game but the commercials it's monday, february 8, 2021. "squawk box" begins right now. ♪ good morning, everybody. welcome to "squawk box" on cnbc. happy monday welcome back from the weekend. i'm becky quick along with andrew ross sorkin and wilford the markets are something to be watching this morning. remember on friday you saw the nasdaq, the s&p 500 and the russell 2000 all close at record highs. the dow closed about 40 points from its record high if you check out futures this morning, you'll see with those gains, it's up almost triple digits, up 99 points, or 100

points, that would put it above those levels if it stayed throughout the session s&p 500 is indicated up by 10 points nasdaq up by about 48 points let's take a look at what's happening with the treasury markets. the ten-year looks like it's yielding 1.99%, getting back up to 2%. we'll take a look at the reddit stocks we've been following because of the retail investor interest there gamestop up by 11.5% back at about $71 this morning and then amc, which has seen some pretty wild springs, this morning is indicated up a little bit, too it's up by about 3%. back to just above $7. also want to take a look at cryptocurrency dogestcoin, hitting an all-time high after tweeting from elon musk, snoop dogg and rapper gene simmons with the dog breed that represents the doge token.

bitcoin is indicated up, too >> fascinating moves also worth mentioning the liking of mike novagratz, a big fan of bitcoin, is critical of these tweets on dogecoin and questions whether medium term undermine the broader crypto trend, which he's a big believer in >> look, it's a fair point there's no way you can say that these tweets have anything to do with anything fundamental in a cryptocoin it's interesting we've been watching it again, there have been all kinds of moves we've been watching recently that don't make much sense just on a fundamental basis. >> to me it raises the one point that ray dalio keeps raising over and over again. there's an unlimited quantity of these coins. we talk about them as limited in supply bitcoin unto itself is limited

in supply, but the more and more we start talking about other coins, it raises questions about, quote/unquote, the supply because there's obviously the opportunity to make an unlimited amount of different types of coins. >> i totally - >> like chuck e. cheese coins. >> it's not unsimilar to silver and has active short positions on it so it raises the question as to whether this is a good short-term squeeze to get behind again, we've got to bring up the point of responsibility. we were shouted when we raised it two or three weeks ago on the initial squeeze of gamestop. gamestop is down a lot elon musk is worth hundreds of billions of dollars. we know some people would have bought into gamestop at the top and got hurt and probably the same with this it's just, frankly, irresponsible, i think, is fair to say we'll probably still get attacked on twitter for saying so we'll see -- >> what's your twitter handle again? >> yeah, mine is easy to guess

mine is just my name i'll have to change that soon. you mentioned the yield move interesting to see close to 120 on the ten-year the 30-year touched 2% this morning, back below that fractionally now, which is the first time since pre-pandemic levels it will be interesting if it closes or goes back above 2% and closes today that yield climb continues there's a perfect snapshot, steepening yield curve, short end shortening it will be interesting to see the sector play where banks had another stellar week last week banks were 8% or 9%. unbelievably strong week last week >> let's keep the debate going washington, we need to get an update from there and the moves from the biden administration over the weekend kayla has an update for us >> good morning. president biden covering a range

of domestic and geopolitical issues in a series of sitdowns aired over super bowl weekend. he said he will not relax sanctions on iran to get them back to the negotiating table for a stronger nuclear deal. he has spoken with the prime minister of japan to discuss the possibility of having the olympics this summer he said they're still hoping for that on the question of why he is yet to speak with chinese president xi jinping, he said that over time, he spent 25 hours in private meetings with him and so far there's been no reason to call >> we need not have a conflict but there's going to be extreme competition. and i'm not going to do it the way -- he knows this because he's been sending signals that i'm not going to do it the way trump did. we're going to focus on international rules of the road. >> here at home biden said the cdc will release guidance for schools to reopen as soon as

wednesday. he may use all 32 nfl stadiums as vaccination sites and he's prepared to pursue a stand-alone bill to hike the minimum wage since it will likely get strapped from this stimulus bill on that stimulus bill, treasury secretary janet yellen said if this one by the administration is passed, she expects the u.s. to get back to full employment by next year otherwise it will take several years. on cbs's "face the nation" yesterday she made her first public remarks on gamestop and market volatility since it began just a few weeks ago here's what she said >> the core infrastructure of the markets, the plumbing, the ability to trade, clearance, settlement, those infrastructures performed well, but we need to make sure investors are adequately protected, that they understand their risks and we have fair and efficient markets. >> she also said she's directed

the securities and exchange commission to produce a report on its findings on the matter. no word on exactly when that report is due. back to you. >> kayla, thank you very much for that. drugmaker astrazeneca is racing to adapt its covid vaccine to combat new variants of the virus south africa suspended the use of that shot after a small scale study found the vaccine offered minimal protection to mild to moderate disease caused by the south african variant. they will continue offering vaccines from j&j and moderna. >> the weird thing about this that i don't understand -- i've heard this story repeated several times this morning already, but what i don't understand is, it offered limited support against mild to moderate versions of this disease when it comes to that, but what about in terms of hospitalizations, what about in terms of deaths because it seems

to me every one of these vaccines, what they know so far, has shown less effectiveness when it comes up against the south africa strain? what's most important is they have shown huge amount of success in preventing severe disease, maybe 85% or better and about 100% when it comes to death, which should be the focus at this point. it's not that you anticipate you're never going to get sick again. we live with the flu vaccine knowing very likely even if you get the flu vaccine, you might end up with the flu this year but you might have a weaker version of that. that's what i don't understand in this case for them to actually stop using the vaccine at that point suggests that it's a worse picture but i haven't seen that reported out. >> we haven't seen it peer-reviewed. it's interesting the state of play, which i think you would have to describe overall as a win despite individual vaccines not necessarily doingwell against individual strains the astrazeneca one does deal quite well with the uk strain,

which is where it's being used most of all at the moment. they also said they should be able to develop by fall, late fall, new booster shots for the different strains that it doesn't deal with, like the south african one. that's, i would say, relatively optimistic, as is the fact that the novavax deals with south african strain, again, not peer-reviewed. it's scary on the surface, when every country wants to stop the south african virus spreading within their borders. >> i just don't understand why -- the idea they would stop using this vaccine maybe it's less effective than the other ones >> well, no, it's -- >> i do think it's important to have context with this. >> i think there's an issue here, which is you don't want -- if you have a choice between the pfizer vaccine and the astrazeneca vaccine, for example, and you think the

pfizer vaccine has even marginally more efficacy than the astrazeneca vaccine in this regard, i think you try to push people towards one over the other. i think the secondary issue, though, is, and i know -- i'm as hopeful as anybody about what's happening here, but if we don't get ahead of it, especially in the united states and so many other places around the world, if we don't stomp out even the quote/unquote, version that's running around here t will very soon turn into the south african version because that is coming to other parts of the world. part of it is we do need to find a way to hit this thing and hit it hard and try to snuff out as much as we can frankly, at the rate we're going, we're not doing a good job. >> that's my question on this. if you can get a -- if you can get a better, higher efficacy vaccine, fantastic that's the situation we're dealing with there's not enough to go around.

would you say, forget it, i'd rather not get one and wait months, if that's the case >> for taking astrazeneca in the united states, i mean, astrazeneca is not available in the united states. >> no, no, that's -- but that's what i mean, in south africa to stop giving that it's not like they have enough vaccines to give everyone a vaccine at this point. that's my question is it that much less effective in terms of hospitalizations and death? i don't know the answer to that. it would suggest that, perhaps, it is if they're willing to take that off the market. >> obviously that variant that it might not be as effective against is not that prominent. the trade-off -- i understand your question. but the tradeoff is different from them deciding not to use it like uk, europe or u.s., if it's unproved in regions like the u.s. because the variant is minor in those spaces. totally get your point >> you can say the same thing about the j & j vaccine here

it's not as effective. 72%. >> it's significantly less effective -- but those studies suggest the astrazeneca against that variant, and now we're getting into the weeds, but that variant is significantly less effective, it appears, than what j&j and its efficacy in the united states. >> their efficacy in south africa was 57% they haven't finished the testing for moderna and pfizer, so there's not an apples and apples to run up against. >> hopefully we can talk to dr. scott gottlieb and others throughout the show who will hopefully have answers. we have other news to tell you about. it's a biggy given it was a big piece of news we talked about last week. south korean carmaker hyundai and kia say they are not in talks with apple to develop an

autonomous vehicle in regulatory filings they said they are getting requests to jointly develop autonomous vehicles but nothing has been decided since it's in early stages both companies said specifically they are not in talks with apple on such a project. earlier this month a source told phil lebeau that apple was reaching an agreement with hyundai and apple could decide to work with another carmaker. stocks both down hyundai off 16%. hard to necessarily say there is no deal in the offing at all, in part because if you read the language of some of this, it's particularly -- it's possibly maybe a semantics game i don't know what's going on here clearly there's questions and a lot of them this morning. >> a lot of questions. i totally agree.

the semantics are interesting, but to do it by regulatory filing -- i don't know what the filing rules are in korea, to be honest, but to do it by regulatory filing, perhaps means you can't mislead in it or perhaps a normal statement that you might say with a journalist in an interview. this story has been out there. it started before phil lebeau covered it last week it started to come out a few months back. the debate then was, don't front-run apple or they'll pull the plug on you. no one wants to do that. they slightly walked it back then anyway. and i just wonder if apple is telling them, we don't want anyone talking about this until we're totally ready so you have to walk this back, even though it doesn't soupd like it was hyundai's fault. there's a lot of questions if it ends up materializing one day, this will all look very bizarre. i think a lot of journalists and investors will be angry with both apple and hyundai for still

denying a story when it comes to fruition, if it comes to fruition at the moment, the share prices are telling you they believe the regulatory filing from hyundai that it's not going to happen. >> in the meantime, tom brady threw three touchdowns to win his seventh super bowl yesterday. it was just his first year with the tampa bay buccaneers it's a pretty incredible achievement. build that up, get the program going, bring gronkowski, watch all of this. tom brady, by the way, won his fifth super bowl mvp award with this performance last night. it was a done deal you kind of knew that would be the situation just watching through the game he was everywhere. shut everything down the defense shut down kansas city's high-power offense. amazing mahomes never get a chance to scorea touchdown the three field goals is where they came up with the nine points i know you were up watching this last night, too. i don't know if i'm getting

older or the game was that good but the best part of it was the game, not the commercials, not the halftime show. the game was pretty incredible and part of it has to be that narrative. there's that huge narrative that seems to be everywhere with the retail investors, with the reddit guys, with sh else about stick it to the man. there was a little bit of that in this, too tom brady, they told him he's too old, thanks for your help with our franchise but it's time to move on and look to the future that's about him coming back and sticking it to them. do you think he's done no way. >> he was clear afterwards he was definitely doing another season i have to say as someone that doesn't come to nfl with a clear allegiance, brady for me doesn't divide opinion you just want the greatest to get greater and greater. i was pleased with the result. the other question i have, which you might know better than me, but joe off today so he could watch it all and i know he was betting, i don't know which side he wanted to win i don't know if he's licking his wounds or counting his dollars this morning >> i don't know. i'm not sure where he was

leaning with any of that it was a great game to watch >> better than the commercials the commercials were terrible. can we just say -- the game was better on a relative basis to the commercials in part because the commercials were terrible and the game was fun but it wasn't -- it turned to be a blowout but it was great to watch. it was great to see brady win, as you said, to stick it to the man. to see gronkowski back, it was cool >> power to the people. anyway, when we come back, the big battle off the field we'll talk about the super bowl ad winners and losers right after this. take a look at the futures this morning even after all the gains we saw last week. the best week for the market all the way back to november you're still looking at additional gains this morning. dow indicated up triple digits, about 114 points higher. s&p after closing at a record is up by another 12 points this morning. nasdaq closed by a record on friday and it's up by about 55 points this morning. "squawk box" will be right back.

