are horrible they're horrible >> trying to raise more money in the bond market. >> yeah, if they can do it. >> one stock to keep an eye on, cisco reports results. chuck robbins here tomorrow morning, 9:00 a.m. eastern that does it for us on "squawk on the street. "techcheck" starts now good wednesday morning welcome to "techcheck. i'm deirdre bosa live from san francisco along with andrew ross sorkin on the east coast carl and jon have the morning off today. the nasdaq is lower today. the major underperformer but up 20% off its june lows as bank of america says it' seeing some of the biggest in-flows into tech seema mody joins us. >> -- led by tech which saw over $2 billion of buying in the last

week at the largest amount dating back to 2008 according to bank of america. the net buyers primarily institutional clients, hedge funds after selling the previous week whereas private clients of the bank were net sellers. data shows investors are drawn to large cash which is consistent with what we've seen in the market over the past few weeks. apple, alphabet, microsoft, rebounding considerably from the june low as earnings came in better than expected portfolio manager richard bernstein says the fact we've had consistent inflows makes it hard to argue that sentiment is tremendously negative as some have been arguing, but also puts valuations into focus following a bruising first half of the year the s&p 500 tech sector trading at a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 19, now above 24 times forward earnings at a time when retail interest is also growing. back to you. >> seema, thank you.

hedge funds also made big bets in tech in the second quarter going by this week's 13f filings which lessee picard has a close eye on andrew, what are you hearing on squawk box on "techcheck" we hear from the bears who like to point to the dot-com crash and say there are four market rallies. on a day like today, it feels more pressing. this rally we've seen over the last six weeks has been quick. it's been steep. >> the question is this real or a dead cat bounce, is it a fake-out i think the fed will be the big player we've talked about this with steve leishman over and over again. i don't view the academic exists and the bank economists on one side which is to say they think the fed is going to continue to put their foot on the neck of the economy. if that's true, where the market is today is not reality, meaning the market has moved much higher

than it otherwise should for reasons, and maybe the market is right, the market seems to believe that inflation is coming down and as a result the fed is going to become a bit more dovish. i think we'll find out at 2:00 today exactly where we are -- i don't know about exactly where we are, but more about where we are and we'll find out really in september what the fed thinks. as a result i think we haven't -- right now this is all about multiples. we're in a multiple guessing game what is the right multiple to apply to these tech stocks that's the entire story. we'll start to see what earnings really start to look like in the fall i think that's also going to change the dynamic of whatever the story turns out to be. >> earnings are going to be key, some saying that's the next shoe to fall, that demand is going to further weaken let me play the other side here. there are those looking at this rally saying the positioning has become so negative we talked to a lot of fund

managers. >> that's the argument if you're playing this as a five-year, ten-year story, by be default you'd almost think a lot of these beaten-down tech stocks will do well the question is this a five-year trade, a one or two-month trade, a two-week trade we're seeing the meme stock return what does that say about where we are, where retail interest is. >> low quality rally. >> exactly. >> you could say this is the broader low quality rally. andrew, at the same time, when we think about earnings going into the next season, you do have some key leaders, like target, walmart, amazon, beyond, a number of different industries, the semis as well, taking expectations, their guidance down. some argue that can be a positive as well >> that's the thing.

are they throwing it all in the kitchen sink last quarter so everybody lowers their expectations and so they beat them on the other side we've seen that movie before. >> we certainly has. retail, e-commerce growth has been key this week shares of target in the red this morning on that huge profit miss walmart is up 7% on the week after strong resulteds its e-commerce inflation a huge challenge here even amazon raising seller fees through the holidays here to break it down, mike gafari good morning to you. it's great to have you >> good morning. >> when we talk about the retailers, amazon took its medicine earlier this year, billions in extra cost to get that overcapacity under control, its labor force as well. is this what we're seeing from target and walmart, to andrew and my conversation, just moments ago, does this position them and expectations, put them in a better place for the rest

