more of life insurance you may qualify to sell your policy. don't cancel or let your policy lapse without finding out what it's worth. visit conventrydirect.com to find out if you policy qualifies. or call the number on your screen. coventry direct, redefining insurance. it is 5:00 a.m. at cnbc global headquarters and here are your top five at five. we begin with the worries on wall street. stocks just reeling following their worst trading day since october amid some new worries that are creeping into the markets. then we turn to big tech, shares of apple, facebook, and tesla, all facing some steep losses this morning following their quartersly reports we're going to sift through those numbers and break down the key take aways deep in the red this morning, the stocks at the center of the retail fueled rallies amid their mounting debate over the influence on the market. and helping to fuel the massive

moves facing backlash as it gets banned from one of it servers and several major airlines out with their earnings on the heels of boeing's massive quarterly loss, and the key questions about the skies ahead for air travel it is thursday, january 28th, and you are watching "worldwide exchange" right here on cnbc ♪ ♪ ♪ and good morning, i am frank holland in for brian sullivan. here's how your money and the global markets are setting up their day. stock futures in the red across the board right now. we're seeing the nasdaq taking the hardest tumble that's following some big tech earnings, and this after the major indices falling since october. for the week, all three are down now more than 2% investors also digesting the

latest policy decision by the fed, maintaining its current monetary plans chairman jay powell acknowledging the economy has softened in recent weeks we continue to follow buying frenzy and shorted stocks that have kept investors on the edge of their seats there's growing fears hedge funds could be reducing their stocks shares at the stocks of the center of the action, gamestop, bed bath & beyond, amc all suffering steep losses after discord banned the wall street server for allowing hate speech. now to the other top stories and the after math of big tech's latest earnings. we start with apple, shares in the red this morning despite blow out first quarter earnings from the company however, apple did fail to provide guidance still apple reporting its first quarter with over $100 billion in revenue with sales for every product category rising by double digits. a key driver for the company, the iphone, of course, which accounted for 59% of the

company's revenue during the holiday quarter. most people agree we're in a super cycle wave of upgrades by customers. we turn to facebook. shares also under pressure this morning. the social media company actually beat on the top and bottom line for the 4th quarter, saying it benefitted last year by a shift toward online commerce toward the pandemic but warning a reversal in pandemic trends and looming changes in apple's operating system could hurt its advertising business, and tesla shares selling off this morning, you see right here, down 7 1/2% after releasing their 4th quarter figures. the company topping on revenue but missing estimates in earnings average growth of 50% going forward with two factories coming online this year, and updated versions of model s vehicles in the early stages of production let's go worldwide now our julianna tatelbaum, she's in our london newsroom with a look at the early trade over in

europe good morning. >> frank, good morning well, european markets are tracking wall street quite closely. yesterday we saw a steep selloff in european equities, the main benchmark, the stock 600 dropped just over 1%, and the german market under performed dropping 1.8% pushing it back into negative territory on a year-to-date basis this morning, we are seeing the selling continue but we bounced off the absolute lows of the day. right now, the german market is off about 1.6%. at one point a half hour ago, we were down 2.1% that has coincided with a bit of a bounce in u.s. futures overall a negative picture the sectors, let's see what break down looks like, red across the board, but we are seeing some particularly heavy selling in insurance and oil and gas alongside health care. at the top of the board, the more resilient parts of the market, food and bev down just

about 10 basis points. we are seeing decent selling the retail frenzy in the u.s. is causing jitters in europe as well. stocks suffering the largest one day loss since october amid vaccine rollouts and heightened speculative training your next guest says there's up side for the markets and is putting a price target of 4,000 for the s&p by the end of the year i'm joined by roderick van lipsy, managing director at wealth >> good morning. >> let's start with the price target all we're seeing today and the fact that the s&p is lower for the year, what's giving you the confidence to make that price target projection? >> yesterday's market was a wake up call for investors, if we stayed and look at the longer term, we have seen an amazing run in the market. a little bit of a pause should not be surprising. january, november through january, if we track those

