i'm kelly evans here this morning with simon hobbs. and on microsoft strategy shift we begin this hour. software giant may introduce microsoft office to apple ipad. officials have yet to confirm reports out there but jon fortt is with us. maybe he can. jon, what do you think about all of this? >> i think that this is a really exciting potential announcement. we'll have to see the details. it's subject that i raised with with satya nadella before, before he became ceo. he's not as window centric as steve was. the key is how much they make available on the ifripad for fr. they're a bit late to the party. >> for free? >> yeah. you expect to see some available for free and then they're going to try to pull you into office 365 into upgrades to pay. they have to make something available for free for this to be much of an opportunity at all. apple's productivity software is already free on new ipads. >> apple's productivity software there is not excel, it's not

simon hobbs has that. >> relatively flat overall. weighted average, they like everybody else now wait to see what janet yellen and the rest of the fomc will do this afternoon. big news of the london that shocked a large number poop people there. the chancellor and the finance minister delivered his budget. in the uk you can save for your pension virtually tax free, unlimited. in return when you retire you have to buy an annuity from an insurer to spread that cash over the rest of your life. the uk is growing up and will no longer require new pensions effectively to buy those annuities. these are very large mega cap insurers that have fallen substantially on that news out of george osborne. on the flip side, some of the asset managers like the largest hedge fund that is traded in the world have bolted higher as you can see. they're also changing the tax the duty on betting. in betting shorts, you have these beens that are called fixed odds betting machines where you can basically bet about $150 in something like ten seconds. hugely co

simon hobbs is down at the new york stock exchange. simon, how does it look? >> business bounce back from yesterday. a lot of stocks doing badly yesterday have come back today. on the data front, iphone survey of confidence, relatively robust. the big news is the question whether the ecb is inching towards some form of quantitative easing group be aware the head of the bank is one of the hulkish on the ecb. he's giving an interview today where he says the unconventional measures under consideration of largely unchartered territory. we need a discussion about their effectiveness and cost and side effects. this does not mean a qe program is generally out of the question. but we have to ensure that the prohibition of monetary financing is respected. in other words, we can't buy sovereign debt. mario draghi just made comments in which he's suggest that small phones risk losing funds without policy action. maybe they will target not sovereign debt but potentially smaller and medium size businesses. weak on the euro and a lot of talk. let's see what the action is do

simon hobbs at the nyse. >> it's pretty brutal to be honest with you, scott.ook at where we are. risk aversion very much, commander of nato warning of a very sizable and very ready russian force on the border with the ukraine. the uk foreign minister saying that that in itself may mean that the crisis worsens. so through the session we've lost ground. it's a bigger selloff 1.75% than you've got in this country. it erupted around -- the selling or markdown erupted around 10:00 a.m. our time, 10:00 a.m. eastern. show you a session chart of where we've traded through and you see the way we immediately fell and then we've recouped some of those losses. it's interesting that the spanish financials have been hit quite bad today. that is true. but it's a broad base selloff. 90% of top stocks are lower. a lot of those that have done well recently to the point you've been making down, spain, italy and ireland have been hit worse. if you have a look at where we are for example on bank of ireland still up 16% year-to-date. so arguably booking profits on a winner. the spa

look at how some have surged 23%, 30% and 13%. >> simon hobbs, thanks to you.oming up, e-bay rejecting carl icahn's nominees. we'll talk to him and find out what his next move is. and jim cramer is off the coast of louisiana on an oil rig. the hard hat's off, jim. >> yeah, i want to get a little sun before i come back. >> yeah. can't wait for this, jim. how's it going down there? >> well, i got to tell you, i listened to lee. i got some great stuff for you about exactly the oil patch he mentioned. we have a lot of things to talk about and synergistic to what he's saying. >> cooperman, cramer, icahn, i can think of nothing better for a show. see you soon. back after this. opportunities aren't always obvious. sometimes they just drop in. cme group can help you navigate risks and capture opportunities. we enable you to reach global markets and drive forward with broader possibilities. cme group: how the world advances. lemme just get this out of here. to go. unlike some places, we don't just change your oil. our oil offer comes with a four-tire rotation and a 27-p

