bottom and it started to turn back but there was plenty of worry about how much of your money was going to be left after all the turmoil of the pandemic. you can see today we're in a much better place than then. >> a much better place for the markets but also public healthwise today vaccinations are front and center so here's hoping for a much more positive year. >> amnd let's turn the over to guy who just got vaccinated, wilfred frost. "closing bell" right now. thank you, tyler welcome, everyone, to "closing bell." i'm sara eisen along with wilfred frost. the s&p 500 topping 4,000 for the first time ever. the nasdaq is up 1.5%. let's look at what's driving the action investors continuing to digest president biden's more than $2 trillion infrastructure plan he laid out yesterday afternoon and wall street is weighing in on the consequences of those

proposed tax hikes in order to pay for it. jobless claims coming in a bit higher than expectations but a key reading ofu.s. manufacturing activity jumped to the highest level since the early 1980s. and technology winning today as yields pull back. faang stocks are all higher. microsoft gets a boost off the back of a $22 billion contract with the u.s. army 59 minutes left to go in a holiday-shortened trading week things are looking strong. >> very strong indeed. coming up on today's show, tom lee will join us with his outlook on the second quarter and why the trading action the past couple of sessions could be a bullish sign for the month ahead. plus the ce o of wyndham resorts on what he's expecting for the travel season. and paris hilton we'll speak with about why she's bullish on the crypto art movement. let's focus in on the big stories we're watching

first of all, mike santoli is back and just in time to break down today's record-setting market action as the s&p climbs above 4k leslie picker has new reporting from her and me on the archegos margin call event. mike, welcome back, by the way. >> good to be back here with a pretty consequential action in the market, even if it is slow and steady and clockwork look at the s&p 500 chart. this really kind of boring uptrend, boring is bullish typically in markets over the course of this period, we're only up 2% over six weeks in the s&p, 4% in eight weeks. so that tends to be a relatively bullish stake. you've also had corrections in the gamestop complex you talked about the margin call shakeout all of that has happened 4,000, not necessarily an important technical level but this is a log chart of the s&p 500 going back to before it

first hit 2,000, which is back in 2014. none of those thousand-point thresholds were necessarily a place that ended up being an important peak but you did see some congestion and it took a while for the market to get really liberated from that 2,000 area 3,000 was really not that big an issue. but there were several weeks when there was hesitation in the market, might be coinstccoincid. 23 -- actually 4300 is the area where market trends are in also a subtle move toward quality and defensive type groups in the last month or so, last couple of weeks this is dividend growth stocks and utilities have outperformed in the last month. i put interactive brokers in there as a proxy for the retail trading frenzy that's up huge over the last six months but it has come back to the pack a little bit. so it just shows you that the market has changed its

metabolism a little bit. it's a little more calm and boring and lower volatility at least for the moment while still managing to stay pretty strong. >> mike, i was going to follow up in terms of today's action and it's a little bit of everything that's working, energy, banks and tech, communication services leads the pack. >> that's been the pattern over the past few months where you get a little push. treasury yields backing off. maybe that again is a big loser in the first quarter were treasury bonds so you have some bidding right there. the large cap growth still a few percent below all-time highs are doing most of the work today in terms of moving the index higher >> yeah, it's feeling different with that growth versus value trade these days we'll watch it into the close. thank you. it's been nearly a week, only a week since the archegos margin call episode drew the attention of wall street and beyond our leslie picker has new reporting on two of the firms at

the heart of the story that she's been digging into with wilfred. leslie, what have you got? >> that's right. wilf and i have been reporting on the many hats worn by two firms involved in the archegos saga and whether there should have been a compliance function that could have intervened in potentially conflicting roles in the same stock let's back up for a second it's a bit complicated it's now pretty well telegraphed that one of the key triggers that led to the margin call of archegos was a tepid secondary offering of viacomcbs sthhares last wednesday this was conducted through respective equity capital markets groups within the banks. on news of a weaker than expected offer, viacomcbs stock plummetted about 23% because archegos was so leveraged to that one name, last week's moves concerned the groups at morgan stanley and goldman sachs which

later were the ones that forced archegos to sell in several names. by midfriday friday they were offering blocks of viacomcbs at $48 per share, a 44% discount from the secondary sale in the same company just two days prior. morgan stanley sold a bloc for a dollar cheaper on sunday when asked about potential spokesman, a goldman spokesperson told wilf there are strong informational barriers between the parts of the firm that manage capital raising for corporate clients and our relationships with institutional investors. morgan stanley and viacomcbs declined to comment. archegos did not respond to my multiple requests. now, while those firewalls may exist between groups, the question now as we're unpacking what happened is who knew what when, and who should have known what and when. guys. >> exactly, leslie clearly some senior people or

some compliance people maybe sit above all of those groups and restrictions and i think the key thing here for me is obviously brokers will tell people or advise people to buy a stock and it might go wrong from time to time, might fall after that. what's unique here is that those that were advised by their broker to buy contribs at $85, see within a day, not weeks or months, the stock collapse, not just fall a couple of percent, and due to a story that broker's company is very much at the center of. i think that clearly leads to some investors that bought at 85 likely to be feeling a little disappointed in their broker, maybe won't trust them as much next time they get a phone call from them. i think what adds to that a little bit, mike, is a secondary offering which i was on the buy side of back in my days as a funds manager. the brokers come to you and we don't know specifically what

happened in the phone conversations last week of course but the brokers come to you and say the book is full at 85, we're going to stand behind it at this price so you can feel pretty comfortable it's not going to fall below that in the days ahead, where clearly the opposite happened in 24 to 48 hours. not only were they standing behind the price at 85, they were doing quite the opposite and dumping the shares at a much, much lower price. >> an extremely set of circumstances that does highlight the fact that investment banks standing between providers of capital and consumers of capital are always essentially going to be playing both sides but the fact that basically as a secondary offering underwriter they were taking the market price as having important information in it, that there was generally demand there, whereas another part of the firm might have been able to tell them there was a single massively leveraged buyer buying total return swaps that were effectively getting the firm short the same shares that they

were on multiple different sides of this thing and maybe that market price that viacomcbs based its decision to raise more equity was not necessarily the true clearing price for the stock. and not standing behind it when it falls apart and exacerbating with the margin call liquidations will leave people unhappy on multiple sides of this. >> the other thing i'd throw in here, we focused on the two u.s. banks at the center of this, others of course were involved as well. between those two, there's slightly differentiating factors. one for morgan stanley is that they were the lead on the secondary and therefore probably have more responsibility to kind of stand behind the deal at 85 on the flip side, goldman sachs started selling at the lower price following the fire sale a little bit sooner, friday rather than sunday. so both kind of involved in a gist in the same kind of way but slightly differentiating factors

between the two. >> i guess my only question, wilfred, knowing -- my question is, is it's not like they did anything illegal, right? this happens all the time. they have the two sets of businesses which theoretically don't talk to each other is there anything -- are you just raising this as a potential client concern it's not a regulatory issue, is it >> no, you're absolutely right to be clear as was made clear in the statement from goldman sachs on the record. there is a chinese wall that exists between the pure investment bank and the pure trading parts of the business. you wouldn't expect the individuals there to be talking to each other. though i think it is reasonable to raise the question as to whether somebody senior in compliance gets taken on the inside as can happen at times and is aware of both of these things happening or someone more senior i think that is not an unreasonable thing to raise. either way as you rightly point out, sara, and as leslie well

