good morning it is 8:00 a.m. at reddit headquarters in san francisco, california it's 11:00 a.m. on wall street and "squawk alley" is live ♪ all aboard ♪ ♪ ♪

happy thursday welcome to "squawk alley." i'm jon fortt with carl quintanilla and deirdre bosa this hour it is fundamentals versus mechanics, gamestop was lower than higher, now lower again. american airlines higher amc halted earlier it's lost about half of its value since yesterday's close and at the same time strong earnings from apple and facebook showing big tech has plenty of gas in the tank. maybe justifying these stretched valuations, deirdre. i am plenty on twitter, linkedin, people angry of being locked out to trade freely in some of these positions they have taken over the last few days it is a difficult space out there when the rules, or at least the duels, keep changing >> yeah, indeed. it's extending past reddit i have four screens in front of

me never been so grateful because it's hard to track all of the conversations going on in different platforms. that's where we're going to start this morning mobile brokerages like robinhood are under pressure after restricting trades in gamestop kate, as i was saying, it's not just on reddit anymore but even in the last few minutes robinhood has been slammed this is gaining momentum >> completely. a lot of momentum here just this morning robinhood, which is really seen as the brokerage firm of choice for the younger investors, said that in light of this recent volatility they're restricting transactions for certain securities to position closing only. to be clear that means you can't sell names -- you can only sell names like gamestop. you cannot buy them. the list also includes amc, blackberry, koss and a few others robinhood also raised margin requirements for certain names, which essentially increases how

much money investors need in their account if they're borrowing money to buy stocks. this is now becoming the industry standard. ibkr this morning said that they are moving to liquidation only for gamestop due to, quote, extraordinary volatility in the markets. any long positions also require 100% margin. it follows schwab and ameritrade for gamestop and amc in, quote, an abundance of caution. these moves are getting a lot of blow back on social media like you mentioned and where excitement around gamestop really started, wall street bets traders went after td ameritrade yesterday calling it market manipulation robinhood is getting a lot of the same feedback this morning we had barstool sports founder portnoy calling them the biggest fraud of all either robinhood allows free trading or it's the end of robinhood. the excitement around gamestop is generating new interest in

these mobile trading apps. according to data firm app topia, it had its single most downloads ever, a record for daily active users at 2.6 million. robinhood ranked number one overall in the app store reddit was number two. td ameritrade and etrade saw their most daily active users ever deirdre, back to you >> yeah, kate, even the backlash is creating more interest and something that's been a discussion point this morning is that brokerage trading model, business model, payment for order flow, that's coming under scrutiny from the reddit crowd they're waking up to the fact that commission-free trading isn't exactly free, jon. their orders are being sold to wall street market makers like citadel. if not robinhood, if not td ameritrade and others, where do you go take a look at shares of square. a lot of chatter about jack dorsey's company and these

square cash app where you can also trade shares up 5% and there's chatter that a lot of these robinhood traders are fleeing to this app. jon, this is so interesting because just like social media has changed politics, what we may now be seeing is reddit changing wall street who may be in the middle of it again. jack dorsey may be one of the most consequential people of the last year, the last year ahead as well. >> yes, and you mentioned changing politics. social media has changed the rules on what you can post about politics and they might just change the rules about how you can buy as well. by they i mean square. you might not be able to buy gamestop, carl, but you could buy apple. it's down 2% after an amazing earnings report. topped $100 billion.

$111 billion just for the quarter. the china business was up huge >> the long/short community is going to work this out for better or worse depending on what side you're on. we're not going to take our eye off the corporate earnings ball. gm saying remarkable things about the sale of electric vehicles to jon's point about apple, our josh lipton spoke to tim cook last night about the quarter and some of those monster metrics. hey, josh. >> so, carl, a blow-out quarter, that's how some on the street are talking about apple's q-1 results, beating expectations in the top and bottom you saw iphone revenue surging the stock slipping today a couple issues, one, heading into this quarter it had surged more than 80% in 12 months and on the call the cfo luca

