of that would be remember, "the washington post" was a real powerful institution that he got for just $250 million. >> this is one to watch, especially to see if sports truly are recessionable. >> we shall find out snyder apparently look ing for billion. >> thanks for watching "power lunch. >> "closing bell" starts now. >> there's green on the screen, look at the nasdaq leaving the charge we're at the best levels of the day. a make or break hour for your money. welcome, everyone, to closing bell, i'm sara eisen: take a look at how things stand for the rest of the market the dow up 1/2%. what's leading the market? it's information technology, the chip stocks really on fire today. we'll talk about that. communication services and consumer discretionary with names like tesla, and a lot of

green in terms of the retailers. e dme ecom ecommerce. the nasdaq 100, trying to string together its best back-to-back day since november take a look at salesforce boosting the dow on news of new activist positions from elliot management, and inclusive capital. we'll talk about the changes that could come at the company a little bit later on in the show. also ahead this hour, the ceo of compass will join us to talk about the state of housing and rentals as high rates keep real estate in check. plus, former council of economic advisers chair jason fuhrman on the -- furman on the changing odds of recession in america senior markets commentator, mike santoli, we haven't checked bony i bitcoin in a whilewhile. >> things have surged this year, and really when it comes to the broad s&p 500, you put together

a series of pretty good days in fact at the highs today, we were up 5% for the month, which of course is also year to daylight, and coming into some interesting test areas, i would say. we have been talking about this down trend that lasted since last january we poked above it, depending on how you draw it. came close to it or made a bid to go higher at the highs of the day, we were at the december highs around 4,100. it's a grab for some expo ssure volatile parts of the market running. we were easing back from there at this point, we obviously have a fed meeting in six or seven trading days, and so probably we might say in this zone just to wait and see, but there's some soft landing sentiment making his way into stocks or staying in stocks. take a look at cyclicals versus defensive, as two categories goldman sachs has their version of this. this has been a pretty good run. not really quite to where we got back in the fall in terms of

believing that the cyclical sectors were the place to be the market has essentially seen no reason to believe right now that the fed has overtimed maybe it will prove to be the case you have the bad leading economic indicators number today, sarah, which gives the statistical, technical grounding for the idea that recession is right there. maybe it means the feds go in smaller is almost done the here and now activity is okay for the markets at least the moment that's the upbeat way of reading it the down beat way, it's just a matter of time. >> leading the economic indicators and inverted yield curve tell us we're going to have a recession it's not what i heard from the leaders in davos it's not necessarily what we're seeing from the data, what about the market is it cheap or expensive going into big tech earnings after we have seen this sell off and a little bit of a comeback. >> it's not cheap. we can set that aside. it's not all that aggressive if earnings hold together okay. i always like to kind of slice

the top five companies ouch the s&p and say we're like 15 times forward earnings earnings season started soft probably a downside to estimates. it's a tough call to make valuation-wise to say it's a no brainer. you have seen a lot of momentum, thrust type activity you see a lot of broadv valleys >> and then you have the silly stuff running too. make of that what you will. >> arc innovations having a good day and a good month up 20% for january mike, thank you. so on that question about the economy, are recession fears actually fading? it seems like it the latest survey from the national association for business economics showed slightly more than hatch of respondents think the u.s. is in a recession or heading into one. that is down from 64% in october. and a note from j.p. morgan found falling odds of a

registration joining us is former economic council of advisers chair, jason furman, it's good to have you, and nice to see you. where do you stand on this debate about recession >> look, i think a recession is far from inevitable. the odds are less than 50%, but if we don't have a recession, i think the odds of inflation coming down to 2% are much longer and harder than even that >> in other words, inflation will come down quickly that's a good thing. and therefore it increases the chances of a soft landing, and that's where the market is right now. >> i'm saying we may not have a recession. if we don't have a recession, we're probably ending this year with inflation above 3%. we're going to sort of rinse and repeat the whole concern about how to bring down inflation next year to be clear, i don't want the recession. i hope we luck out with a soft landing. but i just think a soft landing is a hard thing to achieve it's easy to avoid a recession

