here is cnbc's jon fortt. >> show dad what you're doing. >> reporter: mike rehm doesn't own a pc, but he does just about everything, including his taxes, on his tablet. rehm is part of a growing wave of filers doing their taxes on a touch screen. he's one of more than six million turbotax customers who have already filed taxes on mobile devices this year, on track to double over last year. >> i still don't like to pay the taxes. however, it does make it a lot easier, a little more painless. >> you made some mistakes. >> reporter: gone are the dark images of doing your taxes or being overwhelmed by paper receipts. these days, people are buying more tablets and smartphones, fewer pcs, and they're doing their taxes on mobile devices too, even in a place like a coffee shop. but just because you can doesn't mean you should. but with hackers these days looking to steal personal information, is it safe to file wirelessly? >> what people don't understand, there is no 100% way of making wireless secure. there is none. don't use open wifi. don't use wifi that is not under your control. and once

jon fortt has more on firetv. >> introducing amazon firetv. >> reporter: tech geeks have expected this for awhile, and it'skd some cost half as much. amazon's firetv costs more because it can do more the company says. that's the gamble. >> i think it's too high a price. i think it doesn't do what the gamers would want. the serious gamers will go towards x-box or something like that. i don't think it makes enough sense to solve enough consumer problems so this is off the shelf obvious christmas gift later this year >> reporter: this particular move to bring streaming video to the living room comes at an interesting time. apple ceo tim cook said a few weeks ago, apple tv became a $1 billion business last year for the first time. and tech watchers now expect the company to make an even bigger tv play later this year. amazon itself just hiked the price of its prime subscription service that includes streaming video to $99 from 79. even as it's spending millions of dollars to get exclusive streaming rights to shows like "downton abby" and "24" the crunch time in october and november when ap

our jon fortt is live you side the event in new york with more. jon? >> hey, a few clues.space decked out a little bit like a movie theater, milk duds, three big screens and an entertainment center set up. i saw dave, another one of the amazon kindle hardware executives up there. he told me, hey, eager to see what you guys think about it. we've been looking at it in closed-in room for a while. it will be nice to get this out to the world. obviously we know it's video, it's streaming. some piece of hardware involved in getting that information that entertainment, that digital media to people a little bit more seamlessly. we'll see how it stacks up against the competition when they announced in a few minutes jon, thank you very much. jon fortt, it's going to be a big event. we think we know sort of where they're going with the movie posters and the popcorn but we'll await specifics in a few moments. >>> this morning's squawk feed, joining us is john steinberg. good morning to have you. let's begin with amazon's big announcement on video. what do you think this is going to en

thank you. >> thank you, jon fortt. thank you, mr. krzanich.pearances over the years ahead. >>> let's trade intel. one of the so-called old techs getting a lot of play. >> the key here, the stock has had a nice run-up, but if you listen to what mr. krzanich was saying, back six months or a year ago, people would tell you absolute fact the pc was dead. if you're listening to what he's saying from the front lines, it's not dead. i don't think you sell intel. i'd way for a bit of a pullback. if the pc is going to have a new cycle coming up, intel's the name you want to own. >> pc client group. still nearly $8 billion of the rev here. servers, 3 billion or thereabouts, judge, doing 40 million for tablets, inventories are manageable, they're not excessive at all. i believe they called him, what, good across the entire supply chain. so those are all positives for intel. i agree with murph. i don't think you have to chase here, but it's in my portfolio for the playoffs. i'm still going to hold it. >> yeah? >> you see intel showed us what they are just

jon fortt outside the event. again, where amazon just unve unveiled that device. let's bring in senior analyst for his take. jordan, jon lays this out for us. says it looks pretty good. is it good enough to compete or beat the rokus, the apples, the googles, the whoever else is going to enter this ball game? >> two questions here. first, why is amazon doing this? amazon really didn't miss out on music which originally went towards apple related devices and quickly morphed over to spotify and pandora. they missed out an video and went to netflix and hulu and a few others. clearly they would have hit a home run with books and the kindle e-reader. this is their new bet. this is what they're trying to do. they are trying to get to a point where they matter for all forms of media. i don't think this will work. i think it's too high a price. i think it doesn't do what the gamers would want. the serious gamers will go towards xbox. i don't think it makes enough sense to solve enough consumer problems so this is off the shelf obvious christmas gift this year. >> you have s

