good morning it is 8:00 at instagram headquarters 11:00 a.m. on wall street and "squawk alley" is live ♪ ♪ ♪

♪ happy monday welcome to "squawk alley." i'm jon fortt with carl quintanilla and julia boorstin ahead this hour sasha cohen rips social media, speaking to the suits and karna joins us we'll begin with opportunity stocks surging as investors search for fixer uppers damaged in the bond driven storm julia? >> that's right, jon mike joins us on the underlying question can growth stocks start to work again? >> the fact we're asking that question when the joverall s&p 500 remains at its high. last summer it was assumed the mega cap growth stocks had to work we've seen this massive rotation into cyclicals if you look at a one-year chart of the nasdaq 100 exchange

traded fun against the high beta, a proxy for cyclical stocks, the first six months, march through september 1 of last year all growth stocks. since then growth stocks have flattened out and it's all been cyclicals. it seems maybe we're get to go a point as the yields have stopped flying maybe it will be a mixed pick picture, all cyclicals or growth stocks one upshot, though, is quality stocks such as mega cap growth have become less expensive so they were very overvalued. things like facebook and google and microsoft have lost like several p/e points the last few months by their stocks doing not much of anything that's one thing to keep in mind another one is dividend growth strategies this is like the dividend aristocrats might come into more focus as people get more nervous about their bond holdings and look for income that can grow along with inflation in the economy as opposed to getting

static i think all those things are in the mix right now as we try to figure out if this is a new regime in terms of where yields have gone and of course what the reopening and how much it's been priced in, guys. >> mike, the data that we're going to get -- we've gotten so far this morning ism manufacturing, best since 2004 prices paid, best since 2008 is the market going to get myopic on that >> in terms of the inflation picture? >> yeah. >> i think we're going to continue to talk about it, to argue whether it's just really a statistical phase that we're in as we lap last year's weakness, but i think it's going to concentrate the debate about the federal reserve. the federal reserve is explicit, does not want to move. will err on the side of staying easy if the data and new stimulus come in and the economy really starts to ramp ahead of schedule, quote, so to speak in terms of the fed, i do think, yes, we'll start focusing on that although i still think we're in a phase where inflation is sort of more of a net positive, more of a getting back

to normal factor as opposed to an immediate threat to valuation. >> all right thank you, mike. and now you'll remember our next guest said it's time to pivot away from faang and scale. byron deter joins us now just closing two new funds that will add more than $3 billion of capital. byron, i will zero in this morning on the t, twillio because they might be investing $700 million in technologies which might be going public as well does that fit into the thesis why these types of companies and the pond in which they're swimming is where you ought to be fishing >> thanks for having me on i'm swill an active board member of twilio so i can't comment

communications is why they're included the sms, video and voice communication that you see out there, these are essentially multihundred billion dollar markets they are attacking and like a lot of companies were net covid beneficiaries where collaboration and communications is an essential part and twilio has been a beneficiary of that >> the bifurcation between the market and the mainstream economy is even more intense when you look at stocks like the one you're focusing on and that comes together and what president biden seems to be alluding to when he talks about this organizing in alabama you have to think of alabama when he says that. do you expect these labor worker

main street issues are going to become a drag on some of these stocks >> there's a separate discussion around how they're taking advantage of that power at-large scale and some validity in discussions. if you step back and look at the growth drivers of the economy across all stages and scales of technology that's what's leading to gdp growth, to wage growth and net new employment you see that from the private companies including many that are adding thousands of jobs up to mt. sast. they are in job creation mode for u.s. citizens. >> talking about those companies and looking at today's rally so

many of the stocks that are part of mt. sast have seen such massive gains the past 12 months and, yes, there are these trends that are going to continue what are the untapped opportunities where they haven't seen such significant gains over the past year. >> most is fundamental improvement. these companies are growing at massive scale while on balance generating free cash flow. if you look at the 53 companies in the cloud index they are generating cash flow that's why you see multiple expansion so this double whammy where they're beating expectations and guiding up and people are forecasting in the out years that's trends will continue when you look at the alternatives in bonds or low single digit earners versus the

flag bearers people looking back for growth and opportunity for the new economy. >> byron, are there areas -- buckets or silos within technology where you do think either the promise is elevated on valuation or the projections, the forecasts, are doing too much overpromising with the risk of underdeliver down the road? >> well, as part of previewing mtsast, the cloud leaders and where we think they're taking the reins now we think there's a maturation point happening in gen-1 internet and media the faang stocks in particular if you look at the double trends of local and internet adoption we're seeing this start to plateau. they're great long-term companies but their returns are behind them and transitioning over baskets like cloud computing is more proof.

