consumer, extending its lockdown to april 18th. the biggest laggards, marathon oil down 6% and carnival, tyler, the worst performer on the s&p 500. it's cruise line pushing back its restart in italy by a month. that obviously a concern for that one. >> thanks for watching "power lunch. good to be with you, seema "closing bell" starts right now. seema and tyler, thank you welcome, everyone, to "closing bell." i'm sara eisen with long with wilfred frost. it is officially the one-year anniversary of the covid market bottom and it has been a heck of a year for the bulls dow, s&p 500 both up 75% from those lows the nasdaq nearly doubling after a year of wild swings and volatility, today the market sets a calmer tone let's see what's driving the action the major averages trending lower. the russell pulling back sharply, small caps getting hit hard amid today's congressional

testimony from fed chair jay powell and treasury secretary janet yellen wti crude down because of new lockdowns in europe and a stronger dollar. and travel stocks are seeing another day of sharp declines. the cruise names are sinking along with airlines and online travel names 59 minutes left to go in the session. we're down 221 on the dow. >> the russell down 3.3% coming up on today's show, one of the most interesting earnings reports so far gamestop gearing up for its first quarterly release since the reddit frenzy. plus we'll ask take two interactive ceo strauss zelnick about whether it's driving more sales for him. as we mark the one-year anniversary of the bull market, we'll talk to investor scott black and where he's putting his money to work right now. first of all, let's get to the big stories.

mike santoli is tracking the big stories and steve liesman has the takeaway from janet yellen and jay powell's testimony mike, let's start with you. >> we're used to these days with treasury yields backing off. we get a broad growth in tech. it's a much more defensive type of tone to the market today. a little slippage we've gotten used to as people who have overcommitted to that cyclical reopening trade are unwinding that right now s&p 500, you take it point to point. we're down from late january levels the market really has slowed down a fair bit. mostly it stayed supported through that back and forth rotation as yields have surged and now backed off we really have kind of churned for a while. it hasn't done too much damage, but on a day like today when you don't have any group stepping up except for the generally defensive stuff, it could create

a alittle more room this is just year to date so the gains year to date are quite strong in high beta stocks, energy that's regional banks and microcaps. not just small caps but microcaps. basically all have rolled the latter part of this month. so money coming out of there really it's only software, consumer staples and utilities take a look at a little bit of a measure of retail trader enthusiasm it has also waned. you see those january highs in late january, early february a lot of people had eyes on small options trading. bullish bets on big upside from these small stocks that has really rolled it's still well above levels we get used to in prior years, but there's a suggestion that in fact contrary to many predictions, we did not see a huge rush of stimulus money into retail trading and volumes in general have been very week. also days like the last couple, really not a lot of action in

things like tesla or the big etfs, guys. >> energy is soft today, but only down 1% relative to the oil price slide, we've had two big negative days for oil prices over the last four or five trading days. if you put it in light of that, perhaps you'd say energy stocks have held up kind of okay. >> today, yes. i think in general, i'm not sure we completely kept pace on the upside with the move in crude, except in the real like bombed out parts of energy exploration. but there's no doubt you can definitely say there's a little bit of a buffer on the equity side some of the big oils almost represent a little bit of a defensive type trade, the ones that are really heavy in the s&p energy sector like s&p and chevron so maybe that's creating a little bit of an offset to the move in crude. >> mike, you mentioned gamestop and the effect of retail trading on the market. we'll talk about that in just a bit when we speak with the ceo of investing platform stash which is catering to the retail community, but not to day traders. that's coming up later in the

show mike santoli, thank you. now to the economy and the recovery jay powell and janet yellen both testifying today before congress steve liesman with the highlights what was new there, steve, anything >> powell was asked directly about the $1.9 trillion stimulus and he said he did not see a long-term inflationary threat from it. he stuck closely to his prior statements that any increase in inflation is likely to be temporary. >> strongly committed to our price stability mandate, which is along with our maximum employment mandate, those are the two mandates that you've essentially given us our best view is that these -- the effect on inflation will be either particularly large nor persistent we've been living in a world of strong disinflationary pressures around the world for a quarter of a century >> sara asked what was new it was the first time the

current fed chair appeared with the former fed chair she was asked about policies and she made it clear that the biden administration would be looking to raise taxes, specifically mentioning a rise in corporate income tax rates down the road the treasury is working with other countries to counter a global race to the bottom on corporate taxes. powell also told us if he's going to decrease the amount of quantitative easing, he's going to give markets lots of heads up and lots of notice. >> he's been communicating a lot lately steve, i'm just looking at market reaction. so treasury yields have stabilized, back down to 1.64 or so on the 10-year. it seems like stocks took a little bit of a dip. in anything in there in that testimony that would cause a sell-off >> i was trying to do the tick-by-tick and see if it was something that he or she said. i couldn't really -- he was talking a little about the communication of possibly reducing qe down the road. it was kind of a benign comment.

talking a little bit more about climate change when the market started to go down about 1:20 in the afternoon. but about half of this drop in the s&p has come after they were done around 2:50 this afternoon. i can't think of any particular reason that i can link it back to. >> steve, thanks for that. we're just fractionally off the lows, down 210 on the low. the low is about 260 about 15 minutes ago. shares of astrazeneca getting hit today about concerns of newly released trial data we'll speak to a member of the fda's advisory committee about that data and what it means for future authorization you're watching "closing bell" on cnbc.

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just off session lows, dow down 235, 49 minutes left of trading. time for a coronavirus tracker promising developments on the treatment front today. regeneron and roche's antibody

cocktail has shown to cut deaths by 73% and pfizer which developed the first authorized vaccine in the u.s. just announced it has started an early stage trial for an oral covid-19 antiviral therapy. the drug showed, quote, potent activity against covidin lab studies. meantime, new york is expanding its vaccine eligibility. now anyone over 50 years old can get a vaccine, just a few weeks after they lowered it to 60 years or older texas goes to anyone above 16 next week. amazing the progress we've seen in the year. >> i know. not quite down to our age yet, but we're getting there, we're getting there. >> bring it on. shares of astrazeneca are moving lower amid concerns over its new vaccine trial data meg tirrell has the latest on this roller coaster ride for this vaccine, meg. >> it really is. i think saga might be the best word to describe what's been

happening with astrazeneca's vaccine. here's the latest. remember yesterday we reported that the much-anticipated phase 3 trial in the u.s. of astrazeneca's vaccine showed 79% efficacy, which was higher than many people expected then overnight the national institute of allergy and infectious diseases said that the oversight board overseeing that trial had sent a letter expressing concern about outdated information pertaining to the efficacy data there importantly not the safety and this morning astrazeneca issued a statement saying those data had been from an interim look taken february 17th and that they'll issue a primary analysis within 48 hours this is just a bizarre turn of events dr. fauci saying i was sort of stunned having seen that letter from the oversight board we could not let it go

unanswered "the washington post" said that the oversight board said that the company chose to use outdated, potentially misleading data on the efficacy and that in fact with more updated information, it may be closer to 69% to 74% versus the 79% reported, guys so according to astrazeneca's statement, within two days we'll see their primary analysis, but clearly not good optics for a vaccine going through the process here in the u.s. and which has been, of course, facing some challenges overseas as well. guys >> yeah, just the latest in a series of missteps meg, thank you for more let's bring in dr. levy, a voting member of the fda's vaccine advisory committee. dr. levy, thank you for joining us on "closing bell. req ." good to have you. >> a pleasure to be here. >> have you ever seen anything like this?

