dave portnoy joins us now at the top of the show. , there is some confusion of what you still actually hold. are you out of all of these heavily shorted stocks are wet? >> i got out of them at the time of the sweep. i bought back a little this morning because i saw amc going back out, but when i tweeted, i got out with a $700,000 loss. stuart: are you done with robinhood in this kind of investing? >> you know, it would take a lot for me too do it. we have spoke before the main issue i had was i didn't know they could pause trading like they did in trade up the price and i was jumping on the train trying to make quick money. i will still do that if the opportunity presents itself, but is certainly opened my eyes to what could be done when the little guy starts to get the hammer. stuart: have you thought of changing course and going towards the stocks that have really strong profits, strong growth, organize, well-maintained companies? have you thought to make me switch based on fundamentals? >> i think that's the misconception. i own a

it seems like dave portnoy, he may become a news afternooner?lled there dave portnoy held up a photo of maxim maxine waters and said you couldn't handle this and tenev was answering questions that he couldn't fully answer in the house services committee. it took on a whole new level what they're going to say, let's not forget, he's got more coming up >> it's an interesting strategy and obviously a good one for him to get out there like he has let's talk other headlines square buying into bitcoin in a big way. curious what you think the reaction is going to be, how you think of square on one end buying bitcoin and twitter which is also controlled by jack dorsey on the other end not buying bitcoin, emily? >> well, twitter's ceo said they're considering buying vendors in bitcoin we saw tesla buy up $1.9 billion in bitcoin what we're seeing is ceos saying look this is who risky to have on our balance sheet they're considering it's like a currency that fluctuates wildly. whereas, square and a few other companies are saying look, this is quadrupled in

i mean, dave portnoy was critical, you let the little guy down.ashed the whole system, valid points given the state of play. susan: and also one more point, the fact that they wanted to limit both sides of the trade, think that would've been catastrophic if they did that so the fact that you could sell but not by was probably the middle ground that robinhood took. stuart: it was a good debate. let's look at bitcoin. we have it at 48700. frank chaparro is with us, the director of block news which deals with the technology underlying the crypto's. welcome. as i understand this in a way to fill me in. a lot of people are using borrowed money to buy bitcoin. i think-- you have reported on this, but does that mean the whole system faces risk if you have got a sharp downside move in bitcoin, systemic risk? >> thank you for having me on. long-term listener, first-time caller. great question and i have been packing it over the past several training sessions and when we look at the litigation-- liquidation and we have reported on this, we saw on monday a h

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he sat down for a grilling from his harshest critic of dave portnoy. you can guess. the park. >> you know everybody here is watching us hates your guts, right? >> that is what i hear. but, looking i'm glad to be on your show and hopefully we can get into it and answer a lot of these questions. ♪. insurance is cool. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ sarah shopped for the lowest mortgage rate and chose amerisave, the one choice she'll never regret... ...unlike buying a do-it-yourself orthodontics kit... or marrying eddie... visit amerisave.com now. lower mortgage rates mean higher savings. ♪. >> robinhood, clearly they're marketing everybody about them, we're going, democratizing trading, for the retail trader, all that that is the branding of robinhood. it clearly worked. when you force people to sell you only allowing them to sell but they can't buy. you cratered the stock. charles: barstool sports founder, friend of program, david portnoy taking the ceo of robinhood to the social media woodshed. holding vlad den tenev, holding his f

what's dave portnoy buying now.vous, but so i'm heavily involved in gambling stocks, because penn national which bought a minority share in bar style so i'm very familiar with that space, it's a legalized vic e, that marijuana i think it's space is green and open so i'm obviously a huge pen n guy. there's a little canadian company with canadian sports and the score tiny little company that i think is interesting, and then i have the normal guys, i still have paypal, i still like the tech guys all of the tech guys, but gambling space, people love to gamble and the retail trading shows it. charles: no, there's no doubt about it, and by the way, since you've been involved has been an absolute juggernaught. its been a pleasure talking with you, your final thoughts on where this goes and what you want to see and what you hope happens from here? >> yeah, you know, what happens when they shutdown trading cannot happen, and this pie in the sky stuff, but you can not allow the rich guys, the billionaires the hedge funds that

