names like american eagle, macy's and urban outfitters as the commodity complex in general is getting attention from wall street that is going to do it from "squawk on the street. "techcheck" starts right now good wednesday morning welcome to "techcheck. i'm carl quinatnilla with john fortt and deidre bosa. all s&p sectors, though, are still in the red our first guest says to catch the dip while you can. facebook is under pressure again after that testimony from the whistleblower. we have mark zuckerberg's response to that this hour and then later first on cnbc, aaron levee makes his first

appearance let's talk about the nibbling going on in tech and dominic chu has stuff on that. dom? >> there is some nibbling because we've seen some levels hit in the nasdaq become attractive for certain folks out there. one way to look at it from a big picture perspective what is going on with the nasdaq right now. off the session lows only down by of 25%. we are now down roughly 6% again, making a move now also about 3% below its 50-day average price on aal rolling basis. those tend to be levels in the past over the course of the year whenever those levels hit below average prices, we did see some dip buying so to speak that's on the sector level here. some of the places to watch specifically are some of the most volatile names that we've seen in that tech and communication services type trade. specifically with regard to names in semi conductors

nvidia one of the more volatile names over the course of the last week or so here also financial technology, paypal and square among those names that has seen more of that swing along with the market. also zoom video. some of the higher growth oriented names and chinese internet remember a big story a couple months ago, those names very vol volatile, as well. trending lower and seeing a bid for the big chinese tech companies out there. the nibbling is also happening with certain parts of the mega cap technology space and communication services, as well. the notable ones here in the middle microsoft, alphabet and amazon you can see fractional gains the two not participating at this level apple and facebook we know facebook has headline risks associated with it and that mega cap trade seeing dip buying and, of course, close it out with the really big picture. we often talk about the ten-year treasury note yield as the proxy for interest rates we want to show you the 30-year

interest rate. at one point, guys, we hit 2.15%. that's important because it would be the highest level that we've seen since june of this year so, something to keep an eye on. rates were part of the story with the market volatility and the nasdaq earlier this year we'll see, john, whether it sticks around for this time, as well >> dom, to pull back a bit i'm taking a look at what is happening with certain tech stocks over the past month i notice zoom is down about 14%. adobe down about 15% just some of these pandemic high fliers that i'm looking at down about 19% do you get the sense that the appetite for risk or maybe the sense that there's more room to run on growth stocks might have moderated a little bit >> the story may have shifted a little bit towards what investors find relative value in this notion if you do find growth becoming more of an issue down the line, it does hit the mega cap tech stocks but to a

lesser degree than with the smaller or mid cap names or ones that have growth expectations built into them. that's why you watch names like the zooms and the fastlies of the world. that kind of thing where we thought the pandemic was going to be a huge factor. let's not also forget, john, the pandemic was a factor itself, as well if it tends to be more incremental optimism with regard to the trajectory of the covid vaccination and some infection rates turning lower. now, in a circumstance like that, if you have all those playing out, it's maybe not uncommon to see folks turning back to the trade that's worked for the better part of, you can say, of decade and decade and a half now which has been mega cap technology that's the reason why. if you're seeing some of the buy of the dip technology, a lot of investors and this and maybe the previous generation to turn towards that mega cap technology trade. that's the reason you're seeing incremental buying right now,

john >> little drooling there right now. great context in the volatility. that's important, thanks now, let's turn to facebook ceo zuckerberg sharing a note on his outtake of the massive service outage and congressional testimony. zuckerberg that the company prioritizes profits over safety saying, quote, many of the claims don't make any sense, unquote. the stock hurting recently down more than 12% over the past month. julia, facebook not just zu zuck zuckerberg, but pr seeming to downplay the testimony and suggests she doesn't have the expertise or wasn't in the room where it happened to make some of the statements but getting support from people in those rooms during the time when decisions were made. >> it seemed like she got a lot