maestri did talk about normal seasonal revenue growth, similar margins. some do bet the forecasts could prove conservative i did catch up with the ceo tim cook we talked about the quarter and the new iphones. cook tells me they're full of features customers love and they come in at exactly the right time between the advances on 5g and the camera customers really love the models customer satisfaction is off the charts, cook saying. revenue in greater china you saw that surge nearly 60% to more than $21 billion. the iphone franchise is performing in china saying when the final numbers do come in for iphone shipments you'll see we gained share in q-1. it was a really good quarter, great products at the right time and great growth in other categories as well in china. ipad even higher than the

company average. mac higher than the company average. wearables higher than the company average. so, cook saying, china was strong across the board. back to you all. >> all right, josh, we'll check in with you later. we mentioned gm. some of these headlines now crossing, phil lebeau, aspiring to halt all sales of light duty vehicles with a tailpipe by 2035 phil has more on that. >> this is the target. they are announcing that they are setting a target of being fully electric, essentially only selling electric vehicles or hydrogen fuel cell vehicles that charge electrically. that's the goal by 2035. now let's be clear here. that is the target that general motors is announcing today it's already in the process of investing heavily and rolling out more electric vehicles $27 billion will be invested by 2025 30 new evs by 2025 many of them in north america and here in the united states.

they have a long ways to go, carl let me give you some perspective on gm's global sales last year the company sold about 6.6 million vehicles worldwide take a guess how many were fully electric just 49,149. so it has a long ways to go, but make no mistake this is general motors making a very clear and declarative statement right now they will be fully electric and they plan to be there at least by 2035. >> wow >> jon >> a sign of the times, phil thank you. you know who else is fully electric apple. let's bring in bank of america you are neutral on the stock and investors after this earnings report seem to be, perhaps, validating that at least mind-set but, oh, my goodness, did you expect to see what we saw in china growth nearly 60% up and consider what we're seeing in ipad and mac and the

margin potential in the apple home grown chips in that category as that plays out throughout the year might that change your mind >> yes, it's interesting, jon. no question about it this wasa phenomenal quarter b any standards. the expectation from the buy side in our conversations was about 108 billion to 110 billion going into this print, which explains the stock reaction. the guidance was somewhere around 77 billion. expectations on the buy side we got what people were looking for. we probably got more than what people were looking for but the expectations were so high that it's not translating into this sort of a stock reaction now on the china growth specifically it was very, very impressive they did have some easier comps from the prior year and we do have the fact of the currency moved quite sickly in china from

7.2 rmb to something like 6.4 now. so you've had about a 12% implicit pricing benefit over there as well. so all said and done it's like a phenomenal, very strong quarter. the most on the growth margin side >> wamsi is neutral. on the other hand, for you, apple is one of the best ideas so why is this kind of a multiple justified trading at more than 30 times at the size it is even given the growth potential? that's quite a valuation >> yes, jon. the reality is i don't look at apple as a single product company as in the past i look at the hardware side, the iphone availables, the mac, the ipads are growing. on the services side it's not one single line item apps, the payments, et cetera.

so i think apple is multiple angles of growth so from the standpoint if you try to bucket the opportunities, each has a different growth profile and different multiple profile. and then you take all of that, you can argue, hey, it's expensive relative to your hardware stock it's cheaper than a software stock. but then the reality is you have another layer, the free cash flow yield the generation of this company i think it kind of looks relatively inexpensive on many of those metrics and the other thing it also says besides the monster numbers, the scale of the company is very impressive that people tend to forget in the nitty-gritty of things >> wamsi, it's deirdre, good morning. how much of the china story, which was arguably the biggest part of this earnings story, was about apple, and how much was

about huawei, the biggest competitor in the country that has really felt the bite of u.s. sanctions, been unable to update android operating systems and does that provide a greater opportunity going forward? >> deirdre, good morning i think that this is a more apple centric story. huawei has been challenged by the sanctions and the availability of product. but if you look at the price points where apple dominates, apple has been a player in the premium market if you look at globally where their share is relative to huawei, there are pockets of high-end markets that apple has taken some share from huawei by and large apple has been the beneficiary much more so at the high end the way i think about it is that you do have this pricing umbrella like, yeah, apple starts to dominate across all the higher price points. their strategy is moving more

