overnight since its highest levels since 2013. all those commercials for the past ten years might finally be right. monday, february 1, 2021, and "squawk box" begins right now. good morning, everyone welcome to "squawk box." this is kcnbc joe mentioned there was a bit of a rout last week culminating with the big selloff on friday major averages down by 2% or more on friday for the month of january, because, remember, this is february 1st, for the month of january, you were looking at the dow and the s&p 500 both giving background for the year. they lost the gains they built up earlier in the month. dow was down by 2% for themont

and s&p down by 1% the nasdaq is still holding onto the gains. year-to-date nasdaq is up by 1.5% this morning you're looking at additional green arrows. dow futures indicated up by 155 points s&p futures up by 26 and then the nasdaq up by 115. if you want to check out the treasury yields, right now it looks like the ten-year is sitting at a yield of 1.074% still hanging on above 1%. andrew >> thanks, becky as you might imagine, we are monitoring shares of gamestop once again let's show you where things stand with that stock ahead of the open and a number of other stocks that are in that sort of category, if you will. robinhood planning to continue limit trading in short squeeze names today. it's narrowed its list from 50 stocks on friday to 8 starting today. customers will be only allowed to buy one share of gamestop or

five options contracts limits on the other restricted stocks vary. here's a look at some of the other names limited today. we will see whether they then continue to press up or not. the restrictions coming after wall street's clearinghouse mandate aid tenfold increase in robinhood's deposit requirements last week. we're watching shares -- we're watching the price of silver trading at the highest level since 2013 if you've been on reddit over the weekend, you'll know the reddit investors say they want to pile into that commodity and they are doing so, t the #silversqueeze was trending on twitter last night. that swung over into silver mining stocks. there's lots of impacts across the board that we'll talk about this morning you're looking at pan amsilver up 15%

hedge fund melvin capital management lost 53% in january melvin capital told us last week it closed out those positions on gamestop tuesday afternoon after seeing heavy losses. those are the losses we're talking about, down 53%. citadel infusing $53 million into melvin capital. citadel lost 3% in january as well and i don't know if you were up late last night, i was not, but i tried to listen in this morning to some of it. elon musk was on clubhouse, the social media platform last night. we'll be talking to the ceo of clubhouse a little later today but vlad tenav got on and effectively elon -- the ceo of robinhood. elon started effectively interviewing vlad about what happened he effectively reaffirmed or reconfirmed what he told us on "squawk box" last week but to hear both of them taking

about it is quite a thing. maybe only speaks to where we are in 2021. >> what was elon's take on it? >> elon -- it seemed like what was happening is everybody was pushing on whether citadel -- whether there's conflicts, whether citadel was pushing on them to somehow close down part of the dave portanoy view of the world is because citadel has this arrangement with them was and losing money themselves, there would be conflict, or if the regulators are trying -- not trying to protect the small guy but robinhood was trying to protect the big guy. vlad stuck relatively to the script, it appears again, i have not heard the entirety of it, but in terms of what he had said to us last week, and very much specifically to the point that this is a liquidity crisis of sorts for this company, the model becomes

complicated when there's this kind of activity in only a handful of names and they have to keep putting out bigger and bigger deposits on these names if you're not a massive bank with a huge balance sheet, that becomes very hard. i think it will be interesting to see what happens this week with robinhood i don't want to raise the question, but can they make it through this week as an independent company, i think, is a fair question to ask they can keep limiting the trades the flip side, as you would imagine, a lot of these investors will end up on fidelity or ameritrade or other platforms. there's sort of this push/pull they'll be grappling with all week. >> you saw the journal piece about citadel clearing so many -- so many of robinhood's trades, right, and how much of the actual trading that scitade was doing that -- i don't know -- they were the beneficiary from all the wind

fall of trading in robinhood if you're sticking it to the man with citadel, i'm not sure it's -- you're having the desired effect in that instance i mean, you know, all anyone wants -- i want to -- all we want -- -- free and fair trading. that's all anyone wants. now, if you approach that from the perspective that wall street has always been rigged and never free and fair, then you have a problem with that discussion you know, you're not going to get very far - >> free trades is the question >> all we want is free and fair trading. what's that? >> free trades is the request he robinhood is the one that forced the issue of free trading, made all of its competitors - >> i didn't mean free. i didn't mean free i just meant unencumbered and letting the market - >> but it gets to the point that free trading is the question >> not manipulated

right. >> but is free trading even a business model that works because all of its competitors followed robinhood with that i think it gets back to that question of whether that actually works although, look, even when you were paying for trades, when you had huge days like this where there was a liquidity question, a liquidity crunch on these things, even if you were paying for the trades you didn't always get your trade put through in time. >> that's what i was going to say, becky i can't tell if it's actually -- we talked about the business model. the question is whether the business model connected to citadel and free trades is the issue or whether the business model unto itself in a world where you have a group, an army of investors enabled by social media for the first time all piling into the same things. i think that this is a situation that would affect just about any firm that's doing this unless they were more deep pocketed i think this has to do with being a startup, how well capitalized you are, if you're a

remember if i backed by morgan stanley, you should be able to continue trading if you're an independent entity, at some point it becomes difficult. we've seen situations where brokerages have had to shut things down or, by the way, stock exchanges have had to shut things down before. >> but it wasn't - >> i'm not sure is the central question what did you say >> it wasn't just robinhood that was stopping some of these trades last week you saw it on some of the other platforms, too, some that have copied with the free trading it wasn't all of this em i don't think fidelity every did. >> but i think it's -- right the ones that were doing it -- >> you're not the customer when you're not paying for trades, you're not the customer. the customer is whoever is - >> look, i think there's a -- i think there's an absolutely fair question to question whether ultimately that unto itself

represents manipulation because, for example, citadel is not paying for access to this data for its health it's doing it because it thinks there's value there and value that it can have that others can't, no question but in terms of the liquidity or the solvency of a firm, it's unclear if that is the issue so much as just what would happen in almost any instance if you were not as well capitalized, you would need to be in an instance like this to me, that's where robinhood is there's a question of market infrastructure in this country, which is to say, it's kind of backwards if effectively we're trading in milliseconds and completing or closing out these transactions two days later. the you have to keep putting up more and more deposits along the way to effectively protect yourself during that gap

it would be interesting over time to see if they close that technical gap. maybe we're getting too far into the weeds. >> well, we're back -- just for our own infrastructure, we're back in delay hell, i can tell you that right now because i'm at home because it's still snowing. still snowing out there. on groundhog day, tomorrow, if the groundhog can't even get through the snow, what does that -- is that like a third option for what he's forecasting? i mean, if he's totally snowed in >> i think it falls in the category he doesn't see his shadow if he doesn't get out of had his hole >> all right how about, are you guys -- you see those -- you know the silver commercials i'm talking about, right, those four guys five years, five years it's ready to go it is -- i mean, people say it could go it's five years. it's finally happening

i'm happy those commercials -- anyway, let's move on to -- there is silver. i remember $50 silver. remember, you guys probably read about it, the hunt brothers. i can't remember what year that was. silver was up at 50 bucks. it was something to behold first time gold went to $800 that's how long ago it was and you could get a pretty darn good suit for $800 back then. president biden has invited a group of ten republican senators to the white house to discuss their proposal for a more targeted covid relief package. the price tag for the republican bill is $600 billion compared to the biden administration's proposed $1.9 trillion package democratic leaders in congress say they plan to begin a legislative process that would bypass the need for republican support. we know how that works we've done it before wouldn't be the first time >> yeah, we'll see.

in the mean tirnlgs the major snowstorm joe was talking about, it moved through the midwest first and now pounding the northeast. the new york tri-state area is bracing for 12 to 18 inches by tonight. airlines canceled most flights in the new york city area. officials are urging people to stay off the roads most vaccine locations in the area are shut down as well a lot of restejing of appointments the weather caused president biden to postpone a visit to the state department that was planned for today. check out this video if you're not enjoying all of the snow, here's somebody who is the pandas at the national zoo in washington, d.c., rolling down and sliding in the snow somebody's getting this. by the way, if you haven't gotten enough of this video footage, you can check it out. the zoo has a live video cam in their panda exhibit. it's nice to see somebody enjoying all of this >> i love that i love that. >> we've got - >> woo no sled needed

>> no sled needed. we have a lot more to talk about this morning we'll talk a lot more about the robinhood effect on retail investors and what comes next. the gamestop frenzy getting the "snl" treatment over the weekend. we'll be back after this take a look at this one. it's hard to hope, hard to cope with crisis. so we get to work. we mend, fighting for every person in every neighborhood; we, the coming of the common good. so dare to care, to be hope-sided. we're never divided, when we live to give, we always live united. this is decision tech.

