firm, poshmark, petco, all surging in their public debuts it's friday, january 15th, 2021, "squawk box" right now ♪ good morning, everybody. welcome to "squawk box" here on cnbc i'm becky quick along with joe kernen and andrew ross sorkin. and we're watching the u.s. equity futures on this friday. we did see a little bit of a pull back yesterday for the stock market, and, you know, this came after a week of kind of treading water, i would say, just coming off some of those all time highs we are on track for the three major averages to end down this week, that would be the first time in five weeks that's happened s&p futures off by ten, the nasdaq down by 20.

if you're watching what's happening in the treasury market, the yield on the ten-year, which is the one we have been watching so very closely is sitting at 1.14%. check out the small caps, though, because the russell 2000 was up by 2% yesterday it closed at another record high it seems to be notching a record high every day, up 43 this morning, even after that, 2,155. the dow transports closed at a record high. that came after a gain of more than 1% in yesterday's session i think that's the second day in a row that both the dow transports and russell 2000 have closed at record highs andrew >> okay, thanks, becky meantime, we want to bring you an update right now on the pandemic the u.s. has now distributed more than 30 million doses of the vaccine, and over 11 million people have received their first dose this was the scene in dallas and austin, texas, yesterday as people waited in long lines at vaccine hubs after a scheduling error. austin's public health department encouraged people who had registered to just come when

they were available. well, it backfired after many people decided to come, as you can see right there, as early as they could, resulting in a massive line in north carolina yesterday, hundreds of people 75 years old and older lined up for a first come first serve vaccination line that backed up traffic for miles. we're going to talk to a lot more at 6:30, the ceo of zocdoc, the company trying to cut through the red tape holding up scheduling literally over the last 72 hours as states have opened up access to vaccines, in some cases there appears to be a shortage which is, i don't want to say a good sign but it's a good sign that the demand to some degree is there. i can tell you that my own parents are in the midst of trying to get it and my mother was scheduled to do it yesterday, and apparently they ran out of vaccines, so we are all in this together >> it's a bit of a mess. my parents are doing the same thing, andrew, and i have been trying to help them, too, and

look for appointments, and everywhere you go, it says okay, great, i keep thinking i found the magic link through the state web site and through then some of the contractors that they have sent out to, whether that be a grocery store or an apothecary, drugstore, anything down the line, you try and sign up, and they say forget it, don't even look at us, we don't have any appointments coming up until at least february. we don't have the vaccine right now. it's really a pretty complicated web. >> we talked to zocdoc, reading about how it works, and the actual service it provides, yeah, you can call us or book it, and then we'll get you a time, and then we'll tell you where you can do it, and then we'll book the second one. it's like, okay, that's what doctors have been doing and offices have been doing, but i guess the key is the number of calls, all the sites are going down none of them work, you can't even submit it after you register and it's the demand and the low supply, so i don't know what zocdoc can do about the supply

i guess they can streamline the logistics of the process, but it's not a panacea >> apparently honeywell has been doing work on this the ceo of honeywell was on with jim cramer on mad money, and i tuned in the middle of the interview. i missed part of what they have been doing with it but logistics and helping out in north carolina and charlotte, they have a massive plan where they are inoculating a million people it sounded incredibly impressive it's great to see businesses jumping in and helping with what they're good at, things like logistics, we could probably use more of that help. >> ipos, andrew, these must have given you a lot of agita, for the poor companies that didn't get what they deserved because they're all doubling, right, so time now for a check up on this week's ipos. shares of petco jumped 63%, priced at 18, closed at 29.40.

online clothing reseller, poshmark ended the day up 141% after yesterday's ipo. the stock priced at $42 a share, opened at 97.50, and closed at 101.50, dollars, and affirm holdings, the stock rose nearly 100% in wednesday's ipo. it surging again yesterday, up 18%, and it's up again in the pre-market there's a lot of excitement about ipos you can't control it. >> joe, i'll tell you, though, i don't know if you can't control it i actually think part of it is that you can control it, and there's a decision being made, we talked about yesterday, they are controlling it, when you go back to think about all of the ipos that took place in the late '90 and 2000 it created beyond what happened to the companies themselves, it created a scandal. it created a scandal on wall

street, and i will imagine that we will be having a conversation about a scandal on wall street other theover the next year or when this is all said and done the other thing that's happening is there are hedge funds and other investors making a lot of money, and making a lot of money quick. getting access to these ipos at these prices, knowing that they're going to jump 100% in a day and to not believe that what you're going to find out later is that there were quid pro quos and all sorts of trading among the banks, because there's the client and the bank on one side, the investor, and the client or bank on the other side, which is a company, there's a much bigger conversation to be had about what's happening here. >> that's what confused me yesterday. >> it's the same thing happened 30 years ago i never got an ipo our entire brokerage office would get 100 shares of an ipo, and i remember the biggest producer in the office, he would get his hundred shares, and he would give it to his favorite

client, and it would double, and it would be like a, it's not that different than a discount that you give on someone who gives, you know, who did a lot of trading back then, you would give them a commission discount. this was a way of defraying some of the costs that they had paid over the past years ago but it's always been, you know, there's been a wink and a nod about who gets these things, and i don't know whether it's a dirty little secret. >> andrew, that's what i remember -- i was just going to say, when you were saying that you spoke with max levchin, and he was saying they want certain investors, that gets back to the same idea of placing these things, giving it to preferred investors, preferred clients however that goes out. that's the frustrating thing to people on main street is if they're the retail investor trying to get on these things, there's a feeling of this club, everybody else is left in on it and you're the guy left holding it, chasing after it. >> there's no question i think there's two issues here. there's who the companies want to be their shareholders which

in some cases you don't necessarily want retail or hot money in the hedge fund. >> then don't do an ipo. keep it private. >> that's a very very interesting point. but the second point i was going to make relating to what joe was mentioning about, you know, discounting or offering some kind of advantage to the client, it's offering the advantage of one client over the expense of the company, and the other piece is there were a number of banks as you remember now close to 20 years ago, who were both investigated and prosecuted over these type of issues so the idea that this is sort of a i scratch my back, you scratch yours and it's all fine, i'm only suggesting as we're watching this play out that there are probably some important questions to be asked about this whole program because there's something that people are going to look back at at some point and say maybe this is a little amiss. >> what was the whole quatrone

scandal, do you remember, becky or sorkin. >> i remember very well. >> you were at the course thous weren't you andrew >> there was a mistrial, two trials the case against frank was related to obstruction of justice, but the underlying issue that they were trying to investigate, and actually, at the time, they weren't really investigating frank, so the whole thing was sort of an oddity, and if you remember, the case was overturned in the end on frank's behalf. take him out of it but credit suisse at the time, then credit suisse boston effectively was accused of trading, not trading but basically trying to get big clients and big ceos to get ipos, meaning you would say i'll give you ceo, you'll be my client, i'll give you money, i'll give you access to other ipos if you give us your ipo there was all sorts of favor trading going on, at least that was the allegation and there were fines and more paid along the way.

>> none of that goes on anymore. no way no way >> andrew, you said you bet we're investigating a scandal on wall street in the next year, and all i can think is i can't remember when we didn't have a scandal. i think you're right about the questions that are going to be asked around this particular situation. i think those questions will be coming. >> yeah. i mean petco is a hot flier. they sell dog food i want to get in on that. >> and cat food. how did they think of that it's awesome i remember gabeli 20 years ago said two things, coffee, and this was like at the beginning of starbucks, coffee and pets. >> that's right. you're right he did say that. >> and little did we know, andrew finally might have gotten -- did you get a dog andrew, who is this here >> what, did you get a dog >> not yet >> i thought you were serious.

i say yet is still the operative word, my children may be watching, but i think we should. >> i'll bring cooper on tv, the boys, and sydney would like that >> what is that, a fish? >> no, we've got the greatest bunny in the world we'll do animals we'll do an animal show. >> that's your answer for a pet, sorkin, a bunny. is it one of those with the ears >> bunnies are cute. >> becky, we need to see the -- >> bunnies are cute. it's good for ratings. we'll bring the bunny on later we have the cat on now >> if you get home and there's a big pot on the stove boiling, do not go over there or at least tell the kids. >> not this bunny. this is the bunny you'll ever meet. >> bunnies are good. you'll love this guy. >> if you see in the neighborhood, run. alex forrester. when we come back, president-elect biden unveiling details of a $1.9 trillion covid

relief plan, including another round of direct payments we've got the detail on that plan next sk. and later we are kicking off earnings season with reports from the big bank, starting with jp morgan. we have citigroup and wells fargo coming up at 8:00 a.m. eastern time check out the stocks this morning, all under a ltlbit ite of pressure, but so is the broader market "squawk box" will be right back.

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plan to try and combat the virus and the economic downturn. eamon javers joins us right now. he has more on the details on that eamon, good morning. >> good morning, becky you're right the total here is $1.9 trillion from the biden plan. what they're saying is they're going to divide their relief efforts into two phases, the first one is what they're calling the american rescue plan that's this initial $1.9 trillion, but there's more behind that, they say, they're going to have a recovery plan later in the first hundred days. that, they say, will be an additional amount of money, and that will be focused on infrastructure and building and creating jobs for the future but this initial rescue plan, they say, is going to be centered around spending, around covid relief vaccinations things are much worse than they could have anticipated in terms of the relief plan there's no national plan for

s funding here is going to be focused on that take a look at the details here, $400 billion for covid relief overall. $20 billion toward that vaccine program. $50 billion for testing expand $30 billion for supplies and protective gear of which they say the united states still nearly a year in doesn't have nearly enough. $170 billion for k through 12 schools and colleges biden says he wants to get schools reopened in his first hundred days direct aid to americans, nearly a trillion dollars here. they want to plus up those direct stimulus checks by $1,400, giving you a total with the last bill and this bill of the $2,000 the democrats have been pushing for $400 a week in federal unemployment insurance $30 billion in rental assistance the president-elect says he wants to push for a $15 an hour minimum wage he says that workers on the front lines, those essential workers have been risking their lives, and he says they deserve

a $15 an hour minimum wage, and also that aid to states and localities, that was one of the stumbling blocks in the negotiations over the last stimulus, that's in here as well at $350 billion in aid, to state and local governments. $50 billion for small business grants and loans to help some of those small businesses recover a specific focus here on bars and restaurants which have been so badly hit as we all know, and then $20 billion here for public transit. they say they're going to focus on the transit agencies that have been most hard hit in the course of the pandemic to make sure they don't have to have a massive wave of layoffs and service reductions that would further hurt the economy so guys, the big question now is can this pass up on capitol hill, and i was interested in a conference call with senior biden officials yesterday. they were asked about the prospects on capitol hill, and whether they had enough support in the senate which will be very narrowly divided under the biden administration, and what they said was they have been talking to governors and mayors about this and i thought that was an interesting answer