knows, a lot of clients will be looking at this and saying next time they try to get me on a secondary placing, i know that there could be something else happening days later very, very rare as mike was also saying to see such a fast, dramatic fall just moments after having signed up for the secondary, leslie. >> yeah, and i would add one thing too, which is that it's not clear that at 85 per share, which is where the secondary price, that there would have been major issues for archegos what happened was that deal was met with very tepid demand from the market, and that is something that as an equity capital markets banker you would have a know. it's your job to have a sense of the actual demand in the market at that price. and so it's not within the realm of possibility that they would have known that that stock would fall subsequent to that secondary offering it's common for stocks to fall in any secondary offering. but this one in particular our reporting shows had some pretty

significant weaker than expected demand here so that could have potentially raised some flags throughout the organization as well >> leslie and wilfred, great color and reporting on what was happening inside those banks behind the scenes, as we continue to learn more information about this entire archegos margin call mess-up leslie, thank you. still to come on closing bell -- >> if we act now, in 50 years people are going to look back and say this was the moment that america won the future >> after the break, valerie jarrett, the former senior advisor to president obama will join us to discuss the biden administration's massive infrastructure plan amid new pushback from senate republicans. you're watching "closing bell" here on cnbc the cdow is up 152 points plan

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. the federal government's shrinking investment in the public has undermined broad based growth joining us is valerie jarrett, former senior advisor to president obama. she's also the author of "finding my voice. valerie, welcome back to the show >> thank you, sara. >> what happened to bipartisanship that was the promise from president biden early on they could have just done a straight infrastructure plan and probably gotten more republican buy-in but instead they went for massive government spending on all sorts of environmental and social causes and tax hikes. that wasn't going to get republicans on board. >> that's the campaign that president biden ran on and he's following through on his

commitment look, we rank 13th in the world in infrastructure. we should rank number one. yes, we to need bridges and roads and improving the electrical grid and our water system and broadband we also have to invest in research and development and make sure we are positioning our companies to compete in that global marketplace this is not the time for small plans. there is nothing in this proposal that the president did not run on, campaign on and win on so he is delivering what he thinks is necessary for the american people. i assure you, sara, if they had just proposed infrastructure there would be a reason that mitch mcconnell would find for not supporting that. and so i think what he's doing is saying, yes, i will reach out, i'm willing to listen he and his cabinet were out yesterday saying of course we want to hear good ideas. but the united states has got to be globally competitive and we're not. and that's not just hurting the government, that's hurting the american people and hurting our businesses and so he intends to move

forward. he welcomes their ideas. he loves their support but he's not going to let their lack of support and obstructionism get in the way of what he promised to the american people. >> it also gets at this idea of just big government spending, which is stimulative and has been holding us back, the fact we've been going the other way but the government getting involved in investment decisions, picking winners and losers among companies, among industries, among geographies? the government track record isn't all that great on that front, is it >> well, actually, yes, it is, if you think about what happened when president obama was in office our investment in clean energy, our investment in technology helped u.s. companies be competitive. government has always provided the seed money where there wasn't enough of an appetite in the private sector to do so. i think when we talk about spending, we should be looking at this as investment.

our companies investment in research and development our companies investment in their infrastructure it's about time that the federal government stood up and was a partner in that effort that's what president biden promised he was going to do and he intends to deliver on that promise. that's what the american people voted for. and so of course he's going to stay true to that commitment. >> valerie, to what extent are you concerned there's a little too much stimulus going into the system >> i defer to the economists that i trust janet yellen, i have an enormous amount of confidence in her. when she says that we need this to create jobs, to improve our competitiveness and it's an important investment to make and we will see millions of jobs because of this. look, i travel around the country and listen to stories of people talking around their kitchen tables virtually right now. what i hear is that the american people are looking for their government to step up and deliver.

we have spent far too long without the necessary infrastructure that will allow not only our companies to be competitive but our country to be competitive as you all know, this is a global marketplace now, and we are getting our clock cleaned. i think what the president is saying quite clearly is this is the time for bold plans. this is the time to close the equity gap that has existed in our country for far too long it's time to make sure that nobody gets left behind. and if not now in this crisis, when >> i think the criticism, and, val, you're the political expert would be, yes, he was elected with a mandate, but not by as big of a margin as he had hoped or as the polls suggested and certainly not by a big margin in the senate where it's really evenly split there so how much of a mandate does he have to completely shift the role of government in our economy and to shift the money from the private sector into the

public sector, which this plan does, and how risky of a move is that heading into the midterm elections? >> well, i don't think he's looking at this through a political lens he's looking at this through a lens of what's going to make the united states competitive. what's going to actually help u.s. companies compete in that global marketplace what's going to help hard-working families sitting around their table every day struggling to make ends meet that's the lens through which he looks at his job and i think if he stays true to the commitments that he made, he reaches out, he listens to great ideas coming from all sides of the aisle, all parts of his own party and he moves the country forward and people's lives get better, that's the metric by which i think he will determine whether or not not only does he keep control of the house and the senate in the midterms but continues to have the support of the american people. so that's the only litmus test that measures. you look at the stock market, it's doing fine after his announcement there's no cratering of the

market if anything, it went up today. and so i think he measured it just right he did not raise taxes on those making less than $400,000 a year it was a modest increase in corporate tax. and that investment will see many returns for the corporate community that wants to grow and create jobs here in the united states >> valerie jarrett, as always, a pleasure thanks for joining us. >> you're welcome. thank you. we've got just under 40 minutes left in the session. as valerie said, if anything the markets went up today. they certainly did, green across the screen the nasdaq leads the charge up 1.5%. up next, president biden's infrastructure plan raising hopes of big investments in the ev space we'll tell you about some other headlines that are driving ev stocks higher as well today. check out today's top search tickers on cnbc.com. the 10-year firmly on top followed by tesla,pp, alenio and microsoft. we're back here in a couple of minutes.

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we are following a number of headlines in the ev space after president biden's speech raised guidance on the sector phil lebeau has more for us. >> the ev infrastructure plays are really the stocks that are moving today because people are saying, look, if the president is proposing to throw a couple hundred billion dollars in charging stations, making sure we have the batteries,they're all spacs but you want to look at blink, chargepoint,

quantumscape look at the move today, moving higher on the anticipation that if this infrastructure bill goes through, they will benefit from it quantumscape in particular having a nice pop as they move higher on the anticipation that there will be more funding either through the federal government or in some fashion for the development of next generation batteries earlier today the ceo of quantumscape talked about the importance of developing those longer range ev batteries. >> our view has been that really in order to enable this transformation to happen, what you need is a battery that can compete with a combustion engine to do that you can't rely on incremental improvements that have been going on for the last few decades in the battery world, you need a new chemistry. >> and this is what's driving everything the anticipation that we will see electric vehicle sales grow by 62% this year, up to more

than a million vehicles here in the u.s. by 2025 in terms of annual sales guys, back to you. >> phil lebeau, thanks so much don't miss, by the way, tonight cramer's exclusive interview with the ceo of quantumscape at 6:00 p.m. on "mad money. still to come, shares of emergeent biosolutions sinking after a batch of j&j's vaccines using that company's ingredient failed to meet quality standards. we'll hear from the ceo about the fallout and his response. up next, the original influencer, paris hilton, getting bullish on crypto. she talks to us about her nft ambitions and more, next. bond yields are pulling back to start a new month the 10-year below 1.7. "closing bell" will be right back

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she's known as the original influencer paris hilton is also one of the original nft innovators and has been involved since march of last year. we caught up with paris an asked her about how she started getting involved in that industry >> i've always loved to be an innovator, and i did my first nft in march of 2020 and it won the nft charity award, the best one of the year, so that was exciting and now to see it just blow up in the past couple of months has been so exciting and i've been working together with some incredible artists and doing my first drop in a few weeks and then another one planned after that i just think it's amazing that artists can really take back their power and just -- i don't know, the technology is just so interesting. i'm just fascinated by it. all of it. >> you said you have your first drop coming in a few weeks can you tell us what it is is it a drawing, a photo how are you thinking about it?