>> quite frankly i have not. it's unusual to have nih and niad call out a sponsor about potentially using outdated information, calling them out in public and the company having to rapidly reissue a more updated analysis it is unusual. >> my other question, i guess, is just why the fda needs to approve this drug. i know more than 70 countries have already approved it it's being used in europe and the uk and india and many other places but we have three approved vaccines, more coming online, novavax is looking good. why is it such a priority that we get this shot approved? >> well, thank you for that. let's be clear this pandemic is far from over you've highlighted some very positive developments and we'd love to see that trend continue, but globally there's a very serious need for more vaccines

and more vaccine supply. and of course as a member of the advisory committee and ad hoc voting member, we bring an open mind to the process. we don't convene with the agenda that we have to vote in favor of an authorization we look at all the information about safety and efficacy and vaccines are something you give to healthy people so they better be safe. and then we give an advisory vote and in the end fda decides and we advise them so it's not like we gather with the agenda that we will vote in favor. with that said, it doesn't require deep freezing, makes it more practical for rural areas, right, and there does seem to be evidence that it's effective i'll keep an open mind and wait for the final version of the briefing documents that are most up to date but that's what's being reported it's being reported that there's safety there but again i'll keep an open mind and judge the briefing report

once it's released. >> dr. levy, regardless of what comes out in terms of whether there was inaccuracies on the latest submission from astrazeneca or not, how rare is it for an organization like the niaid to bepublic about their concerns in the way that they were this morning. i ask because clearly there are already questions about the safety and efficacy of this vaccine, whether they were legitimate questions or not, particularly in europe and the trust in the vaccine is very low in some of those countries already. should they have taken that into account and just said to people like you, beware of this, make sure you read into these details but not make a public statement like this until you have absolute definitive answers? >> yeah, what you imply seems like the wise course from where i am sitting it's a highly unusual turn of events with niaid calling the company out, the sponsor out i'm not aware of a similar

situation in the past so this is very unusual i'm sure that people at astrazeneca are reflecting on how they might do this better moving forward. >> just to follow up on that, again, even if there's an error there and the actual percentage efficacy should be lower than it was reported initially yesterday, overall is this vaccine safe is this vaccine effective, way more so than perhaps any of us would have dreamt six months ago, and therefore should that have been the only headline that was reported until a final decision is made >> yeah. again, i have to suspend an opinion until i see the briefing documents, the final briefing documents. as you know, wilfred, we have an excellent process here in the u.s. those briefing documents are eventually made public so any american can download them and look at the same information i will look at and the other committee members will look at once they are available with the most up to data analysis, then i

will form my opinion on safety and efficacy and it will be based on that opinion that i vote and a full day of public deliberation i have not yet received the updated documents, they're not even available yet, as you highlight. and so i am bringing an open mind and not assuming one thing or the other it is potentially an important vaccine and i'd like to see what the final briefing documents look like. >> psso astrazeneca has done a e of these trials now. why is it important, dr. levy, for the fda this trial be done in the u.s.? is that a requirement that all vaccines passed here have to have trials done in this country? >> it certainly is something that's strongly preferred by fda, whether it's elevated to requirement technically i don't know but our population may be different in a number of ways from the populations of other countries, both genetically and

what we call epigenetically. we have a different diet, different weather, all sorts of things affect an immune response so there's a long history in vaccinology that vaccines given in one part of the world might not perform the same way as they might perform in another part of the world. i direct the vaccines program at boston children's hospital and that's one of the themes of our research. >> finally, dr. levy, do you expect a decision and the final documents quickly in order to perhaps sort of stem the ongoing distrust in this vaccine, if that is indeed a warranted course of action to carry out? >> well, you know, this sponsor, in this case astrazeneca, will have to go through the same process that pfizer, moderna and j&j had to go through. they're in communication with fda. when fda judges that the timing is right, they will alert the committee members and then eventually the days for any potential meeting to consider

voting to advise on emergency use authorization will be set by fda and announced to the federal website. >> when you guys debate this, and if it does get presented to you for a vote on whether you would recommend this vaccine and others, are you going to be looking at it relative to what's already been approved, j&j, moderna, pfizer, in terms of efficacy and safety or does it get a fresh slate because we've got new mutations and it's not necessarily apples to apples >> right typically i don't know what the exact question they will have us vote on, but typically the question is does the evidence supported support the safety and efficacy of the product. they won't necessarily be asking us how does it compare to another product because the studies weren't designed to answer that. to really know how the products compare, you'd have to do a head-to-head trial and that hasn't been done for any of

these vaccines so i speculate that they will ask us about the safety and efficacy of this particular astrazeneca product if and when we convene i will also point out that the committee members are not allowed to discuss the topic privately offline with each other. all of our deliberations are public i think that's a really good process we have here in the united states. >> yeah, no, we're glued to it and this was very revealing. dr. ofer levy, we appreciate it. >> a pleasure, thank you 38 minutes left before the close. markets been losing steam and we're looking at new session lows the dow is down 300 points, that is the low s&p 500 down three-quarters. the nasdaq down a percent and the small cap russell 2000 getting hit hard, down 3.5%. the sell-off really picking up steam. after the break, how do consumers plan to spends money during the great reopening that's a question that was asked

in a new survey and the results may not be what you expect we'll discuss next. plus it's the stock that drew the attention of wall street and the entire world. >> could you discuss gamestop. >> i put all my money in gamestop. >> gamestop. >> gamestop. >> gamestop. >> gamestop. >> this retail phenomenon is here to say. >> never seen anything like it. >> coming up, gamestop's first earnings report since the retail mania that sent the stock rocketing higher it is the earnings event of the season in a little over 37 minutes. we'll be right back.

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35 minutes left of trading, looking at session lows right now. time for word on the street. reopening plays like madison square garden and. live nation are down hard along with the travel stocks like trip advisor, airbnb and others ubs surveyed 1,000 consumers on where they plan to spend their money when the economy reopened and found spending was not a priority in the sectors that had been hit hard in the pandemic. spending on events and entertainment ranked second-to-last of the 17 categories in the survey vacation and travel ranked sixth. restaurants and bars were in ninth place. consumers said they plan to prioritize spending on basics, groceries, household products, followed by gasoline and energy, home improvement and health care also high on the list. overall 52% of consumers do

expect to increase their spending as the economy rebounds, while 16% plan to decrease spending. it might be surprising, wilfred, just given all of the money and attention on these reopening plays like msg or live nation, which have basically been closed for the last year and are expecting a huge pent-up demand. i think it's the evidence lab at ubs surveyed these consumers i wonder if that changes once things actually do reopen and people do get a taste of what they missed. >> either way it's going to be very positive for the economy and everyone unleashes this excess saving. just on the stocks today, jim cramer tweeting that crude is weighing on some of these bullish u.s. economy stocks, even if there's no actual causal link between the two you could argue some of them it should be a negative correlation, but hard when oil is down 6.5% for some of these stocks that have exposure to more u.s. cyclical factors to be

up today. still ahead, 2021 has been the year of gamestop the stock up 900% after a retail-fueled rally. in just a few minutes we'll get the company's first earnings report before those numbers come out we'll speak with the ceo of investing platform stash, which bills itself as an anti-day trading alternative. as we head to break, here's a check in on bond yields. yields are lower today, 1.63 on the 10-year so a decent-sized pullback as we speak