it's hard to avoid a recession while bringing inflation down. >> it depends on where the fed stops, where it pauses the market is expecting a smaller rate increaseat next week's meeting, right? 25 basis points and then we're getting toward the end >> yeah, oh, look. it also just depends on what you're talking about, monetary policy as we know, so, you know, in the most likely cenario, we have end the year with no recession. we end the year with inflation above 3%, and then maybe you have the recession next year as the lag monetary policy starts to affect things there has been enough of a slow down in inflation, i agree with you. 25 basis points at this meeting, maybe another meeting or two of 25 basis points after this so not a lot of monetary tightening right now if we get lucky and that works out great, but if we don't get lucky, you might have to have a whole other round of tightening

later in the year. >> interesting to listen to formerly pimco, he thinks the fed should go bigger now he was speaking earlier on cnbc, listen to what he said. >> they should take advantage of the growth window we're in they should take advantage of where the market is and they should try to tighten financial conditions because i do think that we still have an inflation issue. >> do you disagree with that >> i think he's probably right i'm willing to let them try for a couple of months i want to see what the wage data looks like, if you're seeing any slowing in wages in your intro you mentioned that nape survey. it also showed a pickup in wage growth it's going to be very hard to get inflation under control with wages growing the way they have been growing but anything is possible i think 25 at the next meeting is fine.

but they need to send a clear message that they're going to be very reluctant to lower rates, and they are going to stay at it as long as inflation is elevated hawki hawkish 25 i would call that with. >> a hawkish spend from powell, which we have gotten accustomed to lately. it feels like it all comes down to the inflation question, and how fast it falls from here, wages, services, inflation, those are the parts that have been stubbornly high in keeping the inflation rate higher. i guess, easier to get from 9 to 6 1/2 where we are right now what is your best guess about what happens next, how far it falls and how fast >> that's exactly right. i have always been on team, you know, partly transitory. partly persistent that the inflation rate would come down from the incredible highs. some of that really was temporary, but then it doesn't get all the way to two in fact, it doesn't even get all the way to three and that's because, yes, goods, markets and supply chains have

gotten much much better. housing has gotten better, it's not yet in the price day ta, bu it will be there are a lot of services outside of housing that are very dependent on labor, and labor costs are growing at 2 percentage points faster than normal so we are still in a world of above trend inflation. the next couple of months will make it a lot clearer. i don't think there's a big cost to the fed doing a little bit of waiting and seeing maybe we'll luck out, but if we don't, they need to be willing and able to do more, and i think they will. >> the up shot for investors who have lowered earnings expectations but not priced in a recession, jason, is what? >> i worry earnings expectations are a bit too optimistic we have seen the fed heavily affecting the housing sector

consumer spending has held up, but consumers are burning through excess savings credit card balances are rising, interest rates are rising. i don't think you can count on the american consumer to continue to support the economy on this whole year i think a lot of earnings are, you know, building in, have more faith in american consumer than i do. >> yeah, although i have to say, talking to a number of these american consumer ceos in the past week or so, they're not seeing recessionary behavior we're seeing credit card debt rising back to levels of 2019, which was not recessionary so maybe, jason, there's a chance that the consumer can hang in there. >> oh, i think there's a chance. i'm not surprised. i expected that consumers would be able to keep going until about the middle of this year. they got trillions of dollars in 2020, and 2021 their bank accounts have more

money in them than they did prior to the recession in some sense, consumer balance sheets are in good shape here's the problem consumers are spending about 2 1/2% more than you would have expected the inflation adjusted income is at 1% less than you would have the savings rate is incredibly low. there's a potential of a wily coyote moment, that you can continue the high level of spending but you can't continue it forever there's something really sustainable about the american consumer right now. >> jason, thank you for joining me appreciate it. help us make sense of all the mixed messages jason furman. a show of force, elliot management, and exclusive capital, taking stakes in salesforce, including star board value previously announced we're going to talk to an analyst who downgraded the stock on friday, and ask if he's rethinking the position in light of all the news today. you're watching "closing bell,"

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so let's go. the digital age is waiting. salesforce, one of the top performing dow components right now on the back of new activist stakes in the company. elliot management now has taken a multibillion dollar position in the company, and david faber reporting the stock up 17% so far this year.