markets, we have had an incredible ral i ly our investors are taking a hard look at the reality that we have woken up in january, and understood that the vaccine is coming but it's not going to be here that fast that relief is coming but it's not going to be $2 trillion worth, and so we're back to basics some of the big name super caps selling off right now, we have seen investors begin to take that rotation. cyclicals sold off also yelled there's a little bit of reality that we're going to be stuck with technology and stuck indoors for a while. but the bigger picture says that equities with interest rates this low are actually still attractively priced. >> rod, you say that there's also potential for this market to be a bubble and as you mentioned this week, and today we're seeing these tech earnings or tech stocks fall after earnings as i said, the s&p down fractionally for the year. what is creating this bubblish

perception in your mind, and at the same time you have the projection for the price target in the s&p. >> listen, we are all stuck at home mobility is down we've got a lot of people who have a lot of time to look at the internet, to look at their personal devices to be spending on their tablets, and so of course technology in our life is all about technology right now. again, if we look at those valuations, investors should be looking for places where we can expect some attractive returns, and for that segment of the s&p 500 that has dramatically outperformed, there's still an awful lot in the s&p and small cap and mid cap stocks, valuations remain attractive we spend a lot of time focused on the upper cap here, the mega caps. if we come down a few levels, there's still some place for investment, for return expectations we think we'll get through this turbulence yesterday was a bit of a wake up call

there will be market volatility ahead. >> why would we rotate away from the megacaps, tech stocks and consumer discretionary stocks that push the markets further. u.s. equities had a 21% return in 2020, why change up now >> we have seen that change-up start. if we were to look at the first couple of weeks of january for some clues, we began to see the that tech stocks, the big winners of last year were actually lagging some of the value stocks and things that were recovering, the cyclicals were coming back i think it's important for us to understand it was the stay-at-home basket of technology that is getting us through this covid regime, and we're not through yet. and the markets understand that. so there's still good support for technology, but as we come out and we get the mobility trade started, as we get into the next quarter and the following quarter after that, we really should see cyclicals recover. we really should see come opening, which is going to help

with consumer discretionary. it's going to thelp with smalle cap companies, it's going to let us get things going again. we see great value overseas, incredible opportunities in emerging markets, small cap, small cap international value. there's a lot of places there where we have not seen this big tech bubble focus. >> and rob, before we let you go, we have to ask you about some of this activist retail investor movement, the activist retail investment movement that we're seeing related to gamestop, amc and some other stocks how do you see this impacting the markets right now, and could it lead to a broader sell off? >> right now it's causing some real challenges, and those challenges are particularly difficult for the hedge fund folks, the professional investors who are looking at valuations and saying this doesn't make any sense, and those that are short covering are having to cover those. they need to sell some good stuff to take the cash to pay for it, so this cycle, it could

continue for a little while longer, and so this is a dangerous time for the markets but we'll get through this, and i think unfortunately there's going to be a little bit of a bubble bursting for some of the really speculative small micro cap tech names we'll see what happens with those in the coming month. >> rob van lipsey, thank you, again. the latest out of washington as president biden continues his executive order initiative, shifting to health care. this amid a push to get more vaccines and aid out to americans. tracie potts joins frus washington with the latest good morning, tracie. >> good morning, everyone. three sources including an administration official giving us some detail on these executive orders on health care told president biden expected to sign off on expanding medicaid, getting more people signed up for medicaid it's not clear yet exactly how he plans to do that. we'll likely find out more specifics on that today. he also wants to reopen the

affordable care act marketplaces mid year to people who need insurance in the middle of this pandemic, and frank, it's a pandemic that is getting worse the cdc now confirming that by mid february, we will have seen more than half a million deaths that the new u.k. variant of the virus is spreading in the united states, and will be predominant by march and that the vaccine distribution as we know, as we have heard from states, that rollout is slow going. right now, 1 in 16 americans have gotten both shots, but a lot of states are saying they just don't have enough vaccine the biden administration trying to push out more they're slimming down their stockpile, trying to fill orders from states in realtime, and now even asking the military to help >> tracie, certainly the toll of the pandemic being felt in the u.s., both, you know, human toll and economically, so what is the latest on covid relief talks