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welcome back the selling just accelerating moments ago. we got down 340, tiny bounce for a moment and down 330 on the dow so over 1% s&p down 0.9%. nasdaq down more than 1% the russell tw2000 and small ca down 7.3% as we stand. it's been a year since the covid's bottom and the nasdaq

has nearly doubled here's a look at the biggest 52-week winners. goldman sachs, caterpillar, nike, all up more than 100%, sara 30 minutes left to go. as wilfred said, we are selling off here into the close. crude oil down, as wilfred and cramer were mentioning on twitter. it's all the cyclical reopening plays getting hit hard, perhaps on longer lockdowns out of europe that's really hurting the airlines and travel companies. nasdaq is down a percent there are some pockets of strength in the utilities and consumer staples, real estate, all the defensive groups it's been about a month now since gamestop board member tweeted this infamous picture of the mcdonald's ice cream cone that sent the stock on a tear presumably the stock is up more than 300% since that tweet, 900% on the year we are counting you down to the results. gamestop's first earnings sense this whole reddit retail trading

frenzy, coming up at the top of the hour. up next, we're going to discuss the big run and the rise of retail investing with the ceo of investing platform sth, aas robinhood competitor "closing bell" will be right back [music: “you're the best” by joe esposito] [music: “you're the best” by joe esposito] [triumphantly yells] [ding] don't get mad. get e*trade and take charge of your finances today. ♪ ♪ (upbeat music) don't get mad. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

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25 minutes left of trading russell 2000 index, the small caps down almost 4%. time for a cnbc news update with rahel solomon. >> hello, everyone a 21-year-old from a denver suburb has been charged in the killing of ten people in a crowded boulder supermarket. he purchased an assault rifle just six days before the shooting. president biden calling for bipartisan support of legislation to strengthen background checks. he also says it's time to reinstate controls that worked in the past. >> we can ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines in this country once again. i got that done when i was a senator. it passed. it was law for the longest time, and it brought down these mass killings we should do it again. >> and for all the latest on the boulder shooting and the renewed push for gun control, watch the news with shepard smith. and jury selection is complete for the trial of a

former minneapolis police officer in the death of george floyd. the 15-person jury includes six people who identify as black or multi racial opening statements are set to begin next monday. you are now up to date wilfred, back to you. shares of gamestop selling off ahead of its earnings after the bell it will be the first report since january when it surged higher the stock up 800% so far this year joining us for more, stash ceo brandon frank, robinhood competitor good to see you, brandon, thanks for joining us. >> thank you so much for having me today it's great to be here. >> quite a lot of people claim that they are really for long-term investing and not for day trading. qualify that for us. why does that really hold true for you? >> yeah, i mean we're not a day trading app. we started stash from the beginning to be focused on long-term diversified investment so we don't offer margin, we

don't offer options trading and only trade four times a day. people use stash three ways. you come to invest in things you believe in you can come to invest in smart pole folios which is a managed account diversified to your risk level or use the stash debit card and become an investor every time you spend and it helps you become an owner and invest in your world so really from day one it's really been about how do you help people that have never had access to the markets and do not have financial education start that's the most important thing here is getting people to start and get on a journey of long-term wealth creation. >> so have your account opening growth numbers in the last 12 months, i'm sure they have been strong but have they perhaps lagged some of those other players, whether it's robinhood or e trade, so on and so forth which are more exposed to day trading? >> yeah, it's a great question the last year for stash has

quite frankly been incredible. we've seen more than 100% increase in new account openings we have almost 6 million customer accounts now. we've seen our assets surge up to almost $3 billion, the assets under management the thing about our assets that's so different than a lot of wealth managers is that the average deposit onto stash is $31. so you're seeing lots and lots of people put away small amounts of money which are starting to add up to be big amounts of money. we've seen a major increase in the number of stock rewards that people are getting in the platform i think the most important part of your question for stash is that the conversation about gamestop and the mean stocks has also brought more awareness around the lack of financial education and the lack of access that so many people have it's great if your friends are talking about gamestop, but most people have no idea what to do they don't know what a stock is, they don't know what a ticker is a firm like stash with the focus on the long term really does help people start and our

minimum is $5 and get on a path of not only learning but quite frankly doing it at the same time, which is incredible for so many people. >> one of the questions also around gamestop specifically, brandon, was how long these traders were in on this stock for the ride is it a day-trading phenomenon or a longer term play? what's the exposure like for your clients >> yeah, look, our clients have access to buy gamestop but we wrap it in education and advice. the worst thing that we could see at stash is that one of our customers puts all their eggs in one basket or puts their life savings in a single stock. it's just not what stash is there for. if somebody wants to buy gamestop, we do provide education, we provide a lot of guidance and advice around what is the risk around the exposure you're going to have and what is volatility and we teach it to you so you can get a good understanding of what happens if it goes down or if it goes up. and so we are seeing a lot of

people own it, but it's definitely not the only thing they're buying what's really cool is a lot of people come because they're interested in some of the meme stocks but they end up buying something that's very diversified or buy varied investments. the 100 plus million people in america that are not investing find out they can do it. quite frankly it's invig rating for people to know they can start building wealth not only in their futures and their retirement accounts, but their kids accounts. >> what is there that recent buyers of stocks become sellers. one is if the reopening goes well and they have other places to put their money and, secondly, if those people experience significant losses that get kind of locked in for the first time that in a way perhaps over the last year hasn't been the case. >> yeah, i think for a lot of people, especially a lot of

financial companies, if you're thinking super short term, you're probably going to get that type of thinking. for us from day one from the second you come onto stash, we talk about long-term investing we might actually be one of the few financial advisers that does not want you to put a lot of money at one time. we'd much rather you put small amounts of money and build wealth and investment for 5, 10, 20 years that's what we focus on at stash. it's really important because long-term investing is the best way to create wealth versus buying and selling and buying and selling and buying and selling. so with what we're dealing with in this country right now, with how bad the financial situation was for so many people, even before covid and it got a lot worse with covid, it showed to me people, how unprepared they were financially and so myself and all the amazing people that work at stash are most excited about introducing long-term thinking and wealth creation, which is

why we're more than a fin tech cap, we're really becoming a lifestyle brand that really plays into helping people create better financial lives for themselves. >> brandon, thank you for joining us we appreciate it. >> thank you so much i appreciate it. >> we are closing in on the top of the hour, just minutes away from gamestop's results, so we'll preview what to watch next in the market zone as well as the close with 18 minutes or so left of the session, we are down 350 points on the dow

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coverage going into the close. mike santoli is here to break down the crucial moments of the trading day and we have shannon with us as well. let's kick things off with the broader markets. stocks selling off into the close. we are down now almost 4% on the russell 2000 of small caps the dow is down 340 points essentially the s&p and nasdaq all down 1%. mike, there's a little bit of everything down today, particularly those small caps. i guess that's partly exposure to the likes of financials and materials. >> right it's a risk appetite gauge and also the repository for the most speculative stuff that we've seen in this market. i've pointed out a couple of times some of the largest holdings a week ago it was the most overbought in its history the russell 2000 was so i think there's some rethinking on the pacing of this reopening trade. people got a little overcommitted perhaps in the short term to some of the cyclicals. at the same time, late in the

month we had this sort of ammunition for a sizeable rebalancing out of equities into fixed income late in each month the past three months you've had a minor gut check, at least 4% or 5% pullback don't know if that's what we're in for here but all of those things put together is what is happening. yields coming down is not helping because there's some hesitation around the pacing of the cyclical recovery here. >> shannon, i think financials and energy are two of your favorite groups that you think are going to be leading this market so on a day like today where they're among the hardest hit, are you a buyer? >> so, i'm not surprised necessarily that we're seeing a pullback we certainly like financials better than energy, but i do think energy will perform pretty well i don't disagree at all with what mike said we think that this reflationary rebound is for real. but if you look at the last three or four weeks, it does seem like some of it's been pulled forward based on

