stuart: what's the stock of the day? it's not gamestop. it is not amc it is google, otherwise known as alphabet. it is up 7.7% after a spectacular earnings report late yesterday. microsoft, also new all-time high, 243. time's up for me. neil, it's yours. neil: stuart, thank you very, very much. we'll be focusing on that. also focusing what life is like for amazon now that jeff bezos is stepping down from running the company on a day-to-day basis. we've seen this in the past what life was like after bill gates stepped down from running things at microsoft day day-to-day and passed baton to steve ballmer. these canp rough times. steve jobs at apple. one didn't go well at all. one went pretty well. it may serve as a model for in one. when we look back on bezos

contribution not only on amazon, to a society depends on everything getting delivered to their homes, he foresaw this back in 1999. one of the first times i had to chance to talk to him at fox. i talked to him when i was over at cnbc. the fact of the matter was, in the middle of a internet boom going bull. there was jeff bezos still not making any money. still with a stock price in single digits, confident he had a future. and so did e-commerce. take a look. >> this is such a big marketplace. i believe that the online, e-commerce is going to be as richly varied as the physical world of commerce. there won't be one winner. neil: you will be among the major play. >> we'll work hard if we aren't. shame on us. neil: we'll go through tapes here. my staff is eager to get examples what it was like of me before puberty apparently.

one of the things we discussed how he had this vision, every ever veered from it. folks reminded me back then, neil, it doesn't necessarily end with books. we're looking at that. jackie deangelis sort of picking apart what happens now. amazon is more than holding its own. maybe because i guess, jackie, he has not given up you know, an association with amazon all together. in fact the stock is up of course it comes off of a blow away earnings report and revenue report. not like he is leaving the company, right? reporter: good afternoon to you, neil. that's right. he is not leaving the company. after 27 years as you said of being such a visionary and driving force at this company and really taking its success to so many next levels if you will bezos isn't going to completely live or give up the reins. i'm sure he will have some input. he is stepping down effectively as ceo of the company. over the summer he will become the executive chairman of the

amazon board. in an email to his employees, bezos plans to focus on early projects and new initiatives that seems like the strategy side, visionary side. amazon's ceo will be andy jassy. the current chief executive of amazon web services. and you know it is a critical weapon in the amazon arsenal. jassy came to amazon in 1997. he is 53 years old. four years younger than bezos. the entire time he has been there he has been with web services which drives so much of the company's profit. bezos had been credited for being a visionary he discussed. he founded the company from an online bookstore into a mega-retailer that sells just about everything now. in january of last year the company hit the trillion dollar market cap. it is now worth 1.6 trillion. and a lot of that as you said, is appreciation that has come during the pandemic when amazon was the ultimate place for

everybody. the announcement was a surprise. the talk of stepping away when you're on top, a michael jordan figure here, yesterday amazon reported earnings on a $100 billion of quarterly sales. that was the first for the company. wall street is eating this up. the stock is a little tepid. might be up more if it was only blowout earnings and not jeff bezos stepping down. you're looking what the targets are on wall street a lot of analysts say they expect it to be more than $4,000 a share. this stock has literally been on fire, neil. neil: yeah. so if you provide the vision we'll provide the buyers. so we'll keep a close eye on it. the most profitable quarter for this company ever and the revenues to match. all right, we're following that. we're also following right now a little bit after calmer battle among the gamestops and amcs, the host of other players here. i say calmer. it doesn't mean that the volume is any less notable.

we should also point out that the war is not over as well. barstool sports founder dave portnoy was on just now with stuart varney any to talk about what comes next. take a look. >> issue i had i didn't know they could pause trading like they did and crater the price. i was jumping on the train trying to make quick money. that is what i was trying to do. i will still do that if the opportunity presents itself. it certainly opened my eyes what can be done when the little guys start getting the hammer. neil: by the way that was a point echoed the day before by mark cuban. said i wouldn't give up on some of these stocks caught in this squeeze because there is limit how much you can trade either on the buy or the sell side. kristina partsinevelos following all of this right now and where all of this could be going. kristina? reporter: you're right, neil. we are seeing a little bit of a breather with the gamestop frenzy especially if you look at

the price today. it is far cry from the high of $483 a lot of action could be, short interest, betting the stock will fall has declined dramatically. you do have gamestop making some news today. they are hiring an engineer from amazon web services to be their new chief technology officer. maybe that means they're working on the online presence going forward. but the reddit crowd in general has shifted their targets to other focuses. a lot of the conversation today is around sundial growers. they're a marijuana producer. a lot of forms and on twitter, reddit investors are trying to push up the stock price. sundial growers did decline yesterday after the company announced a new stock offering. you can see it is climbing well above 20%. these reddit investors want it to be at least two bucks. we talk about this narrative, neil, about the big versus the small. david versus the goliath but you have a situation where these big

money funds, these big market makers are still making so much money on this volatility because they're the ones that execute the shares, execute the orders of the retail investors. just over the last little while. look at virtue financial. the stock price has been up over 10% since the beginning of the year. that is just in the month of january. we know citadel securities thrown into the mix. so they are doing well. last but not least i forgot to mention blackrock, if you want to follow the money, giant money manager blackrock increased its stake in amc by 60%. they discuss disclosed, bought six million shares. shares of amc climbing higher. with all the volatility comes scrutiny. treasury secretary janet yellen is planning a meeting with top financial regulators to look in the massive market swings to see if they're consistent with fair markets. neil, back to you. neil: kristina, thank you very, very much. before we get to our next guest a lot of attention on stocks

been shorted period and reddit right now is in what it calls a bio war. instead focus on a lot of biotech related stocks that have been shorted. i was going through some name they're looking at, novavax, inovio pharmaceuticals stocks not following the general runup in some like-minded issues that could be the next battle royale. we'll keep a close eye on for you. whatever happens to gamestop, whatever happens to nokia, whatever happens to some of these other players the new game in town is finding a list of shorted stocks that hedge funds are going after, to make them a new target. in other words a rolling battle between those betting on the stock going down, those just as convinced fundamentals favor that going up. a battle between the hedge funds we're told, retail investors, online buyers. we'll see. because it is not over.

