joining us in new york is kate moore. -- in the income statement -- are you focused on nominal gdp and the spirit of revenue growth or do you go down the income statement to cost-cutting and maybe sustained a better margins? what is it? kate: there's a ton of stuff. the top line and you will see which companies are continuing to grow the revenues. this far into the cycle, i think that's critical. of also watching how much slightly higher input costs and perhaps some percolating inflation is flowing through in margins. guidanceies are giving and expecting that to happen impact over the next few quarters or years. probably the most important thing i'm watching in earnings season -- and i think this is true of a lot of investors -- the guidance that a lot of companies are giving us. tom: let me have you become a fed expert here and do the work of others at blackrock looking at central bank policy. if rates come up, does that impinge on corporations or is that a signal of a buoyant and good american economy? which is it? kate

[applause] next to me is kate moore and kate is the author of the radium girls, the dark story of america's shining women and i learned literally shining. this is about young women who worked in the radium dialback restoring order one. they painted the dials the faces watches and they did that with luminous radium paint which at the time, early on, was thought to be a great thing, a really good thing for you. many of these watches made it to soldiers who went to the battlefront and later it was discovered that the radium companies had made them sick, very sick, and they went after the companies who knew something about that at the time and that was a long, hard fight. the book was named book of the year 2017 by npr and barnes & noble and voted the librarians favorite nonfiction book the 2017. i'm a librarian so i loved it. british writer she's purchased numerous bestsellers across many different genres. she spent more than 15 books and her work has been translated into more than 12 languages. this is kate. [applause] liza is a journalist and author of four books most recently coded girls, t

let's go around the horn and get predictions from our panel kate moore, let's start with you. >> yeah. >> slightly higher than consensus. lower than the trend we've seen over the last two months i think we have, you know, strong business confidence we'll continue to see hiring the one question mark for me is what happens in terms of retail since we saw the challenger data suggesting there are significant increase in terms of layoffs >> you already gave yours. >> 150,000 not that i'm rooting against america, i just think of america on a moving average basis. you had 330 last month and 150 this month that is perfectly good >> alex? >> well, i'm taking the high side jason's perspective is reasonable you know, if we're above trend two months in a row maybe the next one will be below i think when i look at the specific data from last month, i see a lot of good news i think we may come in at 260. the unemployment rate might tick down finally to 4% the only thing that i see really is a drag from last month may be the weather, the snow that, you know, has some people depressed i think. >> mor