of the year? >> i think so. i think what you're seeing is a shift in the demand curve. i think you're seeing hiring, people buy groceries, you're also seeing the success of walmart.com online and walmart e-commerce i think target is falling behind as we've seen. they've got inventory problems, having to do markdowns they've got profitability problems while the top line grew, that's sometimes easier in an inflationary environment where transaction sizes are going up anyway i think walmart is well poised target is a question mark. i'm still a long-term amazon believer to andrew's point earlier, is this a dead cat bounce for tech is a looming question. unique case. it's a hybrid. in previous recessions, walmart has done well. it's pure retail now this hybrid retail tech company, so it will be interesting how it plays out. >> isn't it fascinating that walmart is moving up stream while amazon is kind of moving

downstream they both have so much pricing power. look what amazon announced from the upcoming holiday season, charging their merchants more? what does that mean for competition, shopify is in a different position but this does add fuel former chants who have already been trying to diversify their sales more away from amazon. >> to catch everybody up, as you mentioned, amazon raising seller fees they made a big announcement on the one hand, i think you'll see some performative complaints, hey, we have to get off amazon this will drive people to other channels like walmart, if they weren't already on walmart, this will push them in that direction. at the end of the day amazon is a price maker, not a price taker. everyone has to be on amazon it's the biggest everything store in the world all the groundwork they've laid for decades is paying off. so you're going to see more

noise about this i wouldn't be surprised if amazon in subsequent seasons gets more aggressive on pricing with sellers because it has that leverage and it can. i've thought for years if you're a direct retailer or selling something online, you would be crazy not to diversify off amazon, even while amazon is going to continue to squeeze. >> this is a regulatory point that goes to deirdre's point about competition, i think there's a balance here of raising price and what that means to the larger dialogue, national conversation about amazon how quick do you think and how fast can they do that? and also, do you think shopify and others, walmart, can pick up the slack? is there enough competition in this market or not >> i think there is enough competition. i think between walmart, so many other channels, plus everyone can light up their own direct channel and you've got the shopify option as you pointed out.

amazon has built a big collection of eyeballs, different than the google story where google is running these ads and pushing everybody down and making it difficult. i think amazon, people are going there because they want to and they have plenty of other options. i don't know that regulatory could really do much in the amazon situation where it might in other areas of tech. >> you do have questions about its private label product. maybe a discussion for another time mike ghaffary, thanks for being with us. we have to talk elon musk this morning he's making another joke on twitter. tweeting yesterday evening he planned to buy british skoker club manchester united before walking it back and saying it was, quote, a long running joke on twitter man u, the publicly-traded stock linked to the team jumping as much as 17% overnight. the just joking maybe didn't

come soon enough because clearly the stock moved. i wonder, like so many other people, i'm not sure everybody knew that man u. was a publicly-traded company. i don't know if when he wrote that, he thought am i going to actually move stocks if he did, what was the f krrchlsc thinking, should they be thinking anything is a joke a joke >> that's my first thought, did he know man u. was a public company. this is a smart guy. does he do anything without intention? what is that intention i don't think that is clear exactly. >> bizarrely, it's worth noting, there were call options that were brought literally within, like, 48 hours before this i don't know who those people are. did they know this i'm not suggesting this necessarily, but i think people do send elon lots of things suggesting he tweet them out i don't know if you get caught up in that hard to know >> he read something and decided

to tweet this subconsciously not a great argument for the scc. everything we're talking about adds fodder when he's under so much scrutiny. more on key names to buy or avoid after the break. tech neccheck is just getting started.

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it is whale watching week on "techcheck." liquidating nearly $20 million stake in amazon, cutting back on microsoft by more than 25%, but adding new holdings across cybersecurity and cloud including datadog, palo alto take a look at coupang, truck en millier keeping nearly $28 million. it's had a good last few weeks with this rally. you know who is selling a lot of coupang? mass song has chosen to

liquidate some of that position. >> it's a fascinating company. i visited it many years ago in south korea. they are like amazon on steroids in terps of what they do for a very long time, people speculated they would be a takeover target for the likes of an amazon. the real question is, in terms of their growth, given the footprint, they are based there and that's pretty much what the business is, how quickly can they grow? that's a real question given where the valuations were when they came public. >> absolutely. this is sort of an asian company, e-commerce, of course but more of a super app that some of the e-commerce companies that we have here. >> i will say it's fascinating because they soup to nuts manage effectively not just the retail component meaning the website. they're doing the delivery piece of this as well. as a result of doing the delivery piece, they're able to do the returns it is a full almost white glove