not necessarily talking about their push to the senators but talking about those governors and mayors who are on the front lines dealing with this crisis day-to-day it sometimes like the biden team thinks those state and local officials will lean on their senators in washington to get this done because they're most familiar with the scale of the challenges that each of these states are facing, guys, back over to you. >> we have talked so much about budget reconciliation and how if they were to use budget reconciliation, they would only need 51 votes to get this passed in the senate. is that the plan they're take something i read so much yesterday about how he was hoping to do bipartisan, and get 60 votes to get this passed. what do you think is going to happen, because i could see people on the right and people on the far left also not being happy with this plan. >> they're not talking about budget reconciliation for this first one. they think they can pass this on the merit,s, which means they would need at least ten republican senators to cross the aisle and vote with them on that they think there might be that support, given the urgent need

out there in the country for this, and the focus really narrowly tailored on states, localities, and virus rollout, vaccine rollout plans here all of that, they think, can attract some votes they're not entirely sure they have the votes yet, but they seem to be holding that budget reconciliation for the next plan >> i read yesterday that you can't do the state and local government aid through budget reconciliation they have to do some horse trading to get to 60 votes that wouldn't solve that problem, so you got to do some horse trading and get republicans on board. >> and you've got a bunch of tax incr increases. the biden team has tax increases they want to put through that's going to come in the second plan, and that's going to attract less republican votes and so you use budget reconciliation for that, to get tax increases through on a majority vote only >> we just did 900, and now

we're doing, what, 1.9 we're up to 2.8. that's a lot more than what no one could agree to in the waning months of 2020 we're at 2.8 >> what biden is banking on is you've got a new congress -- >> didn't they pass 2.2, and republicans said that's a nonstarter now we're not at 2.2 anymore we're ending up at 2.8. >> i think that 1.9 figure is significant, it's under 2. 2 seems to be the political breaking point this is like the deal when you say it's 9.99, not 10 bucks. you get under that psychological threshold, you think there's politics in the grand total number they came with up with to make it a little more palatable. it's an enormous amount of money. the biden argument is if you don't do this now, the economy is going to be worse for years, and years and you're going to be digging yourself out of an epic

hole, and there will be a tragedy for americans and their families going forward. >> and it's worth pointing out that, look, this is the consequence of elections, whoever controls the senate gets to decide what comes to the floor, and the republicans could say no before. that's not the case anymore. we'll see what happens. >> the democrat ks brcan bring t to the floor, the question is whether they can get the votes when they do it. for more on the plan nancy lazar, partner and chief economist at corner stone. you heard the details of the plan is this the right plan for what we need right now? >> what we need is to get the vaccine out, and to the extent the plan is focusing on that, that's good news you're seeing more and more states becoming more effective the quicker that can happen, that's really what's going to jump start this economy. consumers already have 2 trillion in excess savings from

the 900 billion passed back in december 2 trillion this will probably add more to that what will be passed will probably be something for the consumers, a high probability of that happening, 1.9 sounds a little larger something closer to 1 sounds realistic, supporting the consumer. but consumers obviously can't spend that until the economy can open up and so as this vaccine is, indeed, put in place for more and more people, that's when you're really going to see the economy take off you already have a pretty healthy economy, and you can see that in the employment report on friday to be sure, the travel and leisure industry collapsed in december, but if you took that out, you still had growth in manufacturing, construction, and retail gains of over 300,000 for those particular sectors in december so yeah, this is going to further increase the odds that as a vaccine is indeed disseminated, you will see quite

a large snapback in economic activity. >> what do you think the odds are, i realize you're an economist, but you watch washington closely, too, you mentioned you think the vaccination are the most expensive, vaccinationins, testing, ppe, and you're still talking about 270 billion out of that price tag that's the focus part you think needs to get through if it were to get hung up on some of the other issues and that were to not get delivered as a result, what would the impact be? >> again, it really is covid that's holding the economy back, so it's really important that you do increase the effectiveness of the distribution of the vaccine. that's the only way you're going to get people back to schools, traveling, vacations, going to restaurants, so you really do need to get the vaccine more effectively distributed. as far as something getting through, odds are pretty high. because, again, so many people are out of a job

10 million people are out of a job. they need incremental support. something will be passed will it be down to the last minute as we saw in december, probably, that's politics. but again, something is likely to be passed from washington at least according to our team down in d.c. >> the $15 minimum wage that's been put in this as well, i mean, that's something big companies can probably afford to jump in on, but what would it do to small businesses right now that are already suffering from the pandemic >> you got to be careful in burdening, particularly smaller businesses right now as is perfectly clear. they need extra help right now, and a $15 minimum wage would be a tremendous head wind to them companies have been reading up on this over the past several days, companies have beenmovin in that direction, companies that can afford to pay the $15 minimum wage you have seen some of the larger companies move some of the fast food restaurants, big retailers, and so you're moving in the right

direction. i'm not sure now, though, is a time to put an added burden on small businesses that, to be sure, can't afford that right now. >> nancy, thank you for your time this morning. >> thanks very much. >> andrew. >> okay. thanks, becky. coming up when we return ready for blast off. sources telling cnbc that jeff bezos blue origin may start shoveling passengers to space by april. we have details next. first as we head to break, sap posting better than expected 4th quarter results. it sees flat revenue in 2021 stock up marginally this morning. we're back right after this.

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welcome back to "squawk box. we mentioned it before the break. blue origin, the space company founded by jeff bezos now nearly ready to take passengers on a ride to the edge of space. people familiar with the plans telling cnbc that blue origin is aiming to fly its first crude flight into space by early april. yesterday the company completed the 14th test flight of the new shepherd rocket booster and capsule. the eventual goal of the sub orbital system is to take people past the carmen line where space begins the flight takes 11 minutes, and will spend several minutes in zero gravity before returning to office fully autonomous with no pilots on board. >> oh, good. >> i don't know if you're signed up for the first ride there or not. >> no. you got apple tv, i'm sure, andrew, and -- >> i do. >> when it's in sleep mode, you

are going around the -- some of the shots are going around like the satellite. >> depending on which shots, yes. >> that works. that's great it's a 70-plus inch tv and i basically am doing the same thing. >> that does it for you? okay >> been there done that. >> yeah, exactly give me something that i haven't done >> right not impressed. >> andrew, still dealing with the commercial airliners, you're not going up in this thing you're not not until they beta test this thing until you're 90. right? would you? >> let's get past covid. i don't want to go on this thing and have to wear a mask. >> exactly actually, the hard rock is back here on my shot. and their big advertisement is hard rock masks.

what world, who would have thought this a year ago, wow, i got to get me one of those hard rock masks coming up, the vaccine rollout has been plagued by inefficiency in scheduling like the one that caused this log jam at a texas vaccine hub. up next, we're going to talk to the ceo of zocdoc, looking to streamline the vaccine process for americans. stay with us i made a business out of my passion. >> executive edge is sponsored by at, &t business, our people will keep you in network let's take care of business. glitchy video calls with regional offices? yeah, that's my thing. with at&t business, you do the things you love. our people and network will help do the things you don't. let's take care of business. at&t.

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the pace of vaccinations in the u.s. continues to lag, ranking 5th worldwide in vaccinations per 100 people. 30 million doses of the covid vaccine have been distributed. only eleven million doses have been received by patients. zocdoc is hoping to help balance those numbers, debuting its vaccine schedule today, dr. oliver kharraz, ceo and founder of zocdoc is free. it's already been adopted by a new york health system, correct, doctor >> that's correct. we have been working with them

since last sunday for the general public, and did over 100,000 vaccine bookings, at peak rates of over 100 per minute >> we need to just drill down on exactly what we're talking about here because the process itself is exactly what you would expect, you want to be able to go online or on the phone, set up an appointment that is available for you, make sure that you pass the screening test that you're eligible, and then also maybe set up the subsequent one, since it's a two-dose vaccination. none of these things seem like you need to reinvent the wheel it just seems like the amount of demand right now is out stripping the ability for anyone to do it does zocdoc somehow get around that problem look, scheduling is one of these things that looked deceptively simple but turned out to be quite complicated and as it turns out, zocdoc has been unknown even to ourselves, we

have been preparing for this most for the last 13 years the core of what we do is simplify the health care logistics so doctors can focus on caring for patients, and so, you know, we have a solution that works, that works at scale, that can be implemented very quickly, and that's obviously completely free and it's our contribution to the public health effort. >> in new jersey, the different counties have web sites where you can go, but i was trying earlier to get on one of those things, and twice i gave all of the information, but then it ended up, there were no available appointments so there's no reason to do it, and then when i hit submit, it just sat there. i think it was down. i think that it crashes the minute anyone tries to use it. what, yours doesn't crash because of the scale you built into it? >> it doesn't crash. we have been doing this at scale for nearly a decade at this point, and what i will say is

this is what you're describing is some of the user experience elements of getting this right asking you to fill in a lot of information prior to knowing whether there's even availability it's already one of these, and how you get a booking appointment to under 30 seconds, which is what it typically takes on zocdoc. that is part of the art, making it easy for even elderly patients to use this i think we are really in 2021, there's no reason for them to wait in lines or wait for web sites to load or they'll fill out many items to look somewhere else >> the actual problem itself, though, that for some reason different low locales are having trouble getting the vaccines where they need to be, the logistics of getting it into

arms, you don't do anything to the help any of that >> i think there's multiple components of what goes into a successful vaccination program, the supply of vaccine, and the logistics of distributing the vaccine is one of them setting the booking is another bit, and that's the part that we can solve in order to make this as successful as possible. the one point i would add to this and you mentioned sort of in the way we structured this right now through big centralized, you know, vaccination centers, that is potentially part of the rob. i think we need to distribute the distribution, right, we need to make sure that we have more access centers and we can create bottlenecks, you know, with large health systems or government facilities or, you know, pharmacies we need to tap into our existing network of providers and that will, you know, address, you know, another resource besides the vaccine

itself our ability to do the vaccination which is trust, and we need to tap in the trust with people have built up with their primary care providers or community providers over a very long time to make sure everyone has access to a vaccine and feels comfortable getting it. >> doctor, the new york post had a story about how you have been working with mount sinai, and i have heard from people that it's a very organized effort, it's good, it's easy to get scheduled time for the vaccination but it didn't change the fact that you all had to cancel all appointments through tuesday because of a shortage of vaccine. and that just starts to make me wonder, how do you back fill that does it affect everybody down the line who's had an appointment to this point? what do you do for people who are missing their appointments, do they get bumped to the back of the line, how do you handle those logistical nightmares. >> my understanding is there was a reallocation of vaccines between mount sinai and other

centers so that required mount sinai to cancel these bookings we're currently working through this to make this right for patients as much as possible it just points to the overall complexity of the problem, and we should break it down into the components that we can solve with experience, right there is some elements of it that have to be going through a trial and error period, just like which centers actually are well organized, as you say, to get the patients in and probably those could be prioritized to actually getting the vaccine but then, you know, there's things that we have as a society, figured out how to do and have done for a long time, and bookings, is one of them, the trust with your existing primary care doctor is another, and so i just encourage us to follow sort of the best practices, just like the scientists follow best practice, and develop the vaccine in record speed now, and have a

rollout to match that achievement. >> exactly the record development, now we just got to get this going, and then if we add up both segments of, you know, both issues, the development and then the distribution, and if we can do it in, i mean, it's going to be record time probably either way because the development was so fast maybe we can look on the bright side of that at least we're dolling things out, it just probably improves from here, doctor, with efforts like yours we appreciate it >> i'm an optimist, thank you. >> that's great. like to learn more if your organization is interested in zocdoc scheduling, visit zocdoc.com/vaccine wow, okay, andrew, i did it. once >> okay. coming up, when we return, it's a big morning for bank earnings and we are awaiting results. we're going to hear them from jp morgan, and we'll bring you those numbers as soon as they cross the wire