>> my first drop is about art. i can't really say much yet because it's a surprise. but the first one will be about art and the second one will be about music and memorabilia, so it's amazing that i think really the possibilities are endless with this. >> you're teasing us tell us a little bit more. it's a bounce-out or something you've drawn or created? >> it's something i created with another artist and it has to do with female empowerment. >> you said you're an investor and that you liked nfts. does that mean you're an investor in bitcoin? >> yes i'm very, very excited about that as well it's definitely the future. >> have you been in bitcoin for a while? >> yes >> well, i guess it's been a good trade what else are you excited about in the investment world, anything else right now? >> i'm excited just to invest behind female entrepreneurs especially daily harvest is one that i also

amman investor behind with rachel jori, i think she's brilliant as well as good catch and reset is the one i'm most excited about right now because i think it's just been such a game-changer for me and has really changed my life i want to help empower others and have them be the best versions of themselves >> paris hilton. we've got more coming from that interview in the next hour, including her thoughts on the lockdown and her newest investment wilfred, she's got a lot going on it's been almost 20 years since her original show k, "the simpl life" came out on tv she just signed a new deal with warner brothers. she's a dj she's doing this new brand and is also joining with an equity stake and also sells fragrance and models in ads. there's just a lot to keep track of in the business world of paris hilton. >> and podcasts as well. the list goes on, as you say,

incredibly impressive portfolio of activities. and we talk to her about that, how busy she's been and how she destresses in light of that. so that's all still to come, including her new product. i'm fascinated to see this nft, both whatever she's painted on drawn -- >> i'm fascinated to see how much she gets for it. >> exactly she's got the following, which could really drive it significantly well for her. >> she said that she got into it, she was joining a clubhouse chat about nfts and got really into it then but it's interesting that she sold something with ether last month before anyone was talking about nft. >> more from paris hilton next hour. time for a cnbc update courtney reagan has it for us. >> hi, wilf. the united states is concerned about what the state department sees as escalations of aggressive and provocative

actions by russia's military, including military drills from crimea and the reported deployment of troops and equipment near the ukrainian border russia says its actions are defensive and not a threat to anyone police say the 44-year-old suspect in what they're calling a horrific massacre in a southern california office building knew all of his victims either personally or through a business connection, although they're not releasing details. among the four people shot to death, a 9-year-old boy in the arms of a woman believed to be his mother. tonight on the news with shepard smith, the latest on what we knew, including measures allegedly taken by the shooter to slow down police as they responded to the scene. according to an internal email seen by cnbc, united airlines will soon begin rehiring hundreds of pilots. as more people get vaccinatvaccinations and demand for travel grows. back to you. we've got 25 minutes left of trading.

here's where we stand in the markets. strong start to the new quarter. the dow is up 125 points nasdaq, technology, also catching a bit, it's up 1.6% s&p tracking for a record high close, second day in a row, up 1%, past the 4,000 mark for the first time ever. up next, we'll talk about how the stimulus is impacting the market with the coo of universa. it's a hedge fund. that exclusive interview when "closing bell" comes right back. like..like it's a mirror, dad. you know? alright, okay. how's that? is that how you hold a mirror? [ding] power e*trade gives you an award-winning mobile app with powerful, easy-to-use tools and interactive charts to give you an edge, 24/7 support when you need it the most and $0 commissions for online u.s. listed stocks. don't get mad. get e*trade and start trading today.

the s&p 500 crossing 4,000 for the first time it's up about 7% so far this year joining us for more is universa's ceo the fund was a big winner seeing returns of more than 4,000% in q1 of 2020 brandon, thanks for joining us congrats on that performance congrats perhaps even more so am i right in saying 100% plus returns per annum on average 2008 to 2019 >> thank you very much for

having me. while i can't speak about returns, i think that whether we're qualifying our performance in a month like march, i think that what is most important, like you're highlighting, is how effective we are the rest of the time what are we doing to a portfolio beyond crashes. >> so tell us about that you're providing risk mitigation to people with otherwise traditional portfolios >> correct so we think about risk mitigation here at universa much like most traditional asset allocators would. how are we impacting a portfolio in a drawndown in a month like march. when we evaluate our effectiveness as a strategy, we think about how we are impacting that portfolio the rest of the time, like from april until now.

>> for folks at home investing their own money, is there anything that they can do? i know you have a sophisticated tail risk mitigation strategy, but are there any takeaways for other investors? >> sure. we can't -- i wish we could give more advice to your general investor, but i think the main advice that we would have for them is, one, to avoid derivatives trading themselves, and think about your portfolio irrespective of your view on what's going to happen we're in the midst of monetary stimulus you can see the market double. or you could see the market crash again because of the valuations that we're in and we've written about. think about your portfolio in that context and be comfortable with either of those outcomes. the only other thing i would add is when you look at risk

mitigation, whether you're evaluating long volatility, a tail risk hedge fund by universa or bonds or things like that in your portfolio, you need to make the same analysis. are you better off because of it has it helped you or made you worse off? >> when you look at the risks out there, brandon, do you think there has been too much stimulus and there will be a price that needs to be paid for that somewhere in the future, and how soon >> sure. the nice thing about having proper risk mitigation is you don't need to be correct with the answers to those questions we could certainly see stimulus driving the markets significantly higher, but the effectiveness of stimulus can wane and ultimately the markets are much bigger than central banks are. so trying to figure out when that day will come is impossible there's no tactical way to position yourself for something like that. it's why your risk mitigation

needs to be strategic. you need to always have it on regardless of what your thesis is. >> brandon, thanks for joining us good to see you. >> thank you very much. straight ahead, chip stocks hit new highs and it's another big day for ipos on wall street. we'll check in on how the latest entrants are faring when we take u n inside the market zone next. yocalisten to us live on the go on the cnbc app we'll be right back.

