sales. >> are you a foodie, dom i get accused of being a foodie. i don't know whether to deny it or admit it. >> he had corn dogs for national hot dog day. >> i can't believe you saw that. i should eat better. you don't get a body like mine by turning down food, joe. >> i love corn dogs. futures are down now make sure you join us tomorrow, join them tomorrow "squawk on the street" is next good morning, welcome to "squawk on the street. i'm scot walker with jim craiger at the new york stock exchange carl and david have the morning off. let's take a look at futures this morning how we're going to set up for the trading day on wall street mixed picture right now, s&p would open negative by a few points, dow down 52, nasdaq would be higher. our road map starts with corporate earnings and covid rec recovery at&t, dow, csx among the names

reporting this morning we're going to break down all of the results. plus, american and southwest posting quarterly profits boosted by a surge in travel demand we're going to talk with southwest's ceo gary kelly later on in the hour shares of chinese ride hailing giant didi under pressure once again. beijing reportedly considering a slew of new penalties, which could include a record fine or even perhaps a d listing let's talk about, jim, start with where the futures are i suppose the obvious question is so the correction's over? i mean, that was it? that's as deep as we get, and now it's about building back up? >> that would not be unusual for 2021 my friend caroline baa roe dee, which actually does work with -- just showed you we've had six three-day crashes so far, and they're all the same they're almost exactly the same, and you had -- it seemed odd to buy it it seemed ugly, but they've all

been three days. so it certainly would be in keeping. sometimes i struggle to try to figure out why you can rally, but you know, you and i were kicking around a bit of a thesis that is difficult to talk about and sad, but what i think the market might be predicting here in some way is 1918, 1919 end to the pandemic, but in a way where you're either vaccinated or you get it and if you get it, you hope it's low morbidity as the hilt, as they say in the united kingdom, or it may unfortunately be high morbidity like in india where two-thirds of the people -- it was in "the wall street journal" yesterday, two third of the people antibodies this thing spreads very rapidly. this is not how you want the pandemic to end. you want it to end by full vaccination. what i'm leaning to is how did it end in 1919

herd immunity. we're going to have a brutal form of herd immune it i and it's g - and it's going to happen in the next few months. >> what you're suggesting is the market is coming to grips with that and has the ability, at least right now, to look through the pain and see the other side of herd immunity and then a roaring 20s like scenario, but you're going to have to get through a very difficult period over the next many weeks, especially for the unvaccinated. >> exactly look at the jobless claims this morning, they're not good. and then you start thinking maybe the delta variant, why should i go back to work you start thinking is it going to be time versus school we've got to have people sending kids to school so women can get back into the work force, something that the great secretary of commerce has been talking about. this is how -- now look, does it end? that's a dangerous thing to say. but 1919 ended because everybody got it, right? the new delta strain according to dr. gottlieb, talked about one gives it to nine

gives it to each person gives it to nine. you can see how they got to two-thirds very quickly in india. we just need to have low morbidity. you might have low morbidity in arkansas, in missouri, in the states where there's been resistance, but it does end by everybody either getting it and hopefully living or getting vaccines. >> does it in any way, though, delay some of the reopening -- >> yes. >> -- stories that are out there? >> i'm calling it the great snag it's the snag in reopening i think when we talk to gary kelly from southwest, we can find out whether there's a snag there. those numbers look very good the airlines, it seems like people are willing to travel, almost what's happening in the uk boris johnson is saying go out and do what you want why would you do that. he believes if you do get sick, we are much better at handling people getting sick. he's got a low morbidity way to have herd immunity a lot of the better people i speak to think that this thesis

is completely spot on. it's not how you want this to end. it's not a roaring '20s yet because, jeez we have to go through some serious, serious morbidity, but once everybody has it, go back in 1919, great specials, american experience on it one day people -- it just ended, and the reason why it ended is because everybody -- >> everybody had it. at this level, delta, everyone will have it very quickly. >> what does it mean, though, for travel-related stock you know, like experiential stocks, the casinos have been hammered this week. >> yes >> you said we're going to talk to gary kelly, scott kirby of united was on yesterday. he's fairly optimistic about where travel is. here's doug parker mesh airlines from "squawk box." let's listen to that we can talk on the other side. >> we intend to keep growing into the fourth quarter. the fourth quarter we'll be 90%

of 2019 levels we're going to keep growing as demand grows we've been more aggressive than others and we're happy about that, and you know, we're now flying a lot more customers than anyone else meeting the demand that's out there and as the demand continues to grow, which we expect, we'll continue to add back capacity. >> that's doug parker, american. i suppose you're as optimistic as you can possibly be given where we've come from. >> who wants to come on and say, hey, look, this thing could be ending because a lot of the non-vaccinated people are going to get it. some will die, and -- but none of them feel like they shouldn't do everything they want, same as the uk the number -- i mean, i think these airline stocks are down today, it's probably a mistake i think after you listen to gary kelly you're going to want to buy. the people who are unvaccinated have decided it's just the flu and the people who are vaccinated have decided it's just the flu and i'm not going to get it. that's what's going on

unfortunately the unvaccinated i think that their estimation of what the flu is is a little too glib, but they're -- it tends to be a group of people, scott, as you know from twitter who are adamant that we who think that they might die are just dead wrong. so if you're adamant that you're okay, you're flying, you're going to disney. that's why the down beat numbers today seem incorrect to me now gary kelly, also, he can't come on and say, you know what everybody who's going to die is going to die and we're in good shape. that's not a narrative that can be discussed biut what he can sy is people are much less fearful than you realize. >> what do you want to do with the so-called stay-at-home stocks which this week have rallied hard are those now a sell because of the reality of get through the painful period, and then we're going to be off and running. >> i think it's case by case it's case by case.

for instance, unilever stay-at-home stock, higher costs, still got 5% organic growth the higher cost, nullify that, people don't like it. >> i think it was on twitter this morning where you talked about unilever as not having the growth to offset some of those higher costs. >> they know chipotle. they put out the results i get the results at 3:00 a.m., these aren't so good that's a great way to start the day. look at this, though, domino's, i have them tonight. people felt that's the stay-at-home, i don't want go go out. i want to eat domino's, that way i don't get infected they were up 3.5% versus last year that's an acquired taste i'm a big domino's user. what that says is people like domino's, and they're going to stick with domino's even though the pandemic could be winding down so there is a stay-at-home stock that works now, netflix, though, i mean, remember the old netflix calls, wow, ted talked about about what

he liked >> you're longing for the good old days now it's like hey, listen, gaming no, what are your favorites -- what are the favorite ones netflix turned out to be a stay-at-home story now, some places doing stay-at-home, i've been critical of disney but then you watch black widow stay-at-home, you pay 30 bucks that's the price of popcorn. amc, if you own stock, you get free popcorn i do feel that it's case by case is what i'm saying it's case by case. >> is the most important thing that has happened in the market this week that rates stabilize ed the ten-year is back to 130 this morning. we're not sort of looking through the rate complex thinking something terrible is on the horizon, bond markets sniffing something out, the stock market has to come to grips with. >> i think you should short the bond market. i think that it's -- if our theory plays out and if the people are not vaccinated feel like they can do whatever they want because they're only

worried about the flu, and the people that are vaccinated can do whatever they want because they're not worried, then what are the interest rates doing so low? that's more like the starter home numbers we saw today where there's a shortage i am -- i remain bullish i do believe this three-day correction scenario. i look at the airlines today and i think they could reverse the futures were up 1 point and now they come down i see positive notes about nvidia and microsoft roaring 20s again and i look at companies reacting incorrectly abbott labs was very good, and it's not acting correctly. union pacific was fantastic, it was first not acting correctly and now it is. i'm saying don't look at the stock market now it's digesting numbers incorrectly. >> speaking of numbers, you just mentioned microsoft, a new street high price target at citi 378. >> why doesn't he go to 440. come on, citi, do better than that i'm sorry. you have mike wilson on today.

