it is 5:00 a.m. at cnbc, 4:00 a.m. in dallas, texas, here is your top five at five millions in texas still in the dark and cold. power remains off with little or no heat as another storm hits the state and people point fingers about what went wrong, a humanitarian crisis grows. outside of that, stimulus still in focus for the markets but as the vaccine rollout, and will the relief package get smaller. reddit in the hot seat, alongside the hedge funds they want to bring down

regulators want to know exactly what went on, could charges be filed. australia firing back at facebook over a deal to block news, content, and brewing up success we speak with the cofounder of one black owned coffee brand on their effort to g give back to the community it is thursday, february 18th. and this is "worldwide exchange." well, good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, and welcome from wherever in the world that you may be watching i am brian sullivan. thank you for joining us on this thursday, and here's how your money and the global markets are setting up their day a lot of indication of where this market may go we're down slightly. at this hour, with the volume, let's call that flat on wednesday, the dow eked out gains. the s&p and nasdaq closing just a touch lower. the big story does not continue to be stocks

it's in the energy market, and the story out of texas we'll get more on the latest on that in a moment, but right now, to the underlying fossil fuels involved or at least partly. wti crude continues to move higher we are seeing wti above 61 bucks a barrel on reports that we may actually see production cuts by the saudis or opec in general or at least removal of some of their planned increases. natural gas on the move as well. these are not prices that you're seeing on the board that are impacting texas right now because a lot of power producers and distributors are still paying exponentially more in the spot market, just to buy natural gas to run the power plants, in some cases, hundreds of dollars more per unit. also get a quick check on the cryptos, ether, the world's second biggest digital currency behind boitcoin, hitting anothe record ether hitting it 19, 18 in trading overnight, up 2 1/2%

right now. so let's get around the world and get your headlines and some of your top trades, see how the markets are doing. for that, we go to joumanna bercetche in our london newsroom >> good morning, brian european equities seem to be searching for direction. the mood board is pretty mixed some of the indices in negative territory, some in positive territory. we're right in the heart of earnings season over here in europe you talked about the commodities rebound. some of the best performing names are in the ftse 100. still continuing to perform quite well, though it's not apparent from the overall index performance. way down today, a little bit by airbus, who released their results earlier, disappointing reaction there the stock is down by 3%. and a focus still remains to be on italy, just to remind viewers that the confidence vote for prime minister drage, there are

two stocks in particular we're focused on in europe, credit suisse and barclays, reporting a 22% fall in full year net profit swung to a loss in the fourth quarter as expected, weighed down by provisions for a long running u.s. legal case, and barclays is resuming dividend payouts after earnings beat expectations but the reaction has been negative as you can see behind me, so that is it for europe, brian, continuing to search for direction but perhaps a little bit more red on the board today. >> certainly is. joumanna bercetche, thank you very much. have a great day. all right. now to three big money other stories to begin your day. first, that growing crisis in texas. millions of residents remain in the dark as cold weather and another storm moves across the state. governor greg abbott yesterday signing an executive order directing natural gas companies to stop all shipments of gas outside the state ordering them instead to direct them to power stations within texas.

mean meantime the electric reliability council of texas said it restored electricity to 1.6 million homes, but cold comfort for nearly 2 million families that still do not have power, and likely do not have heat. fema has sent 60 generators to texas to try to power critical infrastructure and a nation of blankets, bottled water and meals. story two, congress set to hold a hearing on last month's short squeeze trading frenzy robinhood ceo vad tenet, citadel ceo, and ten eev is expected to call for trades in realtime. blaming the problems on the settlement period. the wall street bet forum was people and not driven by bots or foreign agents from russia story three, australia's