situation. it's hard to replicate just about in any other place though because one of the reasons it works on unit economics basis is the fact that seoul is such a dense population they have people who literally are assigned to buildings because of the thousands of people who live in those buildings. they just go up and down and up and down those buildings different dynamic than the united states. hard to see if that model could work here. people talk about one-hour delivery, they can do it there in an amazing way. >> they can actually do it without burning through hundreds of millions or billions of dollars. a lot of companies here trying to do that. >> absolutely. meantime, want to talk about billionaires that make like software here. citi sure doesn't, opening a negative catalyst call on sfloe flake ahead of results there and downgrading zoom to a sell behind those calls is tyler rick who joins us now we can talk about those names,

which i want to talk about before we can get there, what do you think of the broad move we've been seeing? >> good morning, andrew. it's interesting the software sector had a very -- one of the toughest starts of the year in recent memory you saw how microsoft and service now report numbers that were mixed at best i think we were of the view that there was further downside risk to estimates you've seen the sector really rebound from low levels seen in june and july. our near-term view is the sector may have rebounded a little too hard and too fast, especially as we're getting into large prints next week with salesforce, zoom, snowflake and more to come so we do see some near-term downside to some stocks such as snowflake and zoom, hence our negative calls. >> let's talk about the negative calls. is this a multiple story for you, or is this just going to be a bad earnings story and you want to apply amuch lower

multiple to it >> yeah. i'll start off on snowflake. i think our concern on snowflake is there is a tactically difficult setup for next week. so we think there's risk that the company will deliver a smaller beat than they typically do in the quarter and may cut the outlook for revenue for the rest of the year this is a use saj model meaning it is not a sas subscription model. customers pulling back on spending snowflake will see that immediately in their results we think this is more of a cyclical sensitivity for a company trading at 20 times revenue, if there's downside risk to numbers, we think the number can go lower. we like what they're doing in data sharing and think they're well positioned in terms of building this ecosystem. near term we're tactically cautious zoom is a bit of a different story. i think our concern, we've always seen a bit of a challenging path out of the

pandemic for this company. i think what's changed over the last 90 days, number one, the stock has rebounded over 40% from recent lows they have almost 50% exposure to smb or individual customers. we see risk that that business starts to decline next year, if you look at the way the street is modeling revenue for next year, it has it growing faster than it is in these coming quarters we see downside risk to numbers. we also see downside risk to margins as the company continues to invest. the online business is very profitable as that goes away, we think there's downside risk to margin as well. >> tyler, zoom and snowflake, a number of previously really hot software companies are known as the category best of breed they haven't been tested in an economic downturn. maybe before there was some thought that especially during the pandemic, enterprises were going to continue to buy their software that's kind of being flipped around now i wonder, what do you think --

how vulnerable are they especially when you have bigger players like microsoft and google better able to pundal these products together and compete with a zoom and a snowflake? >> we see the competitive pressure a lot stronger for zoom microsoft has teams which i would still argue zoom is a better video product i'm a happy zoom user here at citi. >> costs more. >> yeah. it costs more. the challenge is where is that incremental growth people at largecompanies who have zoom are generally happy with it. if you got through the last two years without a zoom contract, why do you need it now >> let me ask you this, tyler, would it have been different if zoom had been able to acquire 5-9. the whole proposition was turning it into a unified communications platform. now it looks like a one-trick pony, right? >> yes, absolutely we were positive on that

proposition. you see companies like nice or 5-9, they're certainly holding up better than zoom post pandemic they haven't seen as big of a slowdown that was unfortunate that that deal didn't go through zoom is trying to build their contact center, back to square one. it's a really tough market to get right. it's going to be a number of years if they're even successful >> tyler, thank you. perhaps some hard reality for snowflake and zoom we'll see. look forward to seeing you again very soon. dee. >> you mentioned this, meme stock mania is back, at least when it comes to bed bath & beyond, up almost 100% it's almost doubled. that story is next ayitus

