this is real business with real money with real innovation that isn't going to be stopped anytime soon. [rock music] ♪ ♪ good morning welcome to "street signs." i'm joumanna bercetche with julianna tatelbaum and these are your head lipz -- european equities rally as a surge in silver drives mining salts higher but investors remain cautious ahead of the retail trading frenzy which has turned its sights on precious metals shares rally in early frankfurt trade. melvin capital down over 50% in january.

julius bar, the trade near the bottom of the stoxx 600 despite the swiss bank posting 60% jump in net profit the ceo tells us the lender is well placed in the current environment. >> we had share buyback which we had to stop due to coronavirus pandemic and regulatory action we will continue on that path. we are highly capitalized right now. we intend to return excess capital. and as strazeneca strikes a deal with the eu as the bloc backtracks on a plan to put checks on the northern ear land border good morning, everybody. welcome to the show. we've got a very busy one to get through. we're getting right into the heart of the corporate earning

season in europe first, i want to bring you data we're getting out of the eurozone these are the final money fraction pmi numbers let me just bring them to you. they have come in at 54.6. in is slightly higher than the flash estimate of 54.5, but still a drop from back in december down 54.6 versus 56.3 in december. i want to flag something that stood out to me from this reading, showing the final manufacturing delivery times have come in at 31.6 this is versus 34.4. that is the actual second lowest number in the survey history and does tell you there have been significant amount of delays in terms of logistics, supply chains and, obviously, that's been holding up some of the manufacturing picture in europe as well. earlier on we had the breakdown from individual countries. we had the german pmi numbers come through just about ten minutes ago, and over there the final manufacturing number came

in at 57.1, slightly higher than the flash of 57. and then the french manufacturing pmi number also came in at 51.6. that is also a smidge higher than the flash number of 51.5. so, with that in mind let's get out to charlotte, who has been looking at these pmi numbers not much movement in terms of where we are today versus the flash pmi numbers, charlotte, but the real question is how quickly france is going to be able to rebound especially given the country is still in the midst of a lockdown. >> that's right. looking at this number, something in december as well when we were on the expansion side of contraction in december when had the effect of the second lockdown coming into place. very different picture from the spring when the economic activity with services and manufacturing basically completely stopped here we see the economic activity still carrying on, in particular in manufacturing. even in services, you could say,

because the last number from services in france, despite big chunks of the economy shut down because of the restrictions, bars, strauns, gyms, cinemas all shut you had services in december 49.1 here manufacturing on the expansion side and here the comments this morning mentioning this is the highest number since july, when conditions began to improve amid expectations of a recovery this has changed since the vaccine news that recovery is in sight. the question is how quick can the recovery can be in france. we know that the whole vaccination rollout and dispute over the weekend on vaccines being available in the eu and france had to revise the calendar vaccinations down because they don't have enough dosages. potentially third lockdown on friday, that was a surprise from the prime minister that there was not a third lockdown despite all week of rumors and

expectations that this would be announced. they give themselves a bit of time, maybe one week before deciding whether to go ahead awith a third lockdown, with the impact on the economy. at the moment they're holding off because french have been very compliant with all the restrictions so far. despite the reputation, the french have been compliant whether there's a third lockdown, all eyes will be on vaccinations, and vaccinations at the moment are quite slow 1.5 million so far there's a question, you had regions like paris that had to delay the first doses because they don't have enough vaccines. all eyes will be on the vaccine rollout. again, that goes back to the recovery, how quick the recovery can come into place if the vaccine rollout is too slow. we know france and there's been some protections for gdp this year, slower than expected recovery manufacturing pmi, there is a recovery in sight. these numbers on the expansion side seem to show that.