in the meantime looking at impact of all of this, what is happening now in a post-amazon world without jeff bezos running the show. we should stress bezos is still going to have his feet clearly in this gigantic concern that he started out of his garage back in the mid-1990s but it will be a little bit different. what is remarkable about jeff bezos what i was saying yesterday on fox news about his legendary skills, how he zigs when others zagged. that is a quality that brings a lot of billionaires together. they see things that others don't. buy when others sell. sell when others buy. see opportunities when others see nothing but awful things. that was consistent. in all my interviews with him over the years, including in the middle of the internet bam ironically just as it was going bust. take a look. you're the expert here but the rap is you're spreading yourself

too thin with music, videos, down the road drugs, everything else, that your original base, books which sounded fine is pushing it? >> well we don't want to be a book company or a music company or a video company. we want to be a customer company. so our goal is to be the world's most customer centric company. to be within that earth's biggest election. neil: those that deal with you, many outside do not, it is a zero-sum game. barnes & noble saying we have much richer supply, cadillac of books than jeff ands his gang do, in the metropolitan area, claim to give it at same day, everyone is eating your business at all ends. are you nervous? >> we're still growing very rapidly. this is a big market. there is room for lots of winners. our job the way we think we continue to grow our company by focusing on the customer experience. that means doing a great job on

every detail, reliability but also low prices. one of the ways we have driven growth the last couple years by really aggressively discounting. now you have the free shipping on orders over $25. you've got 30% off books over $15. great prices on electronics, tools, kitchen products. so we've gotten efficient enough we can really drive prices very low. neil: this is why i report on billionaires and am not a billionaire. so you could raise all the doubts that were legendary following jeff bezos throughout his career when he was amassing billions. had hard enough time finding funds to work out after garage, overcame all doubters, that you were not making money, plowing all the money back into his operation. what we learned from his example. you go with your gut. sometimes for a conglomerate in the making you do that in the face of reporters who doubt you and analysts who ignore you and

fellow billionaires hot scoff at you. that was then. now the second richest man on the planet is getting ready for the next phase of his life now. scott shellady joining us. rebecca walser joining us. rebecca, he is not leaving the company but he is changing the direction a little bit. he wants to focus on his space enterprises and some other issues but that always worries investors. i think one of the things tamping down what otherwise would be a far stronger reaction to the blowout quarterly numbers we got after the bell yesterday. what do you think? >> yeah. i totally agree, neil. kind of like the bill gates model at microsoft he is following and i read his letter i want to quickly point out in his letter he talked about how much they have pioneered and he explicitly listed consumer reviews, one click personalized services fast shipping, alexa kindle, saying in the letter

credited with infrastructure cloud computing. just walk out. don't pay, get what you want, knows who you are and leaving. the innovation that he has amassed and come up with, i think that is why you're not seeing the market super excited not being necessarily at the day-to-day helm and he lists that he, it is interesting, i said bill gates model as he says as amazon has grown in size and scope we're going to leverage our position for social issues, he particularly listed day one, bezos earth fund, blue origin and "the washington post." he is very much an innovator. very much a pioneer. everyone else told him no, no, even you neil, back in the day, right? neil: sure. >> the market should celebrate we had a person at the helm and let's see where he goes with this i hope he uses his genius beyond social issues because we could use him as an entrepreneur in this country. neil: when you look back, scott at the time, early on, i was talking in the beginning of the

internet boom in the late 1990s and close to right after the bust, there were a lot of people amazon would be among its victims because it too hadn't been making mon. neil: it too was priced to promise rather than profit but he survived that as ebays, other big names at the time, sensing what he was building was very, have he different. he had a strategy that few saw or could appreciate until years after the fact, to leverage off of a brand, if you can buy books this way, you can buy pretty much anything that way. of course the rest is history. i'm wondering what that brand looks like now? where does it go now? >> well, i mean taking his words he said in that interview, i was listening it is a big market and there will be a lot of room for winners. it's a big market but he is obviously the biggest winner and you know, to his credit he saw such a seismic shift where the economy was going to be going.

a good example of that thinking of listening to you interview him, i moved to london twice. once in the early '90s. lastly in 2015. in early '90s i had to buy a car to punish my plat. in 2015 i could furnish the whole thing by amazon to deliver to my door. that is the whole difference way we live. this new gentleman coming behind him, he might lose some flair, we've seen that with other bigger companies, this guy was going to take over microsoft after ballmer was leaving and take over uber when kalanick was leaving. amazon web services i'm a big fan of. i still think they will be in good hands. i can't say what the stock predictors are saying but i think the company is fantastic will continue to go strength to strength and innovate. doesn't it remind you a little bit like elon musk? i think there is a lot of parallels there. neil: absolutely. there is a common thread, rebecca, quick thoughts, i know

we're going over, quick thoughts, you are coming back on the message that tie as lot of these people together. one of fun things about my job i get to talk to people like this, steve jobs, bill gates, a host of others, the common link is, it is not their way or the highway, their way to a new highway. it goes against the grain, goes against experts even questioned in jobs case we have sony walkmans, why do we need this ipod thing? he appreciated. bezos and bill gates and democratizing pcs not just for business, guys. i am wondering now what signal this sends going forward to the technology companies that make it versus those that maybe have a tougher time? >> well, it's a good point i think you're both right. scott as well the comparisons to other innovators that have gone before steve jobs, obviously

elon as well. it makes me fall in love with the entrepreneur. i just love the on entrepeneural spirit. person takes road less traveled but builds a brand new road and says my road is better and everyone jumps to their road. these people are so rare. you have to stop and respect. he is young, 57. hopefully he is still, i know he got his social issues he wants to work on but i hope his innovative spirit is alive and well. it will carry through as long as we see innovation. e-commerce and the innovation that came out of it no one would ever guess. it is amazing. neil: we'll get you -- so many different ways and others one of the things that stands out to me from jeff bezos that laugh, that inimitable laugh, maybe just me. it got more robust, in your face

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♪. neil: all right. true to our name "coast to coast," we're going to take a look at the effort to get kids back to in-person classes in oregon first off and in new jersey. different cases but the same, same issue at the core. teachers who are not keen on going back to these classes. first up, oregon, how they want to do that or try to make that happen if teachers can move to the front of the vaccine line. remove any fears they have about the potentially contracting covid. a little more involved than that but let's go to dan springer with the latest on what they're at least kicking around. sir. reporter: they're actually doing it now, neil. those teachers are now at the front of the covid vaccination line. the push to reopen schools has taken a turn in the northwest. two states actually, oregon, idaho are vaccinating over

seniors not living in group setting. meantime people 80 and older had to wait. oregonians who are older than 65 won't be eligible until the end of february. governor kate brown says she is using every single tool she has to get kids back in the classroom this school year. >> for every teacher who is back in the classroom, they help, 20, 30, 35 students get their life back on track. reporter: only 13% of oregon schoolkids have been in a classroom since last march. nationally 40% of k-12 students are inside of schools, leaving some 20 million kids getting all their instruction remotely. studies from the nwea and mackenzie, show they have significant learning loss, more anxiety and depression. a suicide prevention expert based on calls and texts to crisis hotlines, the number of kids in some emotional distress is up between 30 and 60%. while many seniors understand the impact on young people they

say retirees are suffering as well, not only from isolation but the virus. 80% of all covid deaths are people age 65 years and older. >> when seniors are affected by this they have lots of underlying conditions and they're more prone to dying. so i think that's the concern. reporter: teachers are in the classroom in idaho but catch this, neil, in oregon there is no guarranty that even when all the teachers are vaccinated they will go back classrooms. the union said it should be up to them if they feel safe enough and up to the school districts to kids. they are saying vaccinations are not 100% effective. the kids won't be vaccinated. so the unions are saying it should be up to individual teachers if they feel safe enough to go back into the classrooms even after they jumped vaccination line. neil. neil: wow. that could drag on a while then. dan, thank you very much. dan springer. let's move on over to the east

coast right now. new jersey governor phil murphy loosening some restrictions in the states allowing restaurants to be open later for one, allowing a little bit more public activities indoors and increasing crowd sizes, maybe upwards of 30 to 35% when all is said and done. here is the bugaboo, the school issue, that is another issue. despite the push to try to get schools to reopen across the state for in-person learning it ain't happening. it doesn't look like it will happen anytime soon. so some parents there are taking matters in their own shall we say legal hands. hadley heath manning joins us, independent women's forum director of policy. hadley what they're doing is suing to force the issue. how is that going? >> well as is the case in many things in public schools it becomes a political football. seems teacher unions have the ability in political football game to move the goalposts.

