trading. plus, some key earnings on tap today. we'll hear from pfizer, u.p.s. exxon mobil, and alibaba, all before the opening bell. it's february 2, 2021, it's ground hog's day, and don't forget to put your booties on because it's cold out there as "squawk box" begins right now ♪ i got you babe i got you babe they say our love won't pay the rent ♪ ♪ before it's earned our money' all been spent ♪ >> good morning, everybody, welcome to "squawk box" on cnbc. i'm becky quick along with joe kernen and andrew ross sorkin. i love when you reprize the movie, but you better not call me a hairdo, that's all i'm thinking got to love this movie got to love this song. >> as you know, i've got other networks interested in me, qvc. >> the shopping channel.

>> that quote wasn't even bill murray i've memorized even the quotes from the guys on the radio that comes on every morning, so it's pretty sad. >> you watch that enough times, like we all have, you tend to pick up on some of these things. >> one of the great ones. >> absolutely. absolutely i hate it when people say absolutely let's check out the u.s. equity futures at this hour right now, a little bit of ground hog's day based on what we have seen with green arrows in the mornings. we saw gains yesterday, and those gains were pretty significant. for the dow, a gain of 3/4 of a% for the s&p it was a gain of 60 points, a gain of 1.6%. the big gainer was the nasdaq, that's a gain of 2 1/2%. the s&p, though, saw its best performance that it's seen since all the way back to november 24th big gains across the board on all of these issues, and in fact, the gains we saw yesterday

made the dow and s&p, put them back in positive territory for the year, catching up with where the nasdaq was the dow is above 30,000. it's still about 3%, maybe a little bit more than that below its all time high. you've got the s&p and the nasdaq down by about 2% below their all time highs right now, nasdaq indicated up by another 120 points. dow futures indicated up by about 258 points and the s&p is indicated up by about 33 we should also take a quick look at what's been happening in the treasury market. at least right now, the ten-year is sitting at a yield of 1.1%, and then if you want to take a look at what's been happening with the reddit stocks that we have been watching so very closely. there has been a little bit of a pull back today. you're going to see right now with game stop, down by about 23%. down by 20 or 30% after declining yesterday. this is -- yesterday was a 30% decline. today, down by $5,100. a manc down after yesterday's

relatively flat session. this morning, amc down by 20%. still up by 330% over the last two weeks, and then if you want to take a look at silver prices. there is a little bit of a debate about this, about whether these are reddit traders bidding up, or hedge funds gains is down by about 5% this morning. andrew >> it's also fascinating, here's the other part of the story. robinhood now officially saying it has raised an additional $2.4 billion from shareholders to help it ride out the trading frenzy bringing the total infusion of cash to $3.4 billion since last thursday that's more than the company had previously raised in the eight years since its launch and that influx allowed robinhood to raise limits on trading in some of those volatile stocks

for example, users can now buy 20 shares of gamestop or 20 options contracts today. that's up from one share just yesterday. the house financial services committee is planning a hearing on robinhood that's going to happen on february 18th. it's called game stopped, who wins and lose when is short sellers, social media, and retail investors collide a politico report says ceo vad ten deny vlad tenev is expected to testify. the way some of this is structured is a coupon effectively. there's a little bit of a debt instrument i don't want to call it a debt instrument because it's being described as equity, but this terms of valuation, it relates to a discount to almost a guaranteed discount to the ipo price in terms of how this is all set. so all of these investors, some of whom were there before, trying to protect their previous

investment, others who may be quote unquote, clipping a coupon, if you will, all the way up and hoping for this intended ipo in the future. >> more spac >> might be easier, right? >> yeah. could be a spac. >> i don't know if a spac helps them i at one point thought you would find a spac buyer! yeah, but you'd figure you'd need, you can't raise money on what the ipo price is going to be to do it at this point, you would want, obviously, a discount, and that's a lot of money that the company is raising, though, when we have been questioning the entire business model for robinhood, but looks like they're here to stay hey, 20 shares now you can buy when you could buy one share, you can see why the conspiracy theorists say, hey, wait a

second that's really all the financial wherewithal was setting the limits it had nothing to do with we don't want people game stopping the system. >> they didn't have the money to allow to buy more shares we can get it back from you for two days. >> not nearly as sexy. not nearly as sexy a story. >> it's scary for any of the investors involved with that the idea that you night go belly up that's the scary thing with it, and i think that's why the ceo had been so, you know, adamant that that was not their problem. didn't even bother going with the other stuff. they were so concerned about those liquidity questions, i think. that was a much scarier thing for them to consider. >> right >> well, let's move on we're going to talk about some covid relief bills a group of republican senators said they had a productive discussion with president biden and vice president harris yesterday.

and here is senator susan collins speaking for the group >> i think it was an excellent meeting, and we're very appreciative that as his first official meeting in the oval office, the president chose to spend so much time with us in a frank and very useful discussion >> senator collins said they agreed to follow up to work towards an agreement the republicans are pushing a $600 billion relief bill, although democratic congressional leaders began procedures yesterday to pass president biden's $1.9 trillion proposal without republican support if necessary we're going to talk to republican bill cassidy in the next hour. he is one of the senators who met with the president yesterday. becky. i think this is pretty interesting, guys, to watch how this plays out because this is going to be moving on two tracks the whole way down

they are moving toward the budget reconciliation, taking the first steps on that. that would be 1.9 trillion a big difference between 1.9 trillion and the 600 billion the senate came forth with biden is a creature of the senate, he grew up there obviously wants to work on a bipartisan package they are going to be moving down two tracks simultaneously. there's a march 14th deadline, set on when unemployment benefits start to expire, and i think they're looking at that as a deadline i think it's unclear to say which direction they're going to go until they get a little further down road, though, because, you know, that's a big gap, and president biden would probably lose some democrats if he were to go with a bill that was closer to the 600 billion they were talking about because, you know, they have cobbled together this 1.9 trillion you've got bernie sanders out there saying they absolutely should have the higher minimum wage of $15 going in even through budget reconciliation, trying it squeeze that in and say that that would in effect end some of the budget deficit,

or make the budget deficit less as a result because fewer people would be relying on government assistance it's going to get pretty hairy, and i think this is going to be pretty interesting market is kind of looking at this that there's going to be more money coming. there's a question about which amount of money, the budget numbers are going to come through, and the biggest number is the direct pandemic response. the money that's going to vaccines and trying to get that rolled out that's not great news for that to get slowed down while they debate all of the other issues we would like to see that happen sooner rather than later >> trying to read the tea leaves for the discussion you were just saying i don't watch a lot of punditry anymore. i'm just wondering what all of these ratings are going to look like because i have found, you know, i'm really not watching those other channels there's not enough arguing

there's just not enough conflict it's kind of boring, but i did see some punditry saying that this really exorbitant amounts there's been a lot of executive orders, and some people are pos sit -- positing, this is the opening for the far left, i have done all of this for you so he can perhaps be more compromising are other stuff. look, i have done 40 things that you wanted, that, you know, i was able to do with the sign of a pen, now i'm going to work with these people across the aisle. i don't know whether that's true, but some people are saying he's already given concessions to the left saying look, i'm on your side. please don't get mad at me if i compromise in the future have you been -- i don't, i'm telling you we're going to see some of these ratings at other networks, they're going to miss trump. nothing's going on it's like, what are you arguing about these five people.

i don't like any of you and now you're arguing you're not arguing about anything i care about so, you know, anyway thank god i have espn plus, and i'm watching games of schools that i have never even heard of but i'm fixated on that. >> i've been watching cnbc the whole way through because of all the retail trading that's happened, and everything that's gone along with that. >> of course you have. of course you have of course you have >> no, i have. i watched mad money last night with jim >> did you i've got that in a little box. that's always on >> i honestly did. jim was doing it from home it was pretty interesting the way they set it up jim is kind of like my dinner buddy, i make dinner, watch "mad money. >> does he ever do the bye bye bye from home, is he able to do that >> they have the two screens set behind him, and they set it up in his studio so it looked like he was there it was pretty well done.

i was impressed. let me tell you about corporate news, energy giant bp posting a bigger net loss than expected for the full year a key metric underlying replacement cost laws. that came in at $5.7 billion for 2020 that's used as a proxy for net loss, and that number was nearly a billion dollars worse than had been expected. the company's ceo told our colleagues in europe that a pandemic resulted in a brutal year for the oil business as we all know we watched this. he thinks that the mass rollout of covid vaccines can lead to a good outlook for the year ahead. that stock on this news, down by about 4.3% when we come back. we're going it to talk about th big move in the futures and the decline of reddit stocks today later we're going to have the ceo of honey well on the company's earnings and helping with the vaccine rollout lots to talk about with darius adanczyk bill cassidy will be on, too, the senator. "squawk box" will be right back. k