>> it's a big story over the weekend, what's happening with the eu, vaccine rollouts we'll get more of that in the show let's show you how european markets are trading. lots of green on the board a bit of a break from the price we had towards the end of the last week. last week we were gripped by the story of the volatility seeping into markets from the retail investing community. we'll get to that. ftse 100 in the eu up 0.8% minors resources doing very well as we're seeing a squeeze in silver cac in france up about 0.9%. not really reacting to the pmi numbers today. the theme is more of company earnings we'll get about 70 companies in the stoxx 600 reporting this week a very big week in terms of the outlook for individual companies. xetra dax up 1.13% and we're

watching very closely for what happens with the political developments and whether or not prime minister -- stepped down prime minister conte can come back and form a government that's a big story for italy let's get back to the top story yet again for the markets. that is that the social media-fueled trading mania has found another target with the spot price for silver spiking in early trading, hitting the highest level since august some reddit users are urging retailers to force more physical deliveries of the metal. this is the picture for silver today, up 10%, just shy of $30 a ton. this is in line with some of the 2021 targets, annual targets that some forecasts out there have put in. we've already hit it in a couple of days of trading you can see just as we get towards the end of the show -- this chart, how sharply the price of silver has shot up in

the last couple of sessions as option buying started to materialize toward the end of last week. today we've seen a massive spike higher in that commodity up 10% for silver. as for other precious metals, here's some miners i mentioned fresnila up 20%. no surprise because they are commodities resource miner polymetal in the uk up 6 percentage points. some companies are domiciled in the uk so it's giving the ftse 100 a bit of a boost today as well >> thanks so much. let's get a check onle gamestop shares and how they're trading in frankfurt after the volatile week last week at the moment they're up more than 20% one of the big stories, the follow-on stories that we were

talking about, the shift in focus in the reddit community to commodities, silver in particular we'll see how gamestop changes u.s. futures ticking higher, showing a rebound if these levels hold. that after the overall equity market took a significant step back last week of course, institutional investors trying to understand what this retail frenzy may mean for broader markets, if it continues, if it potentially spirals. a big week for earnings as well as data. we've got the final pmi numbers coming through beyond today's data, it is a big week for earnings and data coming back to the retail story, i think it will be interesting to see how these commodities react if we do see sustained focus from the reddit community on assets like silver, given the market is so much deeper than that for some of these single stocks will they be able to have as much of an impact and does that

warrant more from institutional investors? >> when you think about silver specifically, it's coming from a different starting point from the rationale to go into some single name stocks like we saw with gamestop. silver, if you look at the hold, the top holdings right now in the etf space, predominantly they're owned by high-profile hedge funds. if the reddit community were looking to inflict pain on the hedge fund community, in this case they're mistaken because some of the largest holdings in that space are by some of the macro and commodity hedge funds out there. it will be interesting to see how this story in particular plays out, but coming back to the bigger point at hand, that is the sheer amount of footprint the retail community have right now, and that is the big development, in my eyes, from the last week. we're finally seeing a really big cross-section between the

financial world and social media because social media is the plat f form for all these retail pickers to agree on something and they all pile into it. it's not like the old days when a handful of retail investors got into a stock and it barely budged these days they have the power to move markets and to force hedge funds into exiting positions. that was the major takeaway from last week. if you look at the performance of some long shore equities in the u.s., down about 6% for the week last week they have been coming under pressure it is real testament to the retail community that they're able to cause this much pain amongst institutional clients. >> it's a great point that you make about the role of social media and how it has enabled this group of people to come together and collectively make a significant impact on markets. the -- one of the key follow-on

questions, to my mind, is what other asset classes could become attractive to this group of people not necessarily and like silver where they have an opportunity to potentially make an impact like they did with the sing of name stocks but something like bitcoin, which gets to the heart, the core of what some of these retail investors care about. the democratization and decentralization of assets and that's been one of the key bull points for bitcoin and cryptocurrency, that this is a way for investors to access an asset class that isn't controlled by central banks and a way for them to step away from the establishment. last week we saw a lot of the really vocal proponents of bitcoin using this as an opportunity to drum up interest. on friday elon musk getting involved in a big way, putting #bitcoin in his twitter profile and then this morning talking about it as well on this social media platform forum that

he was talking about it will be interesting to see to what extent the cryptocommunity can leverage and seize upon this interest from the retail community to get involved in anti-establishment assets. >> i want to flag also to any viewers who are watching that we've been following -- you and i have been following the tweets out of our colleague, ryan brown, who has been following that conversation between elon musk and actually one of the co-ceos of robinhood this morning on the social media app. if you want to see more of that conversation, i would suggest taking a look at ryan brown's tweets he's been quite active this morning. i want to bring in our first guest, senior portfolio manager from european equities at efg asset management great to have you with us on the show i want to go back to what julianna and i were discussing, the volatility in markets last week are you concerned that some of the idiosyncratic ricks in single name stocks is going to lead to more systemic financial

