near highs again as president biden makes his case for another round of stimulus we're doing some whale watching, several of today's biggest stock movers are names revealed as position ads or cuts in berkshire hathaway's greatest findings we'll have a run down straight ahead. we're looking at a crisis in texas with millions still without electricity, nearly two full days after snow, ice and plunging temperatures strained the power grid beyond the breaking point wednesday, february 17th, 2021, and "squawk box" begins right now. good morning, and welcome to "squawk box" right here on cnbc. i'm andrew ross sorkin along with joe kernen, becky quick is off today. let's start with the markets after the dow closed at its 8th

record high for the year u.s. equity futures right now, looking like they're going to come off a little bit. we'll see, dow jones off about 12 points right now, and nasdaq looking to open about 26 points lower, s&p 500 off of a little over 3 points. but, you know, after where we've been it's been quite something treasury yields, let's show you where they stand, the ten-year note is at 1.287 i don't know if we've officially added it to the list maybe we have. we're back where we used to be in terms of talking abou bitcoin. we're now over 51,000, at 51,283, we're up another 2 1/2%. >> i hesitate to talk about it people have trouble with the 21

million idea they still can't figure, you know, if you can divide it up into a lot of little pieces, it's not 21 million. i got a lot of that yesterday, and i finally had to say you know what, good luck, i hope you know what you're doing i know we're all -- we're stupid you saw that, andrew you know, we got problems with decimal points just like pointing out, it is actually a fixed amount if you split it up. i don't know whether i call it worrisome, but is it getting a little game stoppy, temporarily, as it consolidates here. is it the same kind of -- you know what's weird -- >> that, i don't know. >> and i'm going to move on to this next story. i don't want to say i have no commentary on it this is all i'm going to say, it is viewed at this point not only as maybe a symptom of some of the froth, but also as the answer or the solution to what's causing the froth. and that is the central banks and the debasement of fiat

currency, and an answer to all the money printing, so it's got that weird dynamic, a vicious cycle where it's both. i think there's speculative money going into it, but that speculative money, it's the answer to all of that speculative money. isn't that weird can you think of another asset like that? i don't know if inflation adjusted i don't know, what else works like that, where it's both a reflection, and an answer. right? >> whatever it is -- >> but here we are. >> am i right? >> yes and on twitter, you can't say the right thing about bitcoin right now. i don't even know what the right thing is to say. if i told you it was amazing and going to the moon, that would be crazy, and someone wrote yesterday that i had the wrong body language about it i didn't even know what that meant. >> you did i saw that your right side seemed to be -- there's people that don't know that a year and a half ago i

game a believer, a holder, whatever it is, and they're just, you know, those are some new people, i think, which also worries me we're not new, you know, not everyone watches cnbc, but that's what i meant. i don't know there's a lot of -- a lot going on there but let's, you know, at this point, i don't want to be responsible for the run up or the -- you know, count me out of this thing right now because, you know, in the past you don't want to be inflating things or deflating things you just want to try and report. people make their own decisions. can we do that >> yep >> can we do that? >> let's try. >> for apple, a legislative -- yeah, let's try -- for apple a legislative win, north dakota's state senate at this point voted not to pass a bill that would have required app stores to allow alternative payment systems. it would have allowed developers to avoid fees charged by app and will google. one state senator who opposed

the bill said north dakota is not the place to settle a dispute between companies over payment systems. as good a place as any apple is in a battle with forf fortnite maker who have complained about the resumes and the doj is asking salesforce for more information on its $27 billion bid to buy slack the company is reviewing the second request salesforce says it still expects to close the deal by the end of july >> had to be expected on a transaction of this size i would have thought. sources telling cnbc that spacex completed an $850 million funding round last week. that would bring the elon musk led company's valuation to $74 billion, up from $46 billion after the last funding round back in august meantime, jeff bezos has reclaimed the title as the world's richest person, thanks

to a slide in tesla's stock price yesterday, tesla fell more than 2%, representing a slide of nearly $4 billion, in elon musk's net worth that's according to forbes elon musk passed bezos as the world's richest person back in january. joe, do you think that elon and jeff and some of the others, you know, people look at stock prices every day i actually do think that the ceos who own stock look at the stock price at least once a day. some of them, you know, back in the day, sumner redstone would look at it all day do you think they look at the rankings of themselves versus others every day, too? >> i think they're aware, i guess. for me, you know, if i could get top ten, top ten, you know, i wouldn't even care. >> do you think you could get that >> if i was tied for 10th, that would be fine. i'm sure they know, andknowing the way these guys operate where brewster's millions, you've

never been in this, you know what i mean, so it's not the money at this point, so i'm sure that ego plays into it at some point. i just want to just point out your body language at this point, you know, just keep an eye on it. just beware. be. >> should i sit up higher? >> i'm not sure. >> i'm just trying to -- >> but just think about it. >> meditate, relax. >> know where you are in space especially eyebrow movement, things like that that can, you know, you can see things how about an update now on vaccinations overall 71.7 million doses have now been delivered, nearly 40 million people have received one or more doses, and about 15 million people have actually received their second dose meantime, dr. anthony fauci slightly delaying his estimate for when he expects most americans will have access to a vaccine. he's looking at mid to late may or early june. he points to johnson & johnson

cutting its initial supply estimates, and he attributes the delay to that to some extent, andrew. meantime, at least 21 people have died, and millions are facing power outages for a third straight day as historically cold weather puts pressure on the region's energy infrastructure the break down of the nation's energy capital has sparked growing outrage and demand for answers. and brian sullivan has some of them this morning, and he joins us now brian. >> well, andrew, i hope i have them, by the way, hey, listen, right now, first off, still exceptionally cold 3 million people in texas as of the latest numbers from po poweroutage.us without power, and snow and cold on the way a. the basic human level, it's a scary situation. there are people who have actually frozen to death over the last 24 hours. just a terrifying situation. with we need to get the power on. so what has happened you know, there's still a lot

that we don't know but there's a lot that we are learning first things first, number one, looks like the state was just unprepared for the storm severity some of the weather forecast last thursday predicted a storm but not this bad, and so when you prep for a certain storm coldness, you say, well, we're going to need x amount of energy because the predictions of the storm were so far off, the energy demand needs or estimates were far off factor that in to lower inventories. inventories were not low but obviously less than they needed. you had natural gas. texas, a state that relies on natural gas to fire its power plant, if you don't have enough or enough in the right place, you're not going to be able to fire those plants. also, no power, you can't use a well or pipeline it's an electricity system many have back up generators, maybe the generators weren't operating because of the cold. if there is no power, you can't do a lot of the things you need

to do to get the resources to where they need to be. and of course other infrastructure like the wind turbines, some of the solar were frozen as well all in all, the finger is being pointed in a lot of places what it looks like is the terrible confluence of these different factors, and of course now you've got these prices that have soared, to add insult to injury if there's people that subscribe to the you way, we may, wholesale services, like a griddy or some others, and your power has remained on, you might have a just massive bill because these companies are having to go in the spot market to buy energy, which as i showed you guys yesterday, there was at least one trade done at 8750 per megawatt hour, 87.50 the normal price would be about

70 bucks, so there's so many parti parts to this story and a long way to go. >> brian, let's talk about the human piece of this, which then of course relates to the economic piece to this, which is, you know, if you were to look at the next 48 hours, what do you think it looks like how quickly do you think some of this can imget resolved in any a at all >> it's not an easy question so the storm is coming there's another storm coming bill cairns of nbc, we had him on "worldwide exchange," the bad weather remains. you're not going to get a natural thaw, if you will, just from the weather about a million more people have power than at this time yesterday if you're trying to find an up side. 4 million out of power 24 hours ago. 3 million. so you are seeing more grid activity a lot of attention has been focused of course on this ercot, right, not epcot, ercot,

electric reliability council of texas. not a lot of reliability in the r, and where their role is in moving power around. a lot of discussion, andrew, and you see screen shots of, you know, wealthy neighborhoods have power, poorer neighborhoods don't. i didn't think about it, andrew, these homes in a lot of places that are normally hot are not built with winter in mind, so the stuff we take for granted, you know, insulation, all that pink stuff a lot of them don't have that or don't have very much they're built to actually try to stay cool when it's really hot the state's power demand was higher than the peak of summer when everybody's cranking their air-conditioning just sounds like unpreparedness with a massive storm and a toxic brew. >> and brian, i mean, it's flukey i admit that that, you know,

none of us are supposed to have that cold weather anymore, much less texas, okay, if things are going the way they're definitely headed but, i mean, this could happen, again, couldn't it how often -- is this the new normal, given the way things are structured, so every time texas gets a freak storm that something like this happens, i mean, what needs to be done so it doesn't happen next time? >> well, it has happened before, in fact, we showed a, you know, sort of an angry regulators note and put it up on the screen yesterday when they said this is actually from 1990 it doesn't happen a lot, joe, there were a few record colds made but actually there was a foot and a half of snow in houston -- thanks i'll get back to you in a second -- a foot and a half of snow in houston on valentine's day 1895 a very different world point is, it's been this cold before i think where the calls are going to come from and this is really complicated, i'll make it

quick. there are a number of energy grids interconnected around the country, the eastern interconnect, the spp, and they share with each other, like the interstate highway system, you can drive on i-95 from new jersey all the way down to miami, right texas has its own grid system. ercot, it's like it's a lone star it's by itself it's kind of connected to the others but not really. they don't have the ability to buy a lot of power from other states so i think the criticism is going to come from, why don't you open it up, join in with the band, texas, because that way if you've got issues, and we got more power in tennessee than we need, we'll ship you some of our electricity. they don't really have the ability to do that and somebody asked me yesterday, joe, they said, why does texas do that, i said, i mean this with love. texas is going to texas. >> brian, my only point is,

look, if every car is going to run off the grid eventually and we're all going to be, you know, solar and wind and i'm just wondering what the world is going to look like because we're going to need a grid if we're not powering it with any type of hydrocarbons, and you know, i just wonder. it's a bigger question here, brian, of where we're hurdling in terms of whatever you want to call it but we'll see. we'll see whether the new world is ready for powering this grid which is still going to need a lot of power. >> one word for you, joe, rose bud. >> woke? >> rose bud. >> thanks. coming up, a stock to watch. >> i got it. orson wells. we're going to talk solar power. here we go solar power. electric vehicles, powered off the grid, doesn't work in texas. and airlines, later, anthony scaramucci is going to join to