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action going to the close. mike santoli is here today we have stephanie link with us as well. let's kick things off with the broader markets. the s&p 500 on track for a record close mike, we touched on all of the key points earlier but i want to revisit them which is it's broad, it's big and crossing 4k with the vix sliding it's a pretty attractive day. >> things are falling into place in terms of a trend and in terms of a true quarter. a little bit of that hedging instinct has dissipated a little bit because people are not willing to buy those puts to keep the vix higher because the market does seem like it's in gear at the moment very, very high, well above 60 industrials are flat and it's much more about secular growth and defensive stocks that are doing more of the heavy lifting today. it at least raises the idea that you have to continue to have

this kind of rotation work to keep the market up at these levels because we have pretty much priced in some good things in terms of the economic outlook. nobody says we priced all of it in but i think we have to reflect on the market action to a super hot isp number like that on that note, the market is digesting what we heard from president biden yesterday. does this look like net-net a benefit to the economy as opposed to the tax hikes >> the march manufacturing is some of the best in 38 years underneath the surface it's new orders and production best levels since 2004. a backlog also very, very nice so manufacturing is absolutely humming. you absolutely don't need an

infrastructure bill, i don't think. my point is if you add infrastructure on top of the great data that you're getting, you're going to see us almost like a super cycle in industrials, in manufacturing, in commodities, and i think that's why you want to have exposure these stocks, industrials, for example, have outperformed the technology sector. industrials are up 11% on the year energy is up 33% the financials are up 16% and tech is up 3.75% is it a little mean reversion today and yesterday? certainly. they came down really far, really fast. you want to have exposure to technology but you also want exposure to some of the parts of the economy that are really going to benefit as we get more and more stimulus into the system and see a little more inflation, a little higher interest rates by the way, caterpillar, there's a rumor that caterpillar is going to raise pricing across the board. that's also a very powerful theme for the industrial sector and the cyclical sector. there's been all kinds of supply

chain disruptions and on top of that you have better demand so you're going to see pricing power in these sectors in my opinion. >> for consumer stocks as well micron shares are rallying after an earning beat and bullish outlook. let's hit that name with josh lipton and some details. josh >> sara, micron beating expectations, really seeing strain across the board from data center to automotive. analysts noting that demand is outpacing supply in the dram market that's driving trends stock rallying 130% over the past year. separately the journal is reporting that micron and western digital are exploring a potential deal for a japanese chip company snh 15% closing out six straight months of gains yesterday. back to you, wilf. josh, thank you. it looks like it is the strongest s&p industry group in the market, up 3%. steph, how does micron look and

some of the other semi names as well caught in the crosshairs of this whole supply chain issue, shortage, we know the white house is focused on it and having a meeting on it as well. >> within technology i am very overweight semis and semi cap equipment for this exact reason. micron's numbers were outstanding. they talked about tightness in dram they haven't started to see improvement and that's coming. i own lamb research, nxpi and broadcom the bigger news to me as tsmz putting in $100 million to expand capacity over the next three years. this is on top of $28 billion they're putting in this year alone and on top of intel's $20 billion plan in terms of expansion and samsung over the next decade $116 billion in terms of capacity expansion. we're going to have a lot of this stuff at some point and it's going to be a glut but for now it's a function of better demand and also shortages in supply we know the auto industry, for example, they are going to lose

$60 billion because of the shortages of supply this year alone. so they have got to get it back going. i thought the ceo's comments from tsmz was very interesting, so it's going to take time these are why you want to own some of the other supply chain names based off this news. >> mike, some big jumps today in chip names was it warranted >> the chips managed to have a 12% or 15% pullback. that's more emblem act to me of how this market has always managed to pull the damsel off the tracks before there's any damage done and you have these groups that get way ahead of themselves and correct so i would say it's certainly warranted to have this bounce given the fact that nothing really changed about the outlook, nothing really changed about the supply dynamic so i think it's bullish that they're participating.

they're still not all of them back to their highs. but i do think it's an interesting little picture at how this market is managed to stay away from danger for a while. >> oil prices rallying after an opec agreement to increase production pippa stevens has the details for us pippa? >> hey, wilf wti and brent both rising more than 3% today following that meeting. opec and its allies agreeing to ease their production cuts beginning next month an additional 350,000 barrels per day will be added to the market in may and june with that market rising to 450,000 barrels they are day by july saudi arabia will also scale back its voluntary cuts, meaning that by july roughly 2 million barrels per day will be back online it was a little bit of a surprise ahead of today's meeting, wall street analysts had largely expected the group to keep production steady after recent weakness that saw oil dip in march for its first negative month in five.

but today's upward action suggests that the market views this decision as a sign that demands will be stronger in the second and third quarters and into the back half of the year back to you. >> pippa, thanks so much for that mike, nice bounce for the sector today, energy sector but some of the cyclicals have pulled back for a few weeks. >> that story was certainly well embraced, i would think, off the lows. if you talk about long-term underperformance and mean reversal, it acts as a tailwind. we'll see how much juice is left in those two trends. >> everybody loves energy now, steph, and it is the best

performing sector, up 33%. it has so much going for it on demand, on infrastructure spend, on the supply side and yet this was so hated for all the reasons. esg, structural reasons of where the biden administration is going on climate how do you balance those two factors? >> yeah. you know, it's a good point you make and how hated it was last year for about the last six years the energy sector weighting in the s&p 500 was at 1.9%. it's now below 3% so it's a very small weighting in the s&p 500 people could ignore it the last several years. now they're perking up these company's break evens are about $50 a barrel so they're going to be able to cover their cap ex, cover their dividends. i still think you want to be selective. i own chevron for the yield, also the assets and m & a they have been doing and i like that

they cut cap ex a couple of times. i am a little overweight with slumberage because i think they will benefit. >> 1.67 on the 10-year yield is helping ease some of the pressure of those higher rates we were seeing. it was another big day for ipos on wall street. leslie picker with the details how is compass doing, leslie >> reporter: compass is doing okay we did see two new deals today, just the latest examples of a weakening ipo market it's a trend that's been going on for a few weeks now compass is a real estate platform that's backed by softbank that offering was sliced in off ultimately raising under half a billion dollars. compass priced shares at 18 each, the low end of the range it had cut but shares are rising in its debut now, frontier group, the low cost airline, is facing a more muted reaction from the market

today. this comes after pricing shares at the low end of the range it had been marketing but then there's online education provider, sara, which had a different fate in yesterday's debut surging 36% then, up again today, guys >> leslie picker leslie, thank you. mike, what's the appetite for ipos, and has it changed over the last few months from the enormous enthusiasm we were seeing last year >> i think the appetite has been tested because we have had this massive issuance the spac game has slowed down a bit. part of that is the log jam of these deals getting out and some cold water being thrown on some spac deals by s.e.c. guidance. but i think there's appetite for new ideas, appetites for stocks not in people's indexes. but the ipo etf, the fact that it did so well and it seemed like an easy game never made a lot of sense there were a lot of 2-year-old

ipos in there so i think the whole thing has cooled down. maybe it's going to be a little more selective in general the supply dynamic has gotten a little tough at times and it's one of the reasons that you've had 4% or 5% shakeouts we've had this year. just a little two minutes left to go, looking pretty good. how about the internals? >> they're solid if you look at the new york stock exchange volume split, it's to the positive side. it's about 2-1 to the positive side so it's not as if it's one of these 80%, 90% upside days that people look for as being a real beginning of an acceleration phase of the market so that is all to the good take a look too at the internet sector, kind faang type names against the industrials. industrials have not really done a lot this week. they're taking a rest. you see the internet etf up 3.6% just this week things like facebook and alphabet making new highs as well so that's been a little bit