risk >> thank you for having me, first of all yes, of course, volatility towards the end of the month can be important for some investors, but we think it's a reflection of what happened in the market in terms of the delays we're seeing with the vaccine rollout in europe and the lockdowns. we think volatility could continue, but we are clearly seeing on bottom-up perspective, earnings are starting with expectations for q4 ready in december and we're very early in the earning season, but we're seeing investors should focus on that we think actually this year will be more driven by earnings rather than -- by earnings rather than the pe of the market basically. >> when it comes to earnings, obviously a huge determinant of

how companies will fair comes down to vaccinations rollout programs this week a huge amount of focus on the eu versus the uk with the eu coming under a huge amount of criticism and scrutiny for its slower vaccine rollout from a market's perspective, is there a trade to be made to play the different speed of vaccination rollouts across different countries, playing the uk, for example against the european union when it comes to equity markets >> we see it more from a company by company perspective in the uk specifically we think it's a headwind when it comes to the rollout of the vaccine given the more difficult nature of the market overall and taking into account the uk is very much under owned given the brexit risk it has tailed off, we see an opportunity there not only because of the vaccine, but just because of the sentiment of the market and the cyclicality of the market that

is mainly driven by international companies. so, it will be more driven by economic recovery globally rather than just in the uk >> increasingly it looks like the reopening of the uk is not going to be linear and it may actually be fairly domestically focused in the near term in other words, once the bulk of the uk population is vaccinating, it still looks like the uk will be reluctant to fully open up its borders. similar to what we've seen in australia and new zealand. is that the assumption you're working off, the uk economy will likely remain fairly internally focused for the near term until we understand more about the threat from new variants >> i think that on the uk, i think a lot of economies, a lot of countries will think that way. before we were focusing our main assumption was the recovery in

the economy was pent-up demand by the consumer. if that consumption is locally or nationally, it's driven by what restrictions are in place at that time so, the recovery of the economy will be more driven by that, the consumer, the pent-up demand rather than just industrial production of pmi, which is what has driven the recovery of the market last year >> looking ahead, it's a really big week in terms of company earnings we have about 70 or 80 of the stoxx 600 companies that will be reporting. are there any particular sectors you're focused in particular this earnings season to get a test for the direction of where that particular sector is going or are you just anticipating a broad-based positive story coming out of this week's numbers? >> i think it's a mix. for those sectors that are the most difficult sectors last

year, that recovery was driven be by multiples rather than earnings, we think that earnings to come through for those multiples to maintained at elevated levels. but from other sectors, i've mentioned earlier, consumer sector could be -- consumer discretionary sector is a sector to focus on. we don't think that will be a great amount of companies providing guidance these years, so that will be the difficulty for investors, but clooerly the consumer sector could be one to watch in the next earning season. >> we'll leave it there. thank you for joining us on "street signs. the senior portfolio manager of european equities at efg asset management. before we go to break, i am going to show you the graph of silver and what's been happening to that particular commodity this morning up 10%, just shy of $30 a ton. we'll take a break and be right back

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signs," everybody. apparently all that glitters is not gold, it's silver told let's take a look at how the chart of silver is trading up 10.1% the buying is accelerating into that commodity it was up 8% just half an hour ago. we are seeing continued momentum in buying as far as silver is concerned. let's bring in the head of commodities research at commerce bank interesting morning for silver and for commodities as a whole but this time people are saying that the buying can be attributed to a bunch of retail investors that similar profiled to the retail investors that got involved in the single name u.s. stocks last week my only question to you is, is there actually a substantial short in silver? are we likely to see a squeeze take place to what we had in the single name stocks last week or just more of a buying frenzy and

momentum-driven buying at this point rather than a short squeeze? >> yeah, it's a buying frenzy itself or the short squeeze, the result is the prices are rising strongly silver prices were trading on thursday below $25 today they're trading above $30. so, i don't think that it's so important who is -- how it has been triggered, but the result is clear definitely on silver market, there are, by no means, any significant amount of naked shorts or any significant short positions weighing on the market similar to the stocks which were pushed into stratosphere over the last weeks this buying friendy or rally can go for some time. >> why do you say that why do you believe the buying frenzy is going to continue?