back to you. >> simon hobbs, thanks so much for that. guys? josh brown, give me a comment here.rn about ukraine. we mentioned yesterday and threw the question out as to whether we're paying enough attention to china. those two issue clearly more than anything that marc faber would say are having more impact on the market here. >> with all due respect to mr. faber i don't think he moves the s&p. i think you're right when you mention china. and i think you can actually pinpoint the weaker economic report that we got the first week of march. now he starts to see this pattern where markets open reasonably strong and then sell off. we've been fading late in the day. that's not a pattern that people like to see. the european stuff can be tied to that as well. i really think that, you know, this notion that china is going to grow at 7%, that's a given, is being rethought all over the world. that has consequences for every market and the munlt approximately more importantly that people are willing to pay. does it have a huge impact on the fundamentals of european equities or european st

simon hobbs joins us. >> you can see that it's far lower.over from yesterday's inaction from the ecb. simply lack of sympathy for low inflation and low growth. a lot of people are talking about that. of course you still have the event risk of whatever might happen in the ukraine which will much more impact europe than the united states. another reason why they're lower. the other thing, of course, is that was the ecb is doing nothing to boost the european economy, a least the fed was printing. but now the fed on the strong employment report today looks like it's going to pull back on the taper or continue the taper. and that in itself withdraws liquidity and another reason why we're down in europe so far today. let's look at the weekly charts. remember the excitement we had the heavy losses on monday on the ukraine and the bounceback on tuesday. europe has headed down net for the week overall. this is the united states still tracking higher as you can see. big focus for the week has been telecoms. that continue today with telecom italian ann

i'm carl quintanilla with simon hobbs and david faber at the new york stock exchange.ramer is off today. market facing some headwinds this morning. sop of the retail earnings were a little soft but there are high profile upgrades. the nasdaq could potentially fall for a fourth straight day today. watch the ten year and the three-year note auction later on. and europe is roughly flat. the nikkei up abo2/3rd this morning. >>> it's a busy morning for retail and we'll get some quarterly results from american eagle, dick's and urban outfitters. >>> dupont saying the severe winter weather and the situation in ukraine will impact sales. >>> and apple pushing record companies for exclusive first releases of songs through itunes. >>> and all show long we'll bring you the best of softbank's interview, his criticism of wireless service in the u.s. and his thoughts on alibaba and yahoo! and the 300-year plan, carl. i know you like that. >> think the long term. it's a long game. >>> jcpenney is a big gainer in the premarket. citi upgrades the department store chain to buy from neut

simon hobbs has the run down there. simon?> scott, the thing to realize about europe was that it opened today. down heavily. over 600 stocks around europe. only 27 of them were green. we have a major rebound coming through from, for example, france was down 0.8%. now up half of 1%. that's a huge move that you're getting on the european markets as they cut the losses. obviously they were inspired by yellen's comments yesterday. and this idea that the interest rate cycle around the world potentially is beginning to turn. what was interesting is that you still haven't had a full recovery on bonds though. bonds sold off on what yellen had to say. the yields went higher. chiefly actually at the core of europe and you can see it here on italy and spain as well. the yield's higher. we are getting a little bit of a retrenchment. talking just about the stocks doing well from high interest rates. and the comment here was the financials while in europe, the big insurers have started moving to the upside. look at these. standard life whic

simon hobbs, back to you. >> more importantly spring will be here., the senior economics editor. more data, the jobless data and the retail sales. boil it all down, fed is till on track to taper assets next week? >> i think that's right, simon. just a quick word on these inventory numbers, you know, you don't necessarily want to see these rising. they are up a little bit more than expected at 0.4. the inventory-to-sales ratio creeping up a bit from 1.3 in december to 1.32 in january. it might mean there's a little bit more inventory to work off depending on how the economy does and sales do. a lot depending on jobs and retail sales which we got this morning. 315 on claims coming in better than expected. jobs doing okay, the forward moving average hasn't been this low in quite a while. february retail sales up a tick. exauto 0.03. and we are discounting this number both because of weather but because it wasn't much of a snapback. the big declines in december and especially january and then this modest about a zero three rounds up from zero 2 six. look

