs to be. >> right jim, our kate rogers just tweeted the update on the payroll protection program it was given $350 billion initially. he said it almost hit that and congress left last week without approving more funds the time is of the essence it could run out of funding tomorrow or the next day. >> yeah. so you're using a magic word funding is a measure of liquidity being extended to the market right? we have to think about this in a framework of liquidity, solvency and what the fed is trying to do is extend a bridge loan to create solvency for these companies right now to get through this difficult period of time where earnings might be a little bit short because people aren't outside spending. you don't want a liquidity problem turn into a solvency
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problem and you can be insolvent to the extent that some earnings are not coming in the way people hoped they would and hurts an ability to repay the debts but as long as you don't lose access to funding you can be in that period of time for an extended period of time i should say and in essentially that's what the government is doing is providing a bridge loan to get to the other side of the virus so that when they get there there's still an ongoing concern and a recovery and the companies can still recover. >> right so, jason, i saw you nodding in agreement to that. bring it back to how investors should be positioned right now. >> look. i think the liquidity solvency dynamic is critical. i would say that what the fed's trying to do is solve liquidity issues but the problem is longer term changes in behavior, et cetera, are solvency challenges and the fed can't solve those and as you look at beaten up sectors, financials, energy as an example, the survivors are
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suffering potentially liquidity and not long-term solvency we like royal dutch as an example. has a great balance sheet. access to funding today. and actually the king of saudi arabia just put money into the equity i don't know a better positioned investor from a knowledge standpoint and needs the dividends. as you think about that solvency issue going forward that's very much in our focus. >> i like what you just said and a good point it is one thing to provide a bridge loan and another to keep up a movie theater or a restaurant business that might not be a growing concern because it's at less than 50% capacity, for example. so, jason, i'm not sure there are a lot of great examples of public traded companies, a few in the space, but how a big part of the economy do you think we're talking about that could be permanently affected in that way? >> it is a great question as you look at hospitality sectors.
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i live in a tourist town here in santa fe and restaurants are shuttering i expect this challenge to exist for some time and the liquidity issues to be solved in the marketplace but not in the economy from a solvency standpoint longer term so as we look at the challenge it's critical and for us credit is where this is really playing out. smaller businesses, private credit not so much really large public equities. >> i didn't know you were in santa fe get that backdrop. what's this thornburgh -- i want to see the peblos and the turquoise. >> we'll get the mountains for you next time. >> thank you it's good to see you both. guys, thank you so much. we appreciate it today jason and jim. we mentioned that the price of oil is one of the big parts of the market story today. crude around the $20 a barrel mark it's down nearly 70% in the past year it is causing the texas railroad
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commission regulating the oil and gas industry in texas to hold a virtual meeting as it considers cutting production in the state for the first time in nearly 50 years. how did we get here? there was a proposal of cut equal to a million barrelling a day and then exxon came out against that along with every major trade association. at the commission's open meeting yesterday it heard ten hours of testimony from over 50 people. next week the three-person agency will meet virtually to possibly vote on cuts. for more on this, i'm joined by wayne christian, the chair of the texas commission good to see you. >> honored with you. >> tell me your conclusions to the extent you can from what you heard yesterday. >> of course, after 50-plus testimonies that were given, a lot of views, concerns, and i think the agreement is we have to do something. we're setting here and looking at the different options they told us from industry and individuals but we have a risk in the nation of turning back
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from the -- being the energy exporter to the world, number one in the world exporter, the united states, just behind us are russia and saudi arabia and opec decided they didn't like that and came after us on a one punch and then this pandemic came through and shut down the use of oil and gas worldwide so the industry is suffering and what we yesterday heard from is a desperate industry, many small families that are losing jobs, literally hundreds of thousands to lose jobs unless we stabilize something or come to some rescue. >> yeah. as you said, a desperate industry there's some incredible testimony yesterday. diamondback energy said if you make us cut we'll cut to zero and can't be viable in that environment. talking about putting jobs at risk an so forth they're against the idea that you should do something as you just said. what kind of options are we talking about? are you coming up -- we have spoken to your colleague ryan sitten that seemed to like the