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. i put all my money in gamestop and i can't lose. >> normally a stock price reflects the company's value, right? >> okay. >> and two weeks ago gamestop was valued at $17 a share and then it went to $413 a share would you say that reflects the kind of business gamestop stores have been doing in the past two weeks? >> we sell games >> right but are you good at it >> not really. people download all of our games now, so we're kind of like, what do you call it >> a dying business. >> yeah, that's it >> the gamestop story getting the "snl" treatment over the weekend. boy, has this become the water cooler -- i don't know there's water coolers anymore given the pandemic, but it would have been

called a water cooler story. lots of people talking about it all over. the retail frenzy and the short squeeze saga has been driving trading volume through the roof there's no sign of a slowdown. here to talk about what comes next for retail investors and e-brokers caught up in this wave, kate kelly, and rich, managing director at piper sandler. good morning to both of you. kate, i know you've been working over the weekend, trying to report out what's taking place and what may come next we were just mentioning in the block before this aboutle potential risks to a robinhood and what they'll have to do even throughout this week in terms of the trade -- it's a hard balancing act in terms of trying to keep customers on one side but also not break the liquidity issue for themselves in terms of being able to put up the deposits for all of these trades >>. >> that's right, andrew. i'm sorry, i have a birthday

party in the house recently. i think it's a difficult balance for robinhood. on the one hand, they've had tremendous retail impact, obviously, people really have flocked to the site. it's a commission-free, democratization of trade willing. that's kind of their sales pitch. and because of the reddit crowd and excitement around gamestop and other nostalgia stocks, as the "snl" clip point out, the fundamentals don't support the sky high valuations, you've seen this incredible influx what robinhood may or may not have realized is the amount of marginal loan they have to put up to ensure there's a capital cushion so that customers are made whole in the case of a crisis is massive. and so we reported on thursday morning the dtcc, the central clearinghouse that settles and finalizes all of these trades, increased margin for the market on gamestop and related kind of names, related recent high-fliers from $26 billion to

close to $34 billion we understand robinhood was not the majority of that, but a significant chunk of that. that was because of the very issue we talked about. but it also seems to have put them into this very quick emergency capital raising that you and i wrote about as well as having to draw on their bank line of credit >> rich, you look at what's going to take place over this week it does feel like this is a movement of sorts. we're watching it now take place with silver. how do you think about it in terms of a brokerage like robinhood, meaning is robinhood going to stay as an independent company, can they make it if we have these sort of flash mobs doing this, and what does it say about the model? >> it certainly, as kate and others have pointed out, it's stressed robinhood's model but i think one thing people may not realize, but the risk of a

heavy concentration of risks in these stocks, if you look at the end of last woke, these four stocks, i don't know how many stocks there are overall, 4,000, 5,000, but these four stocks made up 7% or 8% of the volume so, and robinhood, the retail investors, trading a lot of it this heavy concentration of risk pushed up the requirements from the clearinghouse, just like kate explained so, one of the things -- you're already reporting that this retail sort of frenzy or movement is affecting other markets like silver, outside the u.s. as well so, you know, that could continue the one point that i would make is that just to get -- and you pointed out, andrew, this settlement i know it's sort of complex for

the viewer, but what i'm told is right now the clearinghouses are content, happy with robinhood has made its margin calls and its deposit requirements so, in that two days, then they can actually move and get the customer money in. that should help them. now, we'll see how -- you know, they certainly have hurt their brand by shutting down the trading, but that has helped them until they can get through this two-day period, and then if they can manage, you know, with some controls of the trading, it's not going to make customers happy, but it will certainly ease the pressure on their balance sheet. >> rich, i don't know if you saw that "snl" clip. it was pretty funny actually >> i did. >> pete davidson, he might get t typecast as one of those red traders. i don't know if that's fair or not. but the point was made it was a

$17 stock, now it's at370. does that make any sense your firm, rich, piper sandler, just raised the price target on tesla to $1,200. and your analysts had been at $515 obviously it can happen, right >> yeah. and i can't speak for my peer analyst, but he's doing fundamental analysis, and -- >> oh, that's what it is >> well, some analysis to get you comfortable. >> so, tesla -- so it's fundamental analysis for tesla but you see my point >> oh, sure. >> 515 to 1200 >> yeah. i mean, there are times when stocks can double. you know, there's some hopes for the opportunities in the market. here i think, you know, we sort

of understood -- you know, there's a -- there's something different going on the retail activity was picking up dramatically, you know, all throughout last year this retail sort of activism movement is just on top of that. and, by the way, joe, i hope you saw that that actor also mimicked -- played tom brady as well on "saturday night live." >> kate, help us in terms of - >> what's that, andrew >> just help us with this business model question because becky was raising an important point in the last block about the business model in terms of who the customer is, the role that citadel plays, for example, in the con be text of robinhood. by the way, this business model sofi follows this business model, which is worth pointing out because cha muth has been out there criticizing robinhood. he just bought sofi. this is an emergent business model.

how much of the problem or the challenge as a result of the model -- the free model versus simply a capital issue, which is if you're going to be a startup with a certain amount of capital, you're not going to be a morgan stanley owning one of these with a massive balance sheet, that a flash mob arrives and the problem is real? >> this are two questions there. one is about the citadel connection, which is interesting and the other is about the model. you're absolutely right to point out that one of the ironies we wrote about in our weekend story was this was meant to be a disrupter. it has been a disrupter, in all fairness it has done a lot to democrat ties trading at the same time, it's finding itself squarely in the middle of a legacy, for the most part, you know, deep balance-sheeted wall street brokerage business that's heavily regulated and has strong capital requirements, among other hings, for the good of investors.

it's having to kind of slot into that very established infrastructure where others have tried and failed before. in terms of citadel, i think that's where you see conspiracy theories around citadel's involvement here listen, as a reporter, if i thought citadel were inappropriately wielding influence, i'd be all over it. we've been reporting deeply into all the mechanics of this thing, whatever the parties are as far as i know, so far, citadel has some connections to this they get payment -- they pay for order flow from robinhood. in other words, they pay for robinhood's buy and sell orders from customers to be sent to citadel systems, matched in their order book and sent back to robinhood for a confirm separately, citadel has these hedge funds. they invested in some of the positions. i don't know all the details, but from what i understand, they also had shorts on gamestop and some other names going into the massive rally. and in the midst of all that

last week, citadel bought into melvin to the idea that citadel pressured the dtcc to raise margin or other things we've heard, i haven't been able to stand that up. as far as i know, that's not the case >> right we have to run maybe i'll ask this in 30 seconds. i'll ask to kate or rich, whoever thinks they know the answer if citadel can't front-run these trades, what is the value to them for bag for these trades? what is the value of that data if you can't get ahead of it is the value just being able to see the volumes after the fact rich, do you want to take that >> yeah, sure. the first thing is, you know, when they take a retail trade, it's a small trade it's not going to be -- it's not like them taking the other side of a trade from an institution where it might be 1,000 shares now but there's a million hybehd it they make money initially just off the spread

if they're buying at the bid, selling at the offer, they can -- and they are a high-frequency trading firm, they simply make that spread that's probably the very basic elements of that trade -- of the relationship there >> okay. we're going to leave it there. it is a much longer conversation we'll be doing a lot more of it over the next three hours. kate, look forward to talking to you again. rich, we look forward to seeing you again. a programming note, we'll talk to former ameritrade chairman, joe moglia will be talking about the army of reddit investors coming up at 8:00 eastern time it will be great to get his thoughts still to come, we also have a new report that says the ceos of chevron and exxon discussed a merger last year we have the details after the break. check out the price of bitcoin this morning, rising

overnight. you can see right now it's up by 4% to $34,159. here's what elon musk said during an interview session on the audio chat app clubhouse overnight. clearly i should have bought bitcoin eight years ago. talk about being late to the party. i was a little slow on the uptake i do at this point think bitcoin is a good thing. i'm a supporter of bitcoin bitcoin is really on the verge of getting broad acceptance by the big conventional finance people we will bring you more from that session a little later in the show, including comments from elon musk's interview with the ceo of robinhood we also have the ceo of clubhouse joining us at 7:45 eastern time stick around, we'll be right back

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welcome back, everybody. "the wall street journal" reporting that the ceos of chevron and exxonmobil talked about the possibility much a merger last year the report says that chevron's michael wirth and exxon's darren wood spoke about the prospect after the pandemic began to negatively affect oil prices in april oil price futures briefly turned negative. meaning, you would have to pay sw unto take the oil away from you as people stayed at home the journal report says the merger talks were preliminary and not ongoing. i did reach out to both companies yesterday, they both declined to comment on this. you have to imagine there were some interesting discussions taking place when you saw oil turn actually negative at one point. never seen anything like that. there was no scenario anybody had run forecasting something like that. >> the state of the business, right? makes sense, i guess i guess it's not sad if you --

if you're hoping for the end of fossil fuels, but the future does not look too bright i don't know about dividend payouts and everything else. i hope they don't stop producing it, obviously, because the transition will take longer than i think most people think. >> that would be an issue. >> yeah. but it's tough we've talked about mergers like this in the past where they're hanging onto each other trying to stay afloat certainly not a merger out of strength that's amazing, those two? they're the product of how many previous mergers of -- in that industry maybe just one at the end. coming up, how much more -- it's supposed to snow all day and even into tomorrow, right? the nor'easter stumping the new york area right now disrupting, think about this, vaccination centers in the tri-state area. we'll talk to dr. scott gottlieb about the vaccine rollout and

new data we got from johnson & johnson on friday. here's a look at friday, the s&p winners and losers from last week i made a business out of my passion. i mean, who doesn't love obsessing over network security? all our techs are pros. they know exactly which parking lots have the strongest signal. i just don't have the bandwidth for more business. seriously, i don't have the bandwidth. glitchy video calls with regional offices? yeah, that's my thing. with at&t business, you do the things you love. our people and network will help do the things you don't. let's take care of business.