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analysis g they put a plan together to rally the community to be able to take advantage of that. >> that was former td ameritrade chairman on the new sophisticated retail investor these days and how they are changing the investing landscape. also showing us his best coach moglia as he broke it down for us joining us now is j.j. kennehan, and jason snipe, principle at odyssey capital advisers and a cnbc contributor j.j. let's start with you, you have been focused on retail investors for years and years. i wonder what you think of how this played out and where things stand right now? >> i think joe was right, you know, quite a bit in his interview yesterday. he did a great job and you know, one of the things that i think really stands out about it is just if you look at how these things have happened in the past, many people are comparing these past events, it's a bit different for one

primary reason, and that is the tools that retail investors have is just so much better, better than many professionals had 20 years ago, and the other they think is that it's instantaneous feedback that is you can place the trade within seconds, you have your trade back, again, a lot different than it used to be in terms of how people were interacting with the market overall. obviously what's happened in gamestop and amc over the last few days has been kind of a crazy phenomenon, if you will. i don't think i have seen anything like it before, certainly from the retail community. when people are involved with the market overall, though, becky, i still think it's a positive thing we have seen so many people come into the market over the last year and a half or so. it's been a great thing overall in my opinion. now, you know, you have an event like this happen, it's, i know, everybody's throwing their arms up, et cetera, and talking about

restrictions one thing i want to clarify. we haven't restricted anything we did raise capital requirements so that you could buy, you could sell. we weren't letting you do so with margin, and we short stock only because you couldn't borrow those stocks in the open market right now. >> that's an important clarification. thank you for that, jj. >> it is restriction compared to -- >> that's pretty important right. no, that's an important clarification, and i know that i have said that over the last couple of days, so i do appreciate the clarification on that jason, let's talk a little bit about what you think this means for the broader market is there something that you think risks or threatens the broader market or do you think this is something that's confined to about seven or eight stocks, and it's not going to be something that has a bigger impact overall. >> i agree with a lot of the commentary that was already mentioned here this is great for the market i do think on joe's comments

yesterday, these are sophisticated retail investors there as lot of talk about these are unsophisticated folks. this is a very sophisticated trade that was executed very well, and when i look at how it impacted the broader markets as a whole, you know, i also look at the short interests, short interests are historically low right now. we have seen markets grow tremendously over the past decade do i think this is a blip in the road, to a certain degree, yes, and the s.e.c. will look at this to a certain degree. market manipulation, potentially how folks are hershorting stock. i think that might have some impact i think they'll be reasonable here, and in a large degree, this is great for the market, the emergence of the retail investor >> hey, jj, i have a question just about the market structure here issue which you've alluded

to and the question is this a situation that's specific to gamestop -- to robinhood in so far that it's a start up and maybe was less well capitalized or was it that this particular group of investors was actually all on gamestop, all on robinhood, i apologize, and they were all on robinhood and had this happened on any other platform that it also attracted the exact same kind of people to this trade that, for example, td or somebody else would have had that same kind of problem? >> well, andrew, you know, it was on, i believe, all platforms where people were trading it overall. you know, the actions robinhood took, i'm not really going to comment on that's their business, what they did. i can tell you what we did we looked at it, and we said, okay, here's something we foresee in terms of risk, maybe get a little out of control.

you have to remember one thing, people are trading on margin the way i equate it to in people, look at it this way, you do business with a bank. you went in for a loan that's what margin is, is a loan at some point, if so many people are coming for a loan for the same thing, the bank is going to say it's probably not in our best interest to be giving these loans anymore. what we did is said if you want to trade we are not giving you the loan to do so. if you have the money, we are giving you the means, you want to buy stock, sell stock, absolutely, we will let you sell that long stock, we will let you buy stock. we never stopped doing that. in terms of options, we let you buy calls, puts, the thing we put a stop to is something like selling a naked call, which once again, when volatility is completely out of control, which it was, we did not let you sell calls short. >> but, jj, the question or the point i'm trying to make is i believe something like 80 or 90% of the stocks being traded on

robinhood during those days were literally concentrated in five or ten stocks, full stop that was it. i don't believe that was the case at td or frankly any of the other brokerage firms because you have a more diversified clientele, it's a different type of clientele sure those names were high in volume on your platforms as well, but what i'm trying to understand is if this happened on another platform like yours or another, at that rate, what kind of issues it would create clearly it created issues for you unto itself, and it wasn't at those levels that it was at robinhood, do you see what i'm saying >> and i won't say it created issues as much as us getting ahead of risk, andrew, and what i would say for them, for anybody, is again, they're looking at it the same way you have to put up capital you have done a lot of great interviews over the last couple of weeks about this, and you do have to put up capital at night, et cetera. if you have concentration risk

as a firm, you have to start taking some actions in order to lessen some of that concentration risk so, you know, you may have to take certain actions in order to do so. what i would say is our risk team did a great job of getting ahead of things, and saying here's something we could see being a problem in the future. this is the best way we feel to get ahead of it. >> hey, jason, let me just go back to the overall markets again, just in terms of how important the retail investor is to the overall markets levels right now. we've seen so much activity and so much interest from the retail investors but when we have seen things like this in the past, it reminds him of previous cycles when you see retail investors get very active and do active trading, usually those cycles don't last if it doesn't last this time around, what does that mean? >> yeah, so that's a great point. i think, you know, as i look at the retail investor, and

emergence of the retail investor as i mentioned earlier, i think part of it is obviously, and hope to level the playing field going forward. what i will say, this is a tremendous win for the retail investor last week, with amc, and you know, a host of other names but i will say is wins are fw great, but losses are even more hurtful. i hope that, you know, the retail investor stays engaged. i think education will be important. you know, if i look at gme, you know, this morning, it's down almost 25%, down 30% yesterday, so i am concerned about folks who are late to this trade, and, you know, but the ones who have come in early have benefitted tremendously you're right, i think it's important that they stay engaged and continue to be involved in the market, and i think that serves the market in a lot of positive ways. >> gentlemen, thank you both for being with us today. jason, jj, i think we have lots

more to talk about on this front. hope to have you back soon >> thanks, becky >> take care. coming up after the break, a flurry of space news to tell you about, including the new planned missions from spacex and virgin galactic, that's next. and u.p.s. recorded quarterly earnings of $2.66 per share. revenue above forecast for the qute ay tuned "squawk box" is back right after this

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welcome back to "squawk box" this morning elon musk's spacex is going to be flying its first mission to space with an all civilian crew. it's going to take place later this year, and of course a major milestone for the space tourism industry the four-person crew will be led by jared isaacman, the ceo of payment processing company who he's also a pilot. one crew seat is reserved for a st. jude ambassador, and the remaining two will be decided by online competitions. nbc's tom costello spoke exclusively to musk and isaacman, and musk described what this mission means to him. >> i think first of all people will really enjoy, you know, seeing things vicariously from the video and watching the mission. it's like when, you know, america went to the moon in '69, it wasn't just a few people. humanity went to the moon.

we all went there with them. and i think it's something similar here we will all be with jared on the journey, and seeing it in realtime, and as mentioned earlier, this is going to be an important milestone on the road towards making access to space more affordable. >> musk said the length of the mission was up to isaacman, but he's assuming it will last two to four days, and hopefully we will all go on that mission with him. in other elon musk news, he tweeted just this over a couple of hours ago, quote off twitter for a while. looks like elon may be taking a break here >> i know the feeling, times that i do that myself, i usually don't announce it. there are times i just stop watching anyway, in the meantime, virgin galactic shares are soaring again today. they jumped yesterday after the company announced that it would

redo its december flight tech, and downgraded morgan stanley from equal weight, those stairs up another 11 1/2% joe. all right. becky, thank you coming up, we're going to dig into the reddit movement behind some of these hyped stocks, gamestop, amc down in the premarket, and silver prices are pulling back we'll see all that action there as we head to break. here's a look at yesterday's s&p 500 winners and losers i made a business out of my passion. i mean, who doesn't love obsessing over network security?

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good morning, u.s. equity futures are in the default mode this morning for a lot of what we have seen in recent sessions. kindof appropriate for groundhog day. up 241 points now or so on the dow. nasdaq indicated up triple digits s&p up as well checking some of this week's big

movers, we're going to look at that now there realtime. wow. gamestop is down to $155, after a pretty big drop yesterday. remember, it was up well above $400 all of this said without comment. do what you want for the latest on social media driven trading and other stories, let's welcome nela patel. editor and chief of the verge, and also a cnbc contributor. thanks for joining us. i don't know how this all plays out eventually with gamestop, but obviously come of the bloom coming off the rose for some of these stocks if it makes a round trip all the way back to approximately -- let's say it doesn't go all the way back we talked about it yesterday, maybe it stays at 50 or so up from 20 or below that, was it all a good exercise, a productive exercise, a positive

exercise for everyone involved >> well, sure. i mean, if you're somebody like me, you think that watching people put $5 into gamestop this week has caused more pressure for regulatory reform of the market than any pac contribution in history i think that is pretty good. i think all of us want to see a more sane market that reflects the actual value of these companies, that reflects the actual value of the companies, and people can participate without worrying about losing constantly in terms of did gamestop itself this entire situation teach us something? sometimes things go viral on the internet for no reason, and it's kind of dangerous to read more into it than that. >> a lot of people do not want regulatory relief. i don't know, maybe they think the s.e.c. might be able to consider the situation with some, you know, maybe a light touch, some prudent moves here just to make sure everything is

above board in terms of their roles, but most people certainly don't want washington to get involved, i don't think, nelay, and i'm not sure what you meant that we're now better able to see what the actual value of a company is after this incident i would take the opposite side, and say that value had nothing to do with what we have seen >> i'm saying what this situation has shown us is that sometimes the market can get completely divorced from the underlying value of a company, and the underlying value that it creates, and i think everybody actually on both sides of the aisle or if you're a pure anarchist and don't think government should be involved at all, everybody thinks that the market should reflect the j underlying value of the company and the underlying value they create there is a small group of people -- go ahead. >> i was going to say, then

there's these nuanced stocks, like does tesla, we don't throw that in the same category as gamestop does tesla where it's trading now reflect the underlying value. a lot of people would say that it does based on the future for ev, and all of the varied and sundry things that elon musk is creating there while other people, cynics say obviously that's not the case with gamestop but maybe there is something to gamestop in terms of being the netflix model for games in terms of online >> well, i think tesla is the great retail investment success story. right? a lot of people who maybe can't afford a tesla can buy a piece of tesla and say i believe in this model and i believe in elon he's an inspiring figure, and i think he's going to succeed. now, you might not think about it that way on the fundamentals of the business as it is, but for the average person, they can

buy a piece of that future that they see that is a success. and as we came out of break, you were saying the stock market is in default mode. it's just going up as you participate in the market as a retail investor, you can make bets on things that you think are successful, you like the ceo, you like the company, and you get a pretty good return, 7% year over year forever. something like gamestop is a bunch of people online we don't know who they are trading information that we can't really verify. running a financialized play that usually we ask people to be accredited investors to run, and we don't really like it when they do it i think they're just radically different situations and the thing that i have just seen in the coverage all week, all of last week, is our inability to parse what is actually happening, collectively, reading twitter too much, parse what is actually happening from what we want to happen, from what the