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proposal would your action take a different form >> any option is there we're looking at all of the options. there have been no decision made and until we get three get together to make a decision there is no decision of the agency but what i'm looking at is what are the options? the presentation of limiting the production, we need to do that nationwide texas is 40% of the production in the united states and in the world we're only 5% so to really be effective, a lot of the testimony said we need the cooperation of other states. i'm a member appointed by governor abbott to the interstate oil and gas compact commission that regulates energy in the united states and in canada and we need their cooperation. plus the federal government. so we need to act as an entire nation on this if we're going to act economically against forces worldwide. >> right it is the three of you you had over 20,000 people tuned in to the virtual meeting from across the country, from around the world because everyone's
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pointing the finger at you to say is american production agreeing to a cut? some say we could do this by limiting natural gas flaring for instance would you consider something like that as a method of basically trying to trim overall production >> frankly i think that's a separate environmental issue that we are addressing at the railroad commission or looking at ways to address flaring but a side issue when you cut back production, you cut down the amount of flaring. so right now that's not the main issue but we need the dollar of the barrel of oil back up so that our companies can continue and we don't lay off workers and destroy what has been the revamping of not only energy security in the united states and first time in 70 years we are an energy exporter in the united states to the rest of the world. that's at risk we have families, thousands of families making a living from this we have energy security and more
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important for the first time we are now have national security secure the amount of discoveries in america and texas are phenomenal worldwide our ambassadors worldwide said we have negotiated different because of the discoveries of oil in america and under attack from opec for the shale play that made energy number one in the united states. >> these comments from texas state representative larson were pretty stark saying the idea of cuts is arrogant and condescending to every texan please drop any consideration of socializing texas oil today. what is your repons to that? are you guys basically on the cusp of agreeing or imposing quotas across texas oil production >> definitely one option that we are considering. it was a testimony but we set through hours of suggestions and lyle is a great
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friend, a great representative there in austin and listening to his recommendation and all of it put together to come up with what's right for texas and working together with other states for america. >> all right well, it sounds to me like you're considering it. we know the big meeting on tuesday. we'll see what comes out of that and if there's any -- if that's enough to support the oil price. thank you so much for joining me. >> thank you very much. >> it's a pleasure we have some breaking news just talking about theaters. cinemark has news on reopening yulia? >> that's right. the ceo just outlining his plan to reopen his theaters around july 1st he said that he aims to bring back their employees starting around mid-june with a plan of starting to show old movies, library movies, around the beginning of july to ramp up and start getting people back into theaters before the opening of
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christopher nolan's "tenant" to open july 17th that would be the first new movie to open in theaters and outlined the plan saying that they can operate profitably at 20% to 30% capacity and don't need to be more full than that to be profitable and discussing ways ofsocial distancing in th theaters an including capping the number of people admitted. back over to you. >> those aren't going to be details but central to the whole thing, don't you think a movie theater being a first to talk about reopening >> absolutely. what's really interesting is he was pressed on this call about whether people want to come back, whether they would be comfortable coming back. he said he really did think there would be a very wide range of responses to this and noted different ways to do this. they could get rid of reserve seating and allow families to sit together and then families separate from other people
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sell every other seat and he also talked about how a lot of theaters have these recliners, bigger seats separate from others naturally and then range of possibilities and interesting to get the theaters open before new movies open and maybe part of that is to test the appetite of getting people back into those screening rooms. >> everyone's talking about whether direct to the living room is the new model. i know the urgency thank you. coming up, tech takes the lead despite the downturn, some biggest names in tech leaders of an attempt to climb up from the bottom what are the best buys plus we have seen plenty of companies suspend the buybacks and very few suspended dividends. is that the next shoe to drop? a record plunge in homebuilder sentiment sending stocks deep into the red today we'll discuss. because they're here.
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welcome back to "the exchange." historically low rates supposed to give the housing market a boost and hopefully help with the economic recover ri but furloughing and layoffs with respect the only thing to climb, mortgage rates did, too. how the idea of housing holding up doesn't seem to be in the card and diana olick has the numbers. diana? >> reporter: kelly, yes.
