we're prepared to fight if we have to. >> david, back to you. >> all right, yeah, we can take a look there at coinbase shares, they're up 9.7%. i'll let "tech check" figure out why that stock is up for now, we'll wrap it up on "squawk on the street" with the s&p down half a percent. >> here's carl quintanilla with jon fortt and deedra bosa. tech has been soaring this year, but is the rally in some of the most beaten-down names real or a reversion of the mean? we'll talk about that with dan niles. his fund made money in a very tough market two earners going in opposite directions, airbnb with this massive beat, profits and shares surging. is the company a tech pioneer or a well-run travel business we'll discuss. and shares of akamai down.

the ceo will join us in a few minutes first on cnbc. now let's take a little closer look at this year's rally. the nasdaq is already up 14% what kinds of stocks are driving that some of it is unprofitable tech. the top holdings in goldman sachs' nonprofitable tech basket, they have a basket full of nonprofitable tech, it's surging this year from kathy wood, darling exec sciences to okta and so fi or maybe you're interested in squeezing hedge funds short. some of the most crowded shorts include tesla, airbnb, and coin base speaking of crypto, firms linked to the space like macro strategy, galaxy digital, voyager, also surging this year, despite a wave of regulatory pressures. so you've got crypto, heavily shorted names, unprofitable names, i'm looking here and roblox is up about 23%, just

this morning and a lot of names that are down in the range, you know, of 40% or more over the last 12 months are up quite a bit today carvana is up 13.5%. a affirm, up more than 10. i'm not calling any individual stock names, but these are some of the names that have been around >> i know what you're getting at you're not saying it, but i think someone yesterday called it the crap rally. which is to say that if you're looking at fundamentals in this market, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense roblox, yes, the earnings were good were they 20% surge plus good? even airbnb, huge profit margin, huge beat there. but investors sort of ignored the daily rate side of things, the profitability that's going to remain flat this year and of course, yesterday, we had palotier, so it raises the question, what do you do in this environment? what is going to lead to the next leg of this rally of cost

cutting and short squeezes got us here. >> yeah. and we had this discussion yesterday, regarding airbnb, who was awfully prescient in managing costs that's going to ostensibly pay off this year. we had a discussion this morning, john, about chart duration and whether or not we should even be putting up year-to-date charts right now. airbnb looks great today, but it's down 25% on the year. roblox, we well know where it's come off the highs maybe two-year charts are now the standard >> it's kind of like the strobe light effect, right? you've got to look at these stocks in all kinds of different light to make sure you know what you're taking home, carl >> what about charts that go back to 2019 there we go. i think someone called it pandemic mountain. you can see those. but maybe we're seeing another one. i don't know what we call it in terms of all of these tech names that are shooting up in the first few months of this year. our next guest beat the markets in 2022, and his top two picks are up 14% year-to-date. joining us now, satori funds'

dan niles. dan, you heard our conversation and have been consistently saying for months that there's more room to fall here you're looking at earnings revisions, at persistent services and wage inflation. so is this, in your opinion, another bear market rally and does the strength of it surprise you? >> yeah, deirdre, we were -- if you look back at our tweet earlier, we were expecting a santa claus rally. we got that, which is technically the last five days of the prior year, plus the first two days of the new year what surprised the heck out of us was how much the market continued to move up, including, you know, through earnings, despite the fact that earnings came down. and i heard your conversations earlier. yeah, if you look at a basket of unprofitable tech names, the most shorted tech names on the mean stocks, this year they're up 17 to 27% through yesterday last year that same grouping of names was down 52% to 64%. so, you know, you could buy pretty much anything this year

and be making money. now, by the way, that's why people talk about the january effect where the most shorted names go up to start the year, or call it the dogs of the dow theory, which i'm sure many of your viewers have heard about as well, where you buy the worst names in the prior year, and they outperform. so a lot of this is kind of what you would expect the magnitude is obviously pretty high. but don't forget, think about last year. between june through august of last year, the s&p had a 17% rally. you had a lot of people come on talking about, well, technically, you know, the s&p has had a lot of constituents above their 20-day moving averages, et cetera. and you know, it will never go to new lows. and it did so i look at this year and if you're thinking about fundamentally, which is ultimately the only two things that matter are earnings and the multiple you put on them, earnings went down during the