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in sunday's paper.

good orning, everybody u.s. equity futures are indicated higher after a pretty rough last week. dow futures indicated up by 245 points the s&p futures up by close to 38 and then the nasdaq, which is the only three averages still up year to date up by 1.5% versus down 2% for the dow and down 1% for the s&p 500. the nasdaq this morning is indicated up once again, up by 142 points right now let's get a look at some heavily traded stocks that have been hyped on reddit. if you're watching right now, you'll see gamestop is up at 330 bucks, roughly amc entertainment at $15.71. you still have koss shares

trading at $66, a gain of 4.25%. and then blackberry shares, which are up by 6.9% to $15.07 also check out silver prices this morning this is the last area that really looks like it's seeing a big run in things happening. silver prices this morning, up by 10% to just under $30 $29.62 joe? >> thanks, beck. johnson & johnson's vaccine candidate showed strong protection against covid-19 but fueling concern about mutant strains of the virus let's bring in former commissioner dr. scott gottlieb, also a cnbc contributor. in hislatest op-ed he tackles the different vaccines as well as the different strains of covid. it's good to see you this morning. we talked about this when the news came out, that it's a one-shot dose and that the

pfizer and moderna versions after one shot, i don't think, were even 70 people that were looking at apples to apples needed to take that into account. the efficacy was impressive, in your view, even though we hear 95 i'd rather have 95 than 70 i'll take the two shots. >> i'll take what i can get actually as a consumer, but look, this is a good result. you're right that when you look at the mrna vaccines we saw data on the impact of the first dose but we didn't follow it out to 49 days like we have with the j&j vaccines the bottom line, this is a vaccine that can be -- doesn't need to be stored in special handling it's one shot. and it produced a good result. this is a very good result j&j swung for the fences and hit a triple because they tried to get a one-dose vaccine on an absolute basis, the efficacy might be diminished.

but this is a one-dose vaccine the bottom line is they have a trial under way looking at two-dose data. they might show better efficacy with two-dose. and those who get one dose might come back in two or three months and get another dose i think this is a good entrant for a lot of patients. >> the concern about the mutant strain, i guess it was the south african was based on what data and what does it say >> right so, they have a data set in south africa where 90% of patients enrolled in south africa who got vaccinated, there was more breakthrough. the efficacy was about 57% in the south africa arm of the trial. what it shows is that the vaccine has diminished efficacy against that variant that shouldn't surprise us we have expermits to say we have results with the nova vaccine to

show the same. i would bet the mrna show less efficacy with the south african variant and brazil variant that's still a good result if the mrna are 70%, 08% protective and the j & j is 60% after one dose, you're still affording a high measure of protection against that variant. what now seems to be the case is the brazilian variant and south african variant may not be more fit. we know b117 is more fit, more contagious, spreading more readily but we haven't seen the variant in brazil, p-1, and that in south africa break out yet. one reason that might be the case, one theory is it may be more virulent so far as people getting infected may be getting more infected. it may not be more fit, more

contagious yo. we have time to develop boosters targeted to these variants, hopefully. >> this experience and the evidence that we're seeing here, what does that say about year after year in terms of covid mutations and whether it's similar to what we go through every year with the flu vaccines and the flu vaccines, even though everyone doesn't get them, we never seem to have an epidemic would we still have some type of herd immunity with covid, even if it would come back with a variant strain every year? would it be as bad as the first pandemic >> yeah, well, we actually do have the equivalent of a pandemic to flu each year in terms of how it spreads. it's predictable so we don't call it a pandemic, but it spreads around the world in a pandemic-like fashion. even the seasonal flu. some of the conventional wisdom right now is that the ways this virus can mutate itself to try to change its proteins and evade

vaccines is finite there won't be an infinite number of ways this will beat immunity therefore, we should be able to engineer a complement of different kinds of boosters that will protect to some degree against the range of ways this vaccine could -- this virus can change itself. that is some of the thinking right now. i think that we're going to be able to keep up with this. it doesn't mutate as rapidly as flu. maybe it will partially defeat the vaccines but it won't be able to entirely evade the vaccines as quickly as flu does. this probably sits between measles and flu, which changes its surface proteins very readily and, therefore, our vaccine could be defeated within a span of one season this coronavirus probably is in the middle somewhere it's going to change its surface proteins it but probably going to do it gradually enough we'll be able to engineer new boosters and make them available. one of the things i talk about in "the wall street journal" is

the idea of developing a range of different variations of the vaccines and having them on the shelf and scaling up protection of the ones we think will be the predominant strain we could put two different forms of the virus into a syringe and develop a vaccine that can cover more than one strain >> well, of course of course we can develop we're really getting in the weeds here with the advanced virology i assume the cold virus is able to mutate its surface proteins so much that we can't really -- because there are questions that people have. it's like, wait, a got vaccinated when i was a child and still don't get this why am i getting vaccinated every year this is all based on the ease of mutation with the surface proteins >> that's right. it's based on the ability of a virus to accept into its genome,

into its rna changes that will code for different proteins on a surface that become the target of our immune system some viruses like measles can't do that. some do it very readily, like flu. >> i just like the way you said that well, of course. and you're not -- i'm not telling you anything you don't know. >> trivaliant vaccines might be different with self-replicating rna. >> you can't get a decent with a single yeah, you need a tri it's like eight-minute app thank you, doctor, for clearing all these -- >> thanks a lot. >> -- arcane things up we appreciate it we'll see you again soon. andrew >> thank you, joe. so much more coming up on the show everything you need to know for the trading week ahead take a look at this morning's biggest winners so far on the s&p 500. later, we're going to talk to senator pat toomey for the latest out of washington on hopes of a bipartisan stimulus

deal there are other things happening besides gamestop we'll be right back after this

that's the snow in times square this morning. just the beginning of a nor'easter that has already seen snowstorm make its way across the midwest. now it's pounding the northeast. we'll talk about more what you can expect a little traffic on the roads. not much. when we come back, stocks are pointing to a rebound to start the trading month after a 2% decline for the dow for the month of january it's february 1st and it's time to talk strategy we'll do that right after this

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welcome back, everybody. last week was the dow's worst performance since october. blue chips dropping 2% now back under 30,000.

the dow had its worst week since october. s&p down 1% as well. for the month of january the volatility index rose sharply. valerie grant, senior portfolio manager at alliance bernstein. valerie, we watched what happened last week earnings were pretty good and even the strong performers were not getting much in terms of rewards in stock prices. why do you think that is >> right it was a very strange earnings season 71% of companies beat estimates by more than 1 standard deviation. that's usually rewarded. in this instance it wasn't i think there's a couple of reasons for that there's still uncertainty in relationship to the evolution of the virus. i was listening to your previous speaker about the uncertainty around vaccines and covid-19 and still uncertainty about the pace

of economic recovery and the sustainability of corporate profit that's all reflected in the vix. >> is it because we've seen the market run up and all of the good news is baked in and there's not much room for up side >> i think expectations may have gotten ahead of where they needed to be, but you have to recall that early in 2020 there was a lot of uncertainty about how the pandemic would evolve and how the economy would evolve, and i think that many companies actually suspended guidance and people were kind of driving through the fog, so to speak. so i think that maybe the expectations were simply too high, but when we saw the pull back i think it was by and large an opportunity to buy on the dip. >> we've been talking an awful

lot about reddit the retail traders there, traders there and what it's meant for gamestop and other stocks is that what you're hearing from your clients or are there other things they're asking you about? >> that is not what i am hearing from my clients. my clients are generally focused on responsible investing and they are very passionate about this as responsible investors, they're really focused on longer term time horizons and they're focused on the underlying drivers of corporate profitability and company performance. things like the investment of climate change very much focused on pay equity and key other layers on equity and inclusion at the company and board level. they are focused on how companies conduct themselves with employees, suppliers and customers. those are the inquiries i get with the companies invested in my strategy.

they are squarely focused on responsibility and sustainability which they think is an enduring investment theme in 2021. >> we're looking at the s&p energy down by 3 1/3 percent good to see you. thanks for your time. >> absolutely. nice to be here. >> joe all right. thanks, beck coming up, the big interviews on -- of the day on news of the day including senator pat toomey, former tv chairman joe moglia and ray mcguire you see el erian as well dow futures down down a couple hundred. volatile start to february trading so far you're watching "squawk box" on cnbc

. stocks look to bounce back amid a wave of volatility from speculative trading by retail investors. those speculative traders turning their attention to silver. robinhood looking to further curb the volatility with fresh steps to limit trading and save their own hide as well, too. got the details straight ahead. elon musk talks alien, memes on clubhouse

we'll hear from the founder of clubhouse as the second hour of "squawk box" begins right now. good morning and welcome back to "squawk box" right here on cnbc. i'm andrew ross sorkin with becky quick and joe kernen take a look at u.s. equity futures on a snowy monday morning. the dow looks like it would open 215 points higher, nasdaq 123 points higher and s&p 500 looking to open 35 points higher here's what's making headlines at this hour a couple biggies ten republican senators will meet with president biden to discuss a downsized version of his proposed $1.9 trillion covid relief package they recorded a $600 billion alternative. moderna asking the fda to

put more covid-19 vaccine in its viles. the viles now for ten doses but have room for 15 reddit fueled stock volatility continuing it looks like this morning. gamestop, amc and others are on the rise again those stocks of course are involved in an ongoing battle between retail investors and short sellers. we have a lot more on this story throughout this hour and next. also, capturing the attention of reddit community is silver precious metals hitting an 8-year high. taking the stock of silver minors up over 15%. over 22% and it's unbelievable to watch some of this price action, joe. >> so, andrew, i think we're