the parents, school district don't have a lot of tools at their disposal when it comes to tug-of-war. we should look at school reopening problem, not as political issue rather a economic issue where the public school districts have perverse incentive problem. there is very little recourse that school districts and parents have outside of a lawsuit like this one. because you can't change incentives that are set up for public school teachers f they're being paid the same, regardless how they're delivering a education, not delivering education to students, they will continue to behave in ways that benefit them most first. other sectors economy, education sector, private school sector, people who don't come into work even under the conditions that are being offered to them, they don't make the same money or don't make money at all. so that is why we see the issue unfortunately going into courtrooms. going into the realm of politics rather than economics. neil: you're a young mom. so you're dealing with this. how do you?

because you know they keep saying we're hoping to open, we're hoping to open, we're hoping to open, and never open and everything is virtual and everything can be a mess too? >> absolutely. i really appreciate it in the reporter hit how we talked about effective mental health on children. moms worry about kids. i understand retirees are impacted in their own way. people without families impacted in their own ways, right. i'm concerned about the mental health and well being of working moms. i'm only able to join you, my children at age 2 and 4, private pre-school open entire year, without any event related to covid. knock on wood. we're thankful for that. women are suffering not in terms of their mental health and well being but their economic prospects are damaged when they can't have reliance on public schools being open. this particularly impacts women unlike me don't have privileges and resources to access right

school. that is why the issue of school choice once again becomes so important when families are in control of the funding, of their children's education. that will be continue to be an issue pandemic or not. neil: what is weird about it, hadley, i know we're running out of time, governors can't force it. states can't force it. if teachers or teachers union doesn't want to do it or doesn't agree to do it, it ain't happening is it? >> well, no. like i said that is bottom line that comes down to perverse incentives that comes down to political power play. and i think at the end people will start to see through this. if we can change incentives in the public school system, that is our only hope. neil: okay. good luck with the little ones, hadley. >> thank you. neil: we'll see. hadley heath manning, independent women's forum director of policy. we're following a lot of stuff boeing on in washington by the way. the president was wrapping up a meeting with some prominent democrats. they're very confident this plan to go with the $1.9 trillion

stimulus, what is not being discussed is their go it alone america sure seems to be not quite going it alone. they're confident, going on the offense here because we suspect they might have republican support, make more than you think. after this. at t-mobile, we have a plan built just for customers 55 and up. saving 50% vs. other carriers with 2 unlimited lines for less than $30 each. call 1-800-t-mobile or go to t-mobile.com/55.

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♪ ♪ ♪ ♪. neil: all right. i don't know if they have just a very good poker face on this but getting reading now from joe biden and every prominent democrat that met with him, including number of senators on that side of the ledger today he will get his $1.9 trillion

stimulus plan. could it hint maybe picking up republican votes we hadn't appreciated it before, make it bipartisan. hard to say. this fellow has a good idea what could be going on. chad pergram on capitol hill. what are you hearing? reporter: president biden talked on the phone by the house democratic caucus today. he needs to keep the democrats in line. the president's covid plan costs $1.9 billion. democrats may have to cut a deal with republicans to pass a bill and maybe slash the size of the package to court moderate democrats. the man in the middle is democratic west virginia senator joe manchin. >> we built too much trust up among each other to allow this to fall apart. they can count on me to make sure we do everything bipartisan. reporter: not just manchin, consider other moderate democrats, krysten sinema and mark kelly of arizona. white house talked with conservative blue dog democrats. democrats want to rush the bill

through in mid-february but a a long time capitol hill hand notes nothing will move in congress until it absolutely has to. >> the deadline that we'll be facing here pretty quickly is the mid-march deadline that we put on increased unemployment assistance. democrats will be lucky to get to that deadline using this process. reporter: major bills like these always take a while, even if there's urgency. it took six months to do the last bill. now designing the right vote cocktail to pass this bill requires sophisticated legislative mixology, even in a divided congress. neil? neil: all right. chad, thank you very much. chad pergram on all of that. want to get the read on this first, some plans elizabeth warren has about a wealth tax. first on this with scott shellady, rebecca walser back with us. rebecca, i expect in this weird upside down world where the wall street loves government

stimulating away, driving us into debt they would prefer the bigger package, the $1.9 trillion package than anything scored under a bipartisanship deal that brings it smaller. what do you think? >> i think everybody that is elected must be under this new modern monetary theory basically you can print money forever and there is never repercussions. i never seen anything like it. i understand, i'm not a government individualist, i understand the virus and we need it but this is shocking, almost $8 trillion that will be allocated for the virus relief or the pandemic spending in less than a year's worth of time when our total debt is over 28 trillion. it makes no sense. we need to focus on getting the economy back organically working, not just constantly stimulating. i know it's a process but i can't believe how much money we can spend so fast. it is just shocking. neil: i don't want to sound callous, scott, i leave that to

you because you do so brilliantly, kidding my friend but one of the things i find, we have seen clear signs of economic improvement. adp report was very, have strong, 174,000 new jobs. almost quadruple what they had been expecting. we've got the 10-year treasury note now over where we're at 1.9%. still at a level, but a long way from the .65 we were at about a year ago. so i'm beginning to wonder whether we are seeing something that's not appreciated here? that that underlying improvement would limit the need for doing something so big, what do you think? >> i think you're definitely on to something there. that is exactly the case and we still have, by the way a trillion dollars left over from the last plan that hasn't been spent yet. neil: that's right. >> so everybody understands, so everybody understands what a trillion dollar, a trillion seconds ago the neanderthals were roaming the plains of

europe. 31,500 years ago. that is what a trillion seconds is. we're talking about massive stimulus here. here is what i have to say. we don't have to spend the money. i agree with rebecca. don't spend the money open up the economy. that is better than putting my great-great granchildren in debt. i don't see why they don't understand that they rather go into debt, make themselves look better, grandstand giving away capital we can't possibly pay back. it is monumental. a trillion seconds ago, neanderthals were roaming the plains of europe. that is what we're talking about here. >> yeah. neil: i thought for sure that was 999 billion seconds ago. but what the hell i will throw it to you. say you're right. let me get very, very quickly on this, rebecca, because i did talk about it briefly this idea elizabeth warren has a wealth tax, collective north of $50 million and upping it as time goes on when you get up to