still more than 33% off its highs. let's bring in cowen analyst derrick wood he downgraded salesforce on growth and restructuring worries. i don't know, are you rethinking that isn't all of this activist involvement bullish? >> well, i think we'll have to see what the plan is there's no detail. we have an analogy with what elliot got involved in sap, which was in 2019. they had actually been talking for a couple of months before there was an announcement that they had taken a big stake, and really what happened is that they backed the sap plan at the beginning of the year in terms of driving 500 bits of margin. the dip, they asked, they restructured an announcement we got earlier in month, the 10% head count reduction, the real estate moves that they're going to do, is this all kind of part of the plan already that maybe elliot wanted to get the ball rolling on or is there going to

be some other bigger cuts and more aggressive margin expansion to target. we don't know at this point. we do know that star board, when they got involved a couple of months ago, they did lay out a target where they thought the 25% operating margin goal for fiscal '26 was maybe not aggressive enough, and they could see a pathway to move that to maybe 28, over 30% margin maybe that's the up side, but the macro picture here definitely looks a lot different than it did a few months ago, and so the revenue assumptions may have to change with this whole -- in terms of, you know, driving profit growth. >> but everything you just said, and everything that the activists want, isn't it everything that benioff, marc benioff is also already prioritizing he's talked a lot about that operating profit, booster margins, making cuts on the staff and on the real estate this is his playbook already, isn't it

>> right and this is something investors have been asking for for a long time move away from making acquisitions focus on organic growth, on improving cost efficiencies, and for a business of this scale, driving operating margins closer to your long-termtargets which are 30% plus there's some real action being taken now at this point, but one question we had in the downgrade is the sales efficiency analysis we made, last year, it just looks like sales costs went up a lot, and they just -- there may need to be a long way to go before we get the cost structure aligned with where it should be, and there may need to be multiple iterations of cuts from here, and whether we see more head count reductions in the new year i think is still a question, and how disruptive that will be to the top line is also a question. >> sure. they also hired a lot during the

pandemic and grew a lot during the pandemic, just to put it in perspective. what is the play here? do you think that -- i mean, i assume a lot of these companies want board seats, right? that's usually how some of these activists, all of them want a board seat is that a realistic scenario, and would that help matters? >> that's certainly a possibility. i think all the terms for the board members are one year, so there could be a proxy fight other scenarios could be to push for some business unit sales a couple of the underperforming assets that were acquired recently were millsoft and tableau. you have to wonder what the margin structure looks like on those businesses, and maybe you could sell off those units and drive up operating margins for the total company. you could look at trying to do a more aggressive buy back they have already announced their first ever buy back,

$10 billion. they bought back 1.7 billion in the first quarter of the announcement, which was last quarter, and it's not like they had a lot of cash on the balance sheet. there's 13 billion in cash, 10 billion in debt, so there's not a lot of capital to kind of push back the shareholders via a buy back, unless they took on a significant amount of debt to do that but those are some of the scenarios to think about in addition to just pushing for more margin expansion. >> yeah, i think succession planning also is going to be a question they ask. derrick, appreciate you coming on to talk about it. i know you did the recent downgrade with mccown. >> we're up 186 on the dow it's the nasdaq charging forward, up 1 3/4% building on strength that we saw on friday. chip stocks, software names, it's broad communication services and consumer discretionary like amazon and tesla it's all working today

after the break, wall street is buzzing about a potential new currency in the works. we'll tell you about the euro of south america and why it matters more for the future of the dollar check out some of the top search tickers, the ten-year yield in the top spot where it usually is a selloff in bonds today with yields a little bit higher, 3.5 on the ten-year. dollars firmer as well tesla, apple, s&p 500, and amd, which is leading the chip stocks higher amd is up more than 8% right now. 'rgoto talk about that chip rally when we come back

what are we buzzing about today, brazil and north korea will start work on a shared currency brazil's new president is visiting argentina this week the goal will be to make it easier and cost efficient to trade between the two countries.