1979, 1980 so if you bought silver at 50 in 1980, it was really crappy, a crappy investment i think pretty much, right? >> 30 bucks? >> i think it went back to 7 or around there i knew people put a lot of their retirement money in there. it was a mania now the mania is in other places spac, is that a mania. brian sullivan joins us with the details. what's going on, brian >> reporter: hey, good morning, guys good morning, joe. breaking news tillman fertitta is going public buying a spac fast acquisition company he took the entire company

private back in 2010 this will be fertitta entertainment getting merged with the fast acquisition spac the deal is $2 billion you have the spac and immediately on closing we'll have institutional shareholders coming in with $1.2 billion valued at 100 bucks a share via a pipe, public investment and private equity tillman is going to be the ceo, executive and chairman he will have a 60% interest in it overall it involves half the ownership of another spac, the golden nugget online gaming, gnog we're seeing not two spacs merge but golden nugget being part of this tillman returning to the public market for the first time in ten years. listen, i've been talking to tillman a lot over the last couple of years. he bought del frisco's

the reason for this is after being ten years of being private, what he said is we need to have capital to do deals. here's the reality as we know, guys no industry has been hit harder than hospitality, restaurants, hotels, travel, et cetera. and a lot of these businesses may not come back but a lot of them hanging on as things start to open back up, there may be opportunities for new capital investment with a newly public company a buyer tilman may be able to do more spac, landry's coming out big, $2 billion deal back into the public market. the rockets, by the way, not a part of this transaction >> yeah. that's interesting you're right, i was trying to come up with anotherindustry that's been hit as hard. i think it's painfully obvious

you have to leave your house to do any of those things it makes it very difficult except maybe online gaming or a lot of travel and hospitality. thanks, brian. we'll move on. the vaccination rate is on pace to hit a goal of 50% of the population by may according to goldman sachs. steve liesman joins us with the latest road back barometer hey, steve >> reporter: hey, joe. yeah, this is important. we have a very long way to go to herd immunity that will allow the u.s. to get back to normal, but several forecasters including as you say goldman sachs, morgan stanley think the u.s. is, indeed, on track for the 75% mark by may. let's go through the math here the assumption on your left, about 25% of the population has a natural immunity that's born of having had the virus. that's an assumption dr. scott gottleib has more. there's the latest estimate of the percent of the population that's received at least one

does 6.3% your left and middle need to add up to 75%. they don't but take a look at the next chart. vaccinations per day goldman sachs calculates a daily number and seven-day average according to them, you can see 0.4, 0.45% of the population being vaccinated every day getting at least one dose, and that's on a track to hit 50% of the population being vaccinated by may or the spring of this year take a look at the national map and you can see the dakotas doing quite well call them the virginias, west virginia and regular virginia doing fine oklahoma and arkansas doing -- they're also in the higher percentages there. alaska leading the way there are your bigger states, 7.6% for new york. 7.7 for florida.

6.9 for california matthew harrison at morgan stanley says the thing that -- i'm sorry, the thing that makes me feel good is we've moved from 20% of available shots getting into arms to 50% in three weeks and it looks like we can move higher that's improvement in the distributions. now let's look at how the u.s. is doing relative to other countries. i believe it's israel is leading the way here followed by the uae and the u.k. and finally there's the u.s. with all the european countries, by the way, below that in terms of the percent of doses -- doses as a percent of the population right there of course you guys talked about in the last hour, new strains of the virus. there's a reluctance of people to take the virus that will be very important and of course there are distribution issues all could derail the path towards 50%. new vaccines come along and there's good progress on the learning curve about distributions getting shots into arms and that underpins the

optimism that we're on track with joe, right now that's the math we're following. natural plus vaccination and then how we're doing relative to getting to the 75% >> whether we're seeing some good stuff already, steve, i guess it's too early, obviously, but the case rates are coming down probably just because as we put the holidays further in the rear-view mirror. >> yeah. yeah >> and some pretty good numbers coming down. that has nothing to do with the people that have already been vaccinated in due time you will see that starting to have some type of positive effect if when someone gets vaccinated they don't give it to somebody else hopefully and so there's a link between the transmission that doesn't happen, right? >> that's a big part of the calculation, joe, that 25% has that natural immunity.

i asked over the weekend talking to a bunch of guys, you have to see the efforts being exerted by some of the wall street firms and the length adnd detail of te papers i asked if they were counting on johnson & johnson coming through, and they were that has not changed the trajectory we have to watch to see if something does come along, move it up and hopefully not. >> all right, steve. thanks we are hoping. thank you. beck >> hey, joe. at the top andrew was talking about this moderna story, which is really interesting. just the idea that they are asking for approval to put more doses in every vile. they've got 10 that fit in every vile now, there's room for 15. they want to put that in so they can speed up the outturn/output with this. what's amazing to me, it's not the ability to create the vaccine itself that's the bottleneck, it's not the viles,

it's being able to put enough in the viles because apparently they have to put them in the manufacturing capacity, the fill finish process in manufacturing has to be done under a septic conditions and that capacity is at a premium if they can just jam five more into every vile, that can help with some of the bottlenecks that we've seen along the way. kind of amazing. i thought it was manufacturing the vaccine itself that's not the case. weird, right >> that's so weird yeah the minutia and the details of the way it works, something that simple to do crazy. >> yeah. it would be amazing if we can do that, if you can speed up by 50% by jamming five more doses into every vile when we come back, wheels up joining the spac boom too. we'll hear from the founder, kenny ke

kenny dikt ter right after the break. dow is indicated up by 228 points s&p up by 34 and nasdaq up by 120. "squawk box" will beig bk. rhtac for skin that never holds you back don't settle for silver

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welcome back to "squawk box. spac craze there are 91 spac ipos

comprising 71% of the total ipo proceeds in 2021 so far. the momentum continues wheels up is there robert frank joins us. >> reporter: aspirational consumer life. they are merging with wheels up taking it public at a valuation of over 2 billion. that is double the valuation just two years ago this will make wheels up the first private jet company to go public spac will put in $240 million. investments in the pike will bring in another $550 million. t. row price, franklin advisers and durable capital all in that pipe delta airlines has a stake in wheels up, they will be a meaningful shareholder after the

deal the private jet industry has rebounded quickly with business for many of the companies back or near back to pre-pandemic levels wheels up flew more than 150,000 people last year and owns or manages over 330 aircraft. aspiration will help them expand ove overseas aspirational ceo will join the board and help advise the board and the deal expected to close in the second quarter. it will trade under the ticker symbol up with, joe, maybe one of the best ticker symbols i've ever seen. up back to you. >> i can't believe that was available. that is. two letters. >> up is up. >> two letters are good enough that's amazing thank you. that may be the biggest -- that may be the most important thing -- in this day and age, that may be the most important thing about the deal, you know

what i mean? nothing else matters thanks, robert let's bring in the people behind the deal, kenny dichter, robby cochran, chairman and ceo of aspirational and former chairman lvmh south and southeast asia. seems like a great partner, kenny. welcome. in terms of expanding the brand in terms of luxury, what a great partner but also coming with lvmh experience. kenny, how long has it been? you used to come on the show and you were a marquee jet guy >> joe, on august 1st, 2013, i was right there on the set we weren't at home, but i was on the set and we announced wheels up it's 7 1/2 years to the day. "squawk" has been a great partner as we've announced some great things

i know, joe, you were there for justify and american pharoah we got tom brady in the big game tom we've been flying since game one. it's a great day and a testament to all the people working with us at wheels up and couldn't be more proud to have robby as our partner. >> robby, it could -- you could theoretically move this into -- are you talking about -- you tell me, what other areas are we talking about with the wheels up brand that would work globally >> with my 20 years at lvmh and a dozen years of private equity, i've seen the best brands are built which go beyond the functional ability at wheels up that's what it is also i've seen very, very good category combined with a good company and great leadership team here we have aggressive market,

large and growing. 90% of the people who can afford to fly have not flown private jet. just using next gen technology, you don't have to have record lvmh i've seen the overlap of luxury brands and private companies is up beauty, jewelry, champaign i think we can bring the experience and the connect to the benefit of the world class brand. moreover, i and my team have led lvmh in asia for over 20 years and i think that experience of contextual intelligence of asian market, we can bring that as everyone gets ready to basically engage with the fastest growing market in the world. in the next decade 62% of gdp growth is likely to come from asia every company has to be prepared

for that >> kenny, we've watched through the 7 1/2 years you expand and different relationships and we've been through things -- periods where you think it would be great for private jet travel and things where you're not so sure based on prospects for the economy. trying to figure out how the pandemic would go in a lot would like to fly private because they don't want to go on a commercial jet it's been a rough economy. these are some of the people we're talking about, the bifurcated economy the high end has been an advantage, obviously this is a difficult thing to talk about because it has been bifurcated your business has actually been good during the pandemic >> yeah. our business has been firm and, joe, you know, i'm really proud of our pilots and our staff. we stood in and the team on the front line delivered day in and day out for our members. i would say 2020 was really the

beginning of a big democratization. we saw so many new people, so many dynamic new people that never flew private before actually picked up and either joined wheels up or come onto the platform and fly so 2020 was really a solid year for us a lot of the m&a kicked in the platform we bought, the software that's going to enable the digital marketplace is kicking in i'll be honest. a lot of good things our good fortune the first thing we did on march 30 on your show with russell wilson, we kicked off meals up we're over 50 million for meals up for ravi and his team and elcatitan is a partner the spacs that have an operator, like ravi, he's an operator's on

per rater, have a 40% better outcome. we told well here. they talked up top about the investors in the pipe. an amazing group of a plus investors. couldn't be more happy about where we are and where we're going. >> what do you need to do, kenny? what will this enable you to do in terms of more product offerings, expanding, base you want to get to the place of uber but it's still pretty expensive. prices need to come down do you need to share planes? how will it work >> joe, it's simple. we're bringing $790 million of fresh capital to the business. of course with the public currency, we'll be able to be very strategic in how we go out and globalize while we democratize and digitize you said it up top

i mean, we need to in real time facilitate through our software that operator community coming on and having a plane where you need it when you need it at any point in time. so it's real time. connecting millions of customers with tens of thousands of airplanes in real time and that's really the key to the growth here. we built a dynamic membership model that i'm proud of. here's the pivot to the global marketplace. we want to be the airbnb, uber of the sky this partnership with aspirational and el catitan takes us a step closer to getting there. >> kenny, i remember you had that tequila that did pretty well, too. this has got to be a pretty proud day for you. congratulations. ravi, it does boggle the mind that hopefully there will be

people that can afford it. hopefully people get lifted up this is a tough time to talk about private jets when we're sending out stimulus checks. thank you both. >> thank you, joe. when we come back, robinhood will continue to limit trading today and short squeeze names like gamestop and amc. senator pat toomey will join us to talk about how congress should respond to the speculative trading and to the bans of some of these trades as we head to a break, check out silver today now up by 11.5%. more than $3 to $30 an ounce. stay tuned, you're watching "squawk box" and this is cnbc.

still to come on "squawk box. so much. elon musk taking to new social media platform clubhouse we'll speak to the ceo of the drop-in audio chat and find out what elon talked about and what

comes next for the social media hit. wall street looking hard at speculative trading on wall street senator pat toomey will discuss 'rba rhtft ts. and so much more. wee ckig aerhi 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. ♪ ♪ ♪

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welcome back to "squawk box" this morning take a look at futures on this snowy morning. dow up 237 points. nasdaq looking to open higher, 131 points higher. s&p 500 looking to power higher 36 points. let's show you where bitcoin stands given all of the interest we've seen in that and frankly how so many bitcoin millionaires were piling into gamestop and making this almost protest vote, if you will, with their money. bitcoin is trading at $34,065. it's up 3.5% it's been back and forth and quite volatile. we are on gamestop watch as you might imagine this morning again. the stock now trading at about $300.10. it's off 7.5%.

we're watching what robinhood does with its traders still limiting the buying. take a look at this this morning. silver silver this morning surging to nearly a six-month high on a retail frenzy that started with a conversation on reddit taking out some of the short positions on that. we're seeing that power higher, not just silver but some of the silver miners themselves as well joe? >> thanks, andrew. coming up, senator pat toomey is going to join us and then aliens, memes, crypto and the future of tesla. elon musk discussed all of those topics on a new social media app growing in popularity called clubhouse. we'll speak to the company's ceo. we'll be right back. ♪♪ this is what community looks like.