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welcome back, everybody. robinhood debuting its first super bowl ad last night the commercial's message, we're all investors. the focus wasn't on its current pr crisis in the stock trading frenzy around gamestop and reddit ran a five-second ad that was inspired by wall street

bets it read at the end, powerful things happen when people rally around something they really care about joining us right now is ed lee, "new york times" media reporter and a cnbc contributor if you blinked, you missed this one but i think they got their message across five seconds may have been worth it in this case. what do you think? >> they definitely got their money's worth. i actually rewound my dvr and paused just so i could read it and what was this thing. that's also the irony. you had to dvr it to actually see the ad and market extors have blamed dvrs for ad skipping i think between reddit and robinhood, reddit definitely won this thing it was clever. it was really well done. the five seconds, you know, i mean, it's interesting that cbs even sold a five-second spot for something you hadn't seen before, reddit definitely takes

the cake >> that was the surprise to me, the idea that cbs would even agree to a five-second ad spot you think this is going to spawn similar things like this down the road heck, why pay for the whole thing when you can just pay for five snekdz. >> that's a good question. the dynamic of what i saw with all the ad pods is -- i noticed a lot of house ads probably more than we normally see during the super bowl. i kind of wonder if they're able to sell out every possible ad spot i think, if someone comes to you and says, i'll buy five seconds worth and you haven't sold out a lot of the pods, they're probably like, sure, let's do it i think that for sure, i think must have been a factor in terms of how that played out 5 million or $5.5 million for 30 seconds, it's the most expensive it's ever been we still don't really know in terms of how these super bowl audiences have been trending

it's always been around the 100 million mark in the last few years. it seems to be waning a little bit. we'll wait to see what that looks like later in the day or even tomorrow in terms of when those stats come out. >> let's talk about the robinhood commercial, which obviously as if the last month hadn't really happened of craziness for them i wonder whether that was by design presumably it was. the fact that a lot of these have been in production for quite some time and maybe they just thought, well, let's purposefully leave it off or we've already spent our money making this commercial, i don't want to change it. >> if you've already committed and made the spot -- clearly, this spot was designed just to introduce everyday people to what robinhood is. in that way it was probably effective, but it sort of ignored the entire controversy and unless you've been living under a rock for the last few weeks, you're aware there's something crazy happening on wall street and robinhood was

part of it i think it was a definite miss, an unfortunate circumstance where, you know, the pr for this just ends up compounding they'll have to explain now why they didn't address what's been happening with this very sort of bland ad ultimately, this sort of vanilla like, hey, here's who we are, here's what we do, we're all investors. that's exactly the problem, right? that's what's under debate, whether everyone is an investor or not. >> you mentioned house ads, but it was one of my favorite of the whole night, and there was a series of them for poaramount plus patrick stewart on the top of the paramount everest mountain there, whatever we describe it as - >> the paramount mountain, figuring out the language.

i agree. i actually thought it was interesting this terms of introducing people to a new thing. i thought they did a good job. they strung it along where they had a narrative where you saw a few of these spots and they kind of created a whole sort of story around it. i thought it was effective at the same time, i don't know if you noticed, but there was a disney plus/hulu ad, bundle streaming ad in the second half of the game that was also effective if you're in the market for streaming it's interesting that you had these sort of dueling streaming services ultimately kind of in one circumstance here. yes, the paramount ad was effective. again, i think people might be confused in terms of, wait a minute, you see all these different characters i notice that's a cbs show i notice that's something to do with movies and paramount and late night what is this again

it piqued people's interest but if you're not familiar with the streaming setup or what viacom/cbs is, you might have been a little confused >> ed, what did you think of the bruce springsteen ad it definitely caught quite a bit of attention, the jeep ad. it was done by the same company that did the bill murray jeep ad last year. and the clint eastwood ad from several years ago. use someone you would never associate with getting involved in advertising and the super bowl. >> bruce springsteen famously doesn't do commercials that's not his thing this is the first time he's done it he's done it in a big splash according to my twitter feed, this was the most controversial ad of the night. it had this sort of grand theme of unity and, you know, we're all americans and left or right, whatever in is coming weeks after inauguration so on the face of it, it seems

like a nice thing to have and it was well executed. again, it's like, i think my personal issue with this, i was watching with my family and my wife and my daughter whenever we see these commercials where you have basically for-profit companies marrying their brand to these sort of grand themes, you know, humanity, whatnot, the reaction is always like, nope, huh-uh, i'm not buying it. especially the younger generation, they sort of see through that as a little bit of, yeah, it's a nice message but you're just selling cars, right? what's the connection here exactly? i think that's - >> that's interesting. i didn't have that reaction to it i was okay with it. >> you liked it, right. >> you're right. but you're right, i did see a lot of back and forth on my twitter feed, too. >> yeah. i think it hit the note a little too hard i think that's what was particularly difficult around this super bowl advertising seen, which is given the state

of the world, pandemic and really, really difficult election, you know, how do you do messaging, right? so i personally like - >> companies that chose not to - >> yeah. i just like the straightforward -- >> a lot of companies choose not to. >> it was funny because it was -- it was straightforward. the jake/state farm stand-in ad was funny because it was straightforward. >> the cheetos ad with ashton kutcher and mila kunis was hilarious. i can't believe they worked that into an ad great to see you, ed we'll talk to you soon >> definitely. >> by the way, the e-trade ad with the little kid, come on, or jason alexander on the sweatshirt those are my winners for the evening. nonetheless, coming up, strong performances from uber

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♪ ♪ fiverr has the freelancers to get you where you wanna be. is this the lobby? this is not a hotel... welcome back to "squawk. softbank shares jumping in japan overnight. the company's vision record recorded an $8 billion profit. assets valued at $90 billion compared to purchase price of $76 billion. their profit grew by $11 billion, shattering analyst

estimates and they sl filed applications for four blank check companies known as spac. quite the turn-around given the conversation we were having about this company just a year ago. whether you could spend $100 billion and actually make money doing it, it is game isn't over yet but right now it looks like they're clearly winning. in the meantime, hedge fund elliott management has been meeting with bankers about raising more than $1 billion for its spac "the wall street journal" reports that the firm founded by billionaire paul singer has not finalized its plans. guys, i don't even know if this is news at this point. i think we need to start reporting on groups and hedge funds that are not considering spac at this point everybody's got a spac, right? >> unbelievable the slew that continues. we'll have to see when it stops, if the capital goes elsewhere or if it, in fact, a further sign of bullishness in the markets

that it's absorbing all these extra capital and pushing higher at the same time quite extraordinary. an update on investing giant renesas technology bloomberg is reporting the firm has been hit with at least a $5 billion redemption clients pulled $1.85 billion in december and nearly $2 billion in january and the report says investors are poised to withdrawal an additional $1.6 billion this month. hedge fund run by billionaire jim simmons is coming off a tough year after posting double digit losses in 2020 they had said they were underhedged during the march collapse and overhedged in the rebound april through june. still to come, the rise of retail traders we'll break down the account openings and the impact of all the new participants on the markets. as we go to break, dating surface bumble increasing the planned target range it's now planning to sell 45 million shares up from 34.5

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good morning welcome back to "squawk box" on this monday morning. post super bowl for those just waking up. dow 122 points higher. s&p 500 looking to open about 14 points higher. the number of online brokerage accounts increased 17% from 2019 to 2020. that's according to piper sandler. given the recent trading frenzy, there are new questions about whether retail investors understand market risk and what that might mean for broker/dealers joining me is respected wall street analyst, rich from piper sandler. thanks for joining us. those statistics are stark for 2020 versus 2019 what's it been like in the early

part of 2021 that pace has picked up, presumably >> tremendous, tremendous. i want to point out those numbers of 17% is for schwab -- combined schwab and ameritrade but it's up three times the growth rate of what it was the prior year one thing i do want to point out, you were talking earlier, you had a media person talking about the commercials last night. you know, robinhood's commercials. they, believe it or not, they've been seeing a tremendous uptick or surge in app downloads even after the trading restriction. they're averaging probably three to four times the amount of app downloads since the trading restrictions have come in. they may not have needed the commercial last night. i say that facetiously because there has been a lot of frustration with the trading restrictions but they're seeing lots of activity on their

website -- excuse me o their app. >> rich, how much trading are these new account openers doing? and do you expect that to rise, fall, stay steady in the years ahead and how linked to it is market levels? if we get a pullback, does that destroy people's interest in investing and trading in stocks? >> i think you hit the nail on the head it's trading right now is super elevated i would say trading for the schwabs, ameritrades of the world are three to four times they were a year prior to the pandemic for robinhood, you know, they haven't posted any new numbers but here's one number you can get -- that can sort of measure that in the whole market, we used to do 7 billion shares a day. we're averaging 15 billion every day now, or we're doing 15 day

with a bigger portion being retail so double with retail being a greater percentage, double that in the marketplace >> who is making all the money off this, rich is it the more established brokers that may have seen a bit of a pickup in engagement but not as big a pickup as robinhood or is the robinhood type business model one that will be profitable both in the short term and the allowed to exist in the long term and be profitable for them over time >> that's a good question because these e-brokers inspired by robinhood went to zero commissions in late 2019 so, they actually are seeing some upside because volume makeup of the increased volume has made up some of the lost commissions. but they are relying on what we call payment to flow to answer your question, do i think it will stay at these

levels i think a conservative person would think this can't be maintained i have been saying this for the last six months. i think you're right a good market pullback is a sobering if ekt. all that said, we are running at elevated levels right now. >> do you think morgan stanley's acquisition of e-trade was a smart one and do you think oerdz like goldman sachs has been mentioned or any of the other bigger banks should be looking to buy robinhood or start something like this of their own? >> i'm not sure about the robinhood. robinhood brings in new, young clients. they have accomplished what i think their mission was, making investing available to a whole different generation i do think it makes big sense that morgan stanley bought e-trade. parts of e-trade blended with

morgan stanley's business, they bring in deposits. i think that that's what the goldman sachs of the world are thinking as well with this frenzy, we can bring in a customer and their money and we can potentially sell them other products as well >> rich, thank you >> thank you when we come back, futures in the green right now let's get a look at some names leading the dow higher dow is up by 120 points in the premarket. cisco up by 1.8% disney up by 1.5%. chevron up about 0.9%. round that out with johnson & johnson and visa you can watch or listen to us live any time on the cnbc app. i'm made to move. but these days, i'm not getting out as much as i'd like to. that's why i take osteo bi-flex.