>> still negotiating but the snag seems to be what's in that $1.9 trillion plan that president biden is pushing democrats want a quick vote on this, but republicans and even some democrats are balking at what they consider extras in this bill, hiking the minimum wage, cyber security, and other issues that they say are not directly related to covid relief get some of that out and they think they might be able to get some bipartisan support here otherwise we could be looking at democrats pushing a vote that only includes democrats getting it passed. >> i don't think that's the only time that's going to happen this year, tracie thank you again for the insight. tracie potts in washington. the world health organization officially set to begin its probe into the covid-19 origin. and the ongoing outbreak hammering boeing's latest quarterly results, we dive into the business, and when the

industry may start to turn around. and robert frank explains how tootsie roll has found itself caught up in the short selling saga gripping wall street a very busy hour still ahead when "worldwide exchange" returns.

and welcome back, a world health organization team is in china, and they're set to be released from a mandatory quarantine, and then begin their investigation into the origins of the covid-19 outbreak

eunice yoon joins us now from beijing. what's up first for this team? >> well, the team is out of quarantine they were taken away in buses, not allowed to stop and chat with the reporters, but they did tweet with one of the scientists saying that they're going to move into the next phase of work, so the team wants to trace back contacts as well as activities some of the first known cases and ultimately better understand how the virus jumps species to humans they put in some requests of where they would like to see they would like to go to the hospitals, they said, the wet market in question which has been associated with the most cases, especially in the early days, and even one of them put the lab, which had been accused of leaking the virus on that list the foreign ministry said that the team is going to be able to hold conferences, interviews and inspections, not a whole lot of detail there, though, so it's unclear what exactly they're going to be able to see.

the w.h.o. team had stressed that this is a scientific mission but as you all know, frank, there's been a whole lot of politics around this investigation with many people criticizing it coming a year too late the white house had also said overnight that it's concerned about some of the misinformation from some sources in china and urged what the press secretary had said, a robust and clear investigation. the foreign ministry, meanwhile, had said that they don't want to see any prejudice from overseas distracting the w.h.o. team. frank? >> you know, that statement only makes mehave to ask you, eunice, are there general concerns about transparency surrounding this investigation >> there are definitely concerns they, first of all, the evidence is going to be provided by the chinese counter parts, which in some circles already raises questions. one of the scientists on the

w.h.o. team had said that the chinese have shared more information that hasn't been made public in the past. so that's an encouraging sign, however, there are some victims of the families in wuhan who have been asking to meet with the w.h.o. and also have been saying that they want to share their story with these international experts and those people have been either blocked or have been complaining that some of their attempts to get to the w.h.o. and also to have conversations online have been completely censored. >> a lot of questions left to be answered eunice yoon live in beijing, thank you very much for the very latest appreciate it. still on deck, more on the covid-19 outbreak as pfizer reports potential progress in combatting new mutations of the disease details on those key findings when "worldwide exchange" returns.

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welcome back, 21 minutes past the hour. a live look at times square where they're holding restaurant week you can find a blue cheese burger with bacon mac and cheese if you wanted to travel down there. we're going to talk about a couple of other color foods in just a minute as we check on this morning's other headlines nbc's phillip mena is in new york with the very latest. would you eat a blue cheese burger >> not to into that but i see what you did there we're going to talk about those colorful foods in a moment

good morning to you, frank in the first eight days on the job, president biden has signed over 40 executive orders and more were expected soon on immigration, but sources tell nbc news that the white house will likely have to hold off for a few days they declined to give a reason that delay includes the highly anticipated announcement of a task force to reunite migrant families separated under the trump administration. and one of the six suspects in the plot to kidnap gretchen whitmer has pleaded guilty ty garvin admitted he was part of a group that planned to kidnap whitmer the agreement included startling details. garvin said he practiced field training exercises in case to whitmer's vacation home. garvin has agreed to fully cooperate with investigators, including testifying against his alleged accomplices. here's what we're talking about, kraft is getting cheesy for valentine's day, rolling out a limited edition of pink mac

