regeneron's covid data dr. scott gottlieb is here to weigh in it's june 16th, 2021 and "squawk box" begins right now. good morning, everybody. welcome to "squawk box" here on cnbc i'm becky quick along with andrew ross sorkin and mike santoli. joe is off, mike, great to have you with us. >> great to be here. >> yeah, we were just talking about how beautiful times square is and what a magnificent place this is. you see they got rid of the port-a-potties so we got that going for us today let's take a look at the market dow is down by 55 points, s&p down by 2, nasdaq up by close to 10 days. the nasdaq was the biggest

decliner down, down by 7 0.7% people waiting to see what the odds are mike, what do you think with the snap of activity >> i think there's always a snap of activity. the market is being held in place just to see if expectations are confirmed that there's more of an acknowledgement that they're getting closer to this point where they have to withdraw the bond-buying down the road. they have to acknowledge its, without to say it's anything but a temporary blip i think that's where we're going. >> starting to feel like summer, right? lower volumes, not a huge amount of activity. >> exactly >> you mentioned the bond market, let's take a look at where the treasury market stands right now. this has been an interesting thing to watch, interesting like watching paint dry but if you look at this, the ten-year note is 1.5%. brian sullivan was talking earlier this morning how we saw

a temper tantrum or taper tantrum, that took place six months ago when you saw the bond yields move at that point. is that -- >> i think what you saw was a crescendo, it wasn't so much a taper. it was inflation getting to the upside that has really subsided i think everybody is looking at the one-off factors in there and also it's an unusually huge bond move to go from 0.5% to 1.75% in a few months that's working its way off that excess move. that's part of the deal. there's a lot of liquidity everywhere that includes to go into treasuries. a lot of tech factors people talking about the interest, a lot less than we thought a few months ago because the treasury is working down its cash balance. >> right, we have the "squawk stack" lined up for the prefed move for the markets if you take a look, bitcoin has been sitting at 40 -- bitcoin

below 40,000 gold is up slightly, up by a third of a percent but down yesterday. wti is the one that keeps moving oil prices continue to move on concerns about what happens with iran also reopening trade, as more and more people are getting back out there, businesses are reopening in a big way, wti after gaining said is up from 72 a barrel copper is, it's interesting to watch, 3.4 yesterday, down the worst performance for copper trading below an average since february 2nd if you're watching lumber, andrew, we've been talking about this a long time, sitting just at $1,000. that has pulled bag significantly. it was up yesterday. you're talking about a move of down 40% over the course of the last month that's going to be important for what we see what it means for housing and other places housing starts number is coming

out at 8:30 this morning all right. we've been talking about the federal reserve, they conclude the policy meeting today it's not expected to take any policy actions but it's likely to signal thinking about them. some economists expect the fed to mention tapering in its bond-buying program without committing to any time line. i think the fed could pencil in an initial rate hike in 2023 fed is expected to boost its inflation forecast for the year. at 6:50 a.m. eastern, we'll talk more about how to position your portfolio to profit from the fed action meantime, let's talk about the other big story of the day, it is the geopolitical event, and the geopolitical event of the season, president biden meeting with russian president vladimir putin in geneva, in about an hour from now, you know who is there, eamon javers is

there, he joins this morning, good morning, eamon. >> reporter: good morning, andrew, it's a beautiful summery day in geneva alongside the lake and we do expect to see president biden and vladimir putin at 1:00 p.m., as we take a look at the live picture of the villa la grange, that's the 18th century mansion on the shores of lake geneva, they've just been out vacuuming that red carpet within the past hour or so we do expect the two men arriving in sequence a carefully choreographed diplomatic dance will happen here, vladimir putin will arrive first and then joe biden this villa, interestingly enough is the site of the 1854 one of the first international meetings of the red cross this has a history of an international meeting place, this biddined by building wheren will be.

they'll have about 4 1/2 hours together inside the building talking to their aides and whatnot. we don't expect the two men to be alone at any point during this we do expect they'll hold their own individual news conference at the end of the event. putin speaking to russian and international media, biden speaking to american and international media. each offering to see if they have the same take what went on inside the building. the key issues for the two men starting with the cyber attacks in the united states on key infrastructure and food and fuel, that is such an important topic for joe biden. also the situation in ukraine. election interference around the world, nuclear weapons, treatment of dissidents, human rights all of those expected to be on the agenda aides say they expect it to go with the flow. they don't have a set schedule for how long this will last. once the two men enter that doorway there, we're not sure exactly how long it will be

before they come out, but aides are downplaying the idea that there are going to be any major breakthroughs here the expectation is just talk and normalizing the relationship no major treaties, agreements or other deliverables as they say, guys back over to you >> eamon, what's your expect of fireworks when it comes out what may turn out to be dueling press conferences afterwards, perhaps with even dueling versions of events and also, dueling versions of what both want >> reporter: well, the idea of the individual press conference is designed to minimize the opportunity for fireworks, right? because president biden has said, look, i don't want to stand next to vladimir putin and have us try to embarrass each other on the world stage, had the analysis who talked for how many seconds and how the body language looked. i'm just going to have my own press conference and i'll tell you what i think and we'll hear from vladimir putin what they

thinks the question is are there any deliverables at all, as i said they're downplaying expectations on that. you might get a breakthrough on something small like reinstating ambassadors that have been withdrawn to their capitals. that's been a positive indicator but we'll see what happens >> eamon, is there a third party, impartial party that sits in the room that see what takes place? >> reporter: we don't think there will be a mutual party, lavrov, blinken, and presumably there are translators each of whom work for the individual governments and that may be it the swiss will be onsite, but not playing any role is that we are aware of, so there's not going to be a neutral transcription of what was said you're going to be simply subjected to the interpretation of both sides coming up.

and that is the history of these things, right? both sides come out and declare a victory in their own way vladimir putin has his own set of agendas here. number one is simply to appear on the world stage as a peer of the united states. putin's military is much smaller than the united states his economy is much smaller than the united states. it's been hobbled by sanctions there are really internal political difficulties for him appearing on the world stage in this setting is already a win for vladimir putin of course, he wants to get other negotiating items done as well we'll watch for all of that but don't expect a neutral transcript of what these men said >> eamon javers in geneva, we look forward to your reporting all day, eamon, talk to you soon when we come back, a lot more on "squawk box," news overnight on regeneron's covid drug we'll get an answer from dr. scott gottlieb heading into a break, check out shares of oracle, guidance,

though, a bit short. the company ramping up cloud supporting workloads we're looking at the stock, 77.88. "squawk" returns after this. werg with iphone 12 pro on us. that's right. the powerful iphone 12 pro on us. at t-mobile. the leader in 5g. ♪ ♪ this bathroom is too cute! this one is too cool! this one is just right. visit kohler.com. uno, dos, tres, cuatro! [sfx]: typing [music starts] [sfx]: happy screaming

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move your xfinity services without breaking a sweat. xfinity makes moving easy. go online to transfer your services in about a minute. get started today. the reality is that the world is facing a climate emergency. perhaps all that we are seeing now with covid-19 is really just a dress rehearsal for the bigger

emergency which has come which is climate change. and there will be costs associated with trying to at least, you know, mitigate the impact of climate change, or even adapt and prepare for it. there will be costs. someone has to pay for it. >> that was singapore finance minister lawrence wong who was speaking as part of the cnbc evolve summit. that summit kicked off overseas late last night our time, it kicks off here in the united states at 11:00 eastern time this is a virtual conference with an amazing lineup to register to hear from the great ceos go to cnbc.com/evolve. andrew i'm going to interview ing pfizer, regeneron announcing success for hospitalized covid

patients saying the therapy reduced risk of death by 20%. and asking for the food and drug administration for the emergency use to be expanded to hospitalization patients, joining us is dr. scott god leeb, former fda commissioner. serves on the boards of pfizer and moderna. and his new book "uncontrolled spread" is out in september. good morning, doctor let's talk about the regeneron news i remember a time when we thought there was going to be more drugs like this before we might even get a vaccine so how good is this news, how do you think about it and how quickly do you think they can get it out >> right remember, this drug is on the market and developed for patients being used primarily inpatients who have mild to moderate symptoms in the outpatient setting

what it's used for to prevent progression to severe illness in early stage of the disease this is the first result that shows it actually has a treatment effect also in hospitalized patients. what they demonstrated in patients who are sero-negative, meaning they don't mount a response on their own, they haven't yet mounted an antibody response against the virus, but they're sick, sick enough to require hospitalizations in that subset of patients it showed about a 20% reduction in mortality. and also showed a substantial reduction linked from 17 to 13 days interestingly, this is a subset that the president also fell into, president trump. if you look at the data when president trump first became ill with coronavirus, his doctors put out data that he wasn't mounting antibodies. his antibodies were negligible they weren't measurable. that could have been because they weren't measuring him early enough in his disease.

it's that subset of patients which that drug seems to be effective. the patients that don't mount an early immune response. and finally what happens what happens to the patients, their immune systems don't kick in all at once. then all of a sudden, the immune systems kick in and they react to that storm that we talked about. >> in terms of therapies, though, where are we because that was something that we did think there was going to be a lot more available. there was a sense -- i remember, we had conversations whether you end up going to cvr or walgreens, you'd get sick and get the therapeutics where do you think we really are or that the vaccines really matter >> look, progress is being made, merck has data on that and the united states government recently signed a deal to procure that drug. almost a $2 billion deal if i

remember correctly pfizer also has a deal, i'm on the board of pfizer obviously and the company feels good about the progress they made with that therapeutic. i think we will have a therapeutic for coronavirus. i think we'll have a drug that can be taken as a small molecule, as a pill that inhibits viral replication much like tamiflu for influenza. will we have it late in the fall i don't know we will figure out how to develop a drug that's largely nontoxic, can we take it as an outpatient and that will be a game-changer when you couple that with immunization, you can use that drug for people who will go unvaccinated or people who break through develop an illness, despite vaccination, you have a drug that can rescue them, much like tamiflu

>> scott, i was waiting to talk to you there was a report that suggested that covid was circulating in the united states as early as december of 2019 what the heck does that mean >> yeah, look, it's certainly possible there were some cases the problem going back and looking at samples which is what they're doing and looking for antibodies, the interesting isn't that reliable. you get some cross-reaction with other coronaviruses when you do that sort of testing but if you look at the date that's come out of china, or the reporting out of china, excuse me, the chinese government hasn't released any data there's been reports showing that they had samples that the virus was circulating as early as mid-november. it could have been circulating earlier than that. it's possible this was circulating in china much earlier than we expect and started to get exported on a small basis to other countries it's certainly been the case based on studies we had, this was circulating in the united states, certainly by january, it was spreading in new york city