>> we do. >> mike wilson does not do that kind of thing. he does not say listen, i'm raising my price target for coca-cola from 56 to 130 come on. >> mike wilson's been directionally right in thinking that there is going to be a rolling correction and he was -- it's not like he woke up this week and started predicting it as we're in the midst of it. look at new core, the largest steel company. remember, this is our largest steel company, okay? and reported an unbelievable number today it sells at four times earnings. that means people think it's going to fall apart, right obviously it's not four times extra -- i think that new course price wrong. i think that things are going to be good next year. i think mike thinks things are going to be good next year. >> he's been looking for a 10 to 15% correction which sounds severe 3% is feeling pretty bad. >> new core just had that. >> a lot of stocks have had that in the rolling correction.

what hasn't had that >> what hasn't had that, faang, big tech hasn't had that. >> because of what lee cooperman said. >> did you catch what lee said >> i happened to be listening when he was talking about it. >> you know it's just a question -- that was a good interview -- just how much faang you have i'm underweighted in the see >> he has a lot of faang. >> i like lee, i've been taught by lee since 1981. i think what lee has always is a sense of where you are, you know, kind of like the bill bradley book >> microsoft price target, the street high is not, you know, o over the moon, right >> look at these stocks. netflix, please take that out for now, reed didn't even have a mini series he liked let alone an actual -- >> i feel like we need to retire netflix from the faang conversation. >> not until we see if they can start making movies again post-covid that's what we have to hope there. but the microsoft call, the

nvidia -- i mean, nvidia, everyone is back on the nvidia case i think amd is ridiculously valued so tech is going to have a rally today, but mike wilson, i think he would say, look, tech just finished a very brutal correction, and i'm referencing mike because he's on i'm referencing lee because that was the most provocative interview we had on tv, and i think lee was, hey, you know what i'm not that into faang. i only have this much facebook, only this much alphabet. only this much amazon. no, lee, you're into faang. >> his biggest positions, i believe, are in faang. by the way, texas instruments, since we're talking about -- >> that was a conference call. that was a stephen king conference call where everybody dies that was one of the worst conference calls i've ever heard. that was the stand do you know that the analysts were begging them to say something positive one of the analysts said could you please tell us something good i mean honestly, say something

good tell me something good. >> wasn't there a time, though, where people looked at texas instruments as sort of a bellwether of what's happening in chips. >> they had inventories when they needed inventories. they were very lean on inventories. the analysts were quite surprised. texas instruments told a negative story i mean issue -- >> the stock is showing -- >> when you have a conference call where you say our stock's too high >> what they said is we didn't buy that much stock and we have no really good forecast for you and why don't you just go through something else why don't you go listen to csx why are you bothering us. >> go do something else. go cut the grass. >> when we come back, elon musk speaks out about owning bitcoin. we'll take a look at futures as well we're set up for a mixed open here s&p and dow would open in a negative territory we'll see what happens off the open more "squawk on the street" from the new york stock exchange is straight ahead

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i might pump but i don't dump, and i would like to see bitcoin succeed. >> that's the most quiet i've ever been. he's very quite muted there. >> that was elon musk. it was so quick, you might not have realized it was quick

he was speaking yesterday making the case for owning bitcoin. well, i mean, of course he wants bitcoin. >> there's been this kind of recidivist rear guard action to bring back non-fungible tokens we saw that with steve jobs. look, the people who are long these things have been quiet, almost as if they're trying to trap the shorts. musk is very clever at that, we know that. he talked about that on ethereum i own ethereum, i feel like you have to have exposure to bitcoin, just like you have to have exposure to gold. brutal, brutal, why? their lack of transparency was so frightening that gary gensler gave a speech to the american bar association where he's talking about maybe it's time to regulate some of these securities now, people don't want ever to hear that any of the things that you see right now are securities, particularly tether,

but if gary gensler mandates that as a security, deirdre bosa doesn't have subpoena power, gary gensler does. what an interview. >> the idea that crypto is tied directionally to the s&p, right, it's either a risk asset or risk-offs asset if the market is looking through covid is bitcoin going to have another month up >> there's going to be either a waterloo or let's just say a great victory with what comes with this robinhood thing. because robinhood is going far more than usual to its customers. if robinhood opens down, do its customers buy more i think they sell. so robinhood could be the test of the real craziness in this market now, i think -- i talked with -- i talked with marc benioff last night about salesforce

vlad's breaking the rules. he's going give people stop, will they hold their amc, hold their game stop, continue to buy these little $3 stocks yesterday there was a stock, it was only $30 million valuation, but it had 3 million shares and 100 million shares traded. what the heck is that? >> you know, you -- since we were talking about tech just a moment ago, you had benioff, marc benioff on "mad money.." >> i don't know if you have any of that tape. >> the sound that he had about the biden administration specifically. >> not anti-tech. >> we're going to do that coming up i thought we were doing that here >> it's hard to hear i got the crowd here. >> it's like the old days here it's pre-pandemic. this 1919 theory, i'm going to keep that in people's minds because that's a brutal way for the pandemic to end, but it did

end. you hope that we have lower morbidity. the people who are so brave to say it's just a flu therefore they don't need to get vaccinated what i would tell them, do they get flu shots? if you know that a flu shot were to be 95% effective, wouldn't everyone take the flu shot if you didn't call it covid, you just call it the flu. >> you wish that some of the people who are now suddenly urging others to get vaccinated would have done that months ago before the delta variant started spreading wildly here. >> we only have the most watched tv shows they have no impact. >> still to come, a ceo hat trick, don't miss interviews with the heads of southwest, dow, and union pacific, and up next it's cramer's mad dash as we count down to the opening bell take a look at futures once again. set up for a mixed open, s&p would open fractionally higher, more "squawk on the street" when we come back 't just about time, you know. it means experience.