>> and that flattening out process, is that more about just the technology permeating other parts of the globe is it more about the slower pass of international expansion >> it's a mix of both. if you look at the faang stocks over the last several years they've returned about 330% which is a fantastic return. compare that to the mt. sast and you've seen over 800%. the free cash flow long-term potential and the overall are very different at this point in terms of addressable markets we believe companies like snowflake, the biggest ipo of last year, even zoom, the biggest cloud performer in the tech bucket last year, these companies are lightly penetrated and that's why people are betting there's a lot of upside

ahead. >> byron, i have to ask you about a big new addition to bessemer and jeff blackburn who spent a long time at amazon building that company and curious what direction you expect him to take bessemer and what you think he will add to the firm >> yes, several big announcements last week. the addition of our new funds, $3.3 billion bringing total assets to over $10 billion we announced four internal promotions of partners and the addition of jeff as a partner from the outside bringing our partnership to 21. we absolutely believe we should be supporting entrepreneurs and jeff will bring a lot of superpower to our consumer practice when you combine his expertise from the amazon side along with our internal expertise including jeremy lavine there are very few businesses that we don't understand or want

to see and we think that jeff will bring added horsepower as we try to help entrepreneurs scale their businesses and become the next biggest public cloud and internet companies >> i did want to point out, i missed it, but siniverse put out a press release confirming they have this partnership and twilio will invest up to $750 million in cash. we don't have to worry about you commenting on something that hadn't been announced there. tell me about the search, and you've always searched as an early stage investor how is that different now during this period with so many comp companies scrambling for the next big idea? >> the scale of outcomes is staggering when you look across our portfolio with shopify, twilio,

docusign, tens of hundreds of billions of dollars. we have over 25 companies already worth over a billion dollars. your prior guest, peter beck, is an example for companies looking for markets that are multiples bigger and magnitude bigger than we could have envisioned a few years ago as the market sizes for these tech businesses have grown so much. that is very much the focus and across our private and public portfolio you see that their aspirations are growing and their ambitions are to be part of this mt. sast bucket over time or to be the next $100 billion plus cloud and tech companies in the ecosystem and time and time again we're seeing these companies have a real shot at doing it. >> byron deeter from bessemer starting us off right. thank you. >> great to be back. we've been mentioning the day bitcoin is having on the heels of this very large citi

report and tweet hi, kate bitcoin is back up about 10% after a volatile weekend it had dropped to a low yesterday falling below 43,000 analysts pointed to a few factors including some jitters from coin base last week the u.s. crypto exchange put out new documents and in the risk to its business section coin base outlines events that could destabilize the price of bitcoin. that includes regulation, hacks and splits on the underlying network called forks it also cites the identification of nakamoto, multiple people who developed bitcoin, any transfer of nakamoto's bit coins thought to be worth $30 billion as a potential risk factor. one fear if nakamoto is

identified that could damage the reputation as decentralized or not controlled by one central authority. and similar to what we saw with tech stocks last week interest rates may be weighing on crypto sentiment as rates on the ten year rose. analysts say some investors likely backed off bitcoin. finally, carl, citi out saying bitcoin is at the tipping point of mainstream acceptance or speculative implosion. on one hand could become the currency of choice but they say there are still a host of risks and obstacles that stand in the way of bitcoin's progress. julia, back to you >> fascinating stuff, kate appreciate it. instagram out with some news moments ago unveiling live rooms allowing you to broadcast live with three other people. ♪♪

♪♪ ♪♪ pnc bank believes that if you can get a pair of goggles that helps with your backhand... ...then you should be able to get a bank account that helps with your budget. yeah! (laughs) virtual wallet® for digital banking. one way we're helping to make a difference at pnc bank. we see engineers simulating the future to improve today. at emerson, our digital twin software makes power plants smarter, helping facilities optimize operations and increase worker safety. emerson. consider it solved.

it's moving day. and while her friends and increase are doing the heavy lifting, jess is busy moving her xfinity internet and tv services. it only takes about a minute. wait, a minute? but what have you been doing for the last two hours? delegating? oh, good one. move your xfinity services without breaking a sweat. now that's simple, easy, awesome. xfinity makes moving easy. go online to transfer your services in about a minute. get started today.

klarna announcing a $1 billion funding round this morning led by the likes of sequoia and silver lake valuing the company at $31 billion joining us now exclusively ranked at number five on last year's cnbc disruptor list is founder and the ceo. thank you for joining us this morning. >> thank you for having me >> so, sebastian, you have a unicorn funding round. tell us what you're going to be doing with it.