>> i know two people who -- before maybe they thought they had coronavirus earlier. they were thinking january and february and i kind of brushed it off in the past but they had pretty bad respiratory issues, something that looked very similar to a covid reaction is there any way for them to go back and get tested to find out they had it at this point? most of the testing i think wouldn't show up at this point >> yeah, probably not at this point. certainly, you wouldn't know when the exposure was even if they had detectable antibodies it was probably circulating in very low levels in january it would be unlikely that people had it in january. it was probably circulating in new york city, san francisco, seattles early as january, maybe earlier than that. we certainly know it was circulating in late november in china. they acknowledged that now, we have evidence, at least that's been reported in the newspapers there that it had been circulating much earlier than that. >> a way to weigh in on this, i know there's a lot of business

leaders watching us in the morning trying to figure out whether they should make the vaccine mandatory, you see goldman sachs and jpmorgan and others are trying to push people back to the office unmasked. if you have 90% of your employees vaccinated you might not care that the other 10% aren't and actually people won't be upset about it, i don't know. but if you have only 60% or 70% vaccinated, it becomes a lot more complicated what do you think should happen? what would you be doing if you were running a big company that managed itself in an office with a culture that wants to be in the office >> well, look, i think companies have been oddly reluctant to mandate the vaccine, quite frankly. i think certainly, companies that have employees that are client facing, you know, that face the public, a lot of them are going to mandate the vaccine because it's going to be important to their business. we're seeing restaurants do

that we're seeing businesses that have a lot of client-facing personnel, require vaccination in an office-based environment, we'll probably see that kick in, in the fall. prevalence is low now, as we get into the fall, 6.1.7, the delta variant does seem to be a more pathogenic strain. i do think businesses will rethink vaccination for people back in the office because they want to keep their offices open. the best way to protect that environment is through vaccination. there is some truth in the proposition you laid out, however, that if you have a high percentage of employees vaccinated the risk from the cohort that chooses to go unvaccinate said quite low so if you have 90% of your employees vaccinated -- that's quite high, i've not seen that in large businesses but certainly above 80%, that provides an environment where you're far less likely to have an outbreak in an office-based

environment than if only 60% of your employees are vaccinated. >> dr. scott gottlieb making us smarter and through thorny issues we appreciate you and hope to see you very soon. >> thanks a lot. mike coming up, the criminal fraud against against elizabeth holmes is moving closer to trial. the judge making pretrial rulings yesterday. details next mm. as we head to break, check out shares of roblox as the company said it had 43,000 active users in may, down. stock indicated wn bdoy almost 8% we'll be right back. jason, did you know geico could save you hundreds on car insurance and a whole lot more? cool. so what are you waiting for? mckayla maroney to get your frisbee off the roof? i'll get it. ♪ (upbeat music) ♪ ♪ ♪ whoa.

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welcome back to "squawk. time for "executive edge." we're going to start with the update on the trial of former theranos ceo elizabeth holmes. the judge brought down the team's questions on the list, 120 questions, guys, 45 pages, they got it down to 20 pages one of holmes' attorneys objected made it clear that the team is worried about jurors that don't have a bias in the case holmes did make breaks in the trial to nurse her newborn child. and the judge said there will be a designated quiet room for holmes to tend to her child during the trial holmes did not answer questions from cnbc as she walked into the courthouse it will be something i know, lots of people will be watching,

mike >> absolutely. all right. an update on the housing market with home prices and record highs demand for single-family rental homes is soaring so are rents. single-family rents up 5.3% in april. the largest gain in nearly 15 years. rents for single family detached homes as posed to townhomes even higher, 7.6% as millennials are seeking outdoor space. and the biggest percentage jump. and we were just -- andrew, mike and i were talking about the story in "the wall street journal" talking about office workers are still staying home everybody is back at the restaurants, stores are open right now 3 out of 10 workers, white collar workers are back in offices in cities like new york, san francisco. los angeles, washington, d.c but that has not really happened yet. i wonder if that's a function of the summertime or if that is going to change -- if this is just like the new

work reality my guess is it's something that will change a little bit more as we get to the end of summer. >> oh, i think there's a big move happening from what i know, there's a whole move afoot in certain parts of the country in early july, in terms of getting back to the office. there's going to be a second course, which might be even bigger post-labor day. whether that turns into five days a week that may not happen but three or four days a week. give it two or three months. my view is by christmas, even the hybrid work thing is going to be over i think we're going to be -- the world will be back to four or five day a week situation. >> it makes sense this is a problem that is especially a problem in the urban areas that's where it's more complicated if you have to take public transportation. if you're trying to drive in and park mike and i were parking, there's nowhere to park on the streets

all of the restaurants have taken up the spots there if this is what it looks like 3 out of 10 workers back, i can't imagine what it's going to look like with 10 out of 10 >> whoever the next mayor is of new york city is going to have to deal with a very thorny problem of the restaurants i think a lot of us, new yorkers love the restaurants out on the streets. but creates all sorts of issues with vehicles and parking. >> can't have 4 million people coming into the city commuting every day. >> so many other things, we'll see. >> i wonder what happens with the restaurant kiosks before 5:00 a.m you know, before 5:00 a.m., those places are closed, but they're not empty. think about that before you sit down in one of those next time >> truth is i desperately want -- this is an opportunity for all of the restaurants in new york city to get back some of the revenue that they lost. >> i think it's been great >> in part because it creates in some cases double or triple the amount of seating they used to have i don't think anybody is really going to even address that issue

until come fall 2022 i can't imagine anyone even touch it until then. >> i don't know. >> and then the question is whether the city is going to want to actually start to effectively require rent for any of those places. or require much more costly sort of build-outs of these things for safety reasons and other things it's going to change, but we'll see. >> well, there is a faction, of course, andrew that said, hey, this did what we're trying to do all along which is de-emphasize cars in manhattan, we'll see if that happens >> good luck with de-emphasizing commuters. we should tell you that russian president vladimir putin is now arriving at the geneva airport. there's his plane that's coming in he's going to traveling to villa la grange, where he's expected to meet with president biden we already from eamon javers watching it. he tweeted out a note, when

there's big news anticipated, but nothing hammed at the moment you can see people vacuuming the red carpet awaiting this they're not only videotaping this and but actually intervinte interviewing people vacuuming the red carpet lots anticipating what is happening next there you have it, vladimir putin arriving when we come back, we'll talk to the ceo of aflac he'll join us with his view of the pandemic recovery. what he's seeing in the united states and in japan. first, though, here's a quick look at shares of la-z-boy, they're down despite earnings revenue did drop 1%. the stock has been a strong performer during the pandemic because people were upgrading furniture in their homes the ceo says the current quarter is off to a good start with robust order rates and backlog

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even as the world reopens, the pandemic continues to have a pretty significant impact on individuals and businesses and the insurance industry is no exception. since march of 2020 shares of the insurance majors have seen shares plummet but as the virus started to fade this spring, those shares have bounced back to new highs. joining us right now to talk about the current state of the insurance business and the reopening is dan amos, he's the chairman and ceo of aflac. dan, it's great to see you it's been a while since we got to talk to you how are things going right now >> well, becky, things goring as well as you could expect, you know, our profits are at an all-time high. and we were able to adjust to where our employees, almost 95%, were working from home, and continue to do that. so, i would say in all, we're

very happy in our ability as businesses to take a punch at covid and be able to come back so, i'm very pleased >> what are you seeing in consumer behavior right now, just in terms of who's going back to the doctor what kind of claims you're seeing? and how does that compare in the united states to japan where you also have a huge business? >> well, it's a little slow in terms of people returning to the doctor we believe there's still a potential out there for future claims with our act w aboula-a ctuaary, people didn't go for a year, unfortunately, some of them would have been diagnosed in the early stages with something like cancer or some other serious illness. and then they would be, instead of stage one, they could be in a much higher stage which

ultimately would, you know, cause all types of problems for them medically, but also financially, it would run the cost up dramatically but the good news is we prepared for that we have reserved accordingly and we're watching that to see what happens this year, as things move more back to normal, i would say. >> hey, dan, how much of the drop in doctor office visits is because of the doctors' offices themselves i tried to get into my doctor last week. i had a bit of a cough i had just gotten a negative covid test because they test us at work. i'm fully vaccinated the doctor said they wouldn't see because because it was of respiratory nature >> i really don't have the numbers on that other than to know that we're not seeing any trends that we've noticed of any significance i had to go to my doctor not too long ago, just for a checkup, and had no problems, and i specifically asked him about it.

and, you know, our biggest discussion was, you know, getting everyone to take the vaccine. >> but, where do things stand in the united states versus japan we keep hearing about the problems japan is having ahead of the olympics. how would you measure consumers and consumer behavior between the two nations? >> you know that is a great question because it is so different. the americans work more as individuals. and the japanese work much more as -- with a group mentality and so, we tend to see that if we start at the exact same plane, that the americans will jump out ahead with 20% of the workforce being very aggressive and moving forward and then the herd, as i call it, 60%, will then come on board

and then the final 20% are laggards, and they're slow in moving and basically, you've got to force them. on the other hand, with the japanese, they tend to not move at all they meet, they discuss, they come up with a plan and boom, all of a sudden, they've been at 80%, 90%, and they then passion the u.s. so what i think you're right now seeing is they're in that stage of boom. they're vaccinating 600,000 to 800,000 people a day they say they will get above 1 million, i have no doubt about that basically, everyone that group society is moving as a herd and getting it done. so, i look for the olympics -- this is just a personal opinion -- i look for the olympics to take place i look for there could be very few problems, as they're masters

at doing that. and i believe that they have handled the pandemic as best for their society, that they can possibly do. and we, on the other hand, have been working hard on handling the problem ourselves in the u.s. >> dan, we have the federal reserve meeting today. and rates have been kind of unbelievable, treasury rates have been kind of unbelievable to watch the ten-year yield being below 1.5% this morning even in the face of all of this inflation, i just wonder what a big insurer like you does, the big insurance companies have to have a lot of money on reserves and cash on hand, traditionally employing things like the treasury department are you doing things differently? and what do you think the fed is doing today? >> you know, the biggest concern, people say what are you worrying about the most in the insurance industry, interest rates. and what are you going to do in the past, as we've seen it

continue to go down in the u.s., remember, it's been that way for almost 20 years in japan so, we've had to deal with that. and we've had to come up with creative, but extremely safe ways to do that. and it has not been easy and our yields have come down over the years but one of the things that we've done is new policies we've had to repr-price at highr rates because of lower interest rate environments. right now, it's stable and very low. and we're hoping that, you know, we'll see a little movement. but i don't believe the fed's going to anything right now. but i'm not an expert in that area i just take orders and look to find out what they've done >> dan, just to put a fine point on that one impact of lower rates for an extended period of time like this, incredibly low rates is that consumers will mind up paying more for things like insurance because the insurers have no

choice but to raise rates to pay off the claims is that what you're saying? >> well, no, what i'm saying for new policies we will charge a higher rate but our existing policyholders, we kept the rate the same so, that's the way we've been able to do it. and, of course, not all companies can do that. but we've been able to do that and we feel like we've got a strong investment department that continues to manage it in a way that is -- you know, my number one job is to protect the policiholders and the shareholders, so not taking any chances with the investment. and that does slow down our profits. but the safety factor is so important. but the good news is right now, we're having the best year in the history of the company >> dan, thank you for your time today. it's really great to see you we'll talk to you soon >> thank you very much, becky. >> thank you russian president putin is

now en route to his meeting with president biden. we'll continue to monitor that up next, china taking new action to rein in surging economy prices those details are also next. plus, president biden and russian president vladimir putin, as we say, meeting later today in geneva. we'll talk about what to expect with tom friedman. remember, you can watch or listen to us anytime on the cnbc free app we'll be right back. it's hard to hope, hard to cope with crisis. so we get to work. we mend, fighting for every person in every neighborhood; we, the coming of the common good. so dare to care, to be hope-sided. we're never divided, when we live to give, we always live united.