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all right, time now for the mad dash with cramer as we head to the opening bell. what are we looking at >> i'm looking at union pacific, and it's just an excellent quarter. now, a lot of people were worried about union pacific because they thought that they might be in bad shape because of the west port delays the union pacific is the way you get that stuff in and people were a little worried about if they did that ksu transaction, which had come out against union pacific, that deal may fall through because of a biden challenge. suddenly i look at a company that every -- >> i was going to go to csx because you were talking about that earlier on twitter. >> natural gas got so expensive that utilities just switched they're not idiots

as far as products, really, really good. csx the same thing industrial chemicals, we're seeing -- by the way, their ratio of costs is fantastic. i think that the 10:00 show has union pacific, and it's going to blow people away lance fritz is going to blow people away. a lot of people felt there's no way he could do this they underestimated him co constantly can you please ask him about the amazing hiring of women that he's done. this is a guy that's committed to getting women in high positions in his company. >> making notes. >> and you should ask him because it's something that he is really fixated on correctly >> i'll ask him. >> the opening bell is just minutes away followed by the ceos of southwest airlines and dow. don't go anywhere.

he's saying a lot of really smart things, and you know, he is saying some things that other people were afraid to say that are true things. so look, we have to -- it's a

crisis of prioritization in government they've got to figure out what's truly important, and certainly our technology industry is one of the great assets of our country, of course, and we want to help all of our customers get back to growth and to reignite the economy, you know, and the government has to be a team as part of that >> salesforce's marc benioff with jim on "mad money" commenting on what president biden is saying about tech what did you think about these comments >> i tell you, it's funny, the one that always skates by is microsoft. people are too worried about faang, facebook being too powerful marc yesterday closed the deal on slack, and slack is at war with microsoft they think microsoft is too powerful teams comes up i didn't ask for teams to come up it just comes up. >> that just happened with me, literally. >> they did that with everybody. >> that's the antitrust issue. i think there are tech companies

that are too powerful. just not the ones that people think. i don't think that -- >> this is a guy that said facebook was like the new cigarettes. >> right >> but that's okay because the other day president biden said it's a murderer. he did take that back. >> he walked it back. >> he walked it back, but he said it to -- big tech has an issue. >> you're listening to the opening bells. you're looking at the realtime cnbc exchange as well. here at the big board in structure it's a learning management platform celebrating its ipo in the nasdaq database company, couchbase is also celebrating its ipo. >> for all of that jim about, okay, biden says what he says, and we know what benioff's position on facebook is and probably some of the other big tech companies investors don't care about any of that. >> no. the only thing that happens is let's say you're facebook. you're probably not going to be able to do dm.

that's their stable coin they want to do what's weird is what'd they name that after the guy from south vietnam, diem, i don't understand sometimes zuckerberg needs a little history lesson. i do think that alphabet, if it's too powerful, you break it up you get more money. >> that's the problem. >> theyir google cloud service s on fire by the way no one talks about it, taking customers left and right by the way, is microsoft going higher on that call is so bullish. that's just a call that hey, micr microsoft's okay if texas instruments comes back, then you know nvidia's going right to the equivalent of where it was before the high, before the split, which i did like. >> texas's right now is down more than 4%. >> when you ckib osh your own

stock. >> that's an ill vised way to approach things. >> to have analysts begging for you to say something good and just not even giving them -- >> it's like when a coach stands up in front of the football team and says, you know, guys, we stink. we're awful. we can't beat anybody. what do you expect, the guys to run out, run through a brick wall for you after that? >> my advice to texas instruments is to remember the titans >> look, you said, we didn't get to this specifically what you said yesterday about the s&p, that it's, quote, done getting slammed. >> yes, yes, because we had the ste theme of 2021, the three-day correction a rolling correction say on the steels the steels just had a selloff day of all selloffs and i think that they can come back. typically if we ever get an infrastructure bill, which -- whatever. >> hey, what'd you think of the williams -- since we're talking about people getting out

>> this william sonoma piece is slander. >> there's a cut to sell at goldman sachs. >> that was a completely unnecessary gra tuitous act. the ceo is terrific. they're talking about hard compar comparisons. west elm is the way you decorate everything i'm a west elm house my daughter's west elm that's anecdotal, but everybody is >> that's just one piece of the wil william sonoma pipe. >> every single one is on fire how dare this person downgrade it to sell, kate mcshane there i'm sorry, kate, that i pointed out your name, you're probably a nice person difficult comparisons for 2022 how about a brilliant ceo who's going to challenge and succeed over those comparisons she comes on my show, she predicted that there would be outdoor living because of covid and had lines of outdoor furniture before people even realized that you had to be

outdoors that's how good she is. >> so we knock goldman down, can we pick them back up, foot locker initiated by -- >> brilliant piece brilliant piece. i was shocked how good that piece was. it's case by case, my friend all we have. you know who we ought to bring right now, i think we should bring in one of my favorite ceos he's not going to be ceo for long we're going to bring in southwest air. people are calling this mixed results. i think it's great results the company swings to a profit let me also make this point, they're so optimistic about the future, about travel, i can't wait let's bring in right now gary kelly, the ceo of southwest air. gary, you are, as you know, my favorite i make no bones about it i'm sorry, scott kirby, you have a lot of good guys in your industry is the problem. i think all your ceos are good i'm willing to take the opposite view of people who say it was mixed. i think that the actual traveler, the person who is going places is going places in

extraordinary fashions against even 2019 comparisons. am i wrong about being so optimistic >> i don't think so at all, and of course you know, we're still muddling through a pandemic, and i think we all just have to be realistic about the risks associated, you know, with na in the future these are very good results. our revenues almost doubled from the first quarter levels, and the bookings for the third quarter look really strong in relative terms, and yeah, we were profitable in the month of june, and we've got a good shot at profitability for the third quarter as a whole, so there is no effect on our demand right now from the delta variant, and hopefully that will continue to be the case, but you know, as we're adjusting to higher volumes, we've got a little bit of a cost penalty here in the second and third quarter, but

we'll smooth those things out, and yeah, we've got great opportunities to grow next year, and obviously very excited about that. >> go back a year ago, i remember you saying the sweeping nature of the bailout so to speak for airlines should not have really been applied to southwest air because you've got a great balance sheet. you're going to get through this your balance sheet strength is indeed unmatched but i would say unmatched versus many industrials in this country. >> it looks really good, and you know, i'll take it even at the beginning of the second quarter, we weren't sure exactly where things would be here 90 days later, and we've definitely done better than we thought. the cash skgeneration was much stronger than we thought, we've got $17 billion in the bank, and 11 billion in debt, so we're in great shape, and even with that, our leverage has climbed to only

57%. so we'll pay down a lot of debt oaf t over the next five years, and we'll continue to be in great fighting shape i'm just delighted to be at this point. we always are have things to work on, but very, very excited to be able to be looking ahead and planning for the future and thinking about growth opportunities. >> yeah, i can't believe your stock's down $1.90 i think it's a buy i want to turn you over to scott. i read this, and i say to myself does gary need even more planes than you bought? you bought those planes at the low because you're a very smart negotiator do you need more, boeing's got some for you. >> yeah, we have great team at southwest airlines who has that boeing relationship, and boeing is great partner, so yeah, i think that that's -- if there's -- if there's a tendency one way or the other it feels like we need more airplanes.