treasurer slamming facebook's decision to block users there from nearly all news content on its platform the move by mark zuckerberg comes as the australian parliament prepares to potentially pass a new bill that would require online media platforms like facebook and google to pay news outlets for displaying and linking to their content. to your money, and your next guest says an earnings recovery continued pace of vaccinations and falling cases should help keep stocks moving higher overall, but there do remain risks. alicia levine is the chief strategist at bnl investment management, and she joins us now. we kind of stalled out the last couple of days, not that two days make a trend of course but do you feel like the market is starting to reprice any assets or maybe rethink the current pricing of those assets? >> well, good morning, brian look, our biggest risk really going into this kind of reflation and rotation trade

always was spiking yields, and that's because the market, with yields so low, it doesn't really take a lot to really spook the market on some kind of bund market selloff here, and what we saw in the last few days is yields moving very quickly as the ppi came in and just concern about inflation moving to the forefront, and i think the market sentiment is going to be we're getting inflation until you tell me otherwise, and so there's going to be strength in the cyclical sectors, and strength in value, and i think you're going to see a softness in the tech sector just because those long duration assets are most affected when yields move higher this is a bit of a show me show me there's not going to be inflation. i think most market participants are expecting big reads as we cycle through the year and get those big base effects. >> well, yeah, and as we've shown our audience, pretty much every hard or soft commodity, fossil fuels, you name it, the

price is probably up at least in the last year but a longer term chart might show a different story. i want to go to stocks small caps has been the story. we have been featuring and talking about small caps since june or july of last year on this program which has been great for our viewers, but now, according to your data, 90% of the russell 2000 are above their 200 day moving average i'm no math whiz 90% sound like a lot is that over valued. >> it's a little bit counter intuitive. the number is actually the same for the s&p as well. both are at about 91% of the constituents trading above the 200-day moving average the reason that matters is because it shows the broad nature of the market rally it's not top heavy it's not being led only by one sector, while other sectors fall away it's very broad, and with this kind of breadth, you do not get market tops. you can get consolidation, and i

think we'll see that here in the next few weeks, just as we absorb some of the gains that we've had. this is not a market top, and frankly, not a bubble because bubble conditions do not happen when 91% of the constituents are making 200-day highs so that's why it's important i do think we'll pause here as the yields kind of settle in i think they're going to move faster, but the issue is that right now, real yields are still very deeply negative to the tune of about negative 1% and given that, there is no alternatives and that's going to support markets. >> and i'll tell you what's been supportive lately, we don't pay a lot of attention to it, but we probably should, and i don't know what longest time line chart we have in our system for the nikkei 225 in japan is, but if you're not paying attention at home, japan, despite terrible demographics, no growth, four or

five recessions in the last 20 years or so, has just broken above 30,000 on the nikkei since 1939, the year i graduated from high school, hay lee shah, are you a believer, are you a buyer, are you big in japan >> japan is amazing. it has been 29 years, and yeah, let's not talk about years, brian, but look, asia is breaking out everywhere. it's not just japan. actually, china broke out the first time since 2007. so equities everywhere in asia are very very strong, and in part, it's based on the cyclical recovery, so as the u.s. recovers, as other countries recover, manufacturing is stronger, and asia really benefits from that, including the weaker dollar. so yes, we'd be buyers of asia right here, including japan. the charts tend to tell you where markets are going, and so, you know, the demographics are not great in japan, however, they just had a blow out of 4th

quarter gdp, up 12%. so the fundamentals are getting better for the long-term, probably there are structural issues but we like asia, we like europe, and we like europe for some of the reasons we're talking about. europe does not have tech. it has value in cyclicals, and those cyclicals are what's supporting markets right now. >> yeah, and thankfully, covid cases are crashing around the world. let's hope that continues, even in europe where their vaccine rollout has been terrible. we criticize ours here they're at 1/3 our pace. you look at the vaccine boom we're starting to see in certain places of america. you think europe is lagging us by a few months and once they start to get vaccinated and cases falling hopefully, they're going to bust out and be where we were a couple of months ago. >> look, it's hard to know, i'm hoping this is a delay, and not a trajectory issue