there and why the management of robinhood thought that was good to, you know, subject their ceo to davee portnoyy of the portnoys out there was that rob. en hollywood had -- robinhood halted the trading because it was in bed with big hedge funds that were short the stock, and it was bailing out these hedge funds like citadel. citadel securities buys its order flows, its owner, ken griffin, invested in another hedge fund that was losing money. that's the conspiracy theory. amid all that, liz, this is taking an interesting turn, that there are members of congress, there are people probably in the administration who are talking about limiting short selling. that's profiting when stocks go down. and because of that the, there is a lot of worry on the part of short sellers that there's going to be new regulation on this practice which is very necessary for the market, liz, because most stocked are touted. game -- stocks are touted. grahamstop, you know, it traded as high as $500 a share, amc -- by the way, when was the last time you checked your blackberry? people don't go to the mall anymore to buy

dave portnoy.how. >> thanks for having me. >> why is this resonating way beyond a business story? >> it's beyond business because you had -- this story went viral, the gamestop stock went viral and the others around amc so everyday people were investing. it wasn't just wall street. it wasn't even just day traders. this is the general public. we were getting e-mails from people who have nothing to do with the stock market investing money to get on this trend and right when they got on it, is when it plummeted because robinhood stopped it. so a lot of people lost a lot of money and people who weren't used to being in the stock market and people who i guess weren't expecting it to go down that way. it was a much bigger story because it involved everybody not just traders. >> let's talk about the good guys and the bad guys here. i saw you on another program you were heated up. you were talking about the anger toward the elites and the big shots and the wall street types. and that is catchy. people are

they have lost a ton of money including dave portnoy.ow a couple of things. you know, in talking to a guy you know quite well, charles payne a short while ago, they bet against the market, went beyond the market to something they didn't even exist. that is shorting the market to a degree goes beyond the stock that is issued is the main issue. the other thing it brought to line what is happening in the market. i don't think people like it. you deal with it on a daily basis but the average american is not day trading. they wonder how the multibillionaires become multibillionaires some earn it. some are smart about it. i understand it. some are brilliant analysts. other times they're playing the game. they're not creating. they're playing the game. the david in this case as opposed to goliath is not equipped to win this fight. stuart: what i worry about is when the ceo of robinhood gets hauled before maxine waters committee in the house, the financial services committee. i imagine with the little guy taking a beating, the politicians will b

joining me now, dave portnoy and nfl quarterback doug flutie. you are my brady expert. it. they had it him in new england. now he's in tampa and he's wing and they still hate him. >> i think with the patriots, people hate the patriots. they didn't like belichik. i think it's not as severe with tampa bay. i think people have come around to him to a certain level. i don't think the hate is the same. jesse: the media hates him more than ever. but the rest of the country, the hate has leveled off. are the boston fans rooting for tom brady? what's the mentality like up there? >> there is some disappointment when he left tampa, that's not tom's fault. but 78% of the people betting on the game in the boston area are supporting and betting on tampa bay. they are supporting what he's doing. i think that softens all those doubters who said they were cheating. tom at 43 years old bounces over to another team and has them in the same spot. jesse: i have a high source, as high as you can get, they told me gisele was the one who wanted tom to leave new england. she didn't think he wa

how do you think about dave portnoy in the context of being a key man for the success of barstool thee people online that are furious with him there are people saying that he should be sued, that the sec should investigate him effectively as one of the people that manipulated the stock or part of a pump and dump. you could see real -- look, we don't know if anything is going to happen in that regard, but given all of his various roles and a lot of the things he says off the cuff, how do you think about the key man risk from a shareholder perspective related to dave portnoy? >> well, look, dave -- dave is a entrepreneur down to the core. he started barstool in 2003 in his parents' basement. he's turned it from that and two employees to over 250. they've got 80 people that create content he's a marketing genius and i think that, you know, look, there's different ways to look at what happened with this gamestop issue i think dave makes some good points around some of the concerns and we'll see where this goes. i think time will tell but, you know, dave -- dave is certainly going to be vo