and cheese, a flavor packet turns the mac and cheese pick and adds hints of sweet candy flavor for those that are into that frank, back to you. >> for those who are into that, does that mean you're not into that >> not with candy flavor in mac and cheese, not my jam. >> blue cheese burger is a maybe, but the pink mac and cheese is a no >> that's where we stand. >> thanks for that check-in. still on deck, shares of apple, facebook, and tesla all in the red this morning following their latest quarterly results. web bush's joe calilna is standing by with the key take aways. you can watch and listen to us on the cnbc app. "worldwide exchange" back in a moment

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under pressure, futures pointing to more losses at the open after wall street suffered a big selloff. we're talking tech, shares of apple and facebook trading lower this morning, despite better than expected quarterly results. why some of the most shorted stocks are dropping, and may not be rebounding after an exemployexplosiv rally. it's thursday, january 27th, 2021, you're watching "worldwide exchange" right here on cnbc >>. ♪ one, two, three ♪ >> welcome back, i'm frank holland in for big papa, mr. brian sullivan here's how your money and investments look right now as

we're halfway through the 5:00 a.m. hour stock futures in the red the dow is starting to claw back, only down now just a few points the nasdaq continues to see the deepest decline on the back of those facebook and apple earnings those stocks, despite big beats, taking a big loss this morning this after the major indices had the sharpest losses. the s&p and nasdaq were down 2 1/2% for the week, all three are down 2% investors investigating the latest policy decisions by the fed. jay powell acknowledging the economy has sorftened in recent weeks. heavily shorted stocks have kept investors on the edge of their st seats. hedge funds being squeezed could be forced to reduce equity holdings gamestop, bed bath & beyond, amc

were all suffering losses. now we're starting to see things reverse. gamestop in the positive, up 4%. koss corp., up, blackberry with the steepest decline, over 10% as we look at your morning's top stories, a number of names, they got hit hard last night, after messaging platform discord, it banned the wall street bet server in a statement, discord said it didn't ban it for fraud related reasons, to game stop or other stocks but instead because wall street bets continue to allow hateful and discriminatory content after repeated warnings. after that ban, the moderators of wall street bets briefly took the reddit chat room private, and became public again. the gamestop thread was locked, meaning users could not post more comments. reddit cofounder, alexis ohanian is live on "squawk box" at 6:30

a.m. eastern time. a study finds pfizer's covid vaccine works against mutations against the south african variants the study was conduct instead a lab from people who had received the vaccine. ceo mark zuckerberg announcing the social networking giant will no longer recommend civic and political groups to users, and looking at ways to reduce the amount of political content that pops up in a facebook news food. zuckerberg says this is based on feedback from users. sticking with big tech k facebook was among the trio of companies reporting earnings last night, and all three are lower in extended trading. facebook beating earnings and revenue forecast on heavy holiday advertising, but it warns apple's looming privacy changes with ios 14 could hit revenue interfering with targeted ads quarterly revenue topping $100 billion for the first time ever, with business in china rebounding apple did not provide specific

guidance for the current quarter. tesla hosting its 6th straight profitable quarter but the company's delivery forecast for this year appears less robust than analysts expected for insights let's go to joe kalina, head at tech at wedbush securities >> thank you for having me. >> app and will facebook, beats on the top and bottom line, apple shipping the most smartphones it has shipped, and tesla, though the shipments may have been below what people thought or whispered about, pretty close, why are we seeing this big tech selloff? >> i think there's obviously what's been spoken on your program for the last 24 hours, la larger forces in motion with the market, and gross reduction being seen, especially across the hedge fund community, a rough night in asia, fell 4% hong kong tech index fell 4 .4%.

