Tonight, Hillary Clinton officially accepts her partys nomination, and just minutes from now, were going to speak with one of wall streets biggest backers of the clinton campai campaign, mark lazri. Thats katy perry doing a sound check. Shes wearing a black baseball cap that says hrc for Hillary Rodham clinton. Im assuming you can hear her roar. Right now, in fact. Welcome to the busiest earnings day of the quarter. The dow is down, but apple continuing its solid run. Your big dow laggard right now happens to be boeing, down about 2 . Lets get downtown, and our own bob pisani with a scorecard on earnings season as we officially reach the halfway mark. Bob, how are we doing . The numbers are slowly improving, but still negative. Lets look at the Second Quarter scorecard. The s p 500 as a whole, these are Companies Reporting as well as companies that havent yet reported, what we call the blended earnings rate, down 2. 8 . Thats not good. Its still negative, but its better than it was a few days ago when it was down 3. 7 . So the earnings narrative is very simple. We were supposed to have bottomed out in the First Quarter. Lets take a look. So far, that narrative is holding up. We were down 5 on earnings in the First Quarter. Right now, in the Second Quarter down 2. 8 . And were scheduled to go positive, 1 in the third quarter, and notably positive in the fourth quarter. The key story is ending four quarters of negative earnings growth. Thats what we call that earnings recession. So here is the key issues for the second half. Brexit in china quiet right now, but oil is a major problem at 41. Dollars have been a lot stronger recently and that also could be a problem for major multinationals, including Companies Like colgate. Overall, its too soon to call an end to that earnings recession, the four consecutive quarters of negative growth. But q1 was likely the bottom for earnings and second half guidance is holding up. Thats the key reason the s p 500 has been holding up near the highs. Back to you. Lets go back down to philadelphia and michelle live at the dnc. Hi, michelle. Hi there, tyler. The countdown is on to Hillary Clintons big speech, and all week leading up to her big night, speakers have been making the case that donald trump is unfit to serve. Last night, Michael Bloomberg took his wax at the fellow new york billionaire. Im a new yorker, and i know a con when i see one. Here, another new york billionaire, mark lazri, 13 billion hedge fund, where Chelsea Clinton once worked. Good to have you here. A pleasure. Thank you for having me. Were using the stick mics in case katy perry starts singing again. Chelsea clinton worked for you. Shes got to make a speech for you. Is she going to have what it takes to deliver votes to her mother . Yes, i think what youre going to find, shes exceptionally bright. Shes a great speaker. Phenomenal human being. I think youre going to find a phenomenal speech. If speech have done any searches on the dnc wikileaks, your name comes up. Not your email, but youre referred to. I am. Youre on a list of people who could be invited to play golf with obama. Did they invite you . They did. Did you go . No, i dont really play golf. Was it nice to be asked . It was very nice. I think its very nice any time you can spend time with the president of the United States, i think its a real honor. I would have loved to, other than the fact i think it would have been very boring for him to be on a golf course with me. Theres another email where you are referred to. Responding to a question about you. Theyre going to come to you for money. She says were asking for 100,000 for the convention. Do you want a different ask . Did they hit you up . Theyve asked. I havent given yet. Are you going to . Probably. 100 grand . More than that . I dont know what the number is yet, but ill probably end up donating. How do you think about it . I think part of it is, look, we have to do our bit. My view is ive been phenomenally lucky. I wasnt born here. I was able to come to this country. I think its a real honor at times to be able to do some of the things that im doing. When people look at this, and youre not the only one, they make references to it. And the New York Times described when they read through all these emails as the incredibly revealing sometimes ingratiating transactional nature of money in politics. I think some people look at it and say theyre disgusted by it. Should they be . I think, look, i think its peoples opinions. I dont have a problem if somebody is upset about it or if theyre not. I think for me, if im giving to the Democratic Party, its because i want to end up helping others. I think thats sort of my view about it. I think at times it does get a little bit crazy because youre being asked to give quite a bit of money. And i think what youll find, for me, ill never give to a super pac. Im happy to give what the federal limits are, in essence what the government says youre allowed to do. Is there too much money in politics . Yeah, i think theres way too much money in politics, yes. Should there be anything done about that . I think people are trying to do that. I think what they had done when they had limited before super pac s, when there were federal limits, i thought that was great. Brian . Hey, brian. Good luck to your bucks. The Milwaukee Bucks this year. You and i have spoken in the past. Youre the son of a schoolteacher. You were raised in an extremely middle class guy. Youve now achieved wealth and fame. Wall street is blamed for a lot of things. Some of it well deserved, maybe some of it not so much. Youre a wall street guy. How does that feel . Youre talking to the leaders here, are there times when youve had to sort of stick up for wall street . Well, you do. At the end of the day, in any industry, theres going to be some bad guys and i think we have our fair share. But the vast majority of everybody, and i think in any industry, whether its wall street or anything else, everybodys trying to do good and everybodys trying to help. I think what i do when im talking to people is try to