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tv   Squawk on the Street  CNBC  April 5, 2021 9:00am-10:59am EDT

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minimum tax if you will, globally, we'll see what janet yellen has to say about that later today. right now the dow looking like we will open up about 254 points higher and the nasdaq 106 points higher and the s&p 500 up about 27 points higher morgan and steve, thanks for hanging out today. >> a lot of fun. >> appreciate it >> make sure you join us tomorrow "squawk on the street" begins right now. good monday morning, welcome to "squawk on the street." i'm carl quintanilla with jim cramer and david faber who is back we are set for some record highs at the open on the back of that strong jobs number from friday 916,000 broad-based gain, couple that with the higher pace of vaccines, some more reopening news from movies, to vegas, to restaurants, our road map will begin with the economic boost to stocks, futures are pointing to a sharply higher open, following that jobs number
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>> plus global minimum corporate tax rate, treasury secretary yellen said to push the policy this morning in an effort to keep companies from relocating to other countries in search of perhaps lower rates. and shares of tesla are jumping this morning, just ahead of the open, after a first quarter sales surge. carl >> guys, it is great to be back. the three of us. david, you've been on spring break. i've been on spring break. jim had a break a couple of weeks ago. david, all of that is kind of being reflected in the numbers we're getting out of vegas, out of air travel, out of open table restaurant seatings, i mean the economic reopening appears to be very much on track >> yeah, i mean i can, you know, anecdotally i think many of us can report the airlines were full, during travel, barely a seat on the flights that i was on available we know the news from delta this weekend in terms of not even having enough personnel to service what they needed to, opening the middle seats sooner
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than anticipated in order to just deal with, jim, how many people they had coming, and this morning, in talking to a handful of people i usually call, travel does seem to be something a lot of them are thinking about when it comes to even trip, and carvana and what it is going to mean for hertz, as it emerges from bankruptcy, sort of that whole travel play, and reopening play >> look, the roaring '20s, when it comes to that, when you add in the jobs number on friday which was not an inflation number by the way, you can see people are feeling bullish, and you know, 100 million vaccinations, at least part of it, you really start thinking, what am i doing? why shouldn't my life change why should it revert to going somewhere? and carl, i find the money that has been added up, that is sitting on the balance sheet, of many americans, is ready to be spent. obviously, there's still so many people unemployed but carl, those who have money, they're traveling. and one of the reasons why, i
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think the airlines really must have doubted the vacs because they're all short starved, they're short planes and look at southwest why, did they have to buy all of those planes, because they really underestimated travel, carl and they just didn't understand how much we wanted to go somewhere. >> they were clear that the range of potential outcomes this spring was pretty wide but you're right, delta had to cancel a number of flights over the weekend, because they're short on staff we did hit 4 million vaccinations, david, in a single day, over the weekend, and 5 million in a day sometime in the next couple of weeks and new york city goes to everyone over 16 years of age as of tomorrow and then upgrades this morning, david, the likes of amc, based on some of these box office numbers regarding godzilla v kong and the line out the door if you were at caesar's over the
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weekend was pretty remarkable. >> i guess vegas is coming back too. not perhaps a surprise and you pointed out the pace of vaccinations averaging over 3 million, having done 4, and gottlieb says maybe getting to 5 and you do those kinds of numbers and you quickly get to 100 million people in a month and conceivably some level, i don't know how close, but at least herd immunity or whatever they're talking about in a number of months and perhaps sooner than we anticipated, understanding that some portion of the population is simply not going to get vaccinated, and there are still going to be concerns about people under 16, but, and concerns about the variants that are out there and what is still a stubbornly high daily rate of infection. nonetheless, jim, it does appear we are on that road that we talked about so often, and perhaps further along than some had anticipated. >> look, i can't wait to speak to frank del rio tonight he's the ceo of norwegian cruise and he put the gauntlet down
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with the cdc the cdc, carl, i went through the cdc's rules, for first, cruise ships, i have no idea what they really are, but i can tell you, frank is saying everyone will be vaccinated, crew and customers, and i don't know how the cdc says no to that so the gauntlet is july 4th. frank just says it's time. this is for u.s. waters. and i've got to tell you, i know i would take a cruise if everybody would be vaccinated. i mean having watched that diamond cruise hbo, the diamond princess, not that much of a film that makes you want to cruise that much, but i do think that vaccinating everyone, whoa, vaccinating everyone, just takes something big away, and i think frank's right. come on, if everyone is vaccinated, isn't that what the point of vaccination is? carl, if everybody is vaccinated, shouldn't we be wide open >> yes, that's a great point it's a really interesting letter, actually and i can't wait to hear what frank tells you tonight but they're talking
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about july 4th, at 60% capacity, and i did notice this morning, guys, that fauci was talking to "politico" and said that by late fall, early winter, in fauci's view, you could be talking about a situation in which you go to a crowded movie theater, without a mask which is sort of, right, and that's sort of where we all wanted to end up, right? >> oh, man, i hope so. i mean, you know, somebody who i know, you're enthusiastic supporter of broadway and new york city and such an important component of the overall economy there, you can't really open a lot of these theater, in that way, at 30% or 40%, you need to get to a point where you can have everybody in a seat so that would be very good news. and i could even imagine wanting to go to a movie under that circumstance, even if people are answering their phones during the movie, jim, as they tend to want to do these days, for some reason you know, listen, and schools fully reopening. let's hope we get there. at this point though, jim,
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people still walk around the streets of new york, outside with masks on and if you don't have one on, they give you a dirty look. >> sure. >> so going from that, to where you're going to be in a crowded movie theater without people wearing masks i still find hard to imagine but i hope it comes soon. >> remember the analysts, in disney, talking about 2022 and everyone was excited about 2022 and no masks, i thought it was a little strange, i tried to get dr. fauci involved with the mask competition, nonprofit mask competition that we did for a million, and we picked some winners and it was terrific, i got behind it big, and then today, what, yesterday, biden announces a half a million competition. well, i mean first of all, our competition was a lot bigger but second, i mean now i mean now i think that, but if you listen to the diamond princess, and i'm not going to play a peter navarro role here, carl, but when you listen to that hbo documentary you have
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specifically dr. fauci saying no mask, not no masks, no mask, and it was a novel illness, i don't blame anyone, a novel illness but the idea they're just doing a mask competition now for the white house, for me, hello, we kind of did it, and got someone, but you know what, anything i guess that gives awareness to masks, i guess is okay maybe. i don't know >> yeah, your point is well taken, jim and a lot of trouble trying to live that down in the fog of war that we were in, certainly not the only miscalculation that's been made regarding policy but yeah, i'm sure we like to take that back jim, it does kind of lead us then, all of this enthusiasm and the reopening, to more questions about how we're going to pay for all of the stimulus that we either put in place or want to put in place still, and that brings us to yellen, the first major address today, in which she is expected, according to axios and our own steve liesman to call for a minimum corporate
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tax. how would that work? and how would it be resistant to attempts to undercut it given countries that want to draw in business >> i know the person who was in favor of one world a long time ago, i don't know how this is done but the republicans, holy cow are they against this thing, all republicans have been on tv and say the same thing, we're fine with bridges and tunnel, we're not fine really with anything else, i mean i don't know, david, i mean that bill has a lot that is not bridges andtunnels. >> it's got a lot that is not bridges and tunnels. it's going to need more or less complete democratic support. and there is some pushback from some democrats in terms of when it comes to taxes, not reinstating the deduction for state and local income taxes above the $10,000 cap that currently exists so it could be very tough, a
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tough road, even under re reconciliation, jim. that said, you want to figure out a way it potentially pay for it so it's not clear to me exactly what the alternative is but we're back where we always seem to be these last, i don't even know how many years now, where there is no true consensus among the two parties at all and so one just simply says no i don't know you know, jim, i want to come back to the broader market here since i have not had a chance to talk to you, it is that tech unwind rotation kind of coming to an end, in your opinion, again, sort of trying to pick up the tone of the market this morning, that kind of came to the forfrom a number of situations. >> there was an article in "the wall street journal" about the individual investor fleeing the market and the numbers are so powerful that i don't know if the past two days can really
