their stock is elevated like it has been. >> you have to wonder if you were in viacom a week ago, do you get out and cult your losses here or pray and hope that it comes around >> what's crazy about this, there has been technical factors. these were short interest type stocks in the past as well so watch those. >> okay, dom, thank you. and thanks for watching "power lunch. >> great to be with you, rahel have a great weekend let's toss it over to wilfred and sara for "the closing bell." >> thank you so much i'm wilfred frost along with sara eisen stocks looking to close out a volatile week on a high note the dow and s&p 500 off their highs a little bit as we head towards the bell the nasdaq lower as you can see. let's have a look at the action. investors are digesting a number of pieces of economic data earlier consumer sentiment rose to a better than expected level in march and a key inflation metric matched estimates, perhaps easing some inflation

fears. oil prices are bouncing as a massive container ship remains wedged in the suez canal, raising oil supply concerns in the process. tech remains in focus as rates green higher tesla down about 5%. also dragging on the nasdaq, a widening sell-off for discovery and viacom, as the "power lunch" team just mentioned, they're both down now over 30% 59 minutes left in the session. coming up on the show today, cloudy with a chance of snow we'll talk to the ceo of snowflake and the president of salesforce about new cloud sales tools to help companies adjust to changes brought about by the pandemic and a whole lot more. scott black is naming names, bringing us two new picks that he likes at those levels we'll get those plus his take on all the volatility we've seen in the market nasdaq on track for a decline of 2% for the week. we'll start with china

chinese internet stocks under pressure baidu down 20% the s.e.c. moves to implement a new law that could force them to delist from u.s. exchanges let's bring in andy rothman and ian bremmer. if you add that up, ian, with what we've seen out of h & m, nike and adidas, some real anti-brand sentiment from china and chinese social media, state media there, it feels like it's a bad week for u.s./china tensions if you're expecting that to thaw during the biden administration am i right >> last week was worse anchorage definitely was a bigger problem i did think that yesterday's press conference by biden when he came out and said, hey, we organized -- and we're talking

about china but we don't know why it's upsetting the chinese is really clever we know exactly why it's upsetting the chinese. they really don't think the fact that we are trying to advance a coordinated policy of a u.s. ru rules-based system that we consider the chinese to be illegitimately in breach of. the chinese demand to be treated as equals sitting down at the table with the united states that's a pretty significant issue for us to butt heads over. and the willingness of the chinese to whack both u.s. corporations appearnd the europs more broadly in ways that they consider unacceptable on issues of domestic chinese sovereignty, like the uighurs, like hong kong, from their perspective, this is going to get worse, not better. >> andy, there is this issue of the new s.e.c. rule. we've seen some heavy declines, big selling in some of these chinese avrs which are stocks that trade in the u.s.

is there a risk that they get delisted >> there's a risk but i think there's also a dramatic overreaction to this week's press release by the s.e.c they were not responding to anything new from the biden administration, they were simply asking for comment to implement the law that was passed by congress in december the important thing to remember is that law doesn't call for delisting of chinese companies unless the biden administration and the chinese government can't revolve the audit issue over the next three years so it's not anything that's going to happen imminently i'm quite optimistic that there will be an agreement because it's in both sides' interest to solve this audit problem. >> andy, more broadly, are you surprised that we haven't seen slightly better easing of tensions since the change of power here in the u.s. and what did you make of the stories over the last week or so as it relates to nike following sanctions from u.s. allies on china? >> in some ways tensions have

been reduced if you look at the language, the rhetoric that the biden administration is using. two important things they stopped calling china an existential threat to the united states like the previous administration did they refer to china as a strong competitor, and that's important. and the other important thing is that the biden administration is not advocating regime change in china, which the past administration was doing so i think that lowers the tensions i am disappointed that we're not seeing more progress right now by ending the fulbright and peace corps programs, all of which would be in our interest i'm disappointed that that hasn't happened yet. >> we were just looking at some of the brands, ian, that are targeted right now in china and part of this campaign. how far do you think china, beijing, is willing to take this for a company like nike, for instance, they have been in the country for 40 years it makes up more than 20% of

their sales and even more of their profits. how far does this go >> it definitely gets worse because the chinese government is prepared to say to corporations and to governments around the world, you desperately need access to our market if you behave in ways that are unacceptable, we are going to punish you for that. this is going to become a much bigger issue in therun-up to the beijing olympics in february the u.s. government will increasing be telling, we see this from mitt romney and ted cruz telling corporations do not sponsor the beijing olympics the chinese saying if you pull out, you're going to go scratch in terms of access to the chinese market i do want to disagree with your other guest. i don't believe that the trump administration in any way was calling for regime change in china. i think one of the very fe bipa is china is the leading concern,

competitor and threat to the united states. a lot of our allies don't agree with that. continental europeans don't agree with that. but we're seeing an enormous amount of similarity and actual policy implementation of the biden administration and the trump administration the big difference is that the biden administration is actively trying to coordinate with allies in asia and europe and the chinese really don't like that so i'm not surprised that the trajectory of the relationship is worse we didn't see anything like the anchorage meeting while trump was president. it's gotten -- i would say right now u.s./china relations are probably at their worst point since the tiananmen square >> do you envision there being a major fight on the tech fight between the two countries at some point in the next decade? and is it plausible that the

u.s. might lose that fight >> i think the tech area is the greatest danger and market fallout that's coming. first of all, you've got a lot of major tech ceos that don't have access at all to the chinese data market so they're more than happy to be aggressive in saying in congress, for example, hey, don't regulate us at home. you need to be promoting us to beat the chinese certainly you look at mark zuckerberg's orientation publicly, it has been in that direction. then you see someone like elon musk who has been incredibly aggressive in going after the s.e.c. but incredibly solicitous in the way he's engaged with the chinese government because he does so much business in advanced technology in china i don't think that's sustainable. i think that a company like tesla in five years time is not going to be able to play talk out of both sides of their mouth that effectively >> on this topic, let's stay with this, andy and ian if you

would, because we have eunice yoon who's in bay yingeijing tot we've just been talking about some of the that the brands and the way the government is treating them. give us the latest on what's been happening woout of the government and out of the social media and consumers as you've been monitoring it. >> well, sweden's h & m is bearing the brunt of this outrage. the company has nearly disappeared on the internet here you can't search, for example, for the brand on ratings apps or map apps in order to find a physical store and then of course on the shopping sites for the past couple of days you haven't been able to find any clothing made by the company at all. so instead, i wanted to pull up a logo of a state media post that has been circulating online on social media. instead this is what you see when you see the letters h & m

it's a joke sayingthat h & m stands for hun mae which translates in chinese as beautiful. it's beautiful for stock prices of foreign companies to fall if they don't have the right stance from beijing's perspective on xinjiang this is what more than a dozen fi firms are facing many brands, many american, are bearing the brunt of this outrage. they are really being criticized by the public here for saying that they're even concerned about the possible use of forced labor in the production of xinjiang cotton. the government has been highly criticized and accused of using muslim minorities and forcing them to work in the production

of this cotton right now i think what would probably be seen as positive news is that not all of the h & m stores have been shut down in fact most of them are still open and nike stores as well as the other brands, all of their stores are open and those products are available online. so it's seen more as a warning shot to the west it's not yet a full-blown war as of now. >> andy, i wanted to ask a completely different question, which is the chinese markets more generally and their valuations, have we, a, experienced a big influx of retail investors in asia and china as we have in the u.s. over the last year or two and, b, how are the valuations of those chinese markets? >> i think one of the really important trends in the investment scene in china has been the rise of institutional investors. we've seen a lot more retail

investors participating in the market through mutual funds and that has actually led to less volatility and more long-term investing, more similar to what we have had here in the past so that's very good. but back to the other issue that you were talking about, i think from an investor's perspective, if you want to take advantage of the growth in china, the fact that it's the best consumer story in the world, i think all the things that we've been talking about are why we emphasize an active approach to investing in china, so that we only invest in companies that share our values and that follow the rules and that are not benefitting directly or indirectly from forced labor >> andy, ian and eunice, thank you all for joining us after the break, wework's long and winding road. the failed ipo and its c