of support from the senators yesterday. really interesting to see the way facebook is reacting to this the fact that mark zucckerberg has not, her big interview on "60 minutes" and then her testimony. it took him until last night to respond and he very much seemed like he was trying to rise above it, not respond to a lot of the specific allegations but saying just in general her allegations don't make sense and he likes to focus on the logic and reason and a lot of questions about some of these issues that she raised and whether or not he's trying to sort of gloss over some of these more problematic issues for the company and i think going forward he's going to be called, i would be shocked if he wasn't called to testify again, carl. and perhaps really answer some of these pressing questions

about whether facebook needs to take bigger steps to tamp down and the anger that the platform can insicite >> whether it's a call to appear in front of the committee or this bipartisan group of senator s back a full set of documents, john, to get a fuller picture of what he was trying to explain. >> that's right. but this idea of adjusting how we look at algorithms and the fact that algorithms will surface certain types of content that will provoke a certain type of reaction gained some attention in the 2:30 discussion and one of the anecdotes about european politicians saying we're being forced into more extreme positions than we want to take. i think part of what the legacy

of this is going to be is that, carl, the question of algorithm and algorithmic ranking being pushed upon people is going to be front and center. >> by the way, b of a does come out and defend facebook. they reiterate their buy saying they don't see a material impact on engagement. >> yeah, and a lot of analysts pointing out here that facebook is the biggest game in town between facebook and google. advertisers really feel like those are the best options we haven't seen anything about advertiser boycotts. the naacp did ask zuckerberg for a meeting and we'll see if that conversation and that call from the naacp does point to more potential boycotts down the road, carl >> yeah. meantime, talking about the volatility that we've been seeing in tech this week our first guest says she's been using this pull back to add to some positions in the sector

specifically in semis. joining us this morning, chris thanks for being with us thanks for the time. >> thanks for having me. good morning >> it does kind of feel like maybe chip equipment is low hanging fruit here >> well, the market has been digesting a lot of headlines, a lot of risk and a lot of unknowns you know, we're seasonably in some of the toughest time for these stocks and earning season is just around the corner and kind of can't get here soon enough one thing that we all are observing is that semi conductor shortages are global and one way to release and relieve that issue is by installing more semi cap equipment. we think longer term there is growth for semi cap equipments and companies like the two you just mentioned applied material and lam research are two of the best in the industry

higher liquid cap and we think those types of names long term will do well while also there is a smaller suppliers into that supply chain which we also think should be getting the benefit after this correction that we've been seeing. >> of all the takes that we've heard in the past couple weeks and we'll get a little bit out of marvel today, let's hope. this would be around for another 12, maybe 18 months. automakers have echoed that. do you think that makes sense? that kind of timeline? >> i think the supply shortages of semi conductors certainly are around for another year, if not longer the automotive content that is using semi conductors is multiples from where it was in the traditional car when you look at these evs. this is just a trend that is coinciding with the shortages. so, we're seeing more semi conductors across almost every

industry automotive is a big one. but we also see it in arrow space, medical, industrial so, semi conductors we think long term have a very good trend. the question is, is it at the leading edge or is it some of the trailing edge? for some companies they're seeing pricing power for the first time in many, many years on those trailing edge semi conductors just because of the shortages. capacity has to be put in place and if we can begin to build manufacturing here in the united states, which i personally think is a good geopolitical decision, we're going to see more spend and that's going to continue over the next few years. >> yeah, speaking of which, chris, how doo you calculate te risk in the chinese market right now more broadly >> so, the chinese have been trying to build out their semi conductor business for many years. they're not at the cutting edge. they're not at where tsmc,

samsung and intel are trying to get. they're certainly dealing with their own issues over there. but we think that semi conductor manufacturing within the chinese industry or economy is still a long-term goal that they would like to build out. as they decouple really from western suppliers. they've seen what could happen you know, through zte and they know they have to manufacturer and build out, they're just not at the cutting edge like western companies. >> is there danger here, particularly with semiequipment stocks at some point some of these companies might be buying equipment more than they need because it's so hard to get a hold of and then in the next 18 months or so there's some digestion that has to happen >> i don't think right now that they're buying more than what they need. i think that there's such a demand to install capacity, as well as the build plans that