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welcome back to "squawk box. a group of republican senators are proposing a smaller stimulus bill presenting president biden with a potential path to a bipartisan compromise. ylan mui joins us with that.

good morning to you. >> reporter: good morning, andrew those republican senators are going to the white house later today to pitch biden directly on their plan it's a group of moderate republicans include several who served with biden while he was in the senate. susan collins of maine, lisa murkowski of alaska. rob portman of ohio. biden spoke with them yesterday and invited them to the white house for a full exchange of views. the gop plan is only $600 billion. that's 1/3 of the $1.9 trillion package that the administration has proposed some of the major differences are direct checks. they would phase out for individuals making $50,000 a year and for couples making $100,000 a year. the boost in unemployment insurance would end sooner than that september cutoff that biden had envisioned and the money for schools would be reduced to $20

billion instead of $170 billion though the funding for the vaccine would remain at $160 billion. so, becky, while biden is willing to hear this group out, the white house has reiterated that the risk right now is not in doing too much but in doing too little back to you. >> ylan, thank you very much obviously the other big issue in washington is "the game" stop saga and robinhood and the call for hearings to try to figure out what was going on. for more on both issues let's bring in pennsylvania republican senator pat toomey and the incoming ranking member of the senate banking committee which will be holding a hearing to investigate the current state of the stock market thanks for joining us. >> good morning, becky. >> the hearings that are going to be held, when you look at the situation what do you think really bothers you the most about it >> what bothers me the most is mycolleagues who think we have to run out and pass a new law, have more regulation and somehow

limit the freedom of people to participate in the stock market. so we can have our hearing but i hope it doesn't reinforce a tendency to do things that we haven't made the case for why they need to be done i do want to stress, these platforms, these apps that make it so easy for people to trade at no cost, fractional shares at some time, this is a great thing. this helps to democratize our markets. it allows people of ordinary means to participate as investors. i share hope we don't end up doing something that damages our capital markets. >> what about the idea that robinhood is restricting the stocks, that people can't buy them on the way up >> right i want to make sure we understand what happened there

as you know, becky, when a stock gets particularly volatile, the clearinghouses require brokers to have more capital to make sure they can carry through on the settlement two days after the execution despite the price may be too far away. the additional capital requirement is generally understandable and sensible. it's quite possible to me that it was a need to bring additional capital that caused temporary suspension in certain trading stocks on the platforms. we should find that out. that would be an understandable reason driven by the regulatory requirements if there's some other reason, it would be interesting to know capital requirements are a pretty plausible one to me. >> senator, let me just ask. you're concerned about the hearings from saying -- whether

it be pi the retail investors or hedge funds trying to drive down prices or say they closed out trades how deeply are you interested in digging into both of those issues >> we'll find out. the sec routinely investigates these things it is legal to short stock and it should be legal that happens every day were they out deceiving people were they manipulating sending false information about the companies? that would be a different matter i've not heard any such allegations. similarly, on the part of the folks using social media as a platform to coordinate their buying, i'm not aware that they were lying or creating deception or fraud they were celebrating that they were going to put it to the hedge funds. aside from what you think of their motivation, it's not at

all clear to me that they did anything illegal so, fine, we can do a hearing and explore that as i say, my concern is that we have some kind of regulatory or legal reaction that's completely unnecessary. by the way, it's not likely that this is to become a regular feature of our markets these retail investors don't know how it's going to end for the late arrivals or people who held they're going to lose a tremendous amount of money that will tend to dissuade people you can only be enthusiastic for losing money for so long and it runs its course is my guess. >> senator, let me ask you a question we are in agreement. one of the unique features of this phenomenon is typically we've talked about investor

protection and the, quote, little guy has argued they wanted that protection this is the opposite right now. >> yeah. >> if you say the phrase investor protection. by the way, if you're trying to protect me, what you're doing is protecting the hedge fund, protecting the establishment we want a laissez-faire system we want to be able to shoot the moon just like the hedge funds and we should have that opportunity. what do you say to that? >> they're exactly right of course they should have that. these are adults it's grown men and women they can decide if they want to threat as a gallonabling exercise, let them do so it's their money it's their decision. if they do this routinely they will lose a lot of money eventually they'll be unable to or lose their enthusiasm who am i to tell them? you certainly should be protecting penal from dishonesty, from fraud, from

misrepresentation, from false information. that's an obligation we have, the sec's main goal is to make sure the information is accurate what they can do with the information is so paternalistic that i would be strongly opposed to that. >> senator, let's shift gears and talk about the covid relief package, the next one on the table. the ten senators, republicans who are going to the white house today, you're not on the list. what do you think of the proposal that they're putting forward? >> look, it looks to me like -- so first of all i haven't seen a discussion it looks like what we did just 36 days ago i think it was we passed a trillion dollar spending bill spending money on health care, unemployment insurance, direct payments,

nutrition supplements, ppp loan. we did all of that to the tune of almost $1 trillion after, as you know, $3 trillion we did last spring. so why we need a few weeks later to come back and do it all again, i don't get that. most of this money hasn't been spent. i don't think there's a good case for redoing this, maybe even on a bigger scale according to proesident biden if he had hi way. i think it's a bad idea. >> what about the covid vaccine money itself would you go along with that or nothing in this bill is necessary? >> i haven't seen a case for what is, but, look, i firmly believe we should be doing everything we can to make sure this vaccine gets into people's arms as quick a as it possibly can. if it turns out right now an obstacle is money, then i'm open

to that. absolutely we' put a tremendous amount of money behind this and it's not clear to me that that's what's -- that's the limiting factor right now but if it is, then by all means i'm open to that that's the one thing we absolutely have to do as quickly as we possibly can beyond that, you know, the economy is in a totally different place than it was in, you know, nine months ago, whenever it was when we were in a free fall. now we're in a very strong growth mode where we have isolated sectors that are hurting, transportation, hospitality, transportation, those folks. something targeted is what we did. new round of ppp loans is designed to be very conducive for those sectors. i don't think proibd has made the case >> it's probably worth pointing out with those ten senators, it doesn't matter what anybody else thinks if you can reach a deal with

those, that's 60 votes and they could do it without budget reconciliation >> you are correct if every democrat agrees, they can hit the house and president on both. that will be done. that remains to be seen. >> it is we want to thank you for your time >> sure. thanks for having me when we come back, the co-founder and ceo of audio based social media app clubhouse will join us right after this break. then at the top of the hour we're going to be sitting down and speaking with former t.d. a merry trade ceo joe moglia

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last night elon musk made his debut on social media app clubhouse. towards the end of the discussion he brought vlad tenev to talk about gamestop and reddit during the meetup musk asked tenev to what degree are you beholden to citadel? he said this was a clearinghouse decision and it was based on

capital requirements from our perspective, citadel and other market makers weren't involved in that musk then asked, but wouldn't they have a strong say on who got put in charge of that organization since it's an industry consortium, not a government regulatory agency, tenev responded i don't have any reason to believe that i think that's just like, you know, then you're getting into the kind of conspiracy theories a little bit so i just have no reason to believe that's the case, you know so the drama continues andrew >> thanks, becky as we just heard, clubhouse is a new destination for wall street and silicon valley insiders and so many more to connect online it has been growing at a remarkable pace. clubhouse co-founder and ceo paul davison we appreciate you joining us i spent the weekend on clubhouse. i saw you in a conversation with ray maguire, the mayoral

candidate who will be joining us on "squawk box" a little bit then of course last night i don't know if it was the debut of elon musk on clubhouse. for those uninitiated, this is an invitation only currently platform so it's not available for everybody, some of whom may be watching who are members but others aren't. what it exactly is >> first i'd say it's pre-launch we're working to open it up to everyone as fast as we can clubhouse is a new type of social network based on voice where people come to talk and listen and learn from each other real time the topics like sports, politics, music, social justice, thousands of other things the way it works, you open the app. you'll see all sorts of different rooms where there are people talking you can jump into any of them and listen or raise your hand and participate. the focus is on authentic human

connection and dialogue rather than lags. >> what's the scale of the product? right now it feels frankly like a private club for those folks in it, that actually feels kind of cool. over time i imagine you're going to try to grow this. how big in terms of scale do you want to create and can you create that same level of intimacy at building clubhouse for millions people all around the world, verticals, all different walks of life. that's what we want to build the only reason we haven't opened it up to everyone yet is we want to make sure we get the product right before we do that. i think voice is something that's so universal. in the world of social networking it's relatively new, but it is the oldest medium.