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dow is up 200, 45 minutes left of trading. it's been nearly 600 days since shared work space startup wework filed an s-1 to go public. that was back in 2019. now after an epic saga involving softbank and founder eric newman, the company is ready to hit the market again leslie picker with the details. >> i feel like i've aged a decade since they filed that s-1. it's only been 600 days but they finally founding their way into public markets the first time investors shunned the company's billions of dollars in losses and quirky structure. adam newman settled his legal problems with the company. a spac agreed to buy it for

about $9 billion about one-fifth of the value wework had ahead of its failed ipo in 2019. the ceo said on "squawk box" this morning that the timing is just right >> we thought it was a good time to raise additional liquidity and derisk the balance sheet and to make sure that we had a path to profitability so sometimes the path picks you, you don't pick the path. >> the merger could capitalize in a return-to-work environment. that sent bowx up more than 10% today. guys. thank you very much for that summary. let's discuss it further cameron and reeves wideman both join us right now. thank you to you both and good afternoon.

reeves, my first question is whether the current environment as we come out of the pandemic is better or worse for wework? i guess it's better not to be a pure real estate office company in the traditional a al sense bt it's not as good for office space no matter how you structure the model as it was a couple of years ago. >> yeah, i think that's right. thank you for having me. wework is pitching itself as the future of the office for whenever we start to come out of the pandemic and companies think that they don't need a full headquarters maybe they need offices here and there. that's kind of the pitch they're making it's a tough one, i think. i think for one thing everyone in the real estate world is now adapting to what wework was doing and offering more flexible terms and recognizing that we're going to enter a new world, so i don't necessarily know that wework is that much better positioned than some other real

estate companies and some of its competitors that are also doing this, especially given this tarnish of the brand that's happened the last couple of years. so they're pitching it that way, but i think it's a tough sell to make >> cameron, do you think early wework investors will be sighing a big sense of relief today or is this a moment of celebration or still a moment of disappointment relative to early valuations >> i think it's a step in the right direction is what i would say. i don't think they're celebrating, i don't think they're crying but this is a culmination of i think several years of work now to get the company into a place where they could enter the public markets i think they found a great spac partner in bowx to do that and filled the pipe with some incredible investors to give the entire story a lot of heft i think once they get public we'll see after a few quarters as a public company, are they doing the things they need to do in order to grow, generation revenue and cut loss.

>> reeves, one of the -- and there were a number of bear arguments on this company when it was set to go public the first time around, was how would they fare during a recession it was such a bull market company because they had long-term leases and short-term customers paying them short-term fees now that we've been through a pandemic and a recession included in that, how did wework turn out >> they're sort of weirdly in a similar position to before their sort of craft post-ipo and before the pandemic. they have about as many members. it kind of went up and then it went down. their occupancy rate has, however, taken a huge hit. it was in the 70 plus percent range before the pandemic. it's now roughly at about 47%, which is not good. that is not what you want as a real estate company. so their business has taken a hit. they will say that we have more

enterprise clients, big companies that are taking out long leases, but ultimately what wework offers is flexibility they don't have the five and ten-year leases that other companies had that have helped real estate companies sort of ride out the pandemic. so they got hit and now the question is whether they can sort of make that flexibility sort of work for the company going forward and both offer that but also get people to commit to a little bit longer term leases. >> clearly spacs have pulled back from their recent very strong performance this is a pretty big spac as spacs go do you think that is a jolt of life into a market that's been pulling back otherwise >> this is a singular spac that's much larger than most spacs. the name is so well known. this is a company that was on the cusp of going public a couple of years ago. it's certainly a name that a lot of investors are going to know

and track. so i think it's going to get a lot of attention as it is obviously today with the news coming out so it is a jolt in the arm of the spac market and shows the kind of deals that are getting done right now. >> it's a biggie kamran, reeves, we'll leave the conversation there thank you for joining us. after the break, viacom bombs. the stock is down another 30% today to cap off a very ugly week we'll explore what's behind the plunge, next. and later, shares of snowflake are down 40% from their peak in december remember, this was one of the hottest ipos last year we'll discuss the recent price action and some new sales tools for post pandemic working with the president of salesforce. check out some of the top search tickers on cnbc.com once again the 10-year treasury yield drawing the most interest. overall we've seen yields come off of their highs lately. gamestop also at the top of the list giving back 4% after running up 50% yesterday

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♪♪ we've got 35 minutes left of the session. let's get to some individual market movers. madison square garden joins the mix in ranges and is buying msg networks in a stock swap deal. this reunites the two entities after a previous split

they are sliding 9% and 7% respectively discovery and viacom cbs both down sharply after being halted several times for volatility there are reports of a 35 million block trade being offered by viacom cbs. today's activity is not a result of an insider transaction. both stocks got downgraded by wells fargo as well as part of the pressure on the stocks of course, they have been very strong performers, viacom in particular went from $10 to above 90s, now 47, so down 27% in a day is pretty extreme down about 50% this week for viacom, sara >> the charts are unbelievable up next, disney gets a little pricier we have details on the price hike and how it stacks up to the competition. plus former fda commissioner scott gottlieb will be with us about why we're seeing an uptick in cases in dozens of states even as more vaccines make their

way in arms. as we head to break, yields are moving higher today with the 10-year up to 1.66 overall we are off the highs that we were seeing back in the 10-year was around 1.74, 1.75. still, technology is underperforming today and for the week "closing bell" will be right back

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half an hour left of trading. the dow is up more than 200 points shares of disney sitting out the rally, down more than 1% today it's one of the worst performers in the dow this week in fact there's news the company increasing its price of its streaming service to $7.99 a month up from $6.99. yearly subscriptions going up from $69.99 to $79.99 and the package of disney plus, hulu going up also. it still keeps the service priced below competitors in the streaming space. for instance, netflix's standard plan costs $13.99 a month.

hbo max is priced at $14.99 and viacom cbs's new paramount plus ad-free plan, $9.99. the stock is up 50% in the last six months. we've got just about 30 minutes to go before the bell. let's take a look at where we stand. higher on the dow and we've also turned higher on the nasdaq, up 0.4 of 1% the russell up 0.8 of a percent, making back some of the losses that we saw this week. both the s&p and dow are higher for the week nasdaq and russell sharply lower. according to the cdc, just over 26% of the u.s. population has received now at least one dose of the covid-19 vaccine. case counts are still rising in some states. up next, we'll talk to dr. scott gottlieb about why and what it all means for the reopening of the economy. we'll be right back. sales are down from last quarter but we are hoping things will pick up by q3. yeah...uh... doug? sorry about that. umm... what...its...um...