we're hearing from the primary foundries that they want to place them more in the united states where we haven't had that build out. so, we think really what the issue is for semi cap equipment is they, too, can't get enough components to finish the products that they have. demand is not the problem. it's more supply and then also the costs that are going into it you know, shipping costs, logistics. and that's affecting almost every company out there. again, i think that's why this earning season is very interesting for a lot of companies to see which good management teams have been able to manage through this margin compression that we expect to see. the question is how long does that continue? >> wow you got to get chips to make chips. chris, appreciate it very much good to see you. >> you, too. thank you. now, box ceo aaron levee

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that's because you all have the same internet. xfinity xfi. so powerful, it keeps one-upping itself. can your internet do that? >> we settle 90% plus of the situations and the overwhelming majority of those work out unbelievably well. so, i think that's okay. we also run proxy contests and

sometimes we lose them >> ight. >> but that's also okay because it still ramps up the accountability and still forces management to make promises to their shareholders that they'll deliver better and you have to be able to do both i would say with box the stock is up 60% from when we bought it so, we're not unhappy. we're happy, but we think there is more that can be done and we think the company is promising more >> that was starboard jeff smith speaking to david faber in the last hour. box ceo aaron levie is with our own john lipton in his first media appearance since that fight. josh. >> aaron, thank you for joining us >> thank you for having me >> aaron, as mentioned, this is your first television interview since that proxy battle with starboard valuended and also unveiled and introduced important features for box customers just this morning.

i did want to start, though, aaron, really with the big story dominating headlines right now that is facebook big, important questions about facebook and then also broadly about tech and trust and i want to get your sense, aaron, just about how you're thinking about that issue and how you think it should be addressed. >> yeah, this is certainly a major moment in the technology industry where you now have platforms where the government is deciding that we have to drive greater accountability and possibly regulation for how these platforms operate and the kind of information that people consume and able to share freely over the web these are issues that i think have been brewing for the past couple of decades and social media only multiplied the sort of technical ability for this information to spread and i think we're going to have how we regulate these platforms

stand to reason that there is more regulation in the space and i think even facebook would argue there should be regulation a bit too much that the private sector is having to take responsibility for that they would rather have the government decide how these platforms should work from the information tand standpoint. >> i want to stick with the issues of trust and security this morning box works did introduce new features one was the security feature designed to combat ransom ware and interested in why you introduced this feature now. was it something that box customers were demanding from you? >> yeah, so, we have long had a massive investment in data p protection and data privacy. we're taking it further with the box shield product that could do advanced malware protection and in this casein prevent the spread of ransomware any kind of ransomware that could infect the machine and any of that data that might be spreading through people's content we can help detect and ultimately prevent a lot more innovation to come

around ransomware detection and prevention but we have definitely a major initial announcement today will we broaden out the scope of our announcement and collaborate and drive work throws on their content and new updates with microsoft across office and teams and slack, zoom, webex and other companies and doubling down in areas like e esignature and more than any other in box >> it's john >> hey, john >> from starboard josh smith is not unhappy, in fact, he said he was happy with the way that all turned out are you happy and what did you learn from the proxy fight >> we appreciate how shareholders voted we have a pretty clear path forward to drive growth and greater profitability levels from where we are today and we

appreciate that shareholders validated that strategy through the shareholder vote when we look at the engagement broadly, you know, i think that we really embraced starboard and their messages early on. a couple years ago they came into the business and had really great perspective on driving profitability in the company and ultimately worked with them to restructure our board and brought in board directors and operators and we took a very constructive approach. now, at some point we had some slight differences of opinion around what the next chapter should look like, but, their approved board members remain on the board and remain very strategic for us bethany is now the chair of the board who came on as a part of that settlement. we're happy about overall how that relationship, you know, evolved and we're going to have some disagreements here and there with maybe how to drive the greatest amount of shareholder value going forward but ultimately take a constructive and collaborative approach with shareholders and that will continue with