is there any fundamental justification to get long silver right now? >> i don't think it's the fundamental story driving the prices but mainly the flow itself and the effect, and this is really -- holds also for the other efforts, the excess liquidity in the system is likely to create bubbles not only in silver but also other commodities and asset classes going forward. the situation with huge excess liquidity being made available by the central banks in europe as well as is likely to continue to provoke such bubbles. as i said, this rally only started on thursday last week. we also saw that it wasn't really only limited to the terminal markets, the futures, the options market but also went further into the silver etfs, which also recorded back on

friday massive inflows so, it's likely probably also provoke, and this is a big difference between the silver market and the equity markets, its physical presence and also direct link between the physical and terminal markets it might also provoke some physical scarcity at times and, yeah, similar to the situation in the 90th and 80th, it might be also provoking further problem not fundamental but nevertheless a very massive price spike. >> based on your understanding of what has property this group of retail investors to target silvers, are there any other metals on your radar they could target next beyond silver when it comes to trying to spur a short squeeze? >> well, most of the markets we are talking about, pretty large

markets. they are not easy to manipulate in some considerable manner. for gold it probably wouldn't work to the manner we saw the direction on gold prices back on thursday and friday was short lived but there are huge amounts of metals, which are probably right now on the radar screens starting from palladium and other smaller markets, which are also easy to hold, easy to buy by etfs but it might go towards the larger commodities i wouldn't exclude the likes of oil being also addressed by the retail investors going forward although effect on silver and smaller markets is likely to be more pronounced. >> all right thank you so much for joining us

and sharing your views with us head of commodities research at commerce bank. coming up on "street signs," the eu and astrazeneca taking a joint step forward in the bloc's vaccine rollout after supply cut tensions

welcome back to "street signs," everybody. i'm julianna tatelbaum with joumanna bercetche these are your headlines -- european equities rally as a surge in silver drives mining stocks higher. but investors remain cautious amid the retail trading frenzy which has turned its sights on precious metals. nonstop for gamestop as shares rally in early frankfurt trade and pop in the u.s. premarket. hedge funds nurse their losses with melvin capital down over 50% in january

julius bar bucks expectations to trade near the bottom of the stoxx 600 despite the swiss bank posting a more than 50% jump in net year profit ceo tells cnbc the lender is well placed in the current environment. >> we had an share buy bst back which we had to stop due to coronavirus pandemic and regulatory action. we will continue on that path. we are highly capitalized right now. we intend to return that excess capital. astrazeneca strikes a deal with the eu to supply 9 million more covid vaccine as they plan to put checks on the northern ireland border welcome back to the show, everybody. well, a half an hour ago we talked about the final pmi numbers coming out of europe we're just getting the final manufacturing numbers out of the

uk those have come in at 54.1, higher than the flash estimate of 52.9. the manufacturing sector in the uk, at least for the month of january, has held up all right the big question is about the services sector which has seen a deep plunge for the month as the country has been under a very restrictive lockdown that's the picture for the pound. not seeing a lot of reaction but we are seeing the final manufacturing pmi numbers have actually been revised 1.1 points upwards for the uk market. let's take a look at broader european markets right now ftse 100 you can see, sticking to the uk theme, up 0.9% some miners having a phenomenal day with the silver squeeze going on silver spot is up 10%. some of the companies, the miners, are up anything from 15% to 20% today so, that is really giving the ftse 100 a bit of a boost this morning. some domestic focus stocks, some

home builders having a good day. xetra dax up 1.3%. cyclical names performing very well towards the top of the german index cac in france up 1% and ftse mib up similar amount. we're watching closely for the political developments this week and what will happen with the future of the government there switching to foreign exchange, the theme for last week was a renewed strength in it the greenbacks so the dollar actually had its third week of gains in the last four weeks the dollar has actually stopped its downward trend and has seen some support come through over the last week, namely because of the volatility in stock market is playing in the flight to quality bid there. we got to as low as 89 at one point, so good recovery taking place in the dollar index there. the euro we have trading

