good morning it is 8:00 a.m. at microsoft headquarters in washington, 11:00 a.m. on wall street, and "squawk alley" is live ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ happy wednesday. welcome to "squawk alley." i'm jon fortt with carl quintanilla. major indices selling off as a slew of earnings microsoft reported last night and is bucking the dow. it is up more than 3%. some big names like facebook, apple, and tesla are waiting on deck on what is the 11-year

anniversary on the introduction of the ipad, believe it or not we are looking forward to those earnings after the bell. we are also expecting the first covid response team briefing under the biden administration we will take you there live as soon as it begins. but also happening in these markets this disconnect between fundamentals and valuations, the short squeeze, names like gamestop and amc surging surging isn't even the word for it look at that gamestop up 131% of the amc up more than 200% that's tripling. for that let's bring in leslie picker leslie, i don't know whether this is legal market manipulation, whether it is not, is there a precedent for this that you can think of and what are the down sides for the companies themselves >> i can't answer the legality of it. on the face of it without digging into who is behind some of the comments on these platforms, people are having a

conversation david faber made a good analogy in the 10:00 hour, almost akin to the hedge fund dinners that tack place back when people could get together and talk about ideas and some would buy into the same stock and some would choose not to. this is a digital platform where they are technically sharing ideas about various stocks that said, if there are certain bots on the platform that are push these stocks on behalf of a certain actor, if there is a larger group doing more nefarious activity pumping stocks, lying about certain things, that may wade into more legal territory and draw more regulators' attention. these are very dispar ategroups of people. it's difficult to know if someone with a certain user name is turning around and purchasing shares of gamestop or shares of

express or the other names in terms of a precedent, you asked about that, i have personally never seen anything like this. people have drawn comparisons with different chatrooms back then but just the power of the internet now, the prevalence of the enter net and the ability to trade with zero commissions for both shares and options. options in particular is an important aspect t. can create the outsized moves when the money -- when the stock goes in the money. >> in a way what it reminds me of, and stick with me because maybe it's a little out there. seven years ago carl icahn on herbalife short. but that was him actually believing that he was wrong in his assessment of the dire state

and maybe practices of that company, whereas a lot of these users on reddit, other places, seem to just want to stick it to the shorts not making an argument about gamestop they just don't like that somebody is betting against these companies. >> you're right and it's funny you mentioned that because people were bringing up that dispute and saying how is what we're doing any different in terms of market manipulation than when someone puts out their thesis of a stock and other people buy into it on the long side or short side people were bringing up that idea as well it's interesting you bring up a good point about fundamental analysis there are certainly people on these platforms. i don't want to discount them as all being in this for this pump and dump scheme, there are people who do believe in a fundamental case for gamestop and the other names. there are a lot of people on

these platforms that really do want to not only stick it to the shorts but profit from doing so. as an arbitrage trade, this hidden treasure where if we combed through the names of the companies that are heavily sold short and we bid them and have this collective crusade against heavily shorted companies, we can make a lot of money. and if you look at the names on the screen right now, gamestop, amc, bed bath and beyond, it's working. it's working for people. there are people on the other side of the trade that are losing out >> yeah. i would also target, leslie, to some on those pages it's not about the profit knowing that you caused pain elsewhere. we should remind people a large part of our audience are not trying to bed up gamestop, not buying call options, not looking

to short this or that. they're looking for fundamental investing ideas and to that extent jpmorgan said our equity outlook is positive. any pullback such as one driven by repositioning by a segment of the long/short community, jpmorgan says is a buying opportunity and then, of course, what does jay powell say about this how does he address these dislocations and still argue, we think, for further fiscal stimulus to the tune of nearly $2 trillion? >> you bring up a good point n. a lot of my conversations with hedge fund managers yesterday trying to get a sense of what people were saying on the trading desks within hedge funds in particular people were pointing to the fact there is so much cash out there right now. the fact this phenomenon is happening is no coincidence there is a tremendous amount of liquidity, a tremendous amount of people with time on their hands looking for places to put it and they are finding success in under the radar names, jon