the johnson markets are close right now, simon hobbs lots of green on that board. >> reporter: that'sy the gains during the european session. almost 2% gain in germany. don't forget they have fallen quite heavily for the last six sessions in negative territory. inflation data was poor heading in the wrong direction went down 0.7%. more pressure on the ecb. a lot of weaker banks exposed to emerging markets and peripheral debt they did well. national bank of greece portuguese bank all doing reasonable well. siemens was upgratd by jpmorgan and bank of america. they are up 3.5%. the sector that's powering ahead is the uk home builders after the british government said it was going to extend the scheme that they have there, the help to buy scheme which basically means you can buy an apartment for up to a million dollars by putting down i believe a 5% deposit, partly determined by or guaranteed by the government. home builders rocking higher. vodafone has done another deal in europe buying the spanish cable operator for $10 billion. for american investors in the wake of the verizon wireless

simon hobbs has a run down of the activity and how the map looks today. ss, simon, it looks decent. >> it is, scottie. we're at a two-week high rebo d rebounding on most of the markets. italy, spain, ireland, all up over 1% as you can see. still a huge debate about what the ecb might do moving forward. is extra stimulus on the way. hope that china, too, will have an infusion. stock level, the uk fascinating in financial services at the moment. a lot of the big insurers are higher. people keep buying asset managers to diversify. standard life has spent $650. rsa insurance has a $5 billion annuity deal. legal and general is higher as you can e. the uk government continues to attempt to sell out of its stakes that it a. acquired through the financial crisis in key banks. today it sold a $7 billion stake in lloyds bank. takes the government's share back down to 25%. they sold it around 75, i think is the figure they sold out. that's above the break even price that the government claims of 61 pence a share for the uk taxpayer. the big one, of course, scott, rem

. >>> in the meantime, european markets are set to close and simon hobbs at the new york stock exchangeas more. simon, as you go through this report, bear in mind we may have to break away for the secretary. >> i do hope so. if you look closely at the falls in europe today, sent much more on the peripheral markets i would argue the event risk here for the markets is more about simply the markets falling rather than actually what might happen with russia over the weekend because booking profits on those stocks that have done particularly well. look though at where we've traded in europe since the crisis erupted and you will see this major underperformance coming through a lot of stocks clearly directly exposed to russians a sets. down there over 4% in the last two weeks. but today the selling has centered much more on the stocks doing well. which are the eurozone banks. i can tell you bank of ireland, for example, is up 21% still for the year. french telecoms, of course, have done well recently, scottie. we've spoken about that through the week. today the french minister said, maybe vive

simon hobbs has it covered for us. >> hi, scott. the move is down we had here in the united states has taken the edge off the european market. overall, it's another great day after two days of losses. what i would.out to you here is what's actually winning now. and you will see that it's ireland, portugal, italy, and greece. let me do that for you. greece, ireland -- greece, italy, portugal, and ireland. peripheral countries are doing well. european central bank is giving details of the asset quality review, how it's going to judge bank balance sheets going into the summer stress test. you will see that's of the top 170 banks. you will see that a 234u8 ber of the banks are doing particularly well in the wake of that. unicredit, italy's larges, just took a $21 billion loss on its quarter as provisions and makes write-downs in preparation for the stress tests. this is the largest bank in portugal. the yields there have fallen to a four-year low. it may be able to exit the bailout package. the bank of require land, merrill lynch, says

simon hobbs is covering the action for us at the no, stock exchange. >> it's a much worse performancepe as you can see. a lot of red, deep red. disappointment in industrial production falling in january when we thought we would get it up. china, all that stuff from china fed over. high profile earnings misses as well in europe today. ironically in on environment where you worry about chinese growth, actually some of the miners bounced in london today partly because of the precious metals bounce which you highlighted ten minutes ago. not all bond markets in europe surged today but the irish and the -- irish and the italian are notable, the irish ten-year hit a record low today. they tomorrow are going to auction bonds for the first time in four years. that's the first market of course to exit the international bailout and italy had a record low on the one year today and for the first thyme auctions at some inflakes-linked debt. that's one reason why the news flow, of course, on the italian banks. and others over there like the big energy play that behaves a little bit, scott, like a bo