expectations of a really sharp and probably much better than expected rebound in gdp, coupled with this infrastructure package. i think part of this is, is that if you look at some of the announcements about this infrastructure package and how it's going to be paid for, i think there is a little bit of hesitancy given the fact that it's going to be offset by some pretty meaningful tax increases. so is it a little bit too much too fast perhaps. are we looking at potentially a rebalance into the end of the quarter? there's opportunities here certainly with rates pulling back for those investors who maybe haven't made a play in financials yet there's a number of really strong banks that you can pick up in your portfolio on today's like today it might be a nice way to add to those financials positions ahead of what could be a really nice next few months for those stocks. >> let's talk about more of the backdrop federal reserve chair powell and treasury secretary janet yellen made their first joint appearance on capitol hill

today. they testified about the current state of the economy powell weighed in on how the fed does plan to respond in the event of rising inflation. listen >> our most basic tools are here to try to achieve price stability. those principally are interest rates and moving interest rates up and down. as i mentioned a few minutes ago, though, our best exami expectation is there will be modest upward prices but we do have those tools and we'll use them >> does the market buy that, shannon? modest increase in inflation that won't be lasting? >> i don't know if the market buys it, but i think from an economic perspective you should be buying it, right? this is clearly going to be a tr transitory period of inflation if you're looking at things like commodity inflation, particularly in areas like

lumber, if you think about where the commodity super cycle burst in 2005 and 2006, some of these stocks are really looking ahead to expect a similar super cycle to be building and i don't necessarily see that and so if you think about inflation being transitory and you think about the basket that the fed actually looks at, i think you need to look past the next three or four quarters out into 2022 to really get a gauge on when you think the fed will be less accommodative. i don't think they want to move too early. we saw the ecb do that in 2011 and i think they're going to be very hesitant about doing it here. >> mike, dollar rallying today because of some of those comments or just a typical bounce-back in yields down, bonds being bought >> i think it's much more about defensive trade in general going across asset classes definitely not a fed trade here. i don't think powell said anything that wasn't already in the baseline assumption, including the fact that everybody expects a statistical bump in inflation.

pretty much everybody thinks it won't snowball into something big but that does leave open the possibility for periodic scares and makes people be a little more careful about what multiple they assume the stocks they own are going to trade at or the stocks they want to buy will trade at we've already seen multiple compression. we're under 22 times, we were above 23 a while back because earnings were going up so all of these things along with the market that keeps pumping out new equity offerings, i think all that stuff is in the mix right now in terms of why the market isn't as aggressive in terms of running up in the face of all of these issues after a 70% run in 12 months. oil prices under pressure again. pippa stevens joins us with all the details. quite a big, solid intraday sell-off here, pippa. >> yeah, that's right, wilf. demand concerns once again sending oil prices tumbling. wti futures dropping more than 6% and settling under $58 per barrel, the lowest level since

early february the contract also broke below its 50-day moving average for the first time since november. brent crude also sliding around 6% today lockdowns in europe weighing on prices, sparking fears of near term demand weakness looking ahead, tomorrow we'll get more u.s. inventory data and it's expected to show a draw after four straight weeks of increases. that's according to a survey so that report will no doubt be market moving. i'll send it back to you. >> pippa, thanks so much for that shannon, where are you on these names. a bit of a buying opportunity in the banks. what about energy if it continues its pullback >> i think we need to see a more meaningful pullback in these energy names we're talking a lot about the demand aspect. i think you need to look at the supply aspect. if you're looking at 2021 in general and you were looking at it in terms of energy inventories, you were still thinking that we were probably going to be oversupplied this year and so i think that there is going to be some near term

movement here. but if we're going to shake out with oil levels around where they are today, maybe slightly higher, you know, some of these stocks have probably come too far too fast so i would be looking for a little bit more weakness in oil prices in order to get really excited about energy just given where we are today, because i do think that more supply is going to come online in the second half of the year, just given the number of participants on the supply market today versus 10 or 15 years ago >> how do you read oil right now, mike? do you see it as just a tell on demand for how fast the global economy is going to snap back? and did it get too optimistic on that front >> i think that's basically right. it became a little momentum in the source of hot money once it did break out above $60 in wti not that long ago and then it became more sensitive, i think, to any sense that you weren't going to have this huge surge immediately in demand coming back so all those things are definitely in the mix.

it traded like a risk asset, like a cyclical play and that's where we have it right here. it really hasn't done a whole lot of damage to the trend out there or is not really saying that the world economy is falling apart, it's just really a little bit of a stutter step in what we thought in terms of how fast demand is coming back. >> i just want to show you the dow, a little under 7 minutes to go down 318 points. we have taken a spill in the final hour of trade, down a full percent. the biggest losers, boeing, caterpillar, goldman sachs, disney the cyclic a.mal plays are undea lot of pressure today. that's a similar story for the s&p where utilities, staples and real estate are working but materials, industrials and energy are lagging investors are about to see their first quarterly results from gamestop since the stock skyrocketed more than 900% during the retail investor

frenzy kate rooney with a preview for us kate. >> hey, sara, one big thing to watch today is the disconnect between wall street and reddit traders on gamestop. the average analyst price target just $14.64 with not a single buy rating yet gme was trading near $200 this week. webbush's michael pacter says there's nothing executives could say about the quarter to justify those prices today is all about the earnings call analysts plan to ask about that volatility in january, which executives have yet to comment on there's also intense interest from wall street and wall street bets about board member and chewy founder ryan cohen and his digital turn-around plan back to you guys. >> kate rooney, that is going to be exciting to watch thank you. mike, we're going to get a glimpse of the fundamental story here the question, i guess, is whether fundamentals matter. >> well, fundamentals matter in

terms of how they can be recast in terms of opportunity for some kind of strategic confirmation the disconnect is what the stock has been up to and what people are saying this company can become and the actual business, which is 5,000 stores, really reliant on things like selling secondhand games and collectibles there's a lot of things you have to assume to get anywhere close. a real mismatch between what the market has thought of this stock and what the insiders have you see all these executive departures clearly they weren't with the program of what's supposedly to come based on what the new investors have to say. also a lot of the board of directors and insiders were selling in january in the 20s and 30s. nobody saw this coming they have 5,000 stores this is still something to be worked through on a fundamental basis. price-to-sales ratio is 2.3 times. it spent most of the last several years under 0.2 times

sales so this is not based on anything we can observe. >> shannon, does gamestop have the same ability it had to derail the rest of the market or is everyone a little bit more aware and better positioned and prepared if it is volatile still going forward? >> i think the market is better positioned i think it came as a surprise, particularly in some of these stocks that just the veracity of the moves that we experienced and the velocity of the capital moving in and out of these names. i don't expect there to be kind of a -- i expect this disconnect to persist a bit on gamestop if you look at foot traffic, clearly it's up from last year we'll get a decent number quarter over quarter as it relates to foot traffic, but i also think they're completely looking ahead to this digital transformation and i think that from that perspective if you're buying the stock because, you know, there's been this story around it, i

don't know how much the fundamentals are really going to matter this afternoon. and just from a fundamental perspective, thinking about the amount of c suite turnover that's been experienced here, they have to be on a new path. so does it really even matter about the 5,000 stores and the foot traffic, because nobody that built that business is really going to be in their seat in six months anyway so i'm not as worried about the volatility, although i think it will crop up in other areas frankly over the next couple of months. >> two minutes left on the session. what are the internals showing us >> below the surface is looks worse than the headline indexes. look at the split of volume on the new york stock exchange. not too far from being 90% to the downside that's often sort of a sign of real heavy selling pressure out there people use as a threshold to gauge these things. we mentioned before the reopening type trades are under a lot of pressure. that's been the case the past couple of days where the work-from-home stuff is bouncing you see the leisure and