so let's assume it's a delay by a few months they have supply, they have been working on it. but look, fundamental to all of this is that somehow we all get to put covid behind us one way or another i think the data out of israel actually has been very encouraging. you may have seen it, but pfizer in a real world scenario, each arm 600,000 people, still 94% efficacy, including variants in that country, so i think that that really is the center of how we see markets we have to get beyond this by let's call it the summer, by the third quarter. otherwise the whole structure of what we're talking about does begin to fall away, and that's another big risk besides the yield issue. >> a lot of talk about the south african variant. south africa has the largest declining cases in the world of any nation that records its numbers. we got to remember that. alicia levine, great stuff we're watching japan, alicia thank you very much. now to washington, d.c.,

where the biden administration is taking new steps in its bid to combat future risks of covid as harsh winter weather slows down the pace of vaccinations in america. there's a live look at the capitol and winter weather on the way there. tracie potts joining us from washington, warm and indoors, because snow is either there or it's coming. >> it's on the way, and i am warm and indoors thanks for asking, brian, may not be that way later today. in fact, that weather has postponed the president's trip to michigan today to visit a vaccine plant. they're hoping they can do it tomorrow the biden administration still pushing for that big $1.9 trillion covid relief plan, but while they're waiting, they're also hoping to spend some money on hand to boost testing for students and for underserved communities. the white house plans to spend

$1.6 billion on more covid tests and supplies, while waiting for congress to approve massive relief. >> the federal government has to chip in, make sure we get this done. >> reporter: storms affecting 30 states are delaying vaccine shipments. >> we're going to run out. today, tomorrow, we're going to run out of what we have now. >> reporter: the u.s. is now vaccinating 1.7 million people every day. but the cdc warns, cases are dropping because we're coming off the holiday surge, not because more people are getting shots. and that new strains of coronavirus could push those numbers back up. >> the continued spread of the variants that are more tr transmissible could jeopardize the progress we have made in the last month if we let our guard down. >> reporter: instead of spring, the biden administration says due to production delays, it will be july before the vaccine is available to every american next month marks one year since the country shut down. the cdc predicts 559,000 deaths

by then. and the white house is planning how the president will observe that anniversary, brian. they're considering him doing a speech or maybe even an event in washington or elsewhere. they're still working on it. >> tracie potts in d.c., watch for that snow. be well and be safe. a lot of weather coming. and we're coming up right after this break, and when we do, all right, covid cases and hospitalizations, they are down around the world, but there are some concerns about something tracie just talked about, different strains coming out of one big virus maker or vaccine maker, plus another shakeup at boeing, it faces more changes from the 737 max crisis, and shares of twilio taking off. we'll tell you why and who twilio is. we're back right after this. these days, we want sophisticated but simple.

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welcome back to "worldwide exchange." tracie touched on it a few moments ago. it's time for our daily covid vaccine update the latest data, facts on the cdc numbers. about how many of us have been vaccinated and over all, 56.3 million shots have been administered of that 40.3 million receiving at least one shot so about 16 million getting the full dose,

two shots, but remember, even one shot, especially of moderna, is 80% effective now, overall this means 16.7% of american adults have received at least one vaccine dose but a lot of questions about these new variants, these mutations you hear about remember, all viruses mutate, and this one is no exception well, there is some good news. in a small lab study, pfizer says despite slightly reduced antibody growth, and that's getting a lot of headlines, the main part of the story is that the vaccine was still able to largely neutralize the south african type of the virus, and pfizer is talking to regulators about developing an updated version of the vaccine or some kind of booster shot if needed overall covid cases around the world, whether it's here, in south africa, the southern hemisphere or europe thankfully seem to be on a major decline. let us hope that continues all right. still on deck. inspiring the next generation of

black entrepreneurs. the cofounder of black and bold coffee talks about the brand's new initiative to do just that. and remember, this month is black history month, and so we are honoring some of our cnbc contributors and friends here is a personal story about knowing your value >> early in my career, i was interviewing for an analyst position i arrived at the office and told the receptionist i'm here to see the manager, she says have a seat when the manager came into the reception area, he asked the receptionist did mr. wright leave. that manager did not see me. he did not see that the person sitting in that reception area was the same person that was in remesu to me, that did not matter because i knew my value.