narr narrative is. >> in this case, you had the villains or at least portrayed as villains, the fat cat, short seller, hedge funds and the david versus goliath contingent that was going to stick it to the man, and squeeze the shorts and make money in the process. what if in the future, a reddit chat room group decided this stock was way too high, and they took the opposite side, and said we're going to hit this thing and keep shorting it and try and bring this stock down to 0 would the same sort of glamorous notions be attached to this if they were versed positions with these nasty short sellers and hedge fund elitists? >> i think if there were -- what does a short tell you, enough

people, if you can collectively get a whole bunch of people to participate in the markets together against that belief, i'm not sure what the regulatory structure to stop it is. >> i don't know either. >> you started out by saying, you don't know if there should be regulation. you can come up with some. they're not great. every social platform in the world, facebook, twitter, instagram, they have viralty circuit breakers, so if something starts to go viral on facebook, they make sure the moderators look at it, that's how you see stop videos of mass shootings. you could regulate that into the product. is that a good idea? i think that's what the next set of congressional actions is going to ask us. >> right you're also going to hear, nelay, we do nothing regulatory-wise for the last ten years with computerized trading

and algorithms, and 140% shorts, we do nothing until the retail guy starts making a little money. now we're going to regulate it that's what you're going to hear that's what i'm already hearing. anyway, we all want free and fair markets that's what we want, right, that's what we all want, and we just, you know, sometimes you maybe need to look at things i don't know i'm glad i don't have to make these decisions. nelay, thank you, we appreciate your time this morning. >> thank you. >> you're welcome, becky >> thanks, joe when we come back, earnings season rolls on, we're going to be hearing from pfizer in the next few minutes, and exxon, and alibaba later this morning check out the stocks right n, ow all of them this the green "squawk box" will be right back.

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welcome back to "squawk box. pfizer just out with quarterly results. we want to get straight to meg tirrell right now because she

has the numbers. >> hey, andrew let's start with the 4th quarter. pfizer reporting adjusted eps 6 cents light of estimates $0 $0.42 versus analysts $0.48 estimate revenue was a beat, $11.68 billion versus $11.43 billion the company raising its full year guidance for earnings from just a couple of weeks ago now by $0.10 due to changes in its covid vaccine revenue forecast for that vaccine, they are breaking out guidance for 2021 because it will have such an outsized impact on results pfizer is forecasting $15 billion in revenue from its covid vaccine this year. now, it says in terms of the margin on that, the adjusted income before tax margin, they're expecting high 20s as a percentage of revenues there for the pfizer covid vaccine so you're seeing kind of a mixed quarter but breaking out that forecast for the covid vaccine for the year ahead, the quarter

behind, of course, includes that company spinning off its up business combining with mylan, transitioning to a new company going forward. guys, back to you. >> meg, thank you, appreciate it very very much. we've got a lot more coming up this morning, including what else, if we're not talking about gamestop, we're talking about spac news, so geuess what, forme boeing ceo dennis muilenburg has a new venture, plus after the break, a rocket start up spac, whose backers include marc benioff and eric schmidt and check out shares of ford and google this morning. those companies announcing a 6-year partnership to bring android software, that google assistant, google maps, and google play to ford and lincoln vehicles it all starts in 2023. we're back after this.

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welcome back, everybody. dennis muleberg is looking to raise $200 million for spac. the blank check companies, the spacs we talk about so much are outperforming the s&p year to date even before they declare a target investment. take a look at the cnbc spac index. it tracks the 50 spacs it's part of the mania that we talk about and the interest level. it's indicative of who knows what but it's something we're tracking pretty closely. andrew >> thanks, becky

i'll bring you another one, another spac that's going to attract a lot of interest. rocket startup as sttra announcg they're going public through a spac they're combining with blank check company holicity led by craig mccraw. the implied value is $2.1 billion and it's expected to close in the second quarter. joining us right now first on cnbc to talk all about it is astra founder and ceo chris kemp good morning to you. congratulations on effectively going public through this spac vehicle. investors are now going to have an opportunity to buy in to astra more broadly the question i would ask you is as investors think about this space and there's a double entendre there as you can tell,

how do you think they should think about what you're doing compared to where spacex is or where a virgin galactic is given those are two of the most widely understood, to the extent that they're even understood, businesses out there. >> astra's focused on the earth. we're focused on the trillion dollar space economy connecting our planet, improving life here on earth there are hundreds of companies that have formed over the past decade that are building small satellites increasingly providing new capabilities in low earth orbit. we're entirely focused to enable this new wave of innovation around earth to help improve our planet >> do you want to be doing daily launches, as i understand it, starting by 2025 we just reported that spacex is hoping to add some -- putting

people into space literally this year how do you think about the competition right now and those that are out there that appear to have a front -- appear to be ahead? >> well, spacex has giant rockets and with the falcon 9 and the starship it is the most efficient way to get a lot of stuff to one place in space. we're seeing hundreds of companies that want to get from anywhere on earth to anywhere in space on their schedule, not wait years to get to a lot of things to one place. and so we're really focused on building a much smaller rocket produced in much higher volume launched from a much larger number of locations here on earth to serve this market that is focused here in low earth orbit. >> who do you think of asyour competition? >> well, there are three companies that we really admire. rocketlab was really the first company to get to space a couple

of years ago while it's taken them a long time to increase their launch rate, we're planning on getting to monthly launch cadence later this year and really quickly scaling from weekly, biweekly up to daily launches starting as early as 2025. >> can you speak to just the spac phenomenon? it's something i think we're all trying to understand why you decided the spac approach versus going public through an ipo. do you think you could have gone public through an ipo traditionally right now? >> i think what's exciting about this transaction is the speed with which we're able to bring the company. we just achieved our first orbital capability a few weeks ago, back at the end of december the company was only formed back in 2016 and the velocity with which we've been able to form the company, build and iterate implies that, you know, we have

$150 million of revenue, over 50 launches already booked. this was the fastest way for us to not only raise over half a billion of capital but also reach public markets so it's in line with our values which is let's take the most efficient path here and spacs i think are a fantastic way to combine that last later stage financing and access to public markets in one big transaction and that's what we've been able to do here >> how quickly should investors be able to measure your success? this seems to be a much longer term bet for investors than a lot of type of businesses. >> we're putting our first commercial pay load in orbit this summer and then later this year we'll begin monthly launch operations i think investors will see astra will execute this year like we executed last year and the year before we have 50 launches under

contract we'll work for our customers and increasing our revenues and building out the factory and launch operations across the country. >> chris, we look forward to following your progress. we hope to have you back your stock already up over 60% just this morning. >> wow. >> thanks again. good luck. >> thanks, andrew. > . coming up, senator bill cac cassidy is going to jo us infor a compromise covid relief bill coming right back.

stocks kicking off a new trading month as they look to bounce back from short squeeze selling. gamestop shares are sliding. latest on this morning's movers straight ahead. a counter proposal to the president's covid relief plan. we will speak to senator bill cassidy about his meeting with the president yesterday. plus, exxon ready to report. the numbers and market reaction coming straight ahead. it's ground hogg day and the second hour of "squawk box" coming up next.

good morning welcome to "squawk box." u.s. equity futures -- did i say tuesday morning? >> it is tuesday >> let's show you where things stand. i don't know what that music was. not ground hog's day music was it from they were outside at the fairgrounds? >> nasdaq up about 88 points and the s&p 500 up about 27 points headlines to tell you about this hour so much to tell you about. volatility continuing among those stocks involved in the last week. reddit rally and they're all moving to the down side this morning. including the stock that has been at the forefront of it. retailer saga expected to end up

on the big screen. vlad tenev is going to testify later this month as the panel holds a hearing on the wild trading in those stocks and impact on investors but, joe, watching that. you're about to talk about silver it's moving in different directions here. >> i knew those guys were going to be right, those commercials i knew it. i knew it after ten years. silver has been surging. regulators are weighing in leslie picker, i know you're watching it. four guys. >> reporter: i know. >> silver's ready to go! ready to go! could be a move that -- and suddenly, you know what, you're

going to be right sooner or later. finally they are i'm proud of them. >> reporter: it's funny you say that i thought exactly the same thing when i first was alerted to this story. quite the story, indeed. now the commodities leader weighing in. it is closely monitoring recent activity in the silver markets cftc goes on to say that it's communicating with fellow regulators, the exchanges and stakeholders to address any potential threats of the integrity of the derivatives markets. the reddit forums believe some

nefarious group is pumping up silver on social media so far no one is pushing the idea, ets, silver miners. >> should have listened to those guys i'm kicking myself kicking myself, leslie we mentioned this has -- you know what, history never repeats itself obviously, not

completely. gold went from $200 to 800 just like that. so i don't think any of the reddit -- probably reddit traders may need to google that to see that actually some of this stuff actually has some historical precedence. we'll see what happens it's a store of value. not quite as many. remember, used to be in all of the -- whenever you'd go to the photo mat, fuji photo film again, historical reference when silver was used a lot more obviously big industrial uses. we'll see whether this is just speculation. thanks for that report becky, i'm going to toss

over to you. you've got a really special guest. >> i do. i do we're going to get to dom chu right now. he's been looking at some of the stocks on the move this morning. dom, good morning. happy ground hog's day. >> yes i love the early wakeup calls for your show because i get so much love from you guys. i just say that. thank you very much for that >> yeah. we love you too, dom. >> i do. i really do. we have a mix of morning movers, becky, for your perusal. ups up 3.5%. just shy of 10,000 shares of pre-market volume. this is the shipping and logistics giant. it has top average analyst estimates. it was helped along by increased shipping demand from small to medium sized businesses in the domestic u.s. market as well as stronger results those shares giving a nice bid in the premarket then you have a couple of analyst calls. start with shares of dell up 3%.