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stop in or book an appointment to shop safely with peace of mind at your local xfinity store. welcome back to "squawk box. time now for some stocks to watch. shares of solar edge are rising. the maker of solar power beating

estimates on the top and bottom lines. current quarter revenue guidance coming in higher than expected look at that stock up about 3.2% meanwhile, electric vehicle battery maker quantum scape reported first quarterly numbers since going public back in november the loss was bigger than analysts expected due to a one time charge related to the spac process, but we should note only two analysts currently cover the company. revealing it is making progress on its goal of producing multilayer battery cells, an important step of getting its product into automobiles by 2022 that stock up close to 10%, a little over 9% right now joe. okay jet blue announcing it's getting rid of ticket change fees for most of its fares, but there's bad news, though, included for some passengers. the airline announcing its basic economy flyers will be prohibited from using overhead bin space for carry on bags.

it's similar to a policy united airlines introduced back in 2017 here with a look at this morning's market movers, stephany link, chief investment strategist and portfolio manager at high tower, and a cnbc contributor, and kate fattis, cio of grace capital, with their thoughts on the market and stock picks. kate, i just read something interesting in your notes. there will be growth in the spring and there will be a pull back in your view in the stock market, and you think there are some telltale signs that we can see right now terms of some froth? >> yes, good morning, joe, hi stephanie, how are you guys doing? >> we're great. >> you know, the market is up a lot. up 50% in two years, the russell is up 40% in 13 months bitcoin, tesla, everything is up, and i do think we expect -- we do expect a pullback, you never know what is going to

bring it on. i think the market will create a catalyst and say, okay, we're ready, so we're looking for places to hide >> okay. so but you will have -- we'll get to some of your picks in just a moment, but -- and stephanie, i answer for both of you that you're well i hope you're well you look well, but you can tell kate how you're doing. i don't want to answer for you, but do you have similar, you're not as, you know, overall market oriented maybe you love individual names. do you even think about whether we have a pullback or are you just looking for the names to own? >> well, i always look at fundamentals, obviously, and by the way, i am well, and kate, i'm glad that you're well, too, but i always look at individual names, i focus on fundamentals, but a good part of my process is thinking about the big picture and the top kdown in the last two weeks, the big story in my mind i know everyone is talking about energy, and you guys are doing a

great job in terms of talking about it, but i think interest rates and the fact we have gone on the ten year from 98 basis points to 129, as of yesterday, pulling back a little bit today. that's a huge move we've got to watch the velocity of the move in interest rates. what i think it's telling us is actually that the economy is healing and that there's light at the end of the tunnel if you look at the circuisms, regional manufacturing data, initial claims headed in the right direction, those are all good signs, and you add on, we're making progress on distributing the vaccine then you add on covid cases are falling. so i think rates are telling you growth is going to be better in 2021, and i do believe gdp growth will surprise to the upside, and i think that also means s&p earnings are going to surprise to the up side, maybe to the tune of 30% growth, which not a lot of people are talking about, and that in turn means -- and there's been this rotation in the market, more towards value, more towards cyclicals, cyclicals make sense to me, if

you think the economy is going to improve, so while i have been pairing back some growth names, and i think you could see a pull back in those names, i actually think the cyclical names will hold up better as we get better d data points. >> kind of weird that the quality ten-year yields going up, bonds going down, but you got junk, you know, and high yield and all of these i just wonder whether people are moving out on the risk curve i don't know how to interpret that let's get some of your names, and we'll get back to some of stephanies names these are places where even if there's a pull back, you would still buy these, so places to hide, if you will. what kind of stocks? >> yeah, you know, there are a couple of themes we're looking at there the first one is just value-oriented safety. the second theme is places that will recover as we come out of covid with the vaccines, as the

economy improves, so you know, i lee like the banks i like community banks, yields 3% my favorite is city holding, a billion dollars. it's in west virginia, flyover country. you've always got to own something in the flyover k country, like i say, they have the guns, they make the food this company has a great management team. believe it or not, they are up 700% on a 20-year basis without a lot of acquisitions. the big theory with banks is you got to grow. you got to be big. not true if you compare bank of america, some of the more inquisitive banks they are up 30% in the same period. so really like them. another name i really like is visa visa has not participated like the market, about 15% in the past year, mainly because of the on premise business. they made money online, made money doing what they do, visa takes people from using cash to using credit cards

that's their game, but because of the problems with on premise, because of covid, visa has struggled. i think visa still makes $0.50 on every dollar of revenue visa is a highly profitable company. i think visa could do well last name i would point to is united -- >> oh, no, i want to get some from stephanie, but your last name is quickly? >> united physical therapy usph they own a string of physical therapy clinics around, so if you think every time teledoc did will, united physical did poorly because people weren't getting physical therapy in person i think demand is going to surge for this company again, high quality, it's a smaller cap faname i think it's going to do very well. >> stephanie, we were talking about texas and evs and all that

stuff, you still like all the renewable stuff, right >> well, i mean, i'm playing kind of that theme via active, it's an auto parts company, and it's a technology company but it does have an ev spin to it as well because they have a joint venture: i do still like that space. some of the areas that are undiscovered, you know, are kind of those reopen kind of names, so i actually prefer american express to something like a visa because it's so much cheaper but i totally agree with kate, you've got the secular shift, and eventually you're going to reopen, and travel and entertainment is going to recover, and 2021 for american express is going to be kind of a transition year. they're heavily investing, that sets up very well for 2022 and it has lagged the market i like wynn resorts, marriott, the reopen names a play on mccall marriott, a apply on reopening in general,

and i really like chevron, you know, and i'm sort of interested to see that warren buffet added that to his portfolio but it's 5.5% yield it's down 10% in the past year they have done all the right things in terms of what they can control, and i love their permian assets, so i like those names. >> great okay we've got a lot in there thank you. stephanie link, kate fattis, i'm glad you're both well. actually, i am glad you're both well, something we had to consider, right. i'm great. i'm great. i'm great. not everyone -- i'm at home, so i'd rather be back at the nasdaq, but, you know, this is the new normal, as mohammed el-erian would say thank you both andrew >> coming up on the other side of this break, we're going to go whale watching we're going to tell you about the latest moves by berkshire hathaway revealed last night there are a few hints at those

berkshire moves as we take a look at the biggest premarket movers in the s&p 500. take a guess about what's going on there we're back in just a moment. no one likes to choose between safe or sporty. modern or reliable. we want both - we want a hybrid. so do banks. that's why they're going hybrid with ibm. a hybrid cloud approach helps them personalize experiences with watson ai while helping keep data secure. ♪ ♪ ♪ from banking to manufacturing, businesses are going with a smarter hybrid cloud, using the tools, platform and expertise of ibm. ♪ ♪ ♪

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welcome back to "squawk. it's time for some whale watching we learned about big new investments from s.e.c. filings last night, and perhaps the biggest one, warren buffet fee berkshire hathaway after

$4 billion of chevron shares, and added $8.6 billion in verizon shares, and a half billion in marshal mcclenon, increased its stake in kroger by 34%. it trimmed its lucrative apple stake, cutting that by 6%, although apple remains the biggest equity holding in the berkshire portfolio. there might be some balancing there. berkshire continued trimming conditions in financials, closed its j.p. morgan position after selling most of its stake in the third quarter and cut its stake in wells fargo by 60%. berkshire also closed its relatively new position in minor gold a lot of people trying to read the tea leaves there and what warrants thinking at this moment about the state of the world, and maybe where we're all headed meantime, when we come back on the other side of this break, we're going to get a look at the

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we've got breaking news, origin materials going public by a special purchase acquisition company, a carbon negative materials company that turns the carbon from fuel sources into other products while capturing carbon from them in the process. partners include pepsicoa, and nestle joining us is the co-ceo and cofounder of origin materials. congratulations on this moment in your journey. tell us about the decision to go public via spac and in truth,

tell us were you planning to go public otherwise >> sure. it's a good question for us, going public via spac was really -- of course there's the speed and certainty that you get from spacs that everybody sort of talks about, but i think there were two other components that were important in our decision there one was they're exceptional investors, they did an extraordinary amount of diligence, and that was really helpful to see that level of sophistication in the diligence process, and i think being able to talk to public equity investors, 50 or 60 of the world's most sophisticated investors through the diligence process and marketing process i think was useful that was a big driver of it. a lot more diligence than the ipo process, and i think the second component is the proceeds to the company for the execution market are actually larger or i

should say are typical larger with spacs than they are with ipos and so that was important to us as well. let's execute on what we're doing. >> walk us through this company for those who are uninitiated in terms of what the opportunity set is and what you plan to use this money for. >> sure. so our mission is to enable the world's transition t sustainable materials, and our technology platform for producing sustainable materials make it possible for companies to hit their net zero commitments. that's the key we're starting with our technology drop is ready, replacing fossil resources used to make a variety of every day products, and the theme comes from abundant nonfood sources, timber, construction waste, paper waste, other wood residues, and the feed stock used in our technology enables us to be cost competitive with petroleum based materials. we partnered with nestle and

pepsi, and that's focused on advancing our shared goals to have producing beverage company with resources we have a trillion dollar market opportunity to revolutionize materials for a wide range of end products, clothing, packaging, car parts, tires, and more, and to bring it back to the transaction specifically, you know, this will fully fund origin until ebita and free cash flow positive, which lets us effectively scale into commercial production, and that lets us satisfy signed customer contracts of a billion dollars across a whole wide range of industries. >> i was looking through some of the numbers. help us understand what revenue looks like right now, what it takes to get to profitability, and it does look hopefully, if it all works, like a hockey stick in a good way, but what about the challenges ahead >> yeah, so we're building what we call our origin one plan