of a change of tone. again, a little rotation still happening. we talked about the volatility index earlier. it does seem like maybe this is the beginning of a little bit of a capitulation by some people who have been resolutely bearish or at least been trying to hedge this market. it tried to stay around 20 for a while. we're now at 18 at the beginning of a month, beginning of a quarter. plus we might be getting as i said earlier into this boring phase of the market that's going to be harder for the vix to stay up so it's bullish while it's declining but also means eventually, sara, we get to a complacent point. >> let's check out the major averages with a minute left to the close. we are looking strong, at least for the equity rally the s&p is on track to close at a record high. the dow is moving up to session highs in the last few moments of trade here, up 180 points. it's being head by salesforce, microsoft and visa it's interesting because salesforce and visa have been losers so far on the year. they're still down just a little bit. there's the s&p 500 up 1.2%

above 4,000. this looks like our first close ever above 4,000 energy leads the way as far as sectors. communication services and technology also each up more than 2%. only utilities and staples are lower. the nasdaq also joining in the party in a big way, up 1.75% as technology catches a bid after its first quarter of underperformance the russell 2000 index and small caps up 1.5%, wilfred. there's the close with a record for the s&p. >> a very nice record indeed for 4,019. welcome to "the closing bell." i'm wilfred frost withsara eisen. s&p above 4,000 close. the dow at a session high itself, up around half a percent or 173 points. the nasdaq up a healthy 1.8% energy, communication services, information technology the three

best performing sectors, all up more than 2% only three sectors in the red. consumer staples at the bottom only down a quarter of a percent. coming up, tom lee on why april could be a big month for the bulls on wall street plus the ceo of emerggent biosolutions will join us. mike, are there things to be worried about out there? clearly as a record high arrives, are we as stretched as we were last time we hit another s&p 500 close? >> new highs in tehemselves are not bearish. i think we're within a few percent of having to ask if the market has come too far too fast the market was up, s&p up 5.8% in the first quarter earnings forecast for the first

quarter consensuswise for the s&p was up 6% so pretty much in lockstep earnings forecasts continue to go up. most of the things you would look for are locking into place. eventually, i do think you have this issue where you have retail institutions and investors, it's not like they're underinvested in this market so it doesn't take much where people will get a little too bullish and maybe the risk appetites will run wild again. i don't really see that at the moment it's been a fairly muted grind higher, at least this last little phase we closed on the s&p last night, the same level we were at two weeks before so it has not really taken off to the upside to this point. tiffany, i think you are firmly in the bull market camp will you be hadadding positions here to start off the new quarter, particularly in some that have underperformed last quarter, like technology >> absolutely. i think it's a good time to buy. i think we need to pay attention

to the fact that we are in a bull market. we started in the new bull market in 2020 and we're still in it. but things have slowed down, right? so we understand that we're kind of coming out of this really crazy and weird situation, thi event-driven recession you know, we're anticipating volatility we're already seeing that. so we can even look to a week or two ago when technology -- we had days where we were just closing our eyes and watching some ofthese technology numbers. but then, you know, today is a different story. so these conversations about growth versus value and tech versus other industries are going to continue to happen. so yes, we are using opportunities for dips to buy the things that we like. so in tech there are a number of things we like but we're really paying attention to companies that will weather storms

an example is airbnb that we love it's really been able to kind of pivot, do this really quick pivot during a pandemic, right and we really think that it really has a huge runway for growth so when you look at their market share, they have 20% of the current market share of vacation rentals. however, there's this new thing now, this new category called work from anywhere which is a real thing and looking at airbnb's competition, if you really combine the top five hotel chains in the world, airbnb is bigger than all of them combined >> tiffany, in terms of buying things on the dip, what about bonds? q1 was not the quarter to own them are you tempted to buy them now? >> we're investing entire portfolios for our clients, we're not just buying stocks and not just buying bonds. while bonds have not been super duper popular, they have always

been in our portfolio. we think that they're important going forward. so for the investor that was really excited about individual stocks and catching that tech wave throughout 2020, we would suggest that it might be a good time to buy bonds if you don't already have bonds because we do see bonds as a good diversifier and definitely an opportunity to soften those blows so we've always had them and for investors that don't have them, it might be a good time to buy them >> the move back to growth, stephanie, we mentioned -- i know you're in tech in terms of semi conductors, but you have been unloading some of your profitable tech positions. are you adding them back on now that we've seen the nasdaq correction, and especially in the bigger cap growth names or, i don't know, maybe you call them value tech. whatever you call them, google, facebook, amazon, disney >> yeah, i don't own any software companies i own semi semi cap equipment

because i think the end markets are very, very powerful and we talked about 5g, data center cloud, ai. i have two value technology companies which are quite unpopular but i do like to be a little contrarian. i own ibm. i think that is a hidden cloud play that is underappreciated. a recent position with me with cisco as i expect the reopening to lead to better enterprise demand it gives you a nice dividend yield. i own a little spicy, cyclical semi cap equipment and some of the value. a very large position that i have been adding to all along has been alphabet because i do like that company very much. given the operating leverage that it has and also a little component of reopen but still they're benefitting from stay at home too but it's a combination. i think they're doing a great job in terms of cash management and buying back stocks of the faangs, that's what i

own. i own amazon and apple i think in the faang trade that's the one -- the alphabet would be the one that i feel the most conviction for this year. >> steph and tiffany, thank you both for joining us. lovely to see you. >> thanks, wilf. >> for more on the market outlook for april, let's bring in head of research tom lee. tom, good to see you thanks for joining us. >> yeah, great to see you. thanks for having me. >> so we're up above 4k. we're also where i wanted to start not just below 20, but below 18 on the vix, something we've spoken to you about before and saying that it would trigger an upward bounce of flows and momentum where do you stand on that now how much upside does that point to >> i think quite a lot one of the things when you look at the vix close today at 17, it's closing really at a pre-pandemic price in other words, if you look at

the 17 vix today, it is something you haven't seen since covid. that's a pretty bullish signal, especially for cyclical stocks we talked about this in our 2021 outlook that when you have a vix that's been elevated and then it sinks to what you think are normalized levels, 84% of the time cyclical stocks are what we call epicenter outperform. so to me that's really given a strong green light to be long energy, industrials, consumer discretionary. but really that you've got to get out of hypergrowth stocks. >> so the hypergrowth, though, does that include some of the big cap tech or are those also attractive >> to me the faang trade can still track the market, so i'm less concerned about someone who wants microsoft, apple, amazon, netflix. but, you know, when you look at sort of the big 12 stocks that were part of the work from home, those were extremely crowded trades they really benefitted from an

elevated vix and ultra low rates and also the idea that people just weren't leaving their homes. as all those three conditions fade, you really want to rotate more into epicenter. >> tom, i have a question for you about miley cyrus. i don't know if you saw what she did today, offered a million dollars worth of stock to people to go into their cash app accounts, which is a square company, in promotion of her series it just speaks to the rising popularity of retail trading and just the interest and the change in generation that is happening right now with stock ownership but my question is does it signal a top in any way in this boom we've seen in retail trading or does it signal that this is something that's here to stay and could provide a tailwind to the market >> well, i mean it's amazing a million dollars given to a lot of people is a great way to introduce people to stock ownership, so it's pretty