gathering with other human beings and talking for as long as humanity has existed. we want to open it up to the whole world. with regards to how you scale that, this is a room and it's a flexible container if we can empower moderators and other people in the app to host great conversations, you could have millions or billions of people on the platform but everyone has their own room where they're talking. >> paul, as you know so very well, twitter has created a version of clubhouse they are almost trying to april t ape the model by the way instagram is doing it. twitter is adding something called spaces. how concerned are you about that >> we believe in the power of voice. we think people are going to be

launching the products focused on voice it's not surprising to us that other people would be working on products that incorporate voice, but we try to stay focused on what we are building and our user community and we think there's something to benefit of focus and we really think other people will be getting into the space. >> howdo you think about moderating the kind of conversations that are happening on the platform? because there has been criticism, as you know there are conversations happening about antiv-vaxxing, anti semitism, harassment. this is something all social platforms is dealing with. yours is unique in that it's truly real time medium, it's audio, not text. how do you police that or do

you? >> i think any social network needs to make moderation but you have to have the right people to staff those efforts, the right policy externally and internally and having the right product features so people can report incidents if they happen so you can manage them internally you're right live group audio, that's different. different from text and photos we have very strict guidelines in place that explicitly tell you what's okay and what's not okay and make clear that no form of abuse or hate speech or bullying has any place on clubhouse and then you have policies and procedures in place to make sure we're managing that swiftly and consistently. >> do you think that clubhouse replaces the podcast

you're doing it live, but there isn't a recording or at least there's not a recording in most cases. i know all the speakers have to agree with a recording in the case of elon musk, people started to stream it on youtube. i don't know if you intend to try to get that taken down >> well, i think that it's -- i love podcasts. rohan and myself, we love podcasts we love voice andmedium and i think it's a good complement to podcasting it's much more casual and, you know, there's so many different things you can do with voice just like there's so many different things you can do with text or video. i think it's a good complement a lot of people might -- you might be able to see it exist there. i think it's a good complement and people sing opera, play --

>> this is a business that's already being valued at $1 billion. obviously without a revenue model at least just yet, can you give us a peek as to how you're anything about revenue >> yeah. we're excited to allow all of the people whoever smart, bringing people together and what we want to allow them to do is make a living directly on clubhouse through subscriptions, ticketed events, receiving tips from isteners. we want to introduce that funnel for our members. >> do you consider yourself a media company?

one of your partners is a huge supporter not just in economic but a -- >> i think we're a platform. you look at what happened with the elon musk room arti messaged us, the students are watching me interviewee lon. the fact that anyone can go there without a following, without an audience and create conversations like that for everyone to experience, that's what gets us excited. >> paul, we very much appreciate you joining us we hope you come on back we want to follow your progress. it is a remarkable story we plan to continue talking to you. >> thank you so much i appreciate it. >> you bet joe. see you on clubhouse thanks, andrew coming up, another big hour

of "squawk box," joe moglia talks speculative trading. earnings, the economy and so much more with mohamed el erian and ray mcguire with new york city's plan for taxes. we'll be back. into this chip i invested in invesco qqq a fund that invests in the innovators of the nasdaq 100 like you become an agent of innovation with invesco qqq

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good morning welcome to february where u.s. equity futures are on the rise that's a change. the dow lost round 6 of the past 7 sessions robinhood shrinking the list of restricted stocks gamestop is still there. now retail interest sending silver prices surges we'll talk about the reddit rebellion with joe moglia and with former citigroup vice chairman ray mcguire who's running to be the next mayor of new york city. we'll talk to him about the future of new york the final hour of "squawk box" begins right now.

good morning welcome back to "squawk box. i'm joe kernen along with becky quick and andrew ross sorkin snowy morning in the northeast expected to continue for another 24 hours u.s. equity futures starting off on a bullish note up 216 points on the dow you can see the nasdaq participating more than 100 points s&p trading higher as well take a quick look at treasury yields these are a pretty good ba rom meet ter of what people think of prospects, stimulus and the economy. briefly we were above 1. recently went down looked like we would go down again. watching silver prices at one point hitting their highest level in about eight years

above 30 at one point. the move appears to be related precious metal could be a new investment target. market, short squeezes, so much more this hour three biggests, joe moglia, allianz's mohamed el erian and ray mcguire. robinhood had restrictions first imposed last week. retail traders attempted a short squeeze. attempted and succeeded on stocks including gamestop. this morning gamestop still limited. and other platforms include mamc, express, koss and

blackberry meanwhile, sources telling cnbc one hedge fund took a massive loss thanks in part to its short bet on gamestop. melvin capital down as gamestop surged 1600% becky. let's bring in our first biggest on these very big topics gamestop, joining us for that is joe moglia the former chairman and ceo of t.d.ameritrade joe, great to see you this morning. thanks for being here with us. >> hi, becky i'm delighted to be on thanks for having me. >> i've been waiting to hear what you think about this. as somebody who knows this industry so well and those the retail trader so well, what are your thoughts watching this play out? >> i think there's a lot of drama. a lot of emotion a lot of things going on what you have to really do, put

a lot of things you have the long term investor charles schwab is focused on the long term investor you have the active trader ameritrade was focused on the risk trader and what's taking place now is in the day trading world. frankly they've done an incredible job to pull the day trading community together to get this done. when you look at what took place, a lot of people said, well, there's a lot of speculation here i can appreciate the speculation of day trading i can appreciate when you day trade and the market is doing well, you increase the probability you're going to do

better market not doing well, the opposite what happened here specifically, people actually really did their homework on this they didn't do fundamental ana analysis, gamestop, was significantly short, 140%, they were able to put a plan together to rally the community to be able to take advantage of that when they started to buy a i huge short they start to buy. they forced the market up. you got leverage involved it will force it up you got options involved they're responsible to make sure the trade gets settled when you do a trade it gets settled in two days. as the volatility goes up in a stock, the clearinghouse comes in and starts to increase their deposit requirements, kind of like margin requirements for an individual as that goes up, and as it goes up and as it goes up it gets to

the point where at some point robinhood was forced to stop trading. i recognize a lot of people think they did that with the idea that oh, my god, they have to protect the institutional investor they had to do what they did if they had not done that, we would have had to stop trading altogether that was something they had to do at that time. that's how i look at it. this is the day trading world. >> it sounds like you've got certainly some respect for the active day traders who were able to chase out the shorts in this but when you look at it, there was a whole lot of disruption, angry people on every side including the retail investors who were told they can't buy additional stocks and still can't. what if anything needs to be fixed, joe >> well, i think the -- i

understand i grew up on the institutional side of merrill lynch. for the last two decades my entire concern has been the individual investor, it would have to be, so yi understand here what's needed is better communication with the traders so when robinhood stopped trading, they didn't do that to protect the institutional investors, they did that because they were required to on the part of the clearinghouses if they understood it, they would feel better about it behind the scenes, becky, you've

got incredible technology, regulatory requirements. it's pretty complex. it's the job of the clearinghouse to make sure that when the trade settles, it settles and everything takes place. monies are exchanged, securities exchanged, et cetera that's why they get involved in this the regulatory agency is involved in that the long term is to protect the individual investor. >> joe, let me ask you this. there are traders very angry they couldn't trade these. is this indicative of robin hood, free trading >> yeah. >> if they wanted to keep trading would you tell them go to schwab, go to another platform because they have deeper pockets what's the solution that they were mad they couldn't trade >> there is an advantage frankly, there is an advantage for schwab they have greater technology, they've been in the clearing business -- sales

clearing business a long, long time they have an incredible balance sheet. $6.5 trillion in assets. when you need to put up more margin requirement, a firm with a better balance sheet, revenue stream has the ability to do that a little easier than a firm that doesn't quite have those resources but at the end of the day the reason why robinhood had to stop trading was because they needed to be able to deliver on the deposit requirements the requirements on the part of the vtcc were going through the roof so robinhood had to slow down number one, if the individual trader recognizes what's going on behind the scenes, they have a better understanding the bottom line on this, the reason why people are upset is because their trade worked if the trade didn't work and they didn't make as much money -- they blew the cover off the ball

they did beat the institutional investor there were those that had trade here and the trade was so successful, so successful it had to stop trading at least in those stocks where there were issues >> i think you answered the question i'll follow up i think it goes to the question of business model. i think some people look at the business model of robinhood effectively leveraging basically the trade. they're getting paid by citadel in this case some people think that is a problem unto itself and then there's this other problem which appears to be just straight capital. you just need a massive capital cushion to be able to deal with trading, especially in this social media world where people can come as mobs and make these trades. >> yeah. >> are they connected? are those business model issues connected? meaning the free trading on one side, the capital on the other

or are we talking about a startup company that just simply just doesn't have the capital cushion it needs in which case should they remain independent? >> number one, they are connected. you mentioned citadel. citadel has payment. happy to talk about that but with regard to the business model, the free trade concept works. it was 25 years ago chuck schwab said one day we're going to have no commissions in effect commissions have done nothing but go down over the last 25 to 30 years on wall street free trade is an incredible opportunity for any individual investor that wants to buy or sell stock or be involved in the market that's a plus. that's a plus. when you have an opportunity that really starts to go -- i mean, incredible as this particular trade was, there are

regulatory requirements associated with that in order to handle them, you are much better off in terms of -- so free trade is nice, it's good, but it's not enough by itself you have to have another revenue stream you have to have a strong balance sheet. it's great to have assets under management all of those things matter the more separate revenue stream, the greater your balance sheet, more assets under management, the greater the brokerage firm is going to be able to handle increased margin requirements robinhood is still in the early stages and it doesn't quite have the resources that so many of the other large brokerage firms happen to have across the board. with regard to robinhood, when they stopped trading, they needed to raise money. they went to their line of credit and had investors step up i think it was a positive sign that investors stepped up to help them out because they believe in the company at the end of the day the fact that robinhood doesn't have

quite capitol is a problem i don't know what they have because they're not public they are going to need more capital if this trade continues. but i'm aware of what they're doing. they're only allowing you to buy one share of stock for five options. that's going to protect them as well >> let me ask you this in many ways it started as a protest vote by some investors -- >> yeah. >> -- and a protest, i think, about hedge funds, the idea of manipulating the system, gaming the system one of the things that some of these people think and believe is high frequency trading has game phied the system to the benefit of the hedge funds and not to the benefit of the masses do you agree with that given that some of that high frequency trading, if you will, is what's paying for some of these trades?