explain, you know, everything that wall street is trying to do. Were trying to help the economy and trying to help this country. Do you get ticked off sometimes . Im sorry . Do you get angry sometimes . Ticked off. Oh, i dont know if its angry. I think you get very frustrated. I think frustration is a better word. Then you sort of put your head down and say look, this is going to take a while and you keep on working it. I look at this like its going to take five or ten years. For wall street, it can get its good name back. There was a time when it was talked about you being the ambassador to france potentially under barack obama when Hillary Clinton was running the state department. That didnt happen. Do you have any still diplomatic aspirations if she becomes president . I think it would be great to serve your country. The problem is with all the costs and the conflicts that are there, its just too hard. For what im doing, i love it. I think its great. Im able to invest capital for our investors and for myself. Its something i love and its something ill continue doing. When you say the costs and conflict, you wouldnt really have to take that position. You would have to completely disengage from the other, correct . Thats correct. And thats something i wouldnt be prepared to do. Tyler. Mark, would you favor higher taxes on super wealthy individuals like yourself, number one . And do you favor a repeal of the carried interest rule in taxes . Look, i think ultimately, at the end of the day, taxes are probably going to go up. And i think thats fine. The question is by how much. And regarding the carried interest, i think to me, whether we pay ordinary income or capital gains, i dont have a problem with us playing ordinary income. I know a number of you are trying to keep the carried interest. But if youre asking my personal opinion, i dont have a problem with it at all. On july 18th we can turn to the markets, before we let you go. You were on cnbc july 18th. Yes. And you said the continued rise in the stock market didnt make sense to you. You still feel that way right now . I do, but at the end of the day, if the market is going to continue going up, really what thats saying is the economy is fine. What we do, where were purely a dead investor, at the end of the day, thats all good. If equities keep going up, that means the value of our debt also is going up because theres more equity value. And youre more likely to get paid back. Much, much more likely to get paid back, yes. There were concerns about whether or not theres issues the economy. Look, i think the economy is doing fine. Im not a big believer that the economy is going to do 2 or 3 . But i do think the economy is going to at least doing 1 to 2 . And thats fine. If it does better, thats great. Are we a nation that 1 or 2 is fine . No, you want to be making 3 or 4 . I totally agree. The question is can we get there. And hopefully we can. But if youre make 1 to 2 , that means youre growing. Youre not growing by as much as you want, but at least youre growing. And thats the goal. If your downside is one to two, and your upside is three to four, youre going to want to take that. Thank you so much, mr. Lasry. You enjoy katy perry . Yeah. She stops now that weve finished the interview. Marc lasry, thanks so much. Tyler . Michelle, thank you. Bond market news alert. Sevenyear notes up for auction. Rick santelli tracking the action. Whats the demand, rick . Well, just as marc said, if you can make 1. 5 to 2 sound good, i can make a really mediocre c grade for this auction seem wonderful when you look at how horrible the previous two have been. 28 billion, sevenyear notes. Yield at dutch auction. 1. 34. Pretty much where the market was trading up at the end. 65. 5. Indirect is a little better. That is actually, other than the last auction, had to go back to february of 2013 to find a lower one. Dealers take 26. 8 . But a c isnt bad, but in a way it is. Investors still scratching their heads trying to interpret all the variables and i dont think the bank of japan tonight is going to make it any easier. Tyler and the gang, back to you. All right, rick, thank you very much. Coming up, the cloud. You cant go a day without hearing about it. Oracle betting billions more on it. Everybodys talk about it. But what exactly is it . A rundown of the cloud and some of the key cloud players that maybe are the next to get bought, coming up. I asked my dentist if an electric toothbrush was going to clean better than a manual. He said sure. But dont get just any one. Get one inspired by dentists, with a round brush head. Go pro with oralb. Oralbs rounded brush head cups your teeth to break up plaque and rotates to sweep it away. And oralb delivers a clinically proven superior clean versus sonicare diamondclean. My mouth feels super clean oralb. Know youre getting a superior clean. Im never going back to a manual brush. Welcome back. Your big corporate story today, oracle buying cloud competing company net suite for 9. 3 billion. It continues oracles push into the cloud. It also makes oracle founder Larry Ellison even more of an uber billionaire since he also cofounded netsuite and is its biggest shareholder. Kind of like a quarterback throwing a long touchdown pass to himself. That said, you cant go a day without hearing about this thing called the cloud. What is it and whos in it . To massively oversimplify, the cloud is any Software Running from somewhere other than your desk top or on a nearby server. And that way, microsofts old hotmail is in some ways Cloud Computing. Microsoft, google, alphabet, and amazon are really the big three big players right now providing everything from email to file sharing to pushing software to your computer from some other location. Now, oracle and sales force are making big moves into the space, like that 9 billion deal that was done today. And that is leading a lot of people to wonder, what other Companies May be targets . Theres no way to know for sure, but here are some of the smaller and mid cap players in various Cloud Computing sectors. Youve got workday. Ultimate