i think my concern, though, jim, right now is just hiring and staffing going forward so it's a very tight labor market so the good thing about southwest, though, is we can commit to add airplanes, and if we don't have the resources that we need to fly more flights, then we can simply retire older air aircraft, and it's still earnings accretive we're in a great position. we are very flexible in terms of how we execute i think everybody just has to remember that this pandemic is very messy it's messed up the supply chain and so many different industries all over the world, and ours is no different so it was messy going into the pandemic it's going to be messy coming out, and we are so well-prepared to manage through that, so, again, i'm very proud of our people and how they put us in this position. >> hey, gary, it's nice to see you this morning it's scott just to pick up on where you

left off here, how difficult is it to find people across all jobs at southwest airlines right now, and what are you having to do in terms of wage increases to attract workers? >> well, we moved our starting wage rate to a minimum of $15 an hour so that's one thing that we have done and, you know, our staffing overall right now is in very good shape we do -- we've got pockets of stress throughout the country. if you look at a specific airport, we are under staffed in certain cases, and the hiring process is just slower so when we put out -- when we post jobs, we're getting fewer inquiries and we're -- it's just taking longer and it's definitely a tight market. so i don't think that this will persist indefinitely we're definitely beefing up our internal resources to have wider and deeper recruiting efforts,

so it's definitely a concern, and everything that you read in the news about this we're experiencing but it's mostly airport workers. the pilots and flight attendants actually the hiring there, we're in very good shape but front line employees on the ground at the airports, we definitely have some struggles in some locations. >> forgive me for stepping on your toes there, gary. i'm wondering do you have better visibility now on the runway so to speak for getting back to maybe not precovid business travel levels, but somewhere close to that where it was almost a year ago on this network and i think in a conversation with jim and the gang who were regularly here, you were talking about a ten-year time frame to get back to business travel levels like you had once experienced do you feel more optimistic? has that time frame shortened at

all? >> you know, i do feel more optimistic for all the reasons that we've been talking about. 90 days ago we weren't at all sure that this is where we would be here in july with very strong demand, very full airplanes. and so we're glad to be here so i think that that's a good indication, and a lot of these people of course that are flying, they're flying for leisure or consumer purposes, but they are business people, so they're the same people and i think that that is a healthy indication, just the fact that you have travel demand out there. if you look at our managed corporate travel, it's down about 69% for the month of june compared to 2019 levels. that's better than it was in may and april and so forth going forward. so my hope is that we can get that to recover to maybe down 50% by the end of this quarter

again, i think it all -- it kind of depends on the delta variant. i was listening to your show earlier this morning, and talking with scott gottlieb and the prediction that maybe some companies will be delaying their return to office with their employees. so you know, it's anybody's guess here in the short-term, but i do think over the longer term whether that's three years, five years, or ten years, i think we're all going to feel like business travel is robust, whether it's literally back to 2019 levels, who knows but yeah, i think things are going to normalize, and all dependent upon crushing this virus, so i would just appeal to everybody, get the vaccination so we can stop dealing with all these health issues. >> and gary kelly is an apolitical person, so those who hear that should not think it's a democrat issue gary you once came on air during the

height of the pandemic and said, oh, people can still fly, but there's really no place to go. there's nothing open where are people going, gary this is very robust. where are they headed? >> yeah, well,things are opened, and beaches are open you know, the mountains are open disney land is open. you got new york opening back up, california opens up. they tightened back, but there are at least places to go and people, you can tell that, you know, there's a lot of speculation. there was this pent-up demand to get back and travel again, and i think that that's been proven so, yeah, national parks are very crowded so it's -- people are anxious to get out and about and we want to be there to take them where they want to go >> well, thank you, gary, and i'm glad you're still with us and i'm sure probably in the near future bob jordan will be doing the call with you, i hope, do a smooth transition exactly the way that southwest does things

great to see you, sir. >> we will indeed. thanks, jim. >> yeah. that's gary kelly of southwest joining us there dow in the meantime posting an earnings beat for its second quarter. the chemical company pointed to an increase in demand and tight supply signaled a brighter outlook as the global economic recovery broadens joining us on cnbc, jim fitterling good morning, welcome. >> good morning, thank you for having me. >> i'm looking at a couple of analysts' reports, significant beat one says healthy earnings beat says another yet i look at your stock this morning, and it's down by more than 2%. why do you think that is >> well, as you know, sometimes real results and the markets don't line up. but our second quarter was the strongest quarter in the company's history preor post spend, and our third quarter order book is very, very strong, so i think our outlook is that we're going to see a third

quarter very much like the second quarter, and that's across many of our segments and driven obviously by demand and backlogs that our customers -- many of our customers now with 45 to 60-day backlogs on their order books. >> you know, i'm looking at at least, i suppose you could call it criticism that this is a story about higher prices for you and that it's unsustainable in the chemicals market. certainly that's the narrative put forth by bank of america last week where they downgraded your stock to an underperform where they say the top is near are they telling a different story than one that you see? >> i think it's been a difficult market for people to understand, and i think a lot of it has been based on what they saw with oil price and when oil prices went down we have to remember that supply coming on and oil is in advance of demand that's coming. we're within 4 to 5 million barrels a day of pre-covid oil demand numbers, and i think

that's the same thing that we see in our downstream markets. we're still not back to volume numbers like we had pre-pandemic so we've had record earnings, and we're still not back to pre-pandemic volumes in the second quarter we had pretty much a month of impact from winter storm yuri, and we were able to deliver great volumes up 9% and great pricing, and in the third quarter, we're running hard going into july with an order book that's stronger than we had in the second quarter, and it looks like wer going to be running hard now through the end of the year, and probably not a chance at that point to build inventories. >> i think jim -- this is jim cramer, one of the things that confound people is they look at the q of the stock market and think there it is. that's what's wrong, and then they try to build a thesis back ward i don't want to play that game, but i do know that you were on record suggesting that dow's peak ebitda was about $12 billion, and after this

print, you are at that run rate. so perhaps people are saying that's as good as it can get he's told you what to shoot for, and they got there >> well, what we said to them today, jim, was it isn't as good as it can get. we're at thiat run rate, we've got $1.6 billion coming a billion from -- and 600 million from a combination of digital investments and productivity growth so we've got 1.6 billion of additional earnings on top of that, and that's conservative in the near-term. it will take me a little while to ramp capex up to depreciation. 1.6 billion in capex this year. i want to get it up to 2.2 billion and we're going to look at obviously going beyond that as the economy continues to strengthen right now gdp projections are greater than 6% on the back of

the united states, china, and a little bit of western europe the rest of europe, india, brazil, and other economies in southeast asia are going to come out of this pandemic and add to that demand strength and i think that's where the issue is i think people are being too conservative about the forward look for 2022. >> i'm not going to let this interview go without talking about what you've done there's a ralph lauren issue, olympic issue that's a feel good story. i know that we're not supposed to do feel good stories, just feel bad stories i'm giving it to you, jim. tell it. >> well, we've been working very hard to make our products more sustainable and to meet consumer demands, and ralph lauren is a partner that we've worked with for the past year, a little more than a year to develop a product that helps them to reduce the footprint of the products that they make. textile dine requires a lot of water, a lot of chemicals, and a

lot of energy to make that happen when the olympic team marches out, they're going to be wearing the echo fast pure polo, echo fast is a dow product. it allows ralph lauren to dye those materials with 40% less water, 85% less chemicals, and 90% less energy, and that industry is one of the biggest users of water in all of manufacturing. and so this is a real breakthrough and you're going to see it next year when they launch their color on demand series in new york at some of their big flagship stores. we're proud to be their partner, and i think it's another story in addition to plastics recycling and all the things we're doing to move down the path of a more circular economy. >> jim, before i let you go, can you give us an update on the chemical leak down in texas from yesterday? >> sure. thanks, david, it was brought under control before midday yesterday. we had a tanker of monomer

that's used to make adhesives that was starting to vent, and the team did a fantastic job of getting that under control, keeping it in containment. there was no loss of containment, no fire, nothing like that. and that's what we train for it was unfortunate, but i think it's all under control, and we're now doing the learning so that we can avoid a repeat of that incident. >> all right, we appreciate your time this morning, sir we'll talk to you again soon hopefully here on "squawk on the street." that's jim fitterling of dow joining us >> do what's best to make it -- >> you can call me well, as lo call you late for dinner. >> all right still to come, the ceo parade continues. we will talk with the head of union pacific about earnings, covid and the recovery and more as we head to break. the movement in the u.s. treasurys in the eurozone bonds. we'll be right back.