including barstool's dave portnoy. he said he lost $700,000 in a tweet. he attacked robinhood. attacked robinhood because this is free trading app a lot of investors use. they put restrictions in play. because of though restrictions that have been since been eased over the course of the past few days washington lawmakers will be looking into this. you have on february 18th, robinhood ceo could face the wrath of house representatives because he would be in the hot seat and explain any dialogue that went on between robinhood and hedge funds including citadel. this story is not ending anytime soon. with robinhood, the latest raising $2.4 billion from investors to help with the stock frenzy at the moment. looks like the ipo scheduled for may be more crucial than ever. but even that too could be put on the sidelines. neil, back to you, not from the snow but clearly in front of my bookcase. neil: i'm glad. you were going to get frostbite out there. >> thank you. neil: charlie gasparino has been like a dog on a bone with this story. latest revelation got people's attention. the by the

we also have dog the bounty hunter and dave portnoy. wild show. my amazing assistant. it's his birthday on sunday happy birthday, johnny. i have no idea how old you are, but you are a lot younger than i am. have a good one, buddy. >> greg: he has terrible taste in music. >> jesse: juan, you are up. >> juan: happy birthday, johnny. hey, steph curry, here is a three point shot that's going to make you jealous. certify. certify. what a shot and walkoff. he just keeps going with the vacuum and the trash bag. that's joe orion the custodian in findlay, ohio. you are seeing his shot on a security camera. the principal saw it, too. he was amazed and posted it on social media where it's become a sensation. here's what he said. our custodian is better than yours. trick shot nothing but net. said the principal kyleleterman. i have got to tell you that was awesome. >> jesse: that's a nice shot. what else are you going to do if the kids are at home, juan have. a little fun on the court. >> dagen: do it again, please. a very happy birthday to my good buddy d.w.

it's funny because dave portnoy was doing his thing online and saying did somebody just press the button and say go? who do i talk to who is going to tell me this is the moment this is the moment it happened with such force and intensity so quickly from your data you think that you can predict that >> so we don't claim to -- we have a service where investors can track when the number of mentions on reddit for any particular stock is increasing so we don't interpret or analyze the data we don't claim the stock will go up what we are seeing is that there is a lot of chatter around the stock today and for many other data sets as well and investors you need to pay attention. >> how much of the real action in terms of the communication that's happening among the social media enabled world is happening still on reddit. where do you think they go to private rooms in other places? >> sure. reddit is one of the very important sites where most of the action has happened but we do provide a platform with about 30 data sets and track not just social media we track data sets such as pricing, where a

>> dave portnoy is a hero to the world and how did he find his following initially? understood it. a monkey can understand it. the fact that there is any kind of disagreement or any kind of, you know, deniability, it is outrageous, charles. everybody knows it is the foundation of all the speculation has been built on don't fight the fed. charles: all right. well, maybe if they do have three hands, they will use the other one to knock back a few shots. appreciate it. >> thank you, charles. charles: speaking of knocking back a few shots? have you seen cannabis stocks? they are on fire. in part for democratic senators pushing for federalization. big names are down today. long-term investor are salivating over potential. the positions you may want to consider when this sector continues to move higher. i'm bringing in right now heritage capital president, he is also the cio, paul schatz. paul, first, i have to give you props, my man. gw pharma. major take over, $2.7 billion. there have been a lot of head fakes when it comes to marijuana stocks so why is it different this