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the chinese monitor policy authorities are very concerned about the increase of leverage so they are trying to contend that debt level. to me, i think it's overly aggressive i think my views is cha the chinese policymaker should give more time to the economy let the economy go back to normalcy, before putting down -- before breaking down the surge >> that's just a taste of what we're going to be hearing today at the cnbc evolve global summit bringing together leaders and innovators around the world for

provocative conference and, yes, it's still not too late to register to hear from all of the ceos go to cnbc.com/events you're speaking with albert bourla and. >> and later in the day, we've got another great section with ursula burns from zero and arnld donald that runs forefront. a lot of conversations >> we do have new data from china overnight as well. factory output, retail sales and invest data, all of those numbers from may mist expectations analysts are blaming the outbreak of the variant in a seaport in china also consumers and guys i'll point out there's been some stuff written about how the

countries that maybe handled it the best in the beginning and shut things down are having a tougher time trying to reopen. because they didn't have the same number of people who were exposed early on and they haven't had the vaccination programs that have been up and running like ours have while it was more difficult for a lot of those democratic nations in the beginning, while the autocratic nations were able to kind of shut things down. the reverse is maybe true at this point, too. and maybe this is where you're starting to see some of that play out separately, china plans to tap its national reserves to rein in stock prices it plans to release copper, aluminum, zinc in other batches in the near future to ensure the supply and price stability that move had been anticipated and helped push copper prices to an eight-week low yesterday. copper prices were off by 4% just yesterday alone andrew coming up, when we return, we're going to get a major policy announcement from the

fed. the next guest has three stock picks to make re y'rsuoue well positioned, no matter what happens. we're back with that, after this picks for your portfolio to make sure you are well positioned no matter what happens. we're back with that after this.

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joining us now to pick a few areas of opportunity as the markets and the fed try to figure out if inflation is here to stay, stephanie xing. good morning >> good morning. how are you? >> all right thanks you know, the overall indexes have really held very steady near the highs a lot of churn near the surface. a lot of leadership swapping and 1/4 of all s&ps down 10% where is that bringing you as

you look company by company in terms of surfacing some opportunities. >> it's a good question because it is company by company because we've talked about all year long how there's been this massive rotation back and forth, value, growth, growth to value. i don't think today is going to be a big deal quite frankly. i think the fed is looking at two things, the pce deflator is about where they thought it was even last meeting and the youth reit unemployment is higher than they want it to be i don't think you're going to see a lot of change. the current assessment in terms of language changes on the margin net net i try to find some stocks that are going to work either way so we can go through all of them, cisco, halliburton, capital one as opportunities to stay diversified. >> cisco is kind of in the older, slower growing cheaper. what's the rationale for it at this moment? >> yes

you know me. i always try to find some of the cheaper names. it's 17 times earnings it's 2.7% yield. it's been a laggard. it's only up 22% in the last year it's a reopen name you have enterprise spend that is about to recover. you have cloud and telecom spend that is about to recover that is as the companies ready their work force and upgrade a data center switches both in hardware and software. i think that positions cisco really well. remember last quarter their total orders were up 10% versus 1% they're making head way in software >> obviously verify nancy stable as well. now halliburton, interesting play part of the rationale for the bull lischment on -- bullish on

oil. >> it's up 28% year to date. slumbershea is up 26%. i think you are going to see north american shale recover i think that's a 2022 story. it will benefit both companies but i think completions and production will be up mid to high single digits i think drilling and valuation will be mid single digit growth. they have $1 billion growth. it could help margins 100 to 200 basis points as oil prices recover, free cash flow will recover and they can pay down debt. >> consumer credit is very, very strong for obvious reasons consumers are flush. default rates are very low what does it mean for capital one? >> it's had a nice run, up 64% year to date it's hard to buy it. it's been flat since the middle of may it's taking a pause. we've talked about consumer all year long.

savings is high. 2 trillion in pent-up demand consumption should grow 10% in the second quarter alone these guys -- by the way, retail sales. everybody hated that headline number retail sales is up 22% from 2019 so it's a diversified company. their common tier equity is well above what they need it to be and coverage ratio i like their balance sheet and capital levels sicar is still coming. >> sicar coming. we'll see if all of that is a mover today. stephanie, thanks a lot. we'll talk to you soon. >> thanks, michael. when we come back, former robinhood ceo wes moore will join us on how communities across the country are grappling with the inequalities across the country. tom friedman will join us with the high stakes showdown in geneva between president biden and vladimir putin you're watching "squawk box" and this is cnbc

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futures are mixed. waiting to see what happens at the conclusion of the fed policy

meeting as wall street awaits any possible new statements on monetary policy. we'll preview today's decision and find out what it means for your portfolio. president biden and vladimir putin set for a high stakes meeting in geneva. "new york times" columnist tom friedman will join us to hash out the meetings in japan. regeneron's medication that can save covid patients. the second hour of "squawk box" begins right now good morning welcome back to "squawk box" here on cnbc i'm andrew ross sorkin along with becky quick and mike santoli. joe is off today u.s. equity futures off this hour 2 1/2 hours before the opening bell the dow would open down 44 points nasdaq higher 9 points higher.

s&p 500 up about 2 or down about 2.5 points right now couple big headlines to bring you this hour though southwest airlines recovering from its now second computer system issue in 24 hours it's the latest glitch forcing the airline to cancel 500 flights and delay many others. southwest has seen flights delayed on monday due to the problem with weather data system the fda has declared more doses of covid-19 vaccine. they've come from emerge again biosolutions that had been cited for potential cross contamination issues emergent had made astrazeneca and j&j. it hadn't taken proper cross contamination cautions. the price of lumber is coming back to earth after hitting a record high early last month. down in 14 of the past 16 days

and fallen more than 20% from the peak however, the price nearly triple what it would typically be at this time of year according to industry watchers. we've been following this. decision day for the fed the key issue for economists and investors alike is inflation ylan mui joins us. today we'll get to hear how fed chair jay powell is thinking about the economy and we'll get an updated set of fed forecast that will be critically important. pce inflation has boomed past the fed's previous inflation their last estimate was 2.4% from the end of the year the most actual recent trend was 3.6% did the data characterize the

risk of the outlook and where they're coming from. inflation is now the top concern among market participants outranking even the pandemic itself and failure to take the vaccine. that may be why our survey of fed watchers think the fed should go ahead and start tape perfecting by $21.8 billion a month. rising price pressures convinced powell to start talking about tape perfecting. the minutes from the last fmoc meeting show there was a debate about it the course of the officials who are discussing having that discussion has been growing but a reminder, even if taper talk starts today, action could still be months away the respondents don't believe that could happen until january. back over to you. >> ylan, thank you very much as we see vladimir putin apparently arriving in geneva. >> that's right. this is we believe him stepping out of his car we'll take a look at this now.

okay there are the first entries. the firsthand shakes that are taking place they're going to make their way into the chateau where these talks are taking place and we will continue to watch and update there, again, is russian president putins arrival eamon javers is standing by. eamon, what can you tell us right now? >> reporter: becky, we just saw putin's motorcade come under my live shot people over to villa la grange. he's greeted by the swiss president who will make remarks here sometime shortly. now that putin has arrived at the venue, the carefully core rio graphed dance is that joe biden is expected to be on his way as well. we'll see another motorcade through town here and then another arrival at the summit. they are just on the banks of lake geneva here, a beautiful setting for a summit and a

carefully core rio graphed one as you watch putin arrive. he'll settle down for a few minutes. biden will arrive. we'll expect to see the two leaders and the swiss president on the red carpet for remarks. back inside for an unknown amount of time fascinating dynamic as joe biden, president of the united states, will be negotiating with a man who is untrustworthy and a killer the question is what kind of success can he have in that villa today in terms of all of the issues that are on the table. it will be fascinating piece of history to watch. >> i feel like we are learning a lot more about the behind the scenes, the sausage making process for all of this diplomacy as we go eamon javers standing by watching we will check in with him. in the mean time, former robinhood ceo wes moore on equality before we head to a break though, let's get a check on the markets this morning the dow looks like it would open

down 44 points s&p futures off by 2 less than 2.5 hours before the opening bell and just over 7 hours from when we hear from the fed. a loof mket art activity happening today. stick around "squawk box" will be right back. ♪ because things are coming back. ♪ making now, the time to move forward. ♪ at u.s. bank, our goal is getting you to where you really want to be. ♪ because side by side, there's no telling how far you'll go. ♪ u.s. bank. we'll get there together. ♪ flexshares etfs are built with advanced modeling. to fill portfolio gaps and target specific goals. strengthening client confidence in you. before investing consider the fund's investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses. go to flexshares.com for a prospectus containing this information. read it carefully. wondering what actually goes into your multivitamin?

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welcome back, everybody. as vaccination rates rise,

communities are left with worsening wealth and equality. joining us is a man who's used to supporting disadvantaged communities. wes moore is running for governor of maryland >> good to see you. >> we know why you stepped down. talk about why you are running for governor right now >> i'm running for governor because if you look at my home state, the state of maryland, we are a state that is one of the wealthiest states in the country and one of the most inequitable. we have some of the best schools in the united states and some of the most under funded and some of the best hospitals and we have people who cannot afford to get treated. and we can do better when we think about the type of place we find ourselves in, for us to have a really unified and

a broad conversation about economic opportunity, about work and wages and wealth and how do we create that for all marylanders, i feel like we have a unique moment and we can lead in that and make it a space where opportunity doesn't have to be miserly. >> why do you think you can be more effective in a public role than in a private role doing that through philanthropy at this point >> i think i've had the pleasure of leading in a multitude of different sectors of the american economy i've been a paratrooper where i've led soldiers in combat with the 82nd airborne. i've been a successful business owner who had a successful exit that i started in baltimore and then also as the ceo of one of the largest nonprofit organizations in this country, robin hood and focusing exclusively on economic

mobility a, i'm able to see it from a variety of different speheres. i can bring people together and i understand that unless we can focus on that, unless we can bring all these various sectors together, then we will repeatedly find ourselves simply cleaning up the debris coming through the wealthy systems. good deeds alone will not be enough to lead us out of darkness we have to lead a concerted and concentrated conversation, broad conversation with every sector of our economy to be able to provide economic opportunities. >> let's talk about the inequality problem it's definitely something that has gotten worse over the last several years, especially with the pandemic this is a problem that you can kind of tie back to the financial crisis, too. there are lots of people who will point to this and say, this is a problem with the actions of the federal reserve. they took these extraordinary actions, brought interest rates