software. Service now. Tyler technologies. And zen desk. Again, there are others. Those are just five names that stuck out to us. Now, lets bring in an analyst with piper jaf rhfre. Our own john fort also with us now. Alex, any of those companies that we just mentioned, or maybe some others that you cover, do you believe ripe for a buyout . Yeah, brian, thanks for having me on. Id say, you know, you can look at service now as one of the really scaled platforms in the space. The stock was indicated down 5 , their reported earnings yesterday, stocks up 5 today. I think that would be a transformational acquisition on par with, you know, microsofts acquisition of linkedin. You look at an ultimate software, which really has what we think is a dominant market position in Human Capital management. We also think zendesk makes a tremendous amount of sense for a number of vendors looking to leverage the power of customer satisfaction. Also we think it makes sense for a tuckin for somebody like an s. A. P. I think its really important to realize what stage were in right now with the cloud. Weve got these infrastructure companies, infrastructure as a service, sort of the hardware portion of the cloud. Thats amazon. Thats microsoft. Google and oracle trying to get stronger in there. But amazon and microsoft far and away ahead. Were in this period where those who are strong are trying to get stronger and distance themselves from the pack. Now, this clearly makes sense from netsuites point of view. It is an application player. It neetds to get beefed up in order to grow. Oracle clearly thinks that in some way, this is beneficial to them, loading their cloud. Versus them ending up theyre probably not going to end up with amazon. Ellisons got 40 . You can get it. If youre Larry Ellison. They say Larry Ellison was not involved himself in discussions about the specific deal. And his shares wont count in what needs to be voted. To johns point, theres a big difference between gmail and google sheets. And some of these enterprise. The corporate sides of the transactions. Thats where netsuite lives. Who else is in that enterprise space where we wouldnt talk about them in our daytoday lives but the i. T. Heads at our companies would . I think sales force is the one that really sticks out. You can look as recently as just last year when there were all kinds of speculations floating around about microsoft and sales force. Its how you do your payroll. I get paid every month. When i go online, i can check whos paying me. Its in the cloud. Those are two that are obvious ones that stick out. Its a company that was sort of people soft, built all over again by the people who built people software, basically drummed out by Larry Ellison, when oracle did its takeover. Workday is there, but its unclear where it might end up. Theyre very close to sales force and mark benioff, so sales force sort of plays as a potential acquirer, because its been so successful in the cloud, from an application and increasingly platform perspective. But also potentially acquired by the likes of microsoft. Going to alex, i know weve got to wrap. Is sales force at a 55 billion market cap, slap a 30 premium on that, pretty much youre looking at 70 billion. Are they too big to get bought . Or could an ibm, who needs to grow in this space, just throw caution to the wind and throw the money down . And i have no knowledge. Im just throwing ibms name out there because theyre the name we havent talked about. You know, brian, thats a great question. I think some people will speculate that sales force is too big. Im not one of them. I think that we are still, you know, maybe in the early innings of really a transformation in enterprise software, and i think software in general. So, you know, i dont i cant say thats not a possibility sometime in the future. It would have to be google, microsoft, or amazon, i think, to take out sales force. I mean, ibm, sure, its still pretty big, but i doubt mark benioff goes to someone who looks like ibm looks right now. I mean, theyre certainly in the hunt. Theyre certainly trying to burnish their cloud credentials, but i cant see mark benioff selling to ibm, which represents the traditional enterprise that hes been railing against for so long. Microsoft has turned the corner on that score for quite a bit. Is the cloud becoming so much of a fad that as an investment play, that its time to be cautious about it . No, but it has become so mainstream that you can pretty much take it for granted. Its not some wild new thing where if you close your eyes and throw a dart at a Cloud Company you can expect it to do well. Now you have to think about whos really got strategic advantage in the cloud, or whos a really worthwhile asset whos got something nobody else has gotten. But its an overused word. Nobodys putting their floppy disc into their computer and downloading software anymore. I argued this two years ago, that we should stop calling it Cloud Computing. Its just computing now. Its like the old dotcom. Everybody was a dotcom, because http this is the time we needed to distinguish between google and microsoft when deciding where to put your money ten to 15 years ago. Just because its got dotcom and users i still use lycos. Excite at home. Alta vista. Now youre just bragging. Thank you very much. Sales of Harley Dickinson disappointing. Were going to find out what politics have to do with it next, in this revved up edition of power lunch. There you see the stock, basically flat on the day, down 13 over the past 12 months. An. But shes a dentist so. I kind of have to listen. She said jen, go pro with crest prohealth advanced. Advance to healthier gums. And stronger teeth from day one. Using crest toothpaste and mouthwash makes my. Whole mouth feel awesome. And my teeth are stronger too. Crestpro health advanced. Is superior to colgate total. In these 5 areas dentists check. This check up . So good. Go pro with crest prohealth advanced. Moms right. Again infinera shares are getting whacked, down more than 30 . This comes after earnings. Nomura security t