>> oh, well, we're happy to see there are backers and we have an ambition here to try to fundamentally change the banking industry that has lost its focus on the customer, all these flawed models that are transparent. it's very exciting to see there's such a lot of support for us trying to transform the industry and feel strengthened and emboldened by the support to go after it because it's up for disr disruption >> you've had so much user growth i just saw 1 million users per month. when you look at that rate of growth how sustainable do you think that will be especially as economies start to open up and people start going into stores again as opposed to relying more on e-commerce? >> well, look, fundamentally what we're doing we recognize the idea of the credit card is

that a lot of us listening today get free loyalty points and 30 days interest free credit and nobody is asking the question who is paying for that unfortunately, there is a subset of customer, usually low-income customers, who are paying 29% for revolving interest rates and that's how the system works today. it's fundamentally flawed. we think the buy now/pay later fee equal to everyone funded by the merchants who seep the value in it because the consumers reward them with higher average and more commercial rate is a better model we think that's the future, people have debit cards and use buy now pay laetter in installments we are already live in sephora and macy's and in foot locker scores and 80,000 stores worldwide. >> sebastian, we love having you

on and max levchin you are saying a lot of the same things, driving the same messages about a different model from what credit cards have traditionally done are you seeing some of the same trends that affirmed talked about, retailers that you're working with in this field and is there a need at this stage to differentiate from affirm or is differentiating from the mainstream traditional credit card business still going to be the story for years to come >> i think it's to some degree right. being a global player covering 20 countries we have had a lot of success with international brands active in the u.s. and other markets as they look for a partner. with that said, we cherish the fact there are more people out there who share our ambitious of trying to transform this industry i think we feel fortunate to be

in this industry, not like there's a missing addressable market here. it's fundamentally flawed industry which is massive and there are going to be competitors that will share our ambition in the end if we all contribute to that transformation that's great. >> sebastian, a couple questions. one is there's been so much work done by macro strategists about the american -- at least the american household and at the higher end, flush with cash, doing well on their home equity, doing well on the stock market and maybe ostensibly a lesser need to use a product like yours, does that limit the opportunity, do you think, in the near term? >> not necessarily what we're seeing is all income levels our product usage isn't tied to income levels. it's tied to people who are tired of the old system and looking for something new and they know that the purpose the credit cards is pushing these things they want me to revolve

29% interest it is getting me these discounts because they want me to eventually revolve a lot of consumers are tired of that and find these models more attractive to them we don't see that connection in a sense and an acceleration we've seen credit card applications are down 50% there's been over $100 billion in credit card debt paid down during the covid crisis. we think part of that is also because people see the availability of products like ours and are shifting their behavior away from it. that's what we've seen in other markets outside of the u.s i would be surprised if that wouldn't happen in the u.s. as well >> right when you think about the legacy credit card companies and how they will respond to the wave of competition you're helping to bring, do you see them changing their model necessarily or trying to buy their way in through m&a? >> well, i think almost a

question answered. basically when something transforms, as i think this will be, i think this will be the decade of transformation in the retail banking industry, and usually to your point what the legacy incumbents do, some manage to transform themselves that's very tough. requires a very -- somebody who is very courageous as a leader some m&a their way out of it and some don't survive you can see all three of them happening. >> well, sebastian, we appreciate you joining us on this very big funding news we hope you'll be back soon. >> thank you so much thank you for having me. now let's turn to the public markets. dom chu is looking at the largest bouncebacks today in etfs dom? >> because the public markets give us a lot of that second to second price transparency unlike big funding rounds for private companies. check out what's happening with

the nasdaq and nasdaq composite specifically because over the course of the past year we know how far it's come. it's been a huge leader up 57% in the last year this pullback between highs and lows here was roughly 10% on an intraday basis now, by the way that bounceback is a 5% upside so the nasdaq showing some signs of life here. we'll see if that continues. a couple places within that particular market and technology elsewhere in the nasdaq is showing some signs of life are the semiconductor stocks take a look at the etf up 2% so far today. up a very respectable 13% so far this year but, again, this moves higher off the lows coming off technical levels so some traders looking to buy the dips there. one other place to watch is the dow jones first trust internet fund take a look at that up 8% year to date. this company or this particular etf contains alphabet, amazon, facebook, paypal those types of names have seen a bounce over a year-to-date basis, down