. >> and to play the role of david port portnoy, i am choosing dave portnoy.hoice, because with the travel and lodging, 56% of consumers are saying they are likely to travel for fun, leisure or vacation this year which is not that down too much from the nonpandemic year when 70% of us take a trip. and the g.o.a.t. to get out and travel, and solidly in the green. and so, ed, i posted on the twitter, when do you plan to take the first -- and a lot of people said they have -- and when is the lee family hitting the road >> look, the lee family, we love to travel, and we take two to three trips the a year, and at least one or two of them abroad. we are not traveling this year, and even with the vaccine rollout. it is going, but it is not going as fast enough. and, you know, different parts of the world have different issues as well. so we don't see it in the immediate future, and maybe even not next year or towards the end of next year for us. we are not in the 56% -- >> what! >> that is a high number, frankly. >> i have a flight planned to europe in june that i am

dave portnoy kind of led the charge. the airlines doubled month after that.ork from home stocks part of the indices, all the fund managers said were overvalued. they ran es tesla up 600%. eventually included in the s&p 500. these retail investors, everybody comes out, to say, be careful, be careful. the professional investor have to be careful. the retail investors keep eating their lunch and winning and winning that will not happen forever. right now they're at the top of the mountain. not the hedge funds, not the professional investor they're ones at the losing end of this trade. charles: i got less than a minute. should there be any changes with ability to short more than 100% of a company's float or curbing what is said on chat rooms? >> cushing what said on chat rooms is very dangerous. i would be dead-set against that. shorting, the sec was invented in the 1933, because of shorting abuses in the 1929 crash. they should do their job. stop abusive short practices. that is one of the problems. maybe gamestop was undervalued but gamma squeeze because everyb

dave portnoy took the ceo of robinhood to task over his handling of the gamestop saga. >>> and a later a car wreck and emergency surgery yesterday. we'll bring you a live report from outside the hospital. it's wednesday, february 24th, 2021, and "squawk box" begins right now. >> good morning, everybody: welcome to "squawk box" here on cnbc i'm becky quick along with joe kernen and andrew ross sorkin, and we're going to start this morning with the markets because this was something to see. the dow coming off a wild -- actually ended the day with a gain investors can thank fed chairman jay powell for that turn around. he tells lawmakers inflation remains soft and bank is committed to policy. and no hints that they are

if dave portnoy calls, i don't care if you are in the share.thank you. is that what i learned from you alexina. >> get out of the shower. brian: absolutely. if you are in the connecticut area go to levita today hopefully get that business up and running and loosen the restrictions and give everybody a chance at success again. thanks for telling everybody your story. >> to thank you. >> thank you. brian: go to that restaurant. seeing increase in the murder rate in this country. what's fueling this rise in crime and what can be done to reverse it? we're going to talk to a law enforcement panel from cities across the country interest i to get to the bottom of this next. if you have... ...moderate to severe psoriasis, ... ...little things... ...can become your big moment. that's why there's otezla. otezla is not a cream. it's a pill that treats plaque psoriasis differently. with otezla, 75% clearer skin is achievable. don't use if you're allergic to otezla. it may cause severe diarrhea,... ...nausea or vomiting. otezla is associated with an increas

dave portnoy yesterday i agree with dave portnoy, who sounds the bell, who tells everybody when they're supposed to buy how does this happen because you oddly enough on reddit, and i would say most of the social media, you couldn't actually figure out what was going on unless there was a massive group of people doing this outside of the eyes frankly of the public. it was frankly to me very different than what we saw the last time around and the question is it retail, is it institutions you know, who whispered to who to say, you know, game on right now. i still don't get it i don't understand it. >> because we had the news of jim bell, we talked about it yesterday, and it didn't immediately happen that's the rational is that, you know, he wasn't going to be savvy or adept enough to turn it into whateve they think the chewy guy wants to turn it into, which is an online giant in gaming, i guess. the market cap even after the big move yesterday, it's back where it's not, remember, at the highs it was like, wait a second, but three, four, 5 billion, if you move from brick and mortar, and bec