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welcome back to "squawk box. take a look at u.s. equity futures this morning we're going to be getting a host of bank earnings from jp morgan in just a moment i want to show you where we stand right now. we have the dow looking like it would open down about 97 1/2 points, the nasdaq looking to open off about 30 points, and the s&p 500 looking to open off about 12 points, and as just mentioned we are awaiting quarterly results from jp morgan, i want to bring in marty mosby, before we get the numbers, tell us what you are looking for, what investors should be looking for? >> well, we've got a perfect set up in this back half of the year we thought the inflection point for banks was going to be the third quarter earnings that's when the credit costs were going to start and the provisioning start to give them

a little bit of a break. we're getting that right now good feed revenues, should see that, offset the net income. expenses that are relatively flat, and kwwe're going to have kind of a pause in the sense of what we're going to be looking for in credit costs, the provisioning is going to be favorable. this quarter is going to be well, you look at the atmospherics, rates are going up a little bit higher on the back end of the curve which could be just helpful for the story, and so i think those are the things that are kind of playing together to make this earnings season a positive one for the banks. >> in terms of looking at jp morgan, bellwether for everybody or not so much because you've given them a lot of credit over the years for being a better operator than most >> yes, it is a good litmus test, when we look at the industry, however, right now when you look at their overall kind of positioning in the market, their stock price is higher than it was going into 2020 now

so they have recovered and gotten credit for that when you start looking at the earnings as we go into 2021, the net income weakness is going to start getting exposed. we're going to see earnings in 2021 be 12 to 15% lower than what they were in 2019, so the stock price is higher, yet earnings dynamic, even with credit costs relatively benign so from a sense of what are we looking for for the rest of the market and the recovery, it's a great bellwether, from the valuation standpoint it's getting a little ahead of itself relative to the rest of the group. >> marty, we are going to press pause for just a moment as we still await those numbers. what i want to do is put you on hold for a second. i want to come back to you when we do get those numbers. so stick around for just a moment becky? yeah, andrew, as you mentioned, awaiting not only on jp morgan numbers very shortly, we're also awaiting numbers from citigroup and another barnk latr

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welcome back to "squawk box. u.s. equity futures at this hour we continue to await the jpmorgan numbers the dow opening down 107 points. nasdaq off 37 and s&p 500 opening down 12.5 points a couple of other headlines. apple removing the social media

platform wimkin. attracting a lot of negative attention with users calling for the arrest of vice president mike pence a former head of the fda is going to become the head of warp speed. dr. david kessler will lead the federal vaccine effort he headed the administration during the george w. bush and clinton administrations. dr. kessler helped with some of the important early work around aids in trying to get out some of those cocktails as quickly as possible joe? >> okay, andrew. thanks coming up, we're going to bring you jpmorgan numbers, we think, as soon as they cross later, more bank earnings on the way. we're going to hear from citigroup and wells fargo at 8

a.m. eastern i know wilfred frost somewhere is just like pacing back and forth, just waiting, hoping that quite are going to h "sawk box" is coming right back competition beat us, again. how? they have a better finance system than we do. i feel like they might have a better finance system than we do. workday. how do they make better decisions faster? workday. got to do something. workday! i think i got something. work... hey, rob, you're on mute. hello. [all] hey... there he is. workday, the finance, hr, and planning system for a changing world. ♪ch-ch-changes♪

president-elect joe biden unveiling the $1.9 trillion covid relief plan. details from washington straight ahead. the big banks report

we will are you you through the wires. citi and wells fargo coming up later in the show. the ipo market off to a strong start in 2021. shares of petco and poshmark soaring. the second hour of "squawk box" coming up right now. good morning and welcome back to "squawk box" right here on cnbc. i'm andrew ross sorkin along with becky quick and joe kernen. the jpmorgan numbers in a second the market looks like it will open down across the board dow off 100 points, s&p 500 off 11 disney is ending the pass

program. the park has been closed for 10 months due to the pandemic disney said it was ending the program due to uncertainty, as you might imagine, about reopening. president trump extending tariffs on residential washing machines for another two years tariffs designed to protect u.s. manufacturers, they were due to expire on february 8th meantime, mobile gaming company playtika is set to have its ipo. wall street debut pricing the f per share. joe? >> the number on jpmorgan if it's clean would be well above $3.79. haven't gone into the press release. $2.62 was the estimate it's a big beat. >> you see the reserve release >> reserve release is here, 2.9 billion of credit reserve. >> that's 72 cents a share >> release so if we take that out, still be

above $3.79. $2.62. as i said, 28.7 billion was the revenue estimate and the company reported 29 po.2 book value, the quality of this bank always causes its stock to trade quite a bit above book $121 stock which is up a little now. it wasn't initially, but it is now. 142 bid now as you can see up $1.22. it's $141. let's see, the return on common equity, 19%. the revenue on a managed basis, $30.1 billion. consumer and community banking revenue, 12$12.73 billion and, yeah, that -- no share repurchases in the fourth quarter. company says it's going to begin

repurchasing in the first quarter. so we're one down and we've got more than a few to go. let's bring in marty mosley back into the conversation. you were factoring in releasing credit reserves, i guess downesly take out the 72 cents it clearly is above what wall street was expecting, marty. it's actually down now >> yeah. so, joe, what you've got to look at is you're looking at the release taking it to zero. there was about a billion and a half dollars expected in provision. if you take that into account as well, the actual benefit that they're getting from the low lost provision and credit cost is bigger than the 72 cents. you're going to put it pretty close to where the expectation was with a little bit of a revenue beat coming from capitol markets and i imagine mortgages were strong. >> now the stock is, as you said, it looks like -- if it is

just -- if we're focusing on revenue, it's a slight beat. if you factor in what you just said in terms of things offsetting -- not actually offsetting, it benefitted more than the 72 cents. maybe it makes sense now it's down $1.50, marty so in terms of the environment that this is, the picture it's painting for the environment it's operating in, what does that say what should we expect when the peers of squmpt jpmorgan report. >> the accounting got adopted. what a year to adopt a new loan loss provision accounting which created the volatility for six months they were having to put enormous amounts of provisioning in even when there was no credit deterioration showing up at the back end of the year what they're having to do is adjust for the fact that unemployment

rates are back down. the economy is somewhat stabilizing. this is really kind of a moving in one period, taking out another period, creating a lot more noise than really it's worth. but that is what's really moving a lot of these numbers you're looking at right now. >> reserves will allow us to withstand an economic environment that's even far worse than the current base forecast by most economists, so this sounds like some conservative moves just building up just in case. >> and they did that earlier in the year what they're saying there is we're bringing the recertain fs down, but even in doing that the earlier on positioning that they have because of the accounting is to continue to make them be conservative so from a credit standpoint and survivability, these banks are well ahead of schedule for any recession we've had before the other side of this is from a revenue standpoint

fees have offset the interest and net interest income that's just been eroding throughout the year and will continue to be a headwind as we go into 2021. there are moving pieces here and you have to be familiar with, especially if fee revenues begin to normalize as we move into 2021 it will expose the weakness on the revenue side from the balance sheet. >> i was going to intro wilf as being the pursuit. wilfred frost. what happened? get to the numbers, wilf last time i saw you you were -- were you not bearded >> i was until a few days ago, but it's gone now. it was just -- it was just a little bit of keep me warm for the winter and i don't know if that's me being optimistic anyway, it is gone let me get to the numbers for you. revenue the slight beat. 32.4 billion eps a big beat $3.79 per share.

forecast was for $2.62 as you have been discussing mainly because of the credit card side for the bottom line beat to extend on what marty was saying on the top line beat, mainly coming in fee income as opposed to net interest income in 2021 maybe we'll see those reverse in terms of what beats and what slightly misses net interest income, 13.4 billion. the forecast 13.3. we're not seeing improvement in net interest income. yields have picked up more this months than last quarter interesting to see what the guidance is in that area on the call the fee income was the decent beat on the top line, 16.8 billion versus forecasted 15.4 investment banking was the key part equities is a decent little beat in terms of equity trading 2 billion, forecast 1.9. fixed income 4 billion, the forecast 4.1 the bottom line beat is the key standout here. that was because credit losses were better than expected and

much, much better than the first three-quarters provisions for interest was 1.9. people were forecasting some kind of credit cost coming in there. the range was huge as always it was a benefit to give us a scale of where we are, they are able to release some of those reserves that they've built up over the past couple of quarters 2.9 billion, that's an important change of direction. $2.9 billion reserve released relative to still over 30 billion that is kept in reserves kind of gives us a glimpse of the state of play that is a long way to go.