last night earnings, start with tesla, as you hinted the imply growth for fiscal year 2021 for deliveries for tesla, 750,000 units, that was bang in line with expectations and well below kind of whispers that crept up to 800,000 units that's kind of the source of the weakness with tesla, as well as margins came in weaker they cited aggressive price cutting in china, continued, you know, supply chain costs that are rising, you know, globally for almost every auto manufacturer there is. i can see tesla, there are things to poke at for a stock that's gone from $100 less than a year ago, nearly hit 900, you know, did hit 900 not that long ago. for tesla, i'm watching the 21 day moving average from 8.02. you have to thinkthe near term is down, close to the 50 day, and apple, not much to poke at as you said, it was a record

quarter across the board iphone revenues were well ahead of expectations and the key part of the story, china growth up 57% year over year, there's not much to poke at. the company was a little bit cautious, you know, moving forward. services are going to face steeper comps, which we already know a lot of these tech companies are going to face serious comps, just kind of what we saw in q2, q3 of covid-19 apple, fairly straightforward, install base continues to grow and the 5g, it's only been kick started and we'll see robust sales throughout the year. >> let's shift from those wall street whispers to a group of people making noise, retail investors on reddit, what we're seeing with gamestop and tootsie roll, could that lead to a broader selloff, especially for tech >> yeah, it's kind of no secret, you know, these hedge funds do get together, they talk, whether

it's idea dinners or, you know, offline, wherever it may be, you know, there's a reason when you look at some fof the stocks, short interest, the complete inverse of what we're seeing from the reddit army on the long side and that's kind of clear the nascar begin, clerks have been making their calls, forced guys to cut their winners, and cover the shorts it's been a negative vicious cycle we have been seeing, you know, saw aggressively pick up yesterday, and that's really reflective in the vix jumping from 21 to 37 in the short window we'll see if things stabilize today. clearly there's a lot of pain out there, especially with the hedge fund community, and, you know, we'll see how it plays out. a lot of funkiness under the hood. >> you don't hear funkiness on cnbc very often. i'm glad you said that turning to concern on wall street, a lot of people are

going to be looking to go defensive. i thought it was pretty interesting, your defensive play was faang plus microsoft but aren't those mega tech companies, aren't those the ones people are trying to rotate out of >> i think the faang trade has become probably the most compelling it has been in quite some time. you pull back some of these charts, and whether it's facebook, apple, microsoft, google, i mean, google has probably been the outperformer, amazon, these things have been choppy going back to the summer, and more so since the first pfizer vaccine headlines hit on november 9th clearly they have been left behind in the cyclical recovery rotation trade but end of the day, valuations is compelling at these levels for all of the names, and in terms of positioning, i know, you know, j.p. morgan, marco, he has been talking about more neutral positioning. positioning in the faang, large cap stocks is more neutral than it's been in recent memory, and

that provides a very opportunistic time to step in and buy these. facebook's quarter was good. there's some things to pick out in terms of their cautious outlook as well. rpu is better than expected and zuckerberg has been known to take a cautious stance when talking longer term, versus being overly bullish i think these are names you can own without kind of losing sleep at night. >> joe kalina, thank you for the insight into the funkiness, we appreciate it. have a good day. >> take care, thank you. taking flight, we're going to talk about the airline business amid the continuing pandemic, and new travel restrictions, but first as we head to break some of your other headlines this morning. las vegas sands up slightly despite a bigger than expected quarterly loss, the company's new ceo says the covid recovery process is underway in singapore. and levi strauss, earnings and revenues topped the latest quarter but the current quarter disappointed investors. in washington, president

biden is temporarily freezing u.s. arms sales to saudi arabia and examining arms purchases into the united arab emirates as his administration approves billions of dollars of weapons transactions approved by former president trump. such review is not unusual for a new president and many of the deals with likely to still happen stay tuned, "worldwide ge wreomg ckn ba i a moment no one likes to choose between safe or sporty. modern or reliable. we want both - we want a hybrid. so do banks. that's why they're going hybrid with ibm. a hybrid cloud approach helps them personalize experiences with watson ai while helping keep data secure. ♪ ♪ ♪ from banking to manufacturing, businesses are going with a smarter hybrid cloud,