earnings season for all big cap tech names, and then the multiple went up, and i go, i think by the time you get to the second half of the year, you're going to see earnings go even lower, and multiples start to go lower as well, as we figure out that the fed is not going to cut an inflation that's entirely expected >> it sounds like you don't think that this rally is going to last throughout this year i know you're calling it a low-quality rally, but let me pose to you that it's broader than that, broader than unprofitable tech and short squeezes the semietf, smh, is up 22% year-to-date you also have megacap stocks moving higher. and all of this, well, bond yields are moving higher, too. >> well, you've got to remember, bond yields went down a lot to start the year, and people have gotten very optimistic and the way i think about it is, a lot of the things that are driving the market, right, so far on the first half of the year, you're not going to be able to disprove until the back half of the year what i mean by that is right now, if you look at the fed

funds futures, they've got rate cuts starting in the middle of the year so you're going to have to get closer to that for people to go, you know what, service is inflation, excluding housing, which is 55% of poor pce, that's still going to remain higher than expected, because you've got 5 million more job openings than people unemployed and you talk about the number of people getting fired in tech, that's great but that doesn't cover the broader economy where 75% of jobs are in smb. you've got retail where you've got $1.5 trillion in excess savings, still but remember, that number was $2.5 trillion at the peak. it's gone down to $1.5 trillion as consumers burn through that that's going to be all gone by midyear. the way i'm kind of thinking about it, you'll get to mid-year, some of these things that are supporting the market, they'll start disappearing and then you're going to have to deal with, okay, now what happens? because i think the fed, quite honestly, is going to get closer

to 6%, based on raising. >> so, dan, this kind of reminds me of one of those parties in high school where based on the mix of who showed up, you could tell how it was going to end it was like, okay, the cops will break this one up, probably by midnight, right? but when is midnight because you can miss a lot of market action if you put a short on too soon or if you stay in cash too long. so what should people do in this environment? do they wait until that mid-year point or close to it that you're talking about, or do you look at some of the things that are rallying now and say, okay, well, maybe it's time to short them here. >> i look at what is rallying. so i go, all right, if the market is going up and today is another example, right a lot of those baskets that we talked about, they're up another couple of a percent today. you look at david faber was talking about coin base and left it to you guys to figure out why it's up so much today. it's a similar thing, right? you can look at farm results last night, which were horrific, and the stock is up a fair bit

today. so when i see that driving the market versus some of the bellwether, whether it's apple or google or microsoft, et cetera, and those are the ones sort of leaning things higher, on hopefully fundamentals that look like they're stabilizing, which they clearly are not, that gives me more conviction that this thing has actual legs when i see what's driving it, i go, okay, this doesn't have a lot of legs. i look at the inflation metrics that came out yesterday, which were, you know, at best, okay. and i go, all right, you know, i'm starting to add to my shorts my shorts have gone from nearly nothing in my portfolio late last year, early this year, to now they're up to 50, 60% of the portfolio and just a little bit smaller than the number of longs i have in the portfolio. we're obviously a hedge fund, so we have a little bit of leverage so for me, i kind of look at this and i go, i have areas i like, and i think investors should own some of those, so re-opening plays to china, some

of the commodities have come in, commodities did well last year, they've punished this year to some stent we own things in copper, aluminum, natural gas, which has got absolutely crushed and we view the fact that the world's biggest buyer of a lot of these commodities is coming back to the market after three years of a lockdown. that's interesting to us we own facebook, which we talked about before, which is obviously some offense, in terms of a tech name that we thought fundamentals were fine, but their pending was out of control, but they've obviously reigned that in. so it's kind of this mix then we own health care, which we've been adding to, because, again, people rotated out of health care, which did well last year, and you know, that's gone down, and they've moved that money into these areas that we've talked about so i think you want a nice mix of both right now in your portfolio. and we own travel names like united airlines, expedia, make my trip in india, those are