right now. that's under construction, and that plant we see as, you know, of course using our technology but a market development plant in a lot of ways for things to drop in products, and then with funding, well, actually start construction, on what we think is origin two, which is our first fully commercial scale plant, so we see revenue coming online from origin one in '23 but significant revenue is going to come from the plant we're starting now which will come online in '25. >> comes online '25, so when you talk about profitability, when does that happen >> that happens with that '25 plan exactly right. >> and in terms of raising capital, you're saying that this gets you to '25 but it looks like you're going to want to raise more capital to continue to grow that business, right >> yeah, you know, so there are

lots of sources for financing, for companies like ours. we have very, you know, triple a customers pretty much on the back end of these plans. we have relatively fixed plans, stock going in, so as a result, you know, these projects are project financeable. there are lots of tools of capital you can draw from for these heavy capital projects while i think we'll bring in additional capital, it's not at all clear and certainly in the plan, there is additional equity at some point later. >> what is -- and i ask this a lot when spac deals or de-spac deals take place what is the comp, right, what is the comparable company that investors should look like often times the investors on the initial spac are a different group of people than are going to be part of this on an ongoing basis and how they should be modeling or thinking about your company and the multiples assigned to it relative to

others >> yeah, so i think that it's a good question of course. i think what i'll say is investors have often asked us or about other materials companies, and i think there are two ways to think about that. one is how can you take a high margin materials company right now and then figure out what is that going to look like at a really high growth company classically, a lot of the big materials companies aren't particularly high growth where as we obviously will be because there's enormous demand for what we'll be doing, and the other is to look at other companies that are sort of similar in their life cycle to us, and you know, the one that is the tip of people's tongue is danimer, who i think has done a great job. >> fair enough john, we wish you well in this endeavor, and we do plan to and hope to follow your frog, and h -- progress and hope you come on back. >> thanks. >> okay.

thanks coming up, the latest in the vaccine rollout, and the road to recovery, we're going to talk to the ceo of medical supply distributor henry shine for his thoughts, how to really get in vaccine in arms even more quickly, and his suggestion. later we're going to talk to black rock's rick reader for his take on rising interest rates, what it could mean for stocks and a reminder watch or listen live anytime on the cnbc app coming right back. make fitness routine with pure protein. high protein. low sugar. tastes great! high protein. low sugar. so good. high protein. low sugar. mmm, birthday cake. pure protein bars and shakes. for every fitness routine. since we founded affirm 8 years ago,

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welcome back to "squawk box" this morning futures are flat nothing really to write home about. nasdaq off a little bit more in point terms, but dow jones basically flat switzerland's nestle is selling some of its north american water brands to two private equity firms for $4.3 billion nestle is keeping some of its brands like pellagrino. the u.s. improves its rate of getting vaccines into people's arms. the ceo of health care distributor henry schein is with us next talking about the last mile hurdles that still remain and his idea of how to fix him

for more on the vaccine rollout, don't miss a big interview tomorrow with bill gates that's starting at 6:00 a.m.

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the pace of covid vaccinations has been picking up, about 20% of the adult population has now been vaccinated medical supply distributor henry schein has an unique view of the pandemic ceo stan berman joins us stan, you point out that your company has been for years a representative of hundreds of thousands of physicians and office space practitioners who know how to do this. every flu people, most adults,

most children get the vaccines in an office setting, office-space health care setting but ute being utilized to the extent it could. is that something we should do and why aren't we? >> good morning, everyone. that is absolutely correct the vaccine rollout for physicians, physicians will crush it in their communities to administer most of their regular vaccines the first place that the people will call, with the physicians, to say, should i take the vaccine or not we need the physicians engaged to make sure they give the vaccine in offices this is particularly important in minority community where is the hesitancy rate is very, very high elderly does not have easy access to vaccines they know their primary care physicians and they need the ability to visit their

physicians' offices to get the vaccine. >> well, you're telling us, telling me, telling our viewers, who all you have told? have you told officials? the government local officials? have you made this point that this would be a quick and effective way of ramping up the distribution >> the plan that is in place actually for distribution of vaccines is very, very good. there are good plans the key now is to ensure that the physicians are given access to vaccinations so they can administer it in their offices this is a way we will ensure that the hesitancy rate is eliminated or largely eliminated and we have been communicating with officials in the federal government and at the local level. >> and where does it stand

and when do you expect to see -- will we see some progress here in a week, two weeks, a month? >> hard for us to tell we are the largest provider of products and related services for physicians and dentists. physicians and dentists are ready to help. we need to engage the nation's physicians and dentists. 300,000 in total ready to administer vaccinations in their offices. >> and they're ready they are willing to do it? it's not going to disrupt their normal practice and this is something that they're totally onboard unanimously you would say? or is there any pushback >> no, not every single practice is going to be prepared to, as you say, they would not want disruption having said that, the majority of flu vaccinations in this country are administered in the office space practitioner setting and many practitioners if not most, would welcome the

opportunity to administer the vaccine for covid-19 in their offices. >> so, stanley, the numbers that we've seen in the last week have been very encouraging. in your view, is this a reflection of the progress we're making in the vaccine? is it -- is it the social distancing that people are continuing and that we're past the holidays now what do you attribute it to? because the numbers have come down and do you think that this is going to be -- it's going to be lasting and we're not going to see another spike, based on, i don't know, super bowl parties or people letting their guard down >> yeah. i think what is critical is that people, of course, wear masks. and that people socially distance of course, the party is a breeding ground for the virus. i think people are generally concerned and more aware of what

is the basic hygiene needs i also think the administration of these millions of vaccines is helping. having said that, we need to be on our goal and need to be sure that once we have the vaccine we still adhere to the requirements that the cdc has laid out. but i think all of the precautions that the public are taking are helping in a nice day. >> stan bergman. people are watching. and surprised sometimes with the influences hopefully, we will see this ramped up and sounds like a great plan in terms of physicians that didn't know exactly how to do this i'd kind of like to get one from a physician. i'm sure anyone giving them out is qualified but a physician would be okay with me, stan. thank you, appreciate it >> my pleasure for the information. when we come back on the

other side of the break, blockbuster's leader is going to be talking about it. and later, anthony scaramucchi on the need for regulations in bitcoin. and the all-time highs yesterday. something to see some say this is my greatest challenge ever. but i've seen centuries of this. with a companion that powers a digital world, traded with a touch. the gold standard, so to speak ;)

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a dangerous situation in texas and surrounding states moves on cold weather, communities still without power. the oil and natural gas markets in focus we'll have an update straight ahead. futures are pointing to a modestly lower open with investors with increase in inflation concerns higher treasury yields. bitcoin rising above $51,000 what you need to watch ahead of the opening coming up. and the big theory involving all of the players in the gamestop trading we'll break down what it means for investors, traders and the markets as the second hour of "squawk box" begins right now.

♪ good morning, and welcome back to "squawk box" here on cnbc i'm joe kernen along with andrew ross sorkin. becky is off today and u.s. equity futures at this hour right around the flat line. dow up a couple points nasdaq off 20. dow moving between plus and minus. but after, you know, being very close to new records on a pretty consistent basis we'll see whether that continues. bond yields moving up a little as you can see, we now have the bitcoin bug down there above 51,000 now on bitcoin. this year one of the best performing -- last year and last year, best performing assets, andrew >> a couple big stories we're also watching, mortgage applications falling 5.1% last night.

that's just released figures from the bank association. and decline in the financing activity as average mortgage rate is higher builders of new homes facing lumber future prices risen 49% now more than double of a year ago. all of this a product of the pandemic-related building boom meantime, elon musk's spacex is worth $74 billion on the completion of a new funding round. sources tell cnbc that spacex raise $600 million last week and since back in august talking about oil and electricity prices we'll get to the issue of how they're spiking on a rare texas winter storm the deep freeze has many wells shutting down, freezing temperatures making it too cold to pump oil or natural gas oil above $60 a barrel right

now. 3 million barrels a day, production is offline. the blame is going around to regulators to possibly even covid. brian sullivan joins us with more brian. >> thank you very much yeah, the sort of the story continues to evolve here let's start off with what we know, 2.9 million texans are still without power. and the weather is still freezing cold. and some of these folks have been saying they have not had power for 24 or even 48 hours. so, that's an issue there. obviously, a lot of concern being prepared or unprepared for the winter storm no power, no pipelines, no ability to get the infrastructure to where it needs to go. there's a lot of finger pointing now. we've still got to solve the issue, but a lot of finger pointing as regulators figure out what to do about the breakdown here there's a lot of the different factors as we have talked about. obviously, the weather was much more severe than the desire forecasts which means

inventories may not have been in the right place. a lot of the pipelines they don't have a lot of insulation natural gas would not freeze that would be negative 300 degrees. the actual pipeline components can freeze by the way, this happened in 2011, guys of course, regulators got up in arms the state senate had a 350-page report about how to prevent it again. it was literally, well, the instruments are freezing t knobs and dials won't turn with texas a couple of coal plants, piles of coal may have actually frozen where they couldn't get the coal into the coker to get the process going can did covid play a role? well, the local affiliate there in dallas has been reporting apparently winter inspections may not have occurred because of inspections. when you see the term "generator" that's a power plant effectively, guys.

whether or not they were effectively winterized and prepared we'll see if ercot responds to that if covid has in-person inspections which means some of the plants were not prepared okay we talked about electricity prices i want to give you a bit of an anecdote ercot has allowed the prices to go off and ticked a lot of consumers off. it happened about a day ago. we're seeing 9,000 off cap an hour the price is about 70. this comes from my friend paul sankey at sankey research. he just threw this up. $9,000 a mega watt for electricity. it's the equivalent of paying