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coming up when we rurp, breaking spac news after the break. later, we'll talk about the aastrazeneca news from south africa and what it could mean for the vaccines right here. dr. scott gottlieb will join us in about an hour tsf esonanhe glo oqutis d 'sot the answers. solving. , problem at new chapter vitamins we've been busy too... innovating, sourcing organic ingredients, testing them and fermenting. fermenting? yeah like kombucha or yogurt.

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welcome back to "squawk box.

matterport is going public combining with gores homings vi. expected to close in the second quarter. backers of $300 million investment include tiger global and fidelity another day, another spac. joining us right now first on cnbc is matterport ceo and managing director of the gores group, ceo of gores holdings vi. good morning to both of you. r.j., congratulations on this deal help us understand the spac phenomenon, if you will. i know you were thinking of going public in 2021 that was on your roadmap and i think we're all trying to understand this new phenomenon. >> sure. the options for companies like matterport, they're varied and the spac prop was one, but the way that we approached this was really not about looking at a transaction type but who is the right partner.

so we entered the process. we were looking at all of the options, including staying private. we met the gores group they were an interesting partner and had an unusual amount of experience in the spac space as we dipped further into that process we found that we had a terrific partner that could really create a force multiplie for us bringing matterport public and accelerating on our strategy in creating one of the most exciting platform technologies of the decade. >> r.j., explain this and then i'll talk to mark. sometimes i ask the question i just asked you and i'll get feedback if somebody was going public you typically wouldn't ask them why they decided to use goldman sachs as their underwriter do you think it's similar or no? >> certainly in my experience,

i've been doing this long enough, what's most important is quality, right we look for quality in the partnerships no matter who you choose if you are really doing this in the right way. that's something that i think has been deeply rooted with matterport, our investors, board members, partners and customers along the way. it's built around be that fabric you know, i can genuinely say in this case there's no question, you know, the spac vehicle presents some very efficient, advantageous options to it you can move very quickly through that listing process, through that fundraising process. you have a fantastic lineup of investors on the ready if you partner with the right company, you really can create something, i think, that is extraordinary, differentiated but really that's unique for your company not necessarily right for every business in our case we were thoughtful about it and we feel really great about this. >> mark, you've now done seven

of these i think the public somewhat understands them, somewhat doesn't understand them. when we look back at this vintage of spacs, a lot of people look at the number, the pure volume of them and say, look, a couple years from now we're going to look back and there may be some successes but anything -- any time there is too much energy around something there is a bit of a mania and there's going to be losses along the way as well if not more so what do you think? >> look, we keep our heads down and stay focused on finding -- bringing great companies public, right? what we look for is pretty common across all of them. we look for high quality companies that are bringing differentiated and market leading solutions to the market very much like matterport. have untapped and significant growth potential in front of them and outstanding potential to deliver i think if we stick to the recipe we'll continue the success we've had over the course of the last six years.

>> one of the questions people have asked is a lot about alignment, alignment of the various investor groups and also disclosure rules relating to ipos versus spacs. mark, i wanted to get your sense on a couple of things. we've obviously been asking some of these questions in large part because last week there was the news around clover, with chamath palihapitiya and others saying things didn't get disclosed through the spac i'm curious, do you think the idea of forward looking projections in the context of a spac, should those kinds of things be aligned? the fiduciary duty rules which don't necessarily exist in a spac my understanding, mark, you can speak to this differently, the sponsor actually doesn't have a fiduciary duty to the despacced investor group, for example.

i've never been a big fan of fairness opinions because i think they're theater. there's no independent outside somebody saying this actually is a fair deal for everybody. >> it's an interesting point i will tell you, we have closed five business combinations and i believe we're one of the only spac sponsors out there whose boards require an independent third party fairness opinion before approving any transaction. we've done it in every single deal and we'll do it in every single deal going forward. look, i don't think there's any better way to show your belief and conviction and to gain alignment of interest than to put your money where your mouth is, right? we've delivered 3.6 billion of new equity across the five transactions that we've closed of that 3.6, we personally have committed to over 400 million of that and that's not other people's money, not fund money, that is money coming from the checkbooks of the principles

associated with your sponsor >> r.j., mark, we wish you a lot of luck with this. r.j., it's been great. we had you on a long time ago when you first were cracking it's great to see you succeeding we wish you luck with this transaction as well. again, hope to talk to you soon. >> congratulations, r.j. >> thanks. still to come on "squawk box," why last friday's job report could have a huge impact on the size of the biden administration stimulus package. that's coming up next. heading to break, bond yields the 30 year did touch 2% earlier this morning the first time it has done so in a year since pre-pandemic levels last february. we'll keep an eye on that. the 10-year is higher at 198 back in a couple of minutes.

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good morning the bulls look to continue their charge as wall street comes off its best week since november hyundai and kia are not in talks with apple to develop a car. the latest straight ahead. plus, from vaccine production to fighting the strains. we're going to talk to dr. scott gottleib about this morning's top covid headlines. the second hour of "squawk box" begins right now

good morning welcome back to "squawk box" right here on cnbc on this post super bowl edition of "squawk box. i'm andrew ross sorkin along with becky quick wilfred frost is with us this morning in for joe taking the day off after this post super bowl day >> smart one. >> very smart he is, becky you're absolutely right. meantime, let's show you u.s. equity futures still 2 1/2 hours above. nasdaq up close to 50 points and the s&p 500 looking to open 13 points higher. a couple other big headlines to tell you about now the rising price of crude oil making an impact at the gasoline pump prices up 5 cents over the last two weeks to an average of $2.50

per gallon that's three cents below year ago levels after an extended period of lower prices i noticed the price. >> what? >> amazon -- >> i was getting gas and i was noticing that it keeps creeping up i kept looking, is it really that high? getting higher and higher. amazon buying more than 700 trucks -- >> nickell. >> -- as it takes to cut down on pollution. the engines for those trucks are made by joint venture. both stocks higher westport fuel up literally 48% this morning meantime, toy maker hasbro reported quarterly profit of $101 a share getting a boost for pandemic related games. we just bought jenga >> jenga's awesome hasbro has a lot of them

we have twister. there's anything and everything. battleship there's all kinds of games that we've been not only playing but buying new ones because we're wearing these out. >> of those three, i was not built for christer, too clumsy for jenga and battleship i held my own. >> you're too tall. >> you named one i could play. washington news. investors watching stimulus talks. steve liesman has a look at some of the economic factors at play. hey, steve. >> reporter: good morning. the weak friday jobs report giving new impetus to president biden's $1.9 trillion stimulus package even while some economists saying it's too large and could spark inflation later this year. treasury secretary janet yellen took to the air waives to support the plan and directly mentioning the long road ahead to put americans back to work. >> we have 10 million people

unemployed, 4 million have dropped out of the labor market. another 2 million working part time who really would like full-time work we are in a deep hole with respect to the job market and a long way to dig out. >> you can see the u.s. fairly quickly put 10 million people back to work with negative numbers in december, only a slight dwayne reported in january, the jobs recovery has stalled at the minus i'll call it 10 million. wall street economists differ on whether such a big package is needed most have built in a big bill for a strong rebound in growth over at jeffries they say by february we expect payrolls to surgeon the back of the reopening, ppp loans and fiscal support. they said the previous package but they called the biden plan,

quote, fiscally reckless it's got higher yields which seem to be the case. yellen, a former fed chair struck a similar tone as fed officials have in wondering if a bigger danger exists and dealing with inflation later wilf, look at the gdp numbers. no stimulus. the jobs numbers, maybe that's working. >> how targeted does it need to be to get bang for your buck the things like stimulus checks, that's being discussed in a moment steve, you americansed yields there. i have to bring it up with you if you put aside the flash crash part of it in march, the sort of sustained, relatively sustained summer low of yields was down to 1.2. we're back up to where we were prepandemic of 2% on the 30 year i know we're not back to the 4s and 5%, but that is a steady

increase on the long end of the curve. >> for sure. i think the fed is not so much watching the 30 year as they're watching the 10. that has crept up as well. the question becomes where does the fed have some concern that it gets too high to hurt the recovery i think there's two things they're thinking of. the first is that some yield increase will be warranted as the economy and investors begin to think about stronger growth the inflation part of it is the part they'll be concerned most about. i think most fed officials i've spoken with, whifilf, see some m of temporary inflation but they don't see it as a permanent situation. demand may come back but supply down the road. >> thank you very much >> pleasure. thank you all. coming up on the other side

of this break, the ceo of clear on how her company kept this year's super bowl attendees safe and how that same technology might be used in the bigger fight against covid. first, as we head to a break, check out some of this morning's biggest movers stay tuned you're watching "squawk box" on cnbc dana-farber cancer institute discovered the pd-l1 pathway. pd-l1. they changed how the world fights cancer. blocking the pd-l1 protein, lets the immune system attack, attack, attack cancer.