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cisco. the bridge to possible. ♪ good thursday morning and welcome to another hour of "squawk on the street. i'm morgan brennan with scott walker we are live from post 9 at the new york stock exchange. carl and david have the morning off. we are ships passing in the night this week. a quick check on markets which is a mixed picture after a tumultuous week of trading the s&p is flat, the dow down about 0.1% and the nasdaq up a

quarter of a percent we had that higher than expected jobless claims number this morning. that's part of what is in focus today. the leading index data is just out and for that we turn to rick santelli >> thanks, morgan. leading economic indicators for june expected to be up 0.7 to 0.8, up 0.7, the lower side of expectations and last month was revised from up 1.3 to 1.2. it's darn close to half of last month and it is the lightest going back to unchanged in february now, the issue here might not be so much the economy as it is some of the constraints within the economy, supply chain, we know the story, and it is having an affect here existing home sales also out for the month of june. but for that we head east to diana. >> rick, existing home sales in june up 1.4% month to month to a

seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 8.6 million units. t that's a slight miss now, the headline in this report is that we may have turned a corner on inventory. inventory 1.25 million units for sale down 18.8% year over year but represents a 2.6 month supply last month we had a 2.5 month supply inventory getting slightly better still very low, pushing prices higher to an all-time high yet again. $363,300 the median price of an existing home sold this june that's up a 23.4% year over year but again that's due to what is selling. sales between $152,000 million dollars home sales up 147% one last thing investors getting heavier into the market 14% of sales to investors. that's up from 9% a year ago and

all cash also 23% up from 16%. morgan, back to you. >> so many dynamics in focus thanks for the latest. we are 30 minutes into the trading session. here are the three big movers we are watching today we are going to start with at&t, topping earnings expectations. i can speak today. bear with me at&t seeing a jump in signups for the various hbo services those shares though down about 0.3 of 1%. biogen, the alzheimer's drug generating 2 million in revenue. biogen raising the 2021 revenue forecast, shares up 1.5% and las vegas sands after reporting a wider-than-expected loss however, the company said it's still confident about a rebound in travel and tourism you can see the shares down almost 5%

this morning. >> another name to watch, southwest airlines under pressure after a wider-than-expected loss ceo gary kelly joined us in the last hour to discuss the quarter. >> these are very good results our revenues almost doubled from the first quarter levels and the bookings for the third quarter look really strong relatively. we were profitable in the month of june and we've got a good shot at profitability for the third quarter as a whole so there is no affect on our demand right now from the delta variant, and, hopefully, that will continue to be the case >> that's gary kelly, of course, southwest. no impact from delta, morgan and everybody it seems, all the ceos in the airlines fspace are optimistic about at least where look y leisure is where you have been vaccinated or not, you are still getting

out there and traveling. it's just the business travel is going to take longer to come back >> and that is the key from an investing standpoint having just been on nine different flights and that does not include the ones that were canceled or missed in the past two weeks, it is a rough situation because there aren't necessarily enough workers for the amount of people trying to board planes right now the service numbers, the costs associated with that, you heard that from some of the airlines reporting this week. >> heard it from him gary kelly said that it's hard to find people. >> i very much had a front row seat for that process. i mean, transports in general we have talked about we saw that pull back, that dramatic pull back monday in the broader market which basically looking at the s&p today it's almost like it never happened we reversed that and then some in transports you did actually see a correction, down 12% from the recent highs now down about 9% given some of the rebound we have seen in the last couple of days. and it's really the bottom line,

questions longer term about economic growth and what this recovery actually looks like we are seeing more people and more goods, nor freight move around as well that is case with csx earnings, union pacific, we have that ceo, lance fritz today and some of the truckers in general, we are at least right now at this moment seeing a recovery. >> we will see what impact delta has on these businesses, if any. speaking of airlines, american airlines reporting results for that we turn to to phil lebeau now doug parker seems optimistic about the current state of the industry. >> i would say that's a fair characterization he is optimistic about the third and fourth quarter they reported a smaller than expected loss for the second quarter. better than expected revenue but when you look at the third quarter capacity will be down 15 to 20% compared to 2019. q3 of 2019 revenue down 20% versus the same time two years ago

both are a big improvement compared to the second and first quarter. no guidance on profitability as for corporate travel, it is returning. here is parker talking about what they're seeing. >> when we look at the small and medium business they are up 60%. that's who is traveling right now, large corporations are more in the -- still in the 30% level. and they will come back to that. those that are more nimble, that's where business wants to be big corporation like ours, it takes a little longer. >> take a look at shares of american airlines down like almost all of the airlines today, under pressure. you are seeing a company here that has $50 billion in debt they have got to pay that back they paid $1 billion in the last week they are paying another $15 billion through 2025 as they try to work off the massive amount of debt they had to raise in order to withstand the pandemic by the way, in terms of airline earnings today, we also heard

not just from american, southwest, and also alaska airlines earlier this morning. it also reported better than expected results a loss, but a profitable june. and speaking of alaska airlines, we will be talking with the ceo exclusively coming up a little bit later today on the exchange. this is a company that has been adding capacity. we will get ben's take in terms of how much capacity they plan to bring back in the third and fourth quarters. back to you. >> that's where i was going with you, phil, is what is the expected discipline, if i call it that, about adding capacity both domestically and of course i know we have this question about what international is going to look like what does that look like in terms of more flights actually coming back online >> combination of two things have to happen they see the demand. they need to add the flights that's one equation. they want to add the flights but they have to have the staffing, morgan we talked to doug parker about that southwest and american got

dinged in the month of june because they added too many flights back, didn't have enough pilots, flight attendants, crew, you name it, they were not ready for that doug parker said we had to dial that back. it's going to be smoother, that's the expectation for the third and fourth quarter so much more disciplined in terms of how they add back capacity it's primarily domestic. international remains very spotty, transatlantic, asia dead in the water for some time that's the main focus domestically. >> all right phil lebeau, thank you. we are keeping our eyes on the crypto markets specifically, all the volatility that we continue to see there, rising following some bullish comments from elon musk and jack dorsey here is what musk had to say on whether tesla would accept bitcoin again. >> a little bit more diligence that you could confirm that the percentage of renewable energy usage is most likely sort of at

or above 50% and that there is -- that there is a trend towards increasing that number and, if so, then tesla will resume accepting bitcoin >> all right also coming out of that discussion is the spakt that spacex, elon musk's other company, also holds bitcoin on the books. here is to discuss is chris sulky, head of their crypto division cumberland. thanks for being with us today i mean, we have what seems like generalists and specialists where cryptocurrency is concerned. what does cumberland do? where are you focused in the market >> thank you we are a specialist in providing liquidity for the marketplace. what we look to do is make sure that our counter parties have access to a depth of liquidity and ability to execute that they might not be able to find elsewhere. oftentimes we are trading on the order of $100 million at a time to ensure that those counter parties can trade when necessary. >> all right