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of critical vaccinations for the world. emerson. consider it solved. time for your cnbc news update with rahel solomon. >> hello, everyone president biden says that russia's vladimir putin and china's xi jinping are among the world leaders he is inviting to a climate change summit. the u.s. is planning that summit in late april. an administration official tells the a.p. that the u.s. is

looking beyond its international partners for the talks where it hopes to have tough and important conversations. the president is calling georgia's new election law an atrocity and a 21st century version of the jim crow laws used for decades to keep black americans from voting. the republican national committee accuses democrats of peddling a false narrative point to additional early voting opportunities created by the law. here's a look from above of some of the damage left in the wake of those violent storms that hit the southeastern u.s. last night forecasters say severe weather will remain a threat across the region into the weekend. the suspect in the colorado supermarket shootings has been moved outside boulder county due to what officials are calling safety concerns and threats. tonight on the news with shepard smith, the search for a motive continues as police reveal more details on the gun they say that was used in that killing. guys, i'll send it back to you. >> rahel, thank you. stocks continue to gain into the close. the dow is up 252, less than a

half hour left of trade. governor murphy of new jersey announcing that all adults over age 55 will be eligible for the vaccine on april 5th and at least 30 states are giving all adults access to vaccines by may. this comes as 130 million vaccines have been administered so far despite rising vaccinations, we're seeing more cases. so what does that mean for the reopening? joining us now is former fda commissioner dr. scott gottlieb, a board member of pfizer and a cnbc contributor always good to have you on a friday, dr. gottlieb, thanks for being here. >> thanks. >> why are we seeing cases rise to now i think february levels when vaccinations are also rising >> yeah, i think it's a function of the fact that we are reopening the economy. people are going out more, people are taking their masks off, states are lifting some of the ordinances they had in place and there was going to be an

uptick, it was inevitable. i don't think this is the start of a fourth wave some parts of the country look concerning right now michigan certainly the tri-state region around new york you're seeing an uptick in cases. but the combination of the fact that probably a third of american been infected and we've vaccinated 25% of all americans and about 70% of those above the age of 65 is enough of a back stop that we're not going to see a few fourth wave of infection probably what we'll see is a plateauing over the next two or three weeks. the declines won't continue at the same pace that we were experiencing, but then they'll pick up again as we get more people vaccinated, as we get into warmer months and more of the activity gets taken outdoors so even though i think over the next two or three weeks a lot of people will be looking at this and getting very nervous, i'm still hopeful this isn't the beginning of a true fourth wave of infection. >> i guess one of the important questions here is what do we know about the new cases and those that are getting covid-19? are they cases of reinfection or of people who have gotten

vaccines getting infected? do we know anything there? >> yeah, unfortunately we're not as good at this as we should be. but when you're looking at the data in new york city, and i've been looking at that data very closely, you're not seeing wholesale reinfections of people who were previously infected and you're not seeing people who have been fully vaccinated getting infected even when you look at 1526 and look at them that have been sequenced and arguably it's a small pool, we're not seeing evidence of people getting 1526 who have been vaccinated so that's a good sign probably at this point we would be starting to pick up more of those cases if it was happening on a wide scale basis but we're not doing enough sequencing, enough detection to really know for certain. so this is a little touch and go right now and i'm still concerned about that 1526 variant in new york that it could potentially reinfect people because of the type of mutation it is, but so far we haven't seen that. >> how close, dr. gottlieb, to

across the whole nation having a set of rules that allows anyone to get a vaccine if they want one? and do you fear at least temporarily a bit of a bottleneck, a bit of distribution issues as people rush to book appointments? >> yeah, i think this -- i've said all along i think this is going to be opened up wide by the end of march or early april. i think you're seeing that in a lot of states. some states will lag but i think you're likely to see as we get into early april most states will open up eligibility to most adults over the age of 16 there will be a handful of states that lag. there's a lot of supply coming into the market in the next two weeks and i think you'll see much more get pushed out through the pharmacies and much more availability yeah, as states open up eligibility, you're going to see a rush to book appointments, so there's going to be a couple of week period where it'sgoing to be frustrating and people will have a hard time getting online but that's going to get worked out. the end result will be supply will exceed demand at some point in april there's going to be a lot of

appointments that aren't getting filled probably at some point late april as we get into may >> there's news on the treatment front as well, dr. gottlieb, this week. your company, pfizer, testing a pill we know merck and ridgeback have been working on an antiviral pill plus all the monoclonal antibodies if we cannot eliminate covid-19 in the next year, can we make it so that nobody has to die of it? >> well, we're not going to eliminate covid-19, even if we get vaccination rates up i don't know that we're going to get above 60% of the adult population vaccinated. we're always going to need a treatment to backstop people who get sick even though they have been vaccinated and also to treat people who don't get vaccinated one product looks good, that was announced that they're filing in conjunction with gsk that could be reformulated as an intra muscular injection it needs to be infused the merck drug looks very promising that they acquired from ridgeback there's data on that, albeit

early data, but it looks very promising as a direct acting antiviral and a tamiflu type drug for coronavirus like we have for flu. >> if you were advising the president on what he should do with international travel, what would be your advice particularly as we get into the middle of the summer and hopefully vaccination percentages are above 50%? >> yeah, i think we're going to have a real opportunity to open up travel between the u.s. and europe europe looks difficult right now. they are having a true fourth wave but they're lagging on vaccination. we have vaccinated about one in three adults, a little better than that. europe is one in nine. i think as they get their vaccination levels up, they'll see prevalence decline and i think we'll have an opportunity to open up travel with europe. south america is different brazil is in a very difficult situation right now. they're heading into their winter so that is a very difficult situation what's happening in south america so there's parts of the world we still need to maintain some

travel restrictions but europe as a continent, we should be able to open up more travel between the two. >> speaking of reopening, it's still an issue here of states moving at different speeds and how much to reopen and how safe to feel. texas got a ton of criticism when they got rid of the mask mandate and opened more aggressively it's been two weeks. what does the data there show? >> well, look, places like texas and florida and california, southern california where they have b up 117, it's the majorito infections happening in those parts of the country you're not seeing a real uptick in infections. at best you're seeing a plateauing in florida. texas sees declines, so does southern california. so it's good news. parts of the country where we knew b 117 got in early and everyone was worried that it would cause a fourth wave of infection, we're not seeing it happening. the uptick in infections are happening mostly in the north and the northeast. it might be because b 117 got in

later to those parts of the country and 1526 it might be that they're not benefitting from the warmer weather, that people are not going outside and moving activity outdoors as quickly that could partially explain what's happening in the north versus the south, but right now in the south the overall picture looks pretty encouraging. >> dr. gottlieb, thanks for joining us good to see you. >> thanks a lot. sofi offers a chance to get in early on ipos and a check on bank stocks. "the market zone" is next. asdaq0 like this artificially intelligent home system. become an agent of innovation with invesco qqq. ♪ - [narrator] grubhub perks give you deals becomon all the food thattion wmakes you boogie. (upbeat music) get the food you love with perks from- - [crowd] grubhub. with a bang, - grub what you love. energy and change