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and a live look at chicago, the hometown of tootsie roll, that's actually where they make tootsie rolls on the south side of the city. throw out one of those stocks that's the center of attention with the reddit users. shares up 5% in the early trade, closed up 11% yesterday. all right, well, the airlines, they will be in focus today amid this busy earnings week. now, we're set to get quarterly results from american airlines, jet blue and southwest those results coming after boeing reported a record annual loss of $12 billion. that was after a year where plunging air travel. joining us now is sheila, aerospace and defense analyst at jeffreys good morning sheila. >> good morning, thank you >> we're going to jump into this what are you expecting today from the airlines earnings there are three of them coming up on deck for today. >> you know, we have heard already from united and delta.

not much has changed i think we're seeing different commentary about when the airlines get cash flow break everybod everybody, but the real story is when do people feel safe to travel the pick this the airlines is love, we think domestic travel will come back faster than international as well as leisure prior to business. not much change from the airlines today. >> got it. we mentioned in the beginning, a record quarterly loss much steeper than expected, also the 777 x was pushed back to 2023, and no guidance, but boeing down about a percent or so this morning. was there something more positive in there beyond the headlines that people may have missed >> there were so many billion dollars in charges, there was definitely nothing positive in the boeing earnings report yesterday. the 777 x delay, again, nothing new. it was pushed out from 2022 to

late 2023, so about a year and a half delay two reasons for that delay are one more regulatory scrutiny as we have seen with the 737 max. we have heard from the business oems, seeing some slight delays as well. so that was part of it, but the real reason is the 777 x is levered to the wide body market. that's international travel. the order book was fairly limited around 300 orders centered around five major customers and therefore the big push it's a 20-year decision to push the aircraft, but no surprise there's no immediate appetite in 2022 for the aircraft. >> let's stick with boeing for a second now, your price target for boeing is 275. significant upside for that company in particular, that's under 200 this morning what do you see as the catalyst for this kind of price action? >> it's really to get back to a normalized free cash flow, which is the catalyst across our airspace covered, some of the names we would like are boeing, raytheon technologies, so you could get a package of those,

whether it's oe demand, after market the rationale for our price target is based on a normalized 2023 free cash flow number the free cash flow numbers are going to be pretty big losses in 2021, that's because of some payments boeing has to give the airlines they improve massively in 22 and 23 and 24, they start to normalize. the reason they're improving massively is boeing is starting to unwind the max that's been grounded for 18, 24 months now that just started buying in december so as we look at a normalized free cash flow we think boeing could earn $10 billion in free cash flow, a discount in market yield of 6% free cash flow, and get our 275 target price. >> let's talk a little bit more about the max. european regulators giving the green light for the max to go up in the air how big of a part will the max play in boeing's potential recovery >> i thought maybe that was the one positive to come out of yesterday's earnings call.

so i would mention the 737 packs right now. there's been about 40 deliveries within the first 30 days to five airlines customers that's pretty positive as we expect 180 deliveries for 2021 i would say six months ago i thought that estimate was pretty aggressive i'm feeling for comfortable about that now, and that's going to be part of the industry unwind of 400 aircraft sitting there. the european authorities approved the aircraft, and they expect all regulatory authorities to approve the aircraft to fly by the end of q1 >> back to go air alolines, southwest airlines love is your top pick, what are you expecting from the other two >> we actually don't cover jet blue on american, we are under performed rated. we think their travel exposure, their business exposure is not positive, and we also think

there could be some pricing wars across the big three airlines, whether that's delta, united and american we're seeing love coming into markets because it has the capacity to right now. two years ago, you know, load factors were at 80%, it was very high you couldn't get the structure as love coming into the market, opening new routes, prices routes low, and gaining market share. because love has an all 737 fleet, it lost out on market share and 2019 and 2018 and it will allow it to regain, and maybe plus it up. >> sheila, thank you very much for that insight earnings coming up later today. on deck, what key voices in the market are saying between retail investors, and shorted stocks if you haven't subscribed to our new podcast "worldwide exchange," every day in audio form check us out on apple, spotify and other apps

stay with us we will be right back. these folks, they don't have time to go to the post office

