Keith bliss. Keith, welcome thank you very much, morgan good to be with you. Mid averages did hit new records this morning but have drifted back down to the flat line, not really moving very much right now are you surprised by that . Not at all. Im a little suppliesed at trpre lack of action it seems theyve hit their own food coma as we wait for earnings to come through we have 300 companies that are going to report next week. We are on fed watch, of course, waiting for the july 31st Rate Decision a bit like waiting and waiting markets are taking a breather right now. Here in the u. S. And elsewhere around the globe, people are starting to go on their holiday so you have lack of participation. Were going to get into all of that a little more. Secretary mnuchins crackdown. Wilfred is covering citi earnings dion is watching the debt ceiling debate lets begin with treasury secretary Steven Mnuchins comments on crypto moments ago eamon javers has that. The rarely used White House PressBriefing Room these days, put a marker down on skepticism about this idea of cryptocurrency, and specifically about facebooks plan for its own cryptocurrency i asked the treasury secretary about where things stand on the regulatory side with the fed, and then also whether or not he ultimately wants facebook to be in this business at all. Heres what he said. J. Powell and i meet weekly and we talked about this extensively. There are these discussions going on they will continue to go on. Again, to the extent that facebook can do this correctly and can have a payment system, you know, correctly with proper aml, thats fine theyve got a lot of work to do to convince us to get to that place. So, more gone, the treasury secretary there saying facebook has a lot of work to do. The bar here in terms of regulation is very high. Theres been a lot of speculation the past hour. Why was treasury secretary mnuchin doing this today what it was it about this day that brought him to the Briefing Room and what im told, in talking to some people around the white house, this is the treasury secretary very much responding to what the president wants here in terms of facebook this is not necessarily shouldnt necessarily be read as a response to regulatory agent azizirad around the world who are also making moves on cryptocurrency this is very much the treasury secretary and the president of the United States being on the same page here, morgan eamon, thank you very much. Lets bring in Julia Boorstin with facebooks reaction to ma fluch mnuchins News Conference. They anticipated regulation from central bank and lawmakers around the world thats why they announced libra a year out from its anticipated creation so we could have those conversations. Facebook pointing me to libra chief marcuss post they will work with all relevant stakeholders in the prepared congressional remarks for tomorrow, he says libra will be regulated by the swiss government, and that libra as well as Facebooks Calibra wallet will comply with all u. S. Laws back over to you and morgan. Julia, thank you. We have facebook testifying on the hill tomorrow. You referenced that, julia keith, what do you think, whats your reaction to the treasury secretarys comments today and what does this do in terms of libra actually becoming a reality in the next year how cynical do you guys want me to be very. Okay, fine. Think about what monetary authorities do and what they do with the money supply and controlling the money supply, how it indicates on Interest Rates. And really, i think they sense cryptocurrency, not just the fed, but the ecb, bank of japan and bank of china has bitcoin has been ill legal sometime now. They sense some movement with cryptocurrencies where they will quickly lose control of money supply and therefore their Monetary Authority and how they dictate economic policies and how it conveys to us if you read facebooks white paper which i have a copy of right here, libra white paper, what they are talking about is they have 2. 7 billion monthly active users and a large majority of those overseas are unbanked or do have have access to Financial Services. This is giving them access to Financial Services not only being able to bank remitage sances, payments, but doing it in a very affordable way which the existing systems are controlled by one party or just a couple parties and therefore makes it very expensive and out of reach for people around the globe including people here. I think facebook is pushing back a little bit on this and probably be a stable coin, i think theyll get to the end game the question, of course, even if this is focused on emerging markets is whether they will proceed with it if the u. S. Says theyre going to be regulated maybe not quite as a bank with a bank charter but mnuchin saying they would have to have aml, Money Laundering work, would facebook proceed with it. That would seem unlikely on the surface unless they think this is the future of the company as opposed to the broader social media aspect thats right. The bad knock thats happened is it is true that bitcoin was used for illicit activities when it first came out, when bad actors around the world figured out they could launder money or buy illicit drukz with it and use it as the currency of choice. You have to bear in mind if you have any bitcoin atm today, which there are several hundred in the u. S. And around the globe, you have to go through an amlkyc process, flow your antiMoney Laundering process before you can transact in that. The systems are in place again, if you read the libra white paper, Facebook Says out loud that they want to work with the regulators one of the problems with cryptocurrencies in the past, they tried to do it in the shad is owes of the banking system. They want to work with the regulators i think this is a way, again, based on the tweets of the president , Steve Mnuchin treasury secretary is saying theyre going to get ahead of this i think theyll get to a resolution at some point something well want to continue watching as this develops it is a big week for Bank Earnings, talking about financials, citigroup reporting this morning wolf has the highlights from that i do. L they both beat expectations but were flatter than expected with tax cost control. Net interest margin fell to 2. 