our jon fortt is here. this is news to me.t of geeks out there would say you shouldn't use i.e. anyway. but this has to do with the vulnerability in the browser itself, in the way memory can get corrupted. if a hacker tricks into going to a certain corrupted website, they can take over your computer, have access, even within your business, to all sorts of permissions, administrative permissions. >> they're going to try to fix it. >>> a lot of people with questions about how will they get the older operating system browsers patched up. >> maybe you don't know this, but my assumption is hackers go after a lot of microsoft stuff, because it is so ubiquitous. is internet explorer still if the number one browser used? >> it depends on the numbers you use. stat counter has one set, net applications has another. i.e. is still big, no matter whose numbers you use. >> that's just on the pc. mobile browser is entirely different story. >> bottom line would you use it today? >> no, i would not. >> there's your answer. jon fortt, simple an

jon fortt, nbc news, new york. >>> when we come back here tonight, something we said here last nightgot a lot of people all revved up in a good way. >>> april 15th, this date means tax day every year. sadly for the people of boston it will always signify a tragedy as it always will in the uk. it was 25 years ago today at a semifinal soccer match between liverpool and nottingham forest because of gross overcrowding and a standing room only area a barrier gave way, people were crushed. 96 people were killed. chaos ensued. a subsequent report found systemic failure by emergency services among others at the match. >>> hopefully where you live you didn't have the cloudy skies we did here last night and you got to see the blood moon. the strong orange hue that overtook the moon during last night's eclipse. it was best described this way. if you're standing on the moon last night the earth would have blotted out the sun leaving only a glowing orange ring from every sunset and sunrise on earth simultaneously. that reflected glow reflected back on the moon was what was visible last night. >>>

>> carl was very envious of jon fortt and i not wearing ties. looks great, though. >> he always looks great. >>> speaking of jon fortt, he has another tech story this morning. shares of ebay are down big despite strong revenue growth across the board. the stock, though, look at it. down 5%. the big question, of course, is this questionable tax repatriation, and jon fortt is live in los angeles with some answers. jon? >> thanks, kayla. good numbers from ebay. 4.3 billion in the top line. 70-cent eps, but a lot of questions about what ebay has done accounting-wise. they really have taken a noncash charge that gives them flexibility to repatriate overseas cash if they choose to do that. but taking a look at the business in general, john donohoe struck an optimistic tone about the rest of the business, though the u.s. business performed as expected, but international did a bit better. listen to what he had to say. >> international growth is strong. domestic growth is about where we thought it would be. we think we have good opportunities in the seco

our own jon fortt joins us with more.let or on some other mobile device? >> well, kayla, i'm a simple man. always done my own taxes, ever since i got out of college. and i've always done them on a pc or in the past couple of years, actually on a tablet. look, half of people either use an accountant, half use an accountant, half file themselves through some sort of digital means. actually, one in five people last year used a mobile device. and that's accelerating. 6 million people at the beginning of this month had already filed on a mobile device, up from 5 million entire last tax season. we could see more than a third of people who file themselves doing it on mobile devices this year. that's according to intuit. so it's an interesting show that it's not just about viewing content on mobile devices anymore. increasingly we're using them to actually create content, to fill out complicated forms. people who file a simple return can take a picture with their phone, but even more complicated taxes -- you know, i had a move fr

jon fortt, kevin o'leary.k" on tuesdays. >>> you will see him later this hour, too, because up next if you're in the market for a laptop this spring, which one is right for you? luckily we've got the guy, walt mossbe mossberg, on the case. and walt will join us when his picks when "squawk on the street" comes back. e financial noise financial noise financial noise financial noise >>> s&p 500 hitting a new intraday high today. the consumer discretionary sector a big winner on the s&p. if more on that we head back to domed a headquarters. >> kay larks a strong session for the consumer discretionary stocks led by of all companies trip adviser and expedia and price line. more on the online travel side. prease line group. also in the group here ford which reported better than expected march vehicle sales and delphi, the automotive parts maker. overall it's a broad swath with regard to all consumer related stocks. remember, they didn't have a great first quarter but they are roaring out of the gate this time around.