starboard and any other shareholders going forward >> aaron, tell us what this next chapter does look like after this starboard battle is over. where are you going to be investing beyond this new focus on security. >> i think if you look at what the world and what enterprises are facing today, three big challenges and actually we kicked off with security and privacy. you have distributed work, which is changing all the places that we're going to work from and then every single business transaction going digitally. when you think about distributing work, digital first experiences and what is at the center of all of that? content. has to do clinical drug trials and all the research data that goes into that and media companies that have to produce new films and television content and healthcare providers and banks that have to onboard new patients or clients. content sits at the center of all the digital transformation that we're seeing in the enterprise and we're building the leading content cloud to power the content for over 100,000 customers. so, you're going to see us

double down with additional new products that we expand in to. we're going to make sure that we bring those products to all of our customer base through certainly a much more optimized go to market motion. areas like esignature are a recent example of this we just innenter ed and make sue that all of our customers have access and today at our customer event we're going to be revealing a whole new product and capability areas that will extend the power of our platform >> so, aaron, you have the game plan for box laid out and the strategy there i know when i speak to some financial analysts, the worry for some of them is how competitors could come in and possibly disrupt that game plan and one competitor they bring up would be microsoft they say in there with one drive and integrating it with teams and, obviously, very popular how much of a threat is that because some analysts clearly have reservations they're not as

confident about your pathway to strong growth and improving profitability given that rival >> yeah, i think you're pointing to a couple skeptical analysts which is always good to have within a shareholder base. i think largely our analyst base is very bullish on the stock and on the upside. i think when you look at the context of we have 100,000 customers. we are, we've guided up multiple times this year and beat and raised our targets multiple times this year. customers are voting with their dollars every single day on our platform and as it relates to microsoft, we actually have a dramatically enhanced partnership with microsoft just today we're integrating with microsoft office more deeply on the desktop and integrating with teams more deeply in the cloud. when customers want to be able to have a best of breed content cloud that can manage their content across any application whether that's salesforce, slack, service now and microsoft products, our content cloud, we

believe, will really be the best choice but, again, it will be a competitive and dynamic landscape but you will see we're driving massive transformation in the form of data security, protection, work flow automation, data governance, ekee esignature and every software company out there. >> last question for me, aaron, about the i.t. environment our viewers are always interested to get your take on the general software spending environment. one of the trends, are small businesses willing to spend more and what are the themes you're spotting >> yeah, i think we just had our cio conference yesterday and i think what is amazing right now is the i.t. organization, the chief information officer is really at the center of essentially every single enterprise on the planet whether that's a small/medium business or the world's largest enterprises. the reason for that is whether you think about distributed work and digital first experiences for customers and whether you think about data compliance regulation all of this goes back to the i.t. organization. so, we think i.t. budgets are

going to increase and i.t. strategies will become more strategic to the overall sort of growth engine of the company, not just the cost and line item of expense within an organization and when you have i.t. at the center of an organization strategy whether that's a cpg company, a life sciences company, a bank, that means that you're going to see more innovation and more software coming into the organizations and we're seeing this within our growth rate where, again, the past two quarters this year we've been able to exceed our expectation that we put for wall street very healthy environment and a lot of innovation happening right now and a lot of great choice for i.t. leaders out there. >> all right, aaron levie, as always, we thank you for your time john fortt, i'll send it back to you. >> josh lipton, thanks to you, as well. the reporter behind the facebook files and the whistleblower testimony will join us next plus more on today's volatile trading extend losses for the week