so -- oh, go ahead. >> on the other side of it we are seeing a generalist model where other organizations focus on providing a full vertical of services for the industry, custody and agency execution and potentially an order book. those things need to live side by side in order to have a healthy marketplace. >> i want to get your thoughts on the "b" word commence especially given the fact that we just showed the board, the fact that cryptocurrencies in general are in the green today after some of those headlines. i think we are having some technical difficulties with chris right now. we will try to bring him back. but, scott, it certainlywas interesting to, again, given -- we talk about broader market volatility this week but certainly with the cryptocurrencies as well, bitcoin is higher today after some of those comments from kathy, elon musk, jack dorsey

yesterday, and certainly we're starting to see more of these bitcoin enthusiasts, these cryptocurrency enthusiasts call for regulations. i thought kathy woods' comments about the reclassification of cryptocurrency, what that could mean for regulation and further activity from the institutional side was interesting, too. >> be careful what you wish for, right? what kind of regulation? we haven't gotten all that much from gensler at the s.e.c. we will have to see. no surprise the cryptocurrencies are up based on the comments from the conference from musk saying he has etheorem and tesla may once again accept bitcoin and also if the market is back into a more risk -- risk-on environment, it's no surprise that the crypto complex would be rising once, you know, some of the overall fears may be that hit the market for a couple of days are over. >> and not surprising to hear

musk tesla could help with the whole climate situation around bitcoin mining but we're going to take a quick break. we will see if we can get that guest back here is a look at our roadmap for the rest of the hour, including a first on cnbc review with union pacific ceo ron fritz. >> plus, why former wells fargo ceo thinks the market is overvalued he expects a 20% decline in the future. and texas instruments despite blowing past earnings estimates, we are going to look closer at that and what it means for the semi sector ingeneral. we have a lot nor "squawk on the street" still ahead. don't go anywhere. m "squawk on e street" still ahead. don't go anywhere. or "squawk onh street" still ahead. don't go anywhere. e "squawk on the street" still ahead. don't go anywhere.

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let's get caught up on the markets the dow is negative by just about 37 points while the s&p and the nasdaq are showing modest gains our next guest former wells fargo chairman and ceo expects a 20% decline in the market. perhaps even more than that. sometime over the next 18 months we welcome him in right now to explain all that welcome. >> good morning. >> that's a lot. i don't think anybody is ready for a 20% or more correction why do you think one is needed >> well, i think there is a lot of concern and nervousness among investors about what the future is going to hold

i think they are concerned about the increase in the, across the country of the coronavirus, especially the highly contagious delta variant. i think they are particularly concerned about the inflation that we are -- we have at the moment the average worker gets two to three percent increase in their salary and it's all taken away by inflation we have 4, 5, 6% inflation on thebasics, food, gas, normal consumer purchases i think they are concerned about the $1 trillion deficit that we already have had and there is a trillion dollars more in the pipeline if the current administration gets their budget passed through congress. and with all of those issues, the market is at an all-time high so my feeling it's priced to

perfection and we will not have perfection sometime in the next 18 months. i think the next few months are going to be really good. the market will probably go up because we have good economic growth and really good results in terms of profits and sales growth in businesses, but i think they are going to be disappointed with what happens, especially if some of these conditions that exist today persist or even get worse. >> so if i say -- it's hard to make the case that the stock market is wildly overvalued given where rates are now. sounds like you'd say, yeah, i agree with you, but once that all changes over the next 18 months, the market is going to look a lot different than it does now >> exactly >> schawe talking about the debt ceiling as a risk to the markets

here, at least in the near term? >> well, we always talk about the debt ceiling how many times do we go to the cliff and eventually pass it, which we have to do, and we will do it again, but it's just all about the politics that are going on no one can agree with anything, and, you know, we're not dumb enough to, obviously, not pay our debts. so we will get through that, but it will be negotiations like everything else seems to be with the last-minute problems. >> yeah. i guess just to dig into that a little bit more, i mean the fact that no one can seem to agree on majority of policies being debated right now. how do you expect that in general, the policy picture in general so sort of shape up and have an impact on the markets whether it's the possibility of tax increases, more regulation, it's infrastructure, some of the other things that are being kicked around right now? >> that's why i believe that we are going to have a 20% decline

because i don't think it's going to end well. there are going to be some negotiations that get through, but there is going to be others that, even if they do get through, they may not be good for the economy. and you have the right issues. high taxes, more regulation. the government getting involved in a material way with all of the corporations and the internal workings of corporations this is not healthy. this is not good for a healthy stock market >> so then how do you layer the possibility of taper on top of that, and how the fed now approaches its policy and what that, too, is going to mean for investors in the market? >> the fed should be tapering. again, we have more jobs available than we have unemployment at the moment the economy is strong.

i think continuing to stimulate this economy is going to have negative impacts, not positive, because of possible inflation and at the moment we have the highest inflation we've had in decades. decades. >> well, we should, right? of course we do. we went from zero to 100 overnight. we reopened the economy. of course we should have higher inflation than we have had in a long period of time. but you don't believe that it's transitory >> no. because we're talking about even more stimulus coming not because it makes any economic sense it's politics that are happening. so, you know, you ever hear of milton friedmann milton friedmann -- >> i heard the name. >> okay. milton milton friedmann didn't talk about supply chain problems and

whatever he said inflation is all about money supply and we have had, and i think in the last 18 months, you know, i don't have all the figures here, but i think we have had the highest increase in money supply in the last 18 months since, i don't know, world war ii or something. it's growing at 20%. and they're talking about more stimulus and not tapering >> but we -- what you are talking about is half of the equation. >> and milton friedmann would say, you have 20% growth in m2, you are going to have inflation. and he -- you know, he was right for all these years. maybe it's going to be different this time. >> what do you do though about what the fed chairman has repeatedly said he is concerned about, and that's where the employment market is, right? it's a dual mandate. it's not just about the

stability of prices. it's about the employment market as well and there are still, what, 8 million jobs unfilled since the pandemic >> no, but there is 9 million jobs that people want to hire. i walk all over san francisco and all over help wanted, help wanted, help wanted. you can't cause people -- if you pay people not to work, they are not going to go to work. >> but certainly that's not the only issue - >> there are 9 million jobs -- >> you know that's not the only issue keeping people from going back to work there are many other issues that affect families in different ways whether we're talking about in communities of color, which have not returned to the work force, that nearly the rate that others have. there are fears about the virus. there is childcare issues. all sorts of issues. now, i know the headline issue is the one that's easiest to talk about, and that's the one of the government giving people

money to stay at home. but i know you would agree that there are more specific issues than just that. >> of course but don't say that we don't have people employed. we have 9 million jobs available to people. that's not our problem right? there is 9 million unemployed and there is 9 million jobs available. we have to find a way to get the 9 million people who are unemployed filling the jobs that are available. the economy is strong. the economy is good. what good does it do to improve the economy if the conditions you are saying aren't going to have anyone want to go back to work we have a big problem in california as we have the governor and everyone else trying to get the schools open, but the teachers don't want to go back to work. and that's causing a lot of people not to be able to go to work because they have kids at home

but it's not a lack of jobs. that's my point. it's not because we have a bad economy u i it's not because we need to stimulate the economy anymore. >> no, the economy is great. we are talking about an environment where we think, and i think we can think it's fair to say, we hope is a roaring environment on the back side of the pandemic but we'll have to see. i thank you so much for the time i didn't get a chance to ask you about the bank stocks. we will do that next time. we appreciate the provocative conversation we'll catch you soon. >> thank you. all right. we'll check out the biggest laggards on the nasdaq 100 texas instruments is in the red. it's down about 5% right now, forecasting current quarter guidance below analysts' forecasts. 'lbeig bk.wel rhtac tax-smart i? -well, audrey's expecting... -twins! grandparents! we want to put money aside for them, so...change in plans. alright, let's see what we can adjust.