and more into lower price points you see that with every product category almost where they have a mini or they have an se version of products and that really tells you that over time they do need to move down and try to gain more market share in some of the lower price segments versus huawei there are other players in the market that are taking more share on a relative basis. this quarter was special because you did have the launch of highly anticipated 5g phones plus the currency benefits you could see that come through very strongly in apple's results. >> finally, krish, this tet a tet with facebook is it noise and saber rattling i would love to get your thoughts on that >> it's something to watch, something worth watching on the calls one of the questions i asked tim was about

the opportunity and one of the things he specified the search is more internal but privacy does matter to him that's one of the focuses he's been talking about the better part of the last two, three years and i feel like it comes down to that and i feel like apple wants consumers to know they are a privacy focused platform it's something to watch out. i'm not sure if there will be anything material but something to keep on your radar like how we also keep track of the google tag. i think it's definitely worth keeping because in case it snowballs into something big >> apple with $2.3 trillion market tap a quarter of about $ed 111 billion in revenue wamsi, krish, thank you. and that was a good point to end on because so much of

facebook's earning call was about apple and julia boorstin has more on this julia, it's pretty amazing to see the spat pour out into the open >> absolutely, deirdre facebook shares are rising this morning on those better than expected results across the board. the big headline out of the earnings call was apple. facebook pointing to apple as a thread to its business and criticizing the tech giant facebook warning of what they call significant ad targeting head winds again citing apple's upcoming operating system ios 14 apple has not announced yet when it will roll out the operating system facebook expects to see an impact on its results beginning late in the first quarter. mark zuckerberg warning it has a negative impact on small businesses as they'll be unable to use facebook's target to go reach consumers. in addition to raising red flags about the impact of apple's operating change zuckerberg

attacked the imessage, a rival to whatsapp. >> we increasingly see apple as one of our biggest competitors imessage is a key linchpin it comes preinstalled on every iphone and they preferenced it with private apis and permissions which is why it is the most used messaging service in the u.s >> the information reporting this morning that facebook is preparing to take its fight with apple to court facebook would not confirm that to us but they told us, quote, we believe apple is behaving anti-competitively by using their benefit at the expense of app developers and small businesses facebook's accusation they are using their size to preference its own service indicating antitrust violations comes as both apple and facebook are under the regulatory microscope. deirdre? >> thanks for that a big hour of "squawk alley"

continues. the winklevoss twins who have been very outspoken about the reddit trade join us in a bit. do stay ths.wi u

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who was right on tesla i'll tell you who was right. every single retail investor i was right. elon musk was right. let me tell you who was wrong. every single hedge fund. name after name when it comes to innovation, when it comes to growth, to people trying to do fundamentally useful things in

the world. if it doesn't fit in the mold wall street wants they fight against it >> that was chemath palihapitiya tesla did post a miss on earnings but it was that lack of specific guidance on deliveries for this coming year that is driving the stock down about 3% off session lows of course elon, jon, has been busy on twitter. whether it's writing about or liking various tweets about wall street bets. >> chemath got out of gamestop yesterday ahead of this robinhood and other trading app action it looks like that indiana jones move of grabbing your hat just in time here and, boy, traders are angry, understandably so, about the tools getting switched on them kind of in mid revolution.

but, you know, it's free to trade in some of these situations, you get what you pay for. the big difference between tesla and gamestop, deirdre, elon musk isn't running gamestop so gamestop is not revolutionizing gaming or retail, at least not yet so fundamentals in a situation like this when things are volatile still do matter >> at the same time wall street has a hard time saying that tesla is a fundamentally story i read one note after earnings last night that said financial results in no way can justify that roughly $800 billion valuation goes back to the point that tesla is the original mean stock and we're seeing this sort of rejection of the efficient market hypothesis to his point, again, carl, everyone on wall street was late to the it tesla trade. you have to wonder what becomes a trade stock and amc -- do they

settle -- is it possible they settle in at these higher valuations retail investors are hearing the bubble eventually burst, it eventually comes back to fundamentals but we saw another quarter from tesla which doesn't justify the fundamentals but it's elon musk and that future story that continues to keep investors excited about the stock. >> at least they got a car, though fundamentally they have something. >> yes, but not at an $800 billion valuation. >> they have elon musk i don't know >> exactly. >> as for gamestop, looks like we have our fifth halt of the day. watch twitter as well. an upgrade to overweight with a $65 price target snap is benefiting today with a note at evcoerre "squawk alley" is back in a minute have to make: the largest 5g network... award-winning customer satisfaction...