>> i think some -- i agree with that, andrew, to a point i think at the end of the day when you look at what happened here, it was the individual that was successful it wasn't the high frequency trading. it was about millions of individual investors coming together with a well thought out strategy that had some leadership and incredible execution on that strategy there are from the very, very, very beginning to when it first showed up at ameritrade, we wanted to bring financial literacy to the families in the country. schwab, ameritrade, etrade, even robinhood has the best interests of the individual at heart all of the business we do is with individuals or financial consultants working with individuals. so at the end of the day the tools and the ability that the individual has today far greater

than they had 5five years ago far greater than five years ago. if 2020 had upheaval, racial, political, sexual equality, maybe 2021 is individual investor equality. do they have the tools and the skills to be able to execute these trades sfwh they do have the tools. they can be taught the skills but they need, they need better education so they understand what the down side is and they understand what their risk is. they need to be able to have that so the leaders in that world, i know in the brokerage world, that's a critical component in terms of what we try to deliver. for guys like portnoy, reddit, you have to take some responsibility to make sure people understand what's going on behind the scenes and the individual investor understands the complexity so they're better

educated when the market can turn against you. >> joe, it's pretty unusual for a stock to doublein value over the course of a couple of weeks but to see them go up more than 20 times in value over that time, how do you think this ends >> well, i think it's a hell of a trade. i think you back up a little bit, too, becky. go back to what we said a little while ago. people are being critical. they're talking about fundamental analysis normally it deals with the long-term perspective of a particular company there's also a technical analysis you have people on your show talking about the technicals, and they talk -- you've got momentum, different things going on so you've got the leaders of this movement really put in incredible time to figure this out. gamestop had a short of 140% go back to 2008 to the financial

crisis for a minute. it's large institutions. the reason why it blew up was because of individual leverage the short in 140% plus options plus margin is incredible, incredible leverage. the short got squeezed in this case like i think no short has ever been squeezed in history. what's the benefit of this for the institutional investors? i think it's a great education for them they've been able to do this and do this for the most part successfully, for long, long -- decades. now they recognize there is a way they can get hurt that they had not thought about before i think before they put on significant shorts in a particular name, the institutional investor, i don't care how smart they are, how successful they've been, they have to think through this before they put on the short >> hey, joe, before we let you go, you know how many people had to learn how to say shanaclear

the a is like ah >> was this you this year, almost undefeated? was this because of you, you laid the groundwork? >> it was -- it was because of jamie chat well is the current head coach he won every coach of the year award there is to win in our country. he's got a great staff he's got a great team. now i did recruit a good portion of that team and i did coach a good portion of that team. >> that's what i mean. >> i think we did do a good job of laying a foundation jamie and his staff and the players from 2020 deserve all of the credit for the incredible season coastal carolina had. i'm glad you brought it up and i was able to correct you on the pronunciation. >> that's what i said, so many people are just learning i mean, i watched with my eyes wide open, that's moglia's -- amazing, amazing

>> thank you. >> congratulations they are exciting. a lot of scoring it's great >> again, got to give that credit to the players and staff and jamie chatwell i couldn't be prouder. >> moglia's team >> thanks, joe we really appreciate your time today. obviously this is an evolving story. we'd love to have you back. >> happy to come back. hope i was helpful take care, everybody. >> you tee, see ya. >> okay. great conversation when we come back, a lot more. we'll have a couple of big interviews gamestop, we'll talk the markets and more allianz advisor mohamed el erian and then former citigroup vice president ray mcguire running for new york city. we'll talk about the future of new york city. first a few of today's biggest movers to show you

tell you about some of those headlines, president biden slated to meet with ten republican senators for covid-19 relief and the gop group is proposing a $600 billion plan. >> exxon and chevron are said to have discussed a merger late as the pandemic took hold those reports first reported by "the wall street journal." although they're not happening, sources are saying they could resume in the future elon musk saying he supports bitcoin. tesla ceo made the comment last night on clubhouse, he admitted he's been late to the party. clearly he should have brought some of the cryptocurrency i have to look into this to see whether he's actually bought himself. "squk x"etnsig aer this rur rhtft rilled cheese sandwich and ask, “why?” i see a new kitchen with a grill and ask, “why not?” i really need to start adding “less to cart” and “more to savings.”

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still to come this morning, allianz advisor mohamed el erian weighs in on "the game" stop trade and how he thinks it will end. check out shares of tesla.

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>> we sell games >> right but are you good at it >> not really. people download all their games now so we're kind of like, i don't know, what do you call it? >> a dying business? >> yeah, yeah, that's it >> retail traders are turning their attention to silver.

the precious metal shooting up this morning notching its highest level in eight years joining us to talk about this in the broader market of all of this retail market activity is mohamed el erian, also the president of queens college cambridge. mohamed, last week we had a couple of days, volatile days where we lost 6, 700 points. are you troubled by the -- i don't know, the speculation that this is a symptom of perhaps or is it the actual -- what's actually happening that troubles you about the underpinnings of the market >> so i'm fascinated by the new technicals, joe. thank you for having me. and that is that retail investors can have such an influence. you mentioned silver today silver is moving on the notion,

i want to stress it's the notion because it's being moved on the notion that that's going to be the next target. the fact that you can move silver is an indication they have to take the new technicals seriously. >> thanks, mohamed, spell it out. is this going to theoretically end? when the music stops and there's no chairs left for people to sit, are you expecting that stock to return to where it was, for example? and how's that going to look what does that say

>> okay. so two issues. the fact that you can get people to look at silver and in the process they look less at gamestop and because of that there's less worry that the hedge funds short gamestop are going to sell means you can impact lots of markets so don't under estimate in the short term the influence as to what will happen, look, there's a major battle going on between three actors, not two. three. the hedge funds that are short game stop, the retail investors that are long and people in the middle and the question as to where it goes next is who's got the weakest hand who's going to fold first? who's not going to be able to stay in that trade historically that has been the retail investor, historically, but the retail investors are more organized right now if they can stay organized, that's why the silver issue is a really interesting call. if they can stay organized, they can force the hedge funds to

cover more today you get a notion that maybe they're not going to stay organized so we're going to see the one thing that is systemically worrisome is if the intermediary falls that is a completely different issue than if two sides of the trade fold >> but you don't ascribe what we're seeing with the shorted stocks into the same area as the hot ipos, the spacs, you know, the fed-induced irrational exuberance, if you will? is it all part of the same thing? are we in the late innings of this cycle >> it is certainly part of the same thing when you take the cost of leverage to zero and when you make liquidity abundant and predictable, which is what central banks have done, you encourage people to take on a lot of risk. you encourage people to take on a lot of leverage. you encourage people to take on a lot of debt.

we've seen all of this happen. this is another illustration of that phenomenon so, yeah, it is part of the whole thing. are we in the late innings remember, i've always told you one of four things is going to determine that central banks doing a u-turn on policy, they're not going to do that massive bankruptcies, unlikely in the short term. market accident? perhaps. we came close on market accident last week. inflation fears. so keep the eye on the last two things that is what tells me whether we're in the late nicks or not otherwise, this can continue for a while. but we got close to a market accident last week >> mohamed, let's just for argument's sake say some day that the shorts are all gone in gamestop, where would you expect the stock would be at that point? who would be the main owners of

that stock and what finally happens at that point? is it like wylie coyote or the road runner and he looks out and has gone off the edge of the cliff, looks down and there's nothing beneath him? or does it stay there? i don't know how it ends >> technical short terms, fundamental long terms if your scenario plays out where the shorts are forced to cover, they scramble, the price will go higher however, that price is completely disconnected from the fundamentals the inclination of the longs to get out is going to be a very big high that is small volumes in terms of what can be sustained what you would get is the thing shoots up as shorts cover and then it comes back down quickly as longs realize that they're succeeded, the hypothesis has laid out it will end up lower than here but if the hedge funds are

forced to cover it's going to go a lot higher first >> all right, mohamed. i don't know what a lot -- pretty high already. we'll see. when you think about it, 500, 600, who knows anyway, thank you. we'll see you around thank you. >> andrew? >> thank you. thanks, joe. coming up when we return, ray mcguire planning to revitalize businesses in new york candidate for new york city mayor willoi jn us exclusively in a conversation on "squawk box" in just a moment.