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trading day and we are now in the closing bell market zone commercial-free action of all of the action going into the close. we've got chris verone and sylvia jablonski we'll kick it off with the broader market check out the s&p 500, up more than a percent the nasdaq also higher but still on track for a weekly decline of more than 1.5% chris, we've seen a pattern now two days where a row where the stock market has run up higher into the close after six days where it's taken a spill into the close. what's the significance? >> well, i think importantly finally the breadth is a little better today as well you're about 3-1 that could change from frankly what the last couple of weeks have looked like where the closes have just been soft i also like the fact that the leadership today is finally a little bit more risk seeking you have industrials continuing to firm. on the other side utilities on

the softer side. some of these defensive groups, utilities and staples have firmed over the last several weeks. we don't think their leadership and i expect if the market is going to resume here, you would expect to see more defensive corners of the market start to roll. >> very telling intraday chart from the nasdaq, big rally in the last hour or so. for the week as a hole on the s&p, we're higher by a percent or so. do you think that the worst is behind us for this little mini pullback we've experienced >> i think we'll probably see some volatility in the near term i think that will continue but i think what happened is a lot of investors on the sideline that have wanted to get in on these names and realize there's quality and value on some of the biggest names that have been beaten up, the nasdaq leaders and big tech names have probably gotten back in that coupled with the good news about the doubling the vaccines we're going to get and an acceptance of what's going on with the 10-year is bringing

some positive momentum to the nasdaq >> the fed announced plans to lift restrictions on buybacks and dividends by june 30th, up 1.3% but not much ahead of the broader markets. as we discussed yesterday, unlikely we'll see a massive unleash of buybacks because bank stocks have rallied so much. we might see more of an increase in defensiividends from here some banks are a little cheaper than others. sylvia, what's your take as to whether or not this is a nice additional bit of positive news to the banks or something more significant, more game changing. >> i think it's a nice point towards the idea of the recovery of the u.s. market so these regulations when it's in place to avoid 2008 and some selling of treasuries and mitigate some of the that volatility in the market

but i think what we see here is banks have been resilient in the shortest bear market that we've seen and this tells me that banks are in a distinguish spot now. they're paying 0% on your savings but the 10-year going up a little bit allows them to charge something on loans so the margin is growing there. 0% on savings, maybe take your money and put it back into the banks and receive some of these higher dividends too so i do think it's generally positive for the sector. >> how do the charts look? they must look positive. the sector is up 16% so far this year, chris. if so, do any of them look particularly attractive to you >> i want to distinguish between what they have done in the short term and over the longer term. yes, all the bank stocks are up meaningfully over the last six or seven months here but a lot of them have made no progress since 2004, 2005, 2006 so we look at these as coming out of these huge bases. look at the long-term charts of

the goldman sachs, bank of americas, u.s. banks, these are good-looking pictures longer term i recognize that flows are probably too aggressive in the short term you have 98% of them above their 200-day so they can pause here and use weakness opportunistically. this is a group coming out of a 15-year range. we like that. >> what's your outlook, chris, on rates clearly for some of the retail banks, the shape of the yield curve and height of it, what's your outlook for the yield curve? >> what's remarkable appeared we've talked about this before, if you look at where the street economists are there are 52 that submit their forks to bloomberg every week. there's only three of them above 2% for year ending 2021. that seems like all economists have to move the forecast to the right side so we're looking for something north of 2 i think in the short term yields will want to pause here but when you're looking out three, four,

five, six months, something north of 2% is where we're going. >> session highs as we go into the close less than 10 minutes away sofi saying it will allow retail investors to buy into ipos kate rooney with the details kate. >> hey, sara sofi is breaking with wall street tradition here. these ipo shares are usually set aside for institutional investors or high net worth individuals. the startup will offer early access to its clients. sofi will be an underwriter in these deals working with companies to buy securities from the issuer and then selling those back to its retail investors. robinhood is also reportedly working on a similar product but declined to comment. we spoke to ceo anthony noto this morning he acknowledged the risks that come along with some of these earlier stage companies. he likened it to crypto investment and says sofi issues adequate warnings.

>> sylvia, do you like this? it sounds good, opening access to retail traders from something that was formerly cut off? >> yes, sara, i love it. i love the idea that we're democratizing access to large institutional hedge fund-like investments to the average retail investor. i also think that the retail investor has made his or her voice super clear this year and they're looking at emerging and disruptive technologies. so what you're finding with the latest ipos and latest spacs on the markets is just that that's the best way to get access to these names. if you look at the profile of these investors, they're younger. yes, this is risky, we'll see which ipos do well and which spacs do well. i think if they hold on and have these opportunities in their portfolio long term, they may be rewarded for that type of investment i love it. i think it's a great addition for the market and trading platforms. >> chris, more broadly on the retail investor, are we seeing

any signs of pulling back and what might that do to markets if that does occur? >> i would say let's not forget it's been 20 years before retail had actually even been -- i would agree maybe we're in the first or second inning of this but i keep thinking about who's the loser with all of this stuff? maybe it's the bond funds, right? retail has been camped out in bond funds for the last 10, 11 years. i think as bond yields go up, we're always asked at what level do higher bond yields hurt stocks the right thing to ask is at what level do higher bond yields hurt bonds i think that's why we're starting to see some of the equity markets act better. i think you're seeing retail move away from fixed income, money market funds and get back intoic equitequities. >> so you see the sell-off in bonds continuing, higher yields? how high do you think the

10-year gets >> i think we see something north of 2%. we've probably never seen bond yields go where we thinkthey'r going to go. i might take the over, 2.30, 2.40 we're only two years removed from the 10-year being at 3.25 when bond yields were going up, defensives were leading. that was saying, whoa, whoa, who whoa, it's time to get defensive. i think as long as the leadership framework stays cyclical, i'm okay with bond yields going towards 2%. >> the session high is 340 on the dow, over 1% for the dow, the nasdaq is up 0.8 in fact almost all of the sectors are higher, 10 out of 11 now. just communication services lower. tesla rival nio is the latest automaker to suspend production due to the global chip shortage. also cut first quarter delivery forecasts to 19,500 versus the

20,000 to 20,500 previously expected nio shares 5% or so today. sylvia, what is your take on this is this going to hurt the ev makers more than traditional automakers or everyone equally who's going to be hit most in terms of share prices off the back of it >> i think in the short term between the 10-year and this story on the shortage of chips for the ev car maker, it's detrimental. i think the amount of production they're going to have in the short term is going to sort of change the overall estimate that they had but what this tells me is that chip makers need to create more chips. there's a high demand for ev batteries. these cars are essentially going to have a backlog and be in rapid production growth space. so when i see tesla at this price i get really excited about it i think about the future and all of the policy going into becoming carbon neutral and moving towards electric

vehicles i think it's a short-term issue and i think that investors looking to get in on some of these names, i mean there's certainly a discount here. >> let's talk about tesla, chris. i was going to ask you about this chart anyway. it's not participating in this surge into the close where the s&p is now up 1.5% it's one of the worst performers, down 3.5%. i think the weekly low on tesla is $600, so we're not too far from there but it has been breaking down lately what does it tell you? >> yeah, i think there's two points here. number one, tesla has certainly been one of the hood ornaments of liquidity over the last number of years. the fact that it acts soft here even as the s&p flirts with new highs, that might be suggestive of some change in the liquidity environment. when we think about what's the best ev auto name, we don't think of tesla we think of gm for the first time in 10 years, we think of volkswagen, bmw or toyota. i think the traditional automakers which have spent the last decade in purgatory, have