. >> our own jon fortt joining us as well. more people tuning into pandora these days.ared to the year ago. pandora also gaining share, over 9% of the total radio users using the platform. last couple of months dennis gave the bulls but this is a nice number. >> apple incursion into the apple radio sent that stock down for a while. those growth numbers are darn impressive. 9% of all radio listening hours. but i did a little research, carl. i looked at how much money pandora has made in the last seven years. you know the answer, right? >> i think i do. >> the answer is nothing. it's lost, i think, close to $100 million. so this is a call valued at $6 billion. the market loves the growth. but as we know about the pandora business model in some ways the more it sells the more it loses. >> $100 million. box lost that in just a last couple of months. >> badge of honor at this point. you look at the traffic numbers. not much about pandora's product seems to change. how much can we attribute to dumb luck? >> i charted out the listener hours over the past three years to get a s

jon fortt back in silicon valley ahead with more on what we expect to hear from intel's ceo. jon?kayla, thanks. you take a look at last night's report. revenues were pretty much inline. they did well on margins and where they project those will go, partly because 14 nanometer, the manufacturing process they're bringing up to speed now, they've already dealt with a lot of the costs of that. so they're getting margin improvement from that going forward. the enterprise pc market is holding up well, but brian and stacy smith, the cfo, said consumers are generally looking weak across the board, across the globe. and they're making a lot of investments in mobile. they've stated this goal of wanting 40 million tablets being 40 million tablets by the end of this year. they said they shipped into 5 million tablets so far this year, so they're on track. a lot of these are lower-end tablet, and the chips intel has now are sort of overbuilt for the lower-end tablets where they see the opportunities. so they're really giving discounts to the tablet makers to put their chips inside those. they

the ceo will have more with jon fortt in a minute.at geico could save them money on car insurance, right? you see the thing is geico, well, could help them save on boat insurance too. hey! okay...i'm ready to come in now. hello? i'm trying my best. seriously, i'm...i'm serious. request to come ashore. geico. saving people money on more than just car insurance. [ girl ] my mom, she makes underwater fans that are powered by the moon. ♪ she can print amazing things, right from her computer. [ whirring ] [ train whistle blows ] she makes trains that are friends with trees. ♪ my mom works at ge. ♪ >>> coming up at the top of the hour, is the correction already over? we're going to find out what the traders think and how they're playing it, and we'll help you process the barrage of earnings reports and decide which ones matter most to the market. meantime, shares of netflix down nearly 30% from their highs, but one analyst just slapped a buy rating on the stock. we're going to talk to the man who made that big call, all straight ahead at th

joining us is john steinberg along with our own jon fortt. ebay is down about 2% even though this agreementot of the tech names falling off. you have facebook, netflix, tesla. jon? >> yeah, take a look at who's down. amazon around 3%. workday, pandora, cheg, zynga, linkedin, down more than that. this is what we've been talking about. i really think we'll look to earnings, particularly next week they kick off, to see what the fundamentals of these businesses are, particularly some of the fundamental tech names where some of the money's been going, and we'll kind of get a sense at the end of april where this will go. >> also, these are stocks that have all, in many cases, doubled or tripled over the past year. they're moving up 4%, 5% in a day, down 4%, 5% in a day. they're tremendously volatile. facebook had the sheryl sandberg commitment run, holding onto some of those gains. it's sort of all over the map. >> it's quite difficult for them to get leverage, if they are -- and i assume they are -- those that have been bought on borrowed money. this very heavy level of leverage at the new york

smartphones and tablets, i think you'll see revenue in that segment jump about 6%, says tomorrow jon forttl be interviewing intel's ceo, so stay tuned for that one. >> he'll be on with brian kerzanich at 12:30 eastern time. josh, thank you very much scott -- sorry. simon, down to you. >>> it is tax day. as you rush to file returns, you could be in for a surprise. what kind of surprise are we talking about? >> no, you go to file your taxes and get a response that your return has not been accepted, because somebody else already filed in your name. this is happening to about 2 million this year, some you won't believe it happened to. you won't believe who, coming up next on "power lunch." dysfunction get in your way? talk to youroctor about viagra. ask if your heart is healthy enough for sex. do not take viagra if you take nitrates for chest pain. it may cause an unsafe drop in blood pressure. side effects include headache, flushing, upset stomach, and abnormal vision. to avoid long-term injury, seek immediate medical help for an erection lasting more than four hours. stop taking viagra and c