wonderful. and i think there is a future now, especially with crypto and blockchain and robinhood and fractionalized shares that people can use other ways to buy stocks so i think it's actually quite innovative i don't see it as a sign of a top, only because our institutional investor clients remain pretty cautious i mean there's a lot of things that keep them worried at night. if the institutions are nervous, and we know on twitter, which i think is a good read on sort of the public, we get a lot of bearish tweets, which i do welcome and invite i think it's actually really helpful. i just don't think people are that bullish on stocks. >> what's your view towards the small caps and russell 2000, tom, which obviously did have quite a marked pullback towards the middle of last month >> the russell 2000 is a super important index in 2021. in other years it may not have mattered as much

because their chockful of epicenter stocks, they're something we're paying attention to there were things we were watching this week one is a close above 220.93, because if that does take place which it looks like it happened today and yesterday it would be a continuation of a face ripper rally. a rally that could take a lot of investors by surprise. >> tom, we're just getting news here that coin base looks like will begin trading on the nasdaq under the ticker coin april 19th highly anticipated obviously because it's the first time we can really play crypto in the equity market. is that something you would recommend? you've been super bullish on bitcoin. >> yeah. i think when people go through the s-1, they're going to realize coin base is probably one of the top five most profitable exchanges in the world. they might make more money than even nasdaq.

so what investors have to keep in mind is crypto, which has maybe 2% adoption rate, highly, highly traded in high volume, these are going to be incredible companies. so i think coin base is a real hint at how much value is being captured in a crypto ecosystem boy, it's going to be a great -- it's a great company and it's going to be a great couple of decades for them >> well, we'll continue to talk about it as we await that direct listing april 14th tom lee, good to have you. thank you. >> thanks for having me. up next on the show, a rough session for emergent biosolutions the stock sinking today after johnson & johnson said a batch of vaccines using one of emergent's ingredients failed to meet quality standards we'll speak with emergent's ceo in a cnbc exclusive interview. plus we'll discuss the outlook for travel demand when we're joined by the ceo of wyndham te aholsnd resorts we're back in just 90 seconds on "closing bell.

. shares of emergeent biosolutions sharply lower today. they are a manufacturing partner for both johnson & johnson and astrazeneca on their covid-19 vaccines nbc news confirming today a bad batch of j&j's vaccine totaling 15 million doses had to be discarded from an emergent plant. meg tirrell joins us with an exclusive interview with their

ceo, robert kramer >> bob, thanks for being with us today. you know, the headlines are suggesting that somehow at emergent there was a mixup between the ingredients of the astrazeneca vaccine and the j&j vaccine. can you tell us what happened? >> sure, meg thanks for the opportunity to be on your show and clear up some misunderstanding or miscommunication so, first of all, let me say that the team at emergent has been working for many, many months to tget to the point whee we are today, having stood up a dedicated durable manufacturing process for the j&j product as well as for astrazeneca, and secondly to make sure that we have durable quality systems in place that in this case detected a out of specification production run or batch of product for j&j that we have subsequently pulled aside to ensure that it will not be processed further.

as unfortunate as it is to occasionally have out of spec product, it does happen. the good thing is that our quality systems caught it as designed and we moved forward and continue in production >> well, it's good that it was caught and folks should know that these are not doses that have been released and they don't affect anything that's already out there on the market. i know there have been some concerns about that. but how did something like this happen are there really adequate quality controls in place there at the facility? a lot of folks talk and say it's really not something that should happen that an ingredient from one vaccine should be contaminating another vaccine in the plant. >> just to be clear, meg, it isn't the case or wasn't the case where an ingredient from one vaccine contaminated or impacted the other it was more simply the fact that one production run, one batch of product, was determined to be

inconsistent with our quality specifications of emergent and j&j and subsequently that batch was pulled aside and will not be processed further. >> so there wasn't mixup with the astrazeneca vaccine because there's reporting saying that senior administration officials said there was contamination of the astrazeneca evacuation reen with the j&j vaccine that's not what happened >> it was an out of specification result for one batch of product to put in proper context, this was one of many, many other batches of product that has been successfully manufactured in accordance with our and j&j's product specifications and again, it's unfortunate that it happened, but it's one of many batches that had been successfully manufactured. >> just the size, i mean, is

kinds of eye-popping this was enough ingredient, drug substance, to make 15 million doses. it sounded like from "the new york times" reporting it wasn't caught for a few days and that amounted to larger vaccine that this was going to create is that right, it was enough for 15 million doses >> well, it was one batch. i've seen where that has been equated to 15 million doses. all i can say, meg, is it's one batch. and just a reminder that part of our work with j&j is to scale up the manufacturing process so we can make this as efficient as possible and be in a position to make the product available to j&j to meet their supply chain requirements >> we understand that the plant needs to be authorized by the fda in order for you to be able to manufacture and release these j&j -- not these j&j doses, but j&j doses you will be making at

the plant there. what kind of timing do you expect for the fda to authorize the plant and do you expect this could delay it >> i don't expect a significant delay. we are working very collaboratively with fda and with j&j to make sure that the fda has all of the information they need to make that determination. i'm not going to guess on a timeline, that's up to the fda all i can say is we remain confident and committed to do whatever we can to collaboratively work through this process and support the eventual eua approval for our bayview facility for j&j >> all right bob kramer, that's all the time we have. thank you very much for being with us today. ceo of emergent biosolutions guys. >> meg, thanks so much for bringing us that. up next, mike santoli looks at one market indicator that could be flashing a warning sign to investors.

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bounce forward, with comcast business. welcome back let's get over to mike, taking a look at upside momentum as things stand, mike. >> yeah, wilf, some of the

upside momentum and fundamental inputs for the market, here's the citi economic surprise index. this was somewhat broken by the covid crash and massive snap-back. it did not conform to the normal range. but you have seen it recede pretty profoundly back toward zero which basically means that the economic data no longer consistently beating economic forecasts as much as they once were still positive but trending towards zero this would have been the upper end of the range before, though. it shows you when you have those difusion indexes, it only stays so long. looking at the earnings revision, super strong story with upper earnings revisions. so i think it basically means the fundamentals are in place in terms of things improving, but maybe just not as quickly

relative to forecasts as we've become used to and maybe that explains some of the give and take with the cyclical sectors that we've seen in the last few weeks, guys. >> i was just going to say if woe went back to the first shot, the recent pullback not too dissimilar from the cyclical stocks. >> that's right. we talked about this morning's ism manufacturing number well above 60 forward s&p returns when that has been the case above 60 have not always been that good because the markets has led the way and gotten there, especially the cyclical sectors. >> yeah, we have some great expectations now as part of the issue. mike, thanks travel demand has taken off as americans get vaccinated. up next, the ceo of wyndham hotels and resorts of how competition from airbnb and vrbo are impacting bookings. plus the ceo of renting the runway and whether they have

plans to go public we'll be right back. ng the runway and whether they have plans to go public we'll be right back. g the runway and whether they have plans to go public we'll be right back. the runway and whether they have plans to go public we'll be right back.