$15,300 for a barrel of oil which would be roughly equivalent to $800 for a gallon of gasoline. at the local circle c or citgo or whatever. that's what's happened in the electricity market $800 for a gallon of gas and some people may be paying that for a couple hours of electricity at their homes if we're on some of these types of pay for what you got services, andrew >> brian, can you help us with this, overlaying ing all of th seems to be -- possibly, maybe falls along political lines but there's a debate taking place in the media and elsewhere about the idea of renewables, wind turbines, versus natural gas, versus nuclear that the wind turbines don't work in frozen weather

you have ercot saying that actually is true there's a lot of chatter and social media about this on different sides. it does seem to have a political overturn to it but just tell us the facts >> are you saying that people on twitter might get political about -- i'm shocked, andrew you're exactly right this is what's happening, rather than saying let's fix the problem, it's like, see, you're wrong, and you're wrong and ahh -- whatever so says in anonymous account. here are the facts as i know them i'm sure some people have their own facts, andrew. there are turbines that didn't do well, right, because they got ice on the turbines that couldn't stand clear. there are turbines that operate

in northern canada, in minnesota, you can get wind turbines to work in cold weather. you just have to make sure they're the right turbines and icing, whatever. wind power performed offshore a little bit -- listen if your solar panel is covered in snow and ice, that makes it hard, but it doesn't snow much in texas. the majority of the state is powered by natural gas there's a little bit of coal a little nuclear mostly natural gas the breakdown was primarily along natural gas. now, largely a function of the fact that natural gas is the bigger percentage. if you've got an equal percentage breakdown, it's going to be a bigger percentage. the majority was the natural gas breakdown, pipelines freezing up the inability of the power plants to get enough natural gas, andrew, to fire them up to generate heat. coal as i noted actually freezing in a pile where they can't get the coal into the

thing. this is actually -- okay i'd editorialize a little bit here i think you're probably going to see renewed pushes for nuclear when this is all said and done not just because of what happened here, andrew. but because of a variety of different things the fight over it. there's a lot of things that seem to be working on a nuclear favor on a macrolevel, again, just sort of a blimp side-view yes, renewables for a small part of it. but primarily it was a fossil fuel breakdown in the fossil fuel capital of the united states >> okay. brian sullivan, thank you, for helping to break it down and bringing us the facts. appreciate it. ♪ all right, coming up, the shinnecock nation will break ground for a new casino on the southampton in long island we will discuss the gaming

industry and what the business will mean for the new york region after the break before we head to break, we get a check on the markets again there's nothing much going on. "squawk box" will be right back. hey, guys! they have customized solutions to help our family's special needs... giving us confidence in our future ...and in kevin's. voya. well planned. well invested. well protected. before we talk about tax-smart investing, what's new? -well, audrey's expecting... -twins! grandparents! we want to put money aside for them, so...change in plans. alright, let's see what we can adjust. ♪♪ we'd be closer to the twins. change in plans. okay. mom, are you painting again? you could sell these. lemme guess, change in plans? at fidelity, a change in plans is always part of the plan.

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the stock market there's bitcoin this more than up $2700 $51,312. and we have pointed out many times, andrew, that the high and the low of many different years, the low can be a fraction, literally. of the high. although, i don't know whether you agree, this might feel different because of the adoptions that we're seeing by some institutional-type names. >> it might be there were names that weren't there before >> that weren't there before >> i know you're a bitcoin expert i have to admit on this piece -- >> just enough to be dangerous, no, no >> but, do you know anything about -- there's a number of people that are very cautious now relating the runup in the price of bitcoin to the price action on tether

are you familiar with tether which is another one of -- >> no, andrew -- >> it's another coin being run off of typically run off of other exchanges that are, quote/unquote offshore and people are correlating things and raising lots of questions. there's a big investigation going on into tether i don't understand there's a lot of people speculating in the reddit communities and whatnot about it >> i know just enough to be dangerous. i know how you -- what stock to flow analysis of the supply of bitcoin, and you can then try to value it that way. i understand the basic premise of blockchain and distributed ledgers. but beyond that, no. but just what i described i think is more than most people that are writing in as experts actually know. they're still trying to figure out how if you can divide a bitcoin into a million pieces

then why is there a fixed supply they haven't narrowed that down yet. so i'm not -- you know, here's the thing. we went to 20,000 a couple years ago. went all the way back down, crashed down to below 4,000. and tom lee was still -- remember, he was talking about going back to 20 then we got up to about 10, 12, 14 and novograph goes on and says i wish i would have sold some at 14 because then it was back down to 8, 10 those moves, that's the question i have, is that a thing of the past now that we've got musk now that we've got micro strategy, now that we've got mellon bank that seemed to be option a stamp of good housekeeping to some extent because it's become more mainstream are those days gone? >> i don't know. >> now that we're down to a fraction of where we were. i don't either i don't either >> the tether piece suggests --

>> what do you do? >> it suggests there's almost a short thesis on bitcoin in the short term i don't understand it well enough, but there are a lot of folks out there seem to be having this conversation so, we'll see. >> i had someone yesterday tell me i didn't understand decimal points i sent back do you need a decimal point to debt zero followers. is it 0.0. or 0.00. or 0.05. why answer someone with zero followers. that's the question. many state and local budgets are hurting due to the costs related to the pandemic. the shinnecock nation is betting on gaming to give it an economic boost. let's welcome the shinnecock nation chairman. this is something that the

nation, william, has tried to do for a while. are you confident this time you've got the right mix of players and regulatory bodies to go ahead with this because it would be a big thing, and it would obviously help the shinnecock nation whitequite a , will it help this time >> yeah, well, you know, we've been at this like we said before over the last decade and we think this is the time. we have the right partners tristate partners the financial backing of the seminole tribe of florida. and we've actually achieved a big -- overcame a big hurdle when we got in the national gaming commission, gaming ordinance, approved. yes, we think this is the time and we're very excited >> and jack, you've got experience, you've been successful in other venues in the gaming business. this is a positive and exciting

at this point? you think it's going to happen >> good morning. and thank you. it's very exciting, being able to work with shinnecock nation has been very special to me. they're beautiful people and they deserve this opportunity. and i'm really looking forward to their bright futures and what it will bring to their nation. and for the surrounding community. >> bryan, you point out that each year that goes by where something like this doesn't happen and the poverty, whatever, you know, we're trying to move forward with the shinnecock nation that's delayed. this is that important how many jobs are we talking about? how much difference would it actually make? >> so, you know, we're talking about anywhere between 300 sand 400 jobs which will have an

immediate impact on the shinnecock nation and basically change a way of life overnight it's something that will put a lot of money into the housing and money. trying to start a police force and travel force unlike other municipalities with a tax base, we don't have a tax base so we look to these enterprise opportunities so we can self-sustain our people and not rely on federal and state grants >> you've had experience, jack, with the seminole tribe of florida. and some success there as well what are we -- the facility itself, what are you looking at size what would it entail i know slots, texas hold 'em, poker, is that basically it in southampton? >> well, the facility that will be built in the hamptons will be a class ii facility. we're limited by nigc to class

ii games, including poker tables there will be approximately 1,000 machines and approximately 30 poker tables that will include texas hold 'em the facility will be about 76,000 square feet >> 76,000 square feet. and located -- people know it well, located in southampton, out in long island >> correct >> correct >> yeah, that's correct. >> and you've done things in new jersey i think you're a jersey native, jack explain your background in terms of atlantic city and how that came about >> sure. i am a new jersey native atlantic city is an iconic city

that really was where gaming had taken shape in the united states of america and we were really excited to be part of atlantic city's re regentrification we saw it happen to atlantic city to too many casinos where there were not enough jobs we created and brought back thousands of jobs for the atlantic residents and surrounding community. we made a big difference in atlantic city. i'm really proud of our accomplishments with the partners of atlantic city and the family and the seminole tribe of florida we hope to do the same thing with the shinnecock nation and we look forward to working with the surrounding communities. >> well, sounds good, bryan, good luck. this time it looks like it's

going to go forward, bryan polite, shinnecock nation. and jack morris, thank you come back and let us know the progress >> thank you >> thank you so much >> have a great day, bye-bye coming up when we return, detroit is in the midst of a massive redevelopment and rebirth. the story of the rise of motor city after the break and as we head to that break, check our shares of verizon, warren buffett shares of berkshire hathaway berkshire purchased 40 million shares of chevron in the fourth quarter. we're back after this. time now for today's aflac trivia question. what publicly traded company was founded in 1968 under the name mm electronics

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now, the answer to today's aflac trivia question. what publicly traded company was founded in 1968 under the name nm electronics the answer -- intel. welcome back to "squawk. rebuilding detroit is one of the real great stories of the decade while we tend to focus on the big names involved, another group of developers is battling bigotry to make their mark one building at a time diana olick has that story this morning. >> reporter: wall street, but he came home to the streets of detroit which he calls his best investment yet >> making sure that the economic growth that happens here is inclusive and impactful for all detroit residents. >> reporter: he is one of several small black developers

going neighborhood to neighborhood, property to property, building back the beleaguered city and raising up its residents. this will be a mixed development with retail space and affordable housing. >> it's actually one of the first reconstruction projects for grand river, one of our main corridors in over 30 years >> reporter: his partner is local gallery owner and developer george nanadi. >> it's good to have developers in the community most of the time, the community, they have lived in these communities. they know these communities. >> reporter: but for these partners and others like them, finding the capital is not easy. >> access to capital is a problem that emerging developers, african-americans, women, minorities across the board, people across the board, face a struggle with and it does make the products much more challenging. we have to be ten times more

creative to find ways to fill capital gaps >> reporter: that means leaving philanthropic social space not the big bang >> i think the movement that's offered is very, very unique we recognize the potential of going into areas that people don't quite see the vision yet and that's one of the biggest stress we have we're not an anomaly we're not an aberration. we're successful, creative, thoughtful business owners who know how to get stuff done you have to be foolish enough never to quit and be hopeful that you can push through. >> reporter: roderick hardeman says he hopes by creativity and that it makes sense he will help to attract more capital for detroit not just there but all over the country >> diana, we think of detroit as the last place that people want

to live because of what happened to the economy there why so much new development right now? >> reporter: well, there's a new economy in detroit look, the auto industry isn't what it was. but they do have a thriving manufacturing industry and quicken loans which keeps getting bigger and a university base, students who want to stay in detroit. ed and with the millennials there now it's now called the new hipster city >> one question on the capital raise issue, i'm surprised no major bank participated in that? >> reporter: well, there are banks, obviously, participating in the rebirth of detroit, it's as he says, it's hard for small developers like that to get the capital from the bank. you see the bank trying to help residents, homeowners, who want to get in the last couple of months with the big banks offering mortgages when it comes to commercial developments in downtown

detroit, he said it's difficult to get the banks to look at the small developers and minority developer, especially like him >> thank you for the story this morning. appreciate it. joe. all right, still to come on "squawk box," we're just a day away from a hearing in washington on the reddit/gamestop/robin hood we'll talk about whether the investors are here to stay more "squawk box" after the break.