thinner premarket volumes. there's a buy at goldman sachs target price is up 96 bucks. they cite dell's ability to pay down stronger free cash flow trends end on shares of palo alto networks up 1.5% on thinner pre-market volume as well. this is thecyber security market it gets upgraded from outperform at credit suisse it goes from 425 from 385 prior. they cite among other things better positioning in the brand and current leadership in cyber security overall as well as a good portfolio of products the three green companies, becky, for your perusal and premarket movers i will send it back over to you. >> anybody check in on punxsutawney phil or staten island chuck, either of those ground hog's to see? there's a heck of a lot of snow

out there. >> there is. punxsutawney out in pennsylvania, whether we could see some kind of real difference in activity because of the snow that we've seen. my personal feeling is that punxsutawney's going to come out and it's going to be all good even though we have another storm coming apparently on saturday and sunday. so i'm an optimist, becky. but you know that. >> yeah, e, too. i hope he does not see his shadow not very sunny that means we would get a shorter winter i think we could all use that. dom, thank you good to see you as always. >> i thought de blasio killed punxsutawney phil. >> de blasio >> that was staten island chuck. >> he killed -- >> punxsutawney's in pennsylvania >> there's a new staten island chuck. >> i forgot -- someone reminded me something i said a couple of years ago that i should use again. i said punxsutawney phil was wrong last year but we're still

going to have him on because certainly being wrong about something doesn't preclude you from coming on this show, right? if you're a guest. >> or being a host on this show. >> or being a host we'll sign you as a contributor, li l lickety split. >> is he a contributor ♪ i've got you babe ♪ is that the crowd? >> this is not live. this is definitely not live. >> god, i hope not >> those people look like -- >> super spreader. >> too much snow out there this year. >> no mask wearing in that one so i'm thinking it's previous years. >> yeah. >> another thing we miss. >> oh, yeah. forgot about that. ♪ babe ♪ ♪ i got you, babe ♪ >> i just like rabbit holes. >> thank you we'll see you later. we've got a lot more coming up after the break here, you ready for this

questions about the accuracy of rapid testing. we're going to talk to dr. scott gottleib he's going to join us after the break. it's a discussion you do not want to miss later senator bill cassidy, one of the ten republicans pushing a proposal to the president's plan he's going to be joining us. before we head to a break, let's get a check on the markets "squawk" returns right after this

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welcome back, everybody. rapid covid tests are less accurate than initially thought especially when it comes to presymptomatic or asymptomatic people those tests are very likely to get used more frequently as a way to try and reopen restaurants and other businesses right now we're going to bring in former fda commissioner dr. scott gottleib he currently serves on the boards of i will lumen na and pfizer i have to say i'm interested in this because my family has been through it in the last two weeks where we had three false positives, we had inconclusive tests, all kinds of things that went on. i was surprised at how inaccurate some of these tests are and didn't realize it.

there was a super spreader event for amy coney barrett. what can you tell us about how inaccurate some of the tests are? >> that's right. when you are talking about rapid tests, antigen tests, they are not especially sensitive they will generate more false positives. we need to make sure we're using the tests for an appropriate purpose and doing the appropriate things with the test results. there is benefit for doing serial screening with some of the tests. we need to understand if we're screening an asymptomatic population we will miss some cases. 2/3 were missed. you're going to generate false positives. what does that mean? if you are using them as a screening test for a place like a school, it means you still have to put in place mitigation steps. you have to wear masks, distancing you can't rely on the tests

entirely and it also means when you have a positive, you need to verify it. you can't -- with every positive test you can't obligate a lot of people to quarantine and long isolations you need to have a way to quickly verify that with a pcr-based test you need to reflects to a more definitive test quickly. there are ways to do that. the challenge is the way we're using them not necessarily the tests themselves. >> let's talk about the tests though the way they're being used right now, they are wrong more than half of the time how is that something that is useful at all? >> yeah. if you are screening an asymptomatic population with an anti antigen based test, you may get 50% false positive rate. half of the positives you get may be false positives in terms of missing infections, if you are serially screening a population, if you may miss an infection on one day, you'll pick it up the next day. if you're doing serial screening on an asymptomatic population to

try to prevent infection from being introduced into the environment, the test can still be valuable even if they're not that sensitive and missing infections now, again, it's important you don't rely on the test to create a protective bubble. that's what the white house did. they had antigen based tests that weren't active. once you got inside the white house compound you were free to rome and you could behave as though you didn't have coronavirus. they had to take steps inside that compound. they couldn't rely on that test. on the other side of the equation if you generate a positive result, you have to confirm that very quickly. if you are going to obligate someone to isolation because of the positive result, if you are going to quarantine a class, you need to have a way to confirm whether or not that positive was in fact positive what does that mean? have pcr based testing on site where you confirm positive results. if that's too expensive, have a lab you can go to to get it confirmed. you could send someone to go get

another test you need to have it set up in advance. you can't have someone go out and search for a pcr test. you have to set it up and be able to reflex that person to that kind of testing right away. >> all right let me give you my cynical view on this whole thing. there are still some urgent care centers where they'll tell you you'll get your pcr results back in 5 to 7 days that seems completely useless to me nobody seems to be saying about when you should be relying on these rapid antigen tests and when you shouldn't i get the sense it's because there's a lot of money that's being made on them companies still charge you 100 to $250 to get one of these rapid tests. there's not a lot of reason for anybody to stand up and say, these ooercht accurate explain why my cynicism is maybe the wrong way of looking at this. >> not unfounded the tests should be less

expensive. some costs $5 each what's happening is some of the manufacturers that make these antigen based tests are discouraging them to be used to screen asymptomatic population precisely because they're getting back inconclusive results, false positives it's besmirching this and moving into home-based testing. the problem isn't necessarily the test we have to understand the performance measures to use it in the appropriate way if you get a positive result with an antigen based test, you need a way to rapidly confirm that result. you shouldn't have to wait five days to go get a pcr based test and get that back while someone sits in isolation and a whole classroom sits in quarantine if a school is using it, they have to set that up in advance there are ways to do it, they're just not doing it. i don't think they're using it appropriately. they could be valuable in screening an asymptomatic population

>> scott, i have to say i'm very confused because i know a number of doctors who believe that these tests should not be used for surveillance in any way, shape or form. there's no reason to do it if you are going to do surveillance, it should be a straight up surveillance test. if you have a symptomatic case, perhaps use these tests because you might be able to have a better result or at least have a more accurate result and then do a pcr test later. >> it's a good idea if you are using masks, distancing and when you miss a case you won't

potentiate spread. you won't give them a negative result and they won't do things they wouldn't have done anyway they won't take risks and spread the infection. when you need a positive result, you need to confirm it so you don't get a whole class to a quarantine it's not a test that's the problem, it's the way they're getting used we assume they are more accurate than they are. we're using them in a way they weren't intended to be used. you're doing serial screening on a population with a partially predicted test you can catch some infections you might have missed and reduce introductions and outbreaks. i think it's the way we're using them we shouldn't be relying on them for a definitive result in an asymptomatic population. in symptomatic cases they are more predictive. the tests are more predictive in those settings. >> scott, what do we need to do to get pcr tests and pcr testing around the country available at scale where you can get the

answer backlit rally day of? and why haven't we >> we don't -- we talked about the fact we don't have a national testing plan. it still comes back to that. we have a lot of pcr-testing based technology we don't distribute samples effi efficiently. we need a better system. that's what we really haven't had. states can do that on a state by state basis. we haven't pursued that nationally the public health labs can play a more prominent role basically being the hub for the spokes that are available there are ways to fix this also there are systems like the seg network and you can deploy that and use that as a confirmatory platform to confirm some of the results, that can get very accurate, very rapid diagnostic testing to the point of care. there are technologies the mesa technology just

acquired by another company. there are pc r based technologies. >> if we made you the testing czar, how much would it cost and how quickly could you deploy what we'll call rapid pcr testing with rapid results within hours on a day of basis >> look, like i said, it's not necessarily a function of trying to build out a whole base of testing in this country. we do a lot of testing we're doing more than 2 million pcr-based tests a day with covid. those are the ones we're capturing. there's probably a lot going on we are not capturing we can do a tremendous amount of testing. it's the way the samples are being run. some of the bottleneck is the physical processing of the mail. if you are a lab and you get 10,000 fed ex packages a day, individual packages, it takes a

lot of time to process those packages we need to build more efficiencies in that group that's where the bottlenecks are. there are a lot of pcr based testing platforms but the samples aren't getting to the places that have the capacity in a lot of ways. it's an organizational challenge. >> i can't believe we're almost a year into this and we are still in a mess. there is this money that it has been proposed in the biden bill looking through some of these things that seems to be the money for testing and for vaccine approval that seems to be the one bipartisan thing that every single senator we've talked to, even those who don't want to spend any money, will agree to, okay, maybe that's an area where we need it even toomey said that to us yesterday. why don't they focus on that if you're talking about a time line of potentially getting that bill approved and passed sometime in march maybe, what good is it at that point how long will it take from the time there are funds freed up to get a system that's put together that makes it worth while on the ground like i said, there are urgent

care clinics where they tell you you are not goings to get your results from 5 to 7 days that is completely useless. >> it's useless. that's right any money we spend right now to build out the system we're not going to have the system in time before the summer. there was a reluctance to spend money on this. you look at operation warp speed, they spent very little money building o you the a testing infrastructure there were some grants given to the point of care diagnostics but not to build out the coherent system. this was organic the system we have right now as discontinuous as it is and problematic as it is, it really built up organically that's part of the problem you don't have an efficiently run system because no one really built this rationally. >> does that mean there's basically no hope for it that this is not going to get resolved before the summer when we hope things will die down >> i think it can get resolved in time for the fall i think we can have a better system in place. the reality is testing volumes will start coming down rapidly