. welcome back everybody i'm tyler mathisen with your cnbc news update here is what's happening right

now. retail sales unchanged in july the picture may be slightly brighter than that number implies when auto sales are subtracted sales are up as for individual retailer results today, they are mixed. target had a big bottom line miss for the second quarter as it cleared out excess inventory at bargain prices. lowe's, tjx, better-than-expected profits there. demand for mortgages fell to a 22-year low, according to the mortgage bankers association home buyers pulling back as rates rise the higher rates are dampening, of course, refinancing activity. why would you? the food and drug administration is improving the sale of over-the-counter hearing aids. the government estimates consumers may save about $2800 per pair we'll be able to buy them without a prescription or medical exam the fda says about 30 million

adults could benefit from hearing aids only about 20% actually use them the reason is often the cost back to you all. andrew -- >> tyler, thank you for that meantime, we'll talk about the meme stock trading mania bed, bath & beyond up almost 450% since the 1st cnbc pro out with a new screen trying to catch the name pulling out any s&p 500 stocks above market cap that are 50% off their highs and have at least 10% short interest tech names from the list, etsy and dish networks both around 60% off their highs with 11% short interest i don't get it i don't understand what is happening with these meme stocks i'm bafed. >> did you ever? >> i thought it didn't make

sense the first time i don't think it makes sense now. i thought folks had learned their lesson the first time. we were told they were using stimulus checks and the like to do it. a lot of folks lost. so i sort of think to myself who are these people. >> where does the money come from >> let me ask you this, it still doesn't make a lot of sense. however, does it make sense to an adam aron who has been able to really use it to his advantage and raise some $2 billion. what surprises me and we'll talk about this, that more ceos aren't using this playbook. >> well, i think there's a question about using this playbook he has used this as successfully as a ceo can at the same time, it has been, and i know we can debate this, was this at the expense of shareholders or not. there's a delusion factor here you can argue on the other side, if they hadn't done that, they

wouldn't be alive today. it's a complicated story, do the shareholders fully understand the ramifications of what is happening? that's the point that worries me. >> they're cheering him on number one on that cnbc screener is a company called true panion, a pet insurance company, nearly 50% off the recent high, nearly 20% of its float is short. i can see pet insurance has a ryan cohen -- >> can you see bed, bath & beyond at $60 to $80 >> of course not we look at fundamentals, andrew. we're not chasing this momentum and looking for the secret sort of -- the eastern eggs in it we're the wrong audience, i suppose. we're going to stick with the meme trade maybe someone else can make sense of it. we'll bring in ben jen can you understand it better

than we are? >> it seems like the meme stocks are back at least for now. with bed, bath & beyond, we or seeing the struggling retailer it's burning cash. bonds are trading at distressed levels take a look at what's going on with the stock with the options. yesterday, bed, bath & beyond calls were some of the most popular options in the entire market, behind options tied to size we are seeing something that's reminiscent a little bit, of course, of last year's meme mania. >> so what does this tell us gunjun, when we've seen the nasdaq come back some 20%. these are low quality names. does that make it a low quality rally? >> i'm not sure if it makes it a low quality rally because broadly, we have seen some of the recession fears ease in terms of the rally i would like to point out we've

seen the memes come back from time to time we saw that at the end of the first quarter when the broader market started rallying. we've seen the memes come back a little bit it tells us speculation has not gone from the market we saw retail purchases of shuns hit the highest level since april. obviously this meme stocks are going crazy. for all the doom and gloom we started the year with, people are still willing to jump in and willing to speculate >> i hate to be too paternalistic about the situation. how much of this is really the retail trade versus how many of this is the institutional trade riding on the back or perhaps even taking advantage of the retail trade >> so what's really interesting is that i saw some data showing that individual investor purchases of bed, bath & beyond recently surpassed levels that we saw in 2021 which kind of shocked me when we think about the meme