down to incredibly low levels and their point was a good one they were trying to make sure they could rescue the economy and save all boats and make them afloat the problem is the wealthiest people benefitted most from many of those activities and continue to do so to this day what do you think about that how would you go about attacking that when the fed is trying to do things to keep the system afloat that have probably incredibly exacerbated the inequality problem. >> we were starting to see progress on measures of wealth inequality that we had not seen in a long time we had started to see where the wealth gap was beginning to show signs of a measure of decrease and that's no longer the case. what we saw with covid-19 is we saw not just an exposure but an expansion of this nefarious wealth gap that continues to persist within our society the challenges when we're talking about growing inflation and growing inflationary

numbers, we've been talking about those inflationary pressures increasing over the past decade plus since we have had a run up on the markets and now we're watching these pressures, the reality is who it's going to hit hardest as we're watching the price of basic goods increase is those who are low income we still have the situation right now, becky, where there's not a single congressional district in this country where a person can make minimum wage in a 2 bedroom apartment, not one when we look at low wage workers, particularly those who are the working poor, the ones who are working and still not making enough to get them above the poverty line, we see how unless we're having real conversations about work and work training and job reskilling and matching people for the jobs that are available, unless we're having conversations about wages and making sure the people are getting paid a fair amount for a fair day's work and where that's creating measures of generational wealth, we see how inflationary pressures will

continue to create these massive economic and massive wealth divides that will have significant societal impacts on us going forward. >> a big part of your party's platform at this point, part of the movement in your party is to try and address the tax system to make things fairer. we've heard this time and again. there's all kinds of different taxes that are out there, whether that be a wealth tax talked about by elizabeth warren and others, whether that's a financial transaction tax. i wonder where you come down on these things in the past you've worked with billionaires, gone through philanthropy you've seen the power through robin hood of how some of these traders and investors give back pretty actively. what do you think about raising taxes on that class of people? >> i think one of the things i've been really inspired by is when you think about the work we've been able to do whether it was through bridge edu or through the military or through robin hood, i think about the

army we had within the robin hood foundation and it was investment managers and school teachers it was management consultants and it was social workers. it was a broad and a varied group of people who were all focused on solving the fundamental challenge, fundamental issue of a lack of economic growth and economic opportunity for everybody. i think that's how we need to approach these problems. we need to think about what is the goal what is it that we're trying to accomplish what is the end we're trying to get done and how do we think about the resources that are going to be necessary in order to help us to actually accomplish those things? we have to have a system where people and corporations, et cetera, are able to put together a fair tax plan, fair tax policy that's able to hunker down on all of the other problems we need to create, create lifelong learning and lifelong success for the individuals in our community. and we have to understand that

it is our job creators it is the people and screening our people to be not just employees, employers that needs to be ferreted out. i think it's about how do we bring all of these various sectors to come up with a fair tax policy and fair tax structure that can accomplish our larger and natural goal which is creating work and wealth for individuals in our society. >> should i take that as a yes to higher taxes for the wealthier people you're not sure which taxes you agree with >> i think that nothing should be taken off of the table about how we think about our measures of tax policy. i also think it's important to remember that we as individual jurisdictions now have a new flood of capital that we have to be thoughtful and diligent about. the state of maryland through aarp is receiving $3.9 billion from the federal government. $3.9 billion of discretionary capital. that's not capital going towards

infrastructure that's not capital going towards education. that's a separate pot of capital. $3.9 billion of discretionary capital coming into the state of maryland alone to be able to think about how do we invest and turn 3.9 not into 3.9 but turn it into 9.4. the first conversation that needs to be had as we're thinking about the fact that you have municipalities whose balance sheets have changed, they have changed because of aarp, they have changed because of what's happened in the partnership that we've been experiencing, the first thing we've got to do is not necessarily go into the old frameworks about how do we think about a policy from 2016 but it is how do we think about this new flood of capital that can really be the eng twin behind our larger economic growth that everybody can benefit from >> wes, good to see you this morning. >> great to see you, becky. >> we will talk to you again soon thank you. >> absolutely. thanks. meantime, in that split screen you've been watching

there, president joe biden arriving for his meeting with vladimir putin the swiss president greeting him. we get straight over to eamon javers with more eamon? >> andrew, we don't expect the president to take questions here as he gets out of the beast on his way into the villa la grange vladimir putin was asked many questions. he was asked by reporters there who shouted questions at him as he arrived, can you trust joe biden? what do you expect to accomplish here will you release navalny, his political opponent who is in prison currently putin ignoring all of those questions. you can expect our colleagues from the press core will shout same lar questions to joe biden. we expect he will ignore them. you have to shout nonetheless. as we see the arrival here, this

is biden being greeted by the swiss president who we do expect to see making remarks momentarily as the president of the united states poses here for a handshake, photo op and smile on his way into what is going to be an intense four to five hours of negotiations between himself and the president of russia. we don't expect the two men to be alone together at any point we do expect translators and aides, foreign minister of russia, secretary of state of the united states to be in the room at all times to monitor the conversation as it moves along, and we do expect that this will take several hours aides have told us, andrew, that this is going to be free flowing. there's no set schedule. as carefully core rio graphed as this arrival is that you're seeing right now, there is no set schedule for the rest of the afternoon. it is just after 1 p.m. here in geneva they have the rest of the day now to go through a series of issues on everything from

cybersecurity, nuclear weapons, dissidence of human rights, the treatment of people around the world, interference in foreign elections. so many issues for the two men to hash through to see if they can find any agreement low expectations being offered by the russian side and by the american side for any major breakthroughs here we're not expecting them to sign anything at the end of this. we're not expecting any new treaties biden wants a stable and normalized relationship with vladimir putin there you see a beautiful site of the villa la grange the very first meeting of the international red cross. a history here to this location as the two men sit down making more history. >> eamon, it will be fascinating to see what kind of readout we get from the meetings and what we hear in their press conferences after, perhaps duelling press conferences we'll see. i have a very trivial question, eamon. i notice that hand shakes are

back, apparently. >> i may not know the answer. >> are hand shakes back? during the g7 it was all elbow bumps and just now i saw a whole number of hand shakes. is it different in switzerland >> reporter: hand shakes are creeping in. i've got to say there's a lot more mask wearing in switzerland than there is back in the dc area where they've lowered a lot of the public wearing. people are wearing masks indoors here low level interactions there's a lot of offered waiving, hand clasping, bowing, people are still avoiding things. but for the high level things, the greeting of the guy who could be your next boss, hand shakes are coming back in. they're going to trickle down to the rest of us eventually. >> eamon javers we're going to be coming back to you throughout the day. we'll be speaking with "new york times" columnist tom friedman in a couple of minutes about the summit and everything seel going on around the world. "squawk" returns after this.

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everyone will be scrutinizing the expression on the faces. do you see any interaction between the two men? we do not. we may see the two men interact as they both arrive at the meeting site the photo op should be wrapping up here momentarily. >> eamon, thank you.

>> foreign affairs columnist for the "new york times" is with us this morning author from -- from beirut to jerusalem. i want to talk about what's happening in the middle east in just a moment, tom i want to get your thoughts on what you're seeing take lace if you were whispering in the ear of president biden right now you'd be telling him what? >> well, thanks for having me, andrew i'd be telling him there are two things we need out of this meeting. number one is to let putin know that if he considers anymore adventures in europe, ukraine, you know, crimea, things like that, to boost his popularity at home to trigger the kind of nationalism he needs at this time, he better think twice about that that the old guy, the trump guy, he's not here anymore and that we would, you know, coalesce our allies to resist that.

more important for america though is the second message you'd want him to convey to putin and it's on deterring their use of cyber technology to attack our electoral system and our companies. and there i think the most effective message would be for biden to reach into his breast pocket and pull up transcripts of putin's last ten conversations with his miss stress and let him know that we are on to him. we can respond in kind and then some and we will do so, that the other guy isn't there anymore. and those are the two things we need out of this summit. all of this other happy talk of climate change and whatnot, this summit is much more important for putin and his status at home than it is for us, but on these two deterrence questions, i think that's vital. >> do you think the conversations actually happen like that? >> yes. >> i ask completely seriously, which is to say how do you have these what i imagine have to be

very difficult, complicated discussions? >> you know, i've never been in one so i can't say for sure. i've read about them it may not be quite that blunt, but i have no doubt that biden does not intend to leave that villa in geneva without conveying to putin on the cyber issue in particular, which is now kind of the nuclear missile of our age in the cold war, on the cyber issue that we will respond in kind and then some to further russian hacks of our companies and the government system >> and when you think about the press conference we're going to see a little bit later today after however many hours this meeting takes place, i imagine there will be duelling press conferences with duelling versions of what happened and duelling versions of wins that come out of a meeting like this. how should we reconcile or think about that in advance?

>> to be honest, i think the whole thing has been overblown other than those deterrence questions, there's not much we want from russia russia's main export, 50% is oil and gas. all they sell to the world is that we are interested in is vodka, caviar. 2% of russia's exports are computers and advanced technology like that do you know anybody with a russian watch or russian computer this is a country that has under putin thrown everything into, you know, basically drilling the ground and not unlocking the talent of its people there's not that much we have to discuss. the problem for us is that vladimir putin has been america's ex-boyfriend from hell america's ex-boyfriend from hell he just want go away we want to date other people we want to focus on china but he won't go away because his relationship with us, his

ability to say i'm meeting as an equal with the american president just like my predecessors did is so important. >> the ex-boyfriend from hell is one way to put it. you mentioned china. let's go there before we go to the middle east which is the g7, you saw president biden meeting with the other leaders of the g7, effectively to try to create some leverage with china i'm curious how successful you think that will be. >> i will tell you in talking to american business leaders in recent weeks, talking to their european counterparts, there's still a lot of weariness about where america is after being hit with tariffs and whatnot i think the most important part of this trip is what happened with biden's meetings at nato and more importantly the meeting in europe. the only way for us, andrew, to effectively deal with china is

with a coalition of all of the major western economies. the cold war was fought and won in berlin with russia. the cold war will be fought and won in berlin with china which side has the european union centered in germany is the side that will have the most leverage will the eu tilt towards china or towards us? that is still more in play than i am comfortable with. that's important rebuilding the coalition so we can go to the negotiating table with china and say, let me introduce you to my allies over here, korea and japan. let me introduce you to my allies over here, together we're going to come at you in pursuit of universal values, rules and norms. that to me is the key issue. >> tom, i need your analysis i want to talk to you about israel for quite some time obviously over the last week as we've seen a new leader take the role just to get your sense of what you think it means, where you think this is headed and what it means for the stability

or not of the region >> well, you know, in some ways this is an amazing government, a record number of women, gay member of the israeli government most importantly an arab islamist party that is part of this coalition they came together because they all opposed benjamin netanyahu, the previous prime minister. once you get a group of people there together like that, you never know where it will go. you never know what possibilities will unlock. so i'm keeping my powder dry yes, the cement of this is all negative energy against netanyahu, once they're in, they're going to stay in i have a lot of hope for it. i make no predictions, but i think it's one of the biggest developments in the history of the greater politics altogether. this broke a taboo and we have