a billion dollars, higher tax still where is this going you think? >> i have a huge problem with this. okay, let me just read this to you. nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation. there is something called the takings clause in the u.s. constitution. remember we're talking about a tax code made in the early 19 tens we don't have a income tax heel originally. we had to get an amendment to make the income tax legal. people will say, estate tax. the estate tax is not charged until somebody is dead and they're transferring property. that is theirs. actual process happening allows government to take tax this is nothing. this is person, living, breathing, having assets. government saying if you have more than a certain amount we'll come and tax you. i consider that as a tax attorney a taking. i think it is completely unconstitutional. i hope a thousand tax lawyers are ready to take the case on

because this cannot happen under our constitution. neil: they will try though. scott, i'm trying, creative ways to come up with money, as you and i discussed and rebecca, not creative ways to cut spending. they're looking for revenue to support it. a lot of create tiffedty on the more, more, not so much on the less, less, less. what do you make of it? >> that is the only way out of this, open up the economy, stop spend as much. if we do put through the wealth tax she is talking about, it will only amount to 2.5 trillion over 10 years. that is what we call a suitcase on the queen mary. it isn't going to do anything. i don't know what she is looking for. i don't know what she is looking for. that will not be the answer. the homework today is this, what's fair, right? what's fair? upper 1% pays 40% of tax already. bottom 90% pays 30% already. this is now, we're talking exactly what rebecca said, it i

was punitive. we've gone into a punitive tax. that is just not american. neil: all right. someone must be a little sensitive here. someone must be at the 50 million-dollar level wearing a cow jacket. just saying. just throwing it out there. we'll see. great jobs, guys as always. >> thank you. neil: all right. you don't have to wait a trillion seconds. more like 90 seconds before we're back. when we come back we'll look what is happening at fossil fuels. they're getting kicked down hard. some of the latest plans have a lot of folks wondering, this is just the start. what comes next? ♪.

neil: john kerry might talk a lot about green jobs coming for workers who have been displaced in the interest additional fossil fuel industry.

they don't pay as much green. they don't pay six figure income as lot of these guys enjoy, or used to enjoy but since the administration has nixed the keystone pipeline and shall we say decided to focus less on traditional energy, more on new energy, john hofmeister here try winning those displaced workers that won't pay as jobs they got. they are lucky to get them, right? >> that is the real problem. balancing this is not an equal equation. it just doesn't comb put because jobs are located where they're located. people are working where they're working. the two do not compute. this notion that somehow two plus two equals four doesn't add up in that sense. the problem, neil, that the administration is focusing only on the supply side and constraining the supply side without doing anything on the demand side. in other words as the demand

recovers from covid, and you're restricting the supply side, what happens? the price goes up. gasoline price is like a boomerang on any administration. you though that boomerang out there by constricting the supply side, it is going to come and hit you in the back of your head when it returns on the price side. so there needs to be some equivalency here. so far it is all been actions taken to reduce demand. i'm sorry, to reduce supply. no action to reduce supply -- demand. neil: john, i'm wondering if it is already happening here. oil has been up tick, bonds are back up in the face of this. it might be all these improving economic signs, the economy percolating with adp. job survey showing unexpected growth. we've seen it in some retail sales reports. we got a hint of it in boffo numbers out of amazon, showed a whole lot of buying of a whole

lot of products. ironically we could be curtailing supply as economy picks up steam. good for the economy, not good for those who pay for oil and gas, right? >> that is exactly what's happening. vehicle miles traveled are increasing, particularly in asia. asia is growing, the economies are growing more rapidly than in the west but you're exactly right. opec plus basically reduced its production. saudi arabia took out a million barrels a day for some period of time. and the u.s. is not going to spend a lot of capital on new drilling, new production anytime soon. the whole u.s. industry is still recovering from the dramatic setback of 2020. they don't have the capital to put into new oil. so we're not going to recover to the level we were at before covid and so, yeah, we're going

to convict the availability of product and it is going to come back and bite us as price. neil: i hope not, john. certainly the rule of supply and demand would indicate that. we'll watch closely. john hofmeister, thank you very, very much. focusing by the way not only on oil prices but the 30 year bond, i think i misspoke called it the 10-year before. it is in and out of 1.92%. 10-year notes backing up as well. that could hit 2% any moment here, take along with it other rates that we're seeing backing up. the big impetus of course is the improving economy. that is the good news. the offset of that it means slightly, slightly higher rates. i stress slightly higher. some of you might be looking at this, all right, i will not worry about that you about it is something to watch here. good if you're a saver. you might get more bang for your buck in savings, cd account. less so if you're in debt you

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♪. post malone? >> yes i am. >> all right, bud light legends, let's do this. neil: that bud light ad will appear during the super bowl. if you're looking for a general budweiser ad during the super bowl. helping to vaccine efforts and the like. michael dekaris anheuser-busch u.s. ceo. this is different approach. unprecedent unprecedented approach for you guys. explain. >> thank you, neil. good afternoon. thanks for having us here. a pleasure talking to you. i think when we think about budweiser and the way the brand represents american values and everything that the country stands for was only natural for us during the pandemic to pivot. you remember this last year, from with sports to supporting as much as we could the heroes

in the front line as well as american red cross with the blood drives. now there is super bowl for the first time in 37 years the brand is not showing up in the big game. on the other hand it is supporting on this campaign to increase awareness ever since, we're donating it to halftime. doing our part. size advising everyone to have a beer ones we call can together and the market is safe after the reopening. so we're very proud of all of that. the brand is doing once again a big stanes. pre-super bowl. we're not going to be there this year. next year we'll see everybody at the big game. neil: i remember your sanitizer help last year. i know what you're doing on the vaccination front this year. obviously you don't want to see this necessarily repeated next year, right? >> sure. on top of that, in order to make

our part, we are announcing today as well a big investment, one billion dollars planned over the next two years to help in the economic recovery. to continue to support our communities. more than two million jobs that exist around the beer industry. we're very glad to have the chance to do this in the united states in the place that we belong to. of course an agent, leading agent in the economic recovery. neil: nice stuff. you don't hear too much about that. i wish you well, the anheuser-busch u.s. ceo. think of the time of last year's super bowl. none of this had sunk in yet. the danger of the pandemic to come, quickly changed a lot of their facilities over to help, you know. >> thank you,. neil: sanitizers to get it out to the public, of course with the havings nation, hopefully not necessary next year when the pandemic everyone hopes and prays will be an ancient memory.