♪ the house financial services committee set to question several actors in the gamestop saga following the outcry against robinhood and other brokers decision to restrict trading on several stocks last month. executives from robinhood, citadel, lowman capital and reddit will testify tomorrow morning. john hope founder of operation hope a

and john o'leary jhb, looking at your notes, you appreciate the democratization, and trying to open up the entire system to everyone that is a key way to move forward in equalizing opportunity. but reading your notes, you want everyone to participate. but i still get the feeling that you think it's rigged. so, and we got to make sure it's not rigged and i agree with that but why have -- why want everyone to participate in something that from the outset, you kind of think is an unfair system in the first place? >> well, first of all, good to see you, joe and good to see your crew here the last show, from detroit, hardeman, saying you want to be

foolish enough not to quit that's what i want by the way, i want him to call me to help him operation hope to do just that on the playing field on capitalism, so we get a level playing field to operate you know, why you go to the classes of 2021, that's why you go to harvard. it's a club. and they trade information amongst themselves you have a free enterprise system, but you don't have a free flow of information that happened with reddit and wall street. and that game needs to stop. and everybody has a shot and successive failure on their own merits >> now, i want to get to kevin and there say protection, kevin. and all you got to do is look at any of the polls conducted

and i think a majority of people think it's the average investor can't go up against the citadels and the computer traders and guys that have, you know, whether it's -- what's the club i always hear about? that club in new york city where everyone says that's where all the ideas are discussed between these guys there is a perception -- core club, i guess. there is a perception. >> yeah. i want to make an observation, i'm going to bet that as we go through this grilling, this political theater we're about to see, the majority of the people criticizing the system or criticizing robinhood or the wallstreetbets crowd or reddit have never used it i forced myself to download robinhood. i put $10,000 into it and i joined reddit and i rise with the herd now

i did that on one phone. on the other phone, i bought an adviser. i'm trying to day-trade with everyone else and i'm watching my robo adviser beat me right now. the point is it's fantastic, the democratization, there's no question about it. but i'm going to make an observation that i did not assume was there when i started this whole little journey. i called up vlad last week and his executives i didn't know if he would return my call and he did i spoke to him about 45 minutes. i have a different impression about that guy he's an engineer, he's very pragmatic. he's building a platform that he's trying to keep safe for people i did not know until i downloaded the app you can't short his stock on robinhood. it's very hard to blow yourself up it's quite a good platform but here's the issue with it, it's done 20 million accounts that no one else has been able to do. everybody that i've learned now with the reddit crowd that i'm

part of it they're not as dumb as everybody thinks. those people have bloombergs they're shorting situations that are overshorted thin floats. they're organizing the night before and they're going after the stocks and in mostcases they're driving them up. you can realize there's a whole new ball game in town. i'm riding with them i made 5% on some crazy pharmaceutical company i never heard of now, am i going to beat my robo? i don't know but there's a whole new sheriff in town and they're not stupid >> so this is sort of -- >> go ahead, joe >> go ahead, joe >> no, go ahead. i want you to respond. >> yeah, there's a shortage of problems like he is using a foreign language with what he's talking about. i know what you're talking about but the average person has no clue what kevin just said. and you have gaming on both sides, kevin we're at war you have the hedge funds who have privileged information. i call it like a monocle of a

private game, card game. and you got the folks at reddit with their hats backwards who are technology centric and gaining on information which is for themselves riding up a certain stock. wall street should be about capital formation. it should be about the delivery of capital to build important company stocks that have, i don't know, earnings attached to them it's turning into the gamification it's turning into a dangerous place. and my clients are getting caught in the middle i mean, literally that the -- they think it's based on internet hype, this stock can't lose i literally heard that and they're rigged money and they got in at 300, rode it to 450 and rode it all the way now -- whatever, 60 bucks they lost all of their savings plus the loan they took out. so the folks in the middle are

getting hurt here are unsophisticated. and sigh mean, that's the issue, i believe. >> yeah, i don't think, john, that's a good argument for capitol hill i'll tell you why, every investors is a speculator. whether you own a stock for a millisecond or ten years and the market has to accommodate that what i'm coming to believe and why i'm supporting robinhood and the reddit crowd is even if at the gamify it, there's an education process going on you win and you lose you make money and you lose money. that is for every investor if we can get an 18-year-old learning that early on, we certainly didn't cover it in high school and in college, we failed them as a society on that if they have to learn it on reddit and trading on robinhood. i've come to that solution i'm going to be supportive of this i'm going to tell people to do both, download robinhood, put cash into that and compete with yourself on

robo you think from that. you learn indexing long term can happy you sustain wealth and day trading is very hard it's not investing it's really hard to make money doing quick turns. and i think that education is powerful and important, even if you gamify, i think it's fantastic. i'm going out there and saying to every student i teach, do both compete with yourself and see if you can beat it. the point is they're doing something they've never done before i applaud vlad and his team. they are going to take a ton of criticism this coming two sessions i'm going to be one of the supporters of him saying, look, if you're going to be a politician and criticize this platform download, try it use it you can't criticize if you don't try it that's the only rule we should have >> ketvin, we actually agree for different reasons. you said my loving words -- education. but you got your education, and i got mine, by the way, both of us, joe, too, probably, from

sitting on our dad and mother's knee because they were investing. we got our education in the market because we were around other investors. in my neighborhood, if you hang around nine broke people, you're going to be the tenth. no one is talking about margins and investing. these are dreamers, speculators. like going to las vegas, you're going to hit it quick or the lottery. we need to turn them into investors. i'm actually agreeing with you on this point, kevin i actually like -- i responsibility want to mention the specific platform names. there are a number of platforms that i think are quite innovative, i actually think the robinhood is innovative. i like it. i would like them to put education in their first trade that's my own criticism. the first time they open their first trade, it wouldn't slow the process down put a little financial education.

i opened an account just like you. >> john, the risk you're taking -- when you poke the fire with this issue around it not being fair, you stimulate all kinds of politicians to try and change rules around the market that's actually working. we don't need to change anything the market is working just the way it was designed to do and it's doing a very good job of it the words i hate and we're going to hear them all week, hi, i'm from the government and i'm here to help you. i'm here to protect you against yourself i'm here to make sure you only make money when you invest you'll never have a loss because i'm from massachusetts or i'm from tennessee, and i'm going to make sure no bad things happen to you as an investor. how absurd is that of course, that's not going to work they'll get their time yelling at these poor advisers we need to short-stock we need liquidity, and a stock

market that provides for everybody. there's always a politician telling you we have to fix it. i hate that. >> so, kevin, no one said anything about fearing anything -- if you want me to paint me as a crazy liberal. i'm actually a capitalist. >> i love that to do that to you, john. that's my job on earth >> your mother gav manners. where wall street polices itself no regulator, kevin, was created out of good times. created out of the market, federal reserve, fdic, i can go down the list. we have got to put on the right hat and do the right thing it's in wall street's best interest to create the next

generation of joe kernen and kevin o'leary. we've got to create a new generation by educating them in the market with the market >> all right that's good. we're going to end it there. we only need one of each of us, though i think that, we can all agree on and great discussion, you guys we love having you on together and i'm sure there's going to be something to talk about next week, to get both sides from you gentlemen. thank you both john hope bryant and mr. wonderful, kevin o'leary andrew >> thanks, that was a great conversation when we come back, the report that willing to go public, churchill capital, details after the break. "squawk" returns after this.

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new this morning, ariel investments is launching ariel alternatives it marks the first move and it's main focus is called project black. jpmorgan chase has committed up to $200 million to be co-invested alongside project black. joining us ariel's alternative chairman and co-founder. great to see you this morning. tell us about it and what the approach is? >> thanks for having me, andrew. appreciate it. we're looking to change the perception of minority on businesses in america. historically and typically, minority on business has been viewed as small enterprises, revenues of $5 million or less 50 difficult for the fortune