because infection rates are coming down. people when they're less likely to have an infection, less likely to be symptomatic, less likely to have a test. you'll see testing rates come down a lot will be self-correcting. there will be excess volume capacity we need to build it out for the fall when testing volumes will come up and we will be pressed we need to do 3, 4 million tests a day and get back a result in 24 hours or else it's useless if you're using it to confirm a result, that's even worse because now you have someone in isolation, maybe a whole class or workplace in quarantine because of that positive test result >> you know, there is such demand for using this, not just in schools but in businesses, too. i feel like for a lot of businesses they want to do the right thing. they want to make sure they are also kind of covering themselves legally if they are bringing people in and doing some of these things the demand for it does not seem like it's going to go away, at

least on that front. then you have con supersumer ded >> i think a lot of businesses are going to use home-based testing or send workers to labs. they're not going to want to bring testing on site. you'll see it brought on site like schools, certain industrial types of settings where people crowd on to shop floors. a meat packing plant, factory or school, places where you're bringing together a lot of people who can't naturally socially distance very easily. those are the places where you might bring testing into a site. for the most part i think what businesses are going to do is try to set workers up with testing we can do at home. some of the home tests are going to become more operationalized in the future. businesses won't want to operate testing sites at the workplace for all of these reasons. >> scott, thanks so much great to see you. >> thanks a lot. >> i think this is an issue that's more convoluted than people understand. we appreciate your time and hopefully we will get more resolution to it

we'll talk to you soon thank you. >> thanks a lot. >> yeah. cases are dropping at least, beck. >> yeah. >> vaccine going up. it's glacial but, you know, vaccines going up, cases coming down >> more vaccines than cases at this point we finally hit that important milestone. >> right yeah exactly. that's headed the right direction at least. coming up, republican lawmakers pitching president biden on a scaled back covid relief package senator bill cassidy is one of those 10 lawmakers he gngo in'soi tjo us in just a bit. we're coming right back.

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revenue came in a little below forecast forex on mobile $48.7 billion. i'm looking at it now. it looks like the revenue came in at $46.5 billion. exxon mobil shares had been higher before we heard this by

about 1.5% on the news they were going to be investing $3 billion in carbon capture and other projects to try and lower their emissions. right now you see the dow futures up by 250 points exxon mobil shares are up about 1.25%. s&p is indicated higher as is the nasdaq andrew thanks, becky. fascinating to watch what's going to happen with exxon what's going to happen in this whole space given the conversation we're having about potential mergers. nonetheless, when we come back we'll talk to senator and dr. bill cassidy. later, appharvest going public with, what else, a spac the rise of the rest fund. we'll hear from appharvest ceo steve case first, february is black history month. we're honoring some of our cnbc contributors going to show you some advice

for the next generation. >> i would like to see the next generation use their power, the same sort of power that we saw this summer with the protests for george floyd to push washington to pass policies that are beneficial to their economic health they've done a great job on social justice but i would like to see them push washington on the economic justice piece of this

talking about a group of republican senators met with president biden yesterday to discuss an alternative package susan collins called the discussion useful. ylan mui has the story it was useful. we know that much. what do you think? >> reporter: well, that's right, joe. president biden did meet with the senators and the meeting lasted for about 2 hours, longer than the senators themselves had expected both sides also called the discussions productive but after it was over the white house issued this statement. while there were areas of

agreement, the president also reiterated its view that congress must respond boldly and urgently today the house and senate will take a first step by voting on a budget resolution. this can get tricky. major portions can be blocked from passing especially a $15 an hour minimum wage. technically democrats can only include this in a reconciliation spending bill. senator bernie sanders and others argue by raising the wage they can reduce the deficit because fewer workers would not rely on the social states net. raising the wage has no impact

on the federal budget. this is one example of the kinds of lengthy and technical fight that republicans are likely to wage if democrats decide to go it alone back to you. >> okay. ylan, let's talk to one of these republican senators now. joining us, senator bill cassidy, one of the ten republicans who went to the white house to discuss stimulus. all we've heard, senator, senator collins said it was useful the expectations, i don't know whether they were met or that high to start with when jen psaki said this is not a forum for the president to make or accept an offer. it's important that he hears this group at least just to get their ideas. he's open to making the economy stronger is that what you think this was, just to make it look good? are any of these things -- are we moving any closer to a bipartisan agreement, senator? >> so, joe, help with this

you always got to start someplace. yes, it was a forum to exchange ideas. it was also a forum to commit to where, wait a second, if we disagree, maybe we can resolve our disagreement by looking at each other's facts, which should be common, and if we agree upon the facts, then maybe that mabrey us through an agreement on the overall number. you've got to start someplace and the fact that we have committed to sharing information, theoretically making decisions based on that information gives us a path forward. >> we have seen there was a different president obviously, but we have seen the political dynamic of the pathst, i don't know how far you want to go, four years, you can go back much farther than that. what people are saying, senator,

comments from the democratic leaders in congress along with what jen psaki said leaves little room for hope that a compromise is going to emerge. you saw the body language. are you optimistic anything happens? >> you know, i'm -- you don't want to prejudge but i'm optimistic that something can happen we've had five covid relief packages with republican-led senate and a republican president. all five have been bipartisan. now let that sink in everybody's saying this cannot be, and yet we've had five that have and they've been very effective. cbo is estimating a gdp growth of 3.8% this coming year cbo is saying that by june employment will be back to pre-covid levels attributing that to these covid packages we've already had so, yes, we can do it

bipartisan yes, we have done it on a bipartisan basis with the process led by republicans i'm hoping the same can be true in a process led by democrats. >> now many republicans would allow $15 minimum wage blanket increase across the country? >> i don't think any republican will for that. cbo says that will kill 1.3 million jobs if i remember correctly when it's not a pandemic, and think of all the small businesses that are barely hanging on they would have to go up to $15. they would fold. you would -- you would just decimate small businesses, restaurants, et cetera, again, barely hanging on now. but that should not be germ main to the budget process. i think you'd have to destroy the budget reconciliation process to slip that in there. although leader schumer has shown a willingness to destroy portions of the senate process in the past, hopefully he will not do so with this. >> well, you know, i don't need

to do much math to figure 1.9 trillion versus 600 billion is -- what's the gop willing to -- how far would you go up? would the democrats -- would president biden come down at all on 1.9 >> see, i think -- this is where i go back to what i said at the beginning. theoretically you don't pick a top line and fill it up until you get to the top line. you figure out what the needs are for each component and then you put them together and your top line emerges so, for example, there's a big difference in schools. the administration wants $135 billion for schools. we've put up 20 billion. probably more than we should have why? because the centers for disease control has estimated it will cost about $455 per student to re-open schools. we've already given over $1,000 per student. we've given almost three times

more than the cdc said is necessary to re-open schools and yet the administration wants 135 billion more well, the president said he would send us their facts. we will share with them ours, our suppositions and see if we can't narrow that. but i'll go backs, you shouldn't just pick a top line and fill it up until you get there you should figure out what you need for each area add them up, that's how you get to top line that's the approach the republican senators have taken >> right but the language you're using, that's not how you should do it. you should do it this way. that's the way they did it done they're at 1.9 that's the facts of the matter, senator. they may not budge off that. >> they may not budge off that, but we can't let the kind of existential anxiety about what might happen keep us from acting today. we have to take the situation as we have and operate within that moment, ideally working towards a common solution.

i was part of the so-called nine away group, the bipartisan group of senators, republicans and representatives who began to negotiate when the white house in the last administration and speaker pelosi could go to -- just couldn't meet, just couldn't meet. they weren't doing anything. we began with that supposition what do we need for every area what are the political considerations of each side. add them up and this is where we got. now it's a process that works. one more time, we've had five covid relief packages that have been bipartisan. we can do it this way. it doesn't have to be one side saying take it or leave it >> all right, senator. we'll stay tuned thanks for the update. >> thanks, joe. >> appreciate that coming from you and we'll have you back in the near future, i hope. >> thank you, sir. >> andrew? okay coming up on the other side of this break, the reddit rebellion being fueled by those left out

of the stock market and the vast wealth creation machine. is it democratizing the market or making it worse robert frank dives into that. the chairman and ceo of honeywell is joing unis. "squawk" returns right after this

welcome back to "squawk box. the reddit rebellion robert frost with more >> good morning, andrew. the burst of populism we're seeing on all of the stock trading is partly driven by a stock market that continues to benefit a select group of investors and leaving most americans behind now according to recent data from the federal reserve, the top 10% of americans now own 88% of all corporate equity and mutual fund shares that is the highest shares on record and actually above the pre-pandemic levels. now it looks like the peak for broad american stock ownership was back in 2002 when 67% of americans said they owned stock.

the concentration isn't low. it's $3 in wealth. it's also lagging behind the stock holdings is about 1/3 l less it's along racial lines. the traders. they don't survive the