10%, up 5% from those lows we've seen by the way if you look today, carl, some of the biggest nasdaq 100 performers on an intraday basis, at least balances have been manifesting themselves big, tesla up 5.5%. zoom video, a recent underperformer over the medium term, up 6%. paypal up 5% and even apple up 4% the nasdaq 100 being powered by some of these names. those are the ones that have gone on shopping lists we'll see if it stays that way if this rally has legs back over to you >> yeah. with zoom earnings tonight, dom. thanks for that. keep your eye on wayfair truist goes to a buy long-term profitability, faster growth, price target 370 quk le iba ia almost 700 points. "sawaly"s ckn minute ...and delegating to an experienced live bookkeeper for peace of mind. your books are all set. so you can finally give john some attention.

trusted experts. guaranteed accurate books. intuit quickbooks live. ♪ when disaster strikes to one, we all get together and support each other. that's the nature of humanity. ♪ it has encouraged other people to take the time for each other. ♪ ♪ ♪♪ dad, i'm scared. ♪♪ it's only human to care for those we love. and also help light their way. ♪♪ it's why last year chevron invested billions of dollars to bring affordable, reliable, ever cleaner energy to america.

♪♪

welcome back i'm rahel solomon and here is your cnbc news update this hour. in california most public school students could be back in classrooms by the end of this month. the state's governor and legislative leaders just announced a deal giving school districts billions of dollars if they return to in-person instruction by march 31st. former french president nicolas sarkozy will appeal his sentence of at least one year in prison he has been found guilty of trying to illegally get information from a judge about another case against him by offering the judge a coveted job. and umbrellas used to block the view of cameras at a london hospital where 99-year-old prince philip is being treated for an infection royal officials announced he's being moved to another hospital that specializes in cardiac care called precautionary "squawk alley" is back after this quick break apricot, and raspberry.nna, - we have a location that has experienced four floods, a fire, a hurricane, and obviously now we're in the pandemic.

this is during hurricane harvey. the water was like a river. - when you talk about nasdaq, people don't think about insurance or catastrophe risk but that's a product they offer. we have 12 companies that build these models. for example, we have fathom. they are experts in building flood catastrophe models and we get it through our nasdaq platform. so insurers would be able to provide the right guidance to janice and people like her project forwards the risk and actually use that to advise the policy holder where they buy their house or where they buy their next commercial property. - now we have this predictive flood modeling that we can go to and find out if it's gonna flood there or not. and if it's not, then guess what? we get to sleep easier. we get to go on a vacation. we get to grow.

congress shall make no law abridging free speech. that does not apply to twitter and facebook if they want to ban violent rhetoric and harassment they have every right to do so and

the analogy i made in the adl was if a neo-nazi comes into a restaurant and starts threatening customers and saying he wants to kill jews, the restaurant owner has every legal right and actually a moral obligation to kick that nazi out and so do the internet companies. the idea they are the defenders of free speech is ludicrous. they make editorial decisions. they did allow nazis >> sasha baron cohen on the sway podcast. new york sometimes columnist kara swisher does join us this morning. he obviously has read the bill of rights and has turned out to be a powerful voice on this front. >> yeah, i wanted to interview him for a long time t. turns out he won yesterday at the golden globes we'll see what happens in the oscars and everything else i wanted to talk to him for a long time. i was struck -- he has so many carrickers whether it's borat,

his voice himself was incredibly powerful he did this at the adl, anti-defamation league, and i was struck by the whole thing. i wanted to talk to him. a lot of what he does as an entertainer is sort of show how people really think and get people to say things in free speech in a kind of odd way. and so i always felt this was an area he was quite smart about. and so i wanted to do an interview with him >> what do you think the lead is coming out of your podcast with him, and how much credit do you give to him for some of the incremental moves the giants have made so far >> i don't know. i don't know how they get affected by him. he was definitely part of the advertiser boycott it was partially due to him and he was involved in that. and he's been very active about getting trump off twitter. he's used his platform in lots of ways. he did talk about that idea after celebrity doing that