500s, many of whom gave considerable announcements around their desire to increase their spend from 2% to 10% or 15 first with minority suppliers. to do with suppliers of scale, and very very few suppliers in the minorities currently who can take advantage of that opportunity. so what we're looking to do is marry capital and customers in a business to create the opportunity to scale minority-owned businesses that we will own, but then to leverage those businesses into creating both solutions for the fortune 500s as well as to develop the social impact that we're looking to develop, in terms of populated the workforce, creating opportunities in communities of need where there's expansion facilities needed. so on and so forth >> just to help clarify, how much of this is about buying effectively other minority-owned businesses and effectively

rolling them up to some degree, perhaps, on the supplier side-basis to some of the big fortune 500s or is it more about buying businesses, that may very well not be owned by minorities but by you owning them become mino minority-owned businesses and therefores may get additional capital and related investment from the additional fortune 500s that create buckets for that kind of investment >> yeah, it's both it's actually both obviously, there are greater pools of opportunity within the midmarket community, the midsize economy community that are already provider of service of fortune 500s by ownership we can create minorities-owned enterprises and use those platforms to effect all of the things we're talking about in terms of not only social change

and impact, because this at the end of the day needs to be about investment return. otherwise it will be viewed as a social project and destined to be what other projects have been destined to. >> and in terms of structure of sorts, how do you see this playing out over time? >> you know, there's lots of optionality here but if you think about a model where we intend to own these companies for quite some time and we'll have that opportunity over that period of time to do what any buyer of an asset does, in terms of evaluating the stability and appropriateness of management, how to grow the business where to grow the business, all of those things will be done with an eye towards what's beneficial for the business, but where we can also accomplish a social objective and improve the love creation opportunities for our community. >> all right you've signed up jpmorgan to

invest by your side. do you imagine that the investor class is other fort tune 500 companies? or do you imagine it's the other investor class, the pension funds and others? >> i think we're solving for solutions for the fortune 500, they're the natural partner for us working together, we can create those circumstances which satisfy their need to expand their -- the diversity supplier base with shortening their supply chain to their business and add value. so i think they're the most natural base of fellow investors with us as we develop this relationship >> and les, just speak to this which is the most exciting piece of this, given your experience and your network, ariel's

network and all involved, the kind of people that you're hoping to bring into some of these businesses over time >> well, listen, no one has a better network than that those of us in and around that universe all know that there's a tremendous network of black and brown executives who are dispersed throughout corporate america, most of whom won't have the opportunity to be the ceo of a fortune 500 company. by definition, there's 500 jobs and some small percentage goes to our folks but these are competent, qualified executives who we've known and continue to know we've watched grow and continue to expand their skills via experiences. they're a pool of talent that we can bring to bear for the companies that we own to advantage the economics of those economies and accomplish the objectives >> les, we wish you a lot of luck with this and we hope you come on back, as you pursue different companies >> andrew, i'd be delighted to

do that. thanks very much for having me appreciate it. >> of course >> take care >> you, too. coming up, we're going to lock to blackrock's rick reyder for his take on what that ulcod mean and later, anthony scaramucci talks about regular tomorrow on capitol hill "squawk box" coming right back

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good morning, millions in texas still without power and at least 20 people are dead, following that rare southern winter storm the governor of texas calling for reform to his state's electrical grid. warren buffett, berkshire hathaway revealing big fourth quarter bets and a telecom provider among them. and are hedge funds being set up as the fall guy following the recent gamestop trading frenzy ahead of tomorrow's capitol hill hearing, we'll speak to someone who knows a thing or two about capitol hill and wall street

skybridge capital's anthony scaramucci "squawk box" begins right now. good morning, welcome back to "squawk box" right here on cnbc i'm andrew ross sorkin along with joe kernen. becky is off today we'll share the u.s. equity futures at this hour an hour and a half before the open things would turn around opening up 20 points higher. s&p off and nasdaq off 21 points we'll show you the ten-year yield as we're speaking right now. we're at 1003.6. bitcoin, a new high, above $51,000 this morning here's some of the big stories that investors are talking about today. the death toll from historic winter storm that swept the south and central parts of the

country spanning at least 20 that's as of this morning. millions in texas still without heat with cold temperatures not expected to ease up until this weekend. governor greg abbott is calling for reform for the grids responsible for most of the state's electricity. take a look at the price of oil and natural gas. wti gcrude, $60 and in berkshire hathaway, according to a 14f regulatory filing, berkshire added new positions in chevron and verizon. at the end the fourth quarter, berkshire had purchased $4 billion of chevron stock verizon, $8.5 billion. berkshire did trim its stake in apple by 4.1%. and remains the largest equity holdings the oldest shares at this point,

jpmorgan wells fargo sold down a little bit. pnc as well. and sources telling cnbc that elon musk spacex finished up a monitor $850 million equity funding round. that happened last week. with the $74 billion about a 60% jump from spacex which happened in august. the company raising funds at $419, one dollar less than the $420 a share when elon musk was taking test drives and the rising note yield, not seen in a year coming up could easily get to 1.5% he's said that he's braced that the levels would not be a drag on stocks. i'd introduce you totally

differently, rick rieder this is a man who has a global fixed income at blackrock. this is a guy who can talk ten years, but who also made an impassed plea about tesla, about a tenth of what it was telling for. do you remember that >> yes, sir. >> so give us the whole gamut. we're not going to keep you in this little box of stable fixed income we may even ask you about bitcoin, rieder. but let's start with the ten-year the yields have gone up. and you figure it can go to 1.5. i want you to talk about that in relation to what we saw in junk and city of detroit bonds and chicago school bonds so yields are coming down on those but going up on the ten-year does that mean that the economy's improving? or does it mean people are going out to the curb to get more yield? >> thanks, joe, thanks for that intro. so, it means the latter.

and the economy, by the way, one thing i was looking at it over the week, but i think the average economist survey has gdp at 4.8% up from 4.1% i think it's going to be over 7. i think the markets are starting to adjust that the growth, the ten-year will adjust to what is going to be significant growth in the economy but joe, the demand for yields -- two things going on, the demand for safe assets why people are going into munis and parts of the market is extraordinary. the liquidity is so immense and the need for yield, the fact that it goes up 10 or 20 basis points there are not enough income producing assets being created. by the way, we'll talk about it, when equities go up, become become overweight equities in their portfolio and have to

rebalance and you see a flow of fixed income that's pretty persistent >> well, then the yields should be going down on the ten-year, rick >> yeah, well i don't think they're going down because you've got real rates. >> no but you just described a chase for safe yield you just described a chase for safe yield, and the opposite is happening in the ten-year. that's what i'm saying they're go fog yield in other places, aren't they? you described junk not just investment. junk was below 4%. first time ever. >> yeah. so part of why to keep rates from moving that much higher, including overnight, central bank buying, insurance buying, international buying, pension buying that being said, joe, real rates had negative -- close to negative 1% pre-yesterday are still not priced right so, a lot of that money that comes in safe at the front of the yield curve doesn't want to

take the price rick of with inflation, not as freaked out about inflation -- i'm sorry, go ahead. >> yeah. i wanted to ask you about your view about inflation when the fed gets as complacent as it is, and that's when you start with eyebrows getting raised especially with asset inflation in some of the more speculative parts of the market. you're not seeing price inflation, but you're certainly seeing asset inflation that's what you just described >> right >> do you think we go above 2% and would that be a positive for price inflation? >> so, yes i think we're going through a period today where price inflation, you've got a tremendous growth. you've got a restocking that's got to take place. you got capacity constraints in places like energy parts of the comphomty commodity sector people look at inflation,

remember, joe, oil was negative. now because of the re-emergence of demands now you're seeing basis of fact. do i think it's doable when we actually go through and look at the apparent parts of inflation, apparel and transportation there's pressure to keep price inflation down it's moving moderately higher. price inflation, that like you said that is where the fed needs to be thoughtful and part of their policy over the coming months they got to start with fewer asset purchases and i think they'll start to move rate higher sooner than people think. not this year, but start to adjust they have to, like you said, financial inflation will be real >> okay. so, you're not a stock market guy, but you certainly have a good feel. >> right >> why won't -- why aren't you troubled by all of the money sloshing around and the stock market still looks great

but we are seeing some of these other -- like gamestop, or ipos or junk or any of those things, there's a lot of things chase asset. is that going to continue and how do you feel about the stock market with rates going up >> so, a couple of things. i'm not into a lot of equity estimates. there's a couple things happening. one if the earnings yield, if you take forward expectations before you even see this rapid growth of earnings yield you compare it to real rates at negative even if real rates move up 50 basis points, equity valuations are still pretty attractive relative to fixed information. i think what people, like you just described, don't talk about enough is the money coming in where companies can finance themselves whether it's in spac, et cetera,

that ability to finance has allowed them to do m & a, r & z and capx i don't think we're anywhere close. some things can't pull back. people get worked up rates up 30 basis points you can pull back 2%, 3% or so we're going higher we're going higher because the growth is better but true benefit to companies is significant and in terms of your ability to finance, et cetera, i don't think the yields are the multiples when you take free cash flow and earnings yields and companies that are going top line, you look at all of the beats this quarter, you're going to have top-line revenue growth that will surprise people. >> we've had -- just trying to do the math -- people saying i can't do math. i'm pretty good at math. larry comes in, he loves to brag

how much you got on management now at blackrock, 7, 8, keeps going up what is it because you manage it so well? >> yeah. yeah, i watch what i have to do. >> it doesn't matter -- so, bitcoin bulls, bitcoin bulls say 1% even as a head against money, put 1% into bitcoin. i'm trying to figure out what 1% of 7 trillion would mean for bitcoin. that would mean -- are you doing any now? are you recommending any right now? what's blackrock got in the works for -- >> listen -- >> go ahead. >> yeah, i think crypto generally has got the imagination of a lot of people you know, today, the volatility of it is extraordinary listen, people are looking for storyhouses of value people are looking for places that could appreciate, under the assumption that inflation moves

higher and debts are building. so, yeah, we've started to dabble a bit into it and i wouldn't put a number on the percentage allocation. one should add to it like the rest of your portfolio looks like my sense is that technology has evolved and regulation has evolved to the point where a number of people find it should be part of the portfolio and that's driving the price up. >> can you speak to blackrock's eventual plans? what would you be recommending, you're not as old as mellon, you've got a lot more money. what do you think will happen down the road? >> so, i'm not going to make recommendations. so, listen, i think some people holding it as a storehouse of value and diversifying their portfolio. listen one thing that was on one of the shows with you guys

recently we're holding a lot more cash than we've held historically because duration doesn't work, and hedge. diversifies into other assets makes some sense hold something portion of which you hold, in things like crypto is, you know, seems to make sense to me but i wouldn't espouse a certain allocation or target holding >> yeah, i knew -- believe me, i knew you weren't going to do that but you will cop to owning a tesla? >> yes, sir, i will. it's a good vehicle. it is a good vehicle >> by the way, i didn't write -- >> we talk about your show quite a bit. look what's happening in ebs, it's an extraordinary part of time part of it, technology -- technology is changing so darn fast we're watching it play out with spacex, et cetera. pretty impressive stuff.