things that we like as well. again off of china reopening and they like to travel. >> dan, i hear you saying a couple of different things travel is a great example, where, yeah, you've got some operating movement in china, which could drive demand for travel, but if excess savings is going to wind down, how long do you hang on to those names >> great point, carl that's when john asked earlier, like, when does the clock strike midnight on that party that the police are going to break up, i think you have a pretty good runway, at least through midyear on a lot of the travel names because the chooinese, they hava lot of pent-up savings as well not as much as the u.s., because they didn't stimulate like we did. but we'll see how much they spend. and quite honestly, in japan, now that they have the highest inflation in 40 years, they're one of the world's biggest savers as well we'll see if some of that money comes off the sidelines. so you want to match your longs and your shorts. we made money last year, but it

sure as heck wasn't from our longs. it was from our shorts, and those outperforming and timing when we put shorts on and take them off so that's, again, how we think about this year, what spaces have tail winds, driven by things like a china, and then what areas -- i mean, and you saw it to some degree, let's pick salesforce, for example there was something that came out that said, hey, twitter has canceled 75% of the subscriptions, because 75% of their subscriptions are gone so when you look at all of the tech companies that supply into these tech companies that are having the massive layoffs, the next thing you're probably going to see is them coming back and saying, yeah, we have less seat growth than we have, and we have less utilization, that's the next leg lower that's where we don't want to be >> right so you're saying, enterprise spending could go down even more as the nasdaq, by the way, is close to entering positive territory. dan, we covered a lot of ground. we didn't get to your top five

picks, but i know meta is one of them we'll tell the audience that and talk to you soon >> sounds good thanks still to come this morning on "tech check," a blowout quarter from airbnb on top of already high expectations. stock is surging today we'll talk about it. plus, we're joined by the ceo of akamai, an earnings beat shares down as the company does continue its transition to the cloud. that's coming up next. and don't forget cisco tonight, turning positive today on the year, but lagging many of its high-growth peers. chuck robins will be with us tomorrow we're back in two. for businesses of all sizes, there are a lot of choices when it comes to your internet and technology needs. when you choose comcast business internet, you choose the largest, fastest reliable network.

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let's get a gut check on semi shares are sliding 6% on a pretty dramatic reversal berkshire dumped 86% of its stake in q4. that was a short-term trade for berkshire, only november when it purchased a $4 billion stake and the sale comes on the heel of the chip maker dimming its outlook for the year, blaming soft demand, turbulent macro, market conditions. of course, the exact timing of that sale is unknown, but berkshire has now missed out on a more than 20% bounce in '23.

they bought another $20 million shares, added some paramount john, it's been interesting. obviously, these filings operate with a lag, but they've also trimmed sop byd. it is interesting to watch them trim overall asian exposure. >> it is interesting and this strikes me as a shorter term call, versus a longer term call. you have intel and probably others saying, how slowly can we build these things out and pay the likes of amc and others. then there's an opportunity cost berkshire probably thinking, hey, there's some other stuff out here that is about to go up that we could potentially buy here meanwhile, apple, on the other side of this berkshire buying into that, that's also been up

quite a bit this year. it's vertically integrated, so it's not as affected by those supply chain dynamics that are happening in tech. >> and with obviously a lot of china exposure to your point, carl, in that berkshire trimmed some of that asian exposure. there were other names that actually picked up take a look at alibaba and jd.com picking up some of those names, and if they had done so at the start of the year, they would be doing pretty well. look at baba up 16% year-to-date, but in today's session, under a little bit of pressure so there was another theme of those 13-f filings >> speaking of cross winds in tech, let's turn now to akamai, posting a beat on the top and bottom lines in q4 guidance about in line with expectations, but shares are down more than 10% this morning at the moment, as street reacts to lower than expected security revenue. the company planning significant investment in growing its cloud business here to help us break it all down in a first on cnbc interview, akamai's co-founder and ceo, tom layton.