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print discounted postage for any letter any package any time right from your computer all the services of the post office plus ups only cheaper get our special tv offer a 4-week trial plus postage and a digital scale go to stamps.com/tv and never go to the post office again. welcome back, it is 5:23 here in the east 4:23 right there in dallas, texas. it looks shockingly peaceful right now, and there are of course lights on, but behind that and around the suburbs and many parts of the ex-burbs, it's a much different story 2 million people across texas still remain without power the remains cold many have not had heat for two or even three days now it is a very scary situation, and unfortunately there is more storm there on the way meantime, that storm that hit

texas a couple of days ago is now pushing it way to us on the east coast and bringing with it a messy mix for all of us who likely already have snow on the ground. and maybe a lot of it. nbc news meteorologist bill cairns joining us now with more on what we can expect here, and maybe what they can expect in texas. bill, they don't need anymore storm. >> no, they need it to warm up i mean, the water situation is getting kind of scary in many areas because so many pipes have burst. people had their faucets on for four straight days the water supplies are just diminishing so low, some are only getting a drip. you know, the problems just keep piling on top of each other because of these temperatures. let's take this in two parts, let's talk texas it's very cold houston, 34. dallas, 25 oklahoma city at 8 degrees unfortunately at 300,000 will lose power from the snow and ice yesterday in louisiana and mississippi so we added some pain there, obviously some

people in texas have gotten their power back on but we still have roughly 1 to 2 million without power. the unrelenting cold stays with us today temperatures still below freezing all day long in dallas, houston to the low 40s that's a little bit better, and then this weekend, the gradual warming continues. it's not really until sunday that they'll actually feel warmth dallas about 53. that will be a significant improvement and that will be people not taking as much power off the grid and needing as much electricity. as we mentioned, we have the snow and ice we're dealing with in areas of the east, brian, 104 million people impacted by in winter storm the snow totals are not going to be all that impressive by northeast standards but it's a wintry mix and mess, especially around d.c. new york city should be just snow, but only about 3 or 4, brian, this time of year, we can deal with it. >> yeah, some more snow on the way, and you know, it's amazing, bill, when you look at the chart and the graphics you had of

texas, and you love to see that, corpus christi, maybe at 71 degrees. hard to believe a couple of days before that, it was 1 degree or five we're getting 40 and 50 degree swings in temperature in a couple of days luckily, it seems to be going the right direction. >> there's no big cold blast behind this one. they will kick into spring pretty quickly. >> bill cairns, nbc meteorologist, bill, good to see you again as we await the snow here thank you very much. well, staying on texas, much more on that crisis, 2 million still without power. millions have not had power for a couple of days the finger pointing, ramping up, we're going to speak with one expert about really went wrong with the state's energy infrastructure what needs to be done to avoid a repeat because it has happened before, and they haven't seemed to learn if you haven't already, subscribe it our podcasts on apple, spotify, and other platforms, call "worldwide exchange."

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will it be new record highs for stocks again today, the dow notching another one wednesday is the steam finally falling out of this incredible market engine d.c. and focus and a beltway brawl gamestop, putting ceos of robinhood, reddit, on the hot seat will they do anything about it. the crisis in texas,

millions still without power or heat, and the only thing that does seem to be heating up is the finger pointing and political blame game it is thursday, february 18th, and this is "worldwide exchange" right here on cnbc welcome back, and good thursday morning. it is just about 5:30. exactly 5:30 on the nose here. and welcome to "worldwide exchange" here here's how your money investments, as we are halfway through this 5:00 a.m. hour future futures not giving a lot of help on which way this market wants to go, dow futures implied open, i'll take alice in the center square for 200 i just mixed mini game show metaphors right there. we don't know which way this market is going to go. we are indeed staying focused on alice, alice -- it's been a long