>> we have a vaccine, finally getting better for distributing, do you have a buy on it? >> we don't rate, put targets on individual banks, when you're looking at the trends and the individual banks, we do think there's a momentum from the sur st viefbility side. this will be lifted. the profitability will be the challenge. wilfred when you were talking about net interest income possibly a positive, a few things to remember there one, the new book coming on will be lower yields than the back book still because rates are so much lower the other thing is when the treasury market's moving up, other bond yields and loan pricing is not really adjusting higher we're not getting a bleed through into the earnings assets that the treasury yield is generating a little bit of pressure there

when you look into where we're at, i think the stocks are getting ahead of themselves with the earnings headwinds that we'll have as we get into next year >> so was that a, yes, you should buy it or, no -- i mean, if i was a vining sparks client i'd say, i talked to marty i have no idea what i'm supposed to do with the banks >> well, what i'm saying is you can ride the overall general feel now through the spring. you can kind of -- ride this wave through the spring but then you're going to have -- you're going to have earnings pressure and headwind that's going to come up as we go into the first quarter and second quarter earnings this is going to be short lived. we have the biggest amount they're not discounted into the earnings estimate. this is a movement we're in but there will be pressure nobody is expecting on the earnings in

2021 >> thank you, marty. wilf, we're going to see you again. we had started using the term jab instead of shot. >> good. >> i got some grief yesterday that we're trying to be very euro i said, well, there's some very long cues and then i said krikey is krikey okay if i say -- it's not like -- >> krikey. >> it's that b word that we said before that we can't -- >> yeah, that is a slang word, exactly. i'm not -- i nearly said it. >> is krikey australian? >> krikey? we say it too. i'm not sure jab is european as much as british. i don't know what they're called in france, germany, spain to be honest. >> you don't thank you. if you hear, will you let me know >> you know how much i want to look sophisticated

it's hard for me anyway, thank you. thanks, wilf marty, you're going to be with us, too, again >> that's right. we'll see the wells fargo and citigroup in an hour. >> everything just went black again. anyway, toss it over to you, becky, right now moving on. >> when you talk about us -- we say jab, you mean the royal we these are all things joe has learned overtime >> yes yes. in the meantime, president-elect joe biden unveiling details of the $1.9 trillion covid relief plan eamon javers joins us with the details. lots of details to dig through good to see you again. >> reporter: becky, that's right. a lot in the plan but biden making the case in delaware that the cost of inaction is greater than the cost of doing this despite the massive $1.9 trillion price tag here's what he said. >> we cannot afford inaction

it's not just a smart fiscal investment including deficit spending are more urgent than ever, it's that the return on these investments in jobs, racial equity will prevent long-term economic damage and the benefits will far outsurpass -- far surpass the cost. >> reporter: so biden is calling this the american rescue plan. he says this is just going to be the first installment of two packages the other one will be a recovery plan later on in the 100 days, but for now the leading edge of this is $400 billion for covid relief the biden advisers briefing reporters they were surprised by how bad the planning situation is inside the trump administration in terms of rolling out the vaccine. they want more money to do just that they want $20 billion towards the vaccine program. $50 billion for testing expansion. $30 billion for supplies and protective gear, which they say

still nearly year end there's not enough of all of that. $170 billion for k-12 schools and colleges biden says he wants to get schools open in the first 100 days of his administration in terms of direct aid to individuals, they're going to plus up those stimulus checks that were $600 last time around. this time it will be $1400 in direct checks to americans that gives you the total of $2,000 the democrats had wanted. $400 a week in federal unemployment insurance 30 billion in rental assistance. $15 an hour minimum wage biden says essential workers have earned that increase and should get it. in terms of aid to states and businesses, another big chunk in here for the states and localities, $350 billion there $50 billion for small business grants and loans and $20 billion for public transit the question is can this pass on capitol hill that is a big question mark as of right now >> eamon, i look at this and

just right off the bat, the most controversial is the $20 billion for transit, 50 billion for states and locals and $15 minimum wage what do you think will be the biggest issues >> reporter: i think those will be the biggest issues. the aid to state and localities are things republicans were against last year. a lot of this aid is going to go to states that have messed up their own finances throughout the years through covid. they call it a blue state bailout. biden is arguing here that governors and mayors are really in desperate need because they have enormous shortfalls in their budgets and the federal government needs to step in and help them. that's a key there's a lot of other stuff in here that i think will get some attention as this rolls along, including biden wants to hire 100,000 health care workers and get those people trained up to go out and do contact tracing and vaccine awareness throughout the country. there's a lot of jobs emphasis in all of this and i think you hear biden

talking about made in america, american jobs, you're going to hear him leaning on that in order to try to generate support in congress for what is an enormous price tag and there's going to be an even bigger price tag we expect to come in the recovery package, which will be the big infrastructure piece a lot of people have been talking to and some people are really looking forward to. >> eamon, this may be a -- this is going to be a curveball, i promise. if you don't know the answer, i apologize in advance for asking. you had made a reference earlier to the fact the biden administration seemed to be concerned about the rollout of the vaccines, how chaotic all of this is. there was a report overnight from the daily beast that suggested that the cdc has been telling the biden administration that they needed to get rid of the palantier program that the trump administration had put in

place for operation warp speed it was very valuable for palantier, if not to the money to it but the prowess to it. do you know anything about that? >> i don't know on palantier specifically, but i got the sense, andrew, in listening to these officials yesterday, the biden officials briefing reporters, they're doing a top to bottom review of everything gone on in the trump administration they don't like what they're seeing they said it's much worse than they imagined. they're talking about a whole of government response here and i think you're going to see them sort of federalize this response overall. i don't know what that means for a contract for palantier. >> eamon, in the real world i worry about a lot of business's ability to pay $15 just right off the bat, especially given the very difficult times we're having right now on the one hand you're troo ig to help businesses and small businesses, on the other hand

you're increasing their costs. for some businesses exponentially. we've made the point -- >> right. >> -- hourly workers in a big city versus hourly workers across -- there's such a difference in what different small businesses are able to afford depending on geography. that seems like a non-starter. doesn't seem like a great idea to me, even though well intentioned like so many things. >> reporter: yeah. it definitely is going to add to the cost base for those companies. if you ask the biden team about that, they were making the case yesterday that so many of these essential workers on the front lines were asked to take enormous risks over the past year and bore the real brunt of this they weren't in the sort of luxury white collar category of being able to work from home, they were in the category of you've got to go out there, get in your truck and take the risk. they are arguing that those workers deserve that from society broadly.

the businesses aren't going to like that. it's going to be a fight in congress. >> real money. all right. thank you, eamon eamon javers you never liked that i thought -- >> no. >> -- you'd like that. i'm not saying you jabber. we've adopted that instead of shot >> i'll take that shot whenever i can get it. >> exactly. coming up, emerging trends in the markets for 2021. morgan stanley, the chief global strategist joins us next as we head to break, here's a look at this morning's winners and losers in this case in the s&p 500. "squawk box" will be right back.

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author of the ten rules of successful nations we want to get your thoughts on the latest news we have, the $1.9 trillion package that president-elect biden is proposing. first, let's just talk overall when where we are and where you see us going

you make the point we could have a stronger economy if things play out with the vaccine. maybe soggy markets because some of the things that help the markets won't be the same this year can you go into that >> exactly if you look at what happened last year as to what drew markets in the midst of the pandemic, we have never had markets do so well in a recession as last year we had three factors the stimulus, the second was a huge increase in savings, especially the rich sitting home many were also trading on platforms. dramatic increase in trading and investments. the third reason was the market took the view that this is like

a hurricane, a one off so they were quite willing to look through it and think that things would be much better in the coming year. so now if you look at this year, 2021, all those three factors are broadly going to go into reverse. i think the economy comes surging back in fact, we're seeing the economy hold up relativelyokay even in the midst of a pretty bad second wave and then you're going to have a lot more spending put to work here. i think savings rates drop dramatically a lot of the recovery is already discounted in the stock market you have the exact reverse of last year where the economy surges back, surprises on the up side, i think, and you end up getting a pretty meaningful increase in long-term interest rates and the stock market has some trouble with that >> so do we have a marginal up year or could it actually be a consolidation year where we don't -- where we end either the

same or lower? what -- in your gut what's it telling you? >> i think my gut is telling me it will be a consolidation year. you're following the particular pattern where the first quarter you get a blowoff and the second and third quarter you get a pretty significant draw down that's the pattern we could end up in a consolidation phase even though the economy surprises on the up side. >> do you see us hitting the fed's target of 2% inflation >> i think so. you know, the shortest way to discredit yourself is to talk about high inflation because for 30 to 40 years that's been such a bad forecast since inflation never seems to go up i think many conditions are coming into place which could lead to an inflation surprise. those include factors from deglobalization to the fact that there is an incredible amount of

stimulus out there the banking system isn't really broken you're putting a lot of money to work when the banking system is in reasonably good shape i think you could end up getting a good inflation surprise. another is commodity prices. coming off a decade bear market and commodity prices could surprise on the up side. i think the fed's inflation target of 2% could easily be reached in the second half of this year. >> one of the things you said drying up was stimulus what do you think of this $1.9 trillion package is it the right stimulus will that buy us, what, six months of this year? is it directed in the wrong way? >> yeah, i think that i have a conceptual problem with the new conventional wisdom. the new conventional wisdom is we have no inflation and interest rates are so low. i think that the two problems

with that is that the constant stimulus we have had over the last decade has led to lower and lower productivity because you get more and more government intervention in the economy. the second thing i think is it leads to much greater wealth and income and equality because the stimulus goes into helping those who want stocks and assets i think that the stimulus is pretty aggressive. i think this could end up being far too aggressive if we look at the year conventional wisdom that we can just keep stimulating, keep adding on trillions in debt and no consequences to it because we have no inflation is a very superficial argument which overlooks the fact that we are seeing lower productivity and we keep seeing asset price inflation which exacerbates the

problem. >> right right. all good points, ruchir. thank you. appreciate it. ruchir sharma. we will have you back on soon and get another update thanks. >> appreciate that thanks thanks, joe. coming up when we return, saving more has consistently been a top financial resolution for the new year as we all talk about, yet americans say they'll be in survival mode this year. talk about that next. check out shares of petco, ticker, woof the pet retailer surging 64% as the ipo boom continues how long will it last? that's the question. we're going to find out when "squawk box" returns after this. time now for today's aflac trivia question. what restaurant group owns ashby's, sonic, buffalo wild wings and rusty taco

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what group owns this inspire brands the group's portfolio has over 12,000 restaurants in 40 countries. saving more has consistently been a top financial resolution for the new year, but some americans may be trying to do this in different ways >> 31-year-old angel tren works in cyber security. her map focus this year, her own economic security. >> my top goal for 2021 is to be

better about investing. >> reporter: she's saving as much as she can in her retirement accounts now so she's well prepared later. >> i have to play catchup. after i paid off my student loan debt i can max out. >> reporter: the maximum you can max out is 6,000 you can put away $19,500 in your 401 k. if you are 50 plus you can have 1,000 in ira trend are in target date funds which automatically retarget from stocks to bonds as you get closer to your retirement date this year she wants to start investing on her own. >> it's definitely one of my resolutions. of course investing is risky the bigger the risk, the bigger the return >> reporter: investor roger ma says focus on what you can control. >> what you're invested in, how

much you pay to invest and where you put each of those investments, what type of accounts you use. >> reporter: then build on what you already own. advice trinh hopes will help her with her ultimate goal. >> i want to retire with a lot of money and be financially free >> reporter: roger ma says one way to be a more independent investor is build your own target date funds. that will be a u.s. stock index fund, international stock index fund and u.s. bond fund. in this way you can start investing on your own and still make sure you have a diversified portfolio for your retirement account, becky >> be paying lower fees at the same time, too. >> exactly >> there was a lot of trading activity in 401k accounts. all of that trading activity, what kind of long-term impact might that have on those retirement savings >> well, you know, alight

solutions takes a look at 401 trading activity they look at 2 million people's accounts what they found in 2020 was it was the highest level of trading activity that they had seen since 2008 a lot of folks were moving their money from equities into fixed income at the wrong times though as the market was going up they're reacting after they're seeing a market move and they're not really taking advantage of what they should be doing, which financial advisers say all the time if you're going to move money within your retirement account, you want to do it because your financial goals have changed, retirement has changed or your appetite for risk is different than it has been you should not be making changes in your 401 k based on market action this is your long-term savings for your future. >> really good advice. sharon, thank you. great to see you >> sure. good to see you too. >> andrew? thanks, becky. coming up when we return, a breakdown of the hot ipo market.