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the biggest holding d.r. horton sinking despite a beat on the top and bottom lines the company raising revenue guidance for the year as it continues to expect a strong housing market you can see shares of d.r. horton down about 4% now beats in earnings and pressure for the stocks regardless? >> yeah, great beats for some of these stocks and maybe we are not seeing it to the quality that so were expecting. time for a news update. good morning another setback for the troubled tokyo olympics the director of the opening opening ceremony has beenfired after the surfacing of a 1998 comedy routine in which he made jokes about the holocaust. two more olympic athletes have tested positive for covid so far 91 people with olympics credentials have tested positive, including ten

athletes. and first lady jill biden has arrived in japan leading the official u.s. delegation to the games. she is scheduled to have dinner with the country's prime minister and have a virtual visit with the u.s. athletes before tomorrow's opening cemo quk t street" will be right back don't go anywhere. folks the world's first fully autonomous vehicle is almost at the finish line today we're going to fine tune the dynamic braking system whoo, what a ride! i invested in invesco qqq a fund that invests in the innovators of the nasdaq 100 like you you don't have to be a deep learning engineer to help make the world a smarter place does this come in blue? become an agent of innovation with invesco qqq

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this is a tiny step of what blue origins is going to do. what we are trying to do is build reusable space vehicles. we need to build a road to space so our children can build a future we need to take all polluting industry, all heavy industry and move it off earth. this will take many decades. that's what we can do if we have reusable space vehicles. this summer with the tourism mission lets us plaquenil that. >> jeff bezos speaking with me

on tuesday post-flight talking about building a road to space after becoming the second billionaire in a week to travel in his own company's spacecraft. joining us is dr. mark esper, former u.s. secretary of defense. doctor, thanks for joining us. good to see you. >> thanks, morgan. good morning to you. >> all right so we just kicked this off with those comments from bezos. it's been a big couple of weeks specifically where private human spaceflight is concerned and the attention to suborbital tourism is getting in general, this moment where commercial space is emerging, this new era, there are national security implications as well as innovation implications more broadly on society as well how do you see that? >> look, it's very exciting. who would have imagined the private sector would be leading in space when i worked these issues in congress 20 years ago, nobody could imagine it it's the same transition that the defense industry went through years ago where the government was leading it and the private sector took over

it's very exciting it's great to see american entrepreneurism in space and it's the same thing i see in defense sector that's why i associated myself with epris they are not only going to enhance our nation's security and will position the united states well for the 21 gs century. >> under your leadership at the dod and the past administration in general we started to see that cutting of the red tape that those policies that were implemented to try to help spur this defense startup landscape and create more opportunities for these small companies to break into what has traditionally been a hard to crack into market with a lot of bureaucracy, spending and time associated it. now that you are on the private side, what does that look like what are the challenges that you are seeing >> one of the things i brought to my role as secretary of the army and secretary of defense later was my understanding defense industry

i spent many years trying to understand how things work from that side. there was a awakening at dod over the past few years, we had to reach towards the entrepreneurs, the innovators, folks on the vecp side of thing and bring technologies in, partner with them. one of the things i did as secretary of the army, i would meet every week with leaders of companies of all sizes to understand what they were doing, their technologies and how we at the army at the time could do better that eventual le led to the stand up of futures command in austin, texas, an innovation hub. that was critical. i brought that to dod and continued that same pace as best i could pre-pandemic to make sure we were partnering because the key to the 21st century is maintaining capabilities based on cutting edge technologies, hypersonics, a.i., directed energy all those things will be

critical to the united states winning the twent first century. >> i'm going to ask you to put your former hat on for a moment and ask you, how concerned are you and how concerned should we be for what's happening in afghanistan right now as we're leaving the taliban claims it has regained 80% control of the region iran is there. the influence is growing there are fears of all-out civil war. how concerned are you? >> i am concerned for any number of reasons first and foremost, we went into afghanistan in 2001 to make sure it wouldn't be a home base for terrorists such as al qaeda. so we need to prevent that from ever happening again it is the right thing to get out of the afghanistan i don't think this is the right way to do it it is too precipitous. it is that i argued against when i was wearing my former hat as secretary of defense

i didn't support a precipitous withdrawal a i believe it was through a political agreement, and i thought that should have been kept up. but we are where we are and we need to make the best of it and ensure we go back to the core tenant, and that is making sure that afghanistan never again becomes a place from which the united states can be threatened by terrorists. >> is iran the biggest threat to stability in that region as we speak right now? >> absolutely. since the 1979 revolution it's been 40 years of maligned behavior whether pursuing nuclear weapons, long-range ballistic missiles or support of proxy groups throughout the region from africa into south asia so iranis a malign influence we need them to be a rational, normal country they seem to have no interest in becoming that. we need to keep the pressure up, work with partners and allies. they are key to this make sure that we deter and

address iranian bad behavior. >> yeah. >> and one thing i'll add is one of the ways by which iran spreads that bad behavior is through the use of proxies employing things like drones, fixed-wing drones, rotary-wing drones those are the threats the united states faced in my time, we face today that will threaten our troops, our war fighters our position in that region. that's why critical technologies like leeitis that you see behind me, high power mike waves to knock down drones will be critical to protect our war fighters and advance our trts. >> to dig into some of these new innovations helping to find the cape thablts the u.s. war fighter with need in these battles, these tensions in the future, setting sights on china right now, we see the crackdown that's happening in that country around didi and other homegrown

technology countries data is a national security topic there. how do you think the policies, whether it's in china or whether it is here in the u.s., continue to evolve around some of these new ways, these new ways of information being used as warfare? >> china is the greatest strategic challenge for the united states and our allies in the 21st century we need to stay ahead in technology, certainly on the war-f war-fighting side. implementing the national defense strategy, modernizing the force, we put billions of dollars into 11 modernization parties. i had the largest r&d budget in our nation's history the one i prepared was also the largest in history one of those technologies or some of those include a.i. autonomy hypersonics, robotics, and again high-directed energy weapons. so all ofthose things are critical we need to make those investments.

we need to look very carefully about our supply chains in many cases we may need to reshore these or technologies back to the united states or make sure they are pro tenged by having them through our allies and partners this will be critical to deter conflict with china and the key will be technology. >> secretary ses per, thank you for joining us today. >> thank you, morgan as we head to break, check out shares of domino's, a fresh all-time high after the company posted a surprise increase in u.s. same-store sales. theres is, shares up better than 11% right now. we'll be right back with more notable movers n'gonyere. with cutting-edge tech, world-class interiors, and peerless design... their only competition is each other. the incomparable mercedes-benz suvs.