week -- on oil and gas, winter storms in texas shutting down a fifth of u.s. refining output and a million barrels of crude production you have about 3 million barrels of refining capacity offline most of the refineries literally either frozen out, too cold to operate or unable to get the raw oil to them to refine anywhere because pipelines and other facilities are frozen, of course, we'll get more on that, and the failure of the texas power grid, writ large in just a minute we also continue to watch the other hot story, and that is cryptos, believe it or not, remember, mining bitcoin takes a lot of power we are seeing bitcoin down a little bit right now, but look at ether go up 3 1/2% right now. it is above 1,900 for the first time ever. the only of the cryptos that is higher today here are a few of the other big money corporate stories on this thursday morning story number one, twilio shares

popping after the cloud communications company, that's what they do if you are wondering, posted a surprise profit in their latest quarter revenues also topping estimates, look at twilio go. up 11 1/2% one year, up 260%. story two, the house financial services committee will hear testimony today from the leaders of robinhood, reddit, citadel, and others this comes in the wake of the gamestop trading frenzy of the last month lawmakers plan to talk about the lack of data on short selling. and the "wall street journal" reports the s.e.c. is considering whether to require more short selling transparency. 2010 dodd-frank financial overall law required the s.e.c. to collect the information but the regulator just really never imposed those rules. and your third big money story, boeing, two long time board members are retiring susan schaub and arthur collins will not stand for reelection at

the company's annual shareholder meeting. boeing has not yet announced new director nominees but the "wall street journal" reports the change is part of an effort to bring fresh people in with new perspectives, following that crisis around the 737 max, and criticism on how it was handled. now, back to the big story of the day and this week, and that is the growing crisis in texas 2 million plus still remain in the dark, likely without heat as another winter storm moves across the state governor greg abbott yesterday signing an executive order directing natural gas providers to stop any shipments of natural gas outside the state. in other words, ordering them to keep all their gas inside texas to try to help power some of those power centers. the electricity reliability council of texas, ercot, a name you have heard a lot lately said it had restored about 1.6 million homes to electricity, but as we noted,

about 2 million customers still do not have power days in. what exactly happened here let's talk more about the situation, what went wrong, what we can fix, and maybe how do we stop this from happening again joining us joshua rhodes in austin, the fact that i'm seeing you indicated that you must have power, but if you're in austin, austin has been one of the hardest hit. i've seen pictures where the downtown is lit up and you've got areas outside that are completely in the dark before you give us your expert opinion on what happened, what is your situation with your friend and family? do they have heat? >> so we finally have power back we were one of the 4 million who originally lost power early monday morning, and we didn't get it back for a couple of days, and so but as of now, we have power, and i'm glad i still have power and i have a warm place to sit, although we're trying to keep it cool in here so we can share the rest of the power with the rest of the state, and get some of these folks back online. >> yeah, and that's what state

is urging. i mean, listen this is the world of electricity generation and grids, i'm no expert, but diving in the last couple of days has been mind blowing in its complexity the finger pointing is going everywhere in your mind, from where you sit, where was the real break down or was it literally the perfect storm of problems? >> you know, i've never seen all 254 counties of texas under a winter storm warning at the same time i mean, we do our best to plan for events but, i mean, this is beyond anything that i believe any reasonable person would have, you know, said would have happened at the same time. and so, i mean, it is somewhat of the perfect storm i mean, you have a bunch of homes in texas, you know, about 60% of homes in texas us electricity for heating. the other 40% use natural gas, and the state grid is built around our summer peaks, that's what we're kind of famous for, 4:00 p.m., august afternoons, 105 degrees outside, you're