got meaningfully better. the charts are starting to reflect that in some respects, the chip shortage, maybe they won't overproduce anymore. that's always been the knock on the autos, they always make too many i wonder if that limits supply, improves margins >> chris, there's the dow chart, up 1.3%, 414 points. is this bullish on a friday afternoon to see this extraordinary ramp into the close? >> the term that we've been using to describe this market is frustrating, not fatal remember, this is the one-year anniversary of the march 23rd, 2020, low. we're a year off the low welcome to year two. year two tends to be a little more challenging, tends to lack direction or theme we've had iwm correct 10%. nasdaq come in 10% i suspect at some point this summer you'll get a washout in s&p. but i look at the breadth today, it's 4-1 on the upside,

leadership is pretty good. i think we get new s&p highs before a correction later this summer. >> we've got, what, 1:20 left of the session. let's just talk through the highs and lows of the day. the dow was lower earlier in the session -- sorry, it was up 60 points or so and it's now up 400 points, 1.25%. s&p is now 1.5%. even the nasdaq composite is higher by 1% i mean that's probably the most interesting intraday chart because just an hour ago it was quite noticeably negative by half of 1% the nasdaq 100 is 1.4 and the russell will tell a nice intraday story in fact we have the week-to-date chart now up 1.6% for the session. it's still down 3% for the week. but again, a massive ramp into the close and a very volatile week we have seen for the russell 2000 overall in terms of sector performance today, we've got 10 out of 11 sectors higher energy, materials, real estate and tech all up more than 2% in fact all up 2.5%.

only one sector is lower and that's communication services down 0.3%. in fact only two sectors are lower for the week, communication services and consumer discretionary so nine of the 11 sectors dragged into the green on this final session and that particular final hour of trade and the ramp into the close. s&p 500 up 1.7% at the close, sara some high drama there into the close. big surge in the market. a very strong finish for the bulls. welcome back, everyone, to "closing bell. i'm sara eisen along with wilfred frost. take a look at how we finished up the day on wall street. really a surge into the close. the dow closed up 452 points we're used to some big moves back and forth in the final hour of trade today and yesterday we've seen big gains. six days before that we saw declines there's the dow, closed up 452 points

home depot, am gen and visa added the most to the gains. only three stocks closed lower, goldman sachs, boeing and disney s&p 500 up 1.66% all sectors there closing in the green except for communication services dragged down by those media stocks, viacom cbs, discovery, news corp, they have had a tough week nasdaq, which was underperforming all day long closed up 1.25%. still down, though, for the week but really erased some of those weekly losses in the final week of the trade we're down on the nasdaq for the week for the zs&p 500 up 1.5%. the russell finished down 3% after getting clobbered a few of the trading days this week. coming up this hour, the ceo of snowflake and president of salesforce on how an economic reopening will impact the future of the cloud and the future of

work. plus, amazon feeling the bern today senator bernie sanders set to visit warehouse workers in alabama this hour, as they fight to unionize. we'll bring you to that live as it happens. chris verone, sylvia jablonski still with us. gregory branch joins conversation welcome to all of you, sylvia, to see a close like that where we really saw this strong run-up after some indecisive trading where technology underperformed as we've been accustomed to at the end of a week going into a holiday shortened trading week, what does it tell you? >> it tells me it's very promising. i think that the breadth of the bull market is continuing. as chris said before, we're at the one-year anniversary of the market lows. the markets rallied over 70% we have fiscal monetary stimulus in the market, warm weather

reopening. it feels like we're in the second year of a bull market but some of the momentum is coming back into the market as a whole, which is really good to see. >> chris, i mentioned the turn-around in the russell in particular did that surprise you a little bit or do you think the momentum there in the small caps can continue >> what i think is really important, wilfred, is not just the reversal we had in the russell today, this started yesterday. but the reversal in the nasdaq even with rates up, right, this helps answer a big question. the big debate out there is what level of 10-year yields is a problem for tech 1.s 1.60, 1.70 the fact that nasdaq reversed despite bond yields back to this 1.65, 1.66 range is a really important piece of information when yields were 3% in 2018, tech was working so let's not think that they can't work at the 1.60 yields. the breakout in the home

builders today is equally as important. 1.70 10-year yield is not fatal for home builders. >> i guess, reg, it's more the speed of how fast rates move up. how are you approaching this whole dynamic of rising bond yields, falling stocks, which we've seen, and we've seen stabilize a bit this week. >> i think it's the velocity that's important and so if we see pce spike to the 2.2% level or somewhere in there, there's not a lot to be concerned about. but if we see it spike more acutely than that 2.2% that the fed is expecting, the market is going to be anticipatory about the fed having to change its posture. if that happens, it's obviously going to push bond yields and that's going to be more damaging for tech and growth. value, on the other hand, has a wonderful second half earnings revisions, earnings surprise

story in store for us given that the earnings expectations across value sectors is still at a significant discount to its prepandemic levels and so there will be obviously a lot of volatility as we get comfortable with what pc is going to be, but a great second half story is unfolding here, particularly for value and cyclicals. >> do you still, greg, consider big banks value within the cyclical space or have they rallied too much in the last few months >> right well, the multiples don't necessarily suggest value anymore. we were trading at a level where we were 50%, 60% discount to their historic multiples, but they still have the earnings story, particularly those that have the diversified platforms of trading, capital markets to support them through a very challenging net interest margin environment. and so, yeah, to some extent i consider them value in that the earnings in the back half will

drive performance. >> chris, can you explain why discovery was down 30% this week, viacom cbs down 27%? these have had tremendous run-ups. why all of a sudden is the air coming out, and why did it go in for that matter? >> yeah, it feels like there's a little bit of a liquidation going on in some corners of the market look at the move you saw in chinese tech and some of the ipos and some of the spacs the last week or two it almost has that feel of forced liquidation when you look at the volume done on some of these stocks today, you're talking about record volume, record traded, are we close to some type of low with those names? getting back to what greg said about cyclicality, i want to be mindful that flows into cyclicality are about as aggressive as we've ever seen.

i don't mind being part of the consensus. but we need to be aware when the market doesn't agree with the consensus. the flows into cyclicals certainly reflect a lot of enthusiasm around that trade. >> sylvia, the nasdaq was negative for the week compared to 1.6% of gains for the s&p have you been picking up any of the big cap tech names on this slight discount? >> yeah, absolutely. to the last point, i think there's been so much flow going into cyclical and value that now tech is looking like the value play apple is still making phones, they have services, investing in ev amazon should crush earnings microsoft, we still have this flexible work from home where we need technology to grow. alphabet will benefit from the reopen trade add verz advertising. when i look the athat those nam think they have room to run.