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welcome back our dom chu looking at the action, a third straight day of gains. >> the gains have misdemeanor rated a little bit, scott, but we are looking at some of the parts of the market hottest over the course of the last week as traders have stepped in to buy some of the lows that we saw after monday's sell-off. the three sectors that are performing the best so far in the s&p 500, this week, including the sell-off, check out the consumer discretionary technology and industrial sectors. the more economically sensitive ones, the ones that tend to do better as people spend more money, go out, activity resumes again, those particular stocks and sectsers 1.5 to 2% that gives you an idea where that activity has been with regard to buying dips. with regard to certain specific stocks and companies within that particular market with the s&p 500 some of the names that have performed the best over the course of this past week including the lows have been norweigian cruise line, american

airliness, united rentals and freeport macnamara copper and gold speaking to the economic sensitivity trade, those tox anywhere from 4.5 to 10 to 11% for norweigian cruise lines. the travel and leisure and reopening trade coming full force again. one of the technology market that traders look towards for some leadership or tea leaves about what the future direction of the overall tech sector is the semiconductor index and these particular companies lam research applied materials, kla corporation and nvidia fresh off a four for one stock pisplit up7 po 9%. semiconductors a key part of that technology trade and certainly where some of the biggest bounces have happened since the lows on monday back to you. >> dom chu, thank you. after the break, the ceo of union pacific joins us first on cnbc stocks up 2% we'll be right back.

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weighing on the company's rail network. joining us is union pacific's ceo lance fritz. thanks for being with us today. >> morgan, thanks for hosting me really appreciate it. >> at a time where investors are very, very focused on the trajectory for economic growth as we go into the second half of this year given everything that's going on with the delta variant right now, the fed, et cetera, what are you seeing in terms of those volumes and the type of freight that is moving on your railroad >> we continue to see a u.s. economy that's really pretty strong and it's across the board. in the housing sector, that looks pretty strong to us. we see that in lumber. we sew it in other construction material like rocks, cement. we see the steel industry and metals performing pretty pwell grain and grain products is much better than it was this time last year. likewise, food and refrigerated

and just overall consumer demand in the form of international and domestic intermodal. our top line and 40 different sub lines, all good with the exception of three or four or five it's a pretty good economy still. >> you just mentioned intermodal we talked about for months now some of the gridlock around the ports, the fact that there are container shortages. what are you seeing in terms of that and when to you expect that pain to ease >> yeah, morgan, the entire international intermodal supply chain is challenged and it's been challenged for, call it, six months or so maybe a little longer. it started, if you recall, with ships holding out from the ports on the west coast. and the west coast having a hard time absorbing that demand we stepped up and helped do our part we put more resources towards the west coast ports, and we helped move boxes off those ports and move them inland and now what we're seeing at

ramps like what we have in chicago, the end customer is having a hard time taking all the boxes and getting them off the ramp and into the distribution centers and warehouses so we're helping there as well we opened up additional capacity for those boxes to sit for a little bit longer. we're trying to help those beneficial cargo owners find ways to move the product to their warehouses but it looks like it is going to be around for a little while. >> okay. but transitory, nonetheless. do you have enough workers >> we do as a matter of fact, our workforce is solid they're the ones that helped us generate this fantastic second quarter. we are doing a little hiring here and there, but what we said on our call this morning is we think our overall employment count is going to be about where it is right now, about 30,000 employees for the remainder of the year and where we need to hire, we don't see any real problem finding those individuals. plus we still have a few employees that are on furlough,

and we're getting about 70% of them returned when we call them back. >> perfect segue to the question, sir, this is scott, that i wanted to ask you, jim cramer was raving about you and your company earlier this morning. i'm not sure if you heard our conversation from earlier. but it was regarding your efforts to hire more women, which you have made it a priority 5.5% of your total workforce right now, you want to double that by 2030 can you give us an update on where things stand today >> yeah, that's a great question, scott. i'm so pleased you asked we actually have a couple of different markers out when it comes to our diversity of our employment base. one is that we want to increase our female population by double to 11% by 2030 the other is we want to increase our minority and ethnic population up to 40% by about 39%. we made progress here to date. we measure that every month internally

we talk about it and publish it externally every quarter and we made progress on both fronts there is a lot of work there to be done. we had to do the nut and bolt work of making sure our job descriptions aren't discriminatory in some way, whether it is gender or racial or ethnically. we have to look in different spots to fill our jobs we have to do different things to make our jobs attractive to different people than they have been attracted to historically we have got work on all fronts it is a big, big deal for us we fundamentally believe that a diverse, inclusive workforce is a stronger workforce and it is what supports the kind of performance we saw in the second quarter. >> yeah, such a key topic that we talk about across so many industries now i want to shift gears a little bit, though. government policy, just got this executive order from president biden, that includes the railroads and it is a look by the stv to further competition

the rail industry and to provide accessible remedies for shippers, reciprocal shipping, would that help to ease prices and increase competition in the industry >> yeah, morgan, let's level set that eo, right you know that as an industry and as a railroad, we do a great job of providing good service product to move a lot of product in an efficient way. we have very high paying union jobs we help other companies achieve their carbon emission goals and we do all of that by paying for the infrastructure ourselves so when you think about a whole of government approach, we satisfy and help a lot of the administration's goals or achieving their goals. our concern is just what you point out, that this eo kind of

looks like it wants the stb to reregulate the industry and take us backwards and retard us from doing the things i just outlined so we're working with the administration to help them understand whether it is the epa or the department of transportation or the omb or amtrak what the eo might do from a head wind perspective in terms of keeping us from performing the role that we're performing right now, to help the administration achieve its objectives. >> quickly, i know you just mentioned private infrastructure, that the railroads already invest in. if we were to see an actual bigger infrastructure package pushed and approved by congress, what would that mean for your railroad >> we're very strong supporters of the bipartisan infrastructure bill i hope it does get passed. i hope they find a way to the finish line. we rely on the united states to have really good power distribution to have good broadband broadly available, to have a good road infrastructure

that is safe and efficient because that informs both the overall economy and the first mile, last mile. and when the economy is healthy, and we can reach industry effectively in the first mile, last mile, we're in really good shape. >> lance fritz, thank you for joining us today we'll be rhtacig bk. >> thank you speedy but reliab. state-of-the-art but dependable. in other words, you want a hybrid. so do telcos. that's why they're going hybrid with ibm. a hybrid cloud approach with watson ai helps them roll out new innovations anywhere without losing speed. from telco to transportation, businesses are going with a smarter hybrid cloud, using the tools, platform and expertise of ibm. good work little buddy. ♪ ♪ ♪ rush hour will never feel the same. experience, thrilling performance from our entire line of vehicles at the lexus golden opportunity sales event. lease the 2021 is 300 for $379 a month for 36 months.

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welcome back big tech names to watch after the bell with intel, snap and twitter set to report later today. you can see all in the red right now. but snap is down 2%, intel down .6%, as is twitter. intel certainly a big name to watch, scott, because it is a dow component and everything we have been seeing and hearing and talking about, and a now ceo at the helm. >> hasn't been a great run for the stock. if you look, there was that initial burst when pat gellesinger got the job. a lot of optimism. and then, like, there is a lot of work to do. that's why you see the stock moving sideways over the last few months speaking of stocks, we have mike wilson coming up in an hour's

time, from morgan stanley who called the rolling correction correct. looking for a bigger pullback. i don't know if we'll get that we'll talk to him coming up and find out what we're going to do from here in the markets >> just a quick check on the markets now, it is pretty narrow trading range. the s&p is basically flat. that's going to do it for "squawk on the street. "techcheck" starts now good thursday morning, welcome to "techcheck. i'm deirdre bosa with jon fortt and julia boorstin carl is off. today, one of the most compelling stocks in our coverage, why btig is so bullish about airbnb this morning. microsoft has a new street high today. why citi says its 30% upswing is