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welcome back to "squawk box. the dow closed on friday at all time highs if we were to continue, that would be a new high for the dow. s&p and nasdaq set highs on friday nasdaq is up by 47 in our headlines this morning, amc entertainment reporting majority shareholder wanda dps group executed a share that move would allow the china based company to sell amc shares the sec filing did not say how many shares were converted or if

any shares were sold amc shares were caught up in the reddit fueled volatility this morning up 2.5% to $7 andrew thanks, becky. meantime, 100 health care workers participated in the clear health pass. it's just one of many new technologies deployed at this year's super bowl. joining us in an exclusive interview to discuss what this means for businesses in a post vaccine world is clear ceo good morning to you. great to see you again i'm glad that you're out there doing this work. somebody needs to be doing it. help us though understand what you did at the super bowl but perhaps more importantly because i think there's a lot of business leaders watching this, and employees too, thinking about what a world looks like where people do get back to the office in a more meaningful way and how technology changes that.

>> thanks, andrew. great to be here covid has created a ubiquitous problem across so many industries clear is partnering to create the future of the fan experience like we did last night at the super bowl validating vaccinated workers connecting their identity in an automated and frictionless way to their vaccine results. the power of the platform for clear is creating this frictionless experience, making it safer and easier using this platform to enroll once and use it everywhere, at the super bowl, getting into your office building, going back to a restaurant, broadway shows i think last night was incredibly hopeful and exciting. >> so, karen, just explain this to me. there's a view that in the future we might get into a world of vaccine passports, vaccinated passports. someone has to validate the vaccine passport in each instance so that i can't just

walk in and claim that i was vaccinated if, in fact, that's going to be the case how do you deal with that? >> so automation and biometrics and mobile we've been doing it in the airports for over a decade connecting you building this automated link to health care databases to reflect that, in fact, you were vaccinated i think we're going to be living in a hybrid world for some period of time so it can also reflect you were tested. the power here is the truth is the validation, right? it's not you doing it, it's automated. and the ability to enroll once and use it everywhere. so it's really powerful. frictionless for the customer. safer and easier for the partners and i do believe it's where the world is going and it's here and now. i think experiences are going to come back better than they left. >> i think the thing that i'm concerned about or questioning

is are you getting the data directly from health care providers? so if i go get a vaccine, are you getting the -- am i effectively telling you that i was vaccinated or are you finding out from mount sinai that i was vaccinated? and i have not been vaccinated i'm hoping in the next couple months i get to get vaccinated >> i haven't been vaccinated yet either, but when it is my time we will be there and we're encouraging everyone to do that. the answer is andrew, really important question trust is key in everything that we do. everything is opt in not only that, you are in control of your data and we're not selling or sharing the data. if you see what we did yesterday, you are just sharing a green, you are not selling it, you are just opting in i think building the brand that stands for trust for a long time

before this makes it a faster adoption rate and easier to move forward. >> one last question i know wilf has a question for you as well. you talked about a hybrid world. when people really get back to the office, and you're starting to see it in trickles in different parts of the country and whatnot, are you imagining some office places that say everybody has to be vaccinated for those that aren't, do you imagine there's going to be a massive testing regime what does that look like to you? >> there are ceos who are saying vaccines are mandated. there are companies who are saying we have testing at clear right now, we offer testing. we are encouraging our employees to get vaccinated. we're helping educate them we think it's really important again, i want to go first. i've seen you talk about saying you'll do it on tv i do think that health and wellness is a long term, sustainable part of going back

to work and i do think companies, office buildings, real estate are creating health and wellness, whether it be doctor labs, nurse -- you know, to come and do the testing as well as vaccination to help make experiences safer and easier. >> i had, caryn, a totally different question i wanted to come back to your prior question from andrew you mentioned you only have to show green in as i've been cleared to come in to andrew's question, how do you verify what i have told you that i've got the vaccine is it from a doctor or health care professional or because i said i promise you i have it. >> no, it is an automated link to the back end of health care providers but it is you doing that link. what clear is saying you are definitively you you are building that link one time to your health care provider at which point we're saying we have caryn here, she's vaccinated, they're coming back

green and we're showing green. it is not only a much better experience, but it is not sharing data and so i think there is an and not an or on the ability to create safer and easier experiences in a very trusted way. >> you guys are clearly building a great service, one that could have a really important use in the next 6 to 12 months in society, though it's sort of an odd question to put to you do you hope the service is not needed at all after that presumably in a year or two's time we hope we're going back to normal where no one needs to ask you if you've been vaccinated, tested positive or negative. is this a service you think will be used for the next year or two and not after that >> so, you're exactly right. clear has created a platform in travel, sports, entertainment. this is a product. health and wellness, although in

fairness we've been telling our kids school they've been vaccinated if you've had a yellow fever vaccine and going to kenya, you're showing them. we hope covid is not a business although i do think health insights and health and wellness trends will continue as part of an overall customer experience you're exactly right, we hope covid is not a business. >> caryn, we appreciate you joining us this morning. we look forward if you talking to us earlier this morning >> thank you. we should mention clear is a cnbc disruptor 50 company. they're now accepting nominators for this year. you can go to cnbc.com/disruptors. >> becky >> guys, i want you to take a look at shares of tesla. they've come under pressure. take a look at headlines the stock is down only by less than 1% right now.

not a massive move the stock is down as we were getting headlines from reuters a china market regulator said government departments held a meeting with tesla over a quality issue. china's industry, transportation, cyber safety and emergency management are said to have urged tesla to operate according to chinese laws. some of the things they cited, they said the regulator meeting was from response from battery fires, unexpected acceleration this is according to reuters stock is off about 1 1/4%. >> thanks for that we have got minutes left until the close. thinking "closing bell." mo morgan stanley chief mike wilson check out treasury yields this morning, continuing to climb up to 1 poirch point 19 on the

10-year. osg clin2% on the 30

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is at weathertech.com welcome back to "squawk box", everybody. south korean automakers kia and

hyundai say they are not in talks with apple to develop an autonomous vehicle they are getting proposals but nothing has been decided both companies said specifically that they are not in talks with apple on a project like this earlier this month sources told phil lebeau that apple was getting close to finalizing a deal with hyundai kia but no deal had been reached. meantime, we should show you shares of palantir they are working with ibm to adopt red hat software harnessing vast amounts of data. palantir stock up close to 8%.

ibm getting a little bit of a push on the back of that news. not much becky. >> thanks, andrew. still to come on "squawk box" this morning, morgan stanley's mike wilson. check out the futures right now giving us a lot to talk to him about because you're seeing the futures push higher once again even after we're sitting at or near record closes for the three major averages dow futures up 136 points. s&p up 13. nasdaq up 42 stay tuned, you're watching "squawk box" and this is skrooik. cnbc. stressed. cnbc. cnbc yeah, but what if i never hear back? that's gonna make me want to go jab...jab! nope! your geico claims team is always there for you. that makes me want to celebrate with some fireworks. 5,6,7 go... boom, boom, boom, boom boom boom boom boom boom, yeah! geico. great service without all the drama.

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welcome back to "squawk box. take a look at futures this morning. dow up 138 points. nasdaq looking to open 39 points higher and the s&p 500 looking to open 12.5 points higher, round up to 13 in deal news this morning, renaissance electronics buying apple supplier dialogue semiconductor. price is $5.9 billion in cash.

a 52% premium to a weighted three-month average you can see on that chart what that's looked like in other corporate news, amazon warehouse workers in alabama will begin an historic vote to unionize on friday they rejected amazon's attempt to delay that vote mail-in voting will continue and decide whether the alabama warehouse which has 6,000 workers will join a unit of the afl-cio and could spur similar efforts, the thing investors are looking at right now and public policy makers, could spur efforts at more than 100 amazon fulfillment centers around the world. >> stocks set to open at record highs. joining us is mike wilson, chief investment officer from morgan stanley. mike, good to see you as always. thanks for joining us.

>> good morning, wilf. >> i saw various notes which you were calling for a correction. we had a bit of a pull back was that it? it was brief, lasted a week or so 4% peak to trough and back to records again. >> it was brief. if you blinked, you missed it. the markets are quite powerful at the moment. they have to there's tremendously quit at this very good and very understandable story behind the scenes we had a strong economic recovery earnings season is good and peopleville bought into it right now the markets are i think still in a bit of a fragile state, more fragile than people might think because people are involved. there is still leverage in the system it's not dangerous necessarily so we should expect the sort of 3 to 5% corrections at any

moment that's normal. the correction in the last couple of weeks is over with highs and the bull market is in intact >> who is the marginal mover and is it the retail investor in a way that two years ago we never would have expected? what's the risk that they change their mind set on that one >> yeah. i think that's the right question, wilf right now we are seeing definitely inflows from the retail community, meaning we're seeing equity in flows in a decade in a more consistent manner i would argue, you just said it, that the retail community, retail investor is the marginal mover on stocks. i would point out, consumer confidence has not been there.

if that changes then we would probably have a bigger correction. >> so the other factor, maybe this applies more to the institutional buyer, not the retail buyer we've talked about, has been yields rising and whether that pressures multiples. where do you stand on the levels that start to worry you on that given that today we touched 2% again on the 30 year >> yeah. i don't think it's a problem if it happens gradually rates have been moving up over the last four or five months pretty steadily. 10 year has been creeping higher if that happens gradually, we should be able to offset that. more importantly, individual stocks can move higher because they'll surprise on the up side higher the problem for the market will come if rates move out in a nonlinear fashion. the bond market says, oh, my goodness, there's too much stimulus inflation is a problem

in that case, you could have an up tick. that's not happening right now it's a gradual move higher if that's the case, the pull backs will be brief and shallow. >> mike, you said at the top that you think this is still a fragile market and that's why we could continue to see pullbacks of 3 to 5% i'm assuming you don't anticipate a bigger move than 5% down and if so, why not? >> well, i think the fundamental backdrop, becky, is too strong we're seeing it in the earnings eason. part of the call has been the earnings were snapped back a lot quicker. we've been surprised by that if earnings are going to surprise by 10, 15, 20% like they have been, it will be difficult for markets to hold back that far unless we get that rate shock that would be the one thing that could throw us off

the bottom line, it's a bull market a lot of good stocks out there people are too focused on the index and the real opportunity at the stock level. >> the stock level which is still on the cyclical stocks, energy, banks, if they were stronger in the last two months of the last year and all of january and the last week as well. >> that's right. this is part of our quality. we felt like that's the right place to being it needs to consolidate and that's what's happening. some of the cyclical areas have pulled back the most and maybe that pause is over now we don't want to get too cute here, right? we're in a cyclical bull market. new economic recovery. trying to call corrections is a fool's errand. it's our job we try to do that the best we can.