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really stunning numbers on builder sentiment in single family housing market. plunged to 30 on the national association of homebuilders index. anything above 50 is considered positive this is the first negative read in six years and was the largest one-month drop in the history of the survey dating back to 1985 the expectation for a drop to 55 but the survey was conducted from april 1 to 13 and the most current read on the builders that we have to date of the index's three components current sales conditions dropped to 36. sales expectations in six months fell 39 to 36 points and buyer traffic decreases 43 points to 13 construction was deemed an essential business by the federal government during the coronavirus pandemic although certain hard-hit states shut down most operations. tomorrow morning we get housing starts for the month of march and may another indicator of
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what the slowdown will be going ahead. the nu the. >> we appreciate it. thank you. let's check out the homebuilder etf. tumbling 6% at the lows today. is there more pain to come for the industry joining me is jack masinca is it one step forward, two steps back what do you think? >> hi, kelly thank you for having me. it is hard to know right now because your model home centers aren't open. you have a hard time getting people on the job sites to finish the homes you have to distance out the trade and not too many people in your house to finish that home that you have on the track you know the one thing i would say is this is going to be a very front-ended loaded impact. when you look at the financial crisis, it took two years to reach peak unemployment in
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meaningful declines in home prices took longer than that this is very much front-end loaded when does work start again think about the builders they're really -- companies are three things they are transaction models. right? so you don't open the doors on a saturday nobody can buy a house. capital intensive businesses owning land for several years forward because that's your inventory. three, it is a confidence game people aren't buying homes if they don't have confidence about their own situation. >> right so, all of that said, i see how your recent note talks about how the losers get lucky sometimes positive about half the industry dr horton, pulte taylor morrison. why the three? do they have better characteristings of exposure in
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the country? >> overriding theme in the reset of the view is really sale and when you run through -- what we basically did is took a two-year trend of the housing and applied it to two quarters in our models to say what would that look like over two years from there you realize two things business focused on the first time entry-level buyer are likely to do better. right? life type of events. marriage, child, et cetera those focused on the rehiring, those are more the special purchases and you can see that negatively impacted and then the other two is scale so for pulte and horton, when you run that significant drop of demand through the model they tend to be more resilient because they're geographically
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diverse, much better operating scale so the earnings impact is far, far less. >> no. that makes sense jack, thank you. we'll check back with you soon. >> thanks. >> after a record low confidence plunge this morning. coming up as it embarks on a massive and far reaching new path is the fed at risk of losing the independence? if so, what would that mean? we'll explore that. plus how major league baseball is playing a role in the largest covid antibody study in the u.s you n tch cawaor listen to us live on the go on the cnbc app - [narrator] at southern new hampshire university,
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good afternoon new york govern now cuomo signing an executive order requiring people to wear face coverings in public when social distancing cannot be maintained said but the kurvcurve is flattn in the state >> the health care situation has stabilize. the fears of overwhelming the health care system has not happened so we have that stabilize. people are still getting infected but we have the infection spread down to a manageable number. >> senate democrats are seeking $30 billion to fund a national virus testing program. senate minority leader schumer said they need to camp up testing and the contact tracing. there's inspecting the prisons for covid-19 outbreaks they have complained of lack of
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social distancing and problems getting protective equipment for more coronavirus coverage, head to cnbc.com kelly? >> thanks so much. well, testing is under way right now as major league baseball has agreed to participate in the country's largest corona antibody study yet. eric chemi joins me with details. >> they say 27 of the 30 teams to voluntarily participate in an antibody research study conducted by stanford and usc an each will have a finger prick of blood to be tested for the presence of antibodies to indicate a past infection even in people that didn't display symptoms 10,000 total employees have volunteered to participate including players, stadium workers and executives baseball's employee base is a vast range of ages and geographies, a key feature for the study.