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customers, obviously, that's a lot of customers, can you handle all this in. >> well, with the building of logistics infrastructure to be able to handle that, we've focused obsess ily on the customer experience. that's sort of the end to end experience. when they get the package, is it shipped correctly, is it the right stuff, is it undamaged, was it delivered fast. we've worked hard on getting all that logistics and infrastructure right as well as making the web site as easy to use as possible and so on. neil: all right. and you did that and then some even back in those days when i at least had a far better toupee. we should indicate here that at the time of that interview, the stock was around $2 a share, all right? look where we are right now, $3,392.60 a share.

so that gives you a reminder of what jeff bezos created and why some of the gains in the market in the stock today are limited as they are even with the record revenue and earnings quarter that blew away even the most bullish estimates. susan li, i can't help but think a lot of that has to do with concern about the founder, you know, taking himself out of the day-to-day running of the company. he's still with amazon, but people are balancing that with the robust quarter, right? >> yeah. still trying to get over that dreamboat hair he had back then, neil. [laughter] yeah, jeff bezos stepping away, and when leadership changes, they say this is the end of an era but also the start of a new one as well. amazon just reported, by the way, their first $100 billion quarter, and now worth $1.7 trillion. so bezos is walking away at the top. $1.7 trillion is a long way away from the $400 million it was worth after its ipo back in 1997

and also a long way away from its bookseller roots. amazon sells over 12 million different items, and its biggest moneymaker in 2020 is cloud. so it makes sense that bezos is handing the reins over to andy jassy who was one of the early amazon hires if has been at -- and has been at amazon for over two decades. bezos has announced, it also hearkens back to 2000 when bill gates stepped away as ceo of microsoft. microsoft was one of the largest companies in america back then, worth over $600 billion, and both are still huge giants, both worth over $1.5 trillion, and that makes bezos and gates two of the wealthiest on the planets. bezos worth close to $200 billion and both quitting, by the way, antitrust accusations. amazon now so big that lawmakers

and competitors say that they kill off the little guys. now, because cloud and online selling, amazon is now just a behemoth. they have whole foods, pharmacy and electric cars. amazon had to go ahead and start testing its delivery vans in los angeles, so it just shows the e involvement of the amazon business. not just a bookseller anymore. and finally, let's talk about the super bowl, why not? why not use the super bowl for that gamestop controversy, of course, not helping their image, so they're going to pay a few million dollars for a super bowl ad. i just checked the odds, neil, looks like the kansas city chiefs are 3.5-point favorites. that's not a bad bet. neil: only -- >> yeah, that's what i said. neil: i would have thought by more. [laughter] thank you very much, susan, great job as always. one of the things that was always bedeviling jeff bezos, those who were shorting the

stock and doubting his intentions, remember all of the time that this was first starting around the late 1990s when the internet boom was going, but one by one by 1999, a lot of those guys were going out of business because they weren't making money. and, by the way, for that matter, neither was jeff bezos. and it worried many on the street that when his boom was going bust, amazon would be a casualty as well because it might be losing more money, but it was certainly not making money. and it didn't offer a plan even when bezos would try to outline and get through my thick skull that he had one. take a look. but you've also worked hard at telling the street, look, don't expect me to make money anytime soon, it's not in my operating plan. i've got to spend a lot of money to establish this beachhead, but they still worry. >> well, it's okay for people to worry, you know? we don't see it as our job to convince people not to worry. it's sort of if we lay out our

strategy, we think this is a critical category formation time, we think it's a time to invest, and, you know, we don't even claim that's the right strategy. we just claim it's ours. neil: all right. on this story of investing for the long haul and having the patience to see it pan out, scott martin wasn't even born 20 years ago. jackie deangelis who wasn't even born 20 years ago. so here they are with us to put some thought into this. jackie, the one thing that was interesting about bezos is he had to -- you talk about people establish a short position in a stock and think you're going to fall, he was the tesla of his day. and a lot of people just said, yeah, you're growing fast. but, man, we'd like to see you make, make something on this. but he stuck to that, and he could have, you know, bucked the trend and done some clever accounting to humor them, but he chose not to. it's a different environment

today, but the pressure still exists on companies to show investors something, right? >> oh, absolutely. we've seen it also in the social media space too, right, with twitter and facebook when these companies first came out. the big question was it's a great product and people like it, but you have to be able to monetize it. and until they could, they weren't really wall street darlings. and so when i watched the clip that you just played there, i think it's so interesting because i'm not sure that he had a plan. he knew he was investing, but i'm watching his facial expressions there as he talks about the fact that this is our strategy and we're sticking with it. i'm not necessarily sure at that moment in time he could foresee what amazon was going to become. and i think for this company it was really all about diversification, taking advantage of opportunities. yes, they were investing and they were larger than some of the other companies that went bust, for example, during the dot.com boom, and they were able to sustain that. but when you think about the fact that he started out as an online book retailer and now is

in all of these different retail arms that susan just mentioned, it's phenomenal the way he's grown and expanded. he's catered to consumer needs. that's what a good ceo does, he really understands the marketplace and delivers what people need. and he grew with the times. it's phenomenal to see what he's turned this company into, and i think his successor has been there well over 20 years, he's head of one of the most profitable arms of the business. you bring up situations like bill gates or tim cook take the reins after steve jobs died, and all of these people were ingrained in the company, and they did quite well. so wall street is sort of a little tepid about it today. that also could be because the market has come so far so fast, and we've had a lot of volatility for other reasons as well. but this appears to be like it will work out and be a success story. neil: you know, scott, what's interesting about the microsoft example that jackie alluded to

here, if you think about how these respective companies have just shot up and grown, the cloud and some of these cloud businesses are a big reason why. significant for apple, significant for microsoft, significant, you know, all the more so for microsoft long after bill gates stepped down. all the more so now that jeff bezos is taking himself out of day-to-day operations. so the dn answerer, the plant is there -- dna, the plant is there. i'm just wondering where it goes from here. would you still recommend amazon at even these lofty levels? >> i would, and we hold it currently, neil, and we're probably going to buy some more if it does continue to pull back here. andy jassy is the head of amazon's cloud division, so that clearly shows you where this company wants to go going forward. not to say we're going to forget about amazon retail in the future, but cloud and health care are two areas where i think amazon is really going to start to take over in the next 5-10

years. neil: when you say in the next 5-10 years, you've seen these analyst statements, scott, talking about we see this stock going to $5,000, we see a host of others who -- you know, that was kind of the thing we heard in the late 1990s. in retrospect with amazon, that talk was justified. they weren't saying quite the same thing, but there are some that just separate themselves from the rest. is amazon still in that category? >> i believe it is, and i think one thing about some of the lofty expectations of 5,000 a share, that's assuming that the company stays together. awc, amazon web services, and the cloud could get so big, they may spin it off and go into health care too, so maybe three amazons in the future as far as the health care, the cloud and retail. those things could be, obviously, big stocks as well on their own. neil: and, jackie, that is the fear, but also it gets people excited at the prospect of a breakup of amazon if it came to