slightly on the back just below the 121 mark at about 0.3 percentage point weaker. the pound goes from strength to strength the pound still trades very strongly versus the dollar, 1.37 is where we're at 0.3% higher and is still one of the best performing currencies compared to the dollar. a lot of corporate earnings coming out this week let's start with the banks julius bar has reported a 50% rise in full-year profit with the swiss bank boosted by robust client trading the strong performance offset 190 million swiss francs charge. julius bar announced a share buyback program of up to 450 million swiss francs, a move the ceo defended when speaking earlier to cnbc. >> we have always been giving back excess capital to the market over time we wanted to do that

in year we had buyback we had to stop due to the coronavirus pandemic and regulatory action we will continue on that path. we're highly capitalized right now and we intend to return excess capital on the other side, if we see opportunities, should we see them in the future, i'm confident we will get that capital back from the capital markets as we have in the past this is no statement that we do not want to grow it's no statement that we do not want to take opportunities on the contrary, we do this out of a position of strength. turning to the latest news on vaccines. astrazeneca will supply the eu with 9 million more doses of its covid-19 vaccine this quarter, bringing the total to 40 million. the delivery will begin one week earlier than expected. worth noting, this is still significantly less than they had originally agreed. european commission president said it marked a step forward after an unexpected supply cut

fueled tensions between the bloc and the drugmaker. now the eu has confirmed the uk will receive all of its vaccine doses from manufacturers on the continent the bloc imposed a vaccine export ban over the weekend but had to partially reverse course. withholding supplies from britain would have required overriding a key part of the brexit deal and triggered checks at the border between ireland and northern ireland secretary liz truss warned of vaccine shortages. >> we have received assurance from the european union those contracts won't be disrupted now we need to move forward, work with our counterparts across the world rather than putting in restrictions and protectionism, which will ultimately damage citizens we're joined now by co-director of the global health director great to have you on the program

with us. we've now had late-stage data from nearly all of the leading vaccine candidates, perhaps with the exception of gfk whose vaccine has been delayed until later in the year and it looks increasingly clear these vaccines are very effective at protecting against the original strains of covid-19 and even the new uk variant, but they are proven less effective, based on the data we have, against the south africa and brazil variants but crucially, it looks as though these vaccines are very effective overall at preventing severe covid-19 and preventing mortality or death from the disease. from a public health perspective, isn't this ultimately what matters beyond the headline efficacy rates that these vaccines prevent people from dying from covid-19 >> thanks very much for having me i think this is a really important question i think we need to see at least

two or three different things coming from the vaccines of course, we need to prevent death and severe illness, but we also need to prevent people from getting infected in the first place or transmitting the virus onto others. so far we don't actually have adequate data in that regard on top of all that, of course we need vaccines to actually reach people, to get into people's arms and to their bodies as you were just saying, we are having major clhallenges with this, certainly here in europe, but the situation is even more dire when we look outside of the wealthiest countries, where many, many countries either have no vaccines at all or don't expect to get very many throughout the rest of the 2021. >> and on that note, because i know you've done a lot of work looking at the vaccine picture for the developing world, this interesting dynamic is playing out here between china and india. vaccine diplomacy,if you will. we're seeing now india

determined to use its vaccine manufacturing capacity to extend vaccines and extend support to neighboring countries, at the same time we've seen china try to extend its reach and improve bilateral relations by offering its vaccine to countries outside of china what do you think of what we're seeing here. is this encouraging from a global health perspective to see these two big powers in the emerging world try to use their vaccine capacity for good? >> yeah, i think these countries are definitely playing a much more important role in global supply for -- particularly for other developing countries than we've seen in past pandemics and on the plus side, if these vaccines are proven to be sach and effective, they can definitely supplement or even be the main source of supply for countries who are not able to get vaccines, for example, from the big western multinationals

i think we also have to remember, though, that we have seen every single country scrambling to get access to vaccines every country considers a vaccine right now to be a strategic asset that will allow their economies and societies to get moving again and countries that have tried to use vaccines as a tool of diplomacy, i think, have found this is, in fact, a really effective tool we have seen that india, for example, recently shipped exported vaccines to a number of neighboring countries with whom they want to strengthen their alliances. these countries are very happy to, in fact, get vaccines at the same time as indian citizens china, i think, from the get go has been playing a very sophisticated game from, you know, already middle of last year they were striking deals to do clinical trials in southeast asia, lit tan america, to transfer technology to make a number of their vaccines available to countries that, again, might not get those