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welcome back, everybody. i'm sue herera here is your cnbc news update this hour. the covid-19 death toll among new york nursing home residents may be twice what the state has reported that's according to a probe by the state's attorney general as of tuesday new york had reported more than 8,700 deaths in nursing homes a russian court has denied opposition leader alexei navalny's appeal of his arrest navalny says his arrest and the arrests of some of his allies are meant to intimidate kremlin critics. winter storms are battling the west coast strong winds and pouring rains triggered mud slides in california they damaged at least 25 buildings. across the state more than 130,000 customers are without electricity. and in oregon the storms

dumped heavy snow stranding drivers including some transporting covid vaccines which would go bad if it wasn't administered right away. so the health workers went car to car until they found recipients for the six doses they had left. you can't make it up you are up to date that's the news update we will be back with more.

our next two guest have is been vocal on twitter on the

gamestop trade and the reddit rally fueling stocks of yesteryear seema mody with the winklevoss twins. >> tweeting up a storm welcome back to cnbc let's start right there. both of you run a cryptocurrency exchange you both own a lot of bitcoin. why are you joining this debate around gamestop and amc? tyler, i'll start with you >> this is really fascinating because the individual investor has rallied on the reddit board and run over the hedge fund which is the first time in history. usually the hedge fund is running over the little guys or shorting and destroying businesses so that really caught our eye that movement. >> cameron, in a way the bitcoin chart looks a lot like the gamestop chart do you think there are parallels? is the investor in cryptocurrency similar to the one who is going long, these heavily shorted names? >> i think to some extent.

the crypto and bitcoin is very much an individual movement about the empowerment of the individual and that's why we built gemini to give people greater independence, choice and opportunity. i think there's a lot of common themes going on right now in these different groups >> what are those themes, tyler? this has really struck a cord just reading the tweets that you've put out there in the last couple of hours saying that if you want to take revenge against the suits buy gamestop and amc do you own these stocks? >> i purposely don't i wanted to come on the show and not be conflicted which is different than every hedge fund manager that comes on the show they have a position they talk their book they influence the market. they make money and they screw the little guy so we purposely didn't want to get rich off of coming here. we're here to support. and nobody seemed to bat an eye when the hedge funds were piling up on gamestop which has about

15,000 employees and basically exploiting a pandemic when a lot of time -- >> cameron and tyler, i don't have a problem with people coming on talking their book we have you coming on talking bitcoin, just as long as you're transparent about it i think very much what these individuals were doing was talking their book but talking it together. my question is what we should take away from robinhood i tweeted this out a couple days ago when i saw amc moving this will end in tears because there are so many different ways when there's a move that's detached from fundamentals that this can get away and if you're using something like robinhood that's free especially, it's had outages, there are all kinds of things that could happen. now they're shutting down the ability to do anything but close out your position if you are in these names. what should the retail investor

take away from the fact these tools, and i'll give this to cameron, are not working the way that they expected >> well, i think the take system away here is it's centralized finance. and they can be throttled and deplatformed, and we've seen that firsthand and i think a lot of this energy from wall street bets is going to pour directly into decentralized finance which is permissionless where you can't be deplatformed. >> right it shows the vulnerabilities in how the system is rigged there's no call you can make in bitcoin, and so people are seeing the permissionless nature of these block chains and the power of it.

>> you talk about the little guy versus the institution and this debate is around that theme, but this is far from clean or simple going after hedge funds, you can inadvertently hurt pension funds or mutual funds. robinhood now getting a lot of thebacklash and supposed to democratize. how can you take such a strong stance at the beginning of this and are you worried at all about the unintended consequences of taking on wall street and the effect on the little guys or is this about building support for things like bitcoin? >> i have a $3 billion distribution from one hedge fund to the wall street bets community. so far it's only ending in tears for the hedge funds f. a hedge fund can't figure out a gamma squeeze -- >> so far. but you are egging this on so far that's where this is but the movement is getting bigger