it's sort of an anathema what he deals with in his satire, i don't know what you call it, what he does is take aim at things like this which is immorality in this country in lots of ways so i don't know if he had an effect on him but he certainly -- one of the things with the recent borat movie that was on amazon or netflix, what he did he put that out before the election the whole fodder around rudy giuliani and the zipping of the pants caused a lot of attention especially in getting rudy giuliani off the stage talking about things like hunter biden and other things and focused on rudy giuliani in the hotel room on the bed he's an interesting character in that he uses his humor to really affect political change. >> i wonder what you think about what sasha baron cohen and i would put stephen colbert in that category what they

represent. they created these characters to try to have a real world message and impact, kind of intentionally fake news, before fake news became a buzz phrase for the stuff that we see out there all the time now that fake news is this overall concern, misinformation, what does he and his ilk represent in the broader technology conversation? >> well, i think they do listen to him i think it was interesting they did a lot of stuff for the advertising things before the election i think he has had some impact and he's in their head like a lot of people, i don't think he's the only one. by the way, mark twain did this, too. lots of humorists are very political. john oliver, for example i thought he did some of the best stuff this week on andrew cuomo, for example they're commentators in society and use different tools in their entertainment. dave chappelle is another one. there's a lot of people like that i do think, you know -- and tina

fey with sarah palin there was definitely impact by her depiction of sarah palin so this has not been a new thing but he's very effective at it and jumped into the character of sasha baron cohen, who is who he is, and managed to really give a great interview. people are really enjoying this interview because it's so smart and also he's making some great points about his art and its intersection with politics which is very strong >> and, kara, it's interesting looking at this conversation and sort of how it reflects back on what he said back in 2019 and back then he said that he thought people like mark zuckerberg should be put in jail where did you hear him and where do you think the conversation is now? where did you hear him think of things as having evolved do you think there are areas he's optimistic there will be change, and how did he think about the fact facebook and twitter have banned at least temporarily on facebook president trump? >> i can hardly hear you but i think i know what you said

i think he feels he's irredeemable, talking about jail time for these people. i don't think he thinks they're redeemable and should lose power and antitrust or -- he was talking about some criminal action for some of them. and so i don't know. i think he doesn't feel like they've changed a lot, he thinks they're too big and like a lot of people run the stage essentially. i think he's going to continue to speak out against them, and i think he's going to be very active depending on what's happening. i don't know if he's going to do borat again. i don't think so i think that's what he said. he has a lot of other characters and humor he's working on, so we'll see. >> yeah, it's amazing what he's built -- he's been with us for a while building on some of these characters and they're all memorable. on another topic it was interesting to hear the president, at least allude to the union fight at amazon in alabama. here is what he said >> i made it clear, made it clear when i was running, that

my administration's policy would be to support unions organizing and the right to collectively bargain. i'm keeping that promise so let me be really clear. it's not up to me to decide whether anyone should join a union, but let me be even more clear. it's not up to an employer to decide that either the choice to join a union is up to the workers full stop >> kara, what did you make of it >> full stop that's what he supports this is what he ran on and this is what he's talking about i think amazon will run -- every tech company has a different buzzsaw. i think employee issues are the one amazon will have to deal with they've hired so many people during this pandemic i think they're up to 1.2 million. i'm sorry if i have the wrong number they've hired quite a lot of people in the last year and they have warehouse workers, they have drivers, they have all kinds of different workers i think the president supporting it is a good thing

i'm also supportive of unions. not everybody is i understand amazon's arguments that they're trying to -- they have this business it's going forward they went to the $15 minimum wage it's up to the workers to decide if they want to form unions. we talk a lot about this what is a worker now what happened in the uk with uber and different things like that i think the idea of what a worker deserves, and it may not be an employee, but there has to be a new way to form unions, to designate employees so everyone gets health care and all kinds of other benefits. i think that's probably what president biden was talking about. >> kara, we've been talking about this a bit on the program. i feel like the superpower and the purpose behind the union has got to shift in this era we're in because the structure of the economy and the work place has changed so much.