entertainment etf, good proxy for people's enthusiasm about traveling and going out, down 6% week to date and work from home is kind of flat. microsoft, amazon google are defensive plays holdings up to try to keep the s&p a little more supported the volatility index has paumd we were receding down below 20 a few closes below there at 19 or so. here we are popping back up, 21 is realized volatility today it's a little too high to maintain that downtrend in the vix, sara. >> less than one minute left to go before the close. 10-year note yield, 1.61 treasuries get a bid for a change but that hasn't been the trend. that is not helping booflt st boost stocks boeing is the biggest drag taking 47 points off the dow disney, caterpillar, am gen are all the losers pga, united health hold up the best in the s&p 500 which is lower, we're seeing the hardest hit

sectors, materials down 2%, industrials also down 1.7% energy as well utilities, staples and real estate are the best performers s&p down three-quarters of a percent at the close tech, nasdaq, is hit even harder, down even 1% and the small caps getting slammed the hardest. russell 2000 ending the day down 3.5%. welcome to "the closing bell " i'm wilfred frost along with sara eisen assayera said, the russell 2000 down 3.6% today. flae the dow was down 1% utilities the only significantly green sector, up 1.5 two other sectors higher and eight were lower materials, industrials, financials and health care all down more than 1%. energy too also down more than 1% all eyes now turning to

gamestop's quarterly results as the company's first report since the retail revolution sent the stock soaring 900% this year we'll bring you the numbers as soon as they are released. plus the ceo on take two interactive on gamestop's results. shannon is still with us and mona joins us conversation mike santoli, to you, first of all. i guess this slide that we're seeing, interesting on a day of a bit of bond buying and you have been pointing to that rebalancing that perhaps would come due at the end of the month. >> right we had the setup for essentially just this mechanic al allocation shift out of equities into fixed income it's definitely something that looms out there in the final week of a quarter. people do expect it. we are seeing some of that activity but also just this idea that we've had some muting of the expectations for how quickly -- how imminent this

economic acceleration is, whether because of the global reimposed restrictions or people feeling like they got ahead of themselves with the cyclical trade. what's really interesting today and what changed the complexion of the market was yields going back down and there was not a broad comprehensive buy in large cap growth it really was only software and true defensives like consumer staples. so some of that choreography in order to keep the overall market up we're two-thirds of a percent from the s&p before getting worried about breaking trends and support levels. >> what felt different today is usually when you see lower yields, that's been a positive at least for tech stocks today had the feel of more of a growth scare where the trend lately has been a growth scare but on the upside. today with lower yields, sharply weaker oil prices, lower cyclical groups, it felt like there was concern about actual growth what drove that?

>> it was interesting. i do think today's move was a fear of the reopening being stalled. we're hearing more about variants here in the u.s some states now seeing covid trends rising again and in europe they're struggling with not only reopening but getting the vaccine rollout in some sort of good shape. and so certainly we saw the reopening plays really take a hit today. but even some of the tech plays that really do thrive on a reopening in a more cyclical sectors of tech outside of software really took a hit as well where we did see the strength interestingly was in the bond proxy sectors that do well when bonds tend to do well. so with the treasury yield back at 1.61, down 8 basis points, those are the only sectors that held up nicely certainly we think this is part of the ebb and flow of this reopening process. we do think the u.s. will continue to experience a robust reopening going forward. and so any kind of opportunities you get perhaps over the next

week or so where we see a pause in the reopening play could be an interesting tactical opportunity we think still. >> shannon, clearly everyone is expecting a big global gdp bounceback this year but are there a few more risks that people aren't focusing on, including global trade >> i think that there are some nuanced concerns, and trade is a big one. you look at what this manufacturing rebound has looked like over the last seven or eight months here in the united states, you look at the philly fed print from last week, the best print since 1973 or 1974, i can't remember the exact year, and so we've really been driven to be insulated somewhat from the slower consumer recovery here as well as in china by this manufacturing rebound. and i think the tenor of global trade is starting to improve, but we're definitely not out of the woods and it's not clear what the biden administration's china path will look like. it doesn't look all that different right now from the previous administration act the

twitter aspect of that but i think that as we look over the next six to nine months, we certainly want to make sure that that manufacturing rebound is continuing because that will help with some of the support for the cyclical exposure that a lot of investors have added to their portfolios over the last three or four months. >> mona, you mentioned some of the concerns around the pace of reopening and getting back to strong growth. germany, hard lockdown over the easter holiday weekend, extending their shutdown basically for three more weeks to fight this third wave of covid infections can the u.s. market rally if much of europe is still locked down and delayed >> yeah, you know, it's interesting. last year in 2020 i do think the u.s. was that flight to safety asset class. we had the exposure to the covid winners, more liquidity perhaps, but u.s. equities and u.s. bonds outperformed the global market this year a lot of investors came in thinking perhaps we'd

see a reversal in that if global growth started to accelerate, if reopenings across the globe were coordinated through the summer but now we're starting to see a dichotomy once again, where u.s. what we're calling exceptionalism may once again come to the forefront, at least in the next couple of quarters certainly we had china come into this crisis first, now re-emerging out of the crisis first, but perhaps their growth rates or peak growth rates are now behind them. really it's the u.s. that has become front and center in the global reopening story with china ahead of us and europe behind us. and that could be certainly a driver for, once again, u.s. asset classes, being a winner in the near term. >> shannon, in terms of sectors looking forward, health care is one of your top picks? >> yeah, it's certainly a surprise to see a lack of enthusiasm for health care over the course of the last few months i understand that there is this drug price overhang and clearly

there's going to be a bipartisan effort to keep drug prices under control here in the united states but if you think about just the aspects of reopening, if you think about an increase in procedures, if you think about the potential for, you know, greater enrollment for a company like unh, which sara mentioned earlier is having a good day today, i think that there are a lot of opportunities across the health care space. you look at areas like health care technology, there are definitely opportunities within health care, and i think it's kind of stuck in a no man's land right now where it's always sort of in the middle of the pack and so i think you can be very selective here and hitch your wagon to the reopening trade but do it through names that can benefit from this bump-up in procedures and enrollment through the back half of the year. >> mona, what's your favorite sector pick right now? >> yeah, it's interesting. we still are believers in the value rotation if you haven't layered in some

cyclicality, we encourage investors to do. we have a robust reopening ahead of us. areas like financial will do well as yields perhaps continue to rise. we do think we could see the 10-year start to grind higher once again certainly areas like energy have had a nice run, but now that we've seen a little bit of a sell-off, there could be catch-up there in addition to that, we look to some of the biden administration plays. areas like infrastructure, which certainly will come to the forefront in the months ahead or even weeks ahead at this point they're part of the reopening, they're part of an infrastructure package that could be interesting keep in mind clean energy, an area that really had robust returns back half of last year, early this year, had all sold off and are secular growth plays so we think for longer term investors that's another one if you can pick up at a discount here could be interesting. certainly financials, parts of energy, both old school energy and renewable clean energy and

industrials particularly infrastructure, all areas we like. >> it's been working for most of the year, not today, though. mona, thank you. good to see you. we'll hit some earnings here adobe just out let's go to josh lipton for those numbers. josh >> so, sara, adobe reporting q1 results. 314 on the bottom, that's compared to $2.78. revenue is 26% to $3.91 billion compared to a forecast at $3.76 billion. they're looking for eps of 281 versus expectations of $2.70 and they're looking for revenue they say of $3.72 billion slightly above estimates. for the year they're looking for eps of $11.85 versus expectations of $11.26 and revenue $15.45 billion is what they're guiding versus expectations of $15.2 billion. they are saying adobe drove record q1 revenue. he said they're raising their annual targets based around what