>> yeah. then you got musk with -- then we're back to putting the bitcoin logo on his -- it's all converging, it's all converging, when you come on here, just come loaded for -- i won't ask you real specific things but, you know, you're allowed to opine. do you think larry is watching are you in trouble you're all right, aren't you >> i've got to call him after. >> give him our best we'll see you later. >> thanks, rieder. >> see you fun conversation, joe. when we come back, another fun conversation, skybridge capital anthony scaramucci is joining us on what to expect with tomorrow's congressional hearing on the reddit volatility and how the bitcoin fund has been performing ding isurth year's runup. tomorrow on "squawk," don't miss the conversation with none other than than bill gates that starts at 6:00 eastern time

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l lucid nearing a deal according to an organization who spoke to reuters they said a bank acquisition from longtime dealmaker michael klein is talking about raising $1 million via a public investment in private equity on top of the $2 million klein's spac raised. sources tell reuters the lucid deal could be announced this month. speaking of spac in autos, i've got more news this morning. phil lebeau joins us with a special guest. >> joe, the lucid news is interesting and also interesting some of the key suppliers happening with autonomous vehicles, ai announcing it will go public with a spac just introduced let's bring in blair la court the ceo.

spelled aye. not a in artificial intelligence thanks for joining us. you're raising $350 million in proceeds to develop what you guys call intelligent lightdar. how is that different from other automakers? >> sure. good morning, phil active lidar is similar to a difference between a passive system that sends out signals and an active system that actually intelligently scans the environment. you may know it from aeye targeting in the military. or missile defense systems when you have to track objects in movement or objects that are small and need to be acquired so you that understand what they are those systems tend to

potentially do that. >> blair, we've seen spac deals with lidar companies or lidar manufacturers. and you're all developing this technology i have to tell you when i talk to executive in the auto industries more than a few have said these are good for assisted driving systems. but these are maybe not the best systems for level four or five what do you say to them when they say lidar as limits in that regard >> actually, it's a fair comment when you talk about lidar in general content. one of the things you lead off with, these are toolkits they're used with radar and camera lidar is the only sensor that can truly tell you what is out there at distance and depth. we like to look at autonomy as a spectrum when you're parking in a traffic jam, the next generation of them

will do highway autopilot. fully autonomous systems have to actually deal with all of those scenarios, and they have deal with something that comes up with a problem that a human would deal with. so they're much more difficult to actually implement. so, i do believe that the systems will be the first systems we'll see and be implemented in cars in the next couple of years. >> and when you see the market right now, how big do you see that to be in terms of the adas market with the assisted driver market >> the way to think about it, there's 88 million cars made every year as we've seen many technologies migrate from the military radar gps cameras and cameras algorithms you see at peak they get 80% to 90% penetration. and the question really is how long will it take. it's driven by two things. one is how much safety can you

add into a car, that impacts your safety ratings? the second is what feature can it do to a consumer that draws him in to actually pay for the new systems? if you take a look at radar, it took about 15 years to get to 80% penetration. most people believe that lidar, because it has so much value for things like highway, small objects or very complicated environments in the city, we're looking at seven, eight years, to penetrate which means very, very large markets between 25 and 30 >> and quickly, blair, when do you expect the spac merger to close and for you guys to be publicly traded? >> sure, we're just announcing today, the common wisdom with three months, standing on where we shake out with the ftc. and when it makes sense when we're ready to make it happen.

one of the things we always say to people, look, our financing event is not a strategy. it's there to support a strategy we waited in our industry that goes past many of the others and we'll be looking at carefully when we actually join the public company in nasdaq. >> blair lacourt, the ceo of a aeye, announcing they're the next company guys back to you >> coming up, can't miss interview with skybridge capital, anthony scaramucci ahead of tomorrow's hearing on robinhood and the reddit rally stay tuned you're watching "squawk box" on cnbc

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coming up, we've got breaking retail sales data the first look at sales numbers for 2021 "squawk" returns after this.

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if you own it, three covers it. got a cheese slice for "spokesperson?" that's me. i don't even need to see what's happening behind me to know it's covered. (screaming) this commercial is now over. logo. three. no nonsense. just common sense. welcome back to "squawk box. rick santelli here from the live cmh, breaking news, looking at retail sales, by the way, the first retail sales in the last three numbers are negative let's start with retail sales, shall we up 5.3%. the three months of negative numbers this happears as solid

and if we have autos, improves 6.1% these are powerful numbers the control number isn't out yet. i'll come back to that january's ppi. the headline number -- holy cow. up 1.3 this is historic up 1.3 i can't remember the last time i've seen a number that elevated on headline. and if you skip out food and energy, up 1.2%. this is huge and if you look at the final demand on a year over year, it's up 1.7%. that's also very significant because up 1.7% is the highest level since january, when we were up 2% finally, that control number is out. that control number is huge. 6.0. these numbers are to point where it answers all of the questions, joe, that you're asking m mr. rieder this morning. why are interest rates going up on the long end?

there's your answer. and why are they buying corporates? because corporate securities yield is added on top of the treasury's automatic adjustment. back to you. >> well -- >> okay. >> it gives me faith that the fed doesn't see these numbers in advance. perfect timing for chair powell to say never again on inflation. you knew it was coming >> oh, absolutely. and here's the other issue that is so important to understand here and that is, you know, the fed keeps telling us they're going to keep rates low, even m mr. rieder, no rate increase for 2021 he's probably correct. but that isn't what we're supposed to focus on we're supposed to focus on what's happening now the rates are going up i don't hear the fed saying they're going to tighten or ease anytime soon the market has a life of its own and it's certainly going to

demonstrate that in the next couple of months we're going to switch over right now, steve liesman joins us with more information on the data steve, what are you thinking >> these are big numbers it's a revival of spending remember, you have three down months and so, it seemed like, you know, consumers kind of cocooned a little bit in the end of the month. and now, they've come back big i will tell you that while we'll make a big deal of the inflation numbers, the fed is not going to do that. they're looking to this. they're looking for a time when they'll figure out what the inflation story is once both supply and demand returns more to normal. i think that's something that they're going to be mindful of the inflation numbers but i don't think it's going to deter them when it comes to policy, andrew meanwhile, turning to

another topic, black history month, talking more about the gap of minority employment than ever before. is it all talk or rhetoric or real policy? where do you land on this, steve? >> well, you know, it sort of works right into the discussion we've been having, andrew, like never said before officials have been talking about this gap in white and black unemployment it's a decision they're going to be using to figure out to reverse course or tighten policy or keep it loose until it matters. minorities have been hit harder. the current unemployment black rid, above 9%. and like at the 150% of the white level. the idea that the fed can play a role in narrowing the gap. new thinking, conventional economics hold the fed can influence overall demand, but not relative demand. for example, the demand for

white versus black labor but hold, it also shows that black unemployment was a structural problem but fell to an all-time low of eight percentage points. >> the late breaking movements in the labor department is not as expected. in fact, inflation did not even rise to 2% on a sustained basis. there was every reason to expect that the labor market should have strengthened even further without causing a worrisome increase in inflation were it not for the onset of the pandemic >> so whether the powell fed can or should compart a new course remains to be seen a look over 40 years the gap between black and white unemployment not only rises in recession, but it keep rising even after recession technically ends powell was clear this is not just a job for fed policy. he said it would require, quote, a society-wide commitment. but it does appear that this fed

would let the economy run hotter and harder in part to bring down the gap. and be watching for a major of a sign for how long to press on accelerate, or when, andrew, to tap on the brakes. >> okay, joe steve, thank you i thought we came back to joe -- >> thank you, andrew joining us now to talk about the economic data that we just got and what's next for the economy. william sprigs, chief economist at afl-cio and professor of economy professor, when listening to that, was that shocking at all what you heard from rick, that ppi number >> no, at some point we were going to have to have services at private level because they've been running at very low demand. and at some point, they were going to respond to having greater demand this is isn't an out of ordinary

number it's nowhere near the fed's 2% target i'm not sure it's going to be sustained. at some point there has to be this adjustment. >> and then you heard some subsequent steps from steve. and i just thought were jay powell's comments -- do those still hold true? but in terms of inflationary expectations and moves by the fed, if we had a series of numbers like this. would you think that maybe they would re-evaluate and may have missed this nascent price action >> people -- people who have ghosts of 1970 and want to see inflation always think that any blip is next 12% inflation spike. again, there's going to have to be some adjustment to price levels and services.

airlines have been totally empty. they have been pricing accordingly. restaurants. all sorts of services, gyms, all sorts of personal services have not been able to meet their demand and finally in december and january, as incomes have started to come back, people are going to start to go back to some of these. services and so we should expect to see periods where the price is going to spike i do not think that the fed is going to interpret this as the next wave of inflation and let's hope that it does not. let's remember that, right now, in the labor market, we're down as deep as we were at the depth of the great recession so, we have a huge amount of jobs to get back where we're anywhere near full capacity.

and most of the service sector is nowhere near full capacity. >> yeah. 10 million jobs at least and i remember the '70s. and i've finally given up -- i remember voluk. i've given up worrying again i accept we're in the new paradigm for inflation you need the wage/price spiral but when you look at the amount of central bank action in this country and really around the world for years and years and years now, does that -- are we seeing any deleterious effects there? do you acknowledge that asset inflation at this point might be getting to a level where it's troublesome? >> well, my perspective asset inflation, particularly the stock market is just an indication that private capital doesn't seem to have a place to go it's the reason why many people are calling on governments to use the physical space

because there's no risk that governments making the proper investments at this time would be inflationary. and it's necessary that we get public investment up to a level that fittings the 21st century i don't think we've properly modeled the level of investment it takes in the 21st century to create the broad sense of infrastructure we've struggled in this nation right now, with not having enough broadband for our students to stay at home it's a struggle that shouldn't be in place. we should have a better investment from the public sector and with the need to transform to a greener economy, we're going to have to have a much bigger public investment >> dr. spriggs, thank you, we appreciate your quick only six of the numbers that just hit which it's been a while. we'll see.