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change things. and tesla getting everything going and analysts are looking at the multiple price target increases and a buy, and the deliveries in excess of 800,000, and that causes just a tremendous ripple effect, and carl, there are so many e.v. stocks that have been crushed including the spacs, so you got the charging stations doing well, and you got companies that are involved with batteries, that are doing incredibly well, this is early morning, quantumscape, and i question, carl, the lasting power of this, because every time that the individual investor comes back on tesla, and does other stocks that are derivatives, they tend to be disappoint because they want to buy lucid, which i think is a good-looking car, they really feel that that's going to be the future, that's church hill, but i think the problem is when you get behind the fisker, you just tend to wallow, i mean
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lordstown, not a lot of good news coming from lordstown, the romeo power quarter, the preannouncement was as horrible as i have ever seen, so you can get excited about these, carl, but i think in the end, you should be expected about some of the, yes, you should be excited about boeing, you should be excited about disney, i don't know whether this is the time to get right back into docu-sign and zoom, as great as those companies are, carl, more people come to work, the central office, that's why cisco is going up because they're central office, so i am a believer in the semiconductor capital equipment, applied materials, meeting this week, i think the semis because there's a shortage everywhere, that makes sense, that's the intersection of tech, but otherwise, carl, i just hope that people don't lose more money. >> that's an interesting thought, jim, and david, it kind of reminds me, cnbc had a pretty good look of a survey over the weekend of 300 ceos and hr executives, and the overwhelming view, 70% say, you're going to
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have reentry of the work force around labor day the other 30%, who knows but after we got blog posts last week, and the likes of amazon and google, saying we're going to have an office-centric culture that has big implications for real estate on the commercial and residential side we will take a break and be back in a minute. as we said, futures looking pretty good here, on the heels of the jobs numbers, still a lot to get to regarding policy and the week ahead don't get go anywhere. the lexus es, now available with all-wheel drive. this rain is bananas. lease the 2021 es 250 all-wheel drive for $339 a month for 39 months. experience amazing at your lexus dealer.
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we're about a week removed when i joined you on the phone to talk about this incredible archegos story, of course the reason behind that amazing run-up, we talked about virtually every day, and shares of the likes of viacom and discovery, there are other stocks as well, chinese-related companies, tencent music, a couple of others owned significantly but the reverberations from the story are still ongoing and particularly the scrutiny it will put on the swap market, or the total return swaps that are offered by investment banks through their prime brokerage to family offices and hedge funds such as archegos and whether there's going to be a need for more transparency it really is incredible to look at viacom shares now up 19% for the year, of course, they had
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been over 100% higher, more than that even if they're, 101 i think was the high for the stock, they sold ought of that stock at 85, much of it common, and that was in part sort of the downfall there, having brought it down, again, we didn't understand archegos was such an enormous owner of this company stock, "the new york times" reporting may have owned as much as 20 billion worth of stock, which even at its height would have represented close to 40% of the market cap but this was unknown to those who were shorting the stock. it was unknown to those who were buying the stock it was unknown to everybody. even to the prime brokers that had the swaps on with archegos, because they didn't know how many other prime brokers around the street were also, also had the same trade, essentially allowing mr. wang to have the mick performance of viacom
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stock. why, jim, anybody would want to own 30 or 40% of the market cap of this company, even from a risk management perspective, is still a key question we don't know the answer to it what we do know is that viacom has returned to levels that many would argue are more at least based on the underlying fundamentals of the company at this point as has discovery as well i mean jim, i think when the total return swap market, he was by far the largest single player without a doubt. >> well, i think people say firstly, when do you those kind of awkward transactions, the commissions are amazing, so in some ways do you want to look the other way. jpmorgan was not willing to look the other way, didn't want to deal with the business, and also found his character may be called into question, remember, what i found amazing is he used multiple prime brokers, so they really didn't know, none of these actually had a, from as far as i can tell, from these
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were all above board, was he a personal gamestop, did he see the shorts >> ryan cohen -- >> well, he was trying to corner the market in viacom, he was like i want every share. i will own every share. >> i mean tony romo? >> again, we continue to have questions here, because it was so unusual, and if there was more transparency in this market, where you actually knew who was behind these trades, you would have known the risks and many of those who were shorting the stock would have a better understanding yf it kept going up. >> right. >> and there is certainly a large argument to be made here and we may see it. we know the s.e.c. is taking a look at this but there may be an outcome of this that there will be more transparency in the swap market especially given the risk undertaken by the firms as well.
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we saw the loss of 2 billion we don't know what the loss will be at credit suisse. but according to bloomberg, they are now, there's some questions about their chief risk officer and whether she is going to be able to continue with that firm. so we're still seeing the fallout from this, and of course, we haven't heard anything from the man behind it all at archegos. >> he did say it was a challenging quarter, david. >> yes >> but i got to use that word. i mean because i think it really captures, perfectly, how challenges it was. and carl, one thing that did happen, if you go back to the tape of our show, every day, there was this moment where david would say, by the way, viacom's up again, and i mean i would be like, it was almost his personal gamestop, too, i mean david, you're like wall street faber, and that's all, but it may go since, because none of the other guys were moving up that much and as much as i love bob backish, because i got this
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stock wrong i do think about owning 40% in swaps is the type of thing where the government has to say, look, you got to make these swaps deals much more public and i have market access on tonight. they should be doing swaps and carl, there is a way to make this stuff very, very public i remember doing some swaps when i was, you know, very minor league in this market, but you got gaffed typically, you knew you had to get big, big, big, but if you were to be public about these things, and everything had to be in market axess and i think what happened is, this would have never have happened, carl, and that is a bit of a travesty, and i think the s.e.c. ought to say look, swaps from now on, got to make them public and that would change a lot because that's how you get away with this craziness. >> that was exactly senator warren's point, jim, opaque derivatives, dark pools, unregulated hedge funds, a trader who wriggled out from
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under the claw of the s.e.c. we will see what kind of implications it has for regulation down the road for sure we'll take a break here, guys. the opening bell in about nine minutes. don't go anywhere. 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
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than two minutes from now. applied materials. >> yes, did you see that stock flying today why? one, a huge chip shortage and two, an analyst meeting april 6th tomorrow and i think at this point it is very possible that they could announce much higher earnings, david, one of the things that has happened is you need applied materials and lam company and kla tencor if we alleviate any sort of tightness and you could say, asm, too, you could say this meeting could be defines, because we don't hear other than taiwan specific ordering $100 billion of equipment over the next three years. if we don't hear huge orders, we're never going to get this thing, david, where we're going to make it where we will have enough chips for cores and have enough chips for, did chips for cars and have enough chips for, the next thing we may hear about is planes and a huge amount of chips going into everything and a shortage of chips in the food
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chain everywhere and i don't know if will be made up by all of these companies >> you've been following this very closely, it's such an important story, and by the way, when you talk about the shortage, i mean you reference it in a way, the advent of 5g, the internet of things that we talked about so often, only going to require billions and billions more chips than already exist, as, you know, they go into virtually everything, because you're going to be able to have, whatever they go into, communicate with the edge of the network, in a way that there is no latency and it will allow for a lot more efficiency, but again, it goes to your point, chip shortages, perhaps for quite some time. >> right and people, the chinese order a lot of chips and they were just in case, we were just in time, and they ordered a ton from taiwan, and you have to see, there is a major flash bang going on and don't forget taiwan is in the midst of a big geopolitical struggle.