he calls tremendous opportunity across our business and our continued confidence in our global execution they also do announce that cfo john murphy will be retiring this year. back to you all. >> josh, thanks so much for that shannon, you're a holder of this one. what do you make of these numbers? >> very pleased. you know, with this -- this stock is actually somewhat underperformed i've been surprised at the performance of the stock given the importance of digital marketing in this environment and the fact that this is really a company that has very little -- or very high barriers to entry and really no competition in what they focus on and so i think as we look forward over the next three or four quarters, part of this move to work from home and do more business digitally is going to stay, and i think a company like adobe is well situated to be able to take advantage of it so pleased with this this is one of the higher conviction holdings in my portfolio actually and so we

certainly think this has legs on it for the next several quarters >> any moment now we should get the numbers from gamestop. it's trading a little lower in after hours trading, mike. first earnings report since the reddit-fueled trading frenzy around this name we're going to get a peek at the fundamental story. there's also a lot of chatter about whether the company will tap into the very high stock price to raise money by selling stock. what can you tell us about that? they'll be able to do that after earnings, right? >> well, they will they certainly could have done it up to now all they had to do was preannounce some financials and update the numbers and they could have hit the bid that the market was offering them in terms of the valuation they had a while back there's been a lot of consternation as to why the company didn't do it one thing to keep in mind, it's not an amc type situation where they desperately needed capital because they're burning cash very fast and it was nip and tuck so there was a little difference there yeah, they might offer some stock. they may just come out with, you know, broader strategic plans,

we really don't know i think a lot of gamestop shareholders are going to be here for the first-ever financial results they have ever seen from this company because so much volume turned over in this name in the last couple of months >> it is a major event and we are going to be all over it any moment from now. shannon, thanks for joining us today. good to talk to you. we're still awaiting those gamestop numbers up next, mike santoli looking at the surge in mergers and acquisitions over the last few quarters what that means for the market plus, the ceo of take two interactive on gamestop's results and his new deal that he just made. also the new golf game with tiger woods. a lot to stock to strauss zelnick about. stick with "closing bell."

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still awaiting those gamestop numbers in the meantime let's go back to mike santoli who's been looking at corporate deal making which we've seen, mike, is back on the rise i think $40 billion of deals announced yesterday. >> this theme has been building for a while. this is the quarterly totals the first quarter this year not yet over we still have a few days in it but we are at a $3 trillion annual pace for u.s. based targets of m & a this is a feature of bull markets and how it works, but you are seeing a little more in the way of strategic horizontal mergers. chubb trying to buy hartford

we saw news of this railroad deal for kansas city southern this week. even the regionalbank deal, m t and peoples bank old sectors feeling like they have economic tailwinds. this represents about 8% of total u.s. market cap at this pace if we kept it up throughout the whole year so at this point i don't think it's necessarily something that you're going to see really recede because you have the capital markets very accommodating, very good credit conditions and of course high stock prices for currency at least for now, guys. >> are you saying it's a bullish sign that these executives can see now to the other side and have the confidence to grow their businesses >> yeah. >> who would have thought one year after this companies would be in this position where they're making deals it feels like yesterday when they were suspending buybacks and refrenching and layoffs and cost cuts. >> that's the way it goes. conditions have to lead the way here

no ceo is going to say my competition is really cheap, their stock is in the gutter, i'm going to have to buy it. it's much more when confidence seems to return to executive suites that this stuff starts to happen it can keep rolling, along with the bull market for a while until it really kinds of jumps the shark. i don't think we've seen that yet. >> mike, thanks so much. take two teeing off a big deal with tiger woods to make golf video games up next, the company's ceo on how that partnership will impact the company's bottom line. plus we'll get his hot take on nfts. why microsoft may have the perfect fit for its video game business that's coming up on "closing bell." driver in peytonville. takes a lot of work and effort to be the safest driver in peytonville. what about this guy? with nationwide smartmiles®, the less he drives, the less he pays. the list of inspiring stories goes on and on.

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...and learn how much you can save at xfinitymobile.com/mysavings. it should be coming any minute now gamestop earnings not yet on the tape we are waiting they turned higher after hours, up 1.5%. remember, this is the first earnings report from this company since we saw that massive interest and retail trading activity fueled by reddit and social media that sent the stock sharply higher this year. as for what we're going to learn, well, fundamentals should have improved. last quarter same-store sales for gamestop were down 25%

obviously it was hit by covid, mall closures, but this is a company that's been trying to engineer a turn-around the retail traders will be looking for any signs that it's happening and that ryan cohen, who's now a board member and taken an activist positionin trying to make this an e-commerce company and focusing more on customer service as he did so well with chewy is a good bet, because that has been part of the story here. so we are hoping to learn a lot, including about some recent executive departures just today. another high-level departure after the cfo left a few weeks ago. >> and one feels like as we were discussing earlier this is one of those earnings report where the numbers will be focused on but perhaps the long-term guidance and vision for the company might be more important. the other thing i was going to say as well, mike, it's amazing to think that this is the first earnings report since all the craziness and that all of that was only a matter of weeks ago it feels like we've been through years since then

>> two months ago. created this entire kind of rethink of how the trading system works in this country if you think about all the implications of what was going on during that time, just the intensity of all that activity and that stampede into the stock and then back out of it, pretty remarkable all the same, for a stock that really had been, along with a lot of other mall chain retailers, just kind of left to the side by the way, many of them have revived based on fundamental expectations like gap and l brands, not nearly to the degree of gamestop which seems to have been a phenomenon of its own. >> well, i think there's an activist story here, right, mike that's, i think, where the fundamentals could line up for what's happening maybe not to the extent that the valuation has soared into the multi billion dollars from the hundred million dollars of where it was last year, but there is that catalyst and that potential, i think, for a turn-around, which will be interesting to hear, right >> it will be interesting to

hear i think a lot of it is just people trying to decipher kind of the body language of ryan cohen. it's by no means been very much a pointed activist campaign where they say this is exactly what we want to see. it's obviously a very involved investor and director right now, but i don't think that there's a real sense of what the campaign is that's what we want to hear today. but also you have the unusual circumstance of it being an extraordinarily crowded short, and therefore leaving itself open to have this kind of squeeze higher which itself just sort of fed on the upside and created just this entire phenomenon around it that was just not about the business principally. >> from gamestop to one of the top game stoppers in take two, let's bring in strauss zelnick strauss, thank you for joining us as you know, we're waiting for this gamestop numbers so forgive us if we peel away mid-interview, we were expecting them before this interview.