the other goal to limit dependence on the u.s. dollar. the strong dollar has wreaked havoc on emerging markets currency, and economies. don't get too excited and worried just yet i ran it by steve hanky, professor of economics at johns hopkins university he tells me argentina and brazil in search of a common currency will look like two blindfolded men hit by a pinata. the economics are tough. argentina's inflation is nearly 100% it's been locked out of the debt markets and on constant bailouts from the imf brazil's economy is forecasted to grow according to the world bank, and look at this chart the currencies have gone in opposite directions. the peso has been killed over the past few months. dollars up 200% over the past three years. down 25% good luck selling that to the

brazilian central bank, where their fortunes will be hitched to argentinas. while it could take decades and never actually happen, there is a bigger picture here, and it's a reality for the u.s. dollar, and that is countries are eager to diversify russia, we know, is taking payment for oil in rubles. china has been taking small steps, recently extending trading hours for on shore currency to up its international use. remember president xi visiting saudi arabia, to talk about boosting energy purchases and famously saying he wants to settle that trade in united arab emirates, to trade nonoil commodities, the list goes on and on none of it means the dollar is losing its dominance anytime soon there's really no alternative just yet, but it is worth watching as the political winds shift away from the dollar, if it ever does happen, it would certainly have deep financial economic and societal implications for all of america. when we come back, the ceo of online realtor compass on the

outlook for the housing market, whether his company will be forced to cut more jobs as it tries to reduce costs like so many in the tech sector. check out shares of water technology company xylem, the worst performing stock in the s&p 500 after acquiring its rival in an all stock deal worth 7 1/2 billion dollars. we'll be right back.

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the latest data on housing shows existing home sales down 1.5% in september. 11 straight months of declines due to high mortgage rates the current rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage near 6% which is a four-month low, but well above where it was just a year ago our next guest says the fourth quarter of 2022 will be viewed as the bottom of the real estate market joining me here at post nine is compass ceo robert refkin, welcome, nice to see you. >> thank you for hosting me. >> why do you think we're at the bottom the fed is still raising rates. >> we're the number one real estate brokerage company, 18% of the top 1,000 agents in the country are at compass what i can see is our agents are getting more buyers showing requests than they have for months there's increase there, and for the first time in ten months,

all of the statistics that i look at are trending positive, so, for example, the housing, the home builders sentiment index improved month over month for the first time in a year a 25% increase in weekly purchase mortgage applications, and lastly, the pending closings, which in the fall were down over 30% year over year for much of the fall, so far in january is nearly flat in the overall market. >> so is it just because mortgage rates are off the highs? >> it's a big part of it mortgage rates went in january from an all-time low now to a 20-year high in less than nine months. >> exactly >> and so that created a sharper decline in real estate transactions than even in the 2008 financial crisis. >> but we need to see rents come down the fed needs to see rents come down to get inflation down does that mean that that's not going to happen? >> in new york, we're seeing renting come down.

than anytime in the covid period, you're right, 40% of cpi is housing if you look at housing transaction prices, in november, they were 2.5% below the spring f peak and so if nothing changes this upcoming spring, it will be 2.5% from that contribution. >> in other words, buyers have, what, a few more months to get in deals before prices start going up that would be very good for your business, robert. >> the buyers strike was last fall that's gone. so right now, buyers are coming back i think if there's an issue for this next year, it's going to be more on the listing side by sellers that are worried about losing, you know, locked in at 2.7% they're worried about losing that mortgage rate and having to buy something in the 6's. >> let's talk about your business and what all of this has meant. you went public back in the spring of 2001 at $18. stock is trading $3 something per share. it's a double whammy, the housing market, your tech stock,

how have you readjusted to this reality. >> we had our ten-year anniversary and for the first nine years, the world was focused on growth, and we did that very very well. becoming the number one brokerage firm in the country in a fortune 500 company. in the last year, the roles switched on a dime to folks on profit, and we are switching with it. we brought our expenses down three times over the last year in meaningful ways, and we most recently brought it down to a range of 850 to 950, which is what we said we are targeting. if we brought our expenses down to that level a year ago, we would have been profitable last year, and we believe we can be profitable with a 25% market decline because of the new expense range. >> what about the tradeoff between growth and profitability? >> we're focused on profitability. we are a grower in q3, grew 15% year over year

our agent retention improouved year over year to the prior third quarter, right now, the focus is distinctly profit. >> cost cuts, the other question is how sustainable the cuts are. can they last for a few years? >> the goal and what i have shared publicly is we intend to keep our cost base at this new level. the market, it will increase at some point, but will not increase our expenses in any meaningful way, and delta is going to be ebita and profit that we can share with all of our investors. >> we have seen layoffs as part of these cuts, are you hiring still as well? >> we are hiring moderately, but that's not the focus at this time. >> what about getting agents without offering incentives, which you were telling me is a big change right now in the market >> yeah, in august, we announced that we're not going to give anymore financial incentives to bring agents on to compass no signing bonuses of any kind, and we have since hired nearly a thousand agents to come on to

