dealdash.com, the fair and honest bidding site. an ipad was sold for less than $24; a playstation for less than $16; and a 4k television for less than $2. go to dealdash.com right now and see how much you can save. remember, shipping is always free. it is 5:00 a.m. at cnbc, and here is your top five at 5:00. go big, janet. treasury secretary janet yellen making a push for more stimulus saying there's a bigger risk in not doing enough the biden administration taking a key step toward restarting nuclear talks with iran. we will talk about the implications of that power slowly returning to texas. but the damage of this week's deep freeze could have a long-term impact on the nation's energy industry. bitcoin closing in on a market value of $1 trillion.

and another soaring number tag watch. that is lumber wood prices doing something they have never done before we'll tell you about it on this friday, february 19th as "worldwide exchange" begins right now. good friday 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 friday here's how your money in the global markets are setting up their day. dow futures, they are slightly higher right now not going to make too much of it again at this hour thin trading, you know, but we are up 50 points following yesterday's decline. now, for the week, the dow is hanging on to get this, a 0.1% gain for the week. 0.1. pretty much flat lined there most major averages are a little bit lower this week, so today

will really determine whether or not it will be another higher week for the dow, and other indexes. it certainly has been a higher week for many fossil fuels natural gas up nearly 6% since monday, and that's just of course the nimex traded price. oil hovering around $60 a barrel, a little bit below tha right now at 59.38 and by the way, watch your local gasoline prices. analysts say the refineries shut by this week's freeze in the south will take some time to get back up and running at full speed. we'll get more on all of this with helima croft in a few minutes. once again, the hottest asset class, what else, it's the cryptos. bitcoin hitting an all time record above 52,000 earlier this week, and look at it right now 52,700 here's the thing, when we talk about cryptos, we could put whatever we want in the teleprompter and it's going to be different when he show it that's how fast they move. we're up 1 1/2% on bitcoin right

now, closing in on 53,000. by the way, ethereum, it is up 39% just in february a little lower right now, but ether that be even hotter than bitcoin. all right. now to a few of your other top stories on this friday treasury secretary janet yellen making a push for a big stimulus package. here's what she said on cnbc >> we think it's very important to have a big package that addresses the pain this has caused, 15 million americans behind on their rent 24 million adults and 12 million children who don't have enough to eat small businesses failing you know, i think the price of doing too little is much higher than the price of doing something big. we think that the benefits will far outweigh the costs in the longer run. >> the other big story out of

washington, yesterday's house financial services committee hearing on the trading frenzy surrounding gamestop and other stocks with heavy short interest robinhood ceo vlad tenev spoke about his firm's role, while citadel ceo ken griffin defended a controversial wall street practice known as payment for order flow >> consider that gamification. we know that investing is serious, and we're investing in all of the educational tools and customer support to help people on their investing journey >> the idea that i used social media to promote gamestop stock to unwitting investors and influence the market is preposterous. >> we simply play by the rules of the road. payment for order flow has been approved by the s.e.c. it is a customary practice within the industry. >> the gamestop situation is proof that the retail investors are revolutionizing the market. >> they exploited an opportunity, you know, around

short interest and the way that was approached, and i think, you know, us and melvin will adapt, and i think the whole industry will have to adapt. >> now, we will have much more on the hearing later on this hour, and at 8:40 a.m. eastern, do not miss a cnbc exclusive with citadel ceo ken griffin. now to some of the macro stories out there and your markets, there really seems to be one big question surrounding the red hot u.s. stock market, has the reopen recovery already been fully priced into equities or over priced joining us is medley global advisers managing director of global strategy, very simple question, we're all excited about the spring and summer, has the market gotten ahead of itself >> good morning, brian, actually, i don't think that the market has because if you look at that reopening trade that we have been talking about in the past year, there's still a part

of the economy that's shut off so for example, i think you put it out recently on social media, go to an in-person live event. companies that are listed that are about life events, and you know, we know that we can't do that right now, but the reopening is, i think, going to happen fully in the sense that as the vaccination completely rolls out, businesses will really see a revival, i think that part has not been priced in of course the access is quite a bit and it's a lot about technology and stay at home. maybe there's some leveling off now. you can see it in the major indices, as interest rates are going to rise, that's going to put a damper on the index, but in the reopening rgs , there ar lot of opportunities left. >> we got good news on vaccine sp