an israeli air ran muslim party in the israeli component and it means that they will be part of the ruling coalition. >> does it change the dynamic with hamas we saw there were additional bombings even over the last 48 hours. you've talked about your concern about the anti-semitism that has spread around the world in part because of the conflict that continues there. how do you think about that in relation to this new administration >> well, i think from an israeli point of view, israel's relations to world jewish humanity, there is a key issue here we must keep the two state solution alive for this reason if there is no two-state solution and we're in the realm of one-state solution, there is only one of two ways that can go israel grants full and complete legal and civil rights to the arab population in the west bank and becomes less of a jewish

state or it doesn't and it becomes more of the state of the kind of apartheid practices of south africa if that is the choice, that will blow up every synagogue, every jewish organization and the democratic party because basically every member of every synagogue and of the democratic party is going to say to himself or to his colleague, are you at the apartheid israel or not? that will blow up every institution and it will become a huge fissure within the democratic party we've seen signs of that with the progressives basically arguing that israel is involved in one of these racial justice issues between two nationalisms. this is a racial justice issue just like south africa that will blow up the democratic party. it will blow up every jewish institution in the world we must keep it alive. >> final topic, tom. we've gotten to talk about all parts of the world but i

actually want to talk about home for a second this fed meeting that's taking place. lots of questions about whether this inflation is transitory or this is the new normal meanwhile, you're talking about politics in the united states. there's an infrastructure plan that's in play how do you think the two interrelate? do you think the economy is overheating right now? >> i'm not an expert on that, andrew the inflation question, i remain totally humble for this reason i don't think anyone fully understands how inflation went away, how we've gone through such a long period of growth with such low inflation. in particular, what is the relationship of new technology and globalization to that dampened inflation and because i'm not very comfortable with people understanding how it went away, i'm very humble about when it might come back. so i'm watching but i'm thinking what role does technology and

mobilization play in this conflation phenomena i think is one of the most interesting questions in economics i don't know that anyone's answered it definitively i am very humbled by that question when you see these size of dollars going out the door -- >> right. >> -- humility i think is the right bar. >> tom, with a great message of -- you don't need to be humble but you are and we love you for it >> thanks so much. >> great to see you. >> appreciate it you bet. thanks becky. thanks, andrew still to come on "squawk box" this morning, we have news out from regeneron about the covid cocktail actually, let's take a look at this now you see president biden along with secretary of state anthony blinken and vladimir putin along with his minister of affairs sergey let's get over to eamon.

>> reporter: what we don't know is going to be the format of this we know they have breakout sessions planned the two leaders will not be alone at any time. there will be translators and notetakers on both sides this is fascinating to get an inside the room glimpse of the two leaders looking fairly casual this is going to be a huge contrast, both in the united states and around the world of the photos that we saw of vladimir putin and donald trump. this is joe biden attempting to turn a page from the trump era and the trump relationship with russia which was certainly quite close. i was there in helsinki when president trump said that he trusted vladimir putin's take on what had happened over the u.s. intelligence community and now we're hearing biden and putin exchanging a few words of pleasantries here. this will be a very different feel in geneva than what we saw. maybe we should stop down and see if we can hear any of the sound.

what you hear there is the scrum of reporters so you're seeing a very placid looking picture of the four men sitting in elegant chairs and what you're hearing is a loud scrum of reporters all apparently jostling for position in front of the leaders. everybody wants this picture every media organization around the world has been trying to get into this room and we're told from reporters on the scene there's been a little bit of confusion, shall we say, as people work their way into the room you're hearing the negotiations among camera people, reporters, staff as they get this picture you can watch blinken and lavrov looking off stage looking for guidance on what's happening laf rock checking his watch. maybe he's getting a little in-patient with the global media taking their various pictures.

>> we've set this up as a much more contentious relationship but it is coming just after biden didn't block the pipeline over the ukraine's objections for all of this. we talked to people earlier this week who said this was maybe more of a gift to germany than russia russia still got its way how do you build that into this backdrop >> reporter: well, there have been real questions here about biden's decision on that front biden acceded to the riches of the germans on the pipeline. it's seen as making the germans more dependent on russian fuel and more susceptible to russian manipulation that said, the biden administration ultimately went along with what the germans wanted on that front the other criticism of biden domestically in the united states is it's coming too early in the first term. they say biden hasn't thought through what he wants out of this meeting

there are some stakes here in terms of domestic politics to prove this was the right time for this meeting, that he can get something tangible out of it and then some stakes on the world stage in terms of these negotiations in terms of pipelines and troop movements, cybersecurity and all the rest of the issues on the table between the two men. >> hey, eamon, i don't know if you've heard tom friedman in this last interviewee had while you were waiting, but one of the things that tom said is that president biden effectively should talk tough with putin right there in the room. at one point he even suggested he should take out effectively transcripts of phone calls with putin's mistresses my question for you as somebody who has covered cybersecurity for a long time, how does the president approach these things? do they actually come with transcripts, not necessarily of

mistresses per se but of cyber crime and other evidence so that when potentially a putin or another leader says we weren't responsible for that they then lay it out on the table? how does that happen how does that work >> reporter: that's a really great question having not been in the room for one of these, i can't tell you whether they've come prepared for sort of the ultimate document dump, so to speak presumably if vladimir putin has mistresses, u.s. intelligence would want to be aware of it the behind the scenes conversation between the two might take place on a more high level than that. that is, that both sides have elaborate intelligence operations around the world. both know what the other side knows about each other it may be understood that the united states knows what the russians are doing maybe for the drama tuck effect biden wants to put it on the

table. one of the questions is how tough do you get with putin behind the scenes in terms of public in terms of your public rhetoric you saw biden holding back when he was asked about that question earlier in the week about his comment that vladimir putin is a killer video biden gave a long, meandering, awkward answer to that question. you can see the gears turning in biden's mind as he tried to come up with a formulation for his answer that wasn't going to provoke vladimir putin people who have dealt with putin in the past told me that it's vitally important for his ego and domestic position not to humiliate him on the world stage and the psychological effect will go a long ways. behind the scenes you can talk a lot tougher than you can maybe on the public stage. >> eamon, don't go anywhere. i want to bring tom friedman back in. you have covered president biden for a very long time maybe you can speak to this issue. i know you haven't necessarily

been in these kinds of rooms, but to the extent that president biden wants to or feels a need to talk tough with putin, how does he do it given what you know about his temperament and sensibility? >> i traveled with now president biden, then senator biden on a trip to afghanistan actually right after 9/11 i got to see him in action a lot. he's someone who's very familiar with the issues. he's comfortable talking about foreign affairs. he's had a lot of experience as a senator, chairman of the senate foreign relations committee and then vice president so he knows how this is done. i'm sure they've gamed it out and i'm sure they've gone into this meeting, andrew, saying what are the one, two, or three things we must convey to putin that he cannot leave geneva without being clear on them? certainly number one there is the continued hacking of our economy. and to literally say to him, you're backing up all of this

data what the hell are you doing with it you're still just exporting oil and gas. what are you doing with all of these credit card numbers? what are you collecting all of this stuff for are you planning some giant amazon buy >> what do you think he would say though, tom, when president putin, i imagine, has to say, we're not responsible for this there are things happening in our country, there are independent actors or whatever kind of response we've heard over the years about these kinds of activities? for example, the cybersecurity issues. >> of course he won't admit any of it. he'll say, me? all of these stories by the way, andrew, he loves this he loves the fact that wefr one is accusing him of manipulating america's election and attacking the computer systems and corporate america. back home he loves that. look at me, the whole world is

afraid of me back home he's facing a fllaggi economy and popularity anything that makes him look like biden's equal and that's the reason why they denied him that. >> tom friedman, thank you for making us smarter this morning appreciate it. >> thanks, andrew. >> you bet. we're going to sneak in a quick break right now. before we do, check out this morning's winners and losers in the s&p 500. all of this happening as the fed is in focus waiting for the end of the second day of meeting there. here's a statement from the fed and the press conference that follows. we see dish network's at the top leading the way. oracle is the biggest laarggd. down by 5% "squawk box" will be right back. world-class interiors,

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welcome back to "squawk box. i'm dominic chu with market minute you can see here both of these particular etfs attract those respective parts of the market

they have moved a little bit off of their highs and are trading below the 50-day average price some traders look at that as a gauge of whether or not a trend is still holding up. watch consumer discretionary and transportation stocks, two key parts of the market. also watching what's happening with other parts of the market as well. especially with commodities like copper and lumber. we're seeing a little bit of stability here but copper prices now about 11% off the highs that we saw earlier this year lumber has fallen. july futures for lumber were over $1700 per 1,000 board feet. now it's down to $1,000. a big pull back there. that's carrying through into certain parts of the equity market as well watch, for instance, what' happening with shares of freeport-mcmoran they have moved off their highs as well, roughly about 18% to the down side. freeport-mcmoran then a check on the meme stocks. more traditional established ones like amg and gamestop are

up a little bit, at least amc is gamestop down 1% corsair is off 3%. if you're wondering why arrival, a luxembourg based company that makes commercial electric vehicles is up 17, 18% in trading in the pre-market. it's because it is one of those newest mentions in some of these internet chat boards arrival, arvl, that's the reason why, guys, that particular stock is moving in the premarket i'll send it back over to you. >> dom, the traditional established meme stocks in january. amc and gamestop thanks a lot, dom. talk to you later. the fed concludes its two-day policy meeting today and is likely to signal to the markets it's thinking about changing its bond buying policy. with us to discuss possible market buying reactions, ron dietrich and christian mama ni

he's from lafayette college endowment. good morning to you both christian, let me just start with you to handicap what we might hear, what the market is expecting and how it might react. obviously jay powell can continue to say we continue to monitor the progress of our goals and we're not there yet, therefore, status quo is possible but you have to acknowledge inflationary surge is possible. >> i think the core message is not likely to change that is, they are still on board and they will wait a long time before they do anything substantial. having said that, i think marking things up to market with respect to what is happening in the economy both from a growth and inflation perspective is something that they will have to do, otherwise, they kind of lose their credibility. so i think that is one thing that is going to happen. second, there is a potential that some of the lift talk moves

up if that happens, i expect powell to talk about it quite aggressively on his press conference finally as far as the paper is concerned, which is probably the most concrete action they can take in the near term, i think they will still dodge the issue. they don't really gain anything by doing that just yet they just will have to wait and see how the next few months play out before they actually do something about paper. right now they will just be talking about, talking about tape pe tapering >> starting the clock implicitly talk about the market here holding steady, good gains you've seen a little bit of the fever break in terms of inflationary indicators and things like that >> that's right, mike. you know, dom just mentioned transports are weak. consumer discretionary is weak we're fraught with all-time highs. we're all exciting about the fed

meeting and it's a big meeting i think it's a non-event tomorrow's newspaper will be putin and biden. we've gone 17 days within a 1% range. one of the longer streaks we've seen since late 2019 what does that mean? well, listen, things are non-volatile now the fed is coming out historically the second half of june is one of the weaker periods of the year just kind of be aware of these things this big rally, we have a 5% correction, mike, in the s&p since september. that's one of the longest streaks we've ad they can keep going, yes the thing we can say to our more than 18,000 advisers, it's a 10% correction over the troublesome summer months. it's perfectly normal. that's how we see. it's getting passed around now energy are getting leading and that's a sign of a healthy

market. >> maybe a jolt after a long period of calm we'll see how it plays out we have to leave it there, ryan and christian. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> a lot more coming up here on "squawk box" this morning. the imf managing director speaking at the cnbc evolve global summit. we'll hear some of her comments after the break. still time to register don't want to miss it go to cnbc events/evolve. "squawk" returns right after this ♪ when i was young ♪ no-no-no-no-no please please no. ♪ i never needed anyone. ♪ front desk. yes, hello... i'm so... please hold. ♪ those days are done. ♪ i got you. ♪ all by yourself. ♪