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researchers said there's nothing in the league but to help public health policy. they asked many companies for volunteers but baseball was the first one to say yes the goal of the project is to provide a better understanding of many people in various parts of america infected to help figure out how many people exposed but suffered no symptoms and help public officials determine when it's safe to ease up on social distancing rules meant to slow down the pandemic. back to you. >> yeah, no. fascinating. this is the next step towards the reopening but the mlb is first to sign on but how did they get involved? >> in addition, there's an anti-doping lab out of utah part of the study there's not a lot of anti-doping testing going on without sports so they're getting involved with this, had an existing relationship with mlb and use that relationship and mlb very quick to say, yes, we want to participate in this. >> wow great repurposing of something not being used
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way downside energy tops the list down 6%. materials down 4.5%. let's check on the price of oil. barely back above the $20 mark, hit the lowest level intraday since february of 2002 fighting to get back into positive territory and struggling to do so. ma companies have suspended the share buybacks and withdrawn guidance here but only a few halted the dividend payments could that be the next shoe to drop bob pisani with the answers. bob? >> and you have heard proctor and gamble and johnson & johnson increasing the dividend by 6%. you won't see a lot of that. first off, they have modest dividends around 2.5%. more prevalent is trends to cutting or eliminating the dividend and there's johnson & johnson trading to the upside with very good runs recently and looking at those canceling the dividend or spending it,
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carnival, cdarden, ford, hilton nordstrom, delta wall street with lists of companies out there with dramatic price drops, big increases in the dividends yields and perhaps most importantly big cash flow problems because that's the most important thing. here's companies with high dividend rates that have rocketed in the last few weeks kohl's at nearly 15% halliburton 13%. ethan allen. host hotels. american airlines. notice something about this. they tend to cluster in a particular sub sector so you are seeing retailers, energy, hotel stocks, airline stocks, those are the ones that are seeing the dividend yields rocket up the most and might be the most at a risk of a dividend cut most of the time estimates of 10% or 15% decline in dividends paid this year and concentrated
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in particular sectors and i they little l bit of a good sign for the overall market and not seeing mass dividend cuts going on and certain sectors for sure. back to you. >> thanks. from dif denld cuts to tech, amazon and netflix leading some traders to believe it's a way out of the slow down we're seeing i'm joined by paul meeks paul, it is good the see you tell me how you've been positioning throughout the selloff. >> so, what i've done is i've reshuffled the deck and, of course, as technology stocks did so well in '19, most technology stocks slashed 40% to 50%, if you are somebody like me looking at the valuations, i had to dip to the jv team companies that were not as nice as i wanted to but they were relatively attractive valuations then you get into 2020 with the
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coronavirus and you have the big draft downwards in stocks and so what i have done is gotten out of the jv teams and now going into the varsity names, ones that are quality company that is now for the first time in sometimes not just months or years reasonably valued and did that and then with surplus cash i'm still building a pretty big cash position because i'm not one of the believers that this is going to be a snap back that's going to sustain itself. >> you want cash to buy cheaper? the varsity names even cheaper what are the names to snap up here >> one of the things i'm interested in a couple companies that were showing momentum pre-coronavirus and it is obvious to all in the post-coronavirus world that they are strong getting stronger. netflix. amazon recently i beefed up my holdings in activision as a gaming play
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akamai and a speed and performance and security play. and some other names because i want to make sure that they're the best names and also they fit the themes because the themes are going to be different on the other side of this fitting the themes for remote workplace and some other major themes in technology. >> you think remote workplace is a big theme coming out of this a lot of people piled on to the stay-at-home bandwagon trade is this a permanent shift or they're so cheap you could comfortably buy them >> it's interesting. i separated the portfolio into core names that i discussed and trading names such as zoom which is a stock i will exit as fast as i entered because maybe over time it is a permanent beneficiary of the live at home, work at home theme but as of now, you know, it is still on the come so i have some on the
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fringes. i'm playing with the coronavirus successfully some of those plays but they're definitely not core names and will go as i said before as fast as they came in when the time is right. >> zoom's at 150 what is your selling price >> i think if zoom gets back to the mid-160s which was the high of a couple of weeks ago as i held my nose and bought it i have to hold my nose and even up 5%, 7% as it is today on that particular day i have to sell it in good conscioence until they show that they can monetize the huge influx of subscribers i'm not a believer long term. >> everybody loved mastercard and visa why did you sell them? >> you know, mastercard and visa do dominate the backbone of payment processing but the problem is in the post-coronavirus world we're going to be going to bars, restaurants, doing face to face