and bigger by the day and the hour >> the professionals didn't understand the gamma squeeze as well as investors. the pension fund would be better due diligence on those funds and, look, the short interest was bigger than the small cap stock. anyone with an internext connection or smartphone could have figured that out. somehow the professionals couldn't and the little guys could. and the problem is that it's going this way and not the other way, and that's why the establishments set because they can't control the community of wall street bets that's what this is about. i never heard these brick and mortars that are sitting ducks during a pandemic. they can't even legally only for business and operate, and these hedge funds are swooping down and shorting them more than the actual flow of the stock that's the problem here. that story was never reported on that's the story that fascinates

me >> well, cameron, this happens every bubble we start to get comments like, oh, we shouldn't be allowed to short. it's un-american my bigger question to you, we kip t keep throwing around the term little guy on these platforms. you don't get a blue check mark if you're a little guy to prove you're not participate of some other nefarious army do you think we're over our skis on that? >> i think wall street bets has been doing everything out in the open in the forum. we're never going to hear the phone call that was made to robinhood. we don't actually know what's going on behind the closed doors. and i think they've been really open about their strategy and what they're trying to do in the gamma squeeze. i think they're being more transparent. >> putting today's and yesterday's price action to the side, tyler, do you think what we're seeing right now reflects a unique moment in time or the

start of a shift in how younger investors view opportunities in the market >> i think this is the beginning of the end of centralized finance. if anyone thinks this is about just one or two stocks, they're mistaken i think this is a much larger movement i think it's a systemic issue, and i think people need to fix it or it's going to get much, much worse this is a larger issue in the thread of our country and its fragility in what's happening in the inequality and the hypocrisy of the political leaders who say you can't open your business and run your business and make a living during the pandemic we won't pass a stimulus bill in time oh, and by the way, you can't trade. what's the next thing they're going to control you can't do? >> wait a minute, wait a minute. who is saying all of those things that sounds like some attempt at

whipping up something that's not based in fact. is there one person saying all of those things? >> have you tried out outdoor dining in manhattan in january >> what politician is telling people they can't trade? >> there's a limited number of governors -- >> what politician is telling people you can't trade if you have private companies shutting down, blame the private companies. be accurate. >> there are political leaders >> name them who are they what are you talking about >> they're clearly monitoring it >> if you don't know then don't say you know i know it's convenient during these times when people are emotional to blame the authorities for all of these things, about you what are you talking about? who is shutting down trading >> small businesses have not been able to operate >> that's not what i asked i didn't ask about small business operating

you said they have been limiting and shutting down trading. that just hasn't happened. >> who made the call to robinhood? >> was there a call to robinhood? >> i don't know. >> that's all i'm saying >> robinhood woke up and made the decision themselves to halt the tickers. >> i don't know but i'm not claiming to. >> okay. i didn't claim to either >> you did you just said that the authorities are doing all of these things >> go back to the tape, i did not say that i said people are not allowed to trade. i don't know what call was made but i don't think it came from robinhood. i think it's a fair question and i think it's the question given that you're the journalist you should be asking, not me >> exactly and i will ask but i'm not claiming to know like you just did. >> i am not claiming to know i'm claiming to ask and i'm asking you, did you call -- >> well, let's ask the question.

let's do that. that's great >> you can ask robinhood the question today >> i don't have robinhood on i have you on. i'm analyzing what you are saying >> so you haven't done your job today and emailed robinhood and asked them why they stopped -- >> if i haven't done my jo you're implying i'm wasting my time talking to you but all i'm doing is if you're putting a statement out there i want to know what its basis is in fact if there is none, your mistake, whatever, we can move on >> okay, i think if you look at the tape, i didn't make the comment you're saying i did. what i'm saying is someone needs to ask the question to robinhood, and it should be you. it shouldn't be me asking you on my segment >> i have a statement from robinhood. here it is we continuously monitor the markets and make changes where necessary. in light of recent volatility we are restricting transactions for certain securities to position closing only that's the statement that we have from robinhood on the actions they've taken today.