>> leslie, this is a story certainly of the year, perhaps for the ages we'll see how this continues to play out thank you. and, carl, we've also got to be paying attention to earnings from the two biggest u.s. tech names in the game. microsoft, which reported last night and is up 3% at this hour, and apple, which is coming again, on the 11-year anniversary of steve jobs introducing the ipad, a device that was touted as revolutionary at the time, certainly did have a big impact but was stagnant for a while. in this pandemic it along with the mac are enjoying a bit of a resurgence we see a similar effect with microsoft. in its earnings some of the biggest beats came from the windows and the gaming groups and that is some of that same productivity and stay-at-home entertainment effect taking hold azure and cloud were strong. so all of the segments, carl,

for microsoft and that is an encouragement to some of the investors who have remained long tech despite these market val ra valuations >> you say it was stagnant and it was this novelty tool until they got the first enterprise deal with ibm. visions of pilots using them on airplanes to bring down the weight of their books, which eventually did happen. azure up 48, to your point, exactly on the money that's amazing we'll see how apple ties into that let's get to this covid team hearing, one of the first we've heard from the white house take a listen. >> the public to protect themselves and their loved ones. let's start with the data. there are some hopeful signs we are watching very closely. 25.1 million covid-19 cases have been reported to the cdc for

january 25 during the week of january 19 through the 25 the seven-day average of cases decreased by 21% to over 166,000 per day. during the week of january 18 to 24th, the seven-day average of hospital admissions of patients with covid-19 decreased by 15% to 13,000 per day. however, over 78,000 patients were hospitalized with covid-19 as of january 24th 419,827 deaths have been reported since january 22, 2020. during the week of january 19 to january 25th, the seven-day average number of deaths decreased by 4.9% to 3,113 per day. and while the data is trending downward is a good sign, the number of deaths reported in the

single day during the outbreak was reported on january 20th the peak number of 4,383 deaths. though i am encouraged by these trends, now is the time to remain vigilant f. we continue on the current trajectory it is predicted 479,000 to 514,000 covid-19 deaths will be reported by february 20, 2021 i know this is not news we all want to hear but this is something we must say so we are all aware. if we are united in action, we can turn things around continuing to expand safe, effective vaccination is key to ending the covid-19 pandemic and bringing our country back to health daily vaccine doses -- >> you were listening to the

biden white house covid response team, their first press briefing talking about some of the, hopefully, positive signs on new cases. hospitalizations, and covid deaths we'll take a short break here and keep you posted on headlines out of that briefing we'll keep our eyes on amc no longer the worst day for the major indices since october now back to january 4. this is decision tech. find a stock based on your interests or what's trending. get real-time insights in your customized view of the market. it's smarter trading technology for smarter trading decisions. fidelity. keeping your oysters business growing has you swamped. you need to hire. i need indeed indeed you do. the moment you sponsor a job on indeed you get a shortlist of quality candidates from a resume data base claim your seventy-five-dollar credit when you post your first job at indeed.com/promo

so is the gamestop phenomenon the stock market becoming more democratic here to talk about that this morning executive editor and cnbc contributor sarah swisher alongside tony thank you for joining us on this interesting day. >> good morning. >> thanks a lot. >> given all the liquidity that is sloshing around, the brokerages and social media and populism, is this taking you by surprise or not? >> well, i'm old enough, carl to have been around for etrade. if you remember there were a lot of stocks, one that did a disk drive that went crazy, that didn't exist, all the investors piled into i've been around to see this idea of the democratic investor. you can be for the democratic democracy in the stock market because most people are not in stocks though we talk about it a lot. most do not get to participate in this upside and that's a great thing.

you can talk about a ridiculous gain about a company that's really in discretion and so in the end of this it's going to be hurt because these stocks go up and various people will make a ton of money and i'm sure there already are but in general the fundamentals are challenged and they have to focus in on saving their businesses and that's exactly what this is >> i saw a quote from buffett long ago, a quote from warren buffett, if the market were rational, i would be waiting tables how much does this present an opportunity? >> i think this is interesting and it shows the power that these new designers have in creating these applications. there's a goal in product management and user experience to identify things people can resonate with. obviously we talked about the game mechanics themselves involved in apps like robin hood it's great to bring on millennials and gen-z and the

muscle memory to show people, hey, i kind of understand how to use this app the other piece is this notion that within these forums, another important component if we draw the analogy to games, when i was a kid i wanted cheat codes for games like nba jams. so you see this activity within the forums having a material impact on these stocks n. a foregone era, if it were the bud boxes of the world sitting around in some private club smoking cigars and drinking their scott ch and doing this t s.e.c. would launch an investigation. however this is uncharted territory, and i think it, again, represents how fast the technical pace is for these applications and how these regulatory bodies are trying to catch up i'm not suggesting that an investigation should be launched