tom, welcome so, first, with security, there had been some hopes for the sort of mid-teens growth rate what do you see happening there with that business, given this economic environment >> well, i think the business, the security business is very strong we have market-leading products for application firewall, bot management, you know, segmentation to stop ransomware. you know, it's a challenging macro environment out there, i think this year, and so we're forecasting a little bit slower growth, low double digits. you know, overall, i think we had a very good '22. we grew security 20% so a little bit slower going forward. we're also making a lot of investments in commute, which i think has a very bright future ahead. you know, for driving longer term growth at akamai. >> let's talk about some of that i think there are probably some investors who city think of you guys in terms of content

delivery networks, but you've been diversifying out of that quite a bit, and not just in security i think it was about a year ago, you bought lenode, think about it as a junior developer, and it's costing some to bring thup to the scaleability that you want to see. what do you expect to get out of that in terms of revenue and differentiation and how soon after you go through this investment cycle >> so we're really doing a lot of build out around la node, both in terms of scale, also performance reliability. we're taking a really different approach to cloud computing, making it be much more distributed, getting the containers and the vms, the compute closer to users, so you get better performance and i think we can do it at much lower costs than the hyperscalers charge today. so, that's an effort that's akamai-connected cloud there's a lot of investment this year we've already started signing up

some big customers, including the world's largest social media company. and over the course of the year, sign up more customers and you'll see the big returns, i think in '24 and '25, where it drives strong revenue adoption last year, we did $400 million in cloud compute this year we want to be around half a billion dollars and very strong growth as we head into '24 and '25. >> okay. unless i'm wrong, the guidance that you've given suggests a pretty significant, healthy second half of the year. and i always get nervous when i hear about healthy second halves, when there's a lot of cloudiness about the overall macro environment. what has to fall into place for that second half to be as healthy as you project >> our guidance is based on, you know, the conditions that exist today, which are pretty challenging in the macro environment. so we're not forecasting, you know, any difference there and i think, you know, steady improvement based on execution throughout the year.

overall, growth this year, low-to-mid-single digits and i think we're setting ourselves up for a much stronger growth going forward, as we add commute as the third major pillar to our service. already, we're the market leader in delivery, of course this year, security will be the largest product line, and i think you see a lot of growth coming from compute, really getting into '24 and '25 >> that's a while to wait. this morning, the stock reaction pretty tough, down 10% thanks for joining us. tom layton ceo of akamai. >> thank you up next, what to expect from roku, which reports after market close. we will be keeping a close eye on what they have to say about the advertising market and a bull call on tesla today barclays's initiating at overweight, they say because the company is an ev pure play, they will fair better at managing radical shifts in the industry we'll be right back on dhek. ale in life - a “why.” no matter your purpose, at pnc private bank

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. welcome back roku reports tonight after the market closed. this contracting ad market is a concern for some investors our julia boorstin is with us and has more on what to expect hi, julia. >> hi, carl, the stock is way up today, up about 7%, but it has been struggling since the pandemic pulled forward so much growth the stock is down about 65% in the past 12 months, and off nearly 90% from its july 2021 high analysts now expect roku's quarterly revenue to decline by 7%, while earnings are expected to swing to a loss from the year earlier quarter when there was a gain now, wedbush warning, quote, advertising trends should negatively impact roku's fourth quarter results and drive another quarterly loss but they go on to say, quote, once macro economic trends improve, we think there is still significant runway ahead for shifting ad dollars from linear tv to digital. and roku is poised to take a meaningful and growing share of

this shift now analysts are looking for some insight into how roku's new tvs could impact profitability they're also looking for some expectations for the ad market this year. plus, there's some conversation about the potential for roku to open up the platform to ag tech partners which could help drive ad leverage growth guys >> julia, to broaden it out a little bit, we had a discussion earlier today about roblox also, this insider intelligence forecast that says that digital video will surpass linear television this year probably not a surprise to many, but it will be a milestone when it happens >> such a milestone. and it really speaks to the greater opportunity here when i've interviewed roku's ceo in the past and i had him on from the consumer electronics show in january, he said, look, this is part of a growing trend. whether or not we have some momentary challenges, there's no doubt what direction things are going in and that direction is towards streaming video.

he very much laid out this future that is all about streaming video and this idea that roku is a valuable platform there. having said that, this is a weird moment for a streaming video, because a lot of the companies that have advertised a lot on roku, such as disney plus, such as netflix, they have talked about pulling back. and being more judicious in their spending so, yes, the overall trend is towards streaming video, but the question is, just what kind of challenges we're going to see more near-term >> julia, thanks we'll see what happens very busy night for earnings yet again. julia boorstin john and up next, should airbnb be valued like a travel company or a tech company. and breakdown, the latest earnings numbers and a programming note do not miss a "tech check" plus live stream we'll be sitting down with industry experts to talk about the impact of ai on education. that starts at 12:15 p.m. eastern. head on over to the show's