david-- dave portnoy versus robinhood. what really happened with the gamestop meltdown?hey had not the market would've been taken down i think i learned more in last night's debate an

i want to put a tweet by dave portnoy from barstool sports on the screen, he's been fighting for theelongs in jail, of course that's the ceo of robin hood. on the can answer yes and no questions, i'm surprised he's not pleading the fifth. i think that's the hard part, we just had charlie gasparino on about this. you got 54 members of congress sitting in this finance committee right now who have never owned an individual stock and never meet a traitor. but you just saw maxine waters grilling one of those witnesses, that you can't answer a "yes" or "no" question. there must be some wrongdoing here. >> it's very frustrating. they ask a question that takes them three or 4 minutes to get out that has 14 parts and then they demand a "yes" or "no" answer and he essentially don't give the witness any chance to explain what's a nuanced information. this robin hood situation with game stop involved a lot of complicated stuff about the u.s. financial markets and how does settlement risks between the time you do the trade in the trade settles, a lot of this kind of really boring back office tech

of body, because he was in front of congress, and then he's in front of the great inquisitor, dave portnoy. >> and in some ways, dave got more out of him than congressional members. it's very true, jim. >> sure did. >> we'll pay more attention to that and of course later on in the morning. j&j the other big story moving a bit higher this morning on the fda endorsing the company's one dose covid vaccine, for emergency use, and meg terrel has more on that good morning, meg. >> good morning, carl, the briefing documents out from the fda are the first time we've seen the agency's take on these data the first vaccine that would just require a single dose, to provide efficacy and that's what they have filed for, the fda's go-ahead for, one shot and we've seen in these document, they've broken down the efficacy by region, we saw these in the original lin cal trials in the u.s., 72% efficacy south africa where they had more of the variant, 64%. and 68% in brazil. now, interestingly, when we look to see whether there were any variants included in the u.s. part of the trial that affected efficacy an

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

. >> there are other characters in this story as well, congresswoman, like dave portnoy the famous retailban do you think they bear any responsibility >> we don't know that is a whole nother issue, dealing with elon musk and bitcoin and all of that. that will not play in these hearings especially tomorrow. what we are going to do is deal with the players that have been clearly identified that were involved in january 28th i want to know exactly what happened with melvin capital and, you know, if they in fact were the ones who were involved with borrowing the stock, you know, from gamestop and they shorted it i want to know what they did i want to know how long they held it. i want to know what they did in between the time it was borrowed and the time that they had to buy it and so we are going to concentrate strictly on gamestop and big players around what happened on january 28th to contributor to the volatility and disruption in the markets. >> do you think that going forward hedge funds and others should all have to reveal their short positions in the same way they have to reveal long

things first of all i absolutely love the fact that bar stool sports has become 60 minutes and dave portnoyhis. >> mike wallace. >> mike wallace. i don't know i'm not old enough to have a working knowledge of all of the anchors on "60 minutes" but i like the fact that the kid showed up and answered his questions. by the way, portnoy is right if there hadn't been a halt in buying or if an announcement came out we're going to raise capital now so that there is no halt in buying, this might have all resolved differently the other thing i want to say very quickly, if you stage short gamestop from 400 something down to 40, you really didn't learn your lesson the first time the real lesson is this is a five, what, $5 billion there are people who have so much money right now that for them to just buy this company for $5 billion as a goof, like they might actually do it. it's like the joke in austin powers when dr. evil goes like this and he threatens the world over a million bucks it is nothing. there are people buying digital assets that have no value for a hundred million dollars just to make a