because this forum within reddit is a much more loose affiliation but, nonetheless, shows the impact, and there are victims within this. >> kara, to me this has a bit of the coliseum feel. we're watching the gladiators. this isn't just about hurting short tellers. there are actual companies behind these shares that, as you mentioned, are trying to dig themselves out of a really tough situation. there are employees who hold the shares the shares are currency. how do you think this stock price volatility, the inability at this time to discover a fair price will affect the companies themselves >> the idea is to use the stock to buy things and revive no one who is in business will this is a game for a lot of people and it's an interesting game that's why elon jumped in. short sellers have been the bane

of his existence i get the fun and games and that short sellers sometimes really just do start to attack unnecessarily but short tellers serve a purpose for companies that are problematic in the end game stock, someone will take their stock to try to get their business going, there's two things, their business and this game if i was gamestop, i would start selling shares because this is speculative right now what's happening. it's not anything that will help their business going forward and that's where the focus should be. one of the things about robin hood, a lot of these sellers are using robinhood and i know you had the ceo on, a really interesting company. really interesting to get more people in the stock market but people have to have financial literacy and not get taken advantage of i fell down this memory hole of motley fool.

there was a stock that the fundamentals were ridiculous but people kept shoving it higher. it's more powerful and more amplified. amc, the same thing. a lot of secular troubles. that said this is what it is >> part of the challenge, lo, if you were, say, and i'm just making this up, if you were best buy thinking of buying gamestop, you can't do it here, right? you can't justify that if you were gamestop and thinking of buying something else with your stock as currency there's probably not another company that will take that. in a way you're strategically frozen, aren't you isn't that the danger in what these investors or traders are doing that they think is helping these companies? >> without question there is a severe disconnect as kara pointed out between the

fundamentals of this company and what has occurred within the trading activities of the retail investors and particularly that are driving it through the forum, almost this revenge aspect to short sellers. and so this is a freeze period for the company. i think on either side of a transaction whether it's someone looking to acquire or the target being a company within the eyesight of gamestop no one is going to want to make a move i think within the realm of thinking as a fiduciary i don't think it's in anyone's interest to try to execute anything this is what happens we're in this bizarre scenario right now and there is no playbook to be able to address this short sellers have played an important roll providing liquidity, bringing stocks back down-to-earth that shouldn't be trading where they are if you look at what's happened over the past ten years being a

short seller is a tough business because we have been in an extended bull market >> yeah. >> that's a topic that might be brought up at the fed presser today. kara, on our air in about an hour some argue he has not been afraid to add fuel to the fire >> i gave him a list of questions he'll be asked as governor he answered them okay. we'll see if he's serious about this sometimes chamath is serious and sometimes he's not he is a really interesting figure he's sometimes a controversial figure but is always entertaining we'll see. there's an opportunity politically and at the same time playing games around politics just like playing games around

the stock market, which all of this is, we can't -- it may be all fun and games until it all falls apart. we'll see. i'm excited if he's really serious. i think it's interesting >> kara, lo, great to get your take on this as we continue to feel our way good to see you both thank you. >> take care still to come, it is one of the few positive components in the dow this morning a closer look at microsoft's earnings you see it there up 2% stay with us

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welcome back, everyone i'm sue herera here's your cnbc news update this hour. a guilty plea is expected today from one of the six men charged with conspiring to kidnap michigan governor gretchen whitmer. he has signed a plea agreement that says he will fully cooperate with investigators for the first day since july 4,

less than half a million travelers went through tsa checkpoints yesterday a 71% drop from the same day last year. at the international space station the first space walk is under way. they are upgrating batteries an installing a platform. no players will be inducted into the mlb hall of fame. curt schilling got the most votes but was still 16 short home run king barry bonds and ace pitcher roger clemens failed to get enough votes for the ninth year you are up to date, jon. back to you. >> sue, thank you. microsoft delivering blow-out numbers saying its cloud segment in azure saw revenue growth here to break down the quarter, mark, great to have you. what is the most important