supplies maybe we're going to see a huge surge in vaccinations coming, fingers crossed good news for everybody here and around the world, but are you looking at cruise lines are you looking at a stadium, madison square garden, wrestling, the stuff where you're literally jammed on top of each other, is that what you're talking about as maybe the last to come back? >> yeah, exactly that's the last that has to come back still, and i look at those particular stocks and i'm not -- just as an example, you know, they are down still about 20, 25% from a year ago, whereas a lot of other say major airlines, hotels, are up more anticipating this reopening, so i think that part of the economy that was shut off, which is still difficult to do at this moment, could have a revival because as you said, the vaccine is really impacting already the economy, and it's going to be seeing a massive rollout take the example of the u.k.

overnight, the u.k. has made a huge advancement in the rollout of the vaccine, so you can see there that side of the economy quickly same as in israel, so i think in the united states, the same thing, anything that we can do we'll probably have a lot of opportunities. we'll have up side from here >> and what about the yield curve and more particularly ten-year treasury yields there's been a lot of talk about how yields might be predicting inflation or something that could be to your job title, a global macro risk. do rapidly rising, least for the bund market anyway, ben, do rapidly rising yields concern you about equities >> indeed, if they rapidly rise, and i think that's the station to make. at the moment we're seeing 1.3 on the ten-year. that is actually the low that we have in 2019, 16 and 12, we had a crisis then. there is a resistance level. i think if you breakthrough that

with a major boost to say we're going from 1.3 to 2% in short order, then probably the market will not trade well. but, at the same time, could have steepened as inflation expectations have picked up. nominal yields should rise from the ten-year, should move higher from here, the economy is at 4% or higher growth, probably strongly even in the second quarter. it's almost as orderly, i think the stock market will not react too negatively to it, and the real interest rate has not moved from negative 1% to neg negative .85% is a sign that the bund market has accepted that the economy will normalize, will grow faster. that is so positive for the equity markets, then it could be friction >> ben lemons, a pleasure to have you back on have a good weekend. >> thank you.

we have big breaking news from uber out of london. julianna tatelbaum joining us now with the details of a u.k. supreme court decision what do you have >> brian, good morning huge news for uber, just crossing the wires moments ago, uber has lost its u.k. supreme court case on workers rights this is a huge blow to uber and this means that workers at the company are now entitled to various rights currently uber drivers in the u.k. are treated as self-employed, they are afforded minimal protections. to take you back a little bit to understand how we got to today, back in 2016, two uber drivers filed a case against the ride hailing company which uber had then appealed several times in britain's lower courts today, the supreme court finally weighed in, which was uber's final resort this is a case that has been ongoing for several years now.

the case does echo as uber's fight with california regulators over the employment rights of drivers there. this loss for uber could jeopardize its business model and could have wider ramifications for the gig economy. today's ruling is thought to have huge consequences for the u.k.'s gig economy, just to put numbers out there for you, it's estimated to have a work force of 5.5 million people, so huge implications here. a lot of businesses could be affected by the precedent that this set, so a major blow to uber and the supreme court ruled unanimously to dismiss uber's appeal it gives you a sense of how much conviction there is in the u.k. that granting out rights to uber's workers is the right thing to do. brian. >> and that stock is down about 3 1/2% right now we will watch it all morning long a big ruling for uber and not the kind you want. thank you very much.

outside of uber, why don't we get the latest on washington's agenda,al be centered in kalamazoo. tracie potts, are you in kalamazoo, tracie? >> no, i'm in the home studio, talking about kalamazoo, and the president wasn't able to get out yesterday either he was stuck here because of the weather. he's hoping to make up that trip today, but before he goes, he's planning to tell world leaders about a big multibillion dollar investment that the u.s. wants to make in poor countries around the world that have not seen one dose of this coronavirus vaccine. >> this is where drug maker pfizer produces coronavirus vaccine. president biden visits the michigan plant today after announcing at this morning's g7 summit that the u.s. is releasing $4 billion already approved by congress to distribute vaccine to poor