perhaps we don't see the same level of performance as last year in year two but i still expect to see positive returns in these names. >> i also want to pull up the arkk innovation etf. it was down today even in that positive take with technolog rallying into the close, chris closing at 113 so making a new weekly low the quarter ends wednesday, down 9%, not a great start to the year just wondering how you think this plays into what we've seen with some of these tech momentum names. >> i'm glad you brought that up. there are two things that stand out that i think are notable yes, lower weekly close for the arkk fund but actually fewer talks making a new low so you had positive divergences under the surface. the index is lower but fewer stocks contributing to that. you tend to see that at or near tradeable lows also look at the volume profile. you actually did less volume over the last day or two despite things getting flushed to new

lows those are characteristics we look for i think those conditions are in place. i'd really like to see how the rate dynamic unfolds here. if these things can start to firm even with bond yields going up, i would think that means the market is getting more comfortable with 1.70 10-year yields. >> thank you for joining us. senator bernie sanders is expected to join amazon workers in alabama any minute now as they try to unionize deirdre bosa has that story for us hi, dee. >> hey, wilf sanders should be arriving any minute now showing his support for unionization efforts there is a lot at stake here amazon has long discouraged attempts among its u.s. employees to organize. in this particular labor battle, it has been criticized for using tactics like having the traffic lights near the warehouse changed to make it harder for

them to canvas employees the company continues to hit back hard publicly against critics like sanders and elizabeth warren the latest from just the last few hours includes this tweet. sanders would rather talk in alabama than act in vermont. and a response to warren's tweet threatening to break up big tech amazon isn't powerful enough to heckle senators with snotty tweets they said this is extraordinary and revealing. one of the most powerful politicians in the united states just said she's going to break up an american company so that they can't criticize her anymore. of course, guys, there was also yearn-gate this week back and forth over whether delivery drivers resort to peeing in bottles because of strict demands on the job ballots will begin to be counted on tuesday we're unlikely to get a result for at least a few days. whatever the outcome, it is likely to be disputed, setting up this labor battle to continue for weeks and months ahead, guys back to you.

>> it's interesting how much political support the unionization has gotten, even from some unlikely republicans but clearly sanders going into alabama. what sort of chain reaction is amazon prepared for? >> what they're prepared for, i think that's what they're doing right now is sort of gearing up with this -- sort of hitting back really hard, which is unusual for amazon, but not unprecedented. there is talk, and certainly other workers at other factories around the country are watching this very, very closely. some are worried about a domino effect whatever happens at bessimer in alabama could happen at other factories around the country remember that amazon is now the number two employer in the country, so the ramifications could be very, very large. also remember that this union fight did not just set up overnight. this has taken a long time,

months and months of planning. the organizers have set it up very carefully it took a long time even just to get to this point. the voting is going t take longer still but this could really represent a real inflection point what you're seeing right now is union supporters at that bessimer warehouse we're hoping to see senator sanders show up too. he's bringing a little star power too, killer mike and danny glover for what it's worth. up next the ceo of snowflake and president of salesforce join us to talk about the cloud and new sales tools for the post-pandemic workplace. latescr ott black outlines where he sees opportunity in the market we're back in 90 seconds

salesforce hoping to tap into a growing digital first sales world with its latest product update the company unveiling its revamped sales cloud 360 this week which features a number of services, including the use of ai to track sales performance and the analyzation of video call transcripts among sales cloud's customers is snowflake. the stock finishing higher today after being initiated at outperform joining us more, salesforce president brett taylor and

snowflake's ceo. brett, on the announcement today, help explain in english what this is and why you've looked to covid-19 and how that's changed how we work and how we lived to announce some of these updates. >> well, this pandemic just accelerated the digitization of the whole economy. events like this, i'm talking to you over zoom right now. events being broadcast over twitter and youtube instead of being in conference centers. the 4 million b to b -- they have done business over video chat all year long we survey sales reps all around the world. over half say they're not getting on airplanes to do their business and i joke the other half hasn't seen the entertainment policies from their cfos yet we're trying to reimagine the sales process for this

post-pandemic world building in things like video meetings, helping train all the sales people in the world how to be effective in this new digital selling model. most importantly as we look forward to this recovery which is thankfully seemingly accelerated by the rollout of vaccines, helping all customers around the world get back to growth, which is top of mind for every ceo in the world right now. >> frank, you guys have history herewith salesforce. they were an early investor. you're obviously in partnership here we have seen a lot of these cloud and software partnerships over the years big hype, lots of big announcements, ceos coming on cnbc and yet some of them have died, some of them haven't amounted to much why is this different? >> it's important at a couple of different levels we're a big salesforce customer so we're using it to enable our sales operations we had to walk away from our

offices last year and continue to sell and not miss a beat, which we were able to do but it's bigger than that. every single one of our customers is syncing salesforce data to snowflake. so we're joined at the hip here. the sales cloud is about dashboarding and so on >> the thing we floated towards the top, frank, the idea of analyzing what is being said on work, zoom or other video enabled, tech enabled calls, is that something where we start to go down the route of too much invasion of privacy? yes, this will be on work calls where no doubt employees have signed something that allows the monitoring of that sort of thing lie employers, but would they be fully aware of it ahead of it happening? >> yeah, that sounds a bit intrusive. i think there's a lot more lower hanging fruit.

for example, we do extensive scoring of probability scores on sales opportunities out of salesforce because we want to be able to direct our sales people to opportunities rather than things that are going to waste their time you need a ton of data and analytical operations to figure out what those are so that's really where a lot of this effort is going rather than trying to basically monitor people's behavior online >> bret, how much of what you're doing right now with this, partnering with snowflake, buying slack, how much is the goal to go after microsoft at this point >> we're 100% focused on our customers, not focused on competitors. we think that digitization of the economy that was really accelerated by covid is really an opportunity for companies to lean in to transforming themselves if you would ask any ceo around

the world could you do -- run your business from home for a year, every one of them would have laughed at you and we just did it we just proved to ourselves we could. now going back we have this once in a generation opportunity to reimagine our cultures, reimagine our operating expenses, just reimagine our businesses as a whole. you know, partnerships with snowflake, we're recognizing that in a digital economy, data is key to driving insights and helping get back to growth with our announced stock acquisition of slack, it's recognizing that this flexible work model is here to stay and so a lot of our investments, our partnerships, our organic innovation strategy, we want to be the platform for growth for every company coming out of this pandemic and that's what's driving our strategy. >> frank, a different question but with the same word thrown into it, microsoft i mean what level of threat is there that large cloud players like them and others start to kind of offer similar levels of

service for their customers, types of service that you're able to do at the moment >> that's really the world we live in. you know, it's not just microsoft but obviously amazon as well. the relationship there is we're very large customers of theirs obviously. we're their partners, but we're also competitors we have gotten to the point where these relationships are very disciplined, they're very stable, we have established processes for bad behavior and we're keeping a lid on it. just to mention microsoft, that was the fastest growing platform in the mix last quarter and we're very bullish on our relationship with microsoft. >> frank, i wanted to ask about your stock price no secret you had one of the best ipos last year, the biggest software ipo ever. with that one of the most software stocks. yes, it's come off 40% from the ipo highs here as we've seen this software sell-off does it raise the expectations

for you in delivering the kind of growth that investors expect? how do you feel about it >> well, short term i worry about the distraction that it presents to all kinds of people, including our own employees. we have nothing to say about it. it's high, it's low, it's somewhere in between in the long haul performance intersects with valuations what we do is making sure we deliver on the potential of the company. what the stock price does in between is neither here nor there. >> bret, you mentioned how amazing it's been to see a lot of businesses be able to operate totally from home the last year. the other side of it which initially people looked at as being able to boost quality of life if you do more from home, perhaps less travel, et cetera, do you also see from your vantage point the challenges that this presents we've had discussion over the wall street banks that in fact