see whether it's a blip or something to be more concerned with thanks for your time of day. andrew >> thanks, joe coming up, the interview you've been waiting for, skybridge capital's anthony scaramucci never wanted to hold back we'll talk about what's expected tomorrow with the house with game players in the gamestop saga and also the surge in bitcoin. you're watching "squawk" right here on cnbc you're sitting in the place where giants ate. the four way is the heart and soul of the community. ♪

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welcome back it is the french revolution of

finance. that's now the next guest referred to the retail trading frenzy of gamestop and now gamestop and robinhood and citadel will be answering questions at the house and services committee tomorrow. and joining us is anthony scaramucci founder and co-managing capital of skybridge capital. we'll talk bitcoin and so much else anthony, i'm curious what you think could possibly come out of tomorrow's session and what you're looking for >> well, i think the principal focus -- good morning, andrew. i think the principal focus is going to be on the order flow payments and the discussion between what happens with robinhood and places like citadel. i don't think the focus is son the hedge funds. the hedge funds didn't do anything wrong

they got short-stocked and got picked up by the reddit people and exploited at least temporarily by the reddit people but i don't see this being a target practice on hedge funds tomorrow as much as it is, is the little guy getting squeezed here or is the little guy getting hurt and i think what regulators already know is that the laws in place are actually to protect the system more so than the individual investor. and it's not really clear, andrew, how you can do to protect more the individual investor this is sort of a caveat emptor situation. >> is it a fair fight if i'm sitting in my pajamas on my laptop with robinhood on the phone do i have a real chance against the pro who has access to data and resources, and

frankly, doing it professional some people have compared it to the professional golfer against the weekend golfer does the weekend golfer have a chance over the professional >> we both know the professional has an edge when you think you think about the size and scale of things but never has the individual investor come this close to parity. if you step back for a second, the individual investor has the same capabilities as a prop trader in any of the legendary firms circa 1995 or 2000 they have perfect instantaneous information. and that's exactly what people had 20 or so years ago but i don't believe they have an edge and i don't believe if we're ever going to get to parity, i think the question is should they ever get to parity? and the answer is, well, how can they if you're staffing with 150 traders and you've got $20 billion of capital under

management, of course, it's going to be -- there's going to be an edge there i think what you want to make sure of is that they're not being disadvantaged by the system, whether it's the -- you know, the frequency trying the high frequency trading or it's the payment for order flow that could tip people off. >> right, okay >> that direction. >> okay. let's take on the payment for order flow, it's an interesting one, i know it's technical for some folks effectively, the argument is the economics of robinhood is being paid for by citadel. there's a view that citadel wouldn't be paying for that order flow if it weren't somehow meaningful for them? >> there's no question, they're paying for that order flow they want to do the transactions and want to see where the momentum of things are going in the market to listen again, robinhood is fully disclosing that to their

investors. if you logon to the account, you look through the fine print, they're explaining why the transactions are costless. people should know that. that's the age-old thing on the internet services for free, you happen to be the product, as opposed to anything else. and i think people understand that and so, remember, robinhood is also making money off the float. >> right >> so when there are margin accounts at robinhood that's also very lucrative for robinhood. >> what about short-selling? one of the things that happened and the reason it worked to the extent for anybody on gamestop was the short squeeze. you in particular had people come out and say, look this is a stock shorted 140% of shares shorted, people say i don't understand that, that's irrational it can't be that 100% of the stock was shorted. technically, it can because people are buying -- then borrowing from somebody else, selling it and continuing over and over again but the question is whether that

needed to be cleaned up? >> yes, but you also have naked option strategies in the marketplace which is creating that additional, you know, imbalance in the float if you will listen, you can't get rid of the short-selling. this is the exacting dilemma for the regulators they want to protect the little guy but at the same time they show that short-selling is assuring process in the market it helps to unfraud and things that are nefarious in the marketplace and it keeps people more honest. so, you have all of these different variables hitting at the same time. and listen, as kevin o'leary said earlier in the show, the reddit guys are pretty smart they know what's going on and they have to -- >> but do you think this changes investing, though, forever i mean, some people have said this is like the financial version of the arab spring, you know now that you have this social

media-enabled collective that can actually go in after a short squeeze or pump the stock one way or the other i guess the question i'd ask you, is it some kind of new found approach to investing? or is it a pump and dump on the other side a lot of people have different views on this. >> well, listen it's definitely if hedge fund manager, you have to adopt to this. you have to look at your short interest you have to look at the volume that's out there in the short interest and the concentration. and you have to be wary. so hedge fund managers already spreading out their short interest, becoming more diversified, and you know, tightening up their risk management protocols in terms of where squeezes are, so that is definitely impacted. when i said it was the fren of revolution or the arab spring, is that the micro serve now is empowered. they're empowered with near perfect information and costless trading and a result of which, if you're a professional investor, you have to recalibrate yourself, and make that adaptation, so yes, i think

things have changed, andrew, but you can still get very badly burned in these situation, and my warning to individual investors, no matter how smart you are, or how close you are to the information, be careful, put in stop losses, allow yourself to get called away from things when necessary, so that you can live to fight another day. you and i know that there are very bloody stories out there where people have borrowed a lot of money and got burned on these stocks, and it's impaired their ability and their lifestyle. frankly, it impaired their financial capabilities, if you will so i want people to be cautious. the game has changed though. >> maybe it has changed, anthony, because i can remember in the old days when people would complain about trying to compete with the big guys, as a retail broker, i would say, you know, big guys are like elephants, you try moving around, like an elephant, if you have a huge position, there's actually some things that make that difficult, and sometimes, smaller investors were able to move around, and you know, at

the feet of the elephant, i guess you can get stepped on by the elephant, too, but that case is never made anymore about when you have these huge position, there are negatives to that, too, and so there are some advantages, i think, that we don't point out anymore, to being at least more nimble for smaller investors. is that not true >> joe, well, yes, i definitely think that, joe, but on the other side of that, if you look at the technology that these big hedge fund managers have, or a company like citadel, or the high frequency traders, they're moving so much volume, back in the day, when we were doing that together, i was once a retail broker, i think that was a lot clearer back in the day, but today, with this advanced technology, and the high speed trading, joe, i think, i think the edges go with the pros. >> but that's what we, that's what we used to say, it now it's

not so bad, but maybe we were just selling ourselves go ahead. >> anthony, real quick, because i know you got to run, and i know you're in the business and you got a bitcoin fund, but are we going to 100,000 first or are we going in reverse first? >> well, listen, the thing is volatile, again, i want to be cautious with individual investors, but we like it, we have over a half a billion in bitcoin right now, and obviously, our bitcoin fund started in december, and it's done quite well, but be cautious, but andrew, i do think we see $100,000 in this coin before year end. it's just a supply/demand situation. and you don't have a lot of supply out there, and very heavy demand, and lastly, just look at what michael's strategy just did, $900 ml convertible bond offering, ins substantially, pretty hot sector, converts and bitcoin. >> anthony, great to see you come on back

we'll talk soon. >> thank you joe? >> 100,000 and end of the year. not even going out beyond. that's interesting. coming up, top stocks to watch ahead of the opening bell on wall street futures as you can see, i don't think they like that ppi number. that's when they turned down and a programming note, all this week, this programming note, all this week, don't miss fast money special reports on "the new american investor," we were just talking about that 6:00 p.m. eastern time stay tuned you're watching "squawk box" on cnbc i made a business out of my passion. i mean, who doesn't love obsessing over network security? all our techs are pros. they know exactly which parking lots have the strongest signal. i just don't have the bandwidth for more business. seriously, i don't have the bandwidth.

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this is a no-nonsense message from three. you need decision tech. small business insurance is usually so complicated, you need to be a lawyer to understand it. that's why three was created. it's a better kind of business insurance. it's only three pages. straightforward. if you own it, three covers it. got a cheese slice for "spokesperson?" that's me. i don't even need to see what's happening behind me to know it's covered. (screaming) this commercial is now over. logo. three. no nonsense. just common sense. dom chu, dominic chu, the domino, the zom nate, zom nater, joins us now top of the morning to you, we have a slate of the earnings movers like you said this morning, we will start with

shares of garmin, 6,000 shares of pre-market volume, the maker of gps and wearable device, better than expected profits and revenues reported there, and stronger growth than most of the main segments, led bay 48% sales gain in marine products and a 40% sales gain in outdoor products and a 26% sales gain in fitness wearables so covid may be a tail wind for some of those units. next up you got shares of hilton which are down 1.5%. roughly 8,000 shares of volume the hotel operator reported a surprise quarterly loss, worse than expected revenues, and now it was covid-related travel and booking disruptions that helped drive a 59% drop in a key measure of revenue, so those shares off 1.5%. end on shares of shopify, the e-commerce solutions company, did manage to beat analyst estimate force both profits and revenues as more merchants sign up to use their platform to sell things online. but this is a stock, guys, that

was already up 30% year to date, and 178% over the last 12 months so it is safe to say that expectations were pretty high going into that report, joe, i'll send things back over to you. >> okay. so you made a choice, you went with, at the domino, when you did the twitter handle, did you think about at the dominator, or would that have gotten a whole weird group of people following, do you think maybe that's not a good thing. >> a different type of group i was the dominator in high school, i tried to get domino, just domino for twitter but that was already taken, so i just did the domino. >> the domino is good. >> at one point, joe, i had an underscore between the and domino but twitter helped rectify that for me. >> there you go. i'm at joe squawk. so i got that. now i'm branded like that. i can't go with anything and andrew was smart, andrew has

just his name. so he can go, that's mobile, you can go anywhere with your gazillion follows, andrew. >> thanks, dom. >> you got it, guys. >> make sure you join us tomorrow, who knows what's going to happen. "squawk on the street" begins right now. good wednesday morning welcome to "squawk on the street," i'm carl quintanilla with david faber and mike, cramer is out today, futures close to the lows of the morning as the beyond yield back up continues in the wakeup of the blowout eco data, retail sales hottest since june, up 5.3 and wholesale 1.3, the road map begins with the power grid prices and the freezing weather leaves millions in texas and the midwest without power. >> let's talk about shares of qua quantumscape, shares are up and the ceo will join us in a few minutes. >> and