>> we're going to get there after this

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move your xfinity services without breaking a sweat. now that's simple, easy, awesome. xfinity makes moving easy. go online to transfer your services in about a minute. get started today. welcome back to "squawk box. another spac ipo

appharvest completed to trade with the ticker apph steve was an early investor in appharvest along with jonathan webb, somebody else who's been on the squawk program several times we appreciate you joining us talk to us, steve. i'm going to talk to you in terms of thinking about where app harvest is, where you thought it would be in terms of potentially going public with ipo. that was initially the goal and doing it as a spac instead >> well, when we launched our rise the red sea fund three years ago, one of our first investments was in appharvest. made 150 investments in 70 cities trying to identify great entrepreneurs building places outside of silicon valley. when you have a seed fund it makes sense to invest in

agriculture. it was great to hear jonathan's story and vision it's amazing what they've built in the past three years and they really have struck a chord in terms of people wanting healthier food also it resonated when he was pitching us originally, he joined us in kentucky, coal country. a lot of jobs lost so far 300 jobs have been created. john and the team at appharvest have done a great job. we're super proud they're a public company and retail investors have the opportunity to participate as well. >> explain how you're thinking about this, jonathan were you planning to pursue an ipo or because of this spac mania, if you will, did you decide this was a more opportune time to take advantage of that to raise more capital? >> first off, andrew, i didn't know he was wearing the red appharvest flannel i'm wearing the green. we knew we wanted to bring

transparency to agriculture from day one. the best way to do that is to be a publicly traded company and have that institutional rigor of being -- operating at the highest level. you know, what we've seen in the middle of covid is that we -- our country has massive food security issues where we've shipped -- we've pushed most of our fruit and vegetable production out of the u.s. it's being imported from mexico almost 2, 3,000 miles on a truck and for us over the summer we had many political leaders reaching out to us expressing concerns we have our governor here in kentucky that talked to us about his concerns of getting fresh food on the grocery store shelves so we can use technology we can build infrastructure. we can grow a fruit and vegetable with 90% less water, get 30 times more yield per acre and get the harsh chemicals out

and run completely on recycled rainwater. we're doing it here in eastern kentucky where we can get to 70% of -- >> jonathan, what are you going to use the capital that you've just raised? >> we've been able to do this in the middle of a global pandemic. i'm standing in the middle of a 2.8 million square foot facility that's nearly 50 football fields under glass. massive structure. coming out of covid we're ready to hit the ground running and we're going to build -- our goal is to build 12 facilities by 2025 we want to bring fruit and vegetable production back to the u.s. and put it indoors here in central app pa alachia. >> there is a higher value, oftentimes, for some of these companies than the quote,

unquote, private investors has everybody in the private vcor private equity space been wrong in undervaluing their own assets or are the retail guys smarter than them? what's happening here? >> i think it's a little different. revolution growth has taken a couple of companies public draft kings has done quite well. we announced a traditional ipo spacs allows them to invest in innovation companies when aol went public, our market value was $70 million. eight years later it went from 70 million to 160 billion. that money was in the pocket of retail investors more recently when companies were going public later, airbnb went public at almost $100

billion. i think spacs are an important way to allow retail investors to participate and get into something like icap harvest. >> steve, thank you. jonathan, thank you. i should mention the stock has jumped now close to 20% since this interview began we appreciate you joining us of course, look forward to following your progress and having you back. >> andrew, we've got to get you a flannel next time. all three can have one. >> next time i'll get the memo on the costume change. >> hey, case steve. >> yes, sir. >> you retire all your hawaiian shirts, dude i mean, who are you? >> no. i'm celebrating appharvest i'm in washington, d.c it's snowing i think a hawaiian shirt is not appropriate. >> you look like hillbilly elegy. i like it.

it's a good look four. >> i love those. we have the snow, buddy. we have the snow all right. when we come back, the chairman and ceo of honeywell on the company's latest quarter and their role in the battle of the covid-19 vaccine rollout we'll be right back.

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good morning stocks set to jump again following a solid session on wall street yesterday. the s&p notching the best day since late november. what's it like to be in the eye of the reddit storm. final hour of "squawk box" begins right now.

good morning and welcome to "squawk box" here on cnbc. i'm joe kernen along with becky quick and andrew ross sorkin on ground hog day ground hog day u.s. equities if you missed it, that's always playing and one of the top 20 come dis. he's got a few of them, old bill up 238 points now. 239 on the dow up about 98 on the nasdaq. the s&p up about 28. we keep checking silver. just checked another quote on gamestop maybe we'll look at that, too, at some point. as you can see, silver down about 5% gme at this point, you'v i've got a 138 bid down 30% yesterday to 225 and

now down from 225, got it at 140. i've got a 138 bid right now 30% yesterday. 37% today. i don't know what to say about that other than we said all along when the shorts get covered, what's it worth what's it worth when the shorts get covered? did anyone ask that question we did obviously but -- >> yeah. >> i don't know what the company is i don't know what the company is actually worth and i love when people say, you know, maybe the chewy guy's got some great plans who knows. maybe they do. maybe there's some online business model that works for a brick and mortar, right? that i guess you could somehow justify 2000% run up

>> maybe. >> does this go back up to 500 at this point or has the fever broken >> look, i wouldn't proclaim to know what's going to happen with different investors who try to get in and run with this we knew from the beginning you may double and stock and that looks outrageous when you are trading 20 times what it was worth two weeks ago, there is something else at play. it would be impossible to say because it hasn't been a fundamental move driving this for quite a while. >> right hollywood's weird, isn't it? there's a couple of movie versions in the works already. they have no idea what the ending of this is going to be. >> i'll take a guess ben is doing one he did the social network before this is the anti-social network. i would sign up for that >> well, i'd like to have some idea what the ending is going to

be before i sign on. maybe it doesn't matter. anyway, earnings, we're seeing maybe the beginning of the ending here. who knows. i have no idea nothing surprises me anymore when you hit up some of these three-letter symbols, whether it's gme, amc, noc, nok. rolling in this morning for some of the biggest companies, pfizer reporting a top line beat but missing on the bottom line for the latest quarter the company is raising the full year earnings guidance and positive results for the coronavirus vaccine. shipping giant ups scoring top and bottom line beats for its latest quarter among the factors, a nearly 8% increase in revenue and alibaba also reporting better than expected profit and revenue for the fourth quarter up by growth in active users. online shopping has boomed alibaba has growth becky, honeywell

>> yeah. industrial giant honeywell teaming up with what other organizations for a vaccine pilot inside the bank of america stadium in charlotte, north carolina that's where the nfl's carolina panthers play. over the past weekend 20,000 shots were given to residents. joining us right now to talk about this phase of the fight against covid-19 in an exclusive interview is honeywell interview darreus adamczyk people are watching what you've done and have been amazed. i'd like to take a look at where the virus is this is something you talked about when you reported earnings you said we're potentially at a worse place right now than we were a few months ago based on where coronavirus is what are you seeing around the globe? and tell us how difficult things are in terms of trying to see any forecast >> well, thank you, becky. nice to be with all of you as always talked about on the earnings

call last week, the good news is that the virus rates are falling. certainly falling in the u.s. and around the world, but we have to remember that they're falling off of all-time highs. and we're in a place that the virus has been circulating in our populations at a rate it's never seen before, including going all the way back to when the crisis started in the march, april time frame i think it's important we keep that in mind is that directionally we're going the right way. we're starting to see the pickup on the vaccination rates, but we still have a long way to go. that's why we put the event together at b of a with our partners, atrium health and pepper sports. >> you're a global company so you see this playing out around the world. where is your greatest area of concern just watching this >> well, certainly europe we're concerned about because we see the slowest rate rollout of the vaccine.

it's a place that frankly doesn't seem to be able to get access to the vaccine. it's going slow and we certainly thee we hope that picks up. india we're watching closely very large country large population logistics are a challenge to get this vaccine out to a billion people it's a big logistical challenge. let's forget vaccine availability this is why i'm such a strong believer in some of the partners that we played with, that the way back to normal is through these mass vaccination events, particularly as the vaccine becomes more readily available let me give you a few statistics from this past week. i do think this is important, which is we were able to vaccinate a person every 4 1/2 seconds. we got through 20,000 people the average wait time -- and that includes the 15 minutes of

people sitting there after they have the vaccination, roughly half an hour, little bit less than that, and this is all possible and by the way, the other statistic that i think is really important here in terms of equity, 30% were from communities of people of color so we had really nice presentation in what we did and we did this in the course of three days, friday, saturday, sunday 12 hours a day, 20,000 people. just think about if we could do that, set up 50 or 100 of these kinds of sites across the country. granted right now we're still constrained by the vaccine, but now hopefully we'll have the j&j vaccine approved in amatter of a couple of weeks, whether it's novax, astrazeneca, another vaccine should be coming behind that i hope we move to this model at the end of the day this becomes a qe problem the most efficient way to solve

the cue problem is very large, very efficient distribution centers spaced out through the country and states and very quickly get the vaccines into people's arms. the governor saying. >> this came about because you were out on a walk with two of your friends at these partners that you mentioned and you were all frustrated with the pace of the covid vaccine roll in at that point what happened? kind of walk us through that story. >> sure. in the covid era one of the social things you can do is go for walks outside with some of your friends so that's sort of

what we do on weekends sometimes. i happen to have gone on a walk with tom glick who's the president of the panthers and the ceo of atrium health it both happened in my neighborhoods. we were looking at the rates across the country you know, maybe we could help here maybe we could partner as a team, you know, obviously panthers having the large stadium, used to moving a lot of people through that facility very quickly atrium health obviously with having the expertise on the medical side, dispensing of the vaccines and all the things and then us as logistics warehouse distribution company, and then adding our technology to the whole process. for example, we added, you know, cameras which detect the number of cars and people because at the b of a event we had both people and cars. and we said, if we put all of these technologies together and

capabilities together, we think we could do something differentiated i've got to thank our mayor, thank our governor who took a shot on us this could have been a disaster. we did an event at the speedway the weekend before this last one. we vaccinated 15,000 people there. we just did 20,000 both in a matter of three days, only operating half the day i really hope that 24this is ou future because we have to get the vaccines into people's arms. two fundamental reasons for that the first is to get back to living our lives and get back to good economic props. the second one, and i always enjoy your conversations with dr. scott gottleib, the other thing to remember is the bigger the population is available to having this virus, really moving the population the more likely it is that we're going to have a variant that we

can't deal with. we already have some trouble in variants coming from south africa, the u.k., so on. the bigger the population that's not immune to this virus, the higher the probability of us getting a variant that's going to be hard to deal with. >> you darius, i think it's really interesting that you all were able to open this up to such a broad swath of the population in charlotte and that you had 30% that came through that were diverse people, people of diversity i think the reason this is so important is to this point i do think that those who are connected, those who are wealthier have probably gotten a larger portion of the vaccines that have been out there if you happen to be connected to a hospital group, you're far more likely to have gotten this. i think that this model is interesting for that reena lone, to make sure that it's an equal opportunity for everybody to be coming through the doors i worry about that a lot how did you guarantee that