countries. 130 countries haven't received any as new versions of the virus continue to spread >> how close are you to finding a new vaccine to handle the south african variant? >> that likely will take several months. >> reporter: new variants of covid-19 have appeared in 1,300 people in 42 states. pfizer admits its vaccine may be less potent against the south african strain. >> we are preparing for the possibility there might need to be a change in the vaccine later. >> also today. >> we're going to rejoin the paris climate accord. >> reporter: the u.s. officially rejoins the worldwide climate agreement that former president trump pulled out of on his first day in office. >> i have been on the phone for the last few days talking to our allies in europe, elsewhere, around the world, and they are welcoming us back. >> john kerry, biden's special envoy for climate hosts a global engagement summit today, focused on sustainability, including

limits on global emissions now, you might remember the president signed that climate order on inauguration day, hours after he left the capitol, but it wasn't effective until today. >> tracie potts, you know, my goal there was actually just to say kalamazoo as many times as possible, and i think we got it. we were trying for five, and if we didn't, kalamazoo. >> we did it >> have a good weekend, tracie potts, thank you very much it's friday, folks. when we come back, a lot of big stories impacting the energy industry right now from the u.s., rebeginning iran nuclear talks, to the power situation in texas, and there's no one better to talk than all of this than our helima croft dow futures up 75.

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the good news is that the lights are coming back on for millions of residents in texas who lost power, but utility officials say that limited rolling blackouts are still possible if electricity demand rises. all of this as natural gas production across texas, dropped

about 30%, which is making it hard for power companies to find the gas they need to run their power plants at least at prices perhaps they or their consumers can afford and that is not all that is going on in energy there's also the big looming issue of what to do about iran, and the nuclear talks. let's tie this all together like nobody else can, except for helima croft, a cnbc contributor. how did you like that intro. it is true, by the way >> well, it's true, i'm a contributor, yes >> yes, no, the other, come on, helima, way too modest you put out great reports on the big picture and what's going on in texas let's start there. 40% of u.s. oil production, something like that, got knocked offline, net gas is down the question is this, will what happened in texas while heartbreaking and terrible on so many levels rilght now for so many families, will that have any longer term impact on oil or oil policy

>> i mean, certainly push oil prices to 13-month highs, it reignited debates about the u.s., you know, power sector we are having, you know, even when we have conditions ease in texas, i mean, this issue of extreme weather as we saw with the california wildfires is not going away, opening this fierce debate over, you know, what is your ideal energy mix, as you head into the transition as we saw a big debate over the role of renewables, a big debate over what was a culprit in terms of wind or the gas, was it all of the above i don't think this is going to go away in terms of these debates about the roll of renewables in the u.s. energy mix. >> and the sad part is while people were trying to figure out where to get heat and often water, it became political it became this political football people are arguing back and forth about renewables and fossil fuels, can we get just

the heat on, and then we can fight about whose fault it was great article in the texas tribune i tweeted out that we were, according to ercot, we were minutes away from a month long blackout on the grid. we talk about stimulus we talk about stimulus do you think there's an opportunity here for investors, rbc, right, you want to make money, that's kind of the point, to invest in the energy and power grid will that be a great place to invest the next five or ten years? >> i think this is going to be, you look at the biden energy plan it's a huge focus on, you know, pushing investment into renewables, into wind, into solar. this is actually somewhere we thought there was bipartisan support. look where these wind farms are. i think it's going to be very interesting, as we go into congressional action on the biden energy plan, you know, does this impact in any way the effort to provide tax breaks to wind and solar, something that

we thought was very very bipartisan what does it mean about natural gas. again, under the obama administration, there was a lot of discussion about natural gas being your key transition fuel to reach this paris climate accord target. dealing with placement i think it's going to be interesting to see how this impacts those debates as we think about the legislative agenda for this year >> why isn't anybody talking about nuclear, and i'm not talking about the iran talks we'll get to that in a second. i mean, nobody talks about nuclear anymore. >> i think policy makers talk about nuclear. i think it's not something that is necessarily on tv shows all the time, but this, again, is where i think there is bipartisan support we're reaching these ambitious climate goals. i think there's both on the republican and democratic side for advanced nuclear technology. there are concerns still about, you know, extaccidents, i think it's a scenario brought by

bipartisan support in order to reach the ambitious net zero goals. >> president biden has said he will likely restart talks over the nuclear deal with iran what would be the best case outcome for the united states and iran in any such talks and/or some kind of a deal and possibly bringing iran back into the folds, which by the way, could increase their oil experts, perhaps, they don't have to do it certificate ip ti - >> what's so interesting is we have headlines out this morning saying the u.s. is willing to sit down with the p 5 plus one negotiators to restore the 2015 deal here's the issue, there still is a big gulf between what the iranians want and what the u.s. wants. the u.s. says in order for there to be significant sanctions relief, iran has to roll back