>> mike, finally, in terms of the stimulus bill, is there a risk things don't come through as bullishly, dovishly on that front including in particular the stimulus checks. the terms, does that hurt the market >> you know, i think -- well, first of all, i think the chance of getting a stimulus is low at this point there seems to be plenty of vote in congress to get this through. this seems to be a strong push from the top to get this done and quite frankly, wilf, we don't really need that much more stimulus to get us through the rest of this pandemic recession. i mean, from an earnings standpoint, we're through it from an economics standpoint, it will flip quickly once we reopen once again, the pilling gerris being is the rates market once the rates start to move higher as the stimulus comes through because it's too much stimulus

i don't think there's a risk we don't get enough. >> thanks very much. when we come back another well-known wall street name looking to get in on the spac craze. first, as we head to a break, let's take a look at this morning's biggest dow movers right now at the top of the list, cisco systems up by just over 1%. sorry, up by over 2%, i should say. disney up 1.4% and chevron up by 1% as a reminder, you can always watch us live on the go on the cnbc app. ayun, quk x"ilbest ted"sawbo wl right back

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welcome back to "squawk box. take a look at the futures dow looks like it would open up 133 points higher. s&p up 12 points nasdaq looking to open up 39 points let's show you oil prices. they have steadily climbed wti crude at 57.44 doge coin, maybe with a little bit of help from mr. musk, took a currency that started as a

joke soaring to another record after elon musk, snoop dogg and gene simmons all tweeted about it up 142% right now. in the 6:00 hour, this thing is working, what does it do to bitcoin? what does it do to other coins does it suggest there is a limited number of coins? bitcoin limited but if there's so many different currencies, what's going to happen in the future lots of questions? wilf, you asked the right question about responsibility, whether elon should be tweeting about these things what people are really doing i don't know what the right answer is anymore. >> there's the responsibility question as we brought up earlier with mike novogratz's tweet you're saying this could potentially push up bitcoin in the short term what does it do if and when it collapses again? does it drag all of the cryptos down including the more credible among them

it's not like tesla hasn't -- excuse me, it's not like bitcoin hasn't had a great run of late more generally that would allow it to have room to pull back we'll have to keep an eye on it. feels irresponsible, the pushing up of this one, particularly given the recent -- >> hey, wilf, i'm -- >> look at my email. >> look at this, guys. look at this guys. tesla in a new filing says that they've updated their investment policy to provide them with more flexibility to, are you ready for this, be able to buy bitcoin. we have invested an aggregate of $1.5 billion in bitcoin under this policy and may acquire and hold digital assets. it's subject to applicable laws.

it's liquid. it's on the back i imagine it >> i'm just throwing an extra appointment. it looks like it's just happening. we don't know this it's an added responsibility it's pushing up a stock if you're benefitting from it >> maybe musk has tweeted to push up the price of bitcoin in the past couple of months. >> he was. he was just a few weeks ago. in fact, he had bitcoin -- he had added a symbol to his profile on twitter and was doing a lot of things around bitcoin

that seemed to push up bitcoin that was in the last couple of weeks. it was last week when he took the bitcoin symbol out of his profile and then started pushing doge coin instead. i think the question i would also ask here is how his investors feel about those bitcoin has been a big performer but it's also been an incredibly volatile holding if you've been watching this. back at almost $40,000 now but it can drop thousand s of dollas in a day ron baron, is he okay? >> why do it he could not possibly have had -- he could not have dreamt to be in the position he's in where his company does not have any chance of going bankrupt, any chance of running out of cash it's worth gosh i forget the number, 800 billion, he's worth 200 billion. why on earth do this why take the risk? >> if you're gary gensler this

morning, the nominee to run the sec and you're waking up and reading this news and this filing saying this took place in january 2021 that they changed their investing policy, meantime, you're watching elon musk over the last three weeks pump bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, i think there's a question mark of what's going on here from the start, meaning if -- i would bet by the end of the day there will be an inquiry of some sort i'm not suggesting wrongdoing per se, but you're going to start to raise questions about what was being said publicly on one end, what was being done privately because clearly something inside tesla, there were decisions being made inside tesla to buy this. i think it raises all sorts of questions. look, i could see somebody make the argument that he was tipping off the public in a good way to get ahead of this, but i could also see people argue that this is another form of market manipulation. >> this is someone who's had

clashes with the sec before and had restrictions on his tweets imposed on him before. i want to know what every single tesla board member thinks about this they presumably had to vote to approve this the filing says they had to change the rules to allow them to have more flexibility on their cash all of the board members but particularly robin and larry and james mourdock who clearly were the people in and around the period where there were questions about corporate governance were added to add more credibility to this board and say this just isn't elon going to do whatever he wants. but bizarre. >> hey, wilf, we've got dan ives who just called in to the news line i want to get him into this conversation he's obviously followed tesla for quite some time plus crypto. dan, you look at this move what's your initial reaction >> the initial reaction is this is musk diving into the deep end

of the pool on crypto. it's something that's been rumored for a while and ultimately now this is really them putting substance behind his view i think it's something the street will have a differing view of but ultimately we've seen micro strategy, these are going to be viewed as a positive for the stock. >> positive for the stock of tesla and then of course positive for the value of bitcoin, you're looking at that move literally as we've been speaking just in the last couple of minutes here. >> yeah. i mean, this is a major so he lit did i phiing for bitcoin when you have a stall ward like musk making this move. it's significant it's going to have a ripple effect across other corporations with musk making this move and it's something that's -- i think it's a seminal moment for companies as they look towards this area. >> how concerned are you about

the filing relative to the comments that musk has been making online over the past couple of weeks? >> that continues to be a slippery slope we've seen them before with musk and twitter. that's not been a friend in terms of issues like this. it definitely raises probably some questions that's going to be something that they're going to have to focus on i think for investors, it continues to just be another variable in the tesla story. no doubt in this environment clearly there is going to be a whole lot of momentum in terms of bitcoin on tesla. it almost creates a perfect storm to some extent, especially in the environment we have. >> why why doesn't this rather than build momentum, why doesn't it show that it's the top i mean, just to pivot the question a little bit, dan you're an analyst of tech companies and of auto companies. tesla is meant to make cars, and

it's clear tech company more broadly and develop technology should it be trading with its cash once it generates cash from the two core business areas? >> well, to that point, that's a great question we think fundamentally continuing how you have to value it on the ev prospects, it's going to be something that investors when you look at this, it will get that sort of added multiple, but i think for right now that's going to continue to sort of make emotional bull/bear story more in tesla if they start to get that multiple and it starts to run from there. this is going to be something that we're going to continue to contend with you're seeing micro strategy now tesla, it's definitely going to have a major ripple effect, for tesla in terms of what could be the valuation over the coming weeks and months >> dan, we'll leave it there for now. thanks for phoning in at short notice. coming up, much more on this story about elon mussing,

bitcoin, tesla plus, dr. scott gottleib on the day's top headlines. we're back in a few minutes.

we've been talking about south africa who is going to stop using the astrazeneca vaccine after a trial showed it wasn't effective in protecting

against a variant of the south african virus. we welcome in scott gottleib good to see you this morning why don't we start with this news out of south africa >> good to see you. >> the idea that they are stopping using the astrazeneca vaccine there. that seems like a pretty big deal when you consider what we've seen from a lot of the other vaccines, even if efficacy is down, it does prevent in a lot of cases hospitalizations or deaths >> yeah. the data from the astrazeneca vaccine is hard to interpret there's a lot of different trials with a lot of different doses. it does appear that the vehicle that's being used to deliver the spike protein is immunogenic in the second dose if it's given too soon you could get reduced efficacy it's hard to interpret the astrazeneca vaccine in

isolation. i think when you look across the other trials what you're seeing is probably about a 20% reduction in vaccine efficacy against the south african variant, probably the brazilian variant as well. we saw it in a novovax trial and since the vaccines still have good overall he efficacy, 95% efficacy, i would expect that would fall in the 70 to 80% range when they're tested. we don't know. we don't have evidence in people hopefully we're going to have that soon. i wouldn't expect the major reduction. most of the vaccines we're using right now should provide meaningful efficacy against that variant. >> i guess how big of a problem is that variant and then some others do you have a big concern? do you think, look, the vaccines

are going to give us a good amount of protection we'll get booster shots to help down the road? what do you think the real risk is >> well, i think we can stay ahead of it. we will have boosters available in time for the fall that target the variants i don't think the variants are going to become a major issue in the united states until the fall at the earliest. right now they're very low prevalence in the united states. we don't know if they're more fit. more contagious or founder's effect in the two markets. they got into the two markets and became a prevalent strain. we are more concerned than the u.k. strain. people who have the infection, we believe they may be getting reinfected and that's why you see it spreading in brazil and south africa we should be able to develop boosters that target the new variants in four to six months it gives us plenty of time to do that in the fall the fda is working on guidance

to be able to advance the products all of them are working on them as well as the company i'm on the board of, pfizer the reason we're more worried about them, the u.k. variant is here in the united states. 5 to 10% of infections in florida. it's going to cause continued spread much less everywhere else. maybe around 1% in other major cities that's more contagious so that could lead to more spread but prior immunity and the vaccine seem to cover that pretty well with p1, b1351, it does appear prior immune at this time at this isn't as effective. you can get reinfected that's why we're worried about those. >> your op ed in the wall street journal i like because it puts forth a tantalizing idea that soon we'll go from the current problem where it's a whole problem of supply, we'll have the reverse of that where we have lots of vaccines and not enough people who want to take

them how quickly can we get to that point? >> yeah, i think it's going to happen all at once this isn't going to be a gradual transition this is going to be a surprise and it will happen sooner than we think we'll put 220 million doses into the market by the end of march if j&j gets authorized, figure 250 million doses by the end of march. if a 60/40 split occurs, 60% of first injections, 40% of second injections, that's about 150 million people that we'll vaccinate between december and the end of march i think that's going to work off a lot of the available demand. then we'll put another 100 million doses into the market in april. i think once you get into those kinds of numbers, once you look at over close to 200 million vaccines available for the first injections, i think we're going to run out of demand i think we're going to run out of demand sooner than we think sometime by march or the end of

march we'll have to make this generally available. that doesn't mean everyone can get a vaccine on april 1st but you can sooner we'll still be rationing it through february as we continue to rags it based on more and more narrow slices of the population, we have to open this up to general availability which is good news certainly by april this is widely available the demand is not going to be there. we have to work it and get the incremental patients vaccinated. the demand is deep but not wide. there's probably about maybe 100 million americans that want this very badly beyond that we're going to have to work at it. >> let's hope that bmecomes our problem soon i could live with that great to see you thank you. >> thanks a lot. when we come back, tesla disclosing that it has bought $1.5 billion in bitcoin. the cryptocurrency just hit an

all-time high crossing above 42,485 is where it's running we were looking at bitcoin up 2, 3% earlier this morning before we got this news a lot of this being pushed by what is in tesla's filings we'll talk much more about this story when "squawk box" comes right back