stocks coming back, i think broadly speaking activity has been below levels that we saw last year. at first it seemed like this isn't a redo of gamestop at least with bed, bath & beyond, we are seeing purchases surpass those levels i'm sure institutional investors are also in the mix. >> i wish we could figure this out. how many of the traders, retail or otherwise, that are putting on this trade do you think were the same folks putting on the trade a year, year and a half ago at this point? or do we think this is a new group, a new gang? >> one thing i think is really, really important to keep in mind is that things have changed since early last year. even when you look at wall street bets. people i was speaking with earlier this year said a lot of the veteran traders have left wall street bets this cast of retail investors has evolved. i i this it's tough to paint it

with a broad brush i would be reluctant to say it's the same people. i think a lot of professional investors think retail is going to flee the market as soon as things get tough it doesn't look like they've done that. a lot of retail investors have hung around. recently we saw retail investors make up about 12% of equities trading. >> andrew, i saw your conversation with tasty trade founder tom soz nof. he was talking aboutthe big picture here it's a good thing when people talk about finance you were talking about whether these are the same people we saw last year. is that a good thing should they move to more sophisticated trading? what does that tell us about the retail investor, especially the one that has come into the market over the last several years? >> if there's anything i learned covering retail investing the past two years, it's that you really cannot paint them with a broad brush. you have a lot of retail investors who are buying and holding index funds and they

didn't sell during the sum multi-that we saw. then you have the retail traders blading in options, playing a meme stock i think it's important for all of us kind of looking into this to keep in mind that they're not all the same >> i guess the question that i wonder about and i'm on wall street bets and otherwise looking at people talking about bed, bath & beyond, do people realize, this is a company that has not earned a profit, at least that i can tell, since 2018 an has something like $3 billion in debt. i sort of don't understand the calculus and i don't also understand the calculus on ryan's side in terms of why he would buy those options. i know they're cheap it's a big bet what do you think is behind this >> look, i think the calculus of fundamentally it can't

skyrocket. when you and deirdre were talking about the meme playbook, issuing shares to capture this momentum, that's actually helped companies fundamentally. that's helped them improve their businesses i think that's really important to keep in mind. we're seeing adam aron do that that has helped his business during the pandemic. that's helped with tapping into the retail enthusiasm about his stock. >> also made some questionable acquisitions by the way, they're putting -- price target for bby $4.00 it says a lot. the retail investor versus wall street thanks for being with us, as always meanwhile the wales have been making big bets we've been talking about it. chip stocks as well. kristina partsinevelos joining me it's great to have you onset. >> great to be sitting next to you. let's talk about big players they're dumping the chips.

the latest 13f filings that show popular semiconductor names are falling out of favor with micron taking most of that hit. david tepers hedge fund dropped its position by 73%. david einhorn's green light completely dissolved its stake in intel intel stock is down about 2% today, and one of the only stocks right now, the tech stocks on the nasdaq 100 that hasn't jumped higher since the june bottom. code two slashed nvidia by 92% recall nvidia as well as qualcomm issued weaker forecasts going forward. not everybody is saying goodbye. viking global picked um over a million shares in micron. >> the june bottom is remarkable, what we've seen since then andrew, this has been one of the

largest and sharpest semi corrections we've seen in over a decade these 13fs, they're backwards looking, but aulsz the question where do the semis go now? >> i want to see the 13fs next quarter. they may be different than what we're looking at right now we'll see. meantime we should tell everybody that deutsche bank pressing pause they say the stocks range bound with a few positive catalysts ahead. at least in the near term. more market action after the break. don't go anywhere. so, for me and the hundreds of drivers in my fleet, staying connected, cutting downtime, and delivering on time depends on t-mobile 5g. and with coverage of over 96% of interstate highway miles, they've got us covered. (vo) unconventional thinking delivers four times the 5g coverage of

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welcome back to t"techcheck" julia boorstin joining us with the breakdown. >> this week has been passed by news of media companies and investors showing a new-found focus on streaming services' profitability. hbo and hbo max yesterday laying off 70 employees that's 14% of the workforce as the company restructures reducing redundancies and unscripted programming along with cuts in scripted, children's and family content. this all comes as ceo david sa vof looks for $3 billion

this is after they announced partnership with walmart sources say this will be a profitable way for paramount plus to grow its subscriber base and hit its targets. all this comes as 13f filings show investors moving into media. berkshire boosting its position in paramount and global. appaloosa initiated small positions in netflix and disney. and dan lobe bought a stake in disney, pushing the company to cut costs in that letter we discussed. just yesterday fubo tv laid out its plans to cut cost and become profitable by 2025 that stock jumped 45% yesterday. it's down another 11% today. it's hard to tell how much all of these moves are driven by meme traders rather than the company's fundamentals about a third of fubo's float is short interest which attracts meme traders targeting short sellers. yesterday was fubo's highest day on record.