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foundries take two years to build from scratch lam research is probably doing more than almost anyone. and then you can't get a lam research machine in order to make semis the back orders are ridiculous so had is a very key moment for the industry and for the american industry. and it is not just cars. that's the point d-ram is now tight and now flash is getting tight so look out. this is some big squeeze that's going to last some time, a long time >> yes, the debate will be how long, jim. the opening bell and the s&p 500, at the bottom of the screen, 4047 i think will be an all time high to get out of the gate as we expected. same story for the dow jim, you know, in terms of prices, you've been talking about chips, we all have for a while, i know last week, kimberly clark, big price hike in north america, evercore says cat is ready to raise prices for the first time in five years and some of the ism respondents last
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week talked about either having to pay more to draw talent or pay more to retain talent and i wonder if you think that has big inflationary tales for us. >> and i think what jay powell had in terms of keeping rates down was the actual pay last week in that number was not as robust as i thought, but i don't know, i mean look, i had a company on last week, every grade of steel is going higher, nucor, and obviously lumber, there is no price in the decline of lumber after thedoubling. you know, david, it's very hard to realize how much of the plastics industry was really taken down by southe super stor. and prices are going through so we're just seeing, what i think is a level of inflation, of commodities we haven't seen in a long time, but not of labor. and so maybe, maybe the amazon potential unionizing move, i
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don't know, david, i feel like what has happened is we have a short-term inflation spike that jay powell predicted but no inflation yet in talent, across the board, in other words. we're still working on minimum wages. i don't know david, it's not bad when it comes to it. >> go ahead. >> we're still working through, right, this is the first trading day we've had since we got what were unemployment numbers on friday, jim, and you know, i want to come back on the economic front as well, that is something that we talk about oftentimes, and it was referenced in that journal story that we talked about a bit earlier, not clear that those checks are being spent in the way that we thought at least portions of, in the stock market again, this new cohort, and you know, it's funny, sitting here, where i was a year ago, whenth pandemic was just in its early stages, and we were all disparate places, it reminds me of that moment when we started to learn of potentially a new
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cohort existing, jim, but, of investors, who soon were going to be getting some check, who then decided to, in part at least, use some of that to bet on stocks. it doesn't seem to be happening as much as we thought with the latest $1400 checks, does it >> no, and i think you hit on the key word, david. bet on stocks. you didn't say invest in stocks. you said "bet on". >> and i did it specifically for that reason. >> and what happened, there was that article this morning that was so seminal actually because the numbers are staggering, the decline in robinhood, the decline of traffic, the decline of people looking at it, it's almost as if, yes, it's finally happened again, like in 2001, they just put their statements in the drawer, and said don't worry, the companies are going to come back carl, the companies don't come back the vast majority, we learned, they don't come back and that's why if you're
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diversified, you will survive this period. remember, the s&p was up 7% in the first quarter. and yet, there are people putting their statements in their drawer and not wanting to look at it what do they own and the answer is i think they owned a lot of stuff that they bought very high and yes, it is true, snowflake is a great company, and ark innovation is a great fund and we see some terrific spacs but that doesn't mean their stock prices, where they were bought, are anywhere near here and i think a lot of people are foolish if they think that stocks just come back you have to work at it i mean you have to, i wish we hadn't called them value stocks but it was too boring to buy caterpillar and buy nucor. they wanted flash. they wanted fisker they wanted nicola they wanted a lot of things, charging station, and carl, they may not come back as fast as people think if at all. >> it definitely takes a re-think by a lot of bargain
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institutions to pile into those names given how many rewards growth has given you over the past decade, jim to that extent, though, we did get those upgrades out of morgan stanley and some of the vegas names, obviously right at the heart of the reopening, caesar and mgm, overweight, 113 and 43 respectively dy see, jim, regarding your robinhood comment, goldman does add schwab to the conviction list today talking about balance sheet and their view, continued momentum. >> look, i think anything is possible, but the journal piece talked about it last week, the data was, the volume was equivalent to what happened the day after thanksgiving, and the day before christmas, i mean those are just complete nonvolume days i will say, david, and i think you make a case that there's some people obviously not going to leave, and schwab actually has good detail of who would, but some of these stock, david, they all have that same chart, and maybe things have been really great, maybe things will stay great, but isn't somebody
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other than e.v. not doing that well look at this you see caterpillar's chart? >> they do have similar charts we talked about, a couple of weeks ago, we talked about the spac-out, jim, which continues, you know, so many of those names that have captured the imagination of the same investor base don't quite seem to be there anymore. we're also starting to see companies that went public through spacs that have de-spacced so to speak, report numbered that are perhaps not met as they otherwise want to be, you mentioned romeo power for example, as we look at the bottom there, trading at 830, and remember they do the deals at 10. >> and churchill >> right >> churchill iv. >> yes >> i mean it went up there people bought that and that didn't -- >> well, it is still trading, again, i always say if you just, if it was a $10 stock moving to
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wherever, to $24, you would be very happy with it, it still performed very well, it's just that it happened to hit almost $60 on the way to $24. >> quantumscape, down 40%. >> but it does get me -- yes, it is and it's still a large company from a market cap perspective with a lot to come we hear from him all the time in terms of the advances that need to be made, that they are making at quantumscape, in terms of that solid state battery and where that's going to end up let's not forget, so many of these give us the projections on 25 or 26 earnings and/or revenues which is a conversation we've had and will continue to, when it comes to spacs but i did want to get to gamestop, it's down about 12.5%, jim, they finally took your advice, they are doing it as an after-market, not a fully underwritten deal a la viacom, and the stock is down 13% but still up 5,878% over the
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last 12 months. >> i applaud this. and i know there are people who are mad at adam aron for offering something that was in the proxy, about 500 million shares, but look, these companies are using the capital markets the way they're supposed to, not the way that it is about short busting, but about making it so that they can reinvent, and carl, who know, but the people that ryanf the
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newer investors don't really bother with, and i'm not saying that's wrong, i mean they go and
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they look at amc and adam aron and think it's good but there's corporate debt trading in the 30s that's out three years, well, adam said, listen, we sell common stock, we can buy back that debt and it will be anti-dilutive, but when people talk about that, some of these newer, younger investors, aren't looking at the balance sheet side and realizing how good this is it's really good >> how good it is. but is it? i mean i still wonder about the overall future of the company, don't you? >> no. >> you know, people are going back to the movie theaters thankfully, and will do so we hope in even more numbers, but it wasn't as though this was a lighting of the world on fire before the pandemic. this is amc. >> but david, i know they have a lot of debt but i do think if you're the only movie theater that gets through, i mean you look at darden, is darden the only large italian food restaurant that got through, because a lot of the italian we?