overall, we have a lot to go after today dave portnoy got it right, the little guy was left holding the bag and it did and in tears at least for some. president biden is still on the fence with the teachers union, press secretary jenna psyche waffles on getting back to in classroom teaching in the super bowl two days away, joe namath adjoins us. he was inspired by the crowd. what is a super bowl like with virtually no crowd? friday, february 5, "varney & co." is about to begin. ♪♪ stuart: it's gone from the streets and the sidewalks largely on sixth avenue, but still let's get at it. robinhood lifting trading restrictions on all stocks including gamestop. susan, the latest? susan: happy friday. you can buy as many shares of gamestop that you want on robinhood. most of the week you were limited to 100 shares of person, a reason that may be gamestop is down over 80% on the week, but you get a bit of a left this morning with proper head offering-- up-- they greeted by calling the game on today. we called it a gamestop phenomenon and it's been the poster charge of the reddit brigade against

capital those shares are up about 11% right now, 12% again on much higher than expected volume, on a dave portnoyere's the thing, if you can't spot the sucker in the first half hour at the table, then you are the sucker. watch cciv back to you. >> you learn from that quote about life in general, if you can't spot the sucker, it's in the mirror we are going, happy weekend, happy march, make sure you join us, "squawk on the street" is next >>> good friday morning, welcome to "squawk on the street," i'm carl quintanilla, with jim cramer and david faber we will put the month of february to bed today, with more chop, futures getting stronger after the worst day of the month so far and a wave of earnings to digest, the house sets up a vote on stimulus, and of course we will watch rates, 10-year, 1.47. that's where our road map begins and investors are looking to wrap up a tough week for stocks, and as a rise in yield rattles the market

. >> i love dave portnoy and i am on the exact opposite.tarted a broker deal with david and 99 and about six months later we went through the tech crash in march, april, 2000 and the same thing happened. they were calling saying we will restrict buying an increase margin requirements picked this is what happens. no one wants to go out of business. the fact that robinhood and their clearing firm needed more capital, that is the way the business works and i think i have been in the market for over 25 years and if you ask anyone that's been in the market that long, i think they will say the same thing so i don't think-- i think it's going way overboard to say anything was wrong or anyone should go to jail. they restricted by for a couple of days: no major impact on the gamestop story. david: one of the problems with the pushback on robinhood and i know they have done a lot to hurt their credibility with retail traders, but looking at what's going to happen today, you have a lot of lefties in congress and the chairman of the committee, maxine w

now the unofficial public space of reddit would you say has been dave portnoy? stuart: yes. some of the stocks have gained, i mean, tremendous one-day pops. for the whole week you have seen almost 100% gains and also aurora cannabis reporting better earnings. tilray will merge to become the biggest pot company in the world with tilray up almost 500% on the year. stuart: down this morning. citigroup giving alphabet-- i always call them google. susan: they still are. stuart: $2078 is the price now, but that company which ever was. susan: citigroup-- their target price is 24.15 almost 20% up from the current levels and the reason is recovery in advertising revenue as we saw for the final last three months of last year. explosive growth, still losing money. also, content news and how much they're willing to pay for publishers of. stuart: let's see how they close when the word gets out a major firm thinks they are going to 2400 as opposed to make 2000 even. i don't understand this, susan and you will explain. microsoft says google and facebook should have to pay for the news is s

there's some trash talk >> i respect our competitors, but the votes are in >> we'll have to get dave portnoy validator. >> can we go 65 minutes? can you make this hour 65 minutes? >> i can't, but jim cramer will never speak to me again. >> you're right. he's a new jersey guy. all right. thanks, governor we'll see you. >> take care, guys >> okay. andrew >>> coming up, when we return two big interviews you don't want to miss, lyft president and cfo of twitter going to join us. we head to a break a few of the morning's top headlines. nasdaq suing the s.e.c. over a planned overhaul of data and that overhaul supply and demand data in public fees in truth, they don't want it electric make looking to go public could be over $50 billion. >>> and former quarterback colin kaepernick his own spac. with consumer businesses with intent to generous positive social impacts otr day, another spac. stay tuned you're watchiing "squawk" on cnbc hi, i'm a new customer and i want your best new smartphone deal. well i'm an existing customer and i'd like your best new smartphone deal. oh do ya? actually it's for bo