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new projects means new project managers. you need to hire. i need indeed. indeed you do. the moment you sponsor a job on indeed you get a short list of quality candidates from our resume database. claim your seventy five dollar credit, when you post your first job at indeed.com/home. shares of wyndham hotels and resorts up more than 150% since last year. as the vaccine rollout continues and more americans gear up to travel, will they be staying at hotels or checking into airbnbs? joining us now is the ceo of wyndham hotels and resorts definitely want to the get to te competition. but first, geoff, status report. you operate in 95 countries,

have almost 9,000 hotels how much is booked at the moment >> well, it's remarkable just how quickly occupy ancy is comig back these last two weeks, the week of march 20 and march 27 have been the highest two weeks of occupancy in our industry since last march and to see occupancy levels now back to 85% of where they were in 2019 is impressive. to see in our segments, in our hotels, to see economy occupancy now on the weekends surpassing pre-'19 levels, the 70% level is really, really strong. >> we've seen it reflected in your stock price it's been an amazing run to an all-time high, geoff what about that question of airbnbs and vrbos and the appeal that those kind of lodging

places offer right now in an environment where we still are in a pandemic and people have gotten accustomed to being at home are you facing stiff competition there? >> our segments in the economy in the midscale are not feeling pressure when you look at the average daily rates of any of the vacation rental companies versus an economy or a midscale our average length of stays are much shorter, average length of stay of less than two nights, it's a different business. we appeal to families who are out on the road traveling and we appeal to that everyday business tra traveler that have never stopped traveling, that don't have an office to go to. gee whiz, when you look at what's going on from a manufacturing standpoint and a distribution standpoint, those are our business travelers they're not staying in vacation rentals. >> geoff, we did just show a map

of your hotel footprint. are you concerned about the pickup in europe being much slower because of vaccination rates? >> well, it's certainly slower than other parts of the world, wilfred. 99% of our hotels in the u.s. are open, 97% globally certainly in countries like france and italy, those have been two of the harder hit but also two of the countries, when you just look at the last few weeks of industry data that have seen the largest rise in occupancy levels because people want to get out and they want to get out domestically, they want to get out in the country and they want to figure out a way to travel and travel responsibly i'm staying here at the wyndham boston beacon hill and 85% occupancy in a city in the northeast that's a lot more impacted than certainly where i was last week in dallas or the week before in oklahoma city where the vaccines are more widespread and people are traveling more readily than they are here in the northeast. >> geoff, should there be

vaccine passports for vacation destinations, whether it's places like hawaii or within hotels themselves like yours >> it's a great question it's the question that all of us are asking right now, sara i think the industry certainly needs to develop a uniform digital health credential on testing and to your point on vaccine history that could make travel easier, that could make travel safer and certainly predeparture vaccines are becoming commonplace, especially internationally. many of us are working with american airlines on verify. they're all showing great progress u.s. travel had many of us meeting with secretary mayorkas last week. the administration is listening. we believe that it is an administration that could help coordinate a response to your very good question >> have you seen any

opportunities and been interested in m & a with various companies struggling in the last year >> well, we do believe that size matters, wilfred, scale matters. we're a company that has grown through m & a. we've averaged an acquisition every 18 months over the last 30 years and there certainly will be we believe more consolidation in the year ahead. right now we're very focused on our small business owners who are still struggling, who are still hurting and making sure that they get through this pandemic we do everything we possibly can on behalf of the industry to ask for more support ppp has been significant what president biden did in terms of signing that bill into law, extending that until may is going to go a long, long way, but we do believe that this is an industry that needs additional long-term support that's really our focus. >> i was just going to ask about the jobs picture in your industry, geoff. if you're at 85% occupancy right

now, does that mean you've brought back 85% of the jobs that have been lost compared to how many you got rid of? >> no, i was referring to -- >> obviously your industry is in a deep hole. i think there are still 3.5 million jobs lost from the pandemic so when do those come back >> well, they are coming back. this hotel that was at 85 occupancy for a weekend night, the industry still has a ways to go they are certainly coming back in states that are seeing that rising occupancy i mean the employment picture in texas and florida and arizona where occupy ceasoccupancies ar running in the 70s, 80s. but in these downtown locations, the meeting and destination locations where large groups meet, that's where the majority of those 3.5 million jobs that

you referenced have been lost. and that's why the industry is fighting so hard for more support for our workers to get them back and that begins with more support for our hotel owners and our franchisees. >> geoff, thanks for joining us. >> thanks for having us. >> good to see you. still ahead, we will discuss the future of live events and nightclubs with entrepreneur and dj paris hilton. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

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time for a cnbc news update. courtney reagan has it for us. >> hi, wilf. here is your cnbc news update for this hour. president biden's first cabinet meeting has concluded after two hours and five attendees got some homework. the secretaries of housing and urban development, commerce, labor, transportation and energy have been assigned to sell the president's $2 trillion infrastructure plan to congress and to the public. a nashville hotel, police are trying to talk with a suspect who they say fired three shots through a door at a u.s. marshal trying to arrest him for a murder in memphis. so far he hasn't responded to the negotiation attempts. and it doesn't look like spring but they're playing baseball in detroit.

at the tigers home opener, miguel cabrera hit his 350th home run for the team. earlier the washington nationals first home game was postponed after a player tested positive for covid. at the london zoo, an annual easter egg hunt for the animals, but these squirrel monkeys aren't looking for the colorful eggs around them, they're looking for the treats hidden inside due to the pandemic, there were no people to see the hunt, but the zoo will reopen later this month. that's a very cute activity for the animals. back over to you, sara >> a british tradition, animals get an egg hunt too. >> i have to say it's news to me. >> is that a british thing, will fr -- wilfred? >> maybe i've never heard of it before. i'll have to visit next time i'm there for easter >> courtney reagan, next year we hope thank you. up next, the shifting retail

landscape. the co-founder of rent the runway joins us with her next mission, which is venture capital. what kind of companies she's looking for and what could be in store for the way americans shop as we move forward toward reopening. plus live music in a post-pandemic world. we catch up with social influencer and dj paris hilton her comments when "closing bell" comes right back hey, it's good to see you. the company we've trusted to keep us working remotely, is the same company we'll trust to bring us back together. cisco. the bridge to possible.

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another change in the executive ranks at gamestop. the latest headline, game staup chief merchandising officer is going to be resigning from the company. remember this follows a series of executive departures, the cfo, jim bell, resigning late february and then late march the chief consumer officer, frank hamlin, left the company the company also brought in some talent, most notably a chief growth officer from amazon all of this is happening amid the retail frenzy and heavy interest in the name the stock has surged on that and ryan cohen, one of the founders of chewy, coming in as a board member and trying to engineer a turn-around and shakeup at gamestop. looks like he's making moves things are happening whether it's worth a few thousand percent run-up in the stock that's to be determined.