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welcome back to "techcheck" resetting near the bottom of the hour the trend continues today. stocks are off the lows of the session by not as much, though, as a few moments ago nasdaq is down for the seventh time in the last nine sessions as we continue to hover just north of the 4300 line on the s&p. let's get a news update with leslie picker. >> here's what's happening at this hour. ginkgo bioworks sinking and negluigible and the short seller says the company has not meaningfully improved over the last year, even as its valuation shot up 480% to $24 billion.

ginkgo bioworks went public last month. cnbc reached out for ginkgo for comment. oil and natural gas prices pulling back after hitting the highest levels in roughly seven years. higher inventory levels taking a bite out of the rally which drove u.s. crude up to nearly $80 per barrel private sector job growth coming in stronger than expected in september adp says 568,000 new positions were added last month. that is the biggest gain since june service industries and larger businesses did the most hiring back over to you guys. >> thanks, leslie. and mark zuckerberg pushing back after frances haugen's testimony. many of haugen's claims don't make any sense defending the company's push to make tech products for kids and also to research the impact of facebook's products. all this comes after haugen said that zuckerberg has the control

and decides which metrics the wide-reaching platforms rely on. >> mark has built an organization that is very metrics driven it is intended to be flat. there is no unilateral responsibility the metrics make the decision. unfortunately, that itself is a decision and in the end, if he is the ceo and the chairman of facebook, he is responsible for those decisions. >> the buck stops with him >> the buck stops with him >> joining us now jeff horowitz, he led the paper's facebook files that kicked off all the scrutiny and steven levie who spent time with haugen in the field and wrote a great book on facebook that came out last year i want to start with you, steven, just to get your perspective. do you think in the wake of all these revelations facebook is going to make any changes? >> i think they're going to be forced to make some changes.

i think what the terrific reporting, the journal did and i think we're going to see more documents before all the repo reporters. in certain areas but really the question is whether the fundamental change will be made to shift the argument that zuckerberg made that by and large we're good to we can't tolerate certain things. everyone says, boy, one person committing suicide because of bad body image problems and bad mental health on instagram, that's too many. but the question is, are, you know, 20 million people young teenage girls suffering mental health issues or having them made worse by instagram. where do you have to go to change the product to acknowledge that is intolerable. and i think that's probably what facebook leadership is grappling with now

mark is a rational being and the question, which is one we have been asking for quite some time. i raised it in mybook. are we going to see that more fundamental shift? t. >> interesting question to be raised here. the question is sort of how much the product needs to change to make the changes to the impact jeff, are you surprised by the way zuckerberg responded pretty defensive. >> no, not really. i mean, to sort of answer the thing that you led off with. yes, the concerns she's raised do make sense. they are very well laid out in the documents that she gathered inside the company and i think in some respects it was the wide gap between what the company was saying publicly and what employees themselves could see if they chose to look inside facebook's own systems that kind of led to ms. haugen coming forward. >> steven, i wonder how you're thinking about --

>> interesting >> go ahead, julia >> no, please, carl, go ahead. >> i'm wondering how you're thinking about how legislators are thinking about what needs to be quote, unquote illegal. the notion, the conversation continues to center around content that either angers users or makes them feel depressed, which clearly is not going to be unique to facebook don't you think? >> totally i mean, you know, what the legislators will do. i think the good thing that came out of this hearing is one of the more substantive hearings i ever experienced by, you know, talking about how alga orithms work and because she didn't work you commit to x, y and z and they listened to her and she walked them through these documents which she took from facebook so, i think that was good. but to me when you heard senator

marq markey, i believe, say the time is up, mark zuckerberg we're coming for you i heard that from dianne feinstein and other legislators in 2018. it's really difficult to come up with legislation that is not going to trample the first amendment to limit what facebook does in this area. it is really going to be a question of public pressure in some respects. in other respects they mentioned a privacy law which is up now. we've been waiting for that for years. it's badly, badly needed and i think maybe that is one thing they could do for us this session if they can get their act together >> jeff, it seems to me that mark zuckerberg and certainly frances haugen are talking past each other, perhaps intentionally. when zuckerberg is saying some of the things that were said don't make sense they seem to make total sense to me and two of the things that the testimony seemed to really