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transactions a lot less and so i think in that space you want to be in different names. in payment processing versus mastercard and visa which got very expensive because they did so well for so many years leading to the coronavirus i just think they're bigger fish to fry than those two. >> would you give us the name to be in in the space >> i think as we morph over time, i don't do it right now because i still think they could go lower but paypal and square are more interesting than mastercard and visa. >> always answer the questions candidly we appreciate it. >> that's my thing. >> good to see you coming up, getting the right supplies to the right places at the right time, a look at how one new partnership hopes to streamline that process. how did every resident on well think fisher laisnd and
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welcome back let's get to the big calls of the tay. tesla tops the list. goldman initiating the company with a buy of $864 price target to be specific goldman said tesla is well positioned to benefit of goet in the electric vehicles and main tan gross margins and made improvements in cash flow. shares at 727 today. next up is canada goose. upgraded to a buy and raising the price target to 30 from 20 they're saying that concerns about inventory overhang could recede they also like the set-up or 2021 because this crisis will help next year's comps and says it's a solid balance sheet and liquidity position finally, target upgraded to outperform and the price target
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to 125 target they say is poised to emerge from the pandemic in a stronger position relative to peers. target's trial ofsame-day services picked up and will support a competitive advantage for the company and support higher margin sales. target taking the profits today. down 2.5%. the need for critical health care supplies to fight coronavirus is great so has been the willingness to help but getting what's needed to the right place in a timely manner is a challenge and that's where the front line impact project comes in frank holland is here with more on that for us >> as part of the project, that's 5 million kind bars and bucks to workers responding to the covid-19 epidemic as part of that front line impact project and corporate donations of food, transportation and lodging and project n-95 for the logistics for hospitals to buy critical equipment. organizers use what they learn sourcing ppe for hospitals for
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workers after hours. >> the biggest issue that we have seen has been the ability to understand who out in that ecosystem of suppliers actually has the equipment or the products that the hospitals can purchase so the imbalance there really is that there are many people raising their hands saying we can provide that and very few who can deliver on that. >> now creating a sister platform to enable them to also get healthy snacks or travel vouchers or lodging or any other needs that are donating by corporate organizations. >> delivering donations is a challenge. ralph lauren with a nonprofit to deliver thousands of masks and gowns for donations on the east coast and then you have las vegas sands with the donation of 2 million masks to nevada, new york all by itself and then companies like lowe's with medical supplier companies to deliver $10 million in ppe
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nationwide kelly? >> markets everywhere. frank holland with the details on that partnership for us. now to roblt frank who's going to tell us about the antibody testing kits, among the many items in short supply but on fisher island you get a test. what's going on? >> it's amazing, kelly only 1% of floridians able to get tested for the coronavirus but 100% of the residents of fisher island off miami have just gotten the antibody test. now the residents purchased 1,800 test kits for the island's 800 families and housekeepers, landscapers and workers and everyone on the island for instant results whether they had been exposed to the virus or had the immunity just to be clear, this is not the nasal swab test whether you are infected and of course that test in more demand but the testing sparked a backlash in a state of a lot of demand for
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tests and wait for testing right now. a spokeswoman for the island accessible by boat and an average income of $2.5 million said that since many of the residents are over 60 they are high risk and paid for the tests themselves at $17 each she said they're also engaging in social distancing since the marina, the golf club an the tennis courts are now closed the university of miami health system, they tier ones that provided the test saying in a statement to me, quote, we may have created the impression that certain communities would receive preferential treatment and they say they're revising that system for providing the test but clearly, you know, as this crisis has exposed a lot of levels of inequality this is another example where people point and say the well think got different treatment from everyone else. kelly. >> right the cost is not an issue here. $17. almost everybody could have got one. should i call up the university of miami and ask for one for myself
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>> good luck with that. >> exactly who is the person with the access and why was it granted by the university of miami? >> well, that is the question. you know i suspect somewhere in there there's a well think resident of fisher island serving on the board or a big donor to donor to the hospital, i don't know who that might be the hospital system is saying, look, this is what they wanted, we provided it now, interesting, i found out that the tests for the island came from the same company that the hospital got the test from for a broader miami dade county government study again, they're saying they didn't divert these, but it is interesting they came from the same company, kelly. >> very. lots is about this robert, thanks appreciate it, robert frank. coming up, why the fed's emergence as a power play is posing new risks to its independence greg ip wrote about and it will join me live to talk about it, next