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welcome back to "tech check. i'm contessa brewer. here's your cnbc news update this hour. chaos in a buffalo courtroom this morning as a man tried to attack the 19-year-old white supremacist convicted of murdering ten black people in a supermarket. a woman whose 72-year-old sister was killed in that attack was giving an emotional victim

impact statement at the shooter's sentencing hearing it did resume after a ten-minute break. american casinos set a new record for gambling revenue in 2022, according to numbers just now released from the american gaming association $60.4 billion brought in through commercial casinos, sports betting operators and online gaming platforms that's a 14% increase from the previous record set in 2021. and 39% higher than 2019, before the pandemic and that doesn't even include tribal gaming. and speaking of gambling, california lottery officials have the usual big check to give to the $2 billion winner of that record-setting november powerball jackpot. they didn't have the winner, though he declined to attend. he said he would like to largely remain private although, in california, winners' names are public record, though everything else about them does not have to be released still, try remaining private once your name is out there. >> i was just going to say,

contessa, we flashed the name in huge letters on the check there. >> the wealth managers are, you know, like i'm going to call every guy that i can find on google until i find edwin castro -- >> they're googling edwin castro, for sure, and maybe some family members, also contessa, thank you. >> sure. let's talk airbnb showing silicon valley what efficiency is all about the company posting its first full year of gap profitability, as well as better than expected q1 revenue guidance. on the call, ceo brian chesky reminded investors about their focus on cost discipline, since making big cuts in the early days of the pandemic he said that head count is down 5% while revenue is up 75% you can also see that paying off on their balance sheet nearly $10 billion in cash and cash equivalents, plus nearly $5 billion of funds held on behalf of guests in deposits. shares are surging, moving even higher today investors, they are as well, guys brushing off some signs of pricing pressure in airbnb's average daily rates, which was a

little bit of a soft point investors looked past that, because there was a lot of positive stuff on that call. i think for the first time, they actually said how many global listings they had, $6.6 million. it grew nearly $1 million over the last year. you compare that to a ver bbo, which had 2 million listings, you can kind of understand why investors like this name versus some of the others otas. it's a brand name. they don't have to pay anything for marketing. john >> yeah, so much good about this quarter. you sort of have to wonder, how much does brian chesky have to manage expectations here is it time for some false modesty of, awe, shucks, becaue the comps will be tough. where are the areas, even though the austerity has been good where he needs to spend to fuel growth and get people used to that idea. i don't know clearly, i can't run airbnb, but what a great quarter in the

midst of all of these quarters that are not so great. >> i can't imagine brian chesky throwing cold water on anything. >> maybe just modesty. goldman does reiterate a sell today target day do raise the target to '98, but we continue to have concerns about a mixture of change, consumer behavior, which could result in a general slowdown in travel trends or a shift in mix "d," the things dan was hinting at in his interview at the top of the hour. >> and to john's appoint, where does it squeeze more profitability out of this. things like travel insurance, perhaps a loyalty program. that's the kind of stuff they talked about, but they have to justify now this price evaluation so let's dig deeper into that. let's look at a forward price-to-earnings multiple airbnb is expensive. nearly four times that of expedia. the street taking no with more than 40% of analysts neutral on this stock next to other big-cap tech, though, still looks pricey, perhaps a little bit more reasonable, you could argument

and unlike much of the rest of the sharing economy, the ubers, the lyfts, the dashes, it is profitability on a gaap basis. where do you put airbnb and where does it go from here to justify this valuation joining us now, mike gafari. great to have you in studio. you listened to our conversation there. where do you place airbnb. should we be comparing it to the other otas and hotels, or consider this a big cap tech >> look, i think there's three buckets that airbnb could fall into otas are a natural choice. thinking about expedia, booking.com. you could look at the marketplace category and say, they share more in common with uber or doordash or others there. what would it take for them to be considered large cap? if you look at large cap on a revenue multiple basis, airbnb looks a little more expensive, but they've got much faster growth and actually, a higher gross margin profile than some of the large caps like amazon and google so they've got to get credit for that >> that growth profile is larger than some of the megacaps.