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the ipo market is in overdrive. it's unclear how long the frenzy will continue. >> reporter: that would be good on all the markets if we had some insight into when the good times would end. the ipo market doesn't tell you. more than $8 billion has been raised in ipos just a remarkable number to put that into perspective, if this pace continued into the rest of 2021, ipos would raise more than $200 billion that's nearly twice the amount during the most active year of the dotcom bubble, the year 2000 while it's more likely the ipo window eventually closes, the sheer volume and stock price is striking in the meantime take playtika which just yesterday raised the most so

far. they sold nearly $2 billion worth of shares priced above the range. pretty much every deal has driven brands has meineke, take five and work capitol raised over $8 million in its ipo we'll see if investors are more discerning with these names after bidding up shares in other ipos this week names like affirm, poshmark and petco. they have surged 56% this year, ipos spacs have captured investor attention. take churchill capital 4 this is owned by michael klein it surged more than 70% this week just on reports that it will start with lucid motors yesterday the spac was the

second biggest behind what's always on top, tesla. >> you think, wow, there's momentum it always makes you think what changes momentum >> reporter: yeah. i mentioned the word discerning because i think that's really, really important when you take a look at ipos for example, yesterday, you had petco which is a loss making indebted retailer. they do vet work for pets. they've been around 55 years that company surged 60% after pricing above the range. you take another company, poshmark, more venture backed, also surging it doesn't appear investors are as discerning as they normally are. ipo, name brand, let's bid up the stock. that's great for a while the problem is that when those companies start to report earnings, when those lockups start getting released and investors have to start digging into these things, people can

get hurt >> leslie, thank you always good to see you joining us to talk more about all of this is scott stanford co-founder and partner at acme capital. he's invested in airbnb, uber, rent the runway. it includes q health, doctor on demand and spacex. scott, it's good to have you here somebody who is actively involved in all of these and seen what's coming you've been doing these all the time what do you think? >> yeah, i have been doing it for quite a while. you know, we're in pretty unprecedented times right now, whether it's in innovation or what's happening obviously in the political arena. we're all watching and learning, but i think what's at the fundamental core here is frankly just supply and demand there is a lot of demand for innovation innovation is driving growth there isn't a whole lot of yield out there, as we've seen, in

bond markets i think there's a lot of enthusiasm for the opportunities that kind of innovation-based companies are bringing to the market clearly there's a lot to learn here over the next several quarters, several years but i couldn't be more encouraged by what we see in our portfolio in terms of their performance and results that they're delivering. hopefully that will translate well >> in terms of earnings, is that earnings based results, greater adoption, winning market share when you're looking at such a frenzied time and so much activity and so much that's happening to pull through user adoption on many of these issues, what to you is the most important metric right now >> it's a great question you have to bifurcate what story it is, what kind of stock it is.

some stocks will trade on the story, the future potential and some will trade on fundamentals. what's interesting in our portfolio, we see both we have companies that are private. one company in particular is private that has a billion in revenue and 100 billion of ebitda there are only two investors in that company we have other companies that have tremendous future promise some of the companies in more of the frontier space like ear row space. you see one, two, three years out for better opportunity so the key thing is when you look for traction, you have to make sure you understand as an investor what are you looking for? are you looking for milestones that will lead to a large business down the road or are you looking to quarterly earnings we're seeing both coming to the market for sure and what we're

seeing, you've talked a lot about spacs on the show. what we're seeing is the spac is unlocking more of the story opportunities to give the public markets access to these companies which typically they wouldn't have access to them at this point in their growth trajectory >> all right a story stock leads you to the idea as a spac, as you min mentioned, to what leslie said investors get drawn into the stories and they look at the numbers and you can see fallout there. what would you say to that >> i hope investors do the homework you should always look at what could go wrong there are a lot of reasons why things could go right but you should look at what could go wrong in making a decision the good news about spacs in particular is you do have this gating item of the mutual funds, fidelity, t rows, capitals they are defining the success of these spacs because as you know, they need to come in and in

essence put additional capital into the business but also de-spac the company. take the speculative investors out. if you see the big names coming into a story stock, it means they've done their homework. not that you shouldn't do your homework, but they say we like the market the company is operating in we like the fundamentals from the technology perspective or milestone perspective. we're willing to bet on a two to three year horizon does that mean as an investor you're going to see immediate results? no does that mean there will be volatility as the company pursues their mission and vision and the market's going to ultimately catch up or they catch up where the markets are sure but you have to go in eyes wide open the other thing i'd add on the story stocks is you have to kind of approach these the same way we approach investing, that is a portfolio. you can't just cherry pick story

stocks you need to have two, three, four. >> scott, the thing that i -- look, i like the idea of democratizing investing and effectively getting people in to some degree earlier. we've long talked about the problems that people can't get in earlier and they're missing out. i get that. >> that's right. >> at the same time i would argue to you that the incentives are about as disaligned or unaligned as you could possibly imagine. the people investing in the spac itself are completely -- it's an option, a levered option the people investing in the pipe are slightly different than the sponsor which also is slightly different and the price tag that the fidelities are getting in at is very different also than the price at which the public retail investor is getting in sure, you can look at a fidelity and say this looks great because they're in, but they might be in at a price that's 50% of where these things are trading on day

one. >> i think you're dead right you've got to look for alignment. you bring up the spac sponsor incentives we've seen in a matter of months the economic shift radically around where initially spacs are very heavily loaded in favor of the sponsor. now you see it all backloaded. as far as the comment about fidelity t row, you're right just the very fact that they invested doesn't mean you as a public investor should invest blindly but it gives you pretty good indication of where they believe the future value will be so i think that you're totally right to identify the fact that there are a lot of pitfalls here, but the idea that there's more supply, there are more companies available to the public markets i think is a positive but that doesn't mean you should blindly invest at any price. >> scott, thank you. good to see you. >> good to see you too

thanks >> okay. coming up, the attack on the capitol continuing to raise questions about rules on social media, boundaries and power. we're going to have a conversation about what's next for companies in that space. take a look at the futures right now. let's show you the dow looks like it would open down 112 points the nasdaq has gone from the red 'rgrn.e orally in the ee wee back after this.

our next segment social media's move to ban president trump from the platforms. fair or too far? check out the shares of jpmorgan company reported results up half a percent. we'll hear from citigroup and wells fargo. "squawk box" coming right back

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welcome back to "squawk box. the attack last week is raising questions about rules, boundaries and power president trump was banned from some of the platforms. joining us now is carlos watson. ben smith, "new york times"

media columnist. good to see you both i'm going to start with you, ben. i think the real question ultimately in all of this, we've seen jack dorsey try to explain himself on twitter and whatnot, is this a free speech issue or should we be talking about this as a tech power monopoly issue >> i mean, you know, it's both and it's neither, right? it's a free speech -- these tech platforms exert an ee noorm mouse amount of control over the public square, particularly when they act together, when they all race to the same place the way they did here. on the other hand, the people protected by the first amendment are the platforms. that's the reason they can do this the free speech law applies to them and they're able to do whatever they want including kicking donald trump off of here >> carlos, if you could be king for the day, what would you do what's the solution? >> i think you do end up with

some regulation of some sort i think there's no doubt that we've had problems not just in one election but in multiple elections, whether it's been with neonazis, whether it's been with mistrooufts around covid, whether it's with mistruths around election fraud. you see critics like roger mcnamee saying we should look at the code and stopping viral problems, that we should do other things andrew, i think you've got to do something. i don't know whether it's a commission that does it. i don't know whether you support other kinds of changes but i think you've got to do something to limit misinformation spread on the social media platforms. i don't think you can hide behind -- >> how do you do it in real time honestly, we all talk about what we wish could happen, but the reality is you have to create algorithms effectively sometimes what you see and i see, i can read the sentence, i can read a sentence we can read

them differently that's not an excuse at all for some of the terrible things i've seen online. i think that's part of the issue in this country right now. >> yeah. so i think the three things if you were going to think about immediate things, i think ben has written about this a little bit, you've seen in the report, you would set up a commission that would look at the various social media algorithms and look at their ability to limit misinformation number two, you'd cause them to do more tagging than they currently do number three, you'd force them those would be the first three things you would think about if you were trying to meaningfully limit misinformation, fraud, abuse, amplification of truth on the social media platforms. >> ben, do you break these companies up part of this issue is about power, that there's only a handful of these companies and they seem to have an enormous amount of power. the question is do they have

power? if you've broken them up, what do you >> it's not totally clear that that solves the problem. carlos was talking transparency could help nobody is saying the government would regulate the details the strongest proposals are saying they would force companies to set up clear procedures i think the challenge around breaking them up, the way all sorts of companies look like it is this. the ecosystem is splintering a little there are far right and right wing voices moving to other platforms. there's the possibility of distributed, more open source technologies where you could have a less centralized landscape. all sorts of other problems will come from that as well. >> that was the next question i was going to ask you you hear twitter saying they

want to create a decentralized platform the more decentralized you get, the more encrypted you get, the less control you're ultimately going to have, right >> yeah. it was sort of interesting to hear jack, twitter ceo, wishfully think about this stuff. i mean, you know, the issue is that he and mark zuckerberg and a couple others running these companies have to make a couple decisions. could be a lot more transparent about it >> andrew, i think it's almost inevitable that a biden justice department in the same way that the clinton justice department looked at microsoft and big tech almost a generation ago, it's almost inevitable that they're going to follow what you're seeing in australia, germany, other parts of europe and insist there is some meaningful regulation i think you heard tim cook say that there's going to be meaningful regulation. to your point whether or not there's a breakup, i don't see that coming.