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i could argue they have scale. >> i don't know? >> what? you don'e open and until people really coming back isn't it sort of a money-losing proposition. >> well, no, i mean look, adam aron's goal, he's not a monopolistic but it is to be able to stay alive through this period he came on and he said that there's been five bankruptcy scares five i mean that's incredible when you go read the darden conference call, they're talking about how much they can spend versus everybody else. i mean one of the things that's happened here is that the big got bigger i don't know, carl i think that this is - >> that's true but when i think of a final thought quickly on amc and think about the big winner, it's silver lake, they thought they had basically a zero on their hands and they sold out at 12. so right now, that is the
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only - >> trying to get out before this all hit. >> we'll see >> they're a loser. >> fascinating, guys, what a tale >> guys, every sector is green except for oil and we've got the vix once again below 18. i think we will head to bob pisani good morning, bob. >> good morning, guys. not a lot going on overseas. europe, hong kong, australia, china, essentially closed but we have got a very powerful rally that's been going on really for the last five or six days, growth has reasserted itself the new high in the s&p and the new high in the transports and new high in the industrials, and many sectors of the s&p also at new highs, let's take a look at some of the ones that are moving, reits, new highs, communication services, industrials at a new high, materials at a new high. and each financials, bank stocks not quite at a new high but financials as a sector have popped to a new high as well we've also got an interesting mix of new highs in the s&p 500.
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there's a very small group of tech stocks like alphabet and some of the chip names like lam research, new high, home depot curiously continues to hit new highs, a lot of people talking about that over the weekend, but what is really noticeable is the old school industrials, and your textron, norfolk southerns, and eaton, these are big global industrial names, that are continuing to hit new highs every day, and of course, that's important, there's the great re-nation trade that we've been talking about so much, and as far as growth, ark holdings, back again, we know about how difficult it was the last week and a half or so, but since then, most of cathie wood's back names have been back up, tesla is having a good day on new orders and zoom, zillow, spotify, shopify, all of them have had a much better situation than they were two weeks ago some of these names were 20, 30, 40% off their old highs but they reasserted themselves, not in a
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dramatic way but certainly well above where they were for the last week and a half for the tail winds, a lot of them out there right now, important to know just in terms of the overall marks and u.s. is the vaccine leader the most important thing in the world right now, we have the great jobs report and remember the consumer confidence number, off the charts good, last week as well and rates are higher, but they're still contained and i think that's the key to why so much of the market, we're getting so much of the growth being able to tolerate the higher rates 2021 earnings, i keep saying, the numbers still keep going up. week after week. very quietly maybe not dramatically but just look at the first quarter for january 1st, we were expected to be up 16% for the first quarter, and now it's in the mid-20s, for estimates for the first quarter, and put up the next full screen, you'll see that's what really moves the markets here, and for the second quarter, the numbers also keep going up we were expected to be up 45% from the second quarter on january 1st. and now we're up almost 54%. those are huge moves up and
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that's what is powering the market you want to keep an eye on the second half of the year of course to see if that trend continues. the other thing that is amazing, the collapse of the vix, dropped two points going into the close we were at 19 and now at 17, and this is back to february 2020 levels, and really rather remarkable and i think it indicates not only just less concern, or overall panic but perhaps even a little bit more trading, a little less trading volumes, i think david touched on this earlier, we had some numbers out over the weekend for march trading volumes. very interesting remember the crescendo was in january. when we saw 15 billion shares a day trading in the equity market that's remarkable and 10 billion on average, in 2019, and those numbers were february, a little lower than january, and now we have the march numbers, cash equity volumes, 13% below the february numbers, and equity contracts for options, which indicates of course a lot of interest in retail, also 13%
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below what the numbers were in february so this makes a little bit of sense, carl, we had a crescendo in january of trading activity around retail traders, and as people go back to work, the volume levels are coming down a little bit, and i don't think that is surprising at all. carl, back to you. >> all right, bob, thanks, bob pisani. final pmis, rolling in let's get to rick. >> the final march reits and at the top of the hour we will have what many consider the definitive ism services coming out. but 60.4 replaces 60.0 on markit market services pmi. this is a new high water mark post-covid, for this series of data points. and it equals, or higher, the 60 in the rearview mirror and here is something interesting composite pmi, to 59.7, that's important, because
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59.5 last month's final read, was the high water mark, so once again both of these are post-covid highs and we're expecting a number right around 60.5 with the national number coming out soon. let's look at the chart, shall we an intraof 10s, starting around 7:00 eastern, i picked that because because at 8:20 eastern, the futures opened we could clearly see some buying coming in once we move into the time zone with regard to treasuries and then the chart will reveal on the 30th, last week, we had the high close, you can see on the left there, that was tuesday, at 177, and the next day, wednesday, the 31st, we had our high close, which was 174. so i'm sorry, 177 intra-day, high close, 174. why? because bob pisani brought it up and he's exactly right look at the five-week chart of treasuries 10-year, you will see, yesterday, friday, the close at 174 was the seventh close of 70
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basis points or higher which means we really have covered this, and we are sort of guns hot, because we haven't retraced, we haven't seen a lot lower yields but we're not really going through that 1 and 3/4 mark and that is psychologically important. very quickly, euro versus dollar, if you look at it versus october 1st, we are turning off five month lows in favor of the dollar and finally, the dollar versus the yuan, the chinese currency, you can clearly see we're improving but at a slow pace carl, back to you. >> rick santelli, thank you. the week will only get busier. and s&p, 4058, all time high and the dow 33,440 all time high. and the nasdaq highest since march 1. we're back after a break
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take a look at some of the
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s&p gainers, everything is going well today faang is doing well. facebook all time high, but it's really the reopening stocks that are the tip of the spear norwegian, carnival, tesla, and q1 delivery. more "squawk on the street" continues in a moment.
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let's get to jim and stop trading. >> one of my absolute favorite oil companies, i recommend two, chevron and pioneer. pioneer is offering 27 million shares in -- spent a billion dollars, wow, that's a lot, but this double point, which is private equity, and also assuming the debt, and that pressure is really hurting the stock. if you believe in oil, you want to be on that 27 million sky sheffield is fantastic, and this is really high class property if you like oil, you're going to get your chance, so take it. don't run from it. >> interesting, jim. yeah, the oil debate is sort of -- there's a collision here between the reopening play and gas demand, and mobility and then what opec plus says they're going to do over the next couple of months. >> california drilling and
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there's going to be less drilling all over the country because of president biden, and i really do want to emphasize that one of the reasons oil is up is a belief among investors that there really is going to be a major impact by president biden in terms of the switch to wind, the switch to solar, the switch to anything renewable, and what that will mean, of course, this is gasoline we're talking about, we're not an oil-based system, but i do believe that the scythe guist is selling stocks pioneers doing the best, you want to buy that off. tonight you mentioned norwegian, market access. >> yeah, market access we're going to talk about the swap market. it's actually crazy. we had this in 2008. it's happening again frank del rio has come out swinging he's not taking it he's saying, come on, it's time. we're going to vaccinate everybody, give us a break if you do vaccinate everyone,
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how does someone give it to someone else to me that's the secret of how you can change the world, but so far the cdc has a lot of crazy rules. remember last year when people thought it was all surface and not aerosol. let's see if he can prevail. >> leading the s&p at the moment, jim, up 8% we'll see you at 6:00. >> very good >> "mad moy"ne with jim cramer 6:00 p.m. eastern time we're back in a moment incomparable design makes it beautiful. state of the art technology, makes it brilliant.