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welcome back to "squawk box" this morning new york city was the original covid-19 epicenter in the u.s. about a year after it first hit it's still taking a heavy toll on public health as well as business in july a report from the new york city partnership estimates as many as 1/3 of the city's small businesses may never reopen. joining us right now is an exclusive interview to talk about bringing the city back new york city's economy and what it all means, former citigroup vice chairman and democratic candidate for mayor, ray mcguire. so much concern within the business community, within citizens of the community about how you bring back this city

i know you have put together an economic plan that i hope you'll share with us. >> good morning, "squawk box." started from the bottom, now we're here next version from the streets to the suites good to see you all. hollywood can't make this up so -- >> it's great to -- go ahead, ray. >> no, it's great to be with you all. thank you. what can i tell you this morning? >> it's great to be with you, ray. help us with this. i think everybody's trying to understand right now how you or anybody is going to make sure that this city thrives in the future given some of the numbers we've seen, frankly given the tax base that appears to be continually eroding. we're seeing business people leaving the city in droves, being more mobile than ever. you're hearing about people relocating to florida and other

places what do you do about this? >> you know, it is a -- what we explained before when i was fortunate to be here, honored to be here before was george floyd and covid have revealed the inequities we knew have existed for quite some time, systemic inequities in education, economy, health care and criminal justice reform. what we need today is leadership that can move us forward in what i describe as leading the greatest, most inclusive comeback in the history of new york city. what does that include it includes the creation generation of 500,000 jobs half of which will go to, as you've just outlined, small businesses, of which one out of three is likely we need to make sure we inject into the small businesses, go big, go small, go forward. the first part of going big is going small and focusing on what

is the most essential part of new york which is the small businesses what we've outlined is a jobs accelerator where we take 50,000 jobs and we underwrite, we subsidize half of the -- half of the payroll for a year that's number one. number two, we want to have small businesses keep 100% of their sales tax receipts for a year so they can reinvest in the businesses number three, we want to have city permits and liens delayed, deferred let's come up with a way so we can structure that what happens is during these times, fines get levied, there's no way for businesses to pay for this we also want to make sure for small businesses we negotiate some relief. a couple of weeks ago i was in brooklyn and we gathered a small group of business owners and what they outlined was the fact

that they still have to pay utility bills that are 100 cents on the dollar yet they're making 10 cents on the dollar we need to negotiate some kind of relief for them, rent relief, utility relief then we need to make sure that we have what we call a comeback bank and that is to put money into the cdfi, the local banks so they can make investments into the small businesses in the form of grants, low interest loans, equity and mentorship that's no small part the other part to this when i get to go big, it is infrastructure we need to invest in infrastructure they have a plan to invest in infrastructure my plan is to make certain we fix basic infrastructure fractured bridges, sewer mains make sure the basic infrastructure is working with the environmental crisis we're

facing >> sorry >> i was going to say, ray, all of this sounds great, but costs a lot of money the question is do you raise taxes? who do you raise taxes on at a time when we keep hearing stories about some of the wealthiest new yorkers fleeing this is an issue not just in new york city but it's an issue in many cities and states across the country, especially that have been hit with the s.a.l.t. tax, the taxes have effectively gone up on everybody what do you do to tell them to stay and pay more if that's the case >> well, andrew, what we know about new yorkers is that new yorkers like me, i love new york the people love new york what new yorkers need is leadership they need leadership and they need experienced leadership. people don't want to leave new york they don't have confidence new yorkers need leadership in which they can believe it has a proven track record, who can get

things done and bridge the divide andrew, we need to bridge the divide if they look at my track record. i manage the through the crisis. i managed at the bottom of the last financial crisis we had i saw the stock go from $55.99 and we had to invest so people love this city what they're looking for is leadership what they're looking for is management they're looking for somebody who can bridge the divide. the minute they go from the streets to the streets and lead in someone whom they can believe. new yorkers don't want to leave. this is the greatest city that exists somebody who wants to grow, pro growth, wants to make sure in the best area. invest in arts education people want to be here the aspirations around the world are to be in new york city if you make it here, you have been vetted by the most difficult competition that exists anywhere.

people love new york we don't have the leadership in which people can have confidence i am quite confident that when i get into the mayoralship i can reach out to the leaders in the city, in cambria heights, in harlem, in brooklyn, in staten island, in manhattan to make sure those leaders come together we need to bring that divide and give people the opportunity that i had and many children need to have this isn't about the children, it's how we grow our way out of this when it comes to the budget, we know how to manage budgets you cannot tax your way out of this those that have the resources like me and others can pay more. they need to make sure we have the quality of life. we can be more efficient but we can't cut our way out. we have to grow out of this. combination of growth and efficiency. >> ray, what do you do about the relationship between the public and the police

this is something that the business community often talks about as well because the business community is often calling for law and order and more safety and yet there is also a demonstrable conundrum between the relationship that the police and public in new york city do have? >> listen, this is obviously very personal to me. it happened to me, 6'4" black man on the day we shot our launch video black driver like me got pulled over what do we need to do? we need to have what i call rap, rap, respect, accountability and proportionality between the police and community police and the community need to respect each other today that trust has been breached why is that? because those who are the serial abusers have not been held accountable. you pay $200 million a year to settle cases, we need to address that and proportionality. we need to have proportionate

areas. in the black and brown communities it's a sledge hammer we need to restore the confidence, restore the trust. how do we do that? we need to make certain we invest in mental health care colleges people who go to go to mental t issues, we need to invest in organizations that can help intervene, we need to invest in the violence interrupters, we need to invest here. and so i want better policing, i want a to reallocate the police budget reallocate, to get into those services so we can prevent the crime. >> ray, before i let you go, just curious, as we have been talking about gamestop all morning, it's a unique issue because it has todo with the reputation and part of wall street, and you have political leaders from aoc on one side, ted cruz, actually coming together, behind this. did you have a take on what's happening here

>> you know, i think we need to be mindful about how we regulate this industry. and whether or not we've gone too far, so that a casino-like atmosphere, a casino-like environment is one that prevails, so we need to come and make sure that we manage much better because the down side is somebody will suffer greatly and we need to be careful how we manage programs like this and we need to be very thoughtful about that >> ray mcguire, great to see you, we hope to continue these conversations throughout the election, and look forward to talking to you again, very, very soon. >> thanks for having me "squawk box. appreciate you >> always good to see you. thanks >> joe >> thanks, andrew. let's get over to jim cramer, i know you were listening to ray mcguire there, jim, and sometimes what goes up sometimes comes down, are you

concerned for some of the, and welcome back, some of the action we saw last week, or you know, you don't want to delve into that, you can talk about some big earnings numbers that i know you were probably poring over in your spare time last week, as well >> i have otis and full disclosure, old friend of mine from law school, known for him for years, talk with him behind the scenes so i don't want to do anything that people thing is untoward, an old friend of mine, 30-year-old friends i do think, joe, it is important to put this in perspective, i think this is regulatory risk, not systemic risk so i will put it in the confines of what i regard as being what happened with the s&p, not during the february decline, but much more with what happened in the mixed decline, in january of 2018, and in the crash of 2010 and then i would think monday the 24th in august, of 2015, when we had a china problem, so it's really

those. so people don't feel like wait a second, that's the end of the world. that's obviously not true. the actual number of companies that are involved in the squeeze, and the size, we have the largest of 22 billion, and before you get to even anything below 7 billion, you only have 7. so you have to keep that in perspective. think the most important thing is for people torecognize that the quarters were really good last week and let's not forget, that there's some opportunities here >> yes, we didn't, i wish we had more time to do all of the normal stuff, but you got to admit, jim, i know you were watching it, we were transfixed watching. >> sure. >> i would never have believed that we would talk, we did talk about gamestop, on this show, a couple of years ago, you know, off and on, because we thought, you know, is it similar to blockbuster? because, you know, if you're going to do everything online, and it looked like it was, and for that to be the poster child for going up 2,000%, it would

have been the last thing, do you see any similarities you remember iomega? i know you do. do you remember presstech, do you remember, on airplanes, you would open it up, long before the internet, you would be able to buy things, sky mall or something like that, that went up, 100 times, and is this fundamentally different from all those things, jim? >> we have to be careful, because axn, and that turned out to be rick smith did a terrific job and that stock went up and looking at gamestop, when you look at it, with the single digits, the thing i want to emphasize is gamestop is real. you and i were talking about in the late fall, they got hit in the 2017, 2018 transfer where they predicted a very big number for christmas and then they ended up falling dramatically. and why?

that was the beginning of when take two, ea, and blizzard, and swift, direct to consumer, and could ryan cohen have a plan absolutely he might be able to take the money and be able to invest in e-gaming and he might be able to guy ezinga and certainly a reason to think that he could get something back, but that's far away from where it is, with 50, 60 as soon as you say it's not where it is then you're thwarting the people who want the stock to go higher, and i don't want to hurt them. and in the glory days, it was hard to get to 50, 60 and the line of debt, you can pay down that debt, before they even get started, joe, and again, no one wants to hear that and the company has been mum, and when you look at the possibilities of what ryan wants to do it, is hard to get more than an eight-bagger and you've won, to me, and why are you staying at the plate? you won, you won this is the fifth quarter, if

you want to analogize the super bowl you won. that's what i'm concerned about. >> good analysis, jim. excellent. thank you. >> thank you >> and we'll hear more in just a couple of minutes, more on the morning news, ail ver trade, when "squawk box" comes back sales are down from last quarter but we are hoping things will pick up by q3. yeah...uh... doug? sorry about that. umm... what...its...um... you alright? [sigh] [ding] never settle with power e*trade. it has powerful, easy-to-use tools to help you find opportunities, 24/7 support when you need answers plus some of the lowest options and futures contract prices around. don't get mad. get e*trade and start trading today. dana-farber cancer institute

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welcome back to "squawk box. let's take a look at some of the silver trading happening in the market right now just a hair over 30 bucks an ounce right now. up 10% as you can see, a bit of a breakout from the recent trend and we will watch whether that has more legs. the other thing to watch, what is happening with silver etfs as well, a huge amount for the pre-market trade up 9%. that same kind of breakout move here and one thing to pay attention to in the silver trade, whether or not the dislocations in the trading in the market will lead to a premium or discount to the asset values in each fund, according to data from wide chart, we've seen big moves here, 11 to 12% premium and discounts in the trade something to watch there and watch the silver miners as well. pan am silver, wheaton precious metal, hecla mining all up in

the pre-market trade that's not even leaving, or looking at some of the micro cap small ones out there be careful out there, guys back to you. >> thank you very much >> folks, that does it for us today. sorry. that does it for us today. we will see you back here tomorrow joe, i'll see you back here tomorrow, too. right now, time for "squawk on the street". good monday morning, welcome to "squawk on the street." i i'm carl quintanilla, with jim cramer and dave faber, snowy east coast in times square a big week for eco data and the second busiest week of q4 earnings. the road map begins with the reddit fueled frenzy continued for gamestop, amc and now silver the latest target in the short squeeze. plus, goldman calls it the biggest