i see something that feels like the fcc and their management of broadcasters applied to social media giants i don't think that that is that far outside of the mainstream or the american experience. >> carlos, do you think that users should own their follower list, that they should own the follower -- the reason i ask is president trump by being booted off twitter doesn't just lose his voice, he loses his connection to tens of millions of people that he built up over many, many years you're in business you have a follower base, carlos, right? on twitter, youtube, all sorts of other social media platforms. this they said, carlos, good luck to you. you overnight could lose access to that entire audience you built. >> the dirty little secret, andrew, they've already been doing that for the last four or five years ben is smiling because we all saw it happen. facebook brilliantly brought a lot of people onto the platform in the early 2010s

people built up followerships and they changed that algorithm so you only got regular access to most of your fellowership if you continued to pay some of that is already happening. people are realizing that it really is within the purview of these social media companies how much you truly control you see it even with email lists. currently right now we feel like we built up an email list, our contact, our followers, we have full access to them. you do as long as g mail doesn't change the limit on them and there's a little bit of illusion of people believing they can maintain it. i think it will lead to some splintering and creation of new platforms and new media companies originally around the right but ultimately it will impact the rest of us. >> we have to end it here unfortunately. ben, carlos, thank you i'd love to have you back. talk to you soon. >> good to see you. >> becky

thanks, andrew when we come back we'll go through these earnings that are just out from wells fargo. i'm looking at the headlines haven't seen the release if this is accurate, these numbers are clean they beat on the bottom line by 4 cents revenue did fall below forecast though and that stock is down by 2.7% we'll run through all of the numbers on the rest of the lines as soon as we come back. plus, we'll talk president-elect biden's plans for taxes. "squawk box" will be right back. sing

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. good morning futures turning mixed as we head towards the opening bell the dow and the nasdaq on pace to snap four-week winning streaks. and earnings season kicking off with the big banks we've heard from jpmorgan and wells fargo already this morning. now citigroup hitting the tape and joe biden's american rescue plan. the president-elect unveils a nearly $2 trillion coronavirus relief package incoming council on economic advisers jared bernstein will break it all down for us the final hour of "squawk box" begins right now.

good morning and welcome to "squawk box" here on cnbc. i'm joe kernen along with andrew ross sorkin and becky quick. u.s. equities futures, it's friday did you guys know that -- >> three-day weekend. >> did you know that you know why we didn't know? >> yes >> martin luther king day. >> we're always in davos not getting off. >> we? royal we again >> in recent years we're always in transit and we don't have this i just found that out. >> this year you can sit at home for one more day nowhere to go. >> right right. but i was thinking about this market i don't think that claims number yesterday made anyone happy. that was a -- >> no. >> -- kind of a shocker, wasn't

it >> it was terrific. >> a reality check on everything that was happening. >> argument for more stimulus. >> well, it is, but then again i'm not sure that this is not -- that the details of the stimulus, i'm not sure how it's being received i don't know normally if someone talked about -- >> i think it's going to be a play. >> if someone talked about -- even talking about we might even do it, the markets are like, yeah give me more candy more more i think the devil might be in the details. that's a lot of money. i always go back to, guys, the stimulus after the financial crisis do you remember what that was? 787. >> that's just like -- >> that's been the argument.

>> go big or go home you're better to over spend than under spend. that's been the argument powell has made in terms of what the fed is doing saying he'd rather go a little bit too far than not do enough in this case that is the lesson from a decade ago and that's what you're up against. >> you're going to yell at me, andrew wilf is too excited about citi bank. >> the plan is either going to go forward or not because republicans are going to try to seek to block it or whether maybe some democrats try to seek to block it. that's going to be the question. how much pressure is on them the lesson i would actually argue from ten years ago was not that the democrats learned their lesson they learned they should have gone bigger. the reason they didn't go bigger at the time was because the republicans said this is too much money the question is -- >> i thought it was crazy, 850 -- because after we were done with all of the shovel ready projects, i saw the shovels. they were glistening

they were brand new. you could see yourself in those shovels after all the shovel-ready projects. that was the problem of course we did have cash for klunkers citigroup out with fourth quarter numbers. wilfred frost, when it rains, it pours. control yourself. >> citigroup and wells fargo. >> so excited when it happens on one day. >> very exciting revenue for citigroup, similar things in citi to jpmorgan's revenue not quite ahead. 16.4 eps 2.08 why so far ahead the same factor, reserve releases instead of builds credit benefits as opposed to credit cost. the reserve release 1.5 billion coming in. that's in context. we changed direction and that's great. 1.5 billion released versus about 10 or 11 billion by citi build up the prior three quarters releasing a little bit in the fourth

quarter. put another way, credit costs coming in basically zero for the quarter for citi that's compared to 2.4 billion the prior quarter or 17.5 billion for the full three quarters beforehand in 2020 the cost this quarter about zero similar themes as well in the fee area fee area better than the interest earning income. decent beat on investment banking. 1.3 billion up 5% year over year fixed income trading up. now if we look at wells fargo, not quite the same themes really coming through revenue, 17.9 billion. eps is a beat, a small beat. 64 cents a share versus a beat of 60 cents. provisions coming in at 179 million. the forecast is for a loss of 900 million.

not at the same scale as the others more importantly, costs are coming in higher than expected efficiency ratio, 83%. it was expected to drop back down 73, 77% non-interest came back down 1 billion. 14.8 billion compared to forecasts for 13.8 billion a couple more problems under the surface. for wells fargo, stock is down 2.4. the last two months under performed significantly. the new cfo will be joining us for his first television interview. >> excellent thank you for all of that. for some immediate reaction to all the bank earnings, let's -- this morning let's bring back marty mosby and greg branch, managing partner at veritas financial. we'll go to marty first.

marty will tell us all the color on these earnings. then you're going to tell us what to do with it, greg marty won't give me any buy or sell recommendations i read between the lines marty, i'm supposed to hold them for a while and start lighting them up? greg's going to give me numbers, ratings -- not really. we may get a better idea marty, what about the last two can you start with citigroup and tell us about wells? >> sure. citigroup is experiencing less capital markets bank because jpmorgan had less investor banking and the trading wasn't as strong on that side citigroup is not getting as much revenue. they're getting the same provision release that you saw at jp morgan as you're finishing this year, no reason not to put everything into this last year. get all the problems, all the expenses, all the things behind them in 2020 and then start

fresh in 2021. this is still going to be a very noisy quarter for them when we look at, again, going through the outlook of where we think this is going to 2021, they higher value banks like they talk about in jpmorgan, those are not places to be you're looking for wells fargo turn around, pnc and what they're able to do with their acquisition. event driven and things that don't have the pressure that you have on the net interest margin and not going to have the credit which is going to be regional banks like regents financial that carries into this year. maybe that gives you a little more ammunition. >> no. you know what, if i was an analyst, that's all you do sometimes you can know something inside out and whether that may eventually work itself into the stock price or it might not. it's best to get enough

information to make a decision that's where greg's going to come in. you've mentioned financials before which ones did you like? which ones do you like today what do you own? >> let's retrace a little bit because i think the trade is different today than it was when we started talking about this a few months ago a few months ago this was one of my highest priorities because the group was trading at 1.1 times price to book. the historical average is 1.7 price to tangible book to me that made no sense at all. i saw that as one of the most blaring opportunities we saw in the market the sector was headed for ruin we didn't think that was the case because of the aggressive provisioning that the best players were doing that trade is largely done we now have the bkx almost at record highs, the xlf reaching a record high yesterday so the sector catchup trade, the reversion to the mean for the

multiple trade is done i agree with marty, now it's going to be company specific what marty and i probably disagree in the short term is that i think you are seeing a tale of two cities here. jpmorgan was able to release 72 cents of reserves. they had the wherewithal to do that because management acted aggressively when not much was expected of the sector but also because of their diversified position using a lot of those unforeseen gains and trading in investment banking i think it's going to be a tail of two cities in the next few months they will value and find safe harbor in the platforms that structurally are built to weather this and that from a management perspective have made the right decisions. i don't know if we can say that for the wells fargos and citis of the world they have something to show us. >> all right what are the data points, dwreg?

i'm going to ask you we can go back to marty. what are your data points now that we're in 2021 to decide, you know, whether to add, whether to lighten is it vaccine related? is it stimulus related is it inflation related? what are you looking for >> right there's a couple of things i am looking for in terms of the red or yellow flag categories. we're going to start to see net chargeoffs it's great that the banks are releasing reserves, but at the end of the day we have what is likely to be bad debt hiding in plain sight through the moratoriums, through the postponed foreclosures so at some point they'll have to reconcile that and categorize that as bad debt, take a charge off of that. i still want to see names and i still want to own names that are aggressively provisioned like our colleagues said this morning, releasing a couple of billion when you have 10 billion reserved might not be the worst

case scenario. i want to see aggressive positioning because we haven't seen that yet. the other thing to keep an eye out for is the net interest margins. we expect them to be compressed. at the end of the day rates are starting to tick up. that will give us a good picture of what they think about consumer health in 2021, which is ultimately where their bread and butter is going to be made. >> we're out of time, marty. what do you do for the three months, marty, when we don't call you and you don't get on tv where your kids are watching and everything else. is it a big letdown typically? are you busy the entire time >> oh, no. no, joe. we're working with banks across the country so we're helping them deal with these challenges. >> not just tv >> no, it's not. there's a full-time job that we work on to help community banks begin to compete i understand that. the one thing i would add is

what banks will leverage their balance sheets that's the way they can defend against the interrate environment. they also end loans and they have a lot of expansion of balance sheets that will help them overcome this. >> marty, i'm going to suggest a mid quarter check-in with you if you don't mind. >> i'd love that. >> greg's on right through the entire quarter he doesn't need to -- not quite as calendar dependent. i'm going to suggest that to management and see what they say. i can't guarantee anything, marty. i'll do my best for you. >> no problem. we'll be here, thanks. >> thanks, guys. >> andrew. coming up, all the details of president-elect biden's nearly $2 trillion covid relief plan we'll get an inside look with frequent cnbc guest jared bernstein. stay tuned, you're watching squawk on cnbc

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president-elect joe biden laying out his nearly $2 trillion coronavirus relief package. he is calling it the american

rescue plan. eamon javers joins us with details. eamon? >> reporter: yeah, becky it clocks in officially at $1.9 trillion he's calling it the rescue plan. there's two things the u.s. government needs to do, immediately rescue the economy and focus on covid relief and short-term measures to stimulate people's earnings and longer term he says there needs to be a recovery package that would include a lot of the big infrastructure spending that a lot of people are expecting. that he says are coming later. take a look at highlights that are in this immediate rescue plan what you see is big dollar figures here associated with some of this, including $1 trillion in direct aid to america. that includes $1400 direct payments to menks to plus them up to $2,000 direct checks extra $1400 a week for the unemployed we're also seeing $350 billion to aid to state and local governments here aid to businesses includes $15

billion in small business grants $35 billion in small business financing and $416 billion for national vaccination program that's the key here the biden team says is getting your arms around the covid spread, beginning to stop that and get the economy rolling. the question is whether this can pass and an early sign of hope that that's doable this has been embraced by benghazi and the u.s. chamber of commerce it could be an uphill climb. we remember how gridlocked washington was las >> we'll talk to jared bernstein. good morning to you, jared we've been talking about this plan all morning and trying to really just gauge whether we

think it's going to get passed and what the most controversial points of it very well may be. the question is whether you think you're going to get push back on things like the minimum wage piece of it. >> i suspect we will, but let me say the following, andrew. i thankink you and your listenes may agree with this. i don't care whether you have a d or an r, you want to get this virus under control. whether you're a d or an r, you want to ramp up this vaccination to put covid in the rear-view mirror whether you're a d or r you want to open schools and universities you want parents to access the child care they need you want to access businesses that haven't gotten enough help. whether you're a d or an r, you don't want to layoff first responders, educators so there is a ton of common ground here.