strategic segment here i'm looking at productivity in business process, this rebound in linkedin which saw some layoffs earlier this year, but so is intelligent cloud. >> thanks for having me. what's probably most important is not the reported segments but commercial cloud commercial cloud spans azure, office 365, dynamics 365 and linkedin and brings together the growth parts of the business and that's been an engine of the business the key driver is azure which re re-accelerated probably the sustainability of that strength. >> small businesses have tended to be a weak spot for so many of these companies. consumer, at least the higher end consumer, is strong. we saw that reflected and big

businesses have remained strong. what did we learn and what, if anything, should we read through to other companies about to report their quarters? >> that's a great question smb improved this quarter. the first of our companies to call out specifically that smb started to come back and increase what they're doing. we had terence that once ppe ended and things like that we would see layoffs and shrinkage. smb is start to go come back to technology because they needed to differentiate microsoft saw a couple key drivers of the strength in the business one is companies that placed projects on hold during the beginning or middle of the pandemic have started to come back to continue especially lift and shift to the cloud and to

azure and office 365 and dynamics the second was that industries that were negatively impacted by covid started to show some increased or improved strength from an interest in technology and shift to the cloud and the therird as you mentioned is smb just starting to come back if that is an industry and not just a microsoft specific tail wind, software will do well. we can see that in other areas in tech. >> $10 billion in buybacks and dividends in the quarter at this point are the tail winds so strong capital will be a background story how does that fit in >> microsoft keeps dry powder because they need to drive the cloud growth and can bring on debt at almost no cost the second is acquisitions but

acquisitions need to be disruptive to the microsoft business and we saw that with the interest in tiktok they want to do things that i will scratch my head over and then understand as i think about it more. return of cash has always been part of the plan and one the ceo has talked about as they throw off a ton of cash, they're not going to be able to and not going to want to make acquisitions that don't make perfect sense. there's only so much you can invest in the business and, oh, yeah, it wouldn't surprise me if we see an increase in a return of cash going forward. >> how much do you expect microsoft to lean into windows and surface given the shift to productivity particularly on the consumer side and the blurring of what's consumer and what's enterprise with this work from home thing i ask that because there are other companies including apple which reports after the bell

today and its mac and ipad units that will be affected by the shift. >> microsoft in terms of windows including surface is taking a multipronged approach. the first is microsoft 360 in which they are driving their customers to go from buying licenses of windows and office and dynamics to going to a comprehensive offering, a subscription rental agreement and that includes subscription with support versions of windows. that's been a big driver of growth and continues to be and that will separate microsoft's windows business from the sale of devices the second is in the device space and microsoft has had better than industry success with their surface devices as individuals, as companies recognize microsoft builds a quality product and, therefore, people want to offer a complete

solution that will work really well with the underlying technologies so i think it's a continuing investment by microsoft. they don't want to lean in so far that they hurt their partners microsoft is very, very focused on helping supporting and growing their customers -- sorry, their partners whether they are oems or software developers or whatever i don't think they'll lean in too far. obviously what could the read-through to apple be it's incrementally positive but still to be shown to people wanting another device or with a microsoft device >> in those surface devices and in the cloud, great insight from you. thank you. >> my pleasure and all the best. we're going to have a lot more big cap tech to chew on

let's get to josh lipton on that >> the bulls have been in charge early this week when it comes to apple hitting a fresh all-time high, it's actually outperformed many of its notable big-tech peers during the past three months and the past year here is another way to think about it since apple last reported results it has added about $460 billion in market value, the equivalent of a walmart. bulls are confident about the report today, too, given the strong reception for the company's new 5g-enabled phones with consumers opting for higher margin pro and pro max models. due to the pandemic and lockdowns people continue working and learning at home that could result in strength for the ipad and mac businesses. tim cook says he thinks we have entered a new normal, that working from home can be

effective. as for services morgan stanley, a second consecutive quarter spurred by continued strength in the app store. the new digital subscription bundles. on the other hand skeptics could be asking how good news is priced in at these levels and some are wondering about potential challenges, tougher mac and ipad ahead >> josh, i can't wait to get a sense if apple gives one of the margins in the mac business once we get more and more of these macs with apple designed chips once they move intel out and they have their home grown chips because it's so interesting. just a few years ago people were saying the smartphone market is getting saturated. apple doesn't have the unit growth they have the services story to add on there to get that additional profit. it seems that in mac they might have this chip story to add

martin, too. we'll have to wait and see what the impact is. >> that will be a key question for our audience what has been the margin impact of the new presser for the mac line everyone is taking their guesses, that tail wind, how long does it persist tim cook suggests something structural has changed here when it comes to how we think about work but also he has the new mac, switched in his new chip and switched out the intel processor. if that really wows consumers could that be another tail wind for that segment is this. >> we'll see what happens tonight. we'll get a check on the markets. the selling has the dow and the s&p the lowest since january 4 although a down day for the dow would be five straight, the longest since february back in a moment ♪♪ for skin as alive as you are...