>> and that sounds opaque and not the full picture >> robinhood, besides oftentimes companies besides giving us a statement will refuse to say much more than that. i think what you're suggesting is some kind of conspiracy, right, that authorities ordered robinhood to restrict trading in some sense i mean, for us to talk about that on air is a big deal, so i understand jon's pushback. >> what i'm suggesting is that on a theory that could never happen and there would be no such thing so why did it happen in centralized finance, and we should understand that and i've never seen a hedge fund be platformed from bloomberg terminal or throttled on their account and pulled back on the market when they're shorting a company like gamestop, making too much money i've never seen the big guys get throttled. i only see them get bailed out

>> i'm also not sure -- >> so you're assuming -- >> to be fair we are looking at the business model, the payment for order flow and could that be some reason behind it. we are talking about how commission-free trading isn't exactly free i'm also getting a little confused about who you are blaming. tyler, you just mentioned that brick and mortar are like sitting ducks and it's hedge funds and short sellers who are going after them at this weak moment but in that case couldn't you blame jeff bezos and amazon? aren't they the reason brick and mortars are declining and this digital transformation, where does it stop >> it's a little bit different when you're building a competing business versus sitting on a lot of capital and pile driving businesses with shorts these are the same short sellers who tried to kill tesla and elon muss who is trying to bring humanity to mars and they almost got him. they literally almost got him

multiple times so that's like betting against innovation, betting against prosperity, betting against america, and it's really negative so that's a lot different than building a business that's more competitive. building a better experience and, look, the wall street bets crowd i'm sure would come on if you invited them, but they never get the invitation, the privilege to do that so they said, you know what, we're going to put our own show on reddit and pool our capital the same way the hedge funds do, look at the market a hedge fund overplayed its hand it got greedy. it overshorted, and we're going to do a gamma squeeze. we're going to do what they do i think that's what this is about. >> i think we keep the door open we follow the money here at cnbc we'll leave the conversation there. cameron and tyler, thank you for joining us today with your views. >> thanks, guys. appreciate it. and keep your eye on american airlines.

it was way up, heavily shorted it was out with earnings before the open it was way up. now it has settled down quite a bit. now up less than 3.5%. very volatile today. awaly"ilbeig rht back - [narrator] at southern new hampshire university, we're committed to making college more accessible by making it more affordable, that's why we're keeping our tuition the same through the year 2021. - i knew snhu was the place for me when i saw how affordable it was. i ran to my husband with my computer and i said, "look, we can do this." - [narrator] take advantage of some of the lowest online tuition rates in the nation. find your degree at snhu.edu.

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all the -- not even manipulation -- the swings in the price of the stock, if it's a good company, it's a good

comp company. if it's a bad company, it will end up going out of business and the people who bought it just to speculate will -- some will make money and some will lose money that's the way the markets always worked. that's mark cuban earlier this morning on "squawk" talking about the reddit trade our next guest is a former reddit-er who said the company was, quote, making the world a worse place. the former svp of the product division and founder of reddit gifts. thanks for the time on an important issue. good to see you. >> good to see you, too. thanks for having me on. >> can you help our viewers understand at least what we think might have happened last night when this went dark temporarily? >> well, yes so this community has been around quite a long time they have a set of moderators on reddit moderators have control over their communities. they start them. they build them. there was a huge influx of

people rallying around their mission. and with you guys and other publications and celebrities talking about what's going on there was just a huge influx of people, which makes it very hard to manage and moderate and keep kind of an organized place for people to talk and discuss so they have to get their stuff together, and they're doing a great job. they have always done a great job. i've been a member of the community for a long time. they have great intentions and it's just the reality of reddit. >> do you think that they understand this community, and can, i guess, i don't know, what are the consequences of silencing that community further if they chose to do so >> well, i don't think they have any intention of silencing the community. but you have to realize this is a small group of people.

they most likely have day jobs this is not their full-time job. this is something that i ran into earlier on reddit myself. and it can really take over your life and they really do have the user's best interests in mind. so they're trying to take care r community, keep bad voices out and i do think it's sustainable. i think it's grown to a level quickly that isn't normally seen on reddit. i also think they have a lot of, obviously, public exposure, but ultimately they've created a movement that is not going to go away it's just going to keep growing. >> right we've seen this movement particularly wall street bets just grow astronomically last night from three-point-something million to 3.3 this morning. it's still a small group of people on the moderated side