compass. this is one of the best data points for investors and for employees, putting careers in this company, if the majority of agents are paying more to come to compass, they are speaking with their pocket books. they believe compass will help them grow their business and make them more successful. >> the thing for compass, i remember there was so much about this, the technology, that it was a technology company as much as a real estate how differentiated is that tech at this point versus some of your competitors >> our technology is differentiated we have invested over $1 billion in buildings that we have today, the industry's first contact to close platform where an agent can go from meeting someone, and putting them all the way to one single place, one platform, one code base, and none of our competitors have built anything of the kind. >> thank you for joining me with the optimism appreciate it. robert, ceo of come pause. take a look at where we stand in

the markets. a solid rally, the s&p is building on gains, up almost a full percent right now dow is up 177, the nasdaq up 1 3/4% on the back of another strong day of tech we're going into big tech earnings this week, microsoft, tesla, and we are rallying into that speaking of, elon musk taking the stand again today as he defends his past tweets over taking tesla private up next, we've got the highlights and what's at stake for musk and tesla a reminder, you can listen to closing bell on the go by following the "closing bell" podcast on your favorite podcast app. nvidia, apple and tesla leading the nasdaq, we'll be right back. there are some things that go better...together. burger and fries...soup and salad. like your workplace benefits and retirement savings.

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tesla ceo telon musk testifying in court about taking the ev maker private for $420 a share. phil lebeau with the latest details. what did we learn? >> a lot of back and forth on the genesis for the tweet as well as picking $420 as the target for going private in fact, elon musk is on his fourth hour of testimony right now. the shareholder's attorney, by the way, questioning him right now, and a lot of questions are focused on how solid was his belief in the commitment from the saudi investment fund, and he says, yeah,i think it was a solid commitment at the time on the question of 420 funding, the questioning went like this, elon musk said i think it was

419.60, explaining why he picked $420 for the target or something like that, so it would make sense to round up to the nearest round number which would happen to be 4$420 the attorney then said you thought your girlfriend would find it funny to say 420 i don't know if she found it funny or not then on the question of what was happening after he tweeted, the attorney said when you did look at what was happening to the stock price after your august 7th tweet, when did you, i should say is when he asked him, elon musk answered, i was in the factory working on production problems so i was not following the stock price. as we all know it was off to the races that day eventually it came back down from that initial pop on august 7th. and you'll take a look at shares of tesla over the last three months remember, tesla did settle the s.e.c. case regarding these take private tweets it involved elon musk paying $20 million and a fine and also giving up chairmanship of tesla.

we will hear from elon musk wednesday afternoon. at least that's the expectation after the company reports its q4 results, and again, there's so much of that conference call will be focused on auto gross margins. that's really what investors in tesla right now are focused on they're not as much focused on what's happening with this lawsuit? >> what is the up shot of the lawsuit? what is at stake for tesla and shareholders >> with regard to this lawsuit >> yes,with how this goes. >> remember, these are in investors who their claim is, look, we lost money because we believed that you had this locked in to take this company private, and as a result whether we were trading on the stock or trading on options, we lost money when we found out that you didn't have this locked in so when you say funding secured, you're responsible for the losses that we incurred as traders.

elon musk's response is, look, i didn't do anything to hurt people this was not a case where i was just willy nilly about throwing this tweet out there i believed i had funding secured through the saudi investment fund this is a case that pertains to those investors and their claim of losing money. >> got it. it's always interesting, though, phil thank you very much. phil lebeau, tesla up 6% or so after the drubing we have seen latelily when we come back, apple helping drive the dow higher mind story plus salesforce and secouctor stocks both surging when we take you inside "the market zone" next it's an entire trading experience. with innovation that lets you customize interfaces, charts and orders to your style of trading. personalized education to expand your perspective. and a dedicated trade desk of expert-level support. that will push you to be even better. and just might change how you trade—forever.