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this idea that all retail investors are unsophisticated, they shouldn't be managing their money, and should leave that to experts or institutions is a notion that we just have nomove past. >> i think it's worth watching what's happening here. ultimately companies in the fullness of time tend to trade around their underlying value, and so there will be people who make a lot of money in the short-term some of these situations may not turn out well. ultimately, i think, investors should look at the fundamental long-term prospects of the business. >> i think what it proves is this retail phenomenon is here to stay. there are 2.7 million people inside of wall street bets i think that they are as important as any hedge fund or collection of hedge funds. >> it's a risk to the marketplace. the marketplace should be a place where risk is taken but

not reckless risk and not a situation that undermines the entire system, and that's what we're looking at here. this is irrational. >> that was just a taste of the ongoing discussion on cnbc about the short squeeze we're seeing from retail investors s some bouncing back a bit after selling off after the threat was banned from social platform discord last night for the week, squeeze stocks are up, with costs surging more than 2,000% as retail investors piling into the stocks one name getting a huge boost is tootsie roll, providing a big boost for the company's ceo. robert frank joins us with more. good morning, robert. >> good morning, frank well, ellen goodman's family, they have owned tootsie roll industries for nearly 100 years. her father founded the company her husband ran it for 50 years, and she remains the ceo at age 88 the stock has basically been flat for the past 20 years, but

this week, retail traders started buying, drove up the share price by 45%, hitting an all time record. goodman owns about a third of the company, so her net worth increased by $400 million. she is now worth about 1 1.2 billion. the reason this became such a hot trader stock is because of the short interest over 40% of tootsie roll's float is sold short, making it among the ten most shorted stocks. sales at the chicago based maker of junior mints, charms pops, and double bubble fell 14% in the quarter and earnings down 15%. the and boosted the fortunes of canadian billionaire, up 800 million tharnks to his stake in blackberry that stock tripling over the past three weeks, and amc ceo adding $20 million to his fortune. some stocks are down overnight, but tootsie roll still up in

premarket trading. we'll see whether that ride continues. >> i'm not a big -- a big tootsie pop fan. is there a bold case to be made here >> it's tough to see one, especially at these levels this is a company now valued at $2.5 billion the pe multiple is at 48, so this is like beyond even tech category they say their last three quarters have been tough due to the pandemic, but the pandemic has actually helped candy sales. so it's hard to see whether, you know, reopening the economy will really help tootsie roll or whether these brands and candies are a little bit outdated. >> that's a great question, never been a fan of the junior mint, but the tootsie pop is a great pick we're getting a step closer to the frank talk let's talk about it later. the next guest says he's seeing signals that the market

is cracking. joining me now chief investment strategist nate fischer. thanks for being on. >> good morning, frank. >> you say the market is showing signs of cracking, the s&p lower for the month, and today we're seeing a big tech selloff for the week we're seeing stocks down, what other indicators are you seeing of the cracking besides the price action >> the market is starting to narrow we started the year about 86% of the market was trading above the 50 day moving average and after yesterday's selloff, we're looking at 46% as we end january, we start to move into february, which is more of a seasonally weak month. as you're well aware, sentiment is running hot, and complacency is also there. nobody thinks stocks can go down right now, until short squeezes have margin calls and that perpetuates more and more selling as hedge funds have to sell their best stocks to cover

for their worst stocks fw. >> what's your take of the activist investment push on the rise of stocks like gamestop, tootsie roll, amc, do you think this has the potential to create a broader selloff on the markets. >> it's showing you that some investors are off sides. when you look at the short size of books, it's been very easy to pick on these names that have been secular losers, you know, retail, brick and mortar, like the macy's of the world. they have been well known not to be able to compete with amazon, nike, and direct-to-consumer it's not surprising that they have had tremendous amounts of shorts, and the perpetual call buying to come in and hedge their bets, and essentially buy the stock, and self-propels short squeeze. i don't think it's creating a bubble in the market these are such small names if you see massive short squeezes of apple, microsoft,