vaccines from moderna, pfizer, astrazeneca, some of the companies we're relying on in europe this does raise a big question for the u.s. and europe as to whether they would also like to make more efforts to ensure that the rest of the world gets access to vaccines in order to not lose in this diplomatic race, so to speak. >> that actually brings me onto my next question in the context of vaccine diplomacy you bring up eu and u.s. i've seen calls from human rights groups saying they should water down some of the provisions that provide the vaccine manufacturers with intellectual property protections. do you think that would be a good step to help facilitate the scale production of vaccines, especially in the lower and middle income countries where clearly there's -- there's a huge demand but not enough supply going in that direction right now? >> yes, indeed

everybody is scrambling for a piece of pie and the pie is not big enough to moat global demapped that's clear and there's been a wake-up call in europe about that over the last few days. what we've seen is that intellectual property plays a different role in this vaccine than in normal markets by that i mean governments have derisked and subsidized the vaccine r&d process from the earliest start of r&d through the scale up of manufacturing and now through the purchase of products at the end of the process. and so companies are not taking on the same kind of risks they would in a normal commercial market so, the role of intellectual property in incentivizing is much, much smaller than it would be in, say, normal times for this reason, i think some of the consequences of lifting some

of these monopoly protections is going to be much smaller than some alarmists have claimed. it makes a lot of sense, in fact, to try to make that pie as big as possible and to share the recipe, so to speak. what many developing countries are really looking for right now is the ability to scale up their own manufacturing. for that, they don't need the ingredients. what they need is the recipe and the recipe is protected right now through intellectual property. >> very clear. i want to take you to one final topic, the eu over the weekend, there's been a lot of finger-pointing, a lot of delays the with the european vaccine rollout culminating in the huge u-turn they did over the weekend. what do you make of the eu's vaccine export bans? >> i think it's highly problematic. i can understand from a purely political point of view why they put it in place.

it strengthens their negotiating leverage with astrazeneca and other companies but there's a real risk the eu taking this decision is going to spark a cascade of other countries putting in place export bans there's a real risk we'll see a breakdown in the movement of vaccines across border the same kind of breakdown we saw a year ago when countries including in the eu blocked food and even masks and other essential medical supplies from being exported this is really disastrous at an international level. so, i think the eu has certainly put in place a few sort of pressure valves to allow for exports to certain countries in the world but there's still a lot of countries who heavily rely on eu production and they're going to be hurt quite badly. i think the biggest risk, though, is that this is going to set an example that many other countries will follow. and this will lead to a collapse in global vaccine supply >> wow we will not take those words

lightly at all thank you for joining us today on "street signs." co-director of the global health director of graduate institutes in geneva. coming up on "street signs," moscow continues its crackdown on protests against the arrest of putin critic alexei navalny, as washington calls for his release.

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welcome back to "street signs. myanmar's military has seized power in a coup and detained the leaders of the country's democratically elected government, including aung san suu kyi. the army says it made the move following election fraud in last november's vote, a claim rejected by myanmar's election commission a state of emergency will rema inin place for one year. australian university hunger marsten says he does not believe aung san suu kyi's political differences will blunt the reaction to the coup. >> i think you've seen from western governments they are speaking out on behalf of

civilian politicians and will continue to defend aung san suu kyi from the military. in some ways, this is back to the old familiar equation of the military putting aung san suu kyi under arrest and locking up civilian opposition figures. i think aung san suu kyi's controversy in recent years, defending the military against allegations of crimes against humanity that western governments will still support aung san suu kyi, and in some ways this underscores the clear divide in the country and the civilian leadership. russian authorities detained more than 5,000 protesters across the country on sunday following a second weekend of demonstrations in support of detained opposition leader alexei navalny the u.s. secretary of state anthony blinken took to twitter to condemn the arrests and call for kremlin's critics release. navalny was detained last month upon returning to moscow from