advances they have made in their nuclear restart. but the issue of course is, you know, will iran actually halt those activities, and one key thing to watch for is on february 23rd, the iranians have said they are going to stop snap inspections of their facilities if they do not get sanctions relief i think we're come to go a head in these negotiations and i'm not sure it's going to be smooth as we initially thought and the return of the barrels could be delayed. >> hard to believe but february 23rd, only four days away, to your point, helima, this may be coming to a head so much going on in texas, locally, and global macro as well helima croft tying it together like nobody else can have a great day, a great weekend, and we look forward to talking to you again soon. thank you. >> thank you on deck, your morning rbi is about how money may actually grow on trees and why it's bad news if you want to build a deck or do a home renovation project this summer. and of course this month is

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welcome back, i'm phillip mena in new york as many texans struggle to keep warm, one of their senators is taking a lot of heat over his travel plans ted cruz was caught on camera boarding a plane to cancun, mexico making the optics worse, a source familiar with cruz's travel arrangements tells nbc news that the senator was originally scheduled to return on saturday but rebooked mhis flight after the controversy erupted. a trip to paradise landed one couple in the slammer. two tourists are accused of allegedly offering the employee $3,000 to pass through without having to quarantine it didn't work the employee notified authorities and both were arrested on suspicion of

bribery. they were released and sent back home to louisiana. and nasa's perseverance mars rover landed safely on the red planet late yesterday. on board a 4 pound mini helicopter and a micro foam, so we can hear what mars sounds like the rover is headed to a crater, a massive lake billions of years ago. perseverance will drill into rock and soil, searching for evidence of ancient microbial life the samples will likely return yes.arth in ten ar keep it here, more "worldwide exchange" after the break.

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welcome back let's get more on the virtual and often a little bit odd, gamestop congressional hearing yesterday, the heads of robinhood, reddit, citadel and the reddit user name roaring kitty. some of the questions were a little bit out there did we learn anything at all we're joined by jimmy, american enterprise economic policy analyst, cnbc contributor, and caleb silver, editor in chief at in investopedia caleb, you and i worked in tv together a long time ago, and as a tv guy, were you watching this and thinking, first, we got to get back in person, right, because they would ask a question and i felt like they were, the redditers or ken griffin were like looking up at

something being written for them what did you make of the actual proceeding itself? >> actually, brian, i thought that was some of the best business news tv i have seen in 25 years, you and i have been covering this for a long time, the martha stewart hearings, the madoff hearings. this was so entertaining for so many reasons, when you have arr roaring kitty, what we learned is the regulators don't understand how markets work that well there was so much explaining that needed to happen, and so many people had the wrong perception of what was actually happening between robinhood, customers, market makers and short sellers that it needed a reeducation for the entire committee to understand how markets work if they want to regulate them. we're not going to see much but calls for investigation, but it was very entertaining. >> okay. he has a slightly different view, jimmy number one, so what was your take.

i agree that it was entertaining in a bizarre way first off, when did pretty much everybody but ken griffin who's born in the '80s now, i'm starting to feel really old. is there a 40 under 40 for congressional hearings, i have no idea, but i felt in some ways that yesterday was kind of more about social media than the stock market >> right in a way it sort of reminded me of a lot of these tech hearings where you have congress folks very upset about, you know, different opinions about what's wrong with tech, they moderate too little, they moderate too much and at the end of the day, no one quite wants to do i mean, probably my biggest take away from that entire hearing is that a lot of people in congress should probably be in index funds, they clearly have very little understanding of individual trading, risk those look like s&p 500 indexers to me. >> yeah, i mean, caleb, to that point, and listen, this is a -- i'm not going to knock congress

for once, i guess, because this is a rather obscure corner of the market what we're talking about here involves people named, you know, dfv and roaring kitty, same guy, by the way, and sort of these odd things,but they're talking about anonymity, you know, on message boards and there was a lot of questions that kind of veered in that direction ultimately, whether it's markets or social media or i'll just call it media, because that's what it is now, do you think any new regulation gets done >> what's clear is that we're in the wild west. there's so much activity that's going on on these online forups a -- forums, and we have seen how much force day traders can bring to the market and affect it. they used to make noises around the edges. now they can move markets, and gather the attention of institutional investors. what this didn't do is bring trust back to the markets. we were on talking about a survey that shows our readers who are active investors trust