67 lower than 2. 71 forecast. That said, 3 loan growth and 5 deposit growth meant net income did grow and metrics were sound. Their markets related businesses were down year over year but slightly better than expected. Trading was down 5 . It was forecast down high single digit. Investment banking was down 10 . It was forecast for down mid teens. Reiteration of the return on equity, Net Interest Income targets gave the shares support intraday they are also up 37 coming into this year to date. Id say the share Price Performance showing that this was a decent set of numbers because the rest of the banks are lower, yields have slipped as well which has hurt the banks to date. But it shows this is a showme quarter for the banks. We were wondering whether the set up is cuff this shows its a tough set up in the term, and they are going to have to beat resoundingly to get a pop and citi ending the day flat how did you think this sets us up for the earnings as the week unfolds the set up itself, going back to the point yields moving lower today has weighed broadly on the other banks as well. If youre looking for beats on this, it was slightly superficial. It wasnt resoundingly, Interest Rates moves, doesnt hurt us at all. Margins 14ri7d a bit thats why you see banks down. See if they can reiterate guidance for the rest of the year which is what citi managed to do today. The other problem theyre facing as well well see in the next few quarters, the Net Interest Margin decreasing as the yield curve starts to come down but if a lot of people think were very long in the cycle and credit quality is going to start to hamper the banks, now you have two things working against them in their core franchise business, quite frankly what were seeing in trading and Investment Banking from the last quarter is not going to be enough to make up. Thats why youre seeing sideways moves on the banks. It will be interesting to see what the reports are tomorrow. In the meebantime the debates heating up over the debt ceiling. Secretary mnuchin expressing Conference Congress will raise the debt ceiling before leaving for summer recess. Hes been talking with not only House Speaker nancy pelosi, but also minority leader kevin mccarl think and senate ma nort leader Mitch Mcconnell ideally theyll do a twoyear deal and raise the federal spending caps. I think there is a preference on both parties to the extent we can agree on the debt ceiling and a budget deal, that that is the first choice and i think were getting closer mnuchin said the deadline for action could be the first week of september, and thats when treasury could run out of cash congress doesnt come back from recess until september 9th, guys, so theres not a lot of time left to reach that agreement. Back over to you thank you all right. We have got 51 or i guess about 50 minutes left in the session right now the dow, s p 500 and nasdaq, they all hit record highs earlier this the session, currently trading mixed, although just around the flat line now for more on todays moves lets bring in jim bianco from Bianco Research what do you think of the markets . They could be higher. Thing that thats been driving them is the fed is easing. The prospects of negative Earnings Growth which is what we are projecting for the Second Quarter and the Third Quarter, thats the consensus projected negative Earnings Growth right now as long as the fed delivers and the rates stay down, that should be continue to be a tail wind for the stock market do you think, keith, the short term we bought signals in the short term especially the russell 2000 which is an index thats been lagging large caps for a variety of reasons on that i agree with jim i think we can grind higher as i said a couple weeks ago. We could melt up through july. That was based primarily on the thesis they were going to cut rates on that. If we do have an earnings recession, were going to have to have the rate cuts globally and ease money supply to keep the equity market growing. What s p target are you looking at if the positives come through . We came in a little bit last week in the short term we could certainly see the s p trade up to 3060, 3070 in our work. At that point wed be overbought and wed trade back down to the neutral point. But, listen, i dont see any reason why we couldnt run another 5 or 6 into the end of the year based upon what we see. James, im looking at notes from you you said trade is not a factor what do you mean by that i dont think that the trade talks with china has been a factor in this market pretty much the whole year. I think that at the end of the day the market is looking through and seeing theres going to be a deal or there is going to be something that is not deleterious to the economy the market will have to reassess, but i know we hyperventilate over every tweet, every word about trade the market keeps going up. I dont see it being a major factor right now jim, thanks so much for joining us great to see you as always still ahead well have much more on Bank Earnings. J. P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs get set to report results tomorrow morning the former wells fargo ceo will join us. His outlook ahead, maybe comments on who should fill the open spot there as ceo sounds like a little foreshadowing. Plus we have shares of broad come and semantic moving in opposite directions as the merger talks between those two Companies Fall apart were going to discuss what led to that break down in negotiations and as we head to break, here is a check on our closing bell data tracker. The Empire State Manufacturing index topping estimates with a reading of 4. 