you've been talking about it during the show. this all comes at a time when streamsers are working to must-haves to fight for subscribers, there are concerns they won't want to pay for as many services as they once did guys >> julia, here is the piece i don't understand a lot of movement into these names, some thinking maybe these are value plays. warren buffett one of the great value investors over time. clearly we're in a moment. the competition is not getting any less any time soon, right? >> the competition is not getting less we have seen this consolidation. when it comes to warners brothers discovery, they announced they will be merging streaming services and coming to market with one combined service that many say really has a shot at being one of the few. maybe people will subscribe to three. one of the free mini bundles that people will be subscribing

to i think there's a sense we're in the new face it's streaming 2.0 it's all about the new smaller bundles, not quite like a pay tv bundle but you're getting more than one service and the companies behind them will try to figure out what they can do to cut down on extraneous costs and figure out how to make sure they keep you hooked, you don't just drop the service after your favorite show is done. >> julia, so many different ideas to get to better profitability or new paths like add-supported models why is someone talking to you about decreased content spend? is it in the conversation? i haven't heard it at some point is that on the table? >> dee, they have been talking about it it's taken a back seat to some of these other conversations it was interesting hearing bob say he didn't want to buy the cricket rights because it didn't make sense they're going to be very careful about how they make their decisions about what rights.

we heard from fubo saying we're only investing the sports rights we know will drive value for the company and for their consumers. i think across the board we're hearing companies say, yes, we're going to be investing in content, but doing it more carefully. warner discovery decided to not release that bat girl movie. that would have required more money, more investment in that content for them to release it they were willing to pull the plug. >> those are good points we'll see what happens when the nfl sunday ticket comes up i think that could maybe turn that on its head a lot of folks willing to pay a lot for that julia, thank you meanwhile, wall street spac kink faces a shrinking empire. deals in the space grinding the 'rba ia lt wee ckn just two

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shares of cisco are on the move just hours from reporting results as investors look at the latest read on potentially slowing tech demand. frank holland joins us with more on what to expect. >> cisco shares down nearly 8% since last earnings where the company missed on revenue and they dramatically reduced guidance, citing the war in ukraine and covid lockdowns in china that impacted supply chain both as major headwinds. cisco guidance putting revenue about a billion dollars below what the street was expecting for the quarter at that time you can see the street has as justed, expecting a 3% deklain

in revenue and eps for q4. the big question will be forward guidance because china is still in the process of reopening there are questions about whether the backlog will translate to higher revenues just about a 12% move to the upside from where it's trading right now. the rest is hold generally positive sentiment the main thing to watch along with the guidance is commentary on the supply chain and the ability to source components with rising competitors, juniper and aris that, there are questions growing about cisco's ability to maintain its market share. deirdre, back over to you. >> tomorrow cisco chairman and ceo chuck robbins on "squawk on the street." he's always a great interview, very candid. >> we will find out what's actually really going on in this business

you always hear from him pretty direct and oftentimes a signal about where the economy really lies as we head to a break, we want to get a gut check on vm wear. billionaire investors john paulson making a big bet on the company. his fund snapping up nearly half a million shares worth nearly $57 million as of the end of q2. now positive for the year. we're back in just a moment.