simon hobbs has those details. pretty good gains, too. >> we gained through the session. wall street has gained partly as a result of what's been happening or not happening as far as the ukraine is concerned. so it's a broad base rally. individual stock stories are also moving. resolution, for example, is losing the founder. former ge executive is down. the real interesting one is the automotives today and the french carmakers have made gains through the session. p vw has come back and said that's all the money that you're getting. the reason that those carmakers are doing so well today is because we've actually had fresh figures out from the trade industry about what has been happening in europe. and year over year there's now sales and, remember, they're coming from six years of contraction up around 8% and it's u.s. carmakers within that that have done particularly well. i'm hope that i'm -- i'm kind of talking hoping a graphic -- here we go. >> there it is. >> no, that's not what i wanted. that's pictures of cars. i wanted to show you that, for example, gm and ford ha

speaking of people from overseas, simon hobbs is here with a special guest who used to pilot -- you didn't >> no, my guest did. 747s for ireland. guys, surging traffic across the atlantic's helped push the stock of british airways and iag up a whopping, get this, 140% since january of last year. a cnbc exclusive interview, willie walsh joins us from washington, d.c. where he was presented with an award. welcome to the program. congratulations. >> thank you very much. >> we should be clear, this has been a hard slog for you guys. you are actually integrating four airlines, thousands of job losses, major conflict at time with the labor unions. you ruffled an awful lot of feathers. are you there yet? >> not quite but we have made excellent progress. i think we are well on the way to delivering the sort of results that we believe are important and necessary in the industry. >> how do you feel about the fact that you are, of course, almost alone with your u.s. counterparts in not being able to file for chapter 11 bankruptcy which they all have done. you've had to do it in a different way. is it

we want to bring in simon hobbs.tion you see in the markets to europe's most dangerous crisis since the fall of the berlin wall. the selling is having 97% of top stocks in negative territory today. you'll see a different view from european politicians who are much more softly, softly, much more going for diplomatic solution. one of the major reasons for that is this is the ukraine, is that so much of russian -- so much of the imports, 40% of all gas and oil imports come from russia through the pipelines in ukraine. this is an area putin is nervous about at the moment. one of the major concerns they have is not just the businesses in russia but that the financial conditions can worsen in russia. the ukraine owes about $30 billion to the russian banks. what happens if that isn't paid? what happens within russia? let me show you some of the big banks that have fallen around europe today. as i say it's a mass selloff that you've seen or a mass markdown. there is a contagion risk for markets. things could get much worse i

simon hobbs, you're on the floor with a special guest. >> yep, absolutely.ngs. to investors it's all about the two brand turn around stories and the price it's able to charge to fill its 100 ships through this year and next. this is the ntsb. kicks off a two-day public forum on industry safety in d.c. here for an cnbc exclusive the arnold donald, straight off the earnings call at his headquarters in miami. it's nice to see you again. thank you for joining us. >> hi, simon. how are you today? >> i'm okay. before we get into the nitty-gritty of the business, let's talk about the customer facing side of the turn around story and just give us some color on the deal to put the dr. seuss characters on the ships, the deal with carnival live with jennifer hudson singing on ship oroff sent us footage of your newest ship which will be joining the fleet next year. >> as you know, simon, we have ten brands. a lot of focus is on the carnival and costos brands. dr. seuss, the live concerts with jennifer hudson, lady antebellum, jewel, and a host of other entertainers. the

i'm carl quintanilla with simon hobbs, david faber at the new york stock exchange.. futures rebounding after a couple of rough days. retail sales came in with a beat. jobless claims a three-month low is the weak winter data starting to thaw. ten-year yield would suggest still some reason to doubt that around 274. stan fisher on the hill today for his vice chair confirmation hearing and europe is relatively mixed today. the roadmap begins with amazon, new prime