>> i'm not disagreeing with the d or the r piece the question and the reason why i'm digging in, focusing in on the minimum wage piece is simply that given the pandemic that is ongoing, given the small businesses that are struggling and hurt, whether despite the other stimulus measures that are going to be rolled in on top of this, whether the minimum wage piece may complicate that. >> yeah, it's a fair question. obviously president-elect biden ran on a $15 an hour minimum wage, which is not an uncommon level in places throughout this country already. and the research on this has shown that it's a very positive program that has its intended effect by the way, there's a phase-in involved typically a phase-in it doesn't go to 15 right away so businesses can adjust. sure i'm not saying every piece of this is going to be a handshake across the aisle i think the important point is

that there is more than enough here, especially given joe biden's historical prowess at bipartisanship that we ought to be able to cut this deal you heard eamon talk about some of the endorsements from all sides of the aisle that's critically important. people recognize this country has yet to put these two dual shocks behind us, both of course the pandemic and the economic fallout. this rescue plan solidly does so >> jared, i'm sure you're not going to want to show your hand or biden's hand in this case, but given that these things are often, as you said, negotiations, people try to anchor to either side, which of the chess pieces here, which of the component parts do you think there's any flexibility that the biden administration may have? >> well, i like the way you talked about component parts i think what's so critical about this plan is the intersection

between finally getting our -- as eamon said, our arms around the dual shock of the pandemic and its economic fallout you'll just never get to the kind of rescue and recovery that joe biden envisions without finally taking control of the virus and at this point managing the production and the distribution of the vaccine. so i don't think -- you know, i'm not going to say that you can't rearrange one piece without the whole thing falling apart, but that's the kind of negotiation that's going to happen in coming days and weeks. what i think is most important for listeners to recognize is the extent the plan to get back on track the bottom leg of the k, you focus on the financial markets, i get that, we know so many people have fallen behind, essential workers, folks in the

bottom half. people trying to make ends meet. at the same time we have the market results, we've had spikes in homelessness and hunger the way this plan works together, it can address that. >> jared, let me ask you a separate question. you may think this is crazy. are you spending enough on not just the vaccine piece of it but on the testing piece of it because there's going to be hopefully as many people in the country get the vaccine, it sounds like a large part of the country that may not get that vaccine and the testing piece of it is still so critical. as you know around the country, it's still taking 2, 3, 4 days to take the test and makes it irrelevant it very well may be that a year from now testing is going to be a big part of getting people back into the job. >> i agree with all of that and it's a critically important insight that you've just shared with us. i think a lot of people are kind of thinking, hey, this is sort of behind us now that these

vaccines are getting out as you heard the president-elect say yesterday, the rollout has not been optimal by a long shot and he sat down and he did something we haven't seen enough of at this level of government he sat down with scientists, epidemiologists, logistics efforts and figured out what it would take it's a fair question are we devoting the magnitudes that we need these expermts say are as i understood, doing a thoughtful way in which the federal government takes the lead on making sure that we distribute the vaccine in a way that's going to put this crisis behind us, get us on the road towards recovery >> and on that point, let me ask

you about the $1400 which makes the check $2,000 which i know was the initial effort do you think that payment should be more targeted meaning for those families who have not lost their jobs during this period, who have continued to work and work from home, do you believe that they should get the $1400. is that an efficient use of money? >> yeah. i think so i think it's also important to recognize that there's $400 enhancing ui benefit for people who lost their job there's a very significant can't increase in the child tax credit which goes almost exclusively to the lowest earning families. >> right >> according to our estimates is going to reduce child poverty by half take it from about 13 to 6 point be point 5%. >> why would you pay -- jared, why should the umpt s. government give money to people who have not been affected financially? i'm just -- that's one piece of it i never understood. >> no, it's a fair question, but

you have to recognize that the checks actually begin to phase out for single filers under 75,000 under 75,000 there's a lot of people who can use the help. by the way, if you look at the percentage changes in after-tax income, this is a highly progressive piece of the plan, these direct payments. in fact, they raise the income, after tax indexes. something like 15%, they do nothing for the top 1% i can see why people would want a more progressive distribution there. i think this gets the water to the fire in a useful way. >> ared, we have this discussion, the two of us. i miss you we're going to be seeing so much of you now that -- i've got a thrill up my leg we always talk about this minimum wage stuff and you've always got your end all be all studies that show that it doesn't impact business when you

raise it and i love when you said that you just give the businesses a little bit of a heads up and they can prepare for the $15 -- that's all it would take in your studies did you get to any level where it would be a problem. because if you department, i'd like to go to 50 or $100 an hour and bring in the good times, just really let the good times roll, jared. why can't we do that >> i'll suggest your idea to the president-elect, joe i think the way to think about this, look, it's a fair question i think the way to think about this is how many people in the economy does the proposal affect you know, if i proposed a minimum wage of $5 an hour, it wouldn't make any difference because it wouldn't affect anybody. if i proposed $50 an hour that would cover, you know, 90% of wage earners or something like that obviously that's too high. you want to look at the

effective range. that's the way the academic studies work if you look at $15 an hour ranged in. the effective workers that hits, the bite, is actually very much in keeping with all the other increases at all these other studies are looking at that's why i can can have dendly causing the disemployment effects that i know you can >>ary ou jed bernstein, we have breaking news when we come back right after this

welcome back to "squawk box. rick santelli here live at cme hq with breaking news. last breaking news of the week december read on ppi headline expected up .4 comes in .1 light. up .3. it's half of our last look -- excuse me, exactly like our last look, half of expectations now if we look at x food energy and trade, it's up .4. if you take a year over year look it's up .8. that is a number to pay attention to even though it's expected and it's in the rear-view mirror the differences in the short term and year-over-year are something we want to pay attention to

empire, this is a january number expected up 6. it's up 3.5. steadily moving a bit lower. if you look at the rear-view mirror on this, it was up 4.9 prior and prior to that it was up 6.3, prior to that 10.5 you get the idea it's a positive number now retail sales, technically the money ball number of the day for december, it's an advance read so it's going to be changing much worse than expected you start taking things out. you go x autos it deteriorates down >> ex-autos down 2.1 the control number at 1.9. that gets inputted into other economic data points, higher up the food chain well, when it comes to that number, consider this. our rear-view mirror on the

control number was also not very optimistic it was down .5 but this now is one of the worst numbers going back to when we started to come out of the coronavirus it hasn't been negative since april when it was minus 12.4 which is the most negative the control number has ever been so the data this morning really isn't very terrific. of course, we look at interest rates which i thought would go up but couldn't quite get above that march high yield of 1.19. that is quite important because now as we learn 1.9 trillion on a stimulus package we hear the refrain that all of these checks are going to turn into economic growth people need these checks definitely history tells us they don't turn into economic growth with staying power the dichotomy for all of you investors is the near term markets love spending more money. long term, not so much joe, back to you

>> market's down, rick they don't love it that much that's what i wanted to ask you. >> the market's down, joe, but if you take a step back it's not down much. >> 1.9 trillion, what would that have done before we were trying to get 900 billion and it was juicing the markets on any given day my point is yesterday that was a troubling number that we saw that you brought us, the claims number these numbers today aren't good. so i'm wondering, is the 1.9 trillion just running into some headwinds with the actual data or are there things about the 1.9 trillion people don't like >> listen, actual data, this is like that horrible spot, you know, when you throw a baseball up in the air. when it stops going up, hasn't quite gone down, you're in that one weird position the economy, we're going to do way better when the vaccine gets out there. we're doing way worse in the near term. that's difficult the 1.9 trillion, that's not going away, okay people need the money. i get it

but how you divvy it out, what it's actually for, how much this is truly covid, these are all important questions because as jared says, as all the articles i've read today and all the publications say, history dictates helping people is good the debt stays and how to deal with it is important. >> i was listening to your whole report we've got an empire and -- >> empire and prior but didn't get a strong higher. maybe liesman -- liesmania thanks, rick steve liesman joins me i like the casual look, liesman. you can throw on a guitar and, you know, do something like at the end of the report if you want >> reporter: yeah, i'm not sure the producers would go for that, joe. i don't know the extent -- how much authority you have over there. >> it's a friday three-day. >> yeah, maybe

maybe. maybe we can get that on with the banker mid quarter that you were talking about before. >> yeah, right. >> reporter: look, i agree with rick on the following, and it's sort of a semantic argument, which is the extent to which this money creates growth. it doesn't create growth in the way that economists understand growth as in investments that increase productivity that raise the growth potential of the economy. none of that is true and i certainly hope the democrats who are behind this bill are not selling that thing what it does do, what it could do is do a couple things first it will help people. you can see the impact of the lack of stimulus amid this virus in these numbers to date just big declines here electronics and appliance stores, general merchandise stores down. even non-store retailers by the way, the internet didn't do that great. this was the christmas shopping season you can see the impact of that with this kind of money or what

some of this money can do, i don't agree with all of the price tag here, is keep things from getting worse there's a big part of that that's important, joe. if stores close down, more people become unemployed, they lose attachment to their workplace, then things take longer to come back. you talk about the rebound that we're all expecting from the vaccine. the rebound won't be quite as strong if more businesses are closed, more people are unemployed and on a separate note more people are infected. i would not suggest this is all -- by the way, i don't think it's all needed. certainly it's not going to create growth. investments create growth, even government investments create growth i think we can agree upon these kind of payments create the conditions for a rebound i think that's why there's a case for at least a big part of this stimulus proposed by the president-elect.