welcome back to "tech check. the king of spacs apparently has gone silent. the spac mergers caused an up roar in 2020, 2021, quietly requesting to push back the proposed merger deadlines for two outstanding spacs. now, palihapitiya has not tweeted anything about the spac market since he compared their performance to traditional he the spac market has changed since he was quoting jay-z and calling himself the businessman. all of his spac deals have gone south since mergers. virg virgin galactic down, and investor interest continues to

plummet last month the first time in five years spacs raised zero, a big bagel there of no funding. that according to geo logic. i don't know, dee. what do you think here >> you know, i was interested in your thoughts. you were so early to this, andrew, i remember the interview you had with him and asking him tough questions about the fees he was earning i would say he has gone quiet on the spac front, but he's still talking weekly to our friend jason on the "all in" pod. the latest interview they were talking about the losses in the vision fund, and he said essentially he gets to keep swinging it is hard to put that much money to work. i could kind of sense that, you know, maybe it was a proxy for what he is doing as well interesting here too, andrew he said that the way the vision fund is structured, and we know this well, there's actually downside protection for the lps, which is smart they essentially earn a coupon

that soft bank has to pay. there isn't a lot of protection for the retail investors in his spac frenzy. >> well, that's the thing. look, there's two issues here. one is the macro environment that's hit everybody, and so maybe you can have sympathy for everybody across the board my issue with spacs, and it was never with him personally, it was with the structure of the spacs which is to say that the sponsor to me never had the full alignment with the retail investor the way i think some retail investors thought that they did, which is to say it was possible for a sponsor to sell out of the spac to make money on the spac before a retailer -- a retail investor might otherwise be able to, especially given the multi-year expectations, the terms of the projections that were put out >> yes >> that you could be long gone before the projections ever became real or in this case not real >> yes, and it made seem like they were going to hold on to

these companies for a long time because they were selling them on the long-term projection, very different than a traditional ipo where you have to look at path projections, you can't make the same kind of targets. >> what was so interesting about the spac moment was -- and thisthis goes to the retail investor, so many people saying this is our opportunity, let us have a chance at the lottery ticket, this is our version of venture capital, isn't it great they're coming public. >> right - >> look at the conundrum >> this was a pretty good company but actually the valuation was lowered so much because of the stink around the spac names anyway, we could talk about this forever but i wanted to talk about adam neumann, did you some great reporting earlier this week, raising money. no small check, $350 million from an dries and horowitz, his

new company valued at a billion. i have to ask what do you make of the troll theory it was basically a strategic positioning for andreesen and its main audience is founders? this is kind of sticking it to the media and telling its audience, the founders, many in the bay area it is going to support bold move? >> i don't think the a wrong move i don't think andrees, is en buying in and enjoying those, but he has a message to the world of founders and entrepreneurs that he believes in them and wants to be a supporter of them. i think in this case we will see whether it is for better or worse andreessen believes that this idea and adam neumann and the lessons he may have learned from before will benefit in the future >> it is a big check though, biggest ever >> big check >> if you are hungry for "tech check" on the go, follow us at the podcast, listen any time,

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♪ one more thing before we go. embattled crypto lender selfie trying to raise cash anyway it can or face a shut down in october. you have been watching the court

hearing closely. >> that's right, dee yesterday's court hearing outlined bleak for celsius they have a $2.8 billion in the balance sheet and owes more than on hand. according to lawyers, celsius will run out of money by october. it is said to be in the red by $40 million at this point. lawyers representing celsius say it has options the company has, quote, multiple offers outstanding with several more likely to come in this could be some sort of bankruptcy loan or financing package that's usually in exchange for a high-ranking claim to assets if the company defaults those in the industry i'm talking to pushed back on the idea celsius could run a consumer-facing business again where it takes deposits. it has lost customer and regulator trust. at one point celsius was looking to take the in-house mining business public, but right now it is not profitable, still in

the capital-intensive stages the judge expressed concerned about it but approved a motion to let it sell some of the bitcoin it gets through mining and build the business >> thank you, andrew, for hosting with me again. let's do it again. let's get to "the half." ♪ all right. thank you, deirdre welcome to "halftime report. i'm frank holland in for the judge, scott wapner. stock taking a bit of a breather as investors look for guidance from the fed about rate hikes ahead. we will get more clues in a couple of hours from now big question from today, can the recent rally keep going. we will debate and the next move for your money joe tear noarranova. we are waiting for the latest fed notes to be released in two hours. you so a lot of red across the board. the s&p 500 having the biggest drop in three weeks,