jon fortt and natry morris are here to explain just mu have you vulnerable we are and what we can do.> heart bleed is a bug in the code to open ssl. what open ssl is the protocol that web sites use to authenticate themselves to their own servers so they can access information like padwords, secure information that we want very secure. >> so is this s. jon, a malicious bug inserted by something or just a flaw? >> it was probably just a mistake in the way the code was written. the way you know kind of what this is about, you know how when you go to a banking site you see https, there's a lock that appears, that's when you're supposed to be having an encrypted session. everything that you send back and forth to that servers -- >> is not what it means this. >> it's supposed to be secure, but the problem is they left this lock capable of being picked, because they didn't write the code quite right, so right now a bunch of companies are racing to apply a patch to servers, issue new certificates. >> why is it so scary? >> it's been there since december of 2011. the past two years we've been

jon fortt out for us in los angeles. at the lingering gdp and topics of concern over the interest rates. >> for more analysis on the fed meeting and the state of the u.s. economy let's bring in former fed governor randy kroszner. good to have you with us. >> good to be back. >> how do you think janet yellen is doing? >> i think she's doing a fine job. i think continuing on with the taper like they have been doing makes a lot of sense, and it's really kind of steady as she goes. >> it's interesting, both from the tenor of what you said there and the market reaction which is positive for the first time after a fed meeting in i don't know how long, does this not suggest, and i think -- it was neal irwin writing in "the times," the post" as well that the fed meetings and jobs reports aren't exciting anymore because it seems to be kind of steady as she goes. is that the case, or are we too complacent here about how strong the economy really is? >> interesting that the fed is flirting -- that the dow is flirting within a all-t

let's ask ryan lawler from tech crunch along with jon fortt.t's the difference between amazon fire tv, for example, and let's pick say google chrome cast. >> well, the big difference between amazon's fire tv and chrome cast right now is the price. amazon is coming in at $99. chrome cast is around $30 or $40. so if you're going to choose just based on price, obviously chrome cast is where you would go. the difference in the content that they provide isn't that huge. chrome cast does require you to have either a smartphone or a tablet to connect to it. it doesn't have apps natively lined up on that device, but, you know, it's a pretty competitive market right now. >> jon, have you tried all these? you know, technology, content, price point, those are the things that you try to differentiate themselves from. how do you compare them? >> well, i haven't tried all of them but a few key differences here with this fire tv. if you're already a kindle user, you have some preferences that will move over. for instance, somewhere where you stop watching a t

enjoying what's happening on twitter, not feeling like -- >> jon fortt sits at the cool kids' table at lunch. >> yes. a lonely table. >> a great dresser, and he has a gazillion followers, as well. >> way fewer than you two. >> more on that later. we'll see how the redesign is received. >>> and for the time being, the dow is currently up. scott wapner. >> plenty of meat on the bone to discuss. you have a great rest of the day. welcome to "halftime" show. here's what's in our playbook. fire sale or falling knife. is it time to load up on facebook, netflix, and yahoo!? a top analyst says yes. paying dividends. with investors playing the safety trade, is your best move to stick with what's working? motif of the month. how to create your own portfolio from the hottest trends in investing. the man who can make that happen is here live. let's meet today's starting lineup, pete, joe, josh, jim leventhal, steve suttmeier is with us, as well. we begin with the nasdaq coming off the worst three-day stretch in years, rising a bit now, and racing the question of whether the sell-off in momentum nam

jon fortt joins us with more. what do we know?have. let's start off with social networking. how many teens would you think rate facebook as their number-one most important social network? >> close to last, right? >> well, 23%. >> 23? >> not that bad. what do you think is the most important, kayla? >> i would guess instagram. >> instagram, yeah. >> at 30%, yes. the spread not too bad, actually, when you think about it. seven-point spread, but makes zuckerberg look brilliant, snapping that up before facebook went public. they had data on phones and watches, iphone gaining share apparently from fall to spring, around the survey around 7.5,000 -- or 7,500 teens. 17% of teens eager to get an iwatch up from 12% six months ago. so apple, some good news here, even though samsung's marketing suggests apple's for old people, teens still like it. >> i did a straw poll, much caller, two teenage cousins, and they said we like instagram because we don't have to listen to people's political views, we don't have to see what our parents are postin