>> great to be here. >> i was going to start more broadly on take two, but given that we were just discussing gamestop, how closely have you been watching this saga? of course it's a company i imagine you know fairly well. >> we know the company as a operating matter very well as a stock speculation we don't know it all that well and i don't think the way it's traded has reflected its fundamentals for quite some time. >> in the future do you expect that games manufacturers like yourself will always be straight to the consumer and won't maybe need a retailer as much as in the past >> new york city not necessarily. all of us are working on direct-to-consumer offerings of course you can buy directly from take-two and from our competitors. now, we value our retail relationships, whether they're physical retail or digital retail and they will absolutely continue because we want to be where the consumer is. the issue for gamestop is just the transition from physical goods to digital goods and we're

seeing that in the industry. over time i suspect that the business will largely be digitally distributed. >> final one on gamestop, strauss, so do you think they can pull off a turn-around and be a real e-commerce retailer? >> they have a great management team i absolutely think they can do that the question is even in success, does the valuation currently make sense, and i'll leave that as a question. >> strauss, let's get back to your core business i guess we've been talking today about various reopening trades and if they pull back a bit and of course great expectations of a big economic rebound, which we hope materializes. when that does materialize and things do reopen, does your broad business area see a bit of a pullback in terms of engagement >> one might have thought so we certainly did benefit from people sheltering at home. it's challenging to talk about a benefit when so many people face so many difficulties, personal and professional, during this

time the truth is, though, we did see an uptick in our demand. however, as things began to open up in the summertime, we didn't see a reduction in demand. many people, including a leading media consultancy, demand will be 14% higher than pre-pandemic. we are not seeing any softening in overall demand and i think that's a reflection of a real systemic shift in favor of interactive entertainment. i think people's eyes were opened by sheltering at home to the fact that we don't just offer great entertainment, great characters, great stories, great game play, great graphics, we actually offer an opportunity to engage with your friends while you're experiencing our titles >> i wanted to ask about the new deal and the golf play here, strauss. the partnership with tiger woods, which interestingly was announced less than a month after his horrible car accident.

i assume that the deal and the release were all worked out before that happened have you spoken to him he is set to be a part, right, of the development of this game? >> he's executive director of the title going forward. yes, the arrangement was well in the works before the tragic accident we wish tiger well and a speedy recovery we understand that he is doing very well and we're really excited about his engagement with the 2k golf series, pga tour 2k 21 was incredibly success. it's the fastest selling golf game i think for the last ten years. and we have high hopes and we're thrilled that tiger will be exclusively tied to the 2k golf series. >> i wanted to ask strauss about nfts, your view on them broadly and how they might be applied and how attractive they'll be to video games. >> well, i think any time you see people speculating on something, it's easy to be

skeptical. but there's nothing specifically troublesome about an nft by definition, it creates rarity there's only one singular individual nft, and you can be guaranteed of that because it exists in the block chain. so in the same way that people will acquire a rare coin or rare baseball card or rare work of art, you can understand why they would acquire a rare digital good and nfts allow you to do that in a digital way. i think certain things are trading that over time may not prove to be as valuable to consumers as they seem to be right now. again, i think what's driving a lot of the interest is speculation. while there's always an element of speculation in the collectibles business, ultimately you should be buying something that you think has an intrinsic value over a long period of time and i think it's too early in that business to say that's where we are now. >> by the way, gamestop earnings are out. the stock is higher of hours by

3% we're digging through the release and will get you more as soon as we have it it looks like a 6.5% increase in same-store sales we have to mention the roadblocks, ipo and what we've seen from fortnite and the idea there are virtual worlds where concerts are happening and brands are advertising and activating are you part of that do you see that as a fad or is this really the new trend in your world >> well, rock star games, grand theft auto online is probably the definition of a metaverse if you like that term i'm not sure i do. seven years after its initial release, we have more players than ever before, and we're setting a record for its revenues so that's an active, engaging, living, breathing world where people can play the game, play parts of the game, or just interact with each other within

the game's four walls and those four walls are pretty wide that's true to a limited extent but a growing extent of the city in nba 2k. so we definitely believe that people want to enjoy interactive entertainment with other people, and that can involve playing the title, so in the case of basketball, playing a simulation of basketball and at the same time engaging in the overall basketball experience, separate and apart from the simulation. and i think that's the definition of what people are talking about in the metaverse whether you're having conference calls in there or going to a concert, i think, is of lesser consequence. i think the fact that people are engaging with what we create and engaging with their own activities is what makes these living, breathing universes powerful and, yes, roadblocks is a great title, fortnite is a great title. they're our competitors. that doesn't make them any less great. >> strauss zelnick, thanks for

joining us, great to see you. gamestop's results have crossed. kate rooney has got them for us. hey, kate. >> hey there, wilf a slight miss but the stock is up about 5%. they also had another executive announcement this comes after two c suite executives have left they announced the appointment of a new technology officer -- excuse me, a chief operating officer, technology veteran jenna owens joining gamestop here the ceo saying that february comps for gamestop were up 23% he mentioned strength in hardware sales eps came in about a penny shy of estimates. revenues also just shy of estimates at $2.12 billion digital sales up 175% year over year an those digital sales made up about 34% of total sales. margins did decline about 600 basis points as well guys, you don't see this every day. gamestop's earnings call appears

to be at maximum capacity. it's already filled up we just tried to log in and it says the event you are attempting to reach has reached max capacity please try again later so a lot of interest from the reddit crowd and retail traders looking to join this earnings call which kicks off around 5:00 p.m. eastern. >> i doubt that will ever happen to any of the stocks that we cover, sara. >> who would have thought, gamestop no i've never not been allowed into an earnings call kate rooney, kate, thank you for more on these numbers, let's bring in anthony on the phone, joseph feldman as well thank you for joining us you know, another number i wanted to pull apart, global e-commerce sales increased 191%, joseph it represented 30% of net sales. that's a big part of the turn-around bull thesis. what do you make of the numbers? >> yeah. i mean that's been pretty consistent from what we've seen from a lot of retailers this

holiday season it's what we expected. people have shifted towards online spending and that makes sense. i know this is a bull part of the reddit thesis, those investors out there, but that's not because of that thesis they're expecting ryan cohen and all the changes that he's supposed to make to come in the future that has nothing to do with this fourth quarter this fourth quarter was basically in line with what they said it was going to be. your earnings hit, the controlled inventory a lot of the things they have done, closing stores, controlling inventory. the cfo, jim bell, who's on his way out the door had a big role impacting all of that. so we'll see what will come in 2021 >> have you been talking to the company throughout this? they have been -- they have not come on cnbc they have not been addressing the stock surge. they have not done a secondary offering as a lot of people expected, joseph what are they -- are you talking to them? are they telling you anything? >> they are very tight-lipped. they have been very tight-lipped

about this whole situation they don't really want to get into what's going on they are trying to just stick to their strategy and become more consumer oriented, more digital, and really going after the consumer in that way, which is a shift that we're all talking about, becoming a more digital company, less reliant on physical, and yet the company has not really talked much about what they want to do they have not talked about accessing the capital equity markets to raise some cash they have not talked about anything they might acquire to accelerate their transition and transformation from the current status that they're in so i know there's a lot of hope out there, but we need to see really what they're thinking about and how they're planning to make this transition. >> anthony, what are you going to be listening out for on the earnings call, if indeed you've got a place on it? >> i will be listening to how they're going to pull a ranbbit out of a hat and turn this into a viable company that justifies

anything close to its valuation. unlike joe, i no longer cover the company so i don't have to say nice things about them this is not a good quarter comps were up 6.5% that was against down 26%. so on a two-year basis comps were down 20%. earnings were up on an adjusted basis with new consoles that just came out. these are not good numbers they are not good numbers and don't justify this valuation like i said, i will be looking for the magic beans, the pixie dust, whatever you want to call it. >> we've got to get more ex-analysts back on. get brutal honesty here. up 8% after hours. anthony, what is this stock worth? >> so when i dropped coverage of the company in january, i had a $10 price target 1-0. this stock is not worth anything close to where it is trading let's put this in perspective. right now gamestop has a larger market cap than five below, and

floor and decor. i bring those companies up because they have great concepts that are growing, that are profitable, that have positive comps. by the way, i'm not real worried about anybody digitally downloading 4x6 subway tile any time soon. it's nonsensical >> joseph, quick final word? >> yeah, i think anthony is exactly right, quite honestly. i have an underperform rating on the company, and i'm at a $33 price target, which is the most bullish on the street of all the analysts back in the heyday when they hit prior cycles, maybe you saw the stock get up to $60, $70, nothing close to where it is do. i think anthony is right, it's not trading on fundamentals at all. it's a hope and a prayer that there's this magic pixie dust that will make things change for the company. >> gentlemen, thank you for joining us up about 8% in after hours trade. amazon just naming a new ceo ofts i aws business.