the stock market less than they did six months ago further more, they also don't want their brokers telling them when they can and can't trade. they trust it less they don't want that regulation, and they don't want the guardrails telling them when they can't get in and out of a trade. that's going to be a problem going forward. >> yeah, you know, jimmy, i felt like also one of the questions -- and i don't want to get too wonky, especially at this hour of the morning, the lot of our audience may not know, if we have an analyst on, and we're going to have one on after the break, we have to get reams of compliance, do you own this, does your aunt own this stock. they have pages and exams, you know, where you can go on a message board, and say buy this, here's my take nothing new has been going on for a long time. do you think there are fiduciary responsibilities to some of the more heavily followed people on the internet >> well, i'm not going to have average people go on the internet having to start list

what stocks they own that seems like an amazing invasion of their privacy, but i think, listen, people are not idiots the wall street bets people knew they were taking a big gamble and they were taking it for kind of a strange purpose, and they pretty much got what they paid for. they sent these stocks on a wild ride they caused a big fuss in the markets. people were aware of that, and i think you're aware if someone's just on a message board talking about a stock, they may own that stock. listen, i understand congress gets very upset at things like this people are not idiots, we have human agency that's a think tank phrase they knew what they were getting into congress may not have understood people did just because there's a problem, and because some people lost none doesn't mean we need regulations, and i don't think anybody watching that hearing had a lot of confidence that those folks were going to put in good regulations that would help people without also making it harder to be involved in the

market >> fair points, markets are going to market, and this has been going on for a long time, and maybe we should not be surprised. jimmy pethokoukis, caleb silver, have a great weekend, gentlemen. back by popular demand and speaking of markets and insiders, your weekly insider buying segment is back breaking down the five companies seeing the most buying by their corporate insiders during this week all the data coming courtesy of insider score.com, on a macro level most of the stocks have been outperforming the broader market the last couple of months listen up. are you ready, counting you down 5 to 1 company 5, cvs health, a board member, the ceo of dickinson picking up 216,000 worth of cvs. fourth most insider buying, reinsurance. board member buying 244,000. there's that beaten up stock, down 35% in a year

stock number 3, cosmetics company, coty, multiple buyers coming in last week, snapping up 940,000 worth of that. that stock, by the way, the one down 37% in the year, stock number two fiserv, chairman, dennis o'leary buying $1 million worth of fisv, and take note, insider score says this is only o'leary's second buy since two weeks before the market bottomed after the financial crisis in 2009 second buy in 12 years, and some darn good timing back then but the company with the most insider buying this week is kkr, a director buying 1.25 million of the private equity firm, and like the one before him, he's made a few well timed buys in the past, so watch that name there you go, the five most insider bias cvs, everest, coty, fiserv and

kki. we're going to try to do this every week. coming up, there are conflicting headlines on the vaccines and some of the new viru virus strains. what is the real story do they work a top analyst will answer that and more on the vacce llt, ne xtinroou

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africa strain as you know it, could reduce the protective antibodies brought on by the pfizer biontech vaccine. that study led to a lot of scary headlines some of which suggesting the vaccine does not work against that strain, but is that really the case let's get some clarity on this, and the so called variants and vaccines and bring in jeffrey, senior biotech analyst, i appreciate it, read your report with great interest. appreciate you coming on i'm no doctor or scientist, reading through your report, it seemed to me, with all due respect to the media, some of the headlines may have been a bit off. tell us what you think the actual findings really were? >> yeah, look, this is very complicated, brian the fact is that there was about a 60% reduction in the immunizing or protective activity of the people who have been immunized with the biontech

vaccine. it's about a 2/3 reduction that doesn't mean there's no immunity it's possible up to a third of people don't have good production but 2/3 do have good protection, and this is very consistent with what we have seen from some of the other vaccine companies who said, look, you don't get the 95% protection, but you get, for example, against the original virus, but you still probably are going to get something in the range of 50% which is still, you know, much better than nothing. so i don't think that we should expect that there's 0 protection, but equally, there's going to be definitely some diminution of what we would get. >> and again, please, if i'm wrong about anything, geoffrey, because this is very complicated stuff, and i'm trying to learn it for the last few months and as i understand it, first off, i think the flu vaccine is 59% effective overall.