joining us, kevin o'leary, author of "the cold hard truth on men, women, and money," and our own jon forttter major losses over the past few days. the nasdaq is up today, not long after posting the biggest three-day drop. the rally seems to have come to a screeching halt. the nasdaq down 6% from highs that were hit obviously a month ago. kevin, how has this hit home for you, the decline of the shares? >> you know, i learned years ago, carl, i don't invest in stocks that don't pay dividends. i'm old school. 70% of the returns of the last 40 years have come from cash flow. different ends. -- dividends. having looked at that as a student of the markets, you can't talk me into a part that doesn't pay a dividend. sorry. i watched this volatility from afar. i hope you're enjoying it. [ laughter ] my portfolio is like a chicken on stick, dripping cash. >> interesting. how long have you had that rule, and do you ignore the sales forecasts for some of the industries? >> i learned it from a remarkable experience. my mother died seven years ago, and she had a secret account. i wondered where she had

jon, what do you think -- fortt, i should say. >> about the yen? >> no. broadly.p batting around here. i don't feel there is a clear picture. some are saying, look, you are getting a lot of -- >> tax selling. you haven't even brought up tax selling. >> two things in particular on my mind as we look at this. one we just started to get headlines saying the retail investor is coming back into the market paying attention. what exactly are they paying attention to as we see this happening? are they getting spooked about maybe putting that tax refund into the market as we go a couple weeks out? another thing is that period between march 14th and march 21st where we seem to see this move out of some of those momentum stocks into tech stocks, into some of those more traditional tech stocks. if the money wants to move that way but earnings and guidance don't give a lot of confidence, then where does that money go? does it rotate somewhere else? i'm curious what everybody else thinks. >> i'd say end of january we had a spike vix that spiked to 22. end of february we had a s

. >> jon fortt, i want to get to technology stocks here. is it done? that massive sell-off happens.ind of gorges themself. they finally going to come back here? >> i'm still a little uneasy. i've been watching these tech earnings. you go down the line, they're unimpressive overall particularly on the top line. google, basically a revenue miss. ibm, same. intel did pretty well, pretty much hit the number but benefited from some xp refresh. xp support is running out. that enterprise is refreshing there. intel same. that consumer is still weak worldwide. next week we've got a very important week one day in particular i want to point out. wednesday, we have f5 qualcomm, apple, facebook and zynga. all on the same day. that's all on wednesday. we're going to get a really good look at how big techs that are making money are doing, little techs that really aren't making money are doing and grow stocks. i think once we get that look we'll have a better sense. >> jon, i think you were being polite. these earnings were lousy. look at ibm today. the bar is getting lower and lower as we get into

. >> after a week long absence, jo jon fortt is back. >> good to be back. >> welcome home. >> startinge major indices. apple, microsoft, yahoo! making moves to the upside. watching apple trading at levels not seen since december of 2012. several internet companies moving in the opposite direction with high multiples, netflix, am s zon and -- amazon and linked in among the losers. the argument made again in the "times" some of these companies that don't show a profit yet are beginning to see investors lose interest and patience. >> we talked about this before saw momentum move away from big stocks on the hopes we see macro growth and maybe some companies would do well. my queasy feeling was about what if they don't project good earnings, good results when they release guidance. actually, it seems like they have for the most part. you look at apple, what they did, some other companies, google, et cetera. seems like that comfort for the big techs came back as we saw those results come in and now we're just watching the macro. we feel pretty good about that, i think. >> lance, when you thi

our own jon fortt will be sitting down to get a take on earnings and what's next for the company. >>> took over nearly 14 years ago. should a company's stock price be a factor in determining when a ceo should go? the panel weighing in and after the break how did the rough winter impact the railway business. hear from cfx chairman mike ward. that's all coming up on the "closing bell." keep it right here. pags >>> welcome back. when general electric handed the ceo title to jeff immelt nearly 13 years ago, suddenly the plan was for him to run the company for the next 20 year, but a new report says immelt may be leaving sooner than that. mary thompson has the details. >> ge declined to comment on the report in the "wall street journal" today referring to it as speculation. that 20-year mark linked to the idea that immelt might stay on until the mandatory retirement age of 65, but he doesn't have a contract and serves at the pleasure of the board and the report says he doesn't have any immediate plans to step down. during his 13-year ten your the stock has lost 35% of its value though he's