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a vaccination card showing when you have been vaccinated is being applied. we need to look at applying that more broadly obviously the question in hand would be how credible is the underlying information how trustworthy are the p

pass passports? >> that was the head of the imf who's speaking right now at cnbc's evolve global summit. this event continues throughout the rest of the day with ceos of pfizer, mcdonald's, dick's sporting goods and many more it's not too late to register if you want to. you can head over to cnbc events.com/evolve to attend. when we come back black rock's rick rieder will join us here how the rks ghmaetmit react. "squawk box" will be right back. wondering what actually goes into your multivitamin? at new chapter, its' innovation, organic ingredients, and fermentation. fermentation? yes. formulated to help you body really

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. good morning we are counting down to today's big fed decision investors will be parsing jay powell's every word about where he sees inflation heading. this hour we're going to talk about what the fed's message could mean for your portfolio, including the biggest tech stocks that drove the market higher this past year. and as we speak, president biden and russian president vladimir putin are meeting face to face their conversation expected to touch on everything from hacking u.s. businesses to election

interference to human rights we'll bring you all the details as the final hour of "squawk box" begins right now. good morning and welcome back to "squawk box" here on cnbc i'm becky quick along with andrew ross sorkin and mike santoli is joining us right here at the nasdaq market site in times square joe is out today let's take a look at the u.s. equity futures at this hour. you'll see ahead of the fed meeting things haven't budged in hours at this point. dow futures down by 55 points. the s&p futures off by 3 1/2 nasdaq up over 3 points. both the s&p and nasdaq fell from the highs three major averages down but not by a whole lot waiting to see what happens with this fed decision. let's also take a look at what's happening in the treasury market you'll see that the 10-year

looks like it's yielding below 1.5% 1.489% is the latest hit there >> meantime, let's talk about some of the breaking news that's happening literally in front of us throughout this morning you are looking at a live shot this morning at the villa in geneva, switzerland. president biden is meeting with russian president vladimir putin. just a few minutes ago we saw both leaders along with u.s. secretary of state tony blinken and the russian foreign finance minister -- southern the foreign minister sitting down in front of news cameras. the meeting is expected to last somewhere between four and five hours and touch on a range of topics including cyber int intrusions by russian-based hackers, russian interference and the jailing of russian's foremost opposition leader we're not expecting any major diplomatic breakthroughs we'll keep our eyes on this. they have lowered expectations heading into the meeting as

expec relations are at lows. we'll see duelling press conferences at the end of the day and we'll see what they say about what was said in the room. becky? >> thanks, andrew. now let's get to the day's chief economic story, that is the federal reserve interest rate decision that hits just after 2 p.m. eastern time. no rate hike is expected investors on high alert for tapering and fed bond purchases. what the fed says or doesn't say about inflation is going to be the key focus for people today ahead of all of that mike's been looking at stock sectors that are closely tied to inflation and deflation. where the heck are we seeing deflation these days >> we're not really seeing deflation but we see action in the sectors that are much more levered to deflationary trend like software. take a look at where the s&p 500 coasted into this meeting in neutral condition. i would say if you go back to

mid april, market looking really stretched. had a great run even going back to october and there were two ways you can kind of work off that overstretched condition you can have a sharp pullback, encourage some of the hot money or go sideways for a while we had a loss of momentum, a lot of rotation is keeping things supported. you had a little bit of an inflation scare. >> copper, aluminum, chemicals like that. on a year-to-date basis. cloud software what's lighter than a cloud. software, it's secular growth. if you look in the last month, moderating trend in materials come off the highs and you've seen some support here in software there's been a little bit of a fickle indecisive leadership

what's not changed is extremely loose conditions take a look at fixed income. riskier corporate debt, junk bond etf incredibly steady even as treasury yields have gone up. the average yield on junk bonds under 4% then you have corporate, hybrid corporate and treasury yields. the prices have inched up as yields have been compressed. as you get into the fed meeting, loose financial conditions you wonder if that's going to inform whether the fed feels that's safe and a taper is coming in bond prices. >> in terms of handy capping this, we talked earlier. you said there's generally some market activities and some break. how would you handicap it if the fed says something, if they don't say something? >> i think it's a tough call very often the first move is the wrong move seems like a little bit of a head fake. i don't think what investors in

aggregate want to hear is the ultra dovish message we're not here wishing powell writes off all of these inflation numbers and says, no, no, it's full steam ahead because we have this wounded economy. i think we're beyond the point of feeling like excessive dovishness is what the market craves at this point i think a middle of the road message, thinking about changing policy this is not a forever situation with qe. it's going to be taken, i'll finish with one point. a lot of times the market wants a meeting like this to be out of the way and it's been held in check by the fact we had this potential catalyst out there we get released to whatever the market was going to do anyway. >> mike, thank you our first guest this hour says the market's going to be disappointed if the fed says nothing today about tapering the bond purchases like what mike was talking about. joining us is rick rieder, he's with blackrock rick, playing into what mike was

talking about. the idea that the fed probably can't pretend that mog is happening at this point. going to have to live up to the realities of what we're seeing out there. >> becky, boy, i thought mike described it exactly right i would be disappointed. if we continue down this road, the same policy pre-vaccine, that is disappointing. the risk to the markets is not that we need more liquidity or we may lose some liquidity the system is over stuffed with liquidity. the risk is over heating we over heat on wages, input costs for companies. quite frankly, i mean, if they don't start to evolve this policy, that would be concerning for me by the way, we have to put it in perspective. gosh, the taper tantrum and how scary this is. we're talking about a fed that probably sometime the end of the year, next year may do 10 billion a month. put that number in perspective the groesh treasury issuance is 4 oof billion.

if you take net supply treasuries, net of what the fed is doing it's 150 billion. take 10 billion off a month to continue to put liquidity in well into 2022 is not that scary. not acknowledging that the economy is in a different place, that is more concerning to me. hopefully we get that. my sense is they'll talk about how they discussed a plan or not a plan, discussed the idea of coming up with a plan and we'll hear more later. >> would you be disappointed if they don't how would you express that disappointment given the size of the portfolio that you manage? >> yeah, the big thing is the over heating dynamic that is -- i think it's a general risk issue you know, we -- i still think equities are going higher. we're running bigger cash largely because we've cleaned out all of the things like the rich parts of the treasury market, the two-year note, 16 basis points, who cares. how do we clean it out we're all on equities.

if we don't hear anything different, then i worry a little bit about risk the system creates -- you can create asset bubbles you can create leverage. we've seen markets that are a little bit concerning with literally zero spread to them for risk assets, spread to swaths or spread to treasuries some of that gives you pause about markets. hopefully we're starting to evolve again, it's not going to be quick. it's going to be deliberate. i think starting to make that move is really worth while by the way, you look at some of the data in china that's starting to slow a bit let's say the fed doesn't move and let's say the economy starts to slow and how do you look at this the economy's in a really good spot it's time to be anticipatory and moving to just really easy conditions as opposed to emergency conditions. >> rick, what you said about how you're sitting on a lot more cash these days sounds a lot

more like how jamie dimon said, they have cash and ready to be opportunistic. is that the same thought process you have what are you plan to go do with that cash? >> great question. let's talk about a couple of things holding cash doesn't hurt you. >> it does if there's inflation out there. >> right exactly. but if you think about it, the s&p 500 i think after they got this employment report a month ago, i think the s&p 500 is almost exactly the same point that it was. markets are not doing a lot sitting on cash is not hurting you. listen, the think that part of what i think we can normalize a bit, start to taper the program. if you moved rates back, i don't think rates are going that much higher if you start to move them back to where rates are not ex excessively rich, we'll look at the investment grade credit market more than today we like to see a bit more of not distorted levels like i say, holding that cash gives you that ballast to do it.

>> we talked to dan amos earlier this morning, he's the ceo of aflac. insurers are in a crazy position and have been for a lot of years in that it's really hard for them to hold the cash that they need to to be able to pay out claims and still get some sort of return on that. he said they've had to do things like unusual things like raise rates for new customers coming in you have so few other ways to make sure you can get a return on your invest am. does that surprise you at all, rick >> no. that's exactly the point the reason why the fed was brilliant in terms of how they executed dropping rates, protecting the top part of the finance markets, resi and the qe program. the longer you keep it there and if you don't start to evolve it, insurance companies, pension funds, individuals, you start pressing in places

you say, gosh, i don't want to own this the fed is crowding out by buying treasuries, let me take more risk, more risk, more risk. whether you're insurance or pension, a lot of people have to put the money into the market and whether it's to match your liabilities or trying to generate some return, you see the growth where there's a spac market or other areas. anyway, part of why normalizing is healthy for markets, you don't create this constant gosh i've got to take more risk, more risk because i'll never hit it >> rick, you mentioned just the abundance of cash and also the compulsion to put it somewhere that gets to this widely watched reverse repo system. the overnight program the fed runs to allow institutions and banks to park the cash somewhere without it getting a negative yield on it. is that working okay does the fed need to address anything about that program or

is it a symptom of something else how would you characterize it? >> mike, that's a great question it's a symptom of -- people talk about how much liquidity the fed has put in they don't focus on the fact that the treasury has been disbursing what has this year $1 trillion into checking accounts. what's happened the treasury general account pay down is stuffing the system with so much liquidity that's getting right into the banking system that turns around by the way, if you track it and you think about when do the banks start to buy 5 year notes and 7 year notes big size, the treasury paydown was in april. this move to 5 year and 7 year, the bank is saying i've got to take some duration i've got to do some duration management around the portfolio. that's changing. that's a big deal. the treasury for paydown is slowing down that's been a big, big driver of why so much cash has gotten in it's not just the fed it's the treasury the treasury year to date has been a bigger influence on that.