people can't disconnect from work and are therefore seeing a lower quality of life because of it. >> there's a great quote, am i working from home or living at work you're absolutely right. this is certainly not all good we see increased reports of mental health issues, of burnout. i can speak personally, i am just looking forward to getting back into the office and having those casual human interactions. i think what i hear from executives all around the globe is really about intentionality just this opportunity to say we're not going to snap back to the way things were. look at some of the things we've learned during this pandemic that are actually more effective. in our sales cloud alone as one example, we're seeing 21% more sales leads daily this year than the previous year. another example, we did a challenge earlier this year for our sales team saying do one million zooms. we've now done 6 million zooms

over the last half of last year. think of the number of customer engagements that represents and certainly a lot more than it would have been if all of our customer-facing teams had to get on an airplane to talk to their customer when we think about the new digital selling, it's not we're going to be stuck in this home office we're going to be stuck in for this past year, it's saying this is a new normal. it's going to be much more normal to have a digital customer meeting than it was before for the companies that embrace that, they're going to be able to get the best of both worlds they're going to be able to get all the advantages of digital, all the advantages of data that frank was talking about, and a lot more of an intimate relationship with their customer base that just wasn't possible before so we're really looking forward after the pandemic and saying what did we learn this year that we want to retain? i think that's a tremendous opportunity. >> but it also gets to the point, frank, which is i'll think behind some of the selling lately and some of the software names and technology names, which is have we seen the peak

have we seen the best of how it can get? was there a major pull forward in business for salesforce or snowflake or any of these names because everyone, all the enterprises did have to spend so much digitally what happens on the other side of the pandemic? what would you say about whether the cloud stocks are trying to tell us something on that front? >> well, i don't think so. i don't think that's what salesforce and snowflake do that much to do with the pandemic these are long-term secular trends what it has done is accelerated digital transformation that is going to continue post-pandemic as well. i just think it's going faster as a function of that, but it's not -- you know, we're not a working from home type of company. so this has much more of a long-term tail to it >> well, we hope you'll both come back and join us as we get through this digital transformation for now bret taylor, frank

slootman, thank you. >> you bet shares of online secondhand clothes retailer threadup taking off after going public today we will hear from the company's ceo, next. plus, suez standstill. find out the astonishing amount of money in trade that is currently being halted because of the cargo ship stuck tinhe suez canal we have the latest for you on this incredible story, next. or employee number two hundred. maybe it's understanding the real value of your business. or ensuring that what you've built, will be taken care of for a long time. whatever you're planning, you don't have to do it alone. we'll make that part of your plan. you have a team who's been preparing for all kinds of futures for nearly 170 years. learn more at massmutual.com we see smarter software delivering cleaner power. emerson's breakthrough technology enables the power industry to integrate renewable energy sources to modernize

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i just want to show you a live shot here of senator bernie sanders joining amazon workers in alabama as they try to you know -- youunionize he is there to support them in their unionization amazon one of the biggest employers in this country could set off a chain reaction in other places if the vote passes. voting by mail has already begun and ballots are due by monday. but there's bernie sanders giving his support, wilfred, which is a little unusual. an out of state senator coming into alabama to rally. but he's been leading this effort and criticism around amazon and the treatment of its workers. this is just his latest. >> a little bit unusual but

quite understandable, all things considered we will keep you updated on any headlines coming from that. major averages up more than 1% across the board. the value play starting to outperform growth so far this year will that continue let's bring in scott black, who joins us now, president of delfi management >> thank you for inviting me. >> we were discussing this a half an hour ago around the close just by askingabout smal caps, which makes up for quite a lot of the value stocks of course in the index. very volatile week for the russell, ending up 2% today but down 3% for the week what do you make of that volatility >> well, i make the fact is the small cap, the russell 2000 and 2500 are now at 25 times this year's expected earnings they have had huge runs off the bottom and are more expensive than the s&p the s&p now is 23 times the $172

estimate so, you know, from a standpoint of valuation, it's not cheap anymore. as you quite rightly point out, if you look at the actual peak on march 15th and the lows yesterday, both the russell 2000 and russell 2000 value were in correction territory, both down 11% from peak to trough, even though you had a little bit of a snap back today. >> is it harder for you to find genuine value at the moment, scott? >> it really is, because even as i point out, our average pe now in the portfolio is between 13 and 14 times we don't like paying more than 13 multiples for companies with consistent earnings. most of the stocks we have are within their recovery high here. so it is getting increasingly difficult. we don't bend the discipline just because the markets are 23 pe, we don't move up our price front to a 16 or 17 multiple >> well, so i guess lennar fits

into that basket it's still under 16 multiple but it has had a tremendous climb. all the home builders have done really well with the housing recovery it's up 142% on the year do you still see this as a good value play >> yes, lennar is still cheap. it closed today 102.85 we own that one, horton, mi homes and phn. but lennar has very good growth potential. going to do $11.25 this year which is a 9.1 multiple. the top line should still grow at about 17% they're going to deliver about 62,000 homes on the year their roe has been shooting up nicely last year was 14.5%. pro forma it's about 17% they generate quite a bit of free cash. it's not like a lot of home builders to put more money into land and inventory as they build, so it's a well run company. they also have a then called

lenx, which is sort of high-tech ventures related to real estate. there's over $3.25 in hidden value. last year they harvested one of the companies called open door in which they booked a $470 million profit the other thing is we've got housing starts roughly at 1.42 million. lennar and horton are the two biggest. they have economies of scale in building they don't have shortages in getting either labor or lumber, et cetera. the new increases they have which are mostly in lumber they're able to pass along so i think still at a 9 multiple considering it's less than half the market multiple, lennar is a very good value. >> tell us about the next stock? >> they're the second largest of nbc stations the stock today closed -- it closed down at 146 we think they're going to earn

about 15.50. it's a nonpolitical year this year that's still a 9.4 multiple. most of the broadcasters, the earnings cave in after a presidential election. their revenue is only going to be down a little over 1.5% they have 198 stations they're in 8 of the top 10 demographic markets like los angeles, new york and chicago. they cover the maximum they have 39% of homes utilizing television sets. they generate over a billion a year in free cash flow on a price to enterprise value, it's very cheap, selling 7.4 times trailing if you look at next year, they should do exceedingly well the earnings estimates are $23, which puts it a little over 6 pe they have 370 of the house seats in their district, 90% of the senate races and 85% of the gubernatorial races. just to put it in perspective, the past year that just ended, they did over $500 million in

political advertising. so i know some of the o & os are out of favor right now, but i think if you have a time period more than 6 to 12 months, this stock is extremely cheap, it's well run >> just quickly, scott, another media company that was extremely cheap, then extremely expensive might not be somewhere in between, viacom contribution it closed down 27% today, down 50% for the week what's your view on that one >> well, the family that owns the stock has not been user friendly they overpaid the people who ran both viacom and cbs in the past. i mean cbs is a cash flow generator, doesn't have a lot of top line growth. and let's be frank, the viacom, the paramount streaming service is not exactly disney. i wouldn't run out to buy it we've owned disney forever it's very expensive here, but disney is definitely the play if you want to own streaming with

assets and production. so i'm not saying you should buy disney at the top here, but disney is a much better company and a better franchise. >> scott black, great to hear from you as always thanks for joining us. >> thank you for inviting me l brands finishing the day up more than 3% today. we'll tell you what's driving some surprising optimism behind this retailer ahead. plus we'll discuss whether wall street is heading for tax hike trouble when president biden unveils his economic plan next week. ♪ ♪ (upbeat music) ♪ ♪

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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.

how'd you come up with all these elaborate backstories? we get to go on a vacation. glad you asked. i got help from a pro. my financial professional even explained how nationwide solutions could help mr. paisley retire early. and spend more time with his pal, peyton? right? i'm glad you feel that way. let's take a look at retail movers today l brands closing higher after the victoria secret parent company raised the outlook for q1 today they cited unusual shifts in consumer spending patterns, partially from stimulus, leading to a boost in sales. l brands is up more than 65% in 2021 it's been a great call for analysts who recommended it.