facebook, these names are about 20% of the total s&p from a market cap standpoint. that would be a whole different conversation i don't think we're there yet. >> you're overweight on tech and health care. those are pretty broad subjects. can you narrow us down when it comes to health care when you say you're bullish, what are we talking about? a teledoc, cvs >> where we're positioning ourselves is from the reopening trade. people getting back in the operating room striker, yesterday, reporting numbers that are in line there's a lot of knee and hip replacements that didn't happen last year. that's not the destruction, that means they're going to need to happen in 2021, as covid fades if the background, med tech is where we like to be. not active insurance side. more on the software side. those are names we have big positions in health care. >> when you say tech are you

talking about the megatech stocks or things like fintech or some o. other areas of tech like a zoom that we have seen explode during the pandemic. >> the bulk of our positioning in the tech sector is the semis and the software side. we have exposure to microsoft, googles, the facebooks of the woorld, but we're seeing a lot -- of the world, but we're seeing value on the smaller derivatives, the leading provider of microphones that go into consumer electronics, this is a play on the apple phone cycle which was very very strong yesterday. these guys are selling into the smartphones, the wireless headphones, the pcs, the tablets, they have mics in all of the hottest products in the consumer market, and technically it's trailed the russell 2000, as well as the tech sector that's a relative value trade we're seeing that is probably fair value in the mid 20s. it's below 20 bucks right now. >> we had an earlier guest

describe faang plus microsoft as a defensive play do you agree with that or are you rolling into cyclical plays, like industrials and materials. >> industrials has been the spot to be since late last summer that trade is starting to fade relatively, the materials, industrials, banks have trailed the broader market tech has been resurging lately, but agree with the person who said you want exposure to the mega names, the faang names, they're the internet staples these guys can perform in pandemics, outside of pandemics, these are all weather tech stocks we're not overweight a lot of them our favorite name is amazon out of those yes, you want to have exposure there. >> any other big themes for today as we see this huge tech selloff with tesla, facebook, and apple down, despite apple and facebook having really strong quarters. if you're looking to do something today, what are you focused on >> what i'm looking really to do is take some positions that have been outright winners, trim

those a little bit i like the long-term thesis, and i'm talking 5 to 10% of the portfolio. not today, but generally as we continue to move forward in the next, let's call it four to six weeks, and nthen wait for the names that you maybe missed over the last 6 to 12 months, and that's really what i'm doing it's not a wholesale change on my end by any means. i'm looking to be opportunistic, where i see better stocks that i can see the portfolio to. >> is today the day to buy because we're seeing this huge selloff? >> i don't think you have seen enough pain in the market if you look at the russell 2000, still 30% above the 200 day moving average. large cap names, s&p 500 still 10% above the 200-day moving average. there's more wood to chop if we're going to come down be patient we're in the early innings of it >> in this case fischer, we appreciate it. thanks for coming on this

morning. that does it for us on "worldwide exchange. "squawk box" is up next.

good morning, stocks coming off their worst trading day since october amid new concerns creeping into the market more big swings for gamestop overnight, down a hundred, in the 200s, now it's up a hundred again, over $440 right now that's the group that's been h hyping it on reddit, briefly disappeared from the site's public feed. back on track this morning, though and apple, facebook and tesla moving lower after quarterly results.

we'll bring you the highlights from the report, it's thursday, january 28th, 2021, and "squawk box" begins right now. >> good morning, everybody welcome to "squawk box" here on cnbc i'm becky quick along with joe kernen and andrew ross sorkin. let's take a look at the u.s. equity futures yesterday was a pretty interesting day, and by interesting i mean down. if you were watching what happened, the dow was down by 2% s&p down by 2 1/2%, and the nasdaq was big loser down by 2.6% dow was down by about 633 points, and these are pretty significant moves. in fact, both the dow and s&p have given back all their gains for this very young year still the month of january, but we've seen significant gains through the course of the year, gave them back for the dow and nasdaq we're looking at red arrows once again.