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good monday morning, welcome to another hour of "squawk on the street." i'm carl quintanilla with morgan brennan, david faber of course is back. s&p, we have been riding a pretty good wave of positive data, and rick santelli has another e coe data point for us. rick. >> this is going to redefine positive data this morning, carl so our read on ism, supply management services index for march, expecting a number around 59 63.7 63.7 i have a database that goes back
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43 years to 1980 the highest on there is 1997 at 62.0 so this blows that away. really good number now, let's look at factory orders for february. we're expecting down 5/10. it ends up down 8/10 in the rear view mirror, slight revision to january's 2.6 to 2.7 if we look at transportation, it's down 6/10, about half as negative as we were expecting in the rear view mirror, up 1.8 there is some give back, and primarily numbers for january were really quite powerful if we look at durable goods orders, we take the mid month reads and toss them. our final now becomes minus 1.2 versus minus 1 p.1 which is equal to our mid month read, and if we look at capital goods orders, nondefense, a proxy for business spending. it movesfrom .8 negative to
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minus .9 is our final read, which is minus 1%. so of course, all of these numbers are minus signs, and primarily because they were strong with respect to january numbers. however, when we do look at that proxy for business spending, it really is awfully weak as a matter of fact, we had january, which is up .6, and then if you look back, prior to any of the covid, we're also on the soft side, this is a series of data points that covid affected but it certainly hasn't improved much post-covid morgan, back to you. >> definitely an area to keep a close eye on rick santelli, thank you, taking a look at that ten-year, 1.72. we're taking higher but off the 1.77% 10-year yield high that we saw the 14-month high last year. stocks higher this morning as well record highs to start the new week of trading, and i should
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note the first full week of the second quarter after the blow out jobs report on friday when the markets were closed for the easter holiday showed strong job growth but also not those inflationary pressures that folks have been so closely watching for so you could call it something of a goldilocks report, perhaps. janet yellen is set to use her major address when she speaks at the chicago counsel on global affairs, the event there next hour confederate, we are working with g20 nations to agree to a global minimum tax rate that can stop the race to the bottom is what she is expected to say, carl it's certainly an interesting proposal but one -- and obviously coming in the midst of this infrastructure spending bill that's been proposed by the white house, which does come with a proposed increase in the corporate tax rate here but i wonder how many and i'm sure it's going to be a question we're going to ask a lot of folks, how many of these
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countries are going to be willing to sign on and move away from a more competitive landscape when at least here in the u.s. we're talking about a tax rate increase to help fund infrastructure to make us more competitive on that front. >> although still lower than the way it was prior to the tax cut, david. >> true. >> it's been interesting to watch some of this policy friction regarding taxes i know you probably saw the times piece over the weekend looking at dozens of very large u.s. companies who have had a negative tax rate over three years, and we're talking about names we all know. nike, fedex, a and d, and others >> yeah, no, i did see that as you say, and it was notable. some say we have a tax liability, we didn't pay this year we are going to eventually have to pay it's all lawful, carl, of course they are simply taking advantage of the law as it currently is in terms of what they can and can't do on saving on their taxes.
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but it is notable that there are quite a few well known names that haven't paid taxes. listen, you can remember well when i would report almost daily because it was such an engine of merger and acquisition, where we would see deals that were crafted largely to move a company or what we used to call invert a company so that it would buy another company or merge with another company in order to take on a tax rate that was lower than that in the united states. as you point out, carl, it had been 35% it moved down to 21. some who even crafted the bill thought 25 would have been a perfectly nice place to have ended up, and now the biden administration does want to take it to 28, whether that will cause more inversions again, we'll simply have to wait and see, particularly if yellen gets any traction on this new proposal. >> yeah, it's going to be interesting, her first major address there, guys. let's bring in president at yardeni research, and lead baker, owner and president at apex financial
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good morning, great to have you both good to see you. >> thank you >> and i got to just get you first on this ism number, this 63.7 i know you've been talking about your latest acronym, momu, mother of all melt ups this seems to fit into that. >> absolutely, the fundamentals are good, but even though bond yields have been rising since august of last year, the valuation module from the s&p 500 remains around 22 which is very very impressive in the past, one would have thought that with rising bond yields, the valuation of multiple would go down but it's hung in there remarkably well, and i think it's because with the amount of liquidity provided by the fed and the treasury, this is the third round of checks that have just gone out starting around mid march for $1,400, bigger than the first two rounds, and some of it just can't be spent
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overnight. some of it miles up in the money supply and through february was up $4.2 trillion i got to believe it's going to be up even more when we get march and april data >> lee, i wonder what you make of that dynamic. you know, the argument when yields started to creep higher was that, well, companies are going to be able to earn their way out of this hole, the new competition for stocks do you think that's what ed is referring to, and do you think that's what we're looking at lee, are you there i guess we lost him, ed, we'll try to get him back while you and i continue to talk >> sure. >> i want you to follow through on that thought. i also want you to respond to something the journal wrote over the weekend, and that is that the pandemic in general shocked corporate america into adopting technology in ways they hadn't expected and because of that, we're going to be looking at
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that long awaited return to productivity do you think that makes sense? >> absolutely. i have been making that very same argument that the pandemic really was a shock to all of us. and i think those of us who could respond to it in a creative, positive way, by using technology to do our work to go about our business, to try to have some normality in our home lives, we all had to use technology i think that every business now really is a tech company if you're not using technology to improve the quality of the goods and services you provide to the consumer, if you're not using technology to bring the goods and services faster to the consumer, you're going to be left behind, and you're going to go out of business i think everybody recognizes that there's a tremendous menu of technological innovations out there, that can be used to increase productivity. i think that's part of my thesis for the roaring 2020s.