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we are now in the closing bell market zone cnbc senior market commentator, mike santoli here to break down the crucial moments of the trading day. and we have the chip rally, and steve kovak with optimism around the markets. s&p up more than a percent and the nasdaq up almost 2%, so it's an impressive broad rally, like we saw on friday we're now 12 1/2% off the lows smaller rate hikes, better growth prospects the question on the equity market is this a false signal on all of those issues in a bear market >> exactly, and it's actually getting very close to where you really have to make that call as to whether, in fact, this is just another one of those brief episodes of relief, you know, from the intraday low and the

s&p to the highs today in the market, it was more like a 15% surge. there's been some technical improvement, people are warming to the idea that you do actually have some signs of how the market behaves a few months off a significant low. at the same time that, you know, you don't have fed officials pushing back against a small rate hike. it seems as if there's a window of time that you can enjoy the idea of a fed pause without having to face the immediate music of the economy really falling apart because a lot of things seem okay the question is how long that lasts from here on out i think you don't necessarily want to see a rally from here on out led by the riskiest, you know, kind of lowest quality fundamental companies. so that will be the question from here is whether, in fact, you can get some durable leadership in the market. >> or how fast inflation will come down. compass ceo said housing market bottomed in the fourth quarter of last year, and we're seeing signs that economic growth may

be even accelerating toward the end of last year let's hit salesforce, though, it's one of the top dow stocks today on reports that it has caught the interest of a new activist investor. elliot management has built a multibillion dollar stake in a company, this after late last year, star board value, and inclusive capital. that's jeff hubben, announced positions in salesforce as well. this comes as the company undergoes a major restructuring, including cutting its work force by 10%, mike have you seen anything different that would suggest -- that would set up the company for a bigger fight with any of these activist investors? it feels like everybody is on the same page. nobody is going after marc benioff personally as the ceo yet and what they're suggesting is something he's already doing, maybe the speed they can do after. >> yeah, i think a lot of it is the activists smell a possibility that the company itself is ready to take a lot of these measures and maybe looking

to accelerate the pace or hold the company to it, and maybe set a higher bar for how much they would like to see progress on margins and capital allocation and things like that what's fascinating to me is the activist case right now has a lot in common with what you would have considered to be the bear thesis, the short case around salesforce in the earlier years, you know, go back 10 or 12 years, it was about it's an undisciplined rollout. it pays huge amounts to the salesforce of the company itself it's not really run for margins. it's all about top line growth, and now you're at a point, they give too much out in stock-based compensation all of these things are coming to a head. the company is at a point in its life cycle where it makes sense to try and do work at a time when the valuation is no longer as daunting as it has been for years. >> mike, thank you let's hit the chips now because they're climbing as barclays gets bullish another good day for the chips highlighting stocks with data

center, pc, and hand set exposure as the largest potential winners. amd, qualcomm from overweight to equal weight all winners today. nvidia is at the top of the nasdaq 100 look at western digital, rallying on reports it is in advanced talks to merge with japan's k he has a buy rating and a $60 price target on western digital. does this move make sense to you, matt? >> it makes a ton of sense to me, sara with the deal as bloomberg explained it, not only do you potentially have consolidation and memory space, which is a great thing for wbd as well as all the other memory stocks, but you have the potential to set up the hard drive business to where i think the value has been

within the combined company by spinning the -- that value. >> you also have a lot of buys on these stocks. amd, micron, i think you're on hold on nvidia do you brie with the call today with barclays, which is really lighting a fire under some of these stocks >> i guess my concern i think are still at least one more cut to numbers, in terms of, with barclays, they should look beyond that cut. i'm a little bit more concerned in that we haven't seen the pickup in demand, fror instance, in the chinese consumer, with the u.s. consumer, with data centers. we're waiting to figure out what budgets are going to look like for this year, so maybe i'm a little bit behind barclays in thinking about a recovery, having said that, you look at names like amd i think they're a share gainer

in the server space. you look at something like nvidia, certainly you believe in ai they are the market leader in ai there's really not anyone else in the space yet and at some point, these stocks will recover >> mike santoli, the bullishness around nvidia, jim bryer, well known tech investor, it was his favorite stock he loves it. he's buying it up on the weakness i guess my question, mike, is how cheap there's stocks actually got maybe relative to other cyclical downturns or other periods in history like this, and whether it was cheap enough >> yeah, they didn't get cheap and stay cheap they kind of had a lot of frost skimmed off them i think they did trench to a fair degree. the ones that looked cheap are the ones that had the estimates go down a lot like the memory side ofthings. i think what's instructive, if you look at a longer term target of the semiticonductor, etf, its