we'll have those details when we return i'm searching for info on options trading,

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we have some breaking news on amazon. more management changes. deirdre bosa with the details. >> hey, sara, that's right amazon has named its next cloud boss as current chief andy jasy gets ready to take over the top position from jeff bezos later this year, so it will be adam salipski he will be the next ceo of aws

this is a unit with amazon that has a more than $50 billion run rate it is the number one player in the cloud space. jassey notes what while he's coming back, he's not a new face he was hired back in 2005. after more than a decade he left to run tableau in 2016 it was then acquired by salesforce he stayed on with salesforce, became part of its executive leadership team. so now he is going back to amazon jassey says that that happens on may 17th he said that he and salipski will spend several weeks together transitions before jassey takes over at that top job for bezos and salipski takes over that cloud job. this is one of the most important jobs in the cloud space, if not the most because amazon has just become a force to be reckoned with. it had an early headstart in this business and just dominated the field. microsoft and google have been

trying to catch up ever since, so it's a very big position. and likely a loss for salesforce marc benioff has sung his praises and called the acquisition of tableau possibly one of the best software acquisitions of all time. >> yeah, we saw that in the stock as well of salesforce. what's happening with aws, the cloud business it has had such a tremendous run and been the profit engine of this company what's happening to that growth rate as more competition comes from microsoft and google? >> so that growth rate is moderating last quarter, i believe, q4 of 2020, growth of 28%, which has come down over the years, but many would attribute this to the law of large numbers this business is so much bigger than we see at google and microsoft and others so still the dominant player. it's moved from infrastructure, building the data centers and

servers in the cloud to more services for companies, and that's sort of where the next sort of edge or the next phase of the cloud wars is happening so it's an incredibly important time as that competition is heating up but i think many would say that salipski is very well equipped having been one of the first vps ever hired at aws and just seen and regarded so highly within this industry. so it will be interesting to see if benioff has anything to say about this i think he probably had big plans over at salesforce and it does sort of raise questions about succession at amazon i know andy jassey is just coming into the position later this year but amazon has lost several of its key veteran executives over the last year or so, including jeff wilke there's still people there like dave clark, but with selipsky

going back, it could raise questions about his future there too. >> i guess they can get them back, some of those high-profile departures really good context. thank you, deirdre bosa. we do have some breaking news on robinhood. kate rooney with the details. >> robinhood has confidentially filed for an ipo with the s.e.c. this is according to sources familiar with the matter robinhood did decline to comment, but sources also told cnbc in recent weeks that robinhood has picked the nasdaq for its listing venue. this of course is one of the most highly anticipated ipos of the year and to put it in context, the company has seen a ton of growth during this retail boom. it was last valued around $12 billion. i'm also told by sources that the price tag at listing could be up to four times that amounting. but again, robinhood on its way to an ipo, confidentially filing with the s.e.c guys, back to you. >> thanks so much for that one, kate goldman sachs meantime taking new steps to help

burnt-out bankers and now citi is doing the same. find out if the company's new zoom-free fridaywis ll create a healthier work environment we'll discuss all of that coming up next. when a hailstorm hit, he needed his insurance to get it done right, right away. usaa. what you're made of, we're made for. usaa hey, dad! usaa. what you're made of, we're made for. hey, son! no dad, it's a video call. you got to move the phone in front of you like..like it's a mirror, dad. you know?

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we're back time for a cnbc news update. rahel solomon has it for us. >> hello, everyone the pentagon says it has been asked to house migrant children at two bases in texas. it's the first request sent to the pentagon during the biden administration the impeachment investigation into governor cuomo will likely take months. state lawmakers say it will take that long to interview witnesses and examine documents. in israel, election workers are setting up in hospitals so patients can cast their votes. israel is holding their fourth national election in the last two years. exit polls indicate no clear winner. and a banksy painting at set a new record for an artist the aptly named game-changer sold for more than $23 million the auction took place in london on the same day that britons marked the anniversary of the first national lockdown. that money going to health care

organizations and charities across the uk. i'll send it back to you. >> rahel, thank you. >> i was saying it's worth exactly a third of beeples painting i'd rather have that one personally. >> same. and much more sent nemental, i think. although the beeple painting more of the times. actually not necessarily >> you have something to actually put on your wall for that money rahel, thanks. up next, $10 billion that's how much microsoft could reportedly pay for chat app scd. whit could be a good fit for the tech giant, next ♪♪ in boxing or any other business, one day, you're gonna take a hit you didn't see coming.

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microsoft reportedly in talks to buy the chat app discord for $10 billion, josh lipton with the story. >> that's right discord is a chat app design forward g-- designed for gamers. according to reports it has a whopping 140 million active users per month. makes money selling prescriptions to a premium service. it could make sense for

microsoft strategically and financially to expand microsoft's footprint in gaming a key focus for satya who dropped 8 merchandise for zemimax and microsoft could monetize this platform significantly. tough to see regulatory risk only potential pit fall it is a big investment and could certainly under perform. microsoft declined to comment on these reports. >> josh lipton thank you up next zoom free friday face-to-face work/life balance issues how leaders are responding straight ahead. gamestop still higher but coming back to earth a little bit to up 2.5% after hours the company confirming in its 10k that it has been evaluating whether to potentially offer more shares. that was one of the question marks with a massive surge in

the stock this year. "closing bell" will be right back

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tonight the colorado shooting, the latest on the investigation and acts of heroism. plus covid's lasting effects, the symptoms long haulers continue to fight. the facts, the news with shepard smith. 7:00 eastern cnbc. the coronavirus has brought work/life balance in corporate to the forefront of many conversations, critically group jane frazier is banning zoom calls on fridays to set healthy work/life balance, the bank instituting a holiday called citi reset day combat covid fatigue. similarly, microsoft workplace employees are struggling in conditions with large percentage leaving the company this year. the data found pandemic burn out is widespread.

54% say they're over worked. 39% say they're exhausted. managers 61% are thriving. interesting dichotomy on that microsoft survey citi is clearly saying no video calls on friday, internal ones, you can still have video calls with clients and you can still have voice calls not sure if other companies don't allow this but i already decline the video part of the call regularly in the morning call anyway. it's an interesting announcement i guess the pointing from the banks whether goldman sachs or citi group yesterday is that they're listening and responding i'm sure that's welcome from various members. >> yeah part of it is generational, and part of it is situational, with the remote routine. it's also cyclical i remember demands of friday and dry-cleaning paid for to some degree these things come back

around but clearly unique aspects of pandemic non-office work as well. >> women, what needs to happen is we need to go back to work to have more of a work/life balance. >> exactly. >> the life part hasn't been there. we can't go to dinners and movies or concerts and see friends and family that's where things are getting hard. >> for sure. i feel it's okay to decline the video part of the morning call because we're on video now that's hy. lovely to see you as always. that does it for "closing bell." "fast money" starts now. >> i'm melissa lee this is "fast money" today's trader lineup guy adami -- tonight we're all over gamestop stock hitting after hour lows since the early earnings report. the company's call is under way, it is at capacity but we're on it and bring you the highlights. plus light's out at disney sending operators tumbling today. later pete takin