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i'm not the only one who has been making that analogy i think it's going to be based on productivity. >> just to dig into the roaring 2020s a little bit more, ed, i realize we're talking about an economic recovery this year, with the u.s. leading it, and leading it with estimates that just seem to continue to be revised higher we've got strong earnings expected this year as well but when we're talking about a higher corporate tax rate, what's expected to be greater regulations as well for some of the sectors we watch, how sustainable is the growth from a market perspective going into 2022 >> i think that's a very relevant question here i mean, the 2020s is a long time, it's a whole decade, and it's conceivable we'll have it all in the second half of the year the economy is rip roaring even in the first half of the year, the atlanta fed is talking about 6% gdp growth in the first quarter and the federal reserve
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bank of new york has a weekly indicator that suggests it could be up more than that this could be the roaring 2021, and then you're right, there's problems up ahead here in 2022 with the higher corporate taxes and more regulations but look, companies know it's coming and, i think they're responding to the likelihood that some of their costs are going up, by doing everything they can to offset them with productivity, with technology, with boosts to the profit margins to offset what we know is going to be a damper to a certain extent these corporations have very big tax departments, and as carl was saying, they're companies that even when the tax rate is supposed to be around 21%, they're paid nothing >> yeah, lee baker, i want to bring you back into this conversation now got you up and running here. roaring 20s. how do you see it from a market
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perspective? i know we have been talking so much about this rotation, this recovery rotation, does it still have legs? >> absolutely. i think it's still got legs. you know, the weird thing is it's almost like being a value investor is contrarity nowadays, as we're seeing things continue to open up we talked about flights and you guys haven't been on spring break and that sort of thing i think most of what we're seeing on the flights are consumers. i still don't think we have seen the business segment flying around, and so as we get to the third quarter, i think some of those industries will still continue to do better. i think some of the in-person types of businesses will continue to see advantages, things like weight watchers, which has been totally mergeable, they performed well by shifting to a dangeral envir -- digital environment. sometimes, there's digital being to the wrong flight deck. >> new york fed has a piece out
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today, and they're looking at excess savings in households, which we have talked about for a long time. the general view is the savings that was accumulated by the household during the pandemic, don't appear to be excessive in their words, and their conclusion is that the resulting boost to expenditures quote will be limited i guess this sort of feeds to the idea that there's only a finite number of times you can go out to dinner, jay powell has said that. where do you come down on that lee, do i still have you >> yeah, okay. i'm here i'm not sure what happened with this money that has come back, the savings, what we have been seeing in talking to clients, in many instances, people have been remodeling homes, people that maintain their jobs but had savings from not having to put money in the gas tank, getting some of the stimulus checks, and taking that time to reinvest their homes and tidy up things around the nest. >> lee, appreciate it.
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always good to check in with you, and fascinating times, and look forward to talking again soon lee baker and ed >> still to come, a closer look at the growing corporate backlash to georgia's voting law, and proposed changes coming to other states. plus, tesla shares revving up following the company's blow out q1 sales we're going to break down those numbers. and as the game stopped, more on the video game retailers plans, to sell up to a billion dollars of stock a lot more "squawk on the street" is still ahead
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. getting some breaking news this morning from the supreme court, the high court has ruled in favor of google in a copy right dispute with oracle. google had been accused of improperly using oracle's java programming language and early operating system google said the inclusion of java was fair use, though it has since removed java from the android decision a sizable decision from scotus we'll watch that. >> as we see shares of alphabet continue let's move on now. major league baseball has pulled this year's all star game from georgia over that state's new voting law dozens of companies also speaking out as well but are they ready to take their
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business elsewhere our scott cohn has the latest for us scott. >> hey, david, the message from corporate america does seem to be clear, companies support the right to vote and equal access to the polls here's a look at what some of those companies that are speaking out now against georgia's new election law, of course they include major league baseball, microsoft, cisco and others and nearly 200 now, executive, have signed on to a joint statement by civic alliance, a pro voting rights group saying our elections are not improved when lawmakers impose barriers, the result of longer lines at the polls, and secure access to ballot drop boxes, the statement billed as nonpartisan has called on election officials across the country to ensure that everybody has the freedom to vote. that seems to be where this is now going. that is nationwide the georgia law, of course, is signed but legislators in 43 states are considering changes
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that could limit some kind of voting the next big battle ground is texas, where they are considering bills on early voting, drive-in voting, and absentee ballots some big texas companies are speaking out, they include american airline, and dell technologies coming out against specific bills other companies are being more general, like southwest airlines which sent us a statement last night saying we believe every voter should have a fair opportunity to let their voice be heard but declining to talk about specific legislation at&t says it is working with the business round table and other countries on voting rights no response from other big texas companies, most notably exxon mobil but it's not clear how far any of these companies is willing to go. so far the only company or organization that we know of to actually take its business elsewhere is major league baseball everyone else just talking thus far. guys >> scott, yeah, such an interesting issue and the
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corporate response as well brings up so many questions, which is a great place as well to start with our next guest joining us now is les brun, a sig toir against the call to action, a letter to the "new york times," chairman and ceo of satellite sar group, and lead independent executive of merck, good to have you. >> good morning, thanks for having me. >> i would love you to respond, senator tom cotton was a guest on "squawk box" this morning talking about this issue, and i'd love you to listen to what he had to say about the response of corporate america and then respond to that. take a listen. >> sometimes businesses are right. sometimes they're wrong. but ceos that run airlines or pharmaceutical companies or credit card companies or sports leagues aren't really experts when it comes to voting laws, and that's been made perfectly clear over the last week their attacks on georgia's voting law are ill informed.
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>> ill informed, what do you say to that, les >> you know, i don't know that it's worth politicizing, but i do believe that any law which limits the access to the polls of anyone is wrong and inappropriate. and i think that's what we're trying to have a dialogue around are these prospective laws that attempt to in some ways limit access to the polls by anyone. it's an american fundamental right to have the right to vote, and i think that right is for everyone in america, white, black, brown or otherwise. >> you know, i wonder, though, and this is a subject that i had been spending a decent amount of time talking to ceos about, les, the willingness of corporate america to speak out on particular issues and the risks that that brings to the corporations it would seem this issue in part is bringing light to that. and it's not without risk for companies like merck and others
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that choose to speak out do you agree >> yeah, look, i don't think that corporations ought to be political entities having said that, this is not a political discussion this is a fundamental right. the right to the ballot box. and access to that ballot box, and so i think it's perfectly appropriate for corporate america to take a position as to whether or not they think these attempts to limit access to the ballot box are appropriate or not, and clearly it seems that the momentum and the overwhelming sense of orientation is that this is an inappropriate way to go. >> yeah, les, i'm curious, i was involved in that senator cotton interview on "squawk box" this morning. one of the other things he drew a comparison to, and i've seen a number of other lawmakers do this in the last couple of days as well is the fact that the mlb, for example, is punishing georgia over this voting law situation, or at least that's
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what i think he would say but partnering simultaneously with communist china and continuing to work there and generate business there similar comments for some of the companies that have come out and been outspoken about georgia, too. there's a point to be had there, is there not >> i don't know enough about the politics of it all to understand what that point might be other than to say that major league baseball's response is a direct response to the georgia law. having said that, they certainly are entitled to take whatever actions they are we're not suggesting boycotts or any such thing but clearly people are -- people are able to act within whatever constraints they feel they are able to react. >> well, in that case, how dow exit sort of the vicious circle of, for example, theoretically, a company exiting a state because of policy, and then having certain elements of the
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political circle call for boycotts on that company how do we break that and still let these companies vote with their feet >> so we're asking for a dialogue amongst people of goodwill, corporates of goodwill, to have a conversation around these laws and these attempts to limit access to the polls. there's no desire on our part to boycott anyone or to limit or to have people withdraw and i hear both sides talk about the severity of the cancel culture. maybe we ought to take a step back from that and think measure about the dialogue, and what we're trying to say with respect to that. >> les, are you still with us? >> i am, indeed. >> okay. good sorry i heard something that i thought maybe we lost you for a second. >> no, i'm here. >> we keep talking about it. good this law keeping people from the