>> very nice call. another big retail winner today is thread, up after the company launched its ipo courtney reagan has that story for us. >> hi, wilf. threadup is another player in the online resale business that is now a public company. it's not profitable and warns in its s-1 it may not hit or maintain profitability the online retailer ceo said on cnbc today internal discussions is the goal to be the amazon of resale. >> while many people go out and i expect that they will buy new clothes, i think the value proposition of used remains very, very strong not only this year but in the next few years so we feel very confident around what 2021 will look like for us and i think the stimulus checks will provide some incremental wind in our sales. >> a global data survey that thredup commissioned, forecast a

39% compound annual growth rate. last week the revenue grew 14% that was up from 44% and 43% the prior two years. they blame the slowdown on the pandemic leading to lower apparel demand overall and lower supply on its site as well as higher discounts competition is high, though, from other online resellers like poshmark, the real reel, traditional consignment and even the trash can. sara and wilf, back over for you. >> courtney, i've used thredup they send you the bag if you want to sell some clothes and you can ship it right back, it's easy one thing that i wonder about this company and real reel and others, they still have to authenticate the brands and do quality control. it's maybe not as high-end designer as real real but do take some brands do they just have the experts

that can do this >> sure. i absolutely think that it is a risk factor. we know that cnbc did an investigation on the real real that found that in some cases even an expert trained eye will miss some authentication thredup's authentication is a little different it's not as important as trying to resell a chanel bag, we're talking old navy or carter's, much lower prices and a different value proposition for sure i think there's just a lot of competition out there. even if this is a growing market, even if you're a consumer that's drawn to it and more millenial and gen z folks are really looking to resale first. >> courtney reagan, it's certainly a trend. thank you. still ahead, the latest on the huge cargo ship stuck in the suez canal and the impact it's having on trade and the global

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it's time for a cnbc news update and rahel solomon has it for us. the u.s. border patrol is

encountering an average of 5,000 undocumented immigrants each day. that puts the country on track for a record high crossings in march. crossings are defined as apprehensions plus people arriving at legal points of entry without paperwork and encounters typically rise in the spring but border patrol says the large number of families and children makes this year's surge -- >> a 9-year-old girl drowned trying to cross the rio grande river with her mother and her brother. the next sergeant at arms for the house of representatives is the first african-american to be responsible for the chamber's security. and here's a sign of spring from asia. cherry blossoms planted 90 years ago at a train station in southwestern japan giving riders and visitors a very pleasant view it's so close, you can almost taste spring but not quite yet i'll send it back to you.

>> you can go to d.c. if you don't want to go all the way to japan to see that. rahel, thank you up next, salvage efforts still under way for the ship stuck in the suez canal trfic af jam. we'll break down the economic effects straight ahead "closing bell" will be right back all the things, all around you where you learn, work, and fly we help make them healthier. we are the people of abm. for more than 100 years, we've been a leader in making spaces cleaner, from the things you touch to the air you breathe. today, more than 100,000 of us are innovating to ensure spaces are more efficient, healthier and safer. abm. making spaces healthier for you. woo! you are busy... working, parenting, problem solving. spaces are more efficient, healthier and safer. at new chapter vitamins we've been busy too... innovating, sourcing organic ingredients,

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is still wedged in the suez canal. joining us now to discuss, cnbc.com's pippa stevens pippa, what's the latest >> hey, wilf well, the ship is showing no signs of budging and it really is going to take a herculean effort to dislodge it. the white house weighing in saying it's tracking the situation very closely and has offered assistance to egyptian authorities to help reopen the canal. they said that conversations are ongoing and jen psaki noted that they see a potential impact on energy markets take a look at prices of oil it jumped about 4% today to close out a volatile week. it marks a reversal from yesterday when prices actually fell, so it suggests that traders now anticipate this blockage taking longer to clear up than previously expected. in terms of on the ground efforts, those continue, dredging of the sand and the mud all in an effort to refloat the ship

an attempt earlier today failed according to the ship management company. they're hoping that this weekend higher tides might help in that effort two additional tugboats expected to arrive by sunday, so a lot of action on the ground as the days roll on, the economic consequences are really building here. about 12% of12% of global trades through the canal each day 9 million pounds of good $400 million per hour, a lot of consequences as ships still can't get through this vital passageway. >> it's unbelievable what a story, we've seen pictures and reports ships are having to reroute to avoid the bottle neck. what does that mean for trade and consumers and whether they'll get delivered, those products. >> that's exactly right. some ship managers saying we're going to reroute because we can't be stalled without clarity

when this blockage might be cleared. for the ships at the suez canal should we cut our losses and reroute around the horn of africa or will it be resolved. it sttakes an extra week to sail around and it adds a lot of extra expenses in terms of freight cost a lot of decisions need to be made it shows how interdependent the global trade is now, if you ordered something on zobrist amazon if you ordered something on amazon it could be on that freight waiting to get through we'll update you as the story continues to develop. >> keep us posted. still ahead, president biden taking center stage, next week set to make remarks on the

economic vision of the future on wednesday. what investors should be listening for. straight ahead

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pittsburgh president biden will unveil his two part economic recovery proposal first an infrastructure plan based on $1.5 trillion house passed last year and second will focus on educational and social programs based on campaign proposeals transportation secretary pete buttigieg said the final package and legislative path is still being worked out. >> i'm hearing a lot of appetite for sustainable funding streams. at the same time we know there's a great rereturn on infrastructure so some level of financing could make sense. >> lawmakers say they expect the price tag to land between 3.2 and $3.5 trillion. wolf and sarah. >> kayla, thank you. well, as we round out the week one of the question going into

that economic plan is going to be what the pay forward looks like for wall street haven't seen a ton of consternation about the prospect of taxes. what sprebd promised on the campaign trail corporate taxes, wealthy how does that waive go up after this previous package was passed i know jp morgan say last wednesday more than $280 billion went out worth of stimulus checks and seeing that show up in credit card and spending data in a bit of a boom on that front. >> and what will it do for inflation expectations now or down the line. this is a week rates largely pulled back or settled today it picked up 16 8 it didn't derail tocks, not by

the close. and sarah crazy final hour we end at 1.6% on s&p, similar for the week as a whole. and the russell even higher today quite significantly but lower on the week. >> what did the investment say the best final hour of trading since back in september. there really was some buying appetite into the close and it was a pretty bullish signal. >> it was a great hour, two hours of "closing bell." >> it's all us we'll take credit. >> i'm brian sullivan in for melissa lee. this is "fast money. tonight's trader lineup. steve grasso, brian kelly, jeff mills and bonawyn and tonight china tech stocks falling hard if you own these do you sell or load up? we'll get answers. stuck in the suez, another attempt to clear the blocked