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good morning green arrows across the board. stocks coming off their best week since november. tesla investing $1.5 billion in bitcoin that news breaking moments ago what could it mean for the company, the ceo, elon musk and bitcoin. short sellers have gotten dinged up this year in reputation and at times in their results thanks to stocks like gamestop we have a special interview with one of the most well known short sellers. the final hour of "squawk box" begins right now. good morning, everybody.

welcome to "squawk box" here on cnbc i'm becky quick along with andrew ross sorkin and wilfred frost. joe is off today because he's smart. it's the morning after the super bowl and he got to sleep in, but for those of you who woke up with us, check this out. take a look at the u.s. equity futures because it is something to see you've been watching these markets climb even higher after closing at new highs on both the s&p 500 and nasdaq dow was 40 points away it put it well above that level. the dow indicated up 128 points this morning s&p futures up 14. nasdaq 48. ten-year yield up at 1.183%. andrew in. >> thanks, becky. breaking news just in the last half hour tesla revealing in an sec filing it has bought $1.r5 billion in bitcoin and is going to be

accepting bitcoin soon phil lebeau joins us on the squawk news line phil. >> andrew, this is a rumor that had been floating around wall street and different financial circles for a couple of weeks. i heard it from people a week and a half ago we were never able to confirm it now tesla is confirming that it has bought $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin. remember, it was a week, week and a half ago that elon musk put the bitcoin symbol on his twitter profile. it was there for a few days. i don't remember exactly how long before he took it down. and at the time there were people who said, well, is this something that a ceo of a company should be doing? and he's also tweeted about other cryptocurrencies since then, which is a separate debate and i know you guys have been talking about it over the last several days you'll likely talk about it more today. one other interesting note about this filing from tesla

the company says that it will also begin accepting payment for tesla vehicles in bitcoin and to my knowledge, they are the first automaker to do that there may be other automakers who have looked at it. they may be in the process of saying, yeah, let's do this as well to my knowledge, tesla is the first to accept bitcoin for payment for a new vehicle. again, in a 10k that the company just dropped this morning, tesla revealing that it has invested $1.5 billion in bitcoin. guys, back to you. >> hey, phil we're watching s. obviously bitcoin is moving up higher. it's moved up 14% this morning tesla moving as well just up about 2% on this news. i see it cutting two different ways i'm curious where you land in terms of what this means to the business and the way the investor community will look at the company in the future. obviously it's a great marketing event for tesla. there's a lot of folks who made money on bitcoin who may not be

able to use that money to buy in, to buy a vehicle that's helpful on one side on the other end, you become effectively an fx -- there is an fx business going on here, foreign currency bhis, foreign exchange business, rather, and you're going to have to start to take real risk involved in dealing with this currency how do you think investors longer term are going to think about that >> i don't think it bothers the tesla investor longer term i think they look at this and say, look, elon musk has done a number of things that the traditional automakers, traditional companies would look at and scoff and say, that is a crazy idea i wouldn't run my company that way. for the most part, it's worked out for him. now you could probably point out that there are a few examples where they have done something that probably hasn't worked out as anticipated generally speaking when tesla and elon musk have made a particular move, it has worked out for them this could blow up in their face

three months from now, six months from now. it all depends in terms of how this works out, as you mentioned, with the fact that it becomes effectively an fx and so if you're going to go down this path, theoretically you will have thought this out. we'll have to see how the market as well as the industry reacted. i can tell you this much, andrew almost any other auto executive i talked to, if i brought up this idea, they would say, no, i'm not comfortable with that. clearly elon is comfortable. >> you can't bet against him he's an absolute genius. he's killed it in so many ways i want to continue the thought process of andrew's last question obviously if a company's moving into a new country they will establish liquidity in that currency if they're about to start accepting bitcoin, they will need some liquidity to process that you would expect that. i just want to come back to this filing because it says we

updated our investment policy to provide us with flexibility to further diversify maximized returns on our cash. atz part of the policy, i'm scanning the next part, we can invest in certain reserve assets, including digital assets in talks about maximizing our returns going forward. so it doesn't sound like this is purely to have liquidity in a new currency that they might expect to receive, and i go back to the point i put to dan ives, which is do you want your company, who's known for making cars and developing technology, to be a hedge fund i'm exaggerating the point now a little bit, of course, but you see where i'm going? >> well, you would be -- i would say this the conservative investor would say that it's crazy. the tesla investor would look at this and say, why not? they're doing what i want my company to do, which is to

maximize the returns on its cash holdings and if they think this is the best move, i'm all for it. i think you really have to look at it from the viewpoint of the overwhelming majority of tesla investors. now there could be some people out there who look at this and say, i don't know. this doesn't sound like a smart bet to me, but generally speaking i think this would get a resounding ovation from tesla investors. >> can i just point out that this is not a small amount of their cash on hand $1.5 billion is significant. i asked peter shack now to look up in the filing at the end of 2020 the company had $19.38 billion in cash and cash equivalence representing an increase of $13.12 billion from the endof 2019 1.5% that's 7% something, 7.5% of their cash on hand so it's not insignificant. you're not talking 1% or less. and that would be significant that i would ask, you're right,

phil i'm sure a lot of tesla shareholders are fine with this, but there may be some of them who are thinking, wait a second, if i want to bet on bitcoin, i'll bet on bitcoin. if i want to bet on tesla, i'll bet on them. it's not an insignificant amount of cash. >> the counterargument is how many times has tesla made an investment for the future of its business, and generally speaking even if -- >> it's a different story. >> you could make an argument solar city has not panned out and been as successful as elon musk said it would be. the counter argument from that, i hear this all the time from tesla investors, i love his vision i love where he's taken this company. give it time, this will pan out. there is the counter argument there. >> thanks very much. >> hey, phil we've got to run phil, before you go, just one last question if i could

because we've been talking about it all morning and i wanted to get your thoughts on it. you saw this news from kia and hyundai, this filing saying that they're not in talks with apple. given all the reporting you've done around this, what do you make of that >> i'm not surprised as we said when we did the report, we would not be surprised if at some point a deal did not come together or this gets pushed up. these talks between hyundai kia and apple, not like they started last month they've been going on for a long time and there has been fits and starts along the way, so while i'm going to stand by my reporting in terms of the sources that we talked with, where things were last wednesday. my sense is that they're not to the point where apple is ready to pull the trigger yet and they may ultimately decide we're not going to pull the trigger on an apple car. they may decide if they do pull the trigger it won't be with hyundai kia. the fact this filing is made, it

doesn't surprise me given i am sure apple is not pleased with the increased speculation, not only through sources we've talked with but other media outlets have reported the same thing and as a result tim cook wants to work on tim cook's time, when it's the proper time. he does not want to feel as though the market and public speculation is pushing them towards making an announcement. >> phil lebeau, as always, thanks very much let's move to the broader markets. futures in the green this morning after we saw record highs from the s&p 500 and nasdaq on friday means time to ask once again if investor attitudes are approaching he extremes. mike santoli joins us now with some analysis. good morning, mike. >> morning, wilf we're probably building back towards that level bull markets have that hovering over them all the time the s&p 500, in the mode of upward grind reset. expectations a couple of weeks ago. it did get some cash jostled out

of the market. this is a two-year chart you basically are on a parallel track to where we were last first quarter into february before of course the covid crisis essentially this is the path we take 2013, 2017 are other years where it seemed like it was a clockwork meltdown we'll see if that's what it develops into. certain things look extreme. stocks versus bonds. s&p 500 versus long-term bond etf. that's up on a perch that looks like it should have backfilling. yields down. that means bonds are being bit we have adjustment of this ratio. people are getting over their skis perhaps with the stocks over bonds volatility has been the one residual piece of institutions wanting to keep their down side hedge. there's one category of professional investors that have not gone in.

they take a signal >> mike, thanks a lot. good to see you. when we come back, a short seller on the future of short sellers, and at least a chapter of the initial reddit rebellion looks like it is ending. don't miss activist investor carson block in the meantime, check out futures this morning higher all morning long. dow futures up by 132 points s&p futures up 13 points and nasdaq up 50 as we head to break, top headlines. toy maker hasbro beating top and bottom line in the latest qu quarterly report they got an assist from ongoing pandemic related interest in toys and games yeah, my house, too. shell reaching a deal with amazon to supply them with renewable energy amazon looking to get 100% of their power from clean energy in

2025. reuters is saying a chinese regulator held meetings with tesla. the industry, transportation, cyber security agency and emergency management industry are said to have urged tesla to operate accoing rdto chinese law. stay tuned, you're watching "squawk box" and this is cnbc. ♪♪ ♪♪ use a single hr software? nope. we use 11. eleven. why do an expense report from your phone when you can do it from a machine that jams? i just emailed my wife's social security number to the entire company instead of hr,

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welcome back to "squawk box. bitcoin spiking as we learned moments ago tesla bought $1.5 billion of the cryptocurrency. with so much attention on disclosures around short selling, spacs and more, this news has us asking whether elon musk should have disclosed the bitcoin bias he behind the crypto currency over the past few weeks. joining us is long time activist, carson block, founder of muddy waters. i wanted to talk to you about short selling unto itself and i want to get there, but given the news we just learned this morning about tesla and its acquisition of $1.5 billion of bitcoin, but more importantly all of the activity we've seen from elon musk on twitter around bitcoin and around other cryptocurrencies in the past

several weeks, i'm curious what you think about potentially even allegations about manipulation and the like and the way the sec might even think about some of this. >> well, i mean, elon's pretty hard for the sec to touch. they weren't able to do really much of anything to him when he tweeted the fake buyout offer a few years ago at $420 so, you know, in terms of does -- can it rise to the level of manipulation when elon or chamath tweet out, hey, i'm long gamestop calls or something else or bitcoin, doge, go and buy, you know, that's a really -- i dot it i have a hard time even if that were anybody. the sec does not have a record of success against elon musk

i would expect that would just be a dead end basically. >> what do you think of this larger phenomenon of social media being used in certain cases by famed investors and executives, you mentioned elon musk and chamath palihapitiya and others on one side but on the other side, the retail investor, the reddit army which mark andreson said this is the -- >> i'm not an expert on wall street bets so i'm speaking a little bit out of school here, but i do think that that's overblown. i mean, this is obviously relating to gamestop one issue is that this was telegraphed on gamestop months before i read an analysis that's four months old it was very sharp about the technicals and how and why this could squeeze.