>> steve, thank you very much. we're going to continue this conversation for quite a while we'll hash it out some more. in the meantime the sec has launched an investigation of exxon mobil after an employee filed a whistle-blower complaint. exxon over valued its oil and gas prices in the permian basin. stock down 2.75% let's bring in the journal reporter who broke this story, emily glazer tell me the back story on the complaint that has launched the investigation. what are the details >> reporter: sure. thanks for having me my colleague chris matthews and i just reported the story this morning. several people involved in valuing a key asset in the permian basin which is currently the highest producing u.s. oil kneeled complained during an internal assessment that employees were being forced to use assessments to arrive at a

higher value that is what preempted the sec's launch of the investigation after an employee filed the whistle-blower complaint last fall >> this is in particular an area called the delaware basin within the permian that exxon bought back in 2017 explain what some of those employees were pushing back against. >> well, they were saying exxon was valuing the -- everything there higher than it was exxon has said the permian basin, in west texas and new mexico, is essential to its plans, but exxon has also, you know, really the ceo has pushed for this asset valuation the employees were saying pushing is going way too far >> part of this is based on the production they said they could get out of this. darren woods said in march of 2019 that they thought they could get oil and gas production

out of the permian up to 1 million barrels a day from previous estimates of $600,000 barrels a day. what was the company's response to this complaint? >> reporter: well, the company told us that they declined to comment on the existence of an investigation. spokesman said if they were asked by authorities about the 2019 assessment, exxon would provide information to show its actual performance exceeded the drilling estimates and exxon did at week one of the investigation that complained was fired last year there were internal disagreements over the evaluation >> emily, thanks for joining us on the news line this morning. it's good to hear from you that stock down 2.75%. when we come back, dynamic funds noah black steen we'll be back after a quick

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times square coming to life this morning a lot more on the markets following the quarterly bank results, jpmorgan, citigroup and wells fargo. a few of this morning's

headlines. two blockbuster debuts on wall street yesterday poshmark surging more than 140 and petco up by 60%. mobile gaming company playtika said it's placing the ipo above the target range raising $2 billion and will start trading today on the nasdaq. hong kong listed shares of xiaomi they're being added to the black list for companies tied ttohe chinese military stay tuned watching "squawk" on cnbc.

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welcome back to "squawk box," everybody. the futures are a little bit weaker at least for the dow and s&p. the s&p is off by 13 nasdaq indicated up by about 4 points we are looking at the first week out of five that the markets are likely going to be down. our next guest says that the era

of low volatility is probably over joining us right now is noah blackstein he's from dynamic funds. noah, i can't help but think the volatility we've seen over the last year, maybe not much of the markets but especially with what's been happening in the headlines has been extremely high why do you think things are going to get more volatile from here >> perhaps not more volatile but certainly i don't think the volatility is going to subside even been managing my funds for 20 plus years and certainly seen my share of bear markets i've never seen anything like the speed we saw in terms of what occurred in february or march this year, both the decline and the rebound. having said that though, you know in january of '18 we had a 10% correction fourth quarter nearly 20%. this year nearly 35%, then a 9 and 10%. this era of heightened volatility seems to have been

with us in the last few years. i'm not sure there's anything in the cards that will dampen that volatility down. you know, i'm pretty optimistic on the recovery and the broadening of the market but i do think investors need to brace themselves for higher volatility for sure >> what does that mean in terms of the actions they should take? >> well, i think, look, there's a lot of healthy signs under the market there are pockets of speculation for sure but you have a market that's broadening. you have a market that since august has included cyclic calls and financials beginning to participate, small caps as well. which is terrific. we have a number of factors happening. we have big moves in interest rates. tremendous uncertainty with the virus. stick to your plan for sure. i think whether it's a strategy of the dollar cost averaging or holding cash and putting to work on big down days, i think it's a prudent thing or just, you know, open your statements once every

three years. one of those strategies will probably work the best there's nothing that's going to be coming over the next few years that shows we'll enter lower volatility that's what you need to be prepared for. >> you point to those higher rates that we've seen recently do you think that trend continues or you think that was a one off jump and it slows down a little bit >> well, i think the move in the yield curve has a couple things going on i think obviously there's anticipation once the vaccines have proved effective, that the economy will begin to recover for sure i think some of it may be term premium as well just given the amount of supply people might be misreading how much has come in so i think there's certainly optimism being baked in on a recovery some of that is supply issues. but what can reverse that trend fairly quickly, what i think is a risk is just not being able to get these vaccinations and the virus under control.

i think that the rollout has been fairly slow and we really do need to get that arnot down we're seeing further mutations in northern china we're seeing lockdowns in northern china with probably restrictions in beijing and shanghai. it is critical for the government, now that we have a crew, with vaccines, it is to get that out and get that rolling as soon as possible to get this under control. we can only build so many bridges to the vaccine and we're all hopeful that that happens this summer, but it is a risk that investors will start pricing in, that we'll be able to make it through this period, to a vaccination, and the end of the virus, and i think that, i'm hopeful of that as well, but that requires execution. someone once said, execution is the charity of genius, and certainly execution is the way to ending this crisis right now. >> you sound a little more

nervous than the last couple of times we talked to am i reading too much into that? >> i don't think i'm nervous i am certainly optimistic on the overall markets but we've come a long way from the lows and cyclical stocks and a tremendous amount of the recovery, so you know, i think unlike the 2020 market which saw that cheap sell-off related to the pandemic, and then a recovery, and a lot of the shares of the cyclical stocks, some of which have gone almost parabolic here in the last month and a half, 2021, i think is going to be an earnings-driven market, and the companies are really going to have to start delivering on the earnings to justify where the stock prices are i think that will play out for sure but i think the anticipation of the recovery has been baked in, and now the delivery on the earnings and the revenues, and evidence of that recovery is going to have to come through. so 2021 will be, you know, 2020 was a very good year, with steep declines, of probably anywhere from 15 to 20% on overall

aggregate earnings for the market, and this year, we're baking in about 20% plus type of earnings growth for the overall market, and for the market to continue to move, i think the growth has to be sustained for sure and i think that will be a key driver, i think, in 2021. >> noah, good to see you this morning. >> nice to see you too. >> take care. when we come back, jim cramer's first take on the trading day ahead. plus key stocks to watch in the llnal minutes before the opening be it's friday. stay tuned you're watching squawk box

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cnbc headquarters, jim cramer joins us now. earlier you tweeted that jpmorgan, that the banks don't get respect for great quarters, and jpmorgan is now down 3 1/2 points. >> this is a typical world for the banks. stocks ran up. they didn't come in ahead. the quarter is just excellent. i mean there really is so many, there is just so much good about it, but it doesn't matter, joe this group doesn't get respect after its run. going in and buying back stock this quarter, was wells good, when a guy tells you it wasn't good, it wasn't good and that's

what i feel that charlie sharp did in wells >> i can talk forever about bank earnings, but i just need to know, packers/rams, 6 1/2 if you take the packers >> there's really, you know, i want packers to go all the way, and you can make bets that they go all the way you can actually bet right now on the super bowl and the packers. >> you're like, you've got some kind of deal i love that. >> three dollar bet, joe. >> i know. >> fun >> are they candy? >>. >> i did a couple yesterday for $3.60. it's come to that. but i did a parley and won $40. >> i'm up $35 for the year, it's a huge win. >> ravens, bill, it's getting harder because the further you go, the better the teams are, right? isn't there more parity. i have no idea what to do? ravens or bills? >> take cleveland. >> ten points.

i know you'd say that. >> they're begging to you take cleveland. >> how about urban meyer, jacksonville unbelievable. >> buccaneers, saints. brady is a goat. >> he's old enough to get the vaccine. >> we got to go. >> anyway, i don't know what to do i'm so lost. i might ask, i might ask one of my dogs. >> ask will. >> huh >> ask will. >> he likes arsenal. >> i like military >> arsenal. >> what is that? >> you got to enunciate. >> they got to make the soccer goal like ten times wider so we can get some scoring. >> don't start i've done that and gotten so much trouble >> anyway, sorry, jim, we digress. andrew gets kind of antsy. i'm sorry, andrew. taking away from your time >> you know what it was worth it. it was worth it i didn't realize that jim was up 35 bucks for the year that's good. that's good. a little more than a half an hour to the opening bell on wall

street and don chu joins us now with a look at some of the morning's biggest stock movers. >> the take-away from there is to take the points for cleveland right now so i might have to go and figure out my app right now and make some bets at this stage. the analyst this morning, moving some stocks around to your point, watch zoom video, 100,000 shares of volume pre-market. the highest conviction pick for 2021, they've got a $610 price target, they like the stronger than expected growth in the crowd-based zoom-based platform, zoom phone and then you have snap, the parent company of snap chat, up 2.5%. a quarter million shares of volume here. this is the company being helped along by an upgrade at moffett nathanson and they say the company is a buy rating and upgraded from a neutral, with a $57 price target and they like the macro environment being

supportive of valuations and tail winds for online advertising and then we finish it off with shares of foot locker which are up 2% 10,000 shares of volume. the retailer for athletic shoes gets upgraded to buy from neutral at b. riley and the target price goes from $58 to $39. and they think all of the stimulus checks will help out sales, they also see positives for gross margins, and leaner inventories, and less promotional pricing, three green ones on the screen, andrew, and i will send things back over to you guys >> okay, thanks for that, dom. let's show you where the markets stand as of now. closing in on just a half hour before the market opens and the dow looks like it would open down 144 points and the nasdaq up 6 points and the s&p 500 off about 4 points so let's show you where the 10-year note is, did i say 4 points i should have said 14 points the 10-year note right now at 1.102. meantime, make sure you join us on tuesday, have a good long weekend, we'll see you on

tuesday. "squawk on the street" begins right now. good friday morning. welcome to "squawk on the street." i'm carl quintanilla david faber and jim cramer futures are weak ahead of the three-day weekend and the market is somewhat underwhelmed, macro, retail sales, downed 2-1 ex autos and gas. the road map this morning begins with bank earnings and jpmorgan, wells and citi, pnc, all crossing the tape, plus president-elect biden's big stimulus plan. we will have details on the nearly $2 trillion plan to boost the recovery from the pandemic and of course, we're keeping an eye on ipos. a lot of momentum. there the biggest debut of the year on tap. online gaming company, after two monster debuts yesterday, carl