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welcome back the market is looking to the fed for leadership during this crisis and it has arguably emerged as the most powerful component of the government response but as the central bank takes on more power, it's also putting its independence at risk joining me now with more is greg ip, he's the chief economics commentator at "the wall street journal. greg, as always, got your finger right on the issue that everybody's kind of trying to wrap their heads around. i thought greg dervos put it well yesterday when he said, the fed is getting more power, but it's trading its independence. >> i think that's something we really have to ask first of all, the fed is doing what it has to do. we're in a sort of crisis-like war-time situation and the fed is not going to be doing anybody any favors by waving the federal reserve act in anybody's faces and say, no,
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we can dona't do that but let's look a little bit ahead of here, kelly they are going to be making decisions with these facilities where they'll be lending to municipalities, to big companies, to small companies. which corporate credit are they going to buy which asset-backed securities are they going to buy? this is a job that is supposed to be done by private markets. who gets the capital, who doesn't? we're going to have un-elected technocrats at the fed doing it. and here's the issue right now, that seems like a necessary thing to do. it's good that they're putting none o the money out there. but what about when the questions become a little bit more fine grained. you'll have companies going to their congressmen saying, we would like some of that credit you'll have municipalities doing the same thing and there's going to be pressure on the fed to be responding not based on what the data and the financial markets suggest they need to do, but on what the politics they suggest they do. and that's something we need to worry about. >> and they've also changed their tune on this at first, it looked like they were going to try to help the
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strong, not help the weak now they're buying junk bond etfs. the fed is not supposed to be picking winners and losers, but in this case, it nervinevitably. is there a way they need to massage or think about that communication now? even just contracting this stuff out to the likes of black rock as money managers is going to bring up these conflicts of interest >> right, so now the fed will say that they are not picking individual firms over others they're setting broad criteria for classes of borrowers so they'll accept this investment, that credit rating, but not that credit rating that's all well and good and that's more or less as it's been instructed to by the law of congress so i don't really question their sincerity in this. but let's face facts, in that designing the facilities and which criteria you're going to use, that necessarily excludes some companies and some others by deciding that fallen angels, companies that were investment grade up until march 27th would be eligible, that was
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essentially turning ford into a winner, even if that wasn't the explicit design. and i think that -- so there's that issue, yes. how -- why do we want the fed to do that? there was another way to do it we could have just had congress borrow the $3 trillion and make all of those decisions >> right >> the economics are exactly the same i mean, at one level, i suppose, it's a good sign that congress trusts the fed, probably more than they trust the trump administration to do this properly but there's going to be some tough questions ahead, kelly i mean, you know, jay powell has said on september 30th, we'll decide if these facilities are still needed and i don't doubt that he will apply a very non-partisan, economically informed view to that but steve mnuchin might have a slightly different view, you know he might have an eye on the election and what he wants the shape of the markets to be in. those are the kinds of conflicticonflict ing incentives that the fed is going to have to negotiate >> again, we're just at the beginning, i think, of that. greg, thanks so much it's a great piece and thanks for joining me today
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really appreciate it >> thank you, kelly. >> greg ip with "the wall street journal. well, as he just spoke, "the wall street journal" is reporting that the small business aid program is set to run out of money later today so it's going to come down to the wire for whether there's enough funds out there for what's already been announced, not just on the fed side and we're just minutes away from the fed releasing the beige book this afternoon in today's down market, will that news top of the hour send stocks even lower? stay tuned to find out plus, we'll have the ceo of junior's cheesecake. he's back and he told us yesterday he got that small business loan, but he's not ready to bring back his workers just yet that's stirring outrage from washington to main street. we'll talk to him about the blowback he's getting and if what he's doing is allowed this must-see interview, coming up
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good afternoon, everyone and welcome. our breaking news coverage of the markets in turmoil and the global coronavirus pandemic continues right now on "power lunch. i'm tyler mathisen, glad you could be with us the market's getting a reality check at this hour, after bouncing back earlier in the week and last week, as well. we are off the lows, but the dow is down roughly 500 points on a flood of weak economic data. would you expect anything different from manufacturing to housing to retail sales. all of those areas showing just what one might expect in a shuttered economy. best buy, meanwhile, announcing it will furlough more than 50,000 workers and jcpenney exploring bankruptcy the company now worth only about $70 million. at its peak, it was worth just under $20 billion. plus, small business owner alan rosen of
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