pulled back to a level at the lows where it had first reached on the up side in, you know, post pandemic. in other words, it never really unwound the pandemic surge maybe that's because the secular forces are so strong, and you know, we're just in such a digital economy that this is just the new normal level on a pull back, so i would say that they got, you know, some of the risk taken out of them, but they didn't become no brainers on the cheap side. >> matt, do you agree with that? and what's your favorite name? >> i agree in the sense that when you look at the memory names, i disagree in the sense that when you look at the memory names, micron, and historically, that's proven a pretty good low. something like nvidia, it never really got that far below 35, 25 times earnings, which is well above the semiconductor multiples. to pick a favorite, sarah, at

this point, i'm going with semis. if you believe there's a pickup, certainly their beneficiary, and they are going to be a share gainer through this year, continuing to benefit from the struggles. >> got it, matt. thank you for joining me let's hit apple. shares are rallying following a note by ubs that elevated wait times for the higher end iphone 14 models appear to be improving. steve kovack joins us. i think they'll take any positive news. >> i think the banner says worth the wait that is the real question, a little over a week away from earnings, and the question is now that they have largely caught up with production after the facility, the so called iphone city in china that was shut down for a lot of late last year is now pretty much right back up to capacity. but the question still is even as thiese ship times is getting

more normal, is the demand there. is it worth the wait, people that could not get their iphone in time for the holidays going to carry it over here or are they looking at the economy the way many people are, and say, hey, i'm going to hold off and rein in my own spending as things get worse we know from apple itself, they're not going to hit their own internal targets for selling iphones the last quarter they did say demand was strong at the time. that was back in november, and the real question is, sarah, is the demand for iphones carrying through to the march quarter that's the big question. >> what is the set up for earnings expectations here >> they're more muted than they had been with the stock at the highs. but i don't think the stock has really been trading off the current fiscal year numbers. it's not supposed to show particularly much growth at all, even before they started to get cut back to me the whole proposition is

what are we paying in this market environment for a very large stable dominant company that is not growing particularly quickly. and that's all it comes down to, the one that, you know, distributes a lot of capital back to shareholders and the whole story that we know, that warren buffet is not selling any. all of these things that go into the general case for apple, aside from how many phones are they going to sell we're at 22 times earnings right now. it's not cheap it's down from 30. i think it's sort of not going to hurt you too much at this level, beyond what the market does i don't see why there's a particular catalyst to rush in at these levels either. >> apple up 8 1/2% two minutes to go in the trading day. up 1 p.2% on the s&p what are you seeing in the internals? >> it's been strong. breath has been one of the better features of the market in the last few weeks i don't think we're going to get to any sort of decisive push here in terms of advancing volume if you got above 80% advancing

volume, some people would have seen that as a trigger new highs starting to out pace new lows at a pretty good clip on the nasdaq, 115 to 35 we're 14 months past the peak in the nasdaq, so that number starts to get easier to beat and take a look at the volatility still in the 19 zone pretty much reflects a more stable index we are several days out from a fed decision hard to know how much it might come in from here, but it's sort of comfortable at these levels, i would say, not really signaling too much in terms of excess complacency or fear. >> it's very quiet now it's in the fed quiet period ahead of the meeting next week as we head to the close up, 260 on the dow what's adding the most, goldman sachs, salesforce, along with apple. you have strength in boeing, caterpillar, american express, s&p 500 is up a healthy 1.2%

building on its gains from friday, and for january as a whole, up almost 5%. technology leading communication services, consumer discretionary, one sector is lower at the close, and that is energy look at the nasdaq, up 2%, led by nvidia, apple, tesla and microsoft. that does it for me on closing bell see you tomorrow, everyone, now into "over time" with scot wapner >> welcome to "overtime," we are just getting started here at the new york stock exchange. in just a little bit, i'll speak to star venture capitalist low tony we begin with our talk of the tape a big day for stocks, and a really big week for your money microsoft earnings 24 hours a day, tesla coming too, and all of it happening with the future of the rally very much in question should you buy into the move