focus in on is, one, the idea that government should have access to at least be able to understand the impact of social networks on society. and then, two, the algorithmic effects on society and debate need to be better understood and perhaps there needs to be legislation to limit the effects that algorithms can have does any of that not make sense to you, jeff >> no, look, i think that's a really good point. yes, i think one of the things that ms. haugen's testimony and i think my conversations with her have really kind of made me think about are that perhaps immediately having a solution to all of this transformational technology isn't the goal. maybe like one of the things that was best about the hearing yesterday i thought was that people were actually just listening to someone who knows these systems explain how they work so, i don't know that like legislation needs to be done at the end of the day

i think of what you were saying in terms of data access. you know, right now we're in a world where at the moment anywhere hundreds of facebook engineers can go ahead and, you know, run experiments and do good research inside the company. yet outsiders who are working for the public interest can't or the government can't so i think, you know, seeing how data access can be secured that is on a commensurate level as facebook level can access should be a big thing and arguably more important than a platform on a societial level. one thing that carl said earlier that i want to touch on. he asked whether or not this is the same for all platforms in terms of their effects own users. instagram is aware that its own

product has negative that other platforms do not have. these slides are public. this is the company's own operational understanding. i'm not saying other platforms don't have other problems that they cause that are different. in terms of body image and teen girl mental health and negative social comparison, this is something that instagram is uniquely bad at. >> well, jeff, it seems like transparencies can be part of the solution, but likely some sort of regulation will be, as well jeff and steven, thank you both for joining us this morning. now the streaming platform owned by amazon has been hacked exposing its source code and the amounts it pays to creators among other information. eamon javers has more. >> john, that's right. within the last couple minutes twitch has confirmed it has been hacked they are working on it and in a post, we can confirm a breach has taken place and our teams

are working with urgency to understand the extent of this. we'll update the community as soon as additional information is available twitch, obviously, is the online video streaming service so well known for video game streaming and popular among young people among others who participate in watching other people play video games. what we are looking at now is a post from the apparent hacker here who seems to be posting some red team details and client information and even information on payouts to the creators that is the people who are posting video to the twitch services so you can see, apparently, how much each of these creators have been paid. here's what the hacker said on social media about why they did this they're saying the xhubt is a disgusting, toxic pool so to foster more disruption and competition in the online video ga gaming streaming space, we have completely owned them and 6,000 internal repositories and also

said mocking jeff bezos here, jeff bezos paid $970 billion for this and we're giving it away for free #dobettertwitch. in an ideological and motivation here and although you have to be careful about what these hackers say they're doing it and why they're actually doing it. >> thanks for that breaking news we'll continue to watch it with your help. when we come back, upstart holdings and getting into buy now and pay later. the ceo will join us in a moment palantir being selected for a u.s. army contract stock is still down over the past week and really had trouble breaking out of the 20s for most of the year. we're back in two.

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welcome back we just told you about the twitch hack. act vision and take two down some of the worst laggards on the s&p. paid $18 million to the eeoc last monday but the key drivers for these stocks are games take 2 just delayed grand theft auto to after the holiday window and actvision "call of duty" and "world of warcraft" losing hearts from investors and users.

fallen by more than a third. to make matters worst, "world of war craft" has a new competitor from an unprecedented source, amazon after several gaming failures it just put out "new world" and an instant success and the most played game of the year on the gaming platform steam. still got to see how this twitch hack might play into things but amazon ceo andy jassy says the company is just getting started in gaming. >> we have a belief that could be the largest category in entertainment over a long period of time. just look what is happening at games and how social they become >> and success for amazon in gaming, julia. been a little bit of a time coming >> seems like amazon success in so many fields stay with us