that, much like they did to the social media giant withs. it would be like the breakup of an at&t. instead of owning one stock, you owned all those baby bells, so you as the investor come out ahead. that seems to be a no-lose situation for amazon if that is the case. you never want to make up terms, but what do you make of that? >> that's certainly one possibility. and from the analysis that i've done, i certainly don't underestimate the ability for jeff bezos to continue to innovate. that's what he is, a master innovator. as i said before, it feels like he's always a few steps ahead with respect to being able to cater to the consumer. as scott's saying, if he becomes a leader in health care with respect to distribution and god knows because i'm not the innovator that he is or how he's looking at this per se, it could be absolutely huge. and so you look at somebody like this and say, yes, he is handing the reins over. when you are ceo, there are a

lot of administrative duties, duties that will keep you from being able to innovate and expand the business, and now he's going to be able to step back and have the time for his passion projects, but also to be able to look at the company and say, okay, what's next. and he gets to go back to that exciting period versus having to do, you know, everything else that a ceo has to do. i think it's positive for the company, and, you know, with respect to the initial question about a breakup, it's not something that it seems to be in the cards at this point. but i don't think that it would be a terrible prospect for shareholders. neil: all right. we'll watch it very closely. don't go too far, guys, we'll be talking about this push for a higher minimum wage. scott and jackie, thank you very, very much. meanwhile, if you've had it with politicians being targeted for their political viewpoints or to deplatform some of those candidates, so has florida's governor. in fact, he's coming out and fighting back. take a look. >> big tech has come to look

more like big brother with each passing day. but this is 2021, not 1984. and this is real life, not george orwell's fiction. the message is loud and clear. when it comes to elections in florida, big tech should stay out of it. neil: all right. the governor is putting his legislative agenda where his mouth is here proposing daily fines for companies that deplatform political candidates. so to fight fire with fire, the read on all of this from sec commissioner brendan carr. brda of this approach? it's one thing to protest what these companies do, it's quite enough to fine them for it. >> well, i applaud the efforts by governor desantis, because if you step back, what we're seeing here when you look at individual instances of deplatforming, is an effort to drive dissent from the public square. and that gives me a lot of concern when it comes to the

future of freedom of speech in this country because it's no longer just twitter or facebook deplatforming users, it's spreading into the infrastructure. you've gotten apple and google of that have pulled parler from the app store the, you've got amazon web services that have pulled the plug on parler as well. so i think it's time for conservatives at all levels of government to stand up and propose some reforms that will hold big tech accountable. so i was glad to see the effort by governor desantis on this front. neil: now, obviously, there's going to be a whole new sec, the pendulum swings to a more democratic bent here, and i'm just wondering whether you're outungunned, outmanned. [laughter] >> yeah. right now the sec is still 2-2, two republicans, two democrats, and we still have pending a petition from the trump era commerce department to take a look at reforming section 230. i continue to think we should have taken that petition up, i think we can. republicans and democrats are

going to disagree on what particular speech they want to see. that's fine with our personal capacities. but as government officials, i think we should all work towards this idea of more speech, not less. we can do that with 230. but these issues go beyond that. maybe we can find bipartisan consensus on things like competition policy, on antitrust. and i think we need to bring all those tools to bear when it comes to big tech. there was just a new york times report out, i think yesterday, that says that the biden administration should establish a reality czar, and they might as well just call it the ministry of truth. we try to live our lives in a way that we never go full orwell, but apparently that may not be a constraint anymore. so i think we need to push to get a diversity of views. that's been a touchstone of this country for so long. not just the first amendment, obviously, which restricts the government, but it's a culture. we embrace the idea that a diversity of perspectives is the best path forward, and we're seeing a pretty significant retrenchment in that view.

and i think that's a problem. neil: all right. commissioner, got your work cut out for you. thank you very much. we'll see what happens right now. in the meantime, we told you about the administration's push, to hear the oil and gas industry tell it, kill 'em off and make them dinosaurs. but they do have a different approach about going solar and the promise and the green they see in going solar. doesn't grady trimble know it. >> reporter: hey, neil. ten million jobs in solar and wind energy, that's the biden plan and promise. but is it realistic? and how much do those jobs actually pay? we're looking into it next. ♪ ♪ living with metastatic breast cancer means being relentless. because every day matters. and having more of them is possible with verzenio,

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grady trimble's been examining that from albuquerque, new mexico, where a push is on to make solar panels the next, i guess, really big thing. grady. >> reporter: that's the plan, neil. two of the fastest growing jobs in the entire country right now, solar panel installers and wind turbine technicians. the biden administration has made renewable energy a priority, and they say those types of jobs will be available all over the country if this plan goes according to plan. listen. >> we're not going to ask people to go from the middle of ohio pennsylvania and ship out to the coast to have solar jobs. you know, solar jobs will be everywhere. but we need to put people to work in their own communities. that's where their home is. >> reporter: but this plan faces significant challenges as well. number one, the bureau of labor statistics says the number of jobs in those two areas i just mentioned will be relatively

small even by 2026. and then look at this graphic that we have on your screen right now. solar panel installers make significantly less than those who work in oil extraction. so it might be difficult to woo those who work in traditional fossil fuels over to renewable energy. and on top of that, many renewable energy jobs are short-lived. take this area where we are, for example. there's nobody really operating this place right now. they simply build the solar farms, and then they move on to the next job. they're quick in their construction jobs. so those are some of the challenges that this industry faces in terms of switching over to renewable energy like the biden administration so badly wants to do. and i also want to mention silver. we would be remiss to be at a solar farm without talking about that today because silver has been all over the place this week, the latest target of those meme investors, rising to an 8-year high earlier in the week before falling back down this

past, past couple of days. a big component of solar panels, a lot of people don't actually know this, is silver. so if those prices stayed really hard on the commodities market, that could eventually impact the price of these panels. although right now that does not seem to be happening, at least not in the long term. neil? neil: grady trimble, thank you very much for that. grady following this solar push and how far it goes and where it goes as is henry cuellar, the democratic congressman from the beautiful state of texas, who broke with the president of the united states, joe biden, on this issue of, you know, halting oil and gas leases. he was urging the president to reconsider that. i don't know if the president has or will, but the congressman was kind enough to join us right now. congressman, good to have you. >> >> thank you so much. neil: your concern was this about face in halting oil and gas drilling at this time in one fell swoop, a bit too much, a bit too fast.

have you heard back from the president or anyone, for that matter, at the white house? >> no, not yet, but certainly there are several democrats. we do want to have a conversation with the biden administration. i'm a supporter of president joe biden. i've known him for many years, and i've been a big supporter. on this particular point, we just want to make sure that they take certain things in consideration, and that is keep in mind that my area or even texas, you know, there is -- we're dependent on oil and gas. i do understand the transition period, i understand that. but keep in mind that if you look at the best case scenario, it's going to be years before we can totally go from fossil fuel over to the alternative. and one last thing, and you know this, texas is number one in oil and gas in the nation, but we're also number one in wind. so why can we not work on both issues that bring the energy folks to the table so we can help address sol of those issues. -- some of those issues.