what does it do now? i like your point in that the megacaps are diversified they're not one business you could argue, a lot do one business, but airbnb is now sitting on $9.6 billion in cash. what do they do with that? this isn't a typically inquisitive company. do you think they become so in this environment, if investors are looking for more reason to up price targets >> i think m&a is a huge opportunity area for airbnb. with that much cash on the balance sheet and the two biggest acquisitions in recent memory, i think you can go back to 2019 in the $300 million or less range, hotel tonight, and luxury retreats. and i think there is game-changing m&a that airbnb could do you know, maybe it's in loyalty or some of those areas they've talked about maybe it's in experiences. had to really focus on the core, which was really smart to get through the pandemic but now is that time to thinking broader, coming on the heels of this profitability >> and they're doing things around the edges like insurance, right? that doesn't actually add a lot

to revenue it does add to profitability what would that look like in terms of a loyalty program do they need those users what could they do that would actually change the game >> i think what's really interesting about airbnb to remember is unlike the other otas, where you can book your hotels many places, airbnb is the only channel to book most of the inventory that's on their site even the sites -- the inventory that's on vrbo or homeaway, those sites aren't always on airbnb so they've got all of this defensibility. if you can build a loyalty program around unique supply in a way that amazon did and dash is doing, there are tuns there but also, i think, is there a game changing airbnb m&a opportunity, the way google did android, not even a huge acquisition, but they said, the next platform is mobile, let's get five years ahead of this is there something with ai, you know, getting very pie in the sky or if you can make a bet on what's the future next platform, airbnb is in a unique platform

>> what's the risk aaron chesky and his company doesn't do anything they were talking about building and operating their own hotels, essentially. and they've come so far away from that, and focused on their core, which is a good thing. but are they losing some of the innovation and that diversification thapt would make them >> i don't think he's the kind of that. i think he'll come back, but focusing on the core helped them get to 23% profitability >> and let me turn this now to a company that's going to report later this weekend that's door dash they are going vertical with dash marts, very capital intensive. he is taking that risk in an environment where investors are less forgiving of that investment how do you think that turns out? >> i think door dash has to make some of those investments to expand beyond just food delivery i think this could work out well for them, but it will be interesting to see how other

players like instacart, who hasn't been able to go public, but at some point will come on the scene and others are going to react but i think airbnb is in a really interesting position, among the uber and door dash right now. airbnb is in a unique and special position >> unique, too, because it's gap profitable >> gaap profitable >> there we go mike, thank you so much for coming on and chatting with us today. john >> -- direct-to-consumer credit card the reporter who got that scoop will explain it, next. plus, cisco struggling to switch into the momentum trade this year. it reports after the bell today. we've got the metrics investors should be watching for when "tech check" returns for businesses of all sizes, there are a lot of choices when it comes to your internet and technology needs. when you choose comcast business internet, you choose the largest, fastest reliable network. you choose advanced security for total peace of mind. and you choose a next generation 10g network that's always improving,

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billions of dollars are expected to be invested in rail safety in the coming years. rail vision has the solution today. learn more at rvsvinfo.com. rail vision is at the forefront let's get a gut check, another bellwether reporting earnings after the bell tonight. and that's cisco shares are roughly flat on the year the stock has missed out on some of the rally, carrying much of big tech higher. the street expecting revenue, nearly $13.5 billion, and we will get a closer look at the quarter when chuck robins joins "squawk on the street" tomorrow morning, john. last week, evercorps said, skewed towards service providers is probably a positive cancellations, they argue, are minimal. and better supply chain means better reliability in terms of orders and maybe they took a little share in q4 >> that's possible and you know, to give them some