i'm carl quintanilla with simon hobbs and david faber at the new york stock exchange.me headwinds this morning. sop of the retail earnings were a little soft but there are high profile upgrades. the nasdaq could potentially fall for a fourth straight day today. watch the ten year and the three-year note auction later on. and europe is roughly flat. the nikkei

clap along ♪ >> good tuesday morning welcome to "squawk on the street" i'm carl quintanilla with simon hobbsres are a little happy today. some bounce after vladimir putin deescalates the ukraine situation saying he sees no need for military action, has no plans to annex the crimean peninsula. the bulls will take it. the ten year has been a fear gauge you saw it above two six and europe is trying to get back what it lost yesterday, gold is also down about

. >> let's get to simon hobbs, see what's coming up at 10:00. >> good morning to you. welcome back.rner, he's attempting to prevent cyberattacks from the ukraine into this country. looking importantly at whether markets are now underpricing geopolitical risk. are we reaching a tipping point? that on hour two of "squawk on the street." for hearburn? yea. try alka seltzer fruit chews. they work fast on heart burn and taste awesome. these are good. told ya! i'm feeling better already. alka-seltzer fruit chews. enjoy the relief! humans -- we are beautifully imperfect creatures, living in an imperfect world. that's why liberty mutual insurance has your back, offering exclusive products like optional better car replacement, where, if your car is totaled, we give you the money to buy one a model year newer. call... and ask an insurance expert about all our benefits today, like our 24/7 support and service, because at liberty mutual insurance, we believe our customers do their best out there in the world, so we do everything we can to be there for them when they need us. plus, you could sav

simon hobbs, they didn't this morning. how are marketing reactsing? on rates but there has been chatter going into today's meeting and certainly it capped the rally. we have not been able to make substantial gains if you took the weight out. essentially flattish today. certainly the euro shot higher. that's true as we have mario draghi's news conference. he was suggesting that recently the data -- let's look at mario draghi. the recent news out of europe because by and large positive as things stood at the moment. jpmorgan is suggest that he might do something in the future, some small move but he would be immaterial disappointment to get there. the you're yeuro at a new high year. i just showed you where we are in deutsche telekom. telecoms are hot in europe this morning. it has basically reduced the free cash flow forecast by $2 billion as they build out the faster lte network here in the united states. now saying they're going to target 250 people -- 250 million people by the end of the year. deutsche telekom is in negative territory. in france, a

clap along ♪ >> good tuesday morning welcome to "squawk on the street" i'm carl quintanilla with simon hobbs david faber at the new york exchange. cramer is off today. futures are a little happy today. some bounce after vladimir putin deescalates the ukraine situation saying he sees no need for military action, has no plans to annex the crimean peninsula. the bulls will take it. the ten year has been a fear gauge you saw it above two six and europe is trying to get back what it lost yesterday, gold is also down about $13. the roadmap begins with the markets looking to rebound as tensions in the ukraine ease at least for the time being. gold pulling back from that four-month high. >>> however, putin still calling the situation in ukraine an unconstitutional coup, we'll go live to kiev for the latest developments from the region. >>> and shares of radioshack dropping almost 30% in the premarket after the company announced it's closing 1,100 underperforming stores. >>> but we'll begin with the markets as we said trying to rebound from the selloff yesterday despite the turmoil in ukraine, future

. >> thank you simon hobbs. >>> as you might have known by now, elon musk is on capitol hill today speaking space x and is a board member for both of those companies. steve jer vet sonurvetson is a manager director. great to have you. good morning. >> good morning. thank you. >> so much to talk with you about. you go way back with a bunch of names we cover evidence. what elon is telling the hill. it sounds like he's saying the bidding process should be opened up defending space x saying subsidies are not really a factor at this point. what's the message that you and musk want to come out of capitol hill? >> well, i'm not a spokesperson for musk or capitol hill. he's going to do a great job himself in that regard. but what he's generally communicating to the government is that space x is here and provides a wonderful alternative and competition globally for launch. they launch commercial satellites, they launch in the future astronauts to space, they bring cargo to space station. and having more than one option is good for competition. and for a sign of how dramatic that is there's been a th