trying to run every single air conditioner in the state, and that's what, you know, our system is set up for but the difference between then and now is there's competition for that natural gas in the summer it's all going to power plants, and this time, you know, a lot of it is going for heating, and there just was not enough to go around. we had freeze offs at wells and pipelines, and power plants couldn't get cooling winter, some of the wind turbines did freeze it was a feperfect storm of things we could not match supply and demand you have to reduce, you have to shut people off or the whole things go down, and that could take weeks to turn back on, and that would be terrible. >> as people freeze, it's become a political football, and peopl are fopointing fingers on the news with shepard smith, i showed the actual numbers, the decline in power the two days of the storm versus the five-day average was down about 25 to 30%

for all the major generation natural gas, wind, coal, and nuclear, only solar outperformed the bottom line is everything kind of failed, right, to your point, you buy a cheaper turbine that doesn't have carbon blades or de-icing, that we never thought the pipelines would get this cold. the coal froze in place and run able there are things we can learn but this was to your point maybe not a hundred year storm, but darn close. >> yeah, i mean, and you know, we had similar weather back in 2011 and we did a commission and we did studies and we looked at, you know, what do we need to do, and we looked at what best practices were for some of these entities you know, some of the gas lines, some of the cooling water intake lines, and we came up with a series of best practices but we made it voluntary, and it appears that, you know a lot of them didn't, you know, do those things, and so i mean, i hope

this time we make it compulsory, because at some point, we had over 4 million customers, you know, without power during the coldest that this state has ever been across it, and that's just unas unacceptable. >> and homes that are not insulated to handle this you try to keep the homes cool, not warm, and that's the problem, right, ten years ago r, hey spend a lot of money to upgrade for things that may not happen, and a lot of people ignored it, and hopefully this time things will get done, and ercot will be forced to share those pipes with some of the other grids. we will see. joshua rhodes, university of texas, i'm glad you have heat and power and doing your part to tile it down and share with others and best luck to you and your colleagues and friends, we're thinking about texas, and hope this gets through. joshua. >> thanks for having me. coming up, the cofounder of coffee brand black and bold, breaking down the boom and their business, we see the new steps they're taking to also try to

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up the heat on those at the center of the gamestop trading frenzy leslie picker is here to lay out what you can expect from today's congressional hearing. if you haven't already subs subscribe to our podcast, check us out on apple, spotify or other podcasting platforms the pod cast called shockingly "worldwide exchange," we'll be ba rhtft ts.ckig aerhi

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to grill some of the key players. leslie picker joining us with more on what we can expect. >> the official title for today's hearing is gamestop, two who wins and loses when short sellers, social media, and retailers collide. calling key players from all aspects of the january volatility that saw shares of gamestop climb to the stratosphere only to plummet shortly thereafter keith gill,roaring kitty and a ex exp expli explicit alias, he's presumably there as the voice of the little guy. reddit ceo steve huffman will tell congress that bots, foreign agents, nor bad actors played a quote significant role on the sub reddit group wall street bets that became the destination for really pumping up gamestop now, vlad tenev, the ceo of robinhood, the commission free brokerage of choice for younger

retail investors, plans to assess the necessity to place restrictions on buying shares of gamestop as a necessity. this took place in late january as the volatility boosted the collateral requirements with its clearinghouse over the two days it takes for trades to settle. robinhood didn't have the cash on hand at the time to meet those deposits expect to hear these words as well, brian, payment for order flow, especially from the likes of ken griffin of citadel securities which pays robinhood to execute trades, citadel was caught up in a variety of experience theories because griffin owns two separate companies, citadel securities, the market maker and citadel the hedge fund it was the latter that invested in melvin capital, a hedge fund that invested a short squeeze. gabe plotkin will say his short positions were not an effort to manipulate the price of a stock, brian. >> so this payment for order flow, okay, to your point, it's