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shares of biotech are soaring as it partners with eli lily for covid-19 therapies. worth noting shares have been volatile throughout the pandemic with big interday swings this both directions and we see that play out again today the stock is up more than 200% so far this week that's actually not unusual this week

one of the people benefitting from this reddit trade is board stop member ryan cohen. robert frank has more on this amazing trade. hey, robert. >> yeah, it is amazing, carl gamestop more than $3 billion in wealth the past couple of weeks and the biggest winner is ryan cohen. he, as you mentioned, is the co-founder of chewy. he added more to his position

just last month bringing the total stake to 13% his investment of $76 million now worth over $2 billion. he's made $6 million an hour over the past two weeks. the other big winner is a guy we don't hear much about, donald foss, the 76-year-old founder and former ceo of credit acceptance he bought 5% for about $12 million. that $12 million investment now worth over $800 million. and then the hedge fund run by michael burry famous for the big short, of course, owns shares worth over $400 million. he would have had even more but he sold off about 38% of his stake last year. and then we have gamestop ceo george sherman his stake now worth over half a billion. a few directors have sold shares in the first days of this runup

around january 13-14 so far it doesn't appear any of these big shareholders have sold, at least not yet, but, guys, it's tempting when you get to gains like this >> tempting and probably a little bit scary in a couple ways given all of the scrutiny this is likely to get. robert frank, thank you. let us continue with the former nasdaq chairman and ceo. bob, probably no better voice than you to have on this i'm curious when it comes to gamestop and today amc, is this runup, this action that's happening in reddit, is it good for the companies? is it bad for the companies? does it not matter either way? >> well, i would say this. one, it's bad for a statement on capital markets and howthe financial markets are running in the u.s. two, with respect to the individual companies it's impossible not to be a great distraction.

and they clearly have the focus on their business and execute and let the stock take care of itself over time so right now we have a situation that is basically untenable. >> is it kind of like ecology? if you look at an ecosystem there can be an animal in there that you really don't like you think it's a pest but if you eliminate it, you tip the whole thing into an unstable state i'm thinking of short sellers as perhaps being that animal in the ecosystem that these redditers are going after. >> so i would say this the way i look at what is transpiring, it's interesting to me there's not this houtcry saying the system is wrong right now you have two packs of wolves fighting each other and you have the david pack of wolves beating the goliath pack of wolves, retailers against hedge funds.

what's important for us to recognize is the s.e.c. has a primary mandate for investor protection so if the roles were reversed right now and you had the retail investors getting wiped out, clearly you would have a large cry from media, from everybody, saying the s.e.c., the markets haven't stepped up and protected retail investors i think it's important for us to think about that in that context. it can end badly for retail investors and we have regulators whose job is to protect retail investors so steps have to be taken. >> bob,on this morning talking about the quarter and obviously the benefit from all of this in their option trading volume, what is the role for the nasdaq, for example, in all of this when she talks about matching buying activity with social media chatter? specifically what would that look like? >> well, i would say you would start with the s.e.c what is their role

they're the primary regulator of the securities market. when i think about what they can do, i first come up with the thought what they cannot, right? they do not have the power of jack dorsey or mark zuckerberg they cannot turn off these reddit social media posts and basically ban them this can't and that's without getting into discussions with respect to free speech, but there are, in my mind, three things that the sec should be doing right about now. one is it's unconscionable that you have the ability to have short interest greater than the shares outstanding now we had tightened up the short selling rules years ago, but obviously not tight enough so that has to stop. you have to locate a hard locate if you're going to be a hard to borrow stock you can never have a situation where you have 130 and 140% of the shares outstanding you've got to stop that. that will have some incremental benefit. the second thing is we put in