it's part of why there's time for the system, particularly front end assets there's not enough assets. not enough collateral. not enough treasury bills, short duration assets and short-term assets to buy. i it's like trying to remove the overstocked area >> rick, we've had a few people tell us that they think that this is going to be the most important meeting of jay powell's career as fed chairman. would you agree with that? what are you looking for today >> well, i think that's a strong statement. i think what the fed did in march, april, may of last year, that's going to go down in history. what they did, the risks they took, i think the bold, innovative nature, i don't think there's a question of taper or start doing 10 billion a month reduction of 120 billion i don't agree with that. starting to inflect in how you

describe that, listen, i think they criticized chair bernanke in terms of the taper tantrum and how it was communicated. i don't know that it was that off. anyway, how he communicates. by the way, that's important how does he separate taper from rate move. he will remove liquidity doesn't mean we'll raise rates and have an intermission period. the communication is important boy, i don't think anybody in their career at the fed will have a more momentous heroic period than we saw this time last year. >> in terms of any action you might take today, tomorrow, based on any of this, i mean, it sounds like you think that you're already kind of locked and loaded for this. not very likely going to be surprised. what would surprise you? >> so, i mean, first thing is we're not seeing substantial progress.

you get a fuller rush back to jobs, the job market with

kids going back to school, maybe there's a little bit lower stakes around some of the macro inputs i don't know how you would sort of think about those things. >> so, i mean, the china data is interesting. china is restraining credit. you're starting to see that bite of it. they are coming off the boil you have to anticipate u.s. data is going to come off the boil. the retail sales number, you're starting to see those come off the boil i think you have to anticipate that being the case. when people are locked in their house, they are coming out, i need an oil change in my car, i haven't bought a shirt, et cetera, that's explosive so you have to believe that starts to moderate a bit gosh, i still think the conditions for the economy continuing to grow and part of why the fed can take some comfort. we've never seen the savings rate like this before. consumers have delevered we looked at the savings rate.

if you didn't have the pandemic, the amount of savings is 2.2 trillion higher. if you assume the growth rate they're often and we didn't have a pandemic the inventory levels are so drawn down capacity has to be rebuilt in a bunch of areas i think the economy level is going to be in great shape the ism data in the 60s, it's in the 50s. yeah, i don't think that's a slowing but off the boil, yeah, i think we've got to keep an eye on that. >> rick, great to see you today. >> thanks, becky thanks for having me. >> talk to you soon. andrew >> coming up when we return, much more on the inflation debate and your portfolio as we await this afternoon's fed decision we're going to talk about where tech stocks could be headed. first, as we head to the break, check out shares of oracle heading lower the company beating quarterly estimates on the top and bottom line but projecting current quarter profit below analyst expectations that stock down almost to 5%

right now. you're wating quk"ch"saw right now on cnbc. we're back after this. was an actual squirrel... leave it. purchase protection for what you didn't see coming. one of the many things you can expect when you're with amex. wondering what actually goes into your multivitamin? at new chapter, its' innovation, organic ingredients, and fermentation. fermentation? yes. formulated to help you body really truly absorb the natural goodness. new chapter. wellness, well done. tailor made or one size fits all? made to order or ready to go? with a hybrid, you don't have to choose. that's why insurers are going hybrid with ibm. with watson on a hybrid cloud they can use ai to help predict client needs and get the data they need to quickly design coverage for each one. businesses that want personalization and speed are going with a smarter hybrid cloud using the technology and expertise of ibm.

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business leaders with content from around theworld julianna tattlebaum joins us with some of the highlights from earlier. high, julianna >> reporter: mike, thank you so much for having me just moments ago i kicked off the european portion of the cnbc evolve global summon with vasner simmons, the ceo of novartis i wanted to focus in on technology and the role it can play in health care in the future vas seems to think we may be at a turning point when it comes to developing technology for health care solutions >> other sectors you've seen technology really develop productivity in the sectors. typically health care has lagged i see two big shifts happening right now. one is the embedding of ai increasingly within the core

value chain of companies like manufacturing, developing, commercialization enabling us t make faster decisions. at the same time ai is also getting embedded in health care systems so we can better tailor the right therapy to the right patient and taking out some of the waste we know exists in the health care system. >> in addition to artificial intelligence, vas also talked about using telehealth as a means to increasing access to health care for more people around the world now i also took the opportunity to ask vas about one-time treatments a brand-new field within medicine novartis has been pioneering it. one of the downfalls to the one-time treatments is the pry price tag that they come with. i asked him about the role one-time therapies can play in the future of health care. take a listen. >> i would predict post 2025

we're going to see many gene therapies and cell therapies health care systems have to adapt from the traditional model of chronic treatments over decades to this one-time therapy world. >> reporter: so there was the ceo of novartis talking about the future of health care. viewers very keen to hear how technology can play a role in the future we ended talking about preparedness for potential future pan dem mix vas offered an encouraging note saying we have learned a lot through the last year and a half or so but we certainly need to do more when it comes to preparing for any potential crises in the future mike, back over to you >> all right certainly we hope that that will be the case. thank you very much, julianna, for that wrapup. a programming note the u.s. stage at the cnbc evolve summit kicks off at 11 a.m. it's not too late to register to hear from all of the great ceos.

go to cnbcevents.com/evolve. coming up on "squawk box," the latest from geneva where president biden is meeting with russian president vladimir putin as we speak. stay typed, you're watching "squawk box" and this is cnbc. r. plans for the long term, and plans for a long weekend. assets you allocate, and ones you hold tight. at thrivent, we believe money is a tool, not a goal. and with the right guidance, you can get the financial clarity you need, and live a life rich in meaning, and gratitude. to learn more, text thrive to 444555, or visit thrivent.com.

we are seconds away from new housing starts da tampt take a

look at the futures as we head up to those numbers. really being held in place here idoling ahead of the fed meeting as we have been for some time right now. modest outperformance by the nasdaq take a look at the 10-year note. it's been steady hanging out underneath that 1.5% mark for a while right now. you see it continues to be the case rick santelli standing by at the cme in chicago rick has those numbers >> well, we're a little early on the numbers but it's certainly important on the starts and permits. we do realize that the housing market, especially single family, has been on fire there's certain issues, of course, that are affecting it in negative ways, whether it's the price of certain commodities, albeit things like lumber have started to come down a little bit. or of course we haven't made enough new homes over the years, really since the housing crisis. there's going to be a report today from the realtors regarding how many homes were

deficit considering the pace we were on pre-2007, 2008 and how that's really come back to haunt us a bit but, of course, in the context of just mortgages in general, today's fed meeting will play right into the purchases of mortgage securities and treasuries we are now seconds away from that may release of housing starts 1,572,000 seasonally adjusted analyzed units that's a little bit less than the 1.6 we were expecting. still a solid number sequentially up 3.6. how does it figure 1,569,000 is the lowest going back to february when we were a whisker of 1.5 the high water mark has been 1.733 and that was last month. excuse me, that was in may -- march. march. began with an m. now let's go for permits permits expected up 1.7. we ended up with 1.681

1,681,000 seasonally adjusted analyzed units and that is also a positive number when you look at the rear-view mirror. there was a revision 1.517 now becomes your starts and 1.733 now becomes your permits which means this actually is a drop of 3% import prices up 1.1 month over month. ex petroleum up .9 you can see the impact of the crude and some energy prices let's go year over year. year over year is 11.3 11.3 on import prices. this is significant. all the year-over-year numbers are related to covid how does the 10.6 compare? the last look we had that is 11.3, that's the highest going back to the fall of 2011 if you look at export prices month over month, up 2.2 this is multiples of the .8 we

were expecting last month revised from .8 to 1.1. here's the money ball biggest number of the morning, gang. year over year export prices up a whopping 17.4% this series of data points started in 1984. you will not find a higher number than 17.4 andrew, we see that the market hasn't paid a whole lot of attention. we've actually dropped a basis point on 10s for around 149 to 148. much of the anticipation, of course, on rates is about what the fed may or may not say, especially about what's going on in inflation and the purchase program. >> you are 100% correct, rick. we will see what the fed thinks of all of this if they're not thinking about it already. diana olick joins us with more on all of it diana? >> reporter: you know what i'm going to do, andrew, break down single family versus multi-family for single family starts we did

see a gain single family is where we need to see the housing starts go up higher 4.2% gain for single family starts permits down for single family, 1.6% the builders in their sentiment report told us they're having trouble getting not only their supplies but prices being so much higher. rick mentioned the price of lumber is coming down a little bit. still 275% higher than it was pre-pandemic builders saying they're having to jack up prices and that is causing some buyers to be side lined. this looks at the number of houses that have been authorized, permitted, not yet started. it continues to climb. it's up over 50% from a year ago. we know that last may the year-over-year comparisons and last may starts dropped at the beginning of the pandemic. we have been seeing this number climb. builders are telling us they're delaying construction because of higher costs and because of labor. we could see that go up every

single month for the past year and so it says to me that even though we know we need these houses, we have strong demand for single family homes, the builders just can't do it. they're delaying because of higher costs andrew >> okay. diana, thank you for that smart analysis we appreciate it we'll see you very soon. when we come back, a deep dive into what tech investors meade to know heading into and coming out of today's fed decision stay tuned, watching "squawk box" right here on cnbc.

president biden and russian president putin are meeting right now in geneva, switzerland. want to get straight back to eamon javers who's back with us. what's the latest? >> reporter: andrew, things got back to a bumpy start at least on the media side of the velvet rope take a look at the opening, what they call the press scrum. that's when they get a look at the two leaders sitting together the nbc producer on site said there was a 10-minute shoving match between the media on the

russian side and the media on the u.s. side before they were allowed into the room for this picture. you see some of the chaotic moments as they jostled for position there trying to get in. reporting that the russian security services were extremely aggressive with the u.s. media, pushing at their clothes, pulling them out of the room you see jostling for position as the u.s. side tried to get the picture that they wanted of the two leaders. apparently the audio guy couldn't get into the room that's why we don't have a clear sense of what anybody said in the room there we do have a couple of words from biden he was asked whether or not he trusts vladimir putin. he nodded yes but it's not clear in response to that. that's on the media side of things the two leaders obviously seemed calm, cool, collected. we'll wait and see now what happens inside that villa la grange here lakeside in geneva

that becomes a bit of a black box for the next several hours no indication of how long all of this is going on it's a very fluid time line. we'll watch and wait and see what happens. >> eamon, the countdown is onto the press conferences and when they emerge and what they say about it appreciate it. we'll of course be following it with you >> you bet. >> throughout the day. in the meantime, regeneron releasing new data on the effectiveness of the antibody cocktail treatment r for covid-9 >> reporter: beck y i good news. regeneron antibody cocktail was shown when given to hospitalized patients who haven't mounted their own immune response, it can reduce the mortality by 20% when given on top of standard of care this is really big news because this is an iv drug so it was kind of difficult when given only in the early stages of disease to get folks to a place where they could actually

get an iv infusion of one of these antibody drugs it's able to save people's lives reducing mortality by 20%. regeneron will use the data and take it to the fda and ask them to expand the emergency use authorization. importantly, it really is only those patients who have not generated their own antibodies against the virus that are helped by being given the regeneron antibodies importantly, the regeneron cocktail is standing up to the variants retaining potency this could be really helpful as people are still getting hospitalized with covid as we are rolling out vaccines. >> great to see. meg, thank you alphabet's autonomous vehicle unit waymo completing another round of funding phil lebeau joins us with the details. good morning, phil. >> reporter: mike, this is a significant round of fundraising by waymo