545 in the morning, we're going to do this in layman's terms if something is free, free to trade on robinhood, and the company is worth billions, people think how in the world can he be worth billions when he seems to have no product the product is the trader. >> pfof is this just practice, not just limited to robinhood and citadel, there are lots of brokerages that do this. pretty much every has some payment for order flow system in place, and there are several market makers that also pay for this from citadel's standpoint, citadel will pay robinhood for the sake, for example, this morning to execute its trades. why that's helpful for citadel is they operate in a spread business so they are able to make money by executing those trades and enjoying the benefit of scale retail orders are seen as, you know, more lucrative for a lot of these firms, not because they're interested in what

exactly you're trading but because they're a different type to have trade. they're less of a similar style, momentum, and all of that than institutional investors. >> and some people get -- if i knew leslie picker was walking into kroger to pick up a bunch of avocados and i knew that ahead of time, maybe that's the suspicion, we'll hopefully get to the bottom of how this pfof works, thanks very much. leslie picker, thank you very much >> i literally have no idea what i just said. back to the broader markets as stocks look for fresh, not unfresh momentum to keep their push into record territory going. will inflation ultimately be the specter that slows us down lindsay bell, chief investment strategist at ally invest and a cnbc contributor, joining us now, lindsay, i'm old enough to remember six months ago when the

ten-year was fielding $0.50. it's now at 1.28%, massively low historically, but a huge move in six months is this the thing that we need to watch the most as all of our eyes seem to be somewhere else >> yeah, i mean, we definitely need to keep an eye on the treasury yield market for sure in the move that we have seen recently has been swift, and that's why investors have gotten a little bit nervous it also could be an indicator of inflation for certain. that's one reason that people get a little bit nervous, but i would still just remind investors that this is still well below the 2% range, and if you look at the ten-year treasury yield over a longer period of time, you will see that it's still very low by historical standards so that's something to keep in mind i'm not trying to discount the velocity of the move that we have recently seen, but when i look at the market reaction to big moves, on a monthly basis in

the month of february, we have seen the ten-year yield move about 20 basis points so far, i went back and looked when the ten-year moves about 50 basis points in a month, you do see a slight decline in that same month in the s&p 500 but on a 12-month basis, you'll see the s&p 500 up double digits or up 8%, excuse me, so i think it's something just to keep in mind for investors. >> i feel like we just kind of reset back to where we should have been, lindsay, right? i mean, it's easy to look at a one-year chart of anything, and it's going to look really weird because we had that march terror, right, everybody here in the northeast, we got destroyed, covid running rampant, no one knew what to expect, everything collapsed and sold off then we started to learn to be a little more thoughtful we're back to where we should be or where we were if we get $1.9 trillion relief spending bill, is that just going to goose the economy or

goose the stock market even more >> yeah, i'm kind of in the camp with you, brian, i think we're just kind of getting back to where we should be the stimulus, i think, is a key -- it's been a key, and i have been saying this for several months now, six months, eight months plus. stimulus has been a key driver of the market for a very long time, and you continue to see the market react to headlines around the stimulus. the latest package is supposed to weigh in at about 1.9 trillion i think market participants are expecting it to be a little bit less than that, but still, in the trillions of dollars so that's pretty substantial all in when you take together the stimulus that we saw last year and into this year that's going to equate to about 25% of gdp, so that adds to a deficit that has been widening and that certainly can be a little bit nerve racking for

investors. >> yeah, but that's a lot of money, especially as we're already starting to see hotels, some of them starting to fill up flights, people starting to come out, and that have the country seems to be living sort of a normal life, albeit with masks on lindsay belle, ally invest, an interesting look at the market, have a great day take care, thank you. the coffee and tea brand black and bold looking to continue with its mission of not only making great coffee but making a social impact on kids as well. company is launching its new be bold campaign, aiming to amplify black voices while inspiring th next generation of black entrepreneurs, after a tremendous year for the brand. rod johnson, cofounder, let's be clear, i don't know where you are. here on the east, it's 5:50. we are the kings of coffee on this show. maybe there's a partnership ahead for both of us. >> cheers. >> there you go. i'm looking at your numbers.