it's no longer about a picket line in front of a factory, right, when you've got a cloud driven, mobile driven economy, when people are working from home, can you picket at your own house? how is that going to work? sometimes you see these companies, you mentioned amazon's $15 minimum -- ahead of where the government is on a lot of these things, too even if these workers are able to unionize, even if the president is backing them, do the unions know what to do >> i don't know. i think it's an interesting question i should really have someone from unions who are more innovative i've interviewed lots of union organizers around uber and things like that it really is a watershed time for unions to figure out what should be the next move and how we should organize in this way i think the government is going to have a lot to do with it and president biden throwing his support there will make a difference, i suspect. we can't operate the way it's operating, and unions have lost

a lot of clout the past few decades and with this group of companies definitely so. we've talked about the different levels of people at the companies. the people who work in google's kitchens are not the same as their engineers, and they have different goals. it's not really even a similar workforce in some of these workforces lastly, all these contractors that they're using i think is really problematic and they have to figure out a way to organize and be able to demand different things they want from these companies. i think workers should decide how they want to organize and should think hard about how to do so. >> kara, how do you take president biden's comments on unions as an indication how he will approach regulating these tech giants, looking at the fact that google also had this move to unionize. what does this mean in terms of what we can expect this year to happen >> as you know i did interviews with all the google walkout people at the time they did it and a year later

most of them are gone from the company. there's a lot of pressure within these companies not to do so, and it's very difficult. i think they have harder chances at amazon and google to organize in a way we think of as traditional unions it's a really interesting area and i think there should be, just like there's innovation everywhere, there should be innovation in unionization people have lots of different ideas how to do so, but it presents a different challenge than previously. you have to rethink how that goes and you see a lot of unionization within websites like where i work, box media, buzz feed, all kinds of places some of it quite tough negotiations going on. i think it's an ongoing shift amazon will have to deal with its workers unionizing, warehouse workers, drivers, and others and so they have to figure out a way to do this that doesn't -- that gives these workers a voice in their work and everything else i don't think they like -- they're going to resist it, and

they have resisted it. we'll see where it goes. >> kara, our congrats on another good podcast >> one next week >> i love the graphic. >> i have a couple more coming you're going to love they're so good. they're so good. all right. >> we'll see you later, kara swisher. jon, it's the best day for the s&p since june all right, yeah. we'll see if it holds on to these levels meanwhile, warren buffett owns more of this chinese electric vehicle company than he does of gm find out what it is and why only on cnbc.com.

a bunch of price target increases on draft king today. lupe goes to 105 and it's already up more than 45% this year up another 10% now to 67. more "squawk alley" continues after a break.

it's moving day. and while her friends are doing the heavy lifting, jess is busy moving her xfinity internet and tv services. it only takes about a minute. wait, a minute? but what have you been doing for the last two hours? delegating? oh, good one. move your xfinity services without breaking a sweat. now that's simple, easy, awesome. xfinity makes moving easy. go online to transfer your services in about a minute. get started today.

our next guest is a member of the wall street bets community and one of the day traders behind the reddit join. thank you so much for joining us i want to hear about your broader strategy but let's start off with blackberry, which i understand is your pick right now. >> yeah, blackberry, in my opinion, is very underrated stock. i mean, now it's 51% plus on the year and i think we'll see that trend continue to grow i understand there is some backlash from various internet personalities on the meme stocks and on wall street bets, but i think blackberry has so much to offer and i think we're going to see growth into 2023 and 2025. >> we're looking at that stock up nearly 8% right now

more broadly, what is your changing strategy? are you posting on wall street bets and hope other people will follow you or getting information from wall street bets what's your relationship with that platform? >> so wall street bets is really in essence, a community. it's a massive community of individuals of all backgrounds, all different cultures and in my opinion, it's been pretty spot on right? wall street bets is a brand knowledge center you will learn more in wall street bets than you will learn in a lot of investing books and a lot of different things because you'll just see a lot of the mentality and a lot of the morals that come with good investing reflected in wall street bets and even though there are some rash and crazy bets that people do, whether it's throwing a million dollars at gamestop when it's trading at $400, there are much better and

much more sound investments that occurred in the past, right? wall street bets first on coronavirus and what its impact would be to the economy. they were huge on tesla for such a long time. a&d, so many different stocks that have really propelled themselves in the past year or two years or three years and honestly, wall street bets is a very underrated resource that is now really catching fire with gamestop, amc with blackberry, nokia and many others and i think there's a lot to gain from being in that community. in addition, investing becomes very fun it's a community of individuals that aren't just about, where do i put my 401(k) or my ira? it is also about crazy phenomenons that can occur like gamestop going from $2 to $12 to $400 >> you talk about the fun