anybody and everybody could get in did you just have to sign up i guess hitting refresh, refresh, refresh trying to get an appointment? how did it work? >> this i give all the cred doit atrium health for that they opened up the schedule from the diverse groups, church groups, so on to make sure they had access to some of the scheduling because of that we were able to really get that kind of a representation, which is terrific obviously that's been a challenge. that's going to continue to be a challenge and i do think i have an opinion on this we also have to support this at the national level there's an effort by the brt, ad council supported by salesforce and honeywell as well where we get some influencers, whether it be political figures, entertainers, athletes, so on to really demonstrate that they're embracing this vaccination effort, that they're taking the vaccinations themselves and, you know, even if they're sort of jumping out of line concept,

whether the number of vaccines that would be required to really on tv vaccinate some of these people is inconsequential versus the benefit we're going to have in a more equitable distribution of the vaccine itself. i hope we see more of this kind of advertising national support. we'll work ahead at the local level like we did here with the partnership with atrium and the panthers we need some broader help through the ad council efforts and hopefully many like it >> to that point, you said that you like watching dr. scott gottleib when he's on with us. he has definitely given us a ton of great information he's of the opinion that we should roll these out to the big boxes, walmarts, big boxes, cvss, walgreens. it's easier to access it and open it up to the general population to make sure that anybody and everybody could get access to that that's kind of counter to the method that you all have put forth here how do you kind of square up those two different ways of

going at this. >> well, i think for now it's really kind of a moot point because we really still have a constraint on the number of vaccines that are available. frankly, each state should be using up the vaccines every week that they're allocated the delta between administered and actually distributed every week should be zero, which they should be consumed on a weekly basis. right now there's still very much a constraint, but hopefully in a few weeks time there won't be a constraint. i applaud what walmart, starbucks, cvs and so on have done it's terrific. if we really want to move this very, very quickly and efficiently in facilities that are designed for high traffic, like speed yeahs, like large stadiums, i don't think that there's any other way to get a vaccine in people's arm every 4 1/2 seconds. that's what really we have accomplished i think we've got to do this in phases i think there is a place for the wall marts, cvss and so on

i think if we have to prioritize distribution and speed matters, i think you have to go to these mass vaccination centers and this goes back to the cuing problem. do you want to design this for efficiency or speed and convenience? i would argue until we get this up and running once there's no vaccine restraint on capacity, we have to design the system for speed and efficiency >> darreus, very quickly before you go you mentioned that you got help from the governor in north carolina on doing this have you had any conversations with the biden administration? >> no, not recently, but we're looking forward to that. we'd love to engage, you know, whether some of the best practices.

>> people standing there with clip boards and we applied our software and that went from 12 minutes to less than 30 seconds. >> wow >> we're looking to engage and hope to engage the biden administration very soon and i think we have -- i think we can add some value to the discussion >> darius, i want to applaud you and your partners' efforts at this we appreciate what you're doing and your time this morning talking about this thank you. >> thank you, becky. >> take care andrew >> thanks, becky. coming up when we return, the head of silver mining. precious metals on this week's extreme volatility and where we go from here first as we head to break, check out shares of exxon mobil on the rise the company missed on the top line estimate for its latest quarter, but beat on the bottom line "the wall street journal" reporting exxon expected to

announce more changes pushed by investor de shaw stay tuned, watching "squawk" right here on cnbc ♪♪ ♪♪

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we're watching the shares of gamestop right now, gme down 41%. down 91 points or so in fact, we used to have a little bug on gamestop on the way up they're on the way down. we'll see. could be a bounce or maybe it will continue. we'll see. coming up, a pair of big interviews you don't want to miss with robert kaplan and the ceo of silver miner, wheaton precious metals. check out the action in silver after yesterday's spike silver pulling back. you're watching "squawk box" on cnbc

welcome back to "squawk box. we may be seeing that the reddit rally is flaming out, at least for the stocks that led it from the outset gamestop shares, 40% down $134. movie chain gmc seeing its shares plunging. joining us to talk about whether we're seeing the beginning of the end of volatility in these names and what all this means to the larger market is the chief investment officer at international and global equities at ariel investors.

good morning to you. >> good morning. >> speak to these stocks in terms of what you think they represent for the larger market. >> i think frankly not much. it's limited to a handful of stocks and i think it's an extremely isolated development i think they're making much to do about not much. >> trying to speculate frankly rather than invest the record flows into high yield, junk bond etfs. the valuations in the market,

spacs, ipos. i think it needs to be reset with respect to a vaccine-led rally that we've seen since november and i think the second half looks much more valuable although the second half we may manage through. >> it's always hard to call a correction you're calling for a double digit correction is what i saw what do you imagine the tipping point would be that would force that to take place >> it's what always matters, is earnings expectations. we're too far ahead of our self in the wide sectors and geographies. there are a couple of profit warnings in germany in the medical dialysis company i think we still have to work our way through covid.

i think expectations for 2021 have to get reset. that i think requires a pull back >> does that mean that you're telling investors they should be selling stocks now, getting into cash, waiting for this to shake out? does that mean that you're recommending rotating into, i don't know, you tell me. >> no, one should not market time it's important to reposition a portfolio. they're already attractive they're not growthy enough to entice growth investors but they're perfectly good companies with steady growth at reasonable multiples, just not heady growth at hefty multiples some of the big pharma names like glaks glaxo and roche

they don't appeal to the two extremes of the market. >> what about in the united states >> slim pickings i think international markets are the opportunity, both from a stock market stand point and currency and appreciation. in the near term the dollar declined but i think in the medium and long term the dollar looks valuable you can make money two ways by investing abroad to the stock market appreciation because it's more on the value and currency appreciation which i think in the next decade is a source. idiosyncratic returns than people are expecting right now >> okay. thank you for joining us this morning and adding your insights and perspective. we look forward to talking to you again very soon. >> thank you >> becky >> thanks, andrew. when we come back the let of wheaton precious metals will

join us live with this week's volatility in silver and how he's managing his company in the eye of the reddit storm. stay tuned, you're watching "squk x"ndhiisnbawbo a ts cc.

welcome back to "squawk box. i'm mike santoli let's get you a picture where the market is going to start the s&p 500 over the past few months last week's 3.3% decline, a bit of a shakeout both from the long and short side yesterday's bounce did a lot to tack on 2/3of a percent. trying to get back into the orderly up trend it's spent a lot of the month of january. i think there's a little bit of a back and forth the one day before yesterday the s&p was up was thursday. that's when gamestop was down. every other day you had a net gain in gamestop and you had it working the inverse. it was the focal node of some of that short pressure. not going to last. not going to be the tell for the market for a long time but it has been for a few days.

look at silver yesterday tremendous volume in the xlv. you did have a gain. talking about futures, global metals market, it's just not the same as going after a crowded short in individual smaller company where people have to buy back the stock futures are a two-way street, joe. >> all right thank you, mike. that was an interesting correlation. we have noticed it for a closer look at the recent silver surge and slump, let's welcome wheaton precious metals surge, randy we stop talking about the pesky fundamentals with a lot of things we discuss. we watch momentum. we watch, i don't know -- i don't know what you'd call it at times. what happened with silver in your view? >> well, i think there's such strong fundamentals behind silver when you look at silver and how

it's been valued relative to other precious metals, especially gold, the opportunity to get the fundamentals out there, it looks like a great buying opportunity i'm not surprised to see the retail crowd come back in and push it. but it is a bigger market. it is a much broader global commodity as mike said >> you know, randy, i've been hearing that though for maybe not all the way back to 1979 but i've been hearing about the fundamentals and it's been a well-known sort of a thesis. a lot of people advertise there's a lot of companies that are involved in silver and gold that advertise what changed in the last three months actually, i guess it was up quite a bit over the last year or so as well. what would be historically depressed levels >> well, it's just that as we

see mobility if you sit and look at how the world is changing right now, especially in response to the pandemic around the world and how important mobility is, silver is a crucial metal when it comes to mobility anything that has batteries, and you want to have power last longer, be more efficient, have more processing power, silver comes into play. it conducts electricity better than any other metal lower resistivity and great antibacterial applications this year has highlighted the strength you're right, a year ago silver was trading 15 bucks an ounce. i'm still very happy at the prices we're seeing today. >> how much of this is the fed and the notion that this is another store of value and something that won't be debased like fiat currencies >> there's no doubt.

we are focused on precious metals 60% of the revenue is gold i'd love to have more silver in our portfolio. just not available not a lot of good strong silver products or biproducts to purchase no doubt silver always lags gold if you go back and look at any of the strong bull runs in precious metals, gold always starts first, silver lags and then it outperforms. silver has higher beta it always has and always will. so much of it is produced as a byproduct. only 30% of silver comes from silver mines 70% of silver comes as a byproduct from copper mines, led zinc mines and gold mines. that means those mines don't change when the price of silver climbs and that just gives you supply side pressure and you get a higher response. so what i've seen here, gold's been on a good, strong bull run for four or five years silver has woken up in the last

year and a half. i don't see this stopping. obviously this little reddit short squeeze we've seen has sort of highlighted some of those fundamentals in silver i think it's probably welcome. us in the silver market have welcomed back in some of those retail investors we haven't seen in a while it's shaping up very nicely for us >> so you have seen -- that is responsible for what we've seen in the past daze ten days or so? you've been able to detect that these are -- there are reddit investors that have embraced silver after some of the other well-known names in the stock market that we've mentioned? you welcome -- probably wheaton itself, too, right >> yeah. no we've definitely outperformed. we've got one of the higher in terms of percentages of revenue in the precious metals space, 40% silver revenue so there's no doubt that we have

caught a little bit of this wave we're probably going to give a little bit of it back. we're not here for the short term we built long-term value at wheaton. with over 30 years of reserves, we're going to see a lot of days like this and a bunch of resources after that short term volatility, silver has had a game and track record of being extremely volatile and responsive we like it on the way up like this when we see strength in precious metals. we're going to see days like this in precious metals again. >> randy, thank you. appreciate your time this morning and i didn't realize that so a lot of it comes as a byproduct to -- do you know what the stock to flow on silver is right now? what the actual number is? how long it takes to replace the entire supply, randy do you know? >> well, every year we're producing -- worldwide producing

between 6 and 700 million ounces we have seen peaks over production that was four or five years ago we peaked worldwide over 800 million ounces so, again, because most silver comes from base metal projects and copper prices have been depressed and led zinc metal prices have been depressed, there hasn't been a lot of reinvestment we've seen a drop in silver combined with higher demand. >> that's amazing. if copper is depressed, there's less new copper projects and then it actually hurts the supply that's very interesting. all right. we'll end it there thank you. appreciate it. >> thank you, joe. >> andrew? thank you. coming up when we return, exclusive interview with dallas fed esenpridt robert kaplan. don't go anywhere. "squawk" returns right after this