place after the flash crash, limit up and limit down and clearly, that's been used here multiple times, but it has not been affected and you have amplification of the limit up and limit down capability and that's a longer period of time than the short period of time you have now the third thing under the sec mandate and probably focus on the brokers and you have suitability standards and these come in to regulated entities and make sure that they are, in pack, suitable and have some valid purpose for them those three steps -- doesn't solve the problem, but certainly takes it, you know, the long way forward. >> well, often it's the big institutional investors and the companies that get the advice from the likes of nasdaq and nasdaq veterans, but tommy, what would your message be to retail, i'll say traders versus investors right now, many of whom will be tempted to jump in to these heavily shorted names

given what they've seen happen with gamestop and amc? >> yeah. one is they have the right to do that, right? it's their money it's their opinion and i believe they have the right to talk to other investors whether it's face to face or online so we're not trying to stop that at all, but clearly at the end of the day all companies will be valued on some measure of the discounted cash flow over time so fundamentals in the long run are what are fundamentally important. my advice if anybody asked me for that clearly, do what you want, when you want, but certainly think about it in a clear and i think, concise way. >> do you see a broader storyline playing out here about, perhaps, risk when we see what's happening here and when we see what's happened with bitcoin over the past two months and when we look at ipo performance and even

tesla which is all very different stories, but all, you know, arguably valuation stories and kind of around this once in a lifetime-type idea >> yeah. so i think you're on to something there. clearly, one, this is all happening during the pandemic. so i don't know about correlation and causation, but it's happening at the same time. it's happening across a range of asset classes. so the concept is different today than it was 18 months ago and clearly, people with retail investors have an appetite and would that persist as we get past the pandemic and people are out and about? we'll find out when we get there, but you're right. there's acommon theme here and it cuts across whether it's tesla, bitcoin, gamestop so you've seen a massive shift in risk appetite and willing to take risk in the last number of months, and you know, the last time we saw something like this

was in 1999, and in certain ways this is actually more pervasive than what we witnessed in 1999 >> all right bob greifeld, thank you. be careful with your wallet, everybody. >> my pleasure >> our thanks to bob coming up on the half. it's chamath palihapitiya with the judge. in the meantime, markets off intraday lows and you have the market up just barely and the ten-year yield hdi 1olng01 we're back in a momentashboard because when it's decision time, you need decision tech. only from fidelity.

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that's what it means to live feelessly. gamestop and amc, obviously, a fast-evolving story and we talked about impact of brokerages today with an alert with its own users in the interest of mitigating risk for our company and clients we put in place several restrictions on some transactions in gma, amc and other securities we've made these decisions out of an abundance of caution over unprecedented market conditions and other factors. that's separate just from the sheer overload of trading volume which has challenged some of the retail brokerages today.

carl, we've been talking for months about valuations in the markets in tech in particular and it seems to me that part of this refrain has been, part of the reason why this isn't like the dotcom boom and bust is we don't have these absolutely crazy valuations in stocks spiking double and triple digit percentages based on not much fundamentally. well, now we have it, but just in a different way anyway, before we go, carl i want to mention a start-up call apartment list announcing a new round taking its valuation to just north of $600 million. still relatively small, but listen to the investor list. grammy award-winning lizzo, a-rod, pri yanka chopra-jonas and our brandon gorma sat down with apartment list's founder to talk about that funding and how he was able to pitch such a wide range of celebrities >> it was a remarkable path to

add such talented folks. when we think about our renters, we really wanted to make sure we were aligning with folks that could help us take our brand to another level and really perpetuated that vision that we hold so dear and grammy award-winning lizzo was just one of many wonderful folks that we were able to share that story with, and you know, i think for her, it just deeply resonated that connection with home and our business model and our growth >> apartment list, by the way, already profitable differentiates itself by competitors by just taking a fee once a property is actually rented catch the entirety of brandon's interview on social and cnbc.com carl >> all right we love to see brandon on tv john, we covered apple printing tonight with josh lipton earlier in the hour.

take a look at some of the names that are going to be posting earnings after the bell. facebook and tesla, the other big two and thinking back about what morgan stanley said and katie huberty widely considered the axe on the stock our checks indicate a likely record quarter they went from 144 to 152 with a bull case of 200 and we will see if katie huberty was right. let's get to the judge. all right. carl, thanks so much welcome to "the halftime report." i'm scott wapner we are following several stories this hour. the sell-off in stocks and the countdown to an cell very impovery important, and chamath palihapitiya why he got involved and we'll see chamath in just a bit and the resinvestment committee, stephanie