. >> and jon fortt, buzz feed president and that major sell jo last week and most of the move is thankse often talking about. this morning, netflix, twitter, priceline, all moves to the upside and the ceo joined us in the last hour and told us what has set hits company apart from the other names. take a listen. >> a business that makes a lot of money. any can look at the numbers. last year, our top line grew 38% year-over-year, gross profit grew 40% year-over-year. there's a difference between companies on one side of the internet that have business models that work and act like any other business, very high returns on capital and others that find their baseline. priceline has focused on profitable growth. >> interesting take. if i'm a deleveraged hedge fund i might parcel that carefully. >> on why we are where we are at. the average company stock was up 2,000% as of 2013 as the ebitda expanded 16%. the sales growth went on average to 26% down from 40%. you have slowing growth when you have expansion of multiples. you look at dmv and they say we have a little more growth than anticipate

cnbc's jon fortt is here with that story. >> good morning.ing that because that's what everybody is expecting. they've got their vp who's head of kindle coming out to host this thing. hardware, streaming, it kind of makes sense. take a look at the landscape. there are an estimated around 25 million amazon prime subscribers. a lot of these people are subscribing, of course, to get two-day delivery. other perks, not necessarily just video. that's kind of the adressable market for amazon. i think it's no coincidence that this is launching just two weeks ahead of the price hike for existing members. this might entice people to stick around if there are a few extra things they can do with prime and the video service. netflix has 44 million subscribers. it's the big dog. and of course, the people who sign up for netflix sign up for streaming nowadays. xbox live has 50 million subscribers. a combination of people who want to do online gaming and people who are getting video benefit there. and apple tv has moved around 30 million units since that fir

, coexecutive editor at re/code along with jon steinberg, buzzfeed president and ceo and our own jon forttet's start with the big ipo of the morning. grubhub, that's intraday as the stock opened just north of 40. now settling down to 37.79. interesting story. we talked to the ceo in the last hour and he talked about the acquisition of seamless and how it helped his company. take a listen. >> integration has been incredible. cultures have meshed wonderfully. the individuals are pen nominal to work with. in terms of the restaurants, we're actively integrating the restaurants themselves so that the restaurant's available on either of our brands are identic identical. >> there were nice visuals of grubhub here at the nyse. people dressed as pizzas and sandwich wraps. the ceo, look at the opening bell as they were on the balcony. also tweeted seamless tweeted we've run a lot of bells in our day but this was the biggest one. jon, your thoughts on what that means for them and the ipo picture at large. >> it's rare you get a european preview the day before. justeat went public. priced at 15 times

joining us is cara fisher, along with our own jon fortt. guys, we want to start with the market.a healthy correction, it ends badly. are the people in your camp looking at this as a healthy correction? >> well, you know, it did go up a lot. so i think there was a lot of high stocks, linkedin, facebook, twitter, all sort of reaching rather large numbers. i'm not clear on what that -- why that was happening. so i think they're probably glad for a correction, although i think the decline has been pretty precipitous in the past month, i guess. >> cara -- >> -- bad news. >> cara, the valley feels different about these market moves than the street does. a lot of companies have been using their stocks as currency in different ways to make big acquisitions. facebook comes to mind. also, it's important as compensation. what do you think the impact is out there, just kind of depending on which way the market moves from here, if there is a dramatic move? >> well, it's not good. they have been using the stocks -- think about facebook, the two acquisitions it made, a lot of it was stock. goog

. >> a cnbc contributor, jon fo t fortt. good morning to you.book and netflix. we have seen yelp and stocks continue to extend their losses into this morning. cramer's point was he wouldn't be afraid to take a flyer on one high flyer and be prepared to be wrong tomorrow. in this level, technically, some say they're getting close. >> if this was 2000, you would say they're bad companies and not coming back. you look at google or facebook, almost at the lowest levels it's had in a very long time. you have to look at these on a company by company basis, do the homework and decide which ones you want to be for the long h l haul. >> this is confusing, zillow, twitter, zynga, f5, also a lot of momentum names down. we have earnings next week and tuesday we have intel, yahoo! google and sandisk. i will be watching in particular intel because of what it says about pcs and servers. google for the advertising market in general and enterprise markets where they've been struggling. what they say about the second half is going to be really important for other