so people expect vaccines to be 100% effective that's not the case. maybe with the exception of, you know, smallpox, but otherwise, they're not, correct, you're not going to get more than 60 to 80% pretty much on most vaccines anyway, and i guess the study, which is very small, did not measure any of that natural t cell response that may actually make it a little better. no >> that's absolutely correct look, there's a very wide range of protection conferred by vaccines as you pointed out, flu vaccines, depending upon the year can be something between 60 and 70% protective other vaccines that we have, measles vaccine might be as high as 90, 95% effective so as you will recall, the fda sort of put a line in the sand and said 60% is what we need to see to approve a vaccine, and i think that that's a pretty widely accepted standard now, as you also pointed out, there are a number of ways that the body protects us against

future exposure to a virus or bacteria or anything it's not just down to antibodies we have a whole other side of the immune system called the cell immunity, which is t cells, and they respond very effectively, but they respond more slowly. so one of the things that could easily play out is that we retain cell mediated immunity, specifically from the t cells but that that takes longer we get protection against severe disease. but wie don't get protection against infection. so as you pointed out, this experiment did not look at any aspect of t cells. it didn't look at functional immunity all it looked at was the ant antibodies, and whether you could dilute the plasma and replicate the virus in a cell culture system it's a very isolated experiment, and as i said, practically a 2/3 reduction but it ignores the way

the whole human body responds to a virus or bacteria. >> yeah, and we need to take it as such. quickly, there was an article last night that one shot of pfizer may be up to 95% effective. that came out of a study in israel bottom line is this, we should be bullish on that pfizer biontech vaccine against a number of variants or at least partially so >> well, the immediate answer is that we should be bullish on any vaccine because at this stage of the pandemic, particularly in this country, and indeed, in most other developed countries, any vaccine is better than no vaccine, that's the first thing, and in terms of the mrna, the pfizer biontech specifically it's very effective against most of the circulating variants and the south african variant and the brazilian variant. i wouldn't be recommending one

dose of vaccine, but the last thing is they can change these vaccines very very quickly it's simply a matter of switching out a few nucleic acids and then remaking the vaccine, so we're predicting that by mid summer, we could have a second gen vaccine that contains these variants if it's necessary, so. >> wow >> i think we should really panic here. >> wow and a reason to be optimistic and hopeful as cases come down, whether tied to vaccinations or not. cases and hospitalizations are on the way down, worldwide, geoffrey porges, appreciate you coming on. have a great day terrific. >> my pleasure bye, brian. on deck, yes, pun intended, we're talking lumber prices and why you may want to put off that new deck you have been yeyeing o your house that's next.

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time for your morning rbi, and "wood" you believe lumber prices are on fire, i'm sorry, okay a thousand bucks per 1,000 board foot on thursday something we have not talked about ever not only is this a new record but doubled a few months ago the cme contract up 63% in 90 days what's more amazing about this price run is that it kind of shouldn't be happening canadian wood tariffs have come down, so there's more imported competition. and the weather in the south in particular has made logging easier either way, lumber, it's been solid. the only commodity to come close in the price gain is actually steel, up nearly as much this could all be good news for investors in lumber, assuming there are those, but bad news for one industry, home building. they use more wood than anybody. this is going to drive up costs big time, and here's what's random but interesting with a 63% return in three months, lumber, if it was a

stock would be the 7th best performing stock in the sf&p 500 over the past three months money may not grow on trees, but maybe money is trees, at least right now. random but interesting all right. consumer staples have been a big focus for investors over the last year, but over that time frame, they have been vastly under performing the overmarket, dominic chu, the man i'm going to call up after this is over to talk about opening a tree farm is here now, what's driving the action and the consumer staple stocks that may be key to the successor's success. >> if a tree falls in the stock market but an investor is not there to hear it, does it really fall consumer staples like you pointed out, one of the under performing sectors, the markets overall versus the s&p 500, the consumer staples in the last year up a very modest 2%, meanwhile, the joefoverall marki up 15 to 16% in the same time