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welcome back taking buy now pay later on the road, upstart launching a new auto retail product helping

prospective buyers get financing using artificial intelligence. the lending platform on the buy now, pay later boom up 1300% since the ipo last december. co-founder and ceo dave gerard dave, good to have you so there's a quote in your release about this from a partner saying that this is helping them both make lending more -- the lending process more transparent and sell vehicles at a higher profit. how is that possible because as a buyer if you make the process transparent to me i want to get as low a price as possible. >> that's a great question you know, there's pretty much nobody happy about the car buying experience today, either consumers or dealers, so there's a lot of room for fixing, if you will, and the whole notion of what we do at upstart a.i.-based lending and more accurate models you can reduce rates and improve or reduce the prices that

consumers pay for credit, while at the same time reducing enough to make it work for everybody. so in the auto industry, and in the car retailing and in financing business, there's just so much inefficiency that the models that we've built can make it a much better process and a much better product for the consumer, but at the same time make it also more profitable and more efficient for car dealers so what is the a.i. able to do that the existing systems can't, it must be not offering credit for people who seem credit worthy and really wouldn't pay and offering credit to people who looked like they weren't credit worthy, but actually are. is that what's happening or how is the a.i. able to do that? >> the whole premise of our business is that credit origination is antiquated, the fico score was invented 30 years ago and it's a very blunt, inaccurate tool for identifying who's credit worthy and that really means most of us are paying too much for credit because of all of the

inefficiencies and leaks in the system there's a lot more data and a lot more sophisticated math, you can accurately predict and who can pay back a loan and who is likely to and when you push forward on that model which we've been doing for years now and in the end, of a far better rate and far better rated outcome for the consumer and even if rates being lower than they were. it's sort of a win-win opportunity and it's because a.i. is never perfect, but the credit score-based model we've all been using for decades is terribly inaccurate and inefficient. >> one thing that i've not heard explained well is why there's not much of an emphasis in the buy now, pay later space given that households and aggregate have unprecedented levels of cash how does the model take that dynamic into account >> yeah. the general buy now, pay later space is more of a payment play

than a lending play in the sense of it's really going after that kind of visa mastercard oligopoly, if you will and looking for a different way for consumers to pay for something and there is a bit of lending in there and you pay in payments, et cetera, but generally, smart models understand the environment they're operating in what is the unemployment situation out there? what is the consumer debt load situation and what sort of trends are we seeing and these are things that a modern-day system can understand and react to and at the right moment in time and conversely not giving an offer to the person and that's ultimately what better math, better data science can do >> all right dave, appreciate that very much. >> one more thing before we go here at the top of the hour, morgan stanley downgrades their view of the i.t. hardware

industry today they warn of a drop in spending and a rise in inventory levels as a result they take cdw and seagate from overweight to equal weight and cut their price target for hpe adding their u.s. equity strategy team that we are in the later innings of a mid-cycle transition hardware has been the worst performing tech group that has underperformed the s&p by about 11%. john, sometimes it's been about china and tariffs. right now it's somewhat about a decelerating cycle for cios. >> true. while that is happening, also got to note, affirm we were talking about buy now and pay later. it's up 13.5% today and lots of action moving in different directions, inteq up 6%, julia >> and of course, we can't forget the chip shortage and how that's impacting all of these players and then we'll see what

happens with regulation and facebook, carl, that's what we've been talking about really a lot for the past couple of weeks. >> yeah. as the dow's trying to once again inch its way back to some milder losses, down 221. the s&p back to 4324, as we work our way through the week headed to the jobs number friday. let's get to the judge. carl, thanks so much welcome to "the halftime report," i'm scott wapner. how to ride the volatility up, one day down how long is it likely to last? we will ask the investment committee and get their best plays for your money this hour joining me for the hour, brenda vanjello, and john teranova and jon najarian and let's check the markets. the stocks are lower by now and the ten-year yield sits at 151 the stock's up, as i said, all around this week especially recently take a look at this. the nasdaq