5,300% growth. is that a typo >> no, it's something that we're still digesting, first and foremost, good morning, but last year was very remarkable for us. i think it really represents the shift in consumer behavior, and we really were the recipients of that change. >> and you also had to change, i assume, like every other retailer how you delivered everybody just locked down, ordering online, how much of a shock was it for your supply chains, and just your inability to say, okay, stores are less important. we need u.p.s. >> yeah, you know, fortunately for us, we started as a digitally native brand, while many coffee shops and other businesses were trying to figure out online, we had already been set up i wish that we could say that we had the foresight to predict what would happen in 2020, but

never the less the fact that our business was set up online, and we had those strong retail partnerships bode well for a solid 2020 and a lot of momentum that we'll look to continue in 2021 >> and some of the best companies throughout history, rod, as you probably know have been started during the hardest times, the deepest recessions. everybody says don't start a company now, and they do it, and all of a sudden they come out and learn the hard lessons early on i mean, listen, the coffee market is a big market you got a lot of competition out there, big companies, how do you establish a foothold in that >> yeah, the hugest differentiator about our brand besides having a great product is the social impact mission that's embedded at the core of what we do as i mentioned, that represents the change in consumer behavior because customers are looking to invest more in companies that stand for more than just a w

widget we support profits to helping youth, resonates with our consumers and those conscious about their decisions. >> tell us more about your be bold campaign. >> really excited about that, so be bold campaign, it launches today. it spotlights the purpose driven brand that we are, and like minded individuals as we ask the question, what does being bold look like in 2021, so we're speaking with trail blazers, people who are shaking up their respective industries, whether it be art, fashion, music, and really convening over cups of coffee to discuss some tips and tricks on ways we can embark on a solid year in upcoming year. >> very cool stuff seeing some of the videos there. so rod, what's the next step for your company where do you go from here? 5,300% growth, what have you done for us lately >> yeah, well, we're going to continue to, you know, double down on our business model and that's partnering with

retailers, fortunately for us, target has been an amazing supporter. we expanded into over 800 stores this past month, and we'll bring on a few more retail partners along the way. the great part about it is it allows the every day customer to participate in the social impact mission by checking something off their grocery lists. that's up next for us is providing a quality product as well as a means to support a very vulnerable demographic. >> yeah, and you know, we talk about inflation, i watch the price of coffee because i'm boring like that it's gone up, how are you dealing with -- inflation is out there, your raw material costs are going up. >> the great part about it is we're in a position to, you know, buy quantities that allows us to get ahead of that. our micro importers and the relationships we have directly with farmers, you know, we've established them already, and you know, we have been able to, you know, get ahead of those increased prices that, you know,

that we anticipate coming down the pipeline >> good stuff, rod johnson, black and bold coffee, and specialty beverages and like we said, rod, this is the capital if you're on tv at 5:50 in the morn, you know your coffee best to you and your team. congrats on your success talk to you soon take care. >> cheers. >> cheers. exactly. that's right that does it for us here on "worldwide exchange. dow futures off 71, losing a little bit of steam. "squawk" and the gang will pick tovage next we'll see you tomorrow on "worldwide exchange. fill that cup up ready to shine from the inside out? try nature's bounty hair, skin and nails gummies. the number one brand to support beautiful hair, glowing skin, and healthy nails. and try advanced, now with two times more biotin.

good morning, new data on vaccine efficacy against the u.k. and the south africa strains of covid as the cdc says the pandemic shaved a year off life spans in the u.s.

details straight ahead millions in texas still in the dark power remains off with little or no heat. now, the water supply's in jeopardy frozen pipes are bursting faster than they can be repaired. and the reddit rebellion arriving in washington, alongside the hedge funds they were trying to bring down. regulators want to know exactly what went on it's thursday, february 18th, 2021, and "squawk box" begins right now. ♪ good morning, everybody. welcome to "squawk box" here on cnbc i'm becky quick along with joe kernen, and andrew ross sorkin and let's take a look at the u.s. equity futures at this hour yesterday, the dow set another record it was up largely because of gains that you saw witve