berlin and had been recovering in the german capital after beingbe ing poisoned last year we've been gripped by demonstrations across russia over the weekend but the crackdown seems to also be picking up momentum as well it's worth bearing in mind, this isn't the first time russia has experienced widespread demonstrations we're seeing them today, 2021, but of course if you rewind back to ten years ago, right after the presidential elections, we saw another wave of protests with that, i just want to bring in alexander gobav, senior fellow of russia at carnegie moscow center. let me start off by asking you what parallels you seen between the demonstrations this year versus what happened back in 2011 do you draw any distinctions between the two as to how the authorities are responding >> we see the growing discontent in the russian society, which is

explained by primarily of economics. they're now down 10% compared to 2013 right before crimea annexation and the russian government is not growing due to lack of structural reform and end endemic. russia registered about 1,500 mass incidence against both political corruption and lockout issues what's different is that the government is taking an increasingly heavy-handed and tough approach trying to increase the costs for going down the street to protest the putin regime the number of protesters are going down compared to the situation back in 2011 >> i was listening to an interview with one of the very prominent vladimir putin critics, bill browder yesterday,

and he said yesterday in his view the biggest fear for president putin is not a one particular person or figure head in the form of navalny, but it is the risk of widespread protests and further demonstrations do you ascribe to that view as well >> i don't think so. i think that the protests is widespread we've seen that in about 100 cities over the last weekend and the weekend before, but the protests is most of the time small scale. the numbers are going down in some of the cities the main concern for the authorities are two big cities, moscow and st. petersburg. here a week ago we saw about 40,000 protesters in moscow. this time police was prepared. they sealed off the downtown the number have been down significantly also because the police has ratcheted up violence against the protesters yes, it's a challenge, but i think that so far it appears government is in full control of

the situation. >> in terms of the response we've had from the west so far, the u.s. secretary of state has come out saying that the u.s. condemns the persistent use of harsh tactics against peaceful protesters and journalists by russian authorities. so, this marks a significant departure from the rhetoric out of the trump white house over the last four years. the uk, we've had the foreign secretary dominic raab accuse authorities detaining people simply for expressing their dissent and russian authorities. what action could we see the west take if the situation escalates and intensifies in russia >> the problem is that the principled approach is a good thing in itself, it is a positive departure from donald trump era. the problem is that the west doesn't have too many tools and too much leverage to really

affect the situation on the ground and force the russian government to release alex navalny. the u.s. and europe have passed multiple rounds of sanctions that have taken a toll on the russian government but not strong enough to force mr. putin to change course i think team biden knows that very well. unfortunately, the sanctions policy has made the breasest ofa one-trick pony it will be criticism coupled with some sanctions that washington, d.c. and team biden will try to coordinate with the european union >> could we see nordstream -- we had european lawmakers -- angela

merkel says her view hasn't changed despite the navalny case. >> i think the pressure is mounting to cancel nordstream ii and they have acknowledged it's actually preparing for canceling of the project, although the russian vessel trying to lay the remaining section of the pipeline i think that inclusion of nordstream ii is a likely target of the future sanctions. although they wouldn't have much effect on the fate of mr. navalny or the peaceful protests in russia. >> thank you for taking the time to speak with us the senior fellow and chair of russia at carnegie moscow center let's take a look at how u.s. futures are shaping on this early monday morning the picture is pretty positive, in line with the positive momentum we're seeing in

european stocks. s&p 17 points higher the nasdaq, the tech index up 118. this follows on for a weak week for u.s. markets last week s&p ended 3% lower nasdaq about 3.5 percentage points lower lots to watch out for in the u.s. this week we continue with earnings season so far about 50% of companies have reported and about 85% of them have beats. the big ones we're watching out for, amazon and alphabet tomorrow, in addition to a lot more discussion over the fiscal stimulus that is a quick look ahead to the week in the u.s. that is it for our show today. i'm joumanna bercetche with julianna tatelbaum "worldwide exchange" is coming up next.

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it is 5:00 a.m. at cnbc global headquarters. here your top five at five stocks looking to bounce back as we kick often a new trading month amid that wave of volatility by speculative trading by retail investors. robinhood looking to curb that volatility with fresh steps to limit some kinds of trading those speculative traders now turning their attention to silver as the commodity finds itself in the spotlight amid surging prices. president biden se