now it succeeded for a while because, you know, to be frank, melvin capital just was a deer in the headlights here they were too big in the position and they were unaware of this. ordinarily speaking, if i concede -- if i'm in the market trading and i can see what major market participant is going to be doing, that other participant is generally not going to succeed. so this idea that if you can crowd source trading, it's really changing the game, no, i think that there are a few pockets where that works well for a moment, but i don't think that that actually -- i don't think that's a successful hedge fund then, if you will, over the long term. >> but i think there's a larger question being asked in the hedge fund community and even more broadly about the future of short selling and whether you

think that becomes a more limited option for investors to the extent that that's something they would pursue given this new risk, this new variable in the marketplace around a, quote, unquote, reddit army and the potential of social media to enable them to press on the other end or do you think the supply and demand dynamics of gamestop were so unique that's an idiosyncratic one off >> it's actually -- it's actually, you know, there's another take on it that i have look, first future short selling. on the one hand as a short seller, there are fewer competitors there so trades are less crowded so i guess that's less positive. less crowded because everybody is afraid to sell short. maybe i'm the greatest fool, but i like to think not. to me the real issue here, this

is something that i only -- my understanding is evolving and i only really got into this late last week and understand how i think this really relates to the broader market but you have a situation where gamestop shows us it's a microcosm of the broad market in that technicals are generally mattering much more than fundamentals are that's a problem just on the surface where you say, okay, markets are supposed to allocate capital to the best users of capital out there and that's a fundamental decision so if we're not prioritizing fundamentals and we're instead prioritizing technical dynamics, markets are not helping society, but the bigger issue really is that it's when you get down to what actually causes this and i'm going to throw something out there that i suspect the

vast majority of your listeners have not heard, but a lot of this dysfunction is being driven by the prevalence of passive investing. and i want to say one thing before questions come my way yes, i know -- i knew about the robo bid and i knew that the fundamentals are irrelevant to robo bid or passive investors, but what i didn't appreciate as passive grows and floats, that it actually creates convex pricing behavior and it basically becomes the driver of growth and it is, in my minds, based on my understanding now, it's the single biggest explanation for why growth as a style has massively outperformed value. it's not tied to fundamentals, it's tied to supply and demand >> right carson, this is something that

seth clarman might have raised years ago in a letter where he was talking about what passive investing was doing to the marketplace and perverting some of the fundamental issues you're talking about. speak nmore to it your views of this have been evolving the question i would also ask you beyond that is if you're gary gensler, who's going to become the sec chair or you were janet yellen who runs the treasury, how would you be thinking about this as a policy maker? >> sure. okay so i'll explain how the dynamic works and why it's much more distortive of the asset values than i had appreciated i used to think it probably has the passive bid and has a linear effect on stocks, but when passive has in flows, which is the vast majority of the time, and most of those flows are through 401k plans, so they're

automatically debited from people's paychecks, you take -- so if this is your outstanding in a given stock, this is your float. so some percentage of the outstanding. now traditionally that float consisted of active investors who can make decisions that, hey, this price is really high, i'm going to sell them here or this price has gotten really cheap, i'm going to add. what happens, when passive buys, it squeezes out active managers so the float of manager -- or the float of investors who actually make decisions based on price and fundamentals, it shrinks. so here's the thing. as passive continues to get in flows, it will buy and it will pay any price, and the other thing is when you saw this in gamestop, passive almost certainly was buying gamestop in the 300s and possibly even 400s

because it must buy if it has in flows but it may not sell no matter what the price is so this by squeezing the float of what's available, what the real supply is in pushing up the price in an elastic way, it creates this convexity what turbo charges that is leverage and in the u.s. this phenomenon of these very active options markets where, you know, people and institutions are playing this game of buying out of money calls to create gama as the passive bid is pushing the stocks higher and then causing dealers to have to buy even more and push them higher and it's not fundamental >> carson, no, it's not fundamentals and i get your point entirely, but isn't this just a reality of what happens when you democratize wall street i can appreciate the idea, look, when you're a passive buyer you're not going to be able to base every decision on the

fundamentals you don't have time to go through and look at every stop the reality is most people, investors who are putting money in the 401ks can't put money in their stocks and they don't say i have the ability to do a fundamental breakdown of whether this stock is at a fair value or not. this is what happens when you have more people putting their money in we think democratization and having more people invest is a good idea. >> it's not necessarily what has to happen, right a lot of 401ks used to consist of actively managed funds, but a strange thing happened. >> underperformed the markets. >> well, the passive -- now the passive is the market, right you're almost certainly going to under perform because passive is the tail wagging the dog, but if you go back in time, the arguments that the passive managers made were really based on costs and it's like, hey,

this is low cost and investors began to emphasize that and be i think there's culpability in the ria industry also rias charge their clients often a percentage of the assets who call it 75 basis points. make it easy math. 1%. >> really tough to make money when you're paying fees like that. >> well, so here's the thing active managers were charging, call it, half a percent but along came passive and they said, hey, we're charging .1%. rias said, whoa, my margin suddenly has almost doubled. i get to keep 90 basis points instead of just 50 basis points. that's one of the things that drove the shift to passive now passive has a role, but when you pass the tipping point and passive becomes too hard, the markets are not functioning based on fundamentals anymore. >> carson, i want to thank you for coming on. i want you to come on back because this is such an

important conversation and i think you've actually helped educate the public in an important way. i know it's a huge debate and i imagine it will continue i'm glad you were here to help bring it to life and i hope we can continue this. just a quick mention, ria, for those out there, registered investment advisor sometimes i worry we're speaking over people's heads and in certain cases i was getting notes on twitter none thel less, we will talk to you about this. galaxy digal mit'sike novogratz. watching "squawk box" on cnbc. and unmatched overall value. together with a dedicated advisor, you'll make a plan that can adjust as your life changes, with access to tax-smart investing strategies that help you keep more of what you earn. and with brokerage accounts, you see what you'll pay before you trade. personalized advice. unmatched value. at fidelity, you can have both.

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bitcoin rising this morning following news that tesla has brought about $1.5 billion in cryptocurrency and will soon start accepting it as payment for the vehicles joining us is mike novogratz, the founder and ceo of galaxy digital. mike, cryptocurrency really taking off on this bitcoin up last i checked over 11%. what do you think of this news

>> it is big news. elon musk has been better than any ceo in the last years driving stock prices one reason, he's listening to millennials and gen z. michael stahler did a conference last week with 10,000 people where he went through and talked about bitcoin. when i was talking to the audience, my message came right back to listen to your audience. look what's happened to gamestop this is a generation speaking loud and clear elon did it brilliantly. >> let's break this down into two pieces it's two separate pieces of news they didn't say whether they would hold on to bitcoin or instantaneously flip it like paypal said they would do it

they would flip it and change it back to a more stable form or more stable currency the other is taking $1.5 billion of their cash on hand and filing that into bitcoin. that's a significant amount for them if you look at it, it's probably 7.5% of what they had as of the end of the year when they've got about $19.3 billion in cash or cash equivalence on hand break this down into two pieces. what do you think about the idea -- go ahead >> every company should be looking at how to accept digital, you know, currencies, as digital payments as part of their business scheme. it's not that difficult. it's what customers want it's where the world is moving that, i think, means getting ahead of the curve and i think you're going to see every company look to figure out how they -- mcdonald's to bojangles', you name it. the second is a different bet. we have a debasement of phi as

ku -- fiat currency. it's a bet that's a smaller portion of treasury. it tells customers, hey, we're listening. we're looking forward. people want to invest in companies for the next 10 years, not the last 10 years. that's becoming more and more clear. >> mike, no one can argue with what elon has achieved for his company and his share price over the last year or so. what do you make of his tweets supporting doge? >> you know, i wish he wouldn't. listen, i think doge reminds me of gamestop. it's a meme. it was funny for a little bit but now it's at a market valuation where people will lose money in doge. bitcoin has a purpose. lots of the stable coins have a purpose. doge is kind of a meme, a joke i sometimes wonder if elon is so smart he can do whatever he wants to do because he's making everyone buy in.

i think doge is a little bit like the 420 comment >> what do you make of ray dalio's comments last week where he clarified headlines i think people who liked bitcoin thought he was talking it up, others were saying he was talking it down. i thought the most interesting comment he made in his own post about all of this was that bitcoin, even though there's a limited supply of quote, unquote, bitcoins, there's not a limited supply of digital coins and so if you think about it in a larger context, to me the doge coin situation in some ways it points at this, that if there really is an unlimited number of them, whether one is limited or not may be irrelevant in the long term. >> listen, there are 114 elements on the periodic table only gold held that place of store value. everything else on the periodic

table had to be used for something, right i think bitcoin has the brand. it will be the star value. all these other cryptos that i invest in i think are great, i'm investing but they're being used i think that is an important piece, right all the institutions we see that are participating are buying into bitcoin as their store value. as they are learning more, they say let's look at atherian. bitcoin is doing what it's supposed to do as we speak it doesn't have to change a bit. and so i don't think you're going to have, you know, thousands of coins, light coin is going to go the way of the dodo bird. that's going to be a tweet >> mike, i wanted to come back to a broader point we've all kind of been discussing over the last month as "the game" stop and the reddit at the no, ma'am nonhas

taken hold, which is -- and i'm not going down the route of breaking actual laws and what the sec should get involved with but the sort of moral question of talking your own book do you think elon musk has done that now by later revealing that he has a big position in bitcoin when clearly he has been broadly in support of it and people like him, you, chamath, they know they can influence investors even if it's a tweet and you're expressing your opinion. you're always up front we know you are long bitcoin when you talk about the benefits of crypto long term. do you think there's a bit of an immoral action and someone that's so wealthy already and already had a position that wasn't disclosed >> no. listen, i think you've got a corporate responsibility to put your position on you don't want to tell people i'm going to buy something and have the market run away on you. i think in terms of a bitcoin, i think they -- from what i can