credit, the stock is higher. a little less than 10% i think since the last earnings report and boy, last year, that would have been amazing, but based on the comparisons to everything else this year, it's like, oh, you know, 7, 8%, what's that i think the question really is on enterprise spending and, you know, we heard about data center pullbacks from the likes of amazon and microsoft not that those are necessarily a call from cisco, but they represent what's happening in data center overall. so you wonder how cisco being, you know, a little bit on the higher end the one to beat on the networking side, certainly, how they fare in that. >> data center also getting more efficient, right we talk about ai all the time, but that is really transforming the way that even big companies are using the cloud. and that infrastructure. in terms of its performance year-to-date, i'm glad you bring that up, because part of this legacy tech basket, that we talk about all of the unprofitable names, lower-quality tech, you

see in ibm, and hbe of cisco, and oracle, a little bit better. but muted gains, ibm actually negative on the year and it tells you sort of what's working and what's not exactly working in this rally, carl. >> yeah. i can't wait to talk about to robins tomorrow. who normally gives us pretty good color on macro, as well that's coming up on squawk on the street omorrow meantime, during february, we are celebrating black heritage through some of the stories of our cnbc teammates, contributors, and leaders in business here's former b.e.t. ceo and leading women defined founder, deborra-lee. >> growing up in the segregated south emphasized to me at a young age the importance of being an african-american woman. i've always been very proud of my heritage, proud of our history, proud of all that we've accomplished and one of my greatest desires

in life was to be successful and to be able to give back to my community. and i'm very proud of being able to do that and i hope that it has had an impact on the rest of the world. get refunds.com powered by innovation refunds can help your business get a payroll tax refund, even if you got ppp and it only takes eight minutes to qualify. i went on their website, uploaded everything, and i was blown away by what they could do. getrefunds.com has helped businesses get over a billion dollars and we can help your business too. qualify your business for a big refund in eight minutes. go to getrefunds.com to get started. powered by innovation refunds. the first time you made a sale online was also the first time you heard of a town named... dinosaur? we just got an order from a dinosaur, colorado. start an easy to build, powerful website for free with a partner that always puts you first. godaddy. tools and support for every small business first. 92% still active? seems high.

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credit card with a strategy shift that's been going through. the reporter behind that piece joins us now cnbc's hugh san. goldman sachs in a way already had a card it just had apple's name on it what does it mean that they're scrapping gulf coast a goldman sachs card >> the goldman sachs card or the potential goldman sachs card is the latest casualty of their pivot away from the consumer at first, we had heard about marcus loans basically being shuttered. that was their inaugural product. they're shuttering that. and then we learned that this, that the digital checking account they'd been working on for years and had piloted with employees is just being shelved. so once you got to the point where they're not going to be the main -- they're not trying to be the main kind of transactional bank for main street a lot of these ancillary products that were theoretical products on the road map that they were going town vail over t the years, the rationale for those products essentially evaporated >> what good is the apple

partnership for them if they can't leverage it into other things >> you're talking the pro goldman sachs proprietary card, which is, we built this thing, we already sunk the money into this, the millions of dollars to create this new tech platform for apple, for gm, for other folks, why not just use it for our own clients, go direct to the consumer, don't have the li and others, and up get, by the way, to be more choosy with who your clientele is. you don't have to delve into subprime it takes a lot of money to do so and if you wanted to entice people to sign on to your card, you have to spend $600, $700 per user in the customer acquisition cost and they didn't have the stomach for that jon >> how much of a block is this for david solomon? up just outlined a few of the missteps in this consumer space, and this was his big bet, right? >> deirdre, if we take a step back to the overall consumer efforts, i think the biggest question is we're sitting here in the middle of february and at

the end of this month there's an investor day, the 28th, and the question i have is if they step away from consumer that was supposed to provide the higher quality earnings investors seem to favor, if you look at jpmorgan, morgan stanley, which are traded much higher valuation than goldman sachs, where will that come from today i think that's the big question for david solomon which is if you're not doing consumer -- if that's not the growth and excitement and diversifying the business model, where is it going to come from >> yeah, hugh. mike maio's three big questions are why was consumer allowed to lose so much money does solomon have the confidence of the partners and the board? and what's morale like when, for the first time in a quarter century they're not on the fortune list of most wanted companies to work for? >> i think there's a lot -- there's been a lot of reporting what's going on behind the scenes i think one of the biggest