neil: you know, congressman, it seems like a battle between two core democratic constituencies; that is, union types who, obviously, treasure those jobs that are about to go because of this presidential directive and, you know, environmentalists within your party who seem to be winning out. are you worried that it's going to come back to bite the president, to bite you, to bite democrats? >> no. i mean, i think this is just a conversation just like, you know, the republicans have their different voices. same thing we have -- neil: but it's more than a conversation, right? because it's actually happening. i mean, these jobs are actually going. that's not a conversation, that's a fact. thousands -- >> well -- neil: -- are out of a job, you know, as a result. >> yeah. and i think that what you're referring to, there was a temporary ban on public lands that does affect, let's say, new mexico, it affects the state of texas. for example, if you look at the permanent trust fund for the

state of texas, the university fund, most of that money that they get from public lands from oil and gas goes to higher education or even public education. so it affects different ones. so we're hoping that we can have that conversation so we can find balance. again, if we don't bring the stakeholders how we're going to address this issue, you just can't keep the energy out and say here are the winners, here are the losers. you've got to bring people together at the table and try to work things occupant. neil: yeah. you can't ram it down their throats, to your point. congressman cuellar, very good catching up with you. of we'll see what happens, keep us posted, stir. >> thank you. neil: in the meantime, a great deal of attention being paid to this meeting that treasury secretary janet yellen wants to have with all the top financial officials and regulators inchuting the sec, the federal reserve, a host of others on this crackdown on this are

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♪ ♪ neil: all right. what if we're getting it backwards on raising the minimum wage to be $15 an hour? it is outland arish to a lot of folks who are hard pressed to afford that, but doubling it from what is around $7.25 and bringing it to $15, that's a whole other can of worms, right? what if it saves on welfare and related programs to upwards $30 billion?

that begs the question for the pizza saw shop owner in new york city getting that money back themselves or is it the money saving money there? back with us, scott martin, jackie deangelis. scott, i guess the view is this could lessennen the need of people -- lessen the need of people impacted favorably by this to depend on the government to sort of make up for that wage gap. what do you think? >> potentially, neil, if they don't lose their job in the process. i guess you could call me a free marketeer, but i believe if you stay out of the way of business, if you let them choose the wages they pay, lower regulations, we get more growth. and when you get growth, you get the general levity in wages. you don't have to force businesses to all of a sudden add a few dollars here and there to make a minimum wage. yes, if the jobs stay there and they get the minimum wage, yes, that could possibly help. but as we've seen from many businesses' comment, they're going to be cutting jobs if the minimum wage goes up too much. neil: yeah. of i'm sure the boss after a

store, a company, a restaurant will be happy to hear that the government saves a lot on benefits and those workers don't have to depend on those benefits. but the fact of the matter is that isn't helping their bottom line, the guys who employ everyone, right? jackie? >> yeah, absolutely. and there's a lot of concern that it'll just be too much. you know, we were talking about amazon, for example, a little bit earlier. could a company like that afford to pay the $15 minimum wage? possibly it could without, you know, really facing too much harm. but you've got a lot of small and medium-sized businesses as well that would have have to commit to paying that kind of minimum wage, and they certainly would have to lay off workers, maybe downsize perhaps. and when you look across the country at some of the places where they've tried this, for example, california and new york, i know we're in pandemic times, so that's exacerbating things, but these also happen to be high-tax states and you've already seen businesses want to flee because of the wage and tax

issues. they sort of go hand in hand. there's only so much you can keep squeezing a business and its profit before these business owners say enough is enough. and as i said, not every business is amazon. neil: you know, the thing i don't understand is if wall street's worried about this likelihood that this $15 wage will be included in the $1.9 trillion stimulus package, they have a funny way of showing it. or to they just assume, you think, that it won't be in there, that the final package will be a little bit smaller and won't add this component? >> i think they hope that it won't, neil, but they're maybe bracing for it behind the scenes. i think another thing that's going on though with all the stimulus is now we're on countless trillions really. so the market has loved that. so i think the market is signing itself up for more, say, stimulus, more spending than it is so much a minimum wage hike increase. neil: you know, i'm also looking at where the money goes, and the

argument has always been, jackie -- and you've reported this -- that with interest rates still low, though backing up a little bit here, it's not as if people are going to abandon this market for half a percent cd. but as rates do slowly back up and a 10-year now at about 1.13, the 30-year closing in on 2%, there is going to come a point in time where they will have a chance to weigh safe money albeit low rates than risky money in a toppy mark, right? >> oh, i agree with you. and, ultimately, it's been the saver, for example, that has been crushed over the course of the last decade or even longer with these low interest rates, neil. and we saw that under president trump slowly but surely, the economy, the fundamentals pre-pandemic started to rebound enough where the fed chair said, okay, we can start to raise rates a little bit. and you you could see that thisa market, an economy to a certain

extent that has been sort of addicted to low rates, and that was not good for the stock market. and the president at that time started tweeting and what did we see? we saw that interest rates came down, and we're staying this course. so it could be one thing to see those rates start to creep up again, but when they do and the chilling effect comes, nobody seems to like it. the question is going to be, you know, who has enough chutzpah to basically bull the plug if things do get -- pull the plug. we'll see what happens. but as of right now with the 10-year note, yeah, people are still going to invest in stocks. neil: all right. in the meantime, jackie, i guess we'll just be on chutzpah alert. [laughter] martin, thank you very much. scott martin. is charlie gasparino ready, you guys? natalie? charlie are gasparino is here right now, gamestop's latest, a

powwow tomorrow featuring janet yellen. she wants to meet with all the key players to decide what to do about all of this. where's this going, charlie? >> by the way, chutzpah is my middle name. you know that, don't you? neil: tell me about it, yeah. [laughter] >> yeah. you get those letters too, don't you? neil: oh, please. [laughter] >> i'm surprised that janet yellen took this long to assemble this group of regulators, because dick grasso, i spoke with him, the former nyse chief, he was talking about why hasn't she put together what's known as the president's working group as a bunch of financial regulators. whenever something like this happens, something major a frenzy e in the market, they get together to hash out what's going on. good thing she is doing it. but what's interesting right now is, i mean, this story's now a washington story, neil. and there's lots of chatter in d.c. about legislation to

address the reddit, robinhood, gamestop short-selling issue. it's spanning the whole thing. and it's interesting that short selling got brought into this because short selling got crushed in this whole thing. but there's talk from elizabeth warren's office -- as you know, she's on the finance committee, she's the ranking member -- about doing something that cracks down on short selling even though short selling had very little to do with this other than they lost a lot of money. but anyway, here's -- now getting to all that, let's talk about some of the legislation that people are speculating about. again, some requirements on short sell, more disclosures, maybe higher capital requirements on short selling. then there's issues that could affect robinhood's business model. robinhood is the free trading app that's been a sensation throughout the pandemic mainly because people were using it. it's so easy to trade stocks. it's at the center of this whole gamestop frenzy. remember, you trade for free on

robinhood. why is that? because robinhood sells your trading orders to brokerage firms who match them with other buyers and sellers and make a buck doing so, okay? citadel was one of those. that's where some of the conspiracy theory came in. citadel makes a lot of money the more you trade, robinhood makes a lot of money the more you trade because they sell it to citadel. everybody's happy including the small investor who trades for free because robinhood can sell the trade. what we're hearing, and this would be very interesting if it's true, that there's speculation in congress about rules that could affect -- [inaudible] maybe you can't do it as much, maybe you have to pay more, maybe there's something that scales it back. if that happens, neil, the robinhood app, if they do something fundamental with payment forward or float, you -- individual trader who trades on robinhood app -- will have to start paying for those trades.