tell, they behave exactly as they should be listen, you know, the doge coin, the other stuff, that moves into the responsibility of the richest man in the world or of any corporate ceo. what worries me about things like that, same with gamestop, we stuck a lot of new people in at levels that will be unsustainable. i could be wrong doge coin could go higher. i don't think it will. >> mike, that's what i wanted to ask you. you thought light coin was going to go the way of the dodo bird how do you feel about doge coin? >> i don't like doge coin. the currencies without a purpose, you know, i don't think have communities that will build around them. they can get communities in the short run the same way gamestop got a great community for four days, but they're unsustainable. they're unsustainable. once they start losing money,

they're like what the heck did i do the people who got in early, they got in and they can sell and buy something more stable and so any investment thesis needs a community of people that buy into it and believe in it. so we look for, you know, projects with great founders, with great communities that are useful, that can look like they can disrupt the world at a later time. >> mike, i just want to go back to the idea of asymmetric information and frankly manipulation in the marketplace, and specifically around crypto right now because i don't think there's a clear understanding of what is going on with corporations and some of the announcements that they're making related to this the executives and what they're doing online and potentially what some of the executives, even board members at some of these companies may be doing personally, which is to say, you know, whether they're investing in crypto themselves, and we

don't know but in truth, if tesla was going to do a deal with another car maker, you couldn't go buy the stock in the other car maker if you knew about that in advance however, one of the things that i think is unique about crypto given that it is not regulated and it's considered a currency, commodity or whatnot, is potentially -- and i think we'll see how regulators think about this, that you may very well be able to buy cryptocurrencies in advance of an announcement what do you think about possibility? what do you know about that more broadly? i'm not speaking specifically to tesla per se, but i am very aware that there are corporations that are thinking about what to do with crypto and at the same time their executives, board members, others may be owning it or buying it. >> yeah, it's a great question regulation is moving fast in this space, right? markets always get ahead of where regulators are i'm sure gary gensler and others

are saying how do we think about this bitcoin is an asset, right it's -- you can call it cryptocurrency i call it a crypto asset a little bit like you can buy the s&p or you can buy crude oil or treasuries, right it's a macro asset so i think in the future and now you're going to be able to buy bitcoin with a different level of scrutiny than you will, say, an individual equity it's not a regulated security so -- but as we move down to other, you know, parts of the crypto ecosystem, that's going to be a different question you're going to see crypto, some that are seen as securities and so it's -- it's a great question it feels right, like oh, my goodness, if i went out and elon talked about it and went on twitter and talked about it publicly if he had switched it to gold, they talked about gold available to buy gold.

fair question. i think traditionally the answer is going to be yes this is interesting because it's such a big company such a big influencer. >> yeah. and because it moves bitcoin so significantly, we're looking at that price up by about 14.5% mike, great talking to you we appreciate it. >> thanks, guys. i should also point out very quickly, we've got comments from ron baron about his thoughts on this we'll bring you his thoughts on tesla buying $1.5 billion in bitcoin. ron, obviously a long-term investor in tesla. we'll talk more about that in a moment. when we come back, allianz advisor mohamed el erian you're watching "squawk box" and this is cnbc and even now, many experts predict the next gold rush is just beginning. so call u.s. money reserve. the only precious metals organization led by a former director of the united states mint. as one of the largest u.s. gold coin distributors

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commenting favorably about bitcoin for a while so the announcement regarding bitcoin, not surprising i assume tesla is not speculating on the value of bitcoin but rather considers its payment -- it as a payment system when people like paul tudor jones think it is attractive and paypal is building lots assuming use for payments, he thinks he should have learned faster his ultimate comment though is i'm sure a lot of thought went into the bitcoin purchase by tesla and i look forward to learning the rationale not saying he's in favor or not in favor but saying there's a lot here and he looks forward to learningrationale. >> he says he's not in favor or in favor he's not surprised given the bitcoin fervor and speculation. >> no, i would just say holding

our hands up that i would have expected potentially a long investor like him, the initial response could have been negative. >> yes. >> joining us, allianz advisor mohamed el erian and president of queens college cambridge. great to see you have to get your reaction first of all on this headline of the day. two factors for it, one, does it continue to build momentum in bitcoin and tesla, i guess, or does it potentially mark the top or should a company be doing this if it is indeed speculation and an investment as opposed to preparing for transactional purposes >> thank you the first question is easier yes, it will continue to build momentum what did tesla tell you? two things, one is that this is a -- will be a form of payment and, two, is that this is an investment vehicle so those are two powerful

endorsements for the notion, i want to stress the notion that bitcoins are a currency, a money because after all money is a store of value money is a form of payments. so, yes, that will build further momentum as to the reaction, it's going to be all over the place some will see it as visionary. others will say wait a minute, if i want to invest in bitcoins, i'll do it directly. i don't need tesla to do it for me and by the way, shouldn't tesla be in cash management? bitcoins are way too volatile for cash management. so you'll see a whole range of reactions, but for bitcoin holders, today is good news for them. >> i guess, mohamed, one common thread behind all of this is debase-ment of traditional traditional currencies does just further endorsement of their alternative increase momentum behind the downside argument for things like the dollar >> maybe at the margin but i don't think as a consequential

effect but what is consequential is that the argument for bitcoins is evolving it used to be a negative argument you don't trust the system invest in bitcoins you're afraid of inflation invest in bitcoins yields are too low on treasurys. put bitcoin in your risk mitigation bucket. now, suddenly, we have those reasons and tesla says there are positive reasons, form of payment, investment vehicle, so that is the pivot, and that's why you're seeing bitcoin prices at 44,000. >> what's your take, mohamed, on the very quick bounce we had to new highs after that 4% pullback and whether it puts us into overstretch, overbought type levels >> you know, i've said repeatedly, for the last many, many months, the path of least resistance for this money is up. don't get in the way of massive liquidity. the only thing that will stop it

is either a market accident, and we are getting close to one, or alternatively, the fed losing control of the yields on longer bonds, so keep those two things there, this is a rational bubble, it is a bubble, prices are completely disconnected from fundamentals, but it is rational, because there's so much liquidity being pumped in >> and mohamed, just finally, in terms of valuations and opportunities, do you see the u.s. as less attractive than certain international markets? >> i do not. i think failing the u.s. too early is a big mistake europe is going to have a lot more problems in terms of vaccinations and in terms of the economy. and the emerging world is still quite precarious in economic and payments terms, so you have to be very selective, but if you are buying an index, i would certainly wouldn't fade the u.s.

in favor of the other jurisdictions right now. >> moerjsd good to see you thanks for joining us. >> thank you. >> when we come back, we will get jim cramer's first take on the rk imaetn the week ahead and top stocks to watch as we make our way to the opening bell. stay tuned "squawk box" will be right back. your daily dashboard from fidelity -- a visual snapshot of your investments, key portfolio events, all in one place. because when it's decision time, you need decision tech. only from fidelity.

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programs for big companies at goldman sachs as an adviser and we used to tell them, maybe here is another way to put that potential income and maybe you want to sell call, sell puts and on struse ways to do it and never really meaningful other than the way it was a fact to choose the numbers, in other words make it look so you didn't have earnings so little on cash and it was risk, and to me, it is an alternative to cash, i tell people to own gold, to own bitcoin on some stock, on some cash, some bond, i think it is perfectly reasonable do we like the timing of it? elon musk has loved bitcoin. and so i'm not surprised i always feel though, and you guys raised this question, you know, there's a board and you always have to hear from the board, and in a quick and timely fashion, but it's a cash management tool, and when dan schulman said last week, pay pal, it is norm form of currency and why shouldn't tesla adopt it as another form of currenciy >> the yes i would ask though,

people often times pursue buy backs if they think their stock is too low and and you have extra cash lying around and you're making an investment. and the question is is it an investment or can currency play and if it is an investment bitcoin is a better bet right now at the valuation is today than tesla stock is today, for example. >> it is a great question. when i speak with apple, you guys earn nothing on your cash, and people aren't owning our stock, and they are making a lot of money on the cash position, i think this is better for bitcoin than tesla, but you know the enthusiasm we're getting in various places around the web, and elon musk is a visionary figure that has gotten a lot of people involved in the market and if they say dogecoin, you will do dogecoin, and people will follow him but i think it is perfectly reasonable thing for a company to be thinking about. as a matter of fact, we were joking on friday, about did gamestop buy tesla obviously, it is facetious but i think we would probably think, they bought gamestop ahead.

>> jim, we got to go what's a fair value for bitcoin then >> geez, i don't know. this is a buy, this is one of those things, i defer to mike, one of the reasons i got involved in it, i always felt it is a store of value, like gold, and if you go higher, on enthusiasm, and it's going higher now, and seasonably it was supposed to peak, right about now and it hasn't. so i think it's kind of defying where we thought it has done during previous periods, and february, march. >> okay. jim cramer, see you in a couple of minutes on "squawk on the street" with the gang. thanks becky? >> thanks. just a little more than a half hour to go until the opening bell on wall street. dominic chu joins us this morning with some of the morning's top stock movers what have you got? >> i'm not as good as counting mountain dew bottles as you are, becky, but hasbro up 22%

and profits and revenues both topped analyst estimates helped along because of what else the covid pandemic leading more people to stay at home and play board games and toys and that sort of thing so those shares up 2% right now and next up, shares of energizer holdings, up around 8% 67,000 shares of volume. and the consumer products company, best known for its batteries, right, as well as car care products like armor all and stp, better than expected profits and sales and more demand for the products as well, shares up 7% and end on shares of global payments higher by 5%. roughly 5,000 shares of volume, revenues pretty nufrp in line but nounced it partnered with google for vendor, and that's the reason those shares are up 3% right now becky, back over to you. >> dom, i take it you were watching the game late last night too, and even though you got up early.

>> the whole thing and i wanted to be there just in case something crazy happens >> i hear ya yeah, i thought i counted 56 actually, 56 bottles for the mountain dew commercial. that's what my son thought we tweeted it out. >> dom, good to see you. >> likewise. >> will, thank you for joining us today we appreciate it. >> pleasures a always. >> see you back here tomorrow, we'll see you on closing bell and the rest of you back here tomorrow right now it's time for "squawk on the street". good morning, welcome to "squawk on the street. i'm david faber along with jim cramer, carl will be joining us shortly. intra-day high, strong at the open, strong earnings and vaccine news and stimulus outweighs covid variants or inflation. the 30-year yield, it hit 2% and brent for oil is at 60 let's get to our road map this morning. it does start with the cooling trade volatility, stocks look to continue, as w