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polls, and/or perhaps preventing people from voting, but there are a lot of republican politicians who are saying that is not the case, and so i guess i get back to the idea that aren't you in a sense, if you're a corporation speaking out on this alienating some constituency, whether it's your customers or even your shareholders or employees that agree with republicans who say that's not the case in georgia >> i don't know that there is any right thinking american, regardless of political persuasion, who believes that limiting access to the polls is a good thing to do and i would suggest to you that these laws are attempts to limit access and to constrain the ability to vote on the part of constituencies i think most americans, myself included, would find that to be inappropriate. >> finally, les, as the leader director here, somebody who's
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very familiar with the undertakings of boards, i mean, in the broader context of corporations choosing to use their voices on issues that perhaps they would not have engaged on, even as little as a few years ago, where do we draw the line, you know, will you know it when you see it in terms of something you don't feel a company should be commenting on? >> i think that's probably true that you'll know it when you see it having said that, i think it's in certain instances when we're talking about fundamental issues like the right to vote, i think it's perfectly appropriate for corporations to state their opinion and have a point of view i don't believe, as i said earlier, that corporations should be political animals, per se but this is not a political discussion it's not a black/white discussion, it's not a republican/democrat discussion it is a fundamental issue within the american fabric that you have access to the polls the more people who can vote, the better off our democracy is. >> and when a corporation like
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merck is making statements, who is it really addressing, is it all of its constituencies or largely at the behest of its employees. >> i think it has to address all of its constituencies, all of its stake holders, so whether it's our owners, our shareholders, our employees, whether it's our customers, i think we're addressing them all. >> les, it's such an interesting issue for us, and certainly appreciate your willingness to engage on it thank you. >> happy to have been here thanks again for having me. >> it's now time for etf spotlight. we're taking a look at u.s. consumer goods, ticker iyk, up 65% over the last 12 months but flat from the start of the year. the group's biggest holding, tesla rallying in today's trade following the first quarter sales surge, delivering nearly 185,000 vehicles that was a record for the company. earlier in today's session, the stock moved slightly into positive territory for the year, it's now back below the flat line, though in today's session, it's up 5 1/2%
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welcome back, the u.s. postal service has become the latest battle ground in the fight for ev adoption. ylan mui explains. >> good morning, morgan. president biden does want to electrify all u.s. government vehicles as part of his infrastructure plan, and he is specifically calling out the postal service right now, the newest mail trucks are 26 years old. and today, postal workers themselves sent a letter to congress pleading for a $25 billion upgrade with money set aside for brand new electric mail trucks. >> they're not very fuel efficient. we did a lot of repairwork on the fuel systems we did a lot of repair work on really every portion of the vehicle. we got to the point where we had to replace entire frames. >> the problem here is that the post office just signed a $6.10-year contract with oshkosh
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to overhaul its fleet, and only 10% are expected to be electric for now. that has set off a fire storm in washington ev's start up workhorse was passed over for the job, demanding to know why. lawmakers want to know how the post office is going to go from 10% to 100% ev, and whether oshkosh can really handle it oshkosh ceo told us his company can be a disrupter. >> we'll start supplying batly electric vehicles from day one i expect the ratio will probably go up over time, but we're ready to supply as many battery electric vehicles as are needed right from the beginning >> now, oshkosh said it does have a prototype of the vehicle, and is currently considering sites for a manufacturing plant. carl, congress could step in to send us back to square one back over to you. >> we have learned so much about the postal service over the past year ylan, thank you.
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watch game stop today, the video game retailer says it may sell up to a billion dollars worth of stock we are down about 5% on the name but really only at the lowest level in about a week and a 'rba ia up o wee ckn colef minutes. efficiency connected to more comfortable homes. emerson's energy star™ certified sensi™ smart thermostat uses geofencing to simplify how homeowners manage comfort and costs. emerson. consider it solved. don't like surprises? [ watch vibrates ] proactive notifications from fidelity keep you tuned in all day long. so when something happens that could affect your portfolio, you can act quickly. that's decision tech, only from fidelity.
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i'm courtney reagan, and here's your cnbc covid update at this hour. according to new data from the cdc, more than 3 million americans are being vaccinated each day in the u.s. as more supply becomes available, and states expand covid-19 vaccine eligibility. starting today, ohio will vaccinate every college student who wants the covid-19 vaccine the state will hold vaccine clinics where students can get the single dose johnson & johnson shot as of fall 2020, there were more than 492,000 students enrolled in higher education in the state of ohio. india's daily covid-19 cases have surpassed 100,000 for the
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first time since the pandemic began. according to data from its health ministry. more than 103,000 infections were reported in the last 24 hours. the government has intensified its vaccination drive in recently weeks now administering over 1 million shots a day. the country announced stringent covid-19 restrictions including curfews, and lock downs. morgan, back over to you >> courtney reagan, thank you. las vegas based fin tech company is getting $100 million investment boost led by investor bill foley, as online sports gambling and wagering looks to continue to grow joining us in a cnbc exclusive, bill foley, founder and chairman, as well as joe pavano, sight lines payments ceo good morning to you both thanks for being with us this morning. >> good morning. >> bill, i'll start with you, why sight line >> sight line really represents
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the next generation of payment solutions for online betting, gaming, and its cashless approach to brick and mortar casinos is the next evolution of gaming within america. and gaming in america is projected to grow to about $24 billion, online gaming, by 2025 and it grew about 200% last year we just viewed this as an investment opportunity for us to continue to be involved in the land grab that represents the online gaming and cashless society. >> joe, i'm curious what you're going to do with the latest round of capital, and given the fact that you are based out of las vegas, i realize we're talking about online gaming right now, but in terms of what you're seeing for recovery, folks going into casinos, folks using your platform in general,
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what does that look like >> yeah, i will tell you from an investment perspective, we had a phenomenal month of march, and that's coming off the heels of the $100 million investment led by bill foley. then you take a look at, you know, the evolution of now the return of march madness, and what it validates is the consumer's desire and appetite to engage in sports betting activity and doing so in a very safe, secure, and honorable manner we will continue to invest in our greatest asset, which is our people we are in a very diverse industry where you have two complexities of the payments industry and the gaming industry converging, and the depth and expertise of our organization and people bar none is best in class. the second piece is going to continue to build out the differentiated technology and the platform that we have to truly create this unified
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consumer experience to engage in all forms of gaming and entertainment activity and lead this digital transformation, whether it's online, within a brick and mortar or integrated casino resort or off the gaming floor into the nongaming side, being that secure payment ecosystem, we will lead the way. >> bill, i was reading the "wall street journal" pro file on you over the weekend, and you said you're a big fan of boring companies. this doesn't sound very boring to me. >> this company is not boring. it's akin to our investment in, which we de-spacced last week, and it's just an opportunity what i look for are opportunities to get involved in utilities within particular industries no, this is not a boring company. this is a growth story and we're really excited about it. >> >> speaking of spacs, you said you despacced pay safe, you have wpf, you announced that a
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light deal but the market doesn't seem to be particularly enthusiastic any more to announce there are you disappointed with the response, given it's trading only 16 cents above 10 bucks. >> well, daivid, it's a boring company, i'm sorry i don't keep coming forward with the electric car companies or intergalactic space travel, but this is a great company. it does business with 72 of the fortune 100, half of the fortune 500. it's a growth story. t it's a transformation story. maybe the growth rate right now is not exciting to people that are investing but it's going to be exciting, and we're in our second round of comments with the s.e.c., so we believe this will be a de-spac sometime in june, and the market will recognize this company eventually. >> well, speaking of the market, it isn't taking quite as kindly to spacs overall even as it was
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as little as two weeks ago you have at least two out there looking for deals. what's the landscape like right now? has it changed for you in any way? >> you know, david, it hasn't really changed we're talking to some really terrific companies with regard to our -- the three spacs we're still looking for transactions on one we're pretty close with, and these are really good companies that are prime to go public. both of our main candidates are owned by private equity. and we're having terrific conversations and we believe we'll be able to expedite these two despaccing transactions after we agree on terms and have our announcement, but these will be a little bit boring i'm sorry. >> joe, i'm curious about the sports betting landscape between sates r states right now new york is getting a lot of attention. it could be a very big market.