do you think reddit has to re-think its content moderation rules and maybe beef up its unit that looks after this? >> no. absolutely not this has been reddit's model for many years and there are many communities that are much larger than this and no, i think that this model works and moderators will bring in new moderators if they need to, but obviously, with the caring moderators that they have there will be an important vetting process behind that so i don't think it's going to go away. i think the model is great i think that reddit is always has the best interest of their users in mind. they try to keep up with approxim policies and procedures and their policies and procedures support this and things are working as intended. >> dan, is this different because it is so directly connected to money and to a regulated space? i wonder if you think that

reddit in the future will need to treat these conversations differently if there's any place for regulation or protection there because, i mean, some of these very same folks who organized this statement, this movement, this encouragement toward transactions are now being locked out of the forums that they used to make these transactions and there are real world monetary implications. >> yeah. well, i think they're being locked out, but i don't believe they're being locked out so much from their community i think the community has done a great job of turning what was largely a stock trading community into having a real purpose and as more people come in and smart people come in and make no mistake, the people running that are in this community are smart people these are not basement dweller trolls these are smart people and yes,

they have their own vernacular that are very different than what you are used to hearing, but they are smart people and they do their research and now with a movement behind them and their community growing, they are starting to spread out and look at organizations like yourself, like other people involved in kind of the institution of stock market trading and realizing that they have power, specially with the new numbers that are actually willing to put money behind their words. so i think it's like a perfect storm of all things coming together online community communities in the real world, they thrive the best when they have a mission and they're rallying around the mission and they're belonging toward a mission and it's diverse it's a mission that has a number of purposes. >> at this point are you able to distill users or members of the

community that are interested in seeing the market get democratized for the quick buck? are there two separate audiences within that? >> i'm sure there are a number of different audiences within that, but the important thing to note here is that reddit does a great job of surfacing what the members want surfaced. so the more popular opinions tend to rise to the top. so people who may come in wanting to make a quick buck are pretty quickly brought on to the mission of the community and that's why i think this is a long lasting effort. i think you do seeapps like robinhood and you do see media trying to spin the narrative away from them, but i believe this community is going to be around for a while and find new and interesting ways to serve the mission that they have now rallied around >> yeah. >> and certainly forcing, i guess, more historic

institutions around the street to recalculate how they see risk on the street. dan, we hope you'll come back. it's really educational for the viewer and helps a great deal. dan mccomas. thank you. >> thank you meantime, take a look at shares of snap they're on the move today up more than 8% evercore saying marketers are the most bullish they've ever been on the surface while innovation and low ad pricing should benefit the company snap is set to report earnings a week from now. there's more "squawk alley" ahead so do stay with us

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♪ ♪ as we close out the hour, i have to mention ja rule heated about robinhood's decision to reduce trades on gamestop and amc and some others and going on a bit of a tweet storm as you saw saying, quote, this is a bleeping crime between that and david tepper and the sec, john, we've heard from all corners on this today >> including here in the interest of accuracy, one more thing we did find, tyler

wifrpgel voss cited the hypocrisy of the political leaders who say you can't open your business and run your business during the pandemic we won't pass a stimulus bill in time oh, and by the way, you can't trade. what's the next thing he will say you can't do political leaders are responsible for what robinhood and others did this morning. i have a problem with that here is the tape. >> frankly, the hypocrisy of the political leaders who say you can't open your business and run your business and make a living during the pandemic. we won't pass a stimulus bill in time and oh, by the way, now you can't trade. what's the next thing they're going to control and say you can't do and what it really does -- >> wait a minute, wait a minute. >> who is saying all of those things that sounds like some attempt at whipping up something populous that's not based in fact is there one person who is saying all of those things >> i rest my case. >> you know, i appreciate them coming on and being so candid

and it's always great when we can get a lively debate. john, i'm glad that you pushed back, but this last hour has just been evidence of, you know, what began as a small group on reddit some years ago coming out into the open, carl, and you know a lot of times we're rying to play devil's advocate and i don't think anyone on this network has said we shouldn't be allowed to trade we are all for the democratization of trading. >> tomorrow we have lilly and cat and honeywell. let's get to the judge. carl, thanks so much welcome to "the halftime report." i'm scott wapner front and center the state of the markets and the state of your money josh brown, jon najarian and kourtney gibson is the capital of luke capital markets and rob sechan and i'll take you to the wall and show you where we are trading. stocks are higher following wednesday'bi