frame. if you take a look at outperformers and under performers, take a look at names that have been doing well during this particular span of time one is leading the way higher. if you take a look at those stocks, it's kraft heinz, es es day -- meanwhile, these three names are the ones that have been really kind of dragging things down, you take a look at shares of lam westin, other ones out here like mollson coares an tyson foods, your real laggards there but if you want to keep an eye on two stocks in the sector, because of the market cap waiting nature of the indices, it's got to be walmart and procter & gamble walmart is a consumer staple stock because of the massive grocery operations it has and what kinds of goods it sells take a look at walmart and

procter & gambling over the last year, walmart a real outperformer, up 18% procter & gamble has come off the pandemic highs up 3% those two stocks make up a large chunk, brian of the consumer staples sector, the two stocks that are the most important to keep an eye on, brian, back over to you. >> good stuff, on the consumer staples and good stuff, by the way, you know, on the pun there, dom, or phrase, i love it, you know, that, dom chu, miss you buddy. see you soon i hope. experian partner and managing director, sa sandy bregert, i won't ask you to make a lumber pun are your clients starting to get nervous, are you hearing from people is now the time to sell. i made a lot of money since the market bottomed last march, what do i do. what are the main questions you are getting? >> clients are asking about the froth in the market. we're working primarily with

corporate executives, family business owners and entrepreneurs, so people who are participating in the economy and their careers. and they see froth they're concerned. they're wondering should we be cashing out on winners on the other hand, they're also looking at the cheap price of debt and wondering if this is a good time to actually be leveraging up the portfolios and so as we look atout at the markets, the price we pay for investments matters a lot on the overall return, so we take a valuation driven approach and we see areas of the stock market in particular with lots of great opportunity, particularly in the u.s. small cap and international space and we also see areas that we're really concerned about, particularly the u.s. large cap stocks, so we're allocating -- >> let me jump in for a second because i want to ask you about something you just said. if -- so clients are saying should i borrow money to buy

equities, i think that's what you said referring to the cost of debt, is that a -- >> that's right. >> i have been doing this 25 years, that kind of comment does make me a little nervous should we be borrowing money to buy equities >> we think that's a great opportunity at some times, especially when the cost of debt is so low like it is today you know, it's really easy to borrow against the equity of your home or the value of your stock portfolio, but as we look at the market, again, brian, because we see areas of opportunity, but also areas of concern, we don't think that this is a great time to be leveraging off the portfolio, but we are keeping that lever available for when the time is right. just not right now it's a good question to be asking arbitrage is always a great thing to take advantage of when conditions are correct for that. >> yeah, and are you still macro optimistic on the u.s. equity markets, i mean, such a monster return off the bottom, and valuations, i'm not going to say

are quote high, that's not for me to say, but they certainly aren't low >> i'll say it we think parts of the market are really high, especially u.s. large cap, and i think what dom was saying about consumer staples is really important, and this environment, we think it's important to look under the hood and make sure that you're being very intentional about investments that you're placing in the portfolio, a broad market approach, like a 60/40, set it and forget it approach, we don't think is going to do well in the years ahead. we think you need to be really looking for the areas of the market where prices are low and return expectations are high, and again, for us that's in the u.s. small cap area, particularly value stocks and overseas, especially in emerging markets. in those two areas have been doing really great since the fourth quarter of last year, and continue to do well into 2021 which is great news for us and the way we're deploying portfolios. >> great news for your clients no doubt as well sandi braggar of experian.

great to have you on have a terrific day and weekend. >> that does it for us as well if you miss the show, record it whatever, check out our podcast on the podcasting platforms, apple, spotify, it's called, you guessed it, "worldwide exchange." i'll be on "squawk" talk texas e ngwe few minutes thga will pick up coverage have a great weekend, we will see you right here on monday take care.

pointing to gains at the open, and bitcoin, hitting new highs overnight. we have a run down of the biggest movers

power is slowly being restored in texas, but now, more than 14 million people lack access to clean drinking water we'll have an update straight ahead ahead. and treasury secretary janet yellen making a push for stimulus saying there's a bigger risk in not doing enough friday, february 19th, 2021, and "squawk box" begins right now. ♪ good morning, everybody. welcome to "squawk box" here on cnbc i'm becky quick along with joe kernan and andrew ross sorkin. we're going to take a look at the u.s. equity futures. last trading day of the week, as you know things are up across the board dow futures indicated up 73 points, this comes after a down day of markets across the board. yesterday the dow was down fro