3 that was a big reversal from Julian Assange when the index turned in its first negative reading since 2016 were right back after this break. When i was diagnosed with breast cancer, i went straight to ctca. After my mastectomy, i felt like part of my identity was being taken away. My team made me feel whole again. Cancer Treatment Centers of america. Appointments available now. Wake up theres a lot that needs to get done today. Small things. Big things. Too hard to do alone things. Day after day, you need to get it all done. And here to listen and help you through it all is bank of america. With the expertise and knowhow you need to reach that blissful state of doneness. So lets get after it. Everything is all right what would you like the power to do . ® all right welcome back to the closing bell amazon keeping off its longest ever prime day as other retailers offer sales of their own. Courtney reagan has more at headquarters hey, court good afternoon. Amazons prime day event is a quarter of the way through we have quite a ways to go no word on how its going from amazon or other retailers. Price blink shows amazon branded or exclusive products, the fire tv stick, echo dot and echo show, theyre getting the most attention again this year by page views nerd wallet said thats not surprising prices will are lower today than they were on black friday 2018 if theyre amazonowned products, its amazon controlled pricing. Amazon shares are up half a percent today. A analysis of the past four prime day events shows a month later 100 of the time, amazon shares are higher. By an average return of 5 perhaps foreshadowing what well see for amazon shares a month from now back over to you court, thank you. Meantime send it over to mike san toll i who is back with his market dashboard thanks. Pick up on the amazon conversation, something im calling eating the competition they say you shouldnt go to the super market hungry. Maybe that applies to titling charts, too. Heres the theme kids feasting while parents starve, thats another kind of haves and have notes story starting to feel fool, market valuations soon. And a wellfed market. Fed and markets, all together. So eating the competition. A look at this chart of amazon come cared to a couple industry met tricks, the standard etf, the xly the orange line in the middle and equal weighted Consumer Discretionary, what youll see here is amazon at 23 or 24 of the s p Consumer Discretionary sector right now has been dragging the entire thing up so if it were equal weighted, youd see it is not at an alltime high. Its 2 below its record high from a couple months ago obviously amazon tremendous weight, its kind of getting more than its share of the growth of the valuation, of the investor dollars in here and i think what you could say is you cant look at the equal weighted version and say that must mean underlying consumer economy is weak. Its kind of afz secular situation here with who is in favor. So thats why it is not as much of an economic bellwether as it used to be housing, autos, other stuff in there besides retail but really does show you at a trillion dollars the force of amazon in the market guys mike, im digging the theme today and it certainly plays off of what keith said earlier, this idea that the market isnt a food com weve eaten too much. Were in a food coma you have this aws business, advertising business, octopus arms of amazon that hasnt to do with ecommerce. What part doesnt do with discretionary . The majority of their business, even though aws is coming up to speed quickly jeff bezos is quoted as saying were thinking of the next 100 things were going to lose money at theyre always looking to innovate if you look at amazon, i always tell people theres eye reason it calls amazon. Theres a reason it goes from a to z with a smile on it. Theyre all things to all people while it remains a big part of their business, theyll drive customer etf after the break, bank of america raising a red flag about the state of the u. S. Beer market hitting one name with a double downgrade well get the word on the street on that call next. Plus Pivotal Research says one bank stock has a bigger regular tree overhang than the other names in the group and its not facebook. Well speak to the analyst behind that note coming up your daily dashboard from fidelity. A visual snapshot of your investments. Key portfolio events. All in one place. Because when its decision time. You need decision tech. Only from fidelity. Welcome back to closing bell time now to get the word on the street ubs downgrading General Electric to neutral, taking a breather after the recent stock outperformance notable decline in Interest Rates and weakness in the power market, down 1. 25 citigroup downgrading l brands to neutral saying victorias secret brand may not see a turn around. The firm also says management will slow to meaningful change, and that culture norms, which value inclusivity, have shifted away from victorias secret brand positioning. Still l brands is up 1 right now. Bank of america giving mole son coors from under perform to buy. The firm citing concerns the company would have to increase spending to stabilize market share. Bank of america says core brands are declining faster than the overall beer category. Canned wine, canned wine are more on trend. That stock is down 1 . Have you tried either spiked cider or can wine . Can wine if youre going to an event or Something Like that. Im more of a beer drinker myself