$2.5 billion this is the second fundraising round they've had since march of last year. when you add this $2.5 billion plus the amount last year, which ended up being 3.25 billion, you come up to just under $6 billion of capital raised. this is a lot of what the money is going towards expanding its autonomous ride sharing service. you see it in the phoenix area you'll see it in the san francisco area they'll be expanding the ride hailing service. yesterday j.b. hunt or last week j.b. hunt struck a deal to incorporate or at least test waymo via which is the autonomous vehicle for class a trucks they've got 20 million miles of autonomous trucking on public roads. they plan to leverage that take a look at shares of google. waymo is a subsidiary of alphabet as you take a look at this, it's unclear how they're

commercializing this and monetizing this. i talked with the two co-ceos and both of them are pretty bullish about what they believe the future holds when it comes to autonomous ride sharing and autonomous vehicles on the roads. this money is the latest indication that they are going to be putting more money into the development of that technology guys, back to you. >> yeah, accumulating all of that data from autonomous testing. that's been one of tesla's biggest calling cards. we'll see how it goes. coming up, jim cramer's take on the trading day ahead you don't want to miss it. stay tuned, you're watching "squawk box" on cnbc but then an influx of new four-legged friends changed everything. dr. petsworth welcomed these new patients. the only problem? more appointments meant he needed more space. that's when dr. petsworth turned to his american express business card, which offers spending potential that's built for his changing business needs. he used his card to furnish a

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inflation post all of this, but it's very clear clients are worried. the bond market agrees with that clients are very worried about whether this new inflation is going to be transitory the fed seems confident. economists always seem confident. they seem confident afterwards >> that was man group's luke ellis speaking at the cnbc evolve summit. register and take part in it you can go to cnbc.com/events. down to the new york stock exchange where jim cramer joins us now so many things i want to discuss with you last time we had an opportunity to talk was yesterday and it was right after the hindenburg report about draftkings. you wanted to do more work on it i know you've been doing work on it >> yes. >> arc invest seems to be buying on what may or may not be a dip. what's your take away from all of this? >> yeah. looks like they bought about

900,000 shares, ark. i think that they -- i think they do a very good job, the hiddenberg fellas. the issue's really confined to one division and i think that if draftkings, jason ramos said i'll get rid of that one division to $1, then i think hindenburg has to go positive. it is isolated i don't think it's that important. i think at one time it would have been important. the company has minimized. it's 8% of the company according to the research reports. i have worked for draftkings in the past where the bull market fantasy could come back. i don't think it's a reason to sell you would sell it if you felt that gambling was halted in this country, in other words, if you felt like places where gambling are the only places we will have

gambling i think it's the opposite. almost every state is going to allow gambling. >> i want to also ask you about this we're obviously waiting on the fed today. i saw that you were looking at a tweet from carl cantinilla by way of barclays where they're now saying the market is no longer pricing out of control inflation, which was viewed as a key tail risk for equities earnings surprises now likely to continue as a -- as consensus eps expectations are still not fully incorporating the rebasing effect of past surprises are you in the same camp >> i thought that was amazing. i think with the exception of oil almost every commodity is pink people don't want to believe that take a look at copper and aluminum, what the chinese are doing. i think they're trying to get it under control. the one part we can't seem to cure is freight. there's just not enough drivers. that's something that's structural in the economy.

i had albertsons being on tonight and that's the one thing they can't get under control almost every commodity has peaked i'm not as concerned either. i thought the note made a lot of sense. i'm glad carl tweeted it. >> you think it's already moved? because paul tudor jones says if we don't hear a little bit of foot off the brake today it is like foot all onto the accelerator if you're an investor in the inflation trade? >> i think steals could work paul tudor jones is a giant macro player he is not going to analyze whether it's time to buy paper clips or not he's not going to talk about freeport he has a big over arching view i think our viewers want to know if the fed says, you know what, it's game on, do you buy the oil stocks i think that's true. i think the oil stocks can go higher, but that has to do with the fact that there's a scarcity

value. oil is the one problem that is very visible i think that a lot of the heckling, which is what i regard the questions of the press being, is going to be about oil and inflation and at some point if powell breaks his resolve and says, yes, i'm looking at oil, the traders will come in at 243 and smash the market that's what you have to look for. press has to give powell a hard time at one point powell slips up, the market goes down big. >> okay. jim cramer >> everything is good? >> watching you. >> your piece was amazing. >> thank you >> i think that's why they won that's why they won. >> wasn't that something i went to sleep very early last night. i only got to watch the highlights this morning but very excited for the home team and we've got one more to go >> agree with you. totally. i agree with you by far it's the people there obviously biased thank you, buddy.

>> see you, buddy. mike >> thanks, andrew. both alphabet and facebook hit 52-week highs during trading yesterday. check out the other big names. microsoft has outperformed the s&p. have been laggards. so how should you be positioning your tech portfolio ahead of and after today's fed announcement joining us now gene munster, good to see you. it's interesting, we frame the tech discussion as a corollary to the fed decision and the fed debate, but that's a necessary thing because this group in general has in part traded based on what yields are doing, whether we're going to have inflation under control or not is the macro more important than the micro at the moment for big tech >> for the near term, i think that the macro is more important and i think that you're anticipating what the fed was going to say today, and a year ago i didn't pay much attention

to what the fed says, so i think that is an absolutely true, from uber dovish, to a dovish position, probably will suggest that rate goes higher which i think in the near term, investors in not only the four we're talking about but broader talk should be cautious about that but i do want to draw a very clear line between the near term and the long term and the fundamentals and i think that what you have seen withthe trade with google and facebook doing well, that is partially inflationary, because those two businesses tend to do exceptionally well, when prices go up, it is a highly leveraged-mleveraged model, but on the other side, i think with the long term, i think they will surprise investors in the whack half of the year, i suspect you will have a reversion and a performance is going to start to come from apple and amazon, and what it ultimately comes down to is performance, and i think that just this accelerating digital transformation impacting both

amazon and apple, i think is going to benefit the fundamentals and so mike, the way i think about it is i'm watching this, and i'm bracing for the worst, in terms of what happens with these stocks, but i'm optimistic about where it's going longer term >> you know, it's interesting that we now have gotten so entrenched in this idea that higher yields, you know, is a trigger to sell the big techs. that's in general. the big growth stocks. but if you go back to 2013, everybody talked about the taper tantrum as if it was some sort of a cataclysmic thing, and it is a 6% pullback in the s&p and tech did very well after that and you go into that next year and that was the birth of faang, where jim cramer comes up with faang. not long after that, and nails it so i mean do we have to be stuck in this kind of rubric for a long period of time? >> i think we're going to be stuck into it for i think until the fall, as we have these monthly updates and commentary from the fed, ultimately what's going to happen is i suspect that rates are going to go up,

the fed a is going to talk about rates going up, 20323, and i think that's the point of concern and trade-off in the tech names and essentially priced in, because as we know, the market is a great anticipatory, and i think once we start to see actually real evidence, hard evidence from the fed that rates are going up, i think investors are actually going to breathe, tech investors, a sigh of relief, and say finally, we can start talking about the fundamentals again, and not be worried about commentary about the yield curve. and so at the end of the day, i think what's most important to ask is how are our lives changing in the decades to come, and which conditions are going to benefit, and i think that that conversation outweighs any talk about what's going to happen with interest rates >> you mentioned facebook and alphabet, being levered to kind of this reopening type move, travel, advertising demand going up, really tracks gdp pretty

well, apple and amazon, really have been consolidating massive moves into last summer, right? in terms of their stocks and fundamentals and what do you think changes in the latter part of this year that brings investors back to those types of names, amazon and apple? >> i think it's just performance, i've covered apple for a long time and maybe focusing on that, and the march quarter was spectacular, and it was difficult to come up with the right adjectives and maybe my perspective, the best quarter in ten years, the best outperformance in a decade for the company and yet the stock has been flat, and i think what that is representative of is a belief from investors that the best has happened, that they have just pulled forward this massive amount of demand, and ultimately as we look forward, we are going to start to see declining revenue growth, think that is effectively what has happened and the commentary is somewhat similar around amazon so the answer to the question is what gets it out of this kind of flattish piece there, and it's

just simply performance. >> performance, gene, good to talk to you. thanks very much. >> thank you. coming up, top stocks to watch, ahead of e enthoping bell stay tuned we're coming right back. she'll make sure you never miss a call or an opportunity to grow your business. you can't be in two places at once, let posh answer. posh virtual receptionists. wondering what actually goes into your multivitamin? at new chapter, its' innovation, organic ingredients, and fermentation. fermentation? yes. formulated to help you body really truly absorb the natural goodness. new chapter. wellness, well done.

just over a half hour to go until the opening bell on wall street let's get over to dom chu with a look at top-pre-market movers and what's popping up. >> we have interesting analyst calls moving things pre-market, cruise lines, norwegian, carnival, royal caribbean and some upward price action thanks to analysts upgrading all three to outperform, from peer perform and they like the booking trends in the north american market and around the uncertainty with operations as quote-unquote transitory. >> and 80,000 shares of sofi, it gets initiated with a buy rating at rosen blat and a $30 price target, gaining market share from traditional lenders in the evolving banking landscape keep an eye on those shares as well. >> end on shares of coin base. lower pre-market 40,000 shares of volume.

despite analyst help from can accord who say the stock is a buy rating initiated with coverage and a $285 price target there. they cite among other things its brand and operational position as a quote-unquote super on-ramp to everything crypto, becky, so three sets of stocks keeping an eye on the pre-market. back to you guys >> dom, thank you very much. we will check out the markets just before we get ready to go and hand things over to "squawk on the street. you will see the futures are still hanging in there same as we have been watching for a while. dow is down 36 points a little bit of improvement s&p futures off just over a point and the nasdaq still indicated up by 17 points. mike, you've been watching this again, ahead of the fed decision, you won't see much activity until 2:15 today. >> the market is going to sort of stay in neutral until that point, maybe a little bit of a drift higher into the actual press conference, but again, probably no major moves until afterwards

>> we should take a look at the treasury market. because the 10-year has been sitting just under 1.5%. again, that's probably in the same sort of position that we will be seeing 1.489%, right through about 2:15 this afternoon that does it for us today. but make sure you join us tomorrow right now it's time for "squawk on the street. good wednesday morning welcome to "squawk on the street." i'm scott walker with jim cramer at the new york stock exchange, carl's on assignment, david has the morning off, let's go right to the board and take a look at futures on this big day. we are in wait and see mode for the most part. s&p and dow would open as modest losers today nasdaq positive, our road map starts with fed day. it is the big day, the fed takes center stage we'll find out if jay powell is talking about, thinking about tapering plus, cnbc's evolve global summit is getting under way, we will hea