element and it's obvious where that comes from. how do you guys handle, though, loss how do you handle that pain? what lessons have you maybe learned from it and recent examples and what's up with the whole tough guy, i lost more than you is that a common thread in the community? >> i think losses are relative and i think that's something that if you read through the comments, when you see someone losing 4$400,000 and be like, only lose what you can afford to lose, people say that's what losing a thousand dollars is to me everybody has their amount of income or wealth that they have. dealing with loss is something we all work through and people are quite supportive in the community, people will go through rash bets and maybe it's very low chance of success and therefore might see an actual loss where people are like, you shouldn't have done that but like, other cases, this is

crazy, i can't believe it. maybe lessons. maybe not a short expiration on options but start buying months and out turns out it works wall street bets is, you know, taking the gambling philosophy of wall street, which is definitely a parrot in propelling that into a microcosm of individuals that are all focused on the same thing. even though some will take longer data things, it's a huge part of the platform. >> albert, is it important for someone who's maybe joining wall street bets, looking for financial advice to be able to understand who's being serious or not what the track records are of people giving advice, maybe who's in this for a cause? anti-hedge funds or pro a couple of stocks like gamestop or amc, be in favor no matter what price they're trading versus in it to make money should people be able to understand that?

>> yeah, and you can see is it different flairs and levels of support that will have. you'll why why palentier went public someone will have three minutes to read. it's better than just morgan stanley offering a price target of $70 with outperform it's actual reasoning why something might be trading at a discount some individuals that don't have as much money to utilize might be safer with, let's say, 80% of it and gamble with 20% maybe you lose that 20%, but you do have that 80% to utilize on these longer term investments and bigger ideas that you

actually researched. obviously part of the fun to jump into trades that are already going and that's what's going to happen with gamestop. the risk is always higher as something might have ran already but people betting with what they like is something that should be respected. betting on amc not only because of the theatre but a good chance of coming back with the vaccine rollouts coming out. quite a bit of reason for someone to do that without massive backlash from various individuals in the community. >> well, certainly, some fascinating moves there. a lot of volatility in those names. you see blackberry shares up nearly 9%. albert, thank you for joining us. >> thank you so much for having me. zoom earnings coming after the bell this afternoon. head over to cnbc.com for analyst insight on what the ets expecting. more "squawk alley" after the quick break. investments,your key portfolio events, all in one place. because when it's decision time, you need decision tech.

only from fidelity. wanna build a gaming business that breaks the internet? you need decision tech. that means working night and day... ...and delegating to an experienced live bookkeeper for peace of mind. your books are all set. so you can finally give john some attention. trusted experts. guaranteed accurate books. intuit quickbooks live. how do we ensure families facing food insecurity get access to their food? we needed to make sure that, if they couldn't get to the food, the food would come to them. we can deliver for food banks and schools. amazon knows how to do that. i helped deliver 12 million meals to families in need. that's the power of having a company like amazon behind me.

♪♪ ♪ now here we go ♪ ♪ i can't help it if i'm poppin' see them watch like ♪ ♪ who that girl ♪ ♪ it's outrageous how this flavour got em shook like ♪ ♪ hold up ♪ ♪ work work work it out ♪ ♪ ah ha ♪ ♪ i hit it back with a brand new style ♪ ♪ like woah ♪ ♪ bring it up into the fold get wild ♪ ♪ we turning up all the way on the dial ♪ ♪ like woah ♪ ♪ baby i'm fabulous so come on ♪ limitless possibilities. the boldly new 2021 nissan kicks. ♪♪ ♪♪ in boxing or any other business, one day, you're gonna take a hit you didn't see coming. do you stay down? or do you get up?

[announcer] and this fight is a long way from over, leonard is coming back. ♪♪ ♪♪ before we go, look at the decline of the name alexa of u.s. babies down double digits each year the last five years, john, as alexa has made that name not cool. >> not a lot of babies named hey

siri either. >> i have a friend named alexa and messaged her a couple of times and then had alexa respond to me. just a reminder they're always listening. >> they definitely are look who's in, joe kernen in the half >> welcome to the halftime report i'm in for scott wapner. a new week, a new month and a new rally. what's next for the trampled tech trade a lot of alliteration and for the reflation trade. your next money move with our investment committee, consisting of joe shannon, chief investment officer at boston private wealth and last but not least, kevin o'leary. the dow and s&p having the biggest gains of the year. the nasd