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the efforts there seem to have stalled at least right now in the near term. how key is it to see more states come online it to your business. >> when you take a look at today, you have over 30 plus jurisdictions that are either operational, have legalized or have pending legislation in regards to sports betting and/or internet gaming. land based casinos as a result of covid-19 really had to diversify their business models and the gaming industry was resilient, and they went out and helped lead the digital transformation because they knew it would be tangentially by driving velocity by extending online acceptance, and bringing it down and leveraging that consumer base within the brick and mortar casino. so the macro environment has never been more bullish in regards to the digital transformation for online
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gaming, sports betting and what's happening within the integrated casino resorts. >> finally, bill, i'm going to completely shift gears here for a moment you're a value investor, but you made your career in insurance. we're seeing insurers, some of the first among the institutional investors to adopt bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in meaningful ways. i want to get your thoughts on it. >> they understand it, and frankly i don't, we're not a cryptocurrency company in terms of our insurance company assets. pay safe is a cryptocurrency enabler, and we're excited about that and one of my next goals is really to understand cryptocurrency in trading. but it kind of passed me by, i'm sorry to say looks like i missed another one from a dollar to $50,000 for bitcoin. >> all right we'll leave the conversation there. gentlemen, thanks for joining us today. >> thank you >> good to be with you. >> thanks for having me.
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>> april is financial literacy month, and cnbc is committed to sharing messages from business and thought leaders about the importance of financial education. this is mohamed el-erian, and allianz's chief economic financial adviser. >> financial education is better for better offense, defense, earn, manage and protect your money better better defense, avoid three big traps, the debt trap, when you get into too much debt, the inflation trap, when you can't protect your wealth enough and the liquidity trap when suddenly you have a payment and you can't find the money to do it.
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the s&p 500 hasn't seen a losing april since 2012. could seasonality factors help the winning streak connutie.
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answer on tradin tradingnation.cnbc.com more "squawk on the street" straight ahead
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welcome back to "squawk on the street," i'm kate rooney, stocks are higher today with nearly every sector trading in positive territory, led by gains in tech. one notable laggard this morning is energy. just about every stock in that sector is lower with occidental, pioneer natural resources and diamondback among the worst performers this move comes as oil drops more than 2% with wti in particular slipping below that $60 a barrel level just a few days after opec plus agreed to ease its output cuts in the coming months. i'll send it back to you, carl >> all right, kate thank you. that's our kate rooney with a good look at the market action this morning the cdc over the weekend did announce the most significant loosening of travel restrictions that we've seen since the pandemic, and there's more cruise line news today
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seema mody has it all. hey, seema. >> that's right, fully vaccinated americans can travel freely in the u.s. for americans hoping to head abroad, more than 70 countries including brazil and ireland are fully open to u.s. travellers and tourists a lot still off limits, france, italy, spain and lock down as they battle their third covid wave a handful of european countries reliant on tourism including iceland and croatia have started opening up to travelers. no testing or quarantine required you'll need to take a negative test prior to your flight back to the u.s., however you won't have to self-isolate upon reentry unless your state requires you to do so. what is less clear is how the latest travel guidelines will be enforced the eu has rolled out a digital health certificate for vaccinated citizens to travel across borders the u.s. has yet to detail its plans. vaccine passport has received push back from the likes of governor desantis in florida
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experts say in the meantime, carry your cdc issued vaccine card cruise lines hope by requiring crews and passengers to be vaccinated, they too can get the cdc support. regent cruise line sending a letter to officials outlining its plan to resume sailing in july, unclear if the cdc will accept this proposal of course frustration has been growing amongst stake holders in the cruise line industry saying they feel unfairly singled out in not being a priority of the cdc. >> certainly a key area to watch. it's so incredible that in this era of digitization, we still have to carry around these little white paper vaccination cards. see ma mo-- seema mody. amc up more than 10%, 11% after getting an upgrade to buy. meanwhile, gamestop is down 4%, though off its session low on the heels of its plan to sell
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millions of shares there's more ahead stay with us
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got record highs at the open this morning you can see dow up almost 400. s&p 4072 nasdaq is not going to be left behind by much obviously not all-time highs but a further advance best number for the nas since february 19th. we'll continue to watch that wrigley coming back to chicago, meantime this time bringing weed. parallel buying windy city cannabis for $100 million cash and stock. joining us exclusively, the chairman and ceo welcome back great to see evolution of the business good to see you. >> thanks, carl. good morning glad to be here. >> you know, so much of the news flow regarding cannabis gets sucked up by the new states onboard. new york, of course, the latest example. this is a nice way to talk about entry into markets, state markets, that are at least a little more mature
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>> yeah. that's right you know, chicago obviously legalized a ways back. several other companies in there. marketed and developed it nicely we're excited to be onboard and be in the marketplace. we think we can definitely be competitive, grow our business, and importantly i think we can bring a real, strong social equity and responsibility component to chicago's marx plmarx -- marketplace. >> expand as relates to parallel and curious to know your thoughts whether some states like illinois have managed to smooth out some of the inefficiencies we saw with a lot of the early adopters? >> well, look. i think illinois is still developing so there's certainly still things to smooth out you know, the model really is developing a footprint in any
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geographic region. we have a broad footprint across i with this. one of the larger plays in illinois and we're excited about that and looking forward to growing it from there. as i said, again, one of the thing, talking efficiencies is, at what value do you buy companies these days, and if you can create a value and a growth story, which we have at parallel, with our anticipated revenues going forward, i think that's a game-changer in the business. >> well, what is -- you know, what are your expectations in terms of the revenues from this dispensaries i know many of them are very strong, as-is, but can you expect they're going to continue to grow to significant rates >> yeah. i think so. because we have, you know, four stores, windy city has the four stores up and running now. they're adding two more.
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certainly there's a certain amount of through put to run through stores but all sorts of new products, new pipeline ideas down the road. obviously potential for continued store expanse. depends how illinois regulates that market. but there's definitely plenty of upside in addressing this here. >> and you mentioned products in the pipeline we touched on this last time you were on the air. the fact of all of these cannabinoids and's research and development right now. what are the new products you're referencing there, and how should investors and consumers be thinking what could be possible with cannabis >> well, you know, i've been a bit of a broken record i think three things that investors ought to look at today. that's who has the growth story? several cannabis companies out there growing. it also who has the value story. it's value and growth. only one of those based on our expected revenues.
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e we think we're that play i think strongly investors ought to look at companies that address social equity from a holistic manner which we do. both with partnerships internally and composition of our company. including our pro forma board of directors. i don't think anyone stands above us for sure in terms of our focus on commitment on that and thirdly companies investing in the future. we have a very strong r & d program. and planning for that future planting saeeds that involves you'll see in q2 beverages, i can't get into specifics but there's lots coming down the pike here. >> great seeing you. > quk le srtaf >>"sawaly"tas ter the break.
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