it's slightly lower after hours. not a ton of action for gamestop. the national retail federation forecasts retail sales will grow at least 6.5% this year marking the fastest growth since 2004. but as more americans are vaccinated, will they return to their pre-covid shopping habits? joining us is jenny fleish, co-founder of rent the runway. jenny, welcome to the show it's great to have you. >> thank you it's great to be here. >> so you co-founded rent the runway i know you're still on the board, then went on to walmart to found jet black and now decided to go into venture capital. why? are there a lot of consumer opportunities right now isn't the startup world? >> i think there are a lot of consumer opportunities m moreover, rent the runway, my co-founder and i were given a lot of support through our venture capital supporters so

i'm hoping to pay that forward and bring more women into the investing space as other businesses continue to evolve and grow and disrupt industries themselves. >> let's talk about some of the opportunities and the investment themes that you're looking at. post-covid we are expecting strong growth as i noted but who's going to benefit the most from that >> yeah, it's always an interesting moment in time when there is a major flux to the environment from these external factors like covid in this moment we've seen so many businesses transition to more digital in nature and much of that i don't think is going back consumers are much more comfortable and trusting of various forms of technology. so i think we'll see a continued use of digital forms of shopping, but also an overall increase of categories like renting apparel and buying dresses and just purchasing and getting out and about in general. consumers are excited and they're ready for it and there's a lot of great indicators between the travel markets,

wedding bookings at venues, hotel bookings we're seeing that give us the excitement that things are really starting to come back. >> so how do you expect that to manifest in terms of what kind of companies that you are looking for at this new vc role that you're taking on? are they technology companies that are empowering these retailers or the retailers and consumer product companies themselves >> so there's a good amount of both on the b to b software side there's underlying technology and infrastructure to support the very rapid infiltration into the world of digital sho shopify is a great example you have a lot of interesting influencer platforms where influencers are able to sell their products more accurately and efficiently. it's a unique trusted form of marketing that still brings a social/emotional connection to shopping digitally

so a great amount of excitement and facilitation on the software side also on delivery of physical goods. this idea that once we do order digitally we need to get the product so the efficiency around that process and optimization of supply chain still has a long way to go. we saw some of the pain points that happened during covid around the excess demand and supply chain breaking down ultimately businesses that have these omni channel capabilities are those that thrive. covid was a great demonstration. so i don't think we're going back from that i think businesses will need to invest in having better ways to integrate the physical and digital sides to make the best holistic category to customers and health and wellness. there is a digital pharmacy company as one great example and we certainly have seen the uptick and excitement around this category and space. there isn't much of anything lost in that experience and so i

expect that those markets will continue to grow in that same digital direction that they have started to during covid. >> one of your predictions was that the rental consumer economy would come back, obviously rent the runway has been hit pretty hard, right, jenny, over the course of the pandemic >> yes. >> have you seen a turn-around in the business and could you join the ipo party this one was expected to be the next big ipo but clearly it wasn't the right timing because of the business. >> well, can't comment on the ipo component. we are seeing a really exciting uptick in the business it's a great indicator that people are starting to get out and about, open emails, ordering, subscription of course we would have never expected to encounter a time where people don't need to get dressed on a daily basis i think it's made the team very thoughtful and strong about how we grow, growing in a really

disciplined financial way. we're ready for that uptick in growth we always knew it would come back and customers are coming back in droves, still engaged with the business despite the pandemic so we still saw them coming to our side and looking and wanting inspiration, even when they weren't having events. now they're placing the orders and we're ready for them, bring it on. >> jenny fleiss, thank you for joining us. >> thank you. up next, much more from our interview with paris hilton. we're going to dive into her latest project and how she's hoping to combat coronavirus stress in a surprising way we'll be right back. the aflac post-pain show! aflac! what a day of upsets. jill's certainly upset with that unexpected bill

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social media influencer, dj and business investor, paris hilton with a great deal of projects we spoke with her latest investment how it helped her deal with stress during the pandemic. >> i think for everyone this year was a stressful year and in any documentary "this is paris" i discuss many traumatic

experiences in my life, i never talked about it before, so after i talked about it i learned how much stress i was going through and that's when i discovered reset this past year. >> to what extent do he find stress built up with the level of engagement on social media platforms and others with both fans and critics alike is something you struggle to switch off at times? >> i have been in this industry so long that i've learned to deal with that but i can't imagine being a teenage girl and having to deal with the pressures of social media and just people online and how cruel they can be sometimes. i have tough skin over the years and definitely reset has helped me in so many ways deal with stress. >> as the original influencer in this day and age, 2021 which social media platform do you think is the most effective for getting your message out, your

brand out and everything you're working on >> i'm on every single platform. i really enjoy tiktok. i think it's so much fun i got on it this year during the pandemic there's a lot more to it than just dancing, there's comedy and so much that goes into it. >> i want to ask about another of your many career lines, that's djing, clearly nightclubs have not been the place to be in the last 12 months do you fear there might be long-term shifts in people not wanting to return to that sort of environment. i know you have open-air concerts but the smaller spaces, long-term suffering? >> i'm not fearing for myself because i feel i've moved on in my life. i just got engaged, i'm ready to start a family so i'm not going to be wanting to go out like i used to but i've been getting offers from around the world coming up soon i turned down a lot of them. so that's really not a priority

for me any more. but my heart does go out to my other friends who are d 1yrks's in the space and i'm hoping that it will open up again but i think it will be more about these outdoor pool parties and music festivals and smaller can clubs it might be a little bit hard forethem in the beginning. >> pare is hilton there, a few more authority than i to ask a question about djing enjoyed that at the end. my point was going to be how broad her portfolio of interest is a lot of which we discussed and more going up online in due course it does feel like she's completely on top of all of it i find it hard to deal with one social media she's on all of them she's running so many businesses with what feels like a very personal touch to it all. >> no, agree she's got a lot of help, probably but yes, yes the portfolio is broad and expansive. i think that's something we both

learn from it including the podcast, the new tv show with warner brothers, the advertising she does, she still models, i think, and now getting into new products like this stress release supplement it almost sounded like she broke baby news on cnbc but didn't quite go there, just said she wants to focus on having a family and a new chapter, we're not "access hollywood" so it can't happen here but close. >> a hint perhaps. still headed to the pool party so i don't know. >> wow not prioritizing djing, interesting. up next on the show, what to expect, sharp turn from tomorrow's key jobs report for march. a lot of optimism when "closing bell" comes right back

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we are counting you down to the march jobs vortex expected to have -- jobs report expected to see a gain of at least 675,000 1jobs compared last month's 379,000. on monday we will have a first ever interview with the

cleveland med president which will be great reaction on friday the stock market is closed tomorrow the bond market will be open half day we'll see initial reaction to jobs and if we do start getting really good data what will it mean for the fed policy will they be tested to the rising bond yields we've seen in recent weeks also to the numbers and market impact. >> it will be a big piece of the possible, especially some estimates for one million jobs, it's a wide range, and a tremendous number of jobs the economy is still down from the peak over a year ago there's a lot of play in the numbers. of course they will say we're not going to over anticipate recovery or assume we're quickly back to employment, we'll let the market mod u late its estimate of exactly when we're going to be closer to the fed's goals based on each of the

monthly reports. >> nice forecast, nice start to the month. >> yeah, for sure. markets continue to act pretty well below the surface there's still push-pull, lower volume, stocks going up, things to quibble with but the trend is very friendly and very much in tact right now. valt uation -- valuations have gone side ways for a year now because of earnings >> we're out of time have a good weekend everyone "fast money" starts now. >> i'm melissa lee this is "fast money" today's trader lineup, guy adami, tim seymour, karen fineman and -- big moves as we kick off a new quarter. plus president biden promising building ev stations nationwide. and batter up fast pitch on deck one trader thinks this e-commerce toing