this is speculation. not saying t going to happen. we'll make get some clues out of the janet yellen working group. we're clearly going to get some clues out of elizabeth warren's office and the democrats, they are in the majority, but that's what's going on right now. and it's fascinating. if the end result out of all this stuff is somehow they put curbs on trading flow and then guess what? robinhood has to start charging for trades, the small investor will then get screwed. back to you, neil. neil: you know. south korea's already continuing its ban on short trading i think through late spring. they've toyed with that here, but i worry about that idea coming up as well because you need both ends of the trade, you know? >> yeah. i mean, neil, there's more touts out there. listen, i've been critical of short selling. i mean, i'm no -- the guys, we've had arguments about the tesla short.

i was not crazy about his theory on that. obviously, i was critical of bill actman's short on herbalife, and i covered that. some of his prognostications about herbalife. that said, you need people to raise the other side of the issue because there's many more touts out there than very short sellers that are doing stuff that's beyond the bounds. i want to say one thing about tesla because it's an interesting example. people were very negative on tesla like jim than not. tesla almost went bankrupt. the people that sniffed that out were the short sellers. elon missing admitted it. -- elon musk admitted it. the short sellers sniffed that one out, neil. back to you. neil: each side has value in this market. let the buyer or the seller decide. great stuff, charlie, thank you very, very much. in the meantime, you probably -- we were just mentioning spacex had another rocket crash. the problem is this, it has no

problem, you know, launching, getting up. it's returning that's the problem. another crash, second in as many tries, after this. ♪ ♪ the lexus es, now available with all-wheel drive. this rain is bananas. lease the 2021 es 250 all-wheel drive for $349 a month for thirty six months. experience amazing at your lexus dealer.

[background sounds] neil: a spacex rocket that had no problem lifting off just like the one prior to it, but just like that one, crashed on return. we're told one of the rocket boosters didn't do what it was supposed to do on the return and, of course, that was the result. should spacex officials be worried, elon musk be worried that this is a pattern? casey stegall in dallas. what do we know right now, and what's being planned next? >> reporter: we know the faa is investigating. so, so close, right? can't get those landings just

yet. watch once again the video, pretty shocking. [cheers and applause] oh, again. >> reporter: forchute9 nayly, no people were onboard the prototype when it exploded during the landing phase yesterday following a high altitude test flight. happened at the spacex launch facility down in texas. the sn-9 star ship is a heavy lift rocket, one that elon musk's private space company hopes will someday be used to ferry people and huge amounts of cargo to mars and also the moon. now yesterday went well up until the end. the 16-story-tall rocket successfully lifted off, and then it soared 6 miles above earth, then ran into trouble attempting to restart the engines for a successful landing. that did not happen as the aircraft crashed into a

fireball. now, you remember the exact same thing happened at nearly, by the way, the exact same point in the landing process with last december's crash of the sn-8 star ship test flight. there was also controversy surrounding that one. the faa says that spacex didn't meet some of the terms for that launch. everything is cleared up, everything was proper and good to go yesterday, but they are investigating the accident. back to you. neil: casey stegall, thank you very much, my friend. >> reporter: yeah. neil: in the meantime, worried about covid, worried that you might have it? there's a $30 test, and getting the results in the minute, how does that sound to you? the company behind that and the guy who runs that company next. ♪ ustomizes your home insurance, here's something you shouldn't try at home... look, liberty mutual customizes home insurance

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neil: so let's explain it -- you can far better than i can, no doubt -- how this works, how it differentiates from other test kits that are out there right now. >> so this is a single-use test where which you'll be able to buy from a pharmacy or supermarket. everything you need is inside the kit with the exception of your personal smartphone. and you download a free app. the app walks you through how the use the test step by step, really simple instructions. you take a swab of your nose, and then you apply the sample to this little digital analog that i've got here. all of the processing of the sample, all of the measurements and things all happen inside here, and the result is bluetoothed to your phone so you know whether you have covid or not in 15 minutes. ours is the only test which has been authorized by the fda for symptomatic and asymptomatic use in adults and children.

so it is a nonprescription, over the counter test for adults and children to detect covid-19. neil: all right. so you don't need a prescription for this. i'm curious as to its accuracy. a lot of people -- not with yours, i'm just saying, but they get false positive tests. could you, you know, educate us there? >> yeah. inside this instrument is a fluorescent antigen detection technology, and it's really give lent to or best in -- equivalent to best in class tech all built in this little analyzer. in our studies which we ran in conjunction with fda requirements, we showed overall accuracy of 96% when compared to the pcr testing that laboratories perform. ing. neil: i was looking at abbott, i'm sure there are others, it's a crowded field. so how do you distinguish

yourself from that field? >> yeah. abbott has come to market, and we'll be looking -- will be looking to scale. they have -- [inaudible] or a health care provider into that loop. it is a visually-read test, so it's two lines for positive, one line for negative which some people find a little bit fusing, a little admit -- confusing. ours is all done by the analyzer, it's all high performance fluorescent detection technology. it's designed to be an over the counter test that's really simple to use. it's approved for adults and for children, and it has, it has a broad authorization from the fda for detecting covid-19. so that all said, it's going to take everything all of us have to be on top of this pandemic. so, you know, we need to have more testing in the home, we need to detect as many of these asymptomatic cases as we can. we need the try and stop the spread within our communities.

so for us it's less about competition, and it's more about making a dent on the burden of illness within the american community, and that is going to take everything, all of the diagnostics manufacturers have. neil: all right. we'll see what happens. dr. sean parsons, thank you very much. love the inexpensive nature of this and the ease of use, no prescription. as i've many times argued on this show, the easier you make it and the less hassle you make it, the better things will be. we've got to find out just how many people have this and make it easy for them. this could be a step in that direction. ♪ here i am, stuck in the middle with you ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪

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♪. neil: all right. call it alphabet. call it google. discuss call it right now a screaming performing stock up close to 10% already. to charles payne right now. charles: newell, absolutely remarkable. then again that is what the market has been. thank you very much, my friend. i'm charles payne this is "making money." stocks indeed mostly higher taking their cue from two megagrowth names that posted earnings from the close yesterday. there are concerns about what happens at amazon in jeff bezos, as he is about to give up the top job. we'll tell you why that may not be a problem. of course we're all over the broader markets. plus i'm answering your trading and investing questions today. keep them coming. as investors are still hoping for more stimulus out of