takeaways for me it is highly unusual where you have the ceo of a company who has such levels of internal dissent that you have all these leaks going through the press about how badly the consumer bank is going because you have partners and managing directors who disagree with david solomon and so i think the partner they should have had a step to try to consolidate and gain consensus within his internal ranks and hopefully, for his sake, that is what's going on right now. i do think there will be more pieces as we get closer to the 28th and you'll see more progress from other outlets about what's going on internally to move the place forward. >> so finally let's talk impact on other stocks. goldman sachs backing away from the consumer to this extent, is it better for sofi or jpmorgan chase? >> i would say probably for sofi when you think about it. they're the fintech place out there that when goldman decided

to show up you started -- when they scored apple, okay, this is really going to be the first of a succession of other high-profile deals and they didn't materialize, john >> always on the beat for us appreciate it. and we didn't get to whether solomon keeps his side gig disregard for the rule of law, how a republican ftc commissioner described chan. is the ipo window reopening? "tech check" is back after a shorbrk.t ea l across the countr, people are working hard to build a better future. so we're hard at work, helping them achieve financial freedom. we're investing for our clients in the projects that power our economy. from the plains to the coasts, we help americans invest for their future. and help communities thrive.

the latest out of washington, republican ftc commissioner christine wilson announced her resignation in this scathing op-ed pointing the finger at chair lina khan and expressing concern over her, quote, willful disregard of congressionally imposed limits on agency jurisdiction and abuse of power wilson being a frequent critic of khan using the ftc's failed lawsuit and a ban on noncompete clauses as examples. no specific timing on her stepdown but does open the door for the president to nominate two republican commissioners

while we often disagreed with commissioner wilson we drespecte her. rarely do you see this kind of language coming out of any kind of resignation notice. >> yeah, but more and more these days, d, there's an opportunity to go out with a bang, right that certainly doesn't hurt and the next thing you want to do if it's lina khan you're targeting. >> so maybe posturing for something after this but whatever the reason is, the ftc credibility is now at stake. if president biden chooses to centrist republicans maybe that changes the dynamic, do you have real dissenters, carl. the choices ahead are just as important. >> well, he's not going to choose conservative republicans. i think that's a safe bet. one more thing before we go, reddit aiming to go public in the second half of this year

it's not the first time the company has eyed a public listing. in december of 2021 reddit confidentially filed for an ipo at the height of the meme stock frenzy back then it looked to command a $15 billion valuation but the information reporting mutual fund giant fidelity recently valued reddit at $6.6 billion. ipo window has been shut for the past several months but maybe lights appearing, d, or a super mario optical. you have to run through while it's open. >> rainbow road maybe, really twisty and bumpy it does beg the question, we started talking about this enormous rally and even unprofitable names and the late stage startups could use this opportunity. the fact they're not maybe leads to you wonder about what they think of the quality of this rally, but you have another name, carl, an instacart, which reportedly is profitable and really needs to create a

liquidity event for their employees has also taken some valuation, resets terribly that's a name investors will be watching and could open the floodgates for more to come. >> yeah, we've been talking about that one for a while we'll see if it's the spark that lights the fire, but i was trying to think, jon, whether or not there's any kind of theme attic continuity to these reports, reddit. we've heard a little bit about restaurants in "the journal" piece on panera, for example, the fanduel report that contessa brewer talked about yesterday. it's a little bit disparate. >> maybe, it's not quite winter. i don't have to put on a heavy coat maybe can i frolic a little bit. it would be nice to see frolicking in the markets perhaps. >> yes there will be growth in the spring, as they said, in being there. as for tonight, we mentioned some of the names we're going to get, cisco we'll talk to chuck robb bins.

zillow and shopify might be interesting. >> rounding out the gig economy names, interesting to compare them to uber uber versus livyft, no contest. >> as the market continues to shave away at the early morning losses back to 4130 on the s&p and the dow under 100 points to the down side. let's get to the judge and "the half." carl, thank you very much. welcome to "the halftime report." i'm scott wapner the still strong consumer and what today's surging retail report means for the rally, the fed, and hopes of a soft landing. we'll debate that with the investment committee joining me bryn talkington, jason snipe, rob sechan and josh weiss. carl said it, we're obviously off the lows the nasdaq has gone positive, 380. the yield on the ten year got that really strong retail report today. will the