. welcome back to "squawk box" on cnbc. want to get over to another big interview. steve liesman joins s. good morning, andrew joined by robert kaplan. president kaplan, thank you for joining us this morning. i want to get to a ton of news out there. the first one i want to ask you about is the issue of the vaccine. how critical is the vaccine to the outlook? how closely do you follow it the most important part of this question is how does it look like the u.s. is doing relative

to your expectations >> the vaccine is critical, and getting the population vaccinated and making sure we can do that rapidly is critical and when you think there are various variants of the virus around the world, some of them may be here, may grow here, i think it makes the urgency of getting the vaccine that much greater. getting schools reopen in person, it's central to everything we're seeing in the economy. >> so what's your assessment of how it's going i'm assuming that a lot of your outlook, you said yesterday that you thought we're headed towards 5% gdp i'm assuming a lot of that outlook is relative to the outlook getting out there and being distributed. is it going according to your outlook. >> i think with the plans

announced with the administration's plan of at least 100 million vaccines notice firstdays, we hope that will occur, mobility engagement will be sluggish, we think, up until june and the next few months certainly in the economy are going to be sluggish i think you're going to start to see them once we get to june and beyond, better mobility, better engagement by consumers, a lot of small businesses doing better and everything will flow from that, but it's critical. so how are we doing? i think -- i know there have been some fits and starts but i'm very hopeful that we'll make more progress. cities and states do need money to execute this program. it's money for logistics with you they need money for staff to administer the vaccines. we're hearing that throughout our district >> you talk about increasing mobility in june

the economy perhaps returning to normal how does federal reserve policy react to that? you're buying an awful lot of securities, $120 billion a month of treasuries. you're at zero interest rates. as the economy returns to normal, does fed policy need to return to normal >> i would say there will be time to have that discussion down the road and you've heard me say before that once we've weathered the pandemic, we've moved beyond it, we're not out of the woods by a long shot, we're making substantial progress on our goals, i think there will be time to have that discussion i think it will be healthier to wean off the extraordinary measures right now we're in the teeth of this pandemic. i think we should be aggressive. i'll probably avoid talking about timing and i want to avoid being rigid or pre-determined about when we're going to move beyond this pandemic right now we're in the middle of

it >> you've long talked, president kaplan, about the effective monetary policy on financial markets. it's hard not to look at some of the things that are going on right now from gamestops to reddit fueled short squeezes and think there aren't some excesses going on to what extent do you see that linked to monetary policy? >> so i don't see anything right now systemic i'm watching this very, very carefully. i'm looking at financial stability questions in the non-bank financial market, funding risks. there's a lot of factors in the current situation but one of them, yes, is there is a substantial amount of liquidity and we're seeing that at play. i still think we need to be doing what we're doing right now in the teeth of the pandemic but, again, i think as we move beyond it it'll be healthier to start limiting this liquidity

and normalizing monetary policy down the road. the issue is i'm going to avoid talking about when that might be yeah, some of the current situation you're seeing one of the factors is there's a lot of liquidity and some of that relates to fed purchases of 80 billion of treasuries and 40 billion in mortgage-backed securities every month i think it's wise for us to acknowledge that >> the other side of the liquidity from the federal reserve is concerns about inflation. i want to ask you broadly about whether or not that's something you see coming down the road very specifically, being the work that i know the dallas fed does about oil prices, i've been surprised given the lack of demand for oil, the price has held up quite so well. is that something you expect to go up a lot more when the economy returns to normal? >> yeah, we do we expect -- we expect the global oil and gas markets will get into rough balance probably

sometime in early 2022 you'll see production this next -- this year we're in probably flattish but as the year goes on there's no doubt that driving will increase as long as all goes well with the vaccine and with the virus, mobility will increase, driving will increase, consumption will increase in terms of inflation, it wouldn't surprise me to see during this year some inflation spikes in certain items. we see shortages of things like semiconductors, metals, wood products, packaging products i think a lot of that will be transitory the longer term issue is going to be as the cyclical forces of inflation build, how much are they offset by technology, technology enabled disruption, globalization. i think the jury is out on how those forces will play out >> president kaplan, i've got two more questions for you if you don't mind >> please. sure. >> you have a choice a $600 billion package from the

republicans, you've got a $1.9 trillion package from president biden. pick one >> yeah. i'm going to defer thank you for offering i'll stay away from that debate completely, but i would comment -- here's what i'm hearing in my district, which i'll give insight from that issue. it's vaccinations and testing. it's critical that people are out at work, have continued relief beyond march. it's critical we have enough money to reopen schools and one of the big issues in this pandemic is women with children have disproportionately left the work force so getting schools reopened in person and having money for that and money for child care is critical to getting that group back into the workforce. we need it if we're going to grow faster. >> thank you for that. one more question. the ten-year yield now at 111. it's one of the highest levels we've seen on the one hand

on the other hand, be still, my beating heart that it's only still 111. jeff gunlak talked about the idea that perhaps the fed is gearing its concern about the ten-year for when it becomes positive in a real basis that the ten-year yield remains on an inflation adjusted basis negative is that something that it's the time to come in and perhaps cap that growth or is it not a concern of yours at all? >> i think if we go through the year and we're successful in combatting the virus and we get higher growth, you're going to see the ten-year and the curve back up. in other words, rates will be higher i would expect that, and you've heard me say before, i'd be reticent at this point based on what i'm saying for us to take action and do things that might distort those market signals i think it should be expected

and maybe healthy to see that curve back up as we recover. back in january of 2020, the ten-year was 175 to 2 %. i don't know where we'll head here, but i would expect it will be a healthy sign for yields to back up as we recover and i'm probably expecting that. >> thank you so much for joining us this morning. >> good to talk to you, steve. okay andrew, back to you. steve, great conversation. thank you for bringing that to us right here on squawk. meantime, over to jim cramer this morning he joins us live as well jim, there's so much to talk about, but i got a talk gamestop and other stocks that you're seeing literally collapsing in front of our eyes this morning any way this turns around the opposite direction >> well, i think that you have to have something coming from the company. the company has been -- i called them yesterday

we like to call them why? they seem like nice people they've not been responsive. and are they losing opportunity because of that? contrast that with adam aaron. he was selling stock constantly for the company, of course so when you see this, you say to yourself, opportunity squandered could they have bought a gaming company? of course. i think they were caught as unaware as the short sellers fortunately for the short-sellers, they lost a fortune. unfortunately for the people on the other side, there aren't a lot of gamestops out there heavily shorted. people say there are, but that's hi p hyperbole. >> do you think gamestop could still issue shares and raise money? >> yeah. absolutely now, of course a lot of people say they can't, but those people are ill advised. what i think is interesting is you would have to sell stock to get raised cash.

they have a not great balance sheet. the victim of the fact that they did a hideous buyback when their model was changing and direct to consumer was modelling there's always time provided this fellow, ryan, joining the board comes up with a game plan. he's got a 15 bagger what's his point it was a great story it was as we would call if you're a hitchcock fan a mcguffin the model is hard to fix i offered a solution to get it to 50 and 60 i did that in part because that's where it did trade before the direct to consumer model took offer go back to the january 2018 release where they admitted they were going to make up about half the money. they were blind sided by the fact that the take twos, and the eas were going to

disintermediate them like what nikeis doing with foot locker. is chewy a good model? if we were working on something special and went on something else, people would say those guys are smart to figure it out, but chewy is -- that's trying to up end brick and mortar. the it hard to up end yourself it's hard. you have to take people on the board and say listen, we've done things wrong, but money is the -- i think they still -- the clock is ticking they may have reasons to say they can't do it but that's because they're not as -- i choose the word ill advised. i used to say raise eyebrows >> jim, we got to run. we're going to see you in a couple minutes if they raise money, does the stock go up or down from here at $128 >> people like it. some of the younger people like it when they raise money, but amc -- he takes a walk, we sit

on 0,000 people -- hey, i'll take a walk. >> jim, we'll see you in a couple minutes squawk returns after this. the holidays weren't exactly smooth sledding this year, eh santa? no, but we came through smelling of mistletoe. the now platform lets us identify problems before they became problems. if only it could identify where my ball went. this you? hmm... no, mine had green lights. whatever your business is facing. let's workflow it. maybe i should workflow my swing...

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welcome back new this morning, impossible

foods is slashing its suggested price at u.s. grocery stores by 20%. it's the first time the privately held company is lowering retail prices based on figures from the agricultural department, customers will still pay more than double for an impossible burger versus a traditional hamburger but prices are narrowing. in an interview, impossible foods president said the coronavirus pandemic led the company to speed up its retail strategy i got to get with the program. i think i might pay twice as much for the regular burger. so i've got -- my whole -- i might drive my internal combustion seven-paid. i might drive my internal combustion engine to in-and-out,

and then we'd still have hurricanes if i don't get on board. and i want to get rid of those once and for all once we do that >> and blizzards >> and everything else >> yes >> warm weather. yeah everything just got to fix all that stuff once and for all >> that's right. >> let's take a very quick check on the markets >> andrew, i miss him already. >> good news for you, he'll be back here tomorrow morning with us all three of us are going to be here tomorrow morning once again. we'll see you then right now it's time for "squawk on the street" good tuesday morning welcome to "squawk on the street." coming off the s&p's first gain since september. further gains today as the red dit rally fades, attention turns to earnings. stimulus and more assuring covid trends

the retail mania reversal, shares