Closed relatively flat. Nikkei was down by about 0. 3 . In europe, it looks like things are modestly weaker. The dax is down by about 0. 3 . The ftse looks flat. Lets get you through some of the top stories this morning. We have citigroup expected to report at 8 00 a. M. Eastern time. Analysts looking for the bank to post earnings of 1. 03 per share on revenues of 17. 5 billion. Citi has already said Investment Banking fell during the quarter. Worth watching. The bank could give us a better snapshot of the Global Economy than some of its peers. More than half of citis revenues coming from outside the u. S. Citi was the only bank to make it through the living will process. Probably questions on that Conference Call about that as well. Were also watching oil prices ahead of this weeks highly anticipated producer meeting in doha. Ministers from the biggest opec and nonopec countries debate the next steps in a production freeze. But russias finance minister telling cnbc it wouldnt have that much of an impact. Translator we see in conditions in the slowing down of the World Economic growths, the accumulation of oil reserves by producers. Theres no serious grounds for talking about increasing oil prices. Lets show you oil prices at this hour. Wti crude sitting at 40. 96 right about now. Also, a little bit of corporate news. Exchange operator bats Global Markets pricing its ipo at 19 a share, the top of its expected range. Shares are expected to begin trading today on its own exchange. The company is hoping this goes better than its last attempt to go public back in march 2012. You might remember technical malfunctions affected trading of bats own stock. They say theyve been aggressively testing its auction system to make sure it can handle the volume today. Were you up late watching the debate . I think youd have a little more bounce in your step today. April 15th and all. Very exciting. Were you up late . I was watching bernie and hillary take brooklyn. We played the beastie boys. No sleep til brooklyn. Just hearing a couple thoughts this morning. Its almost as if bernie thinks theres this big pool of money that exists. Its a big pool. Then you got these entities like General Electric grabbing. You got verizon grabbing. You have rich people grabbing from this pool. Its a zerosum game. No concept of Wealth Creation and of actually adding to jobs, creating jobs, creating an economy that generates that. No conception of that. He was mayor of burlington. Thats his ente world. Burlington, vermont. Thats his entire world view. Honeymoon in the soviet union. He plans to raise taxes by about 15 trillion over the next ten years. He would also be looking at expenditures that are 16 trillion to 24 trillion. He beats the republican candidates, like all of them, 52 to 32. He beats the republicans more than there was a fox news poll yesterday that showed they thought he was the most trustworthy one to be president. Where are we . I did see something last night. They were asking people name as many avengers as you can. Then name as many president s. Former president s. These people were getting five and six avengers. When it came to president s, one person said grover washington, whos a saxophonist. Then he said thomas edison. They couldnt come up with anyone other than obama and washington. I swear to god. I would be better with the president s and terrible with the avengers. Same with me. I dont know if i can name a single avenger. Okay. Lets look at a couple thoughts, then ill talk about something. Democratic president ial candidates Hillary Clinton and senator Bernie Sanders squared off in a cnn debate thursday night in brooklyn, new york. With next weeks New York Primary hanging in the balance, this was the ninth and according to this the most contentious. Sanders questioned clintons experience and judgment. Heres how she responded. Talk about judgment and talk about the kinds of problems he had answering questions about even his core issue, breaking up the banks. When asked, he could not explain how that would be done. Later, sanders responded to clintons claim that she stood up to the banks when she served as senator from new york. Secretary clinton called them out. Oh, my goodness. They must have been really crushed by this. And was that before or after you received huge sums of money by giving speaking engagements behind them . So they must have been very, very upset. We will get more highlights. Got that to look forward to later this hour. One of the reasons im trying to drum up some twitter followers today. You are. What is a fake twitter account . How does that even work . So theres a lot of inactive users, some of which are bots, these sort of madeup accounts. Some of which are truly users who went on twitter and unfortunately for jack dorsey just basically stopped using twitter. Okay. I dont have enough fake or real twitter followers, so i retweeted thats because you keep blocking people. I do block people. In fact, i think most days i have a net negative for people that follow me versus people i block. But this time i tweeted out this picture of me. Im with president reagan, who was a president. I dont know whether you remember. I heard about him. He was a president. He has this great quote about Independence Day versus april 15th and which party likes which. I tweeted that out again. If you want to see it oh, you want me to go . Im trying to generate some followers. The reason youre doing that is because today is a special day. Its april 15th. Although you have until monday. Have you sent in that supplemental fair and equal check you usually send in after youve paid your normal taxes to get to the actual amount . To get it up to 90 or whatever. When do you send that one . I send my regular check in very proudly. I send my taxes in quarterly, actually. Even the patriotic millionaires, i dont think, the sanctimonious, smug people, i dont think they send free money. They just pay youre going to find a lot of friends on twitter today. Yeah, i enjoy the blocking. Just remember this. Reagan did not cut the budget. He raised it. You mean taxes. Both, actually. Raised taxes and Government Spending. To say he raised taxes is functionally true, but in a lot of ways functionally true. It is. Everyone raises taxes in some respect at some point. But he brought down capital gains. We were at 70 at one time, marginal rate. Brought it down to 28 or whatever. But he was not an austerity president. Think about all the money that was spent on defense. You mean to end the cold war. And to tear down that wall. If you look at Government Spending during reagans presidency, you would not say there was less spending. There was more spending. Just putting it out there. Why dont we look overseas at another government this morning. Theres new news out of china today. China posting its slowest Economic Growth rate since 2009, but there are some signs of a debtfueled recovery and factofactory activity, and household spending. Eunice, good morning. Or evening there. Good morning, becky. China delivered a decent economic report card for the First Quarter. Gdp came smack in line with expectations at 6. 7 . Thats well within the range the government has targeted for the year. This was the weakest quarterly growth weve seen since 2009, but there were signs of stabilization towards the end of the quarter. The march data came in better than expected. Retail sales held steady. The industrial output figure surprised a lot of people here because it came in almost a full percentage point higher than estimates at 6. 8 . Fai also improved. This is all feeding into the confidence that has been building over the last month. Weve seen a bit of a housing recovery. Also, the volatility in the currency as well as capital outflows has been calming down a bit. The export figures we saw this week for march were surprisingly strong. So thats all been positive news, that there could be some momentum. The big question is whether or not the growth is sustainable beyond a couple of quarters. Most economists here have been talking about how they believe this recovery is mainly stimulus driven. Its lending, construction. Its not companies that are much more efficient or market reforms. Also, the Bigger Picture environment is that the demand picture is looking pretty weak, both at home and overseas. Finally, the Chinese Government has been talking about how theyre pledging cuts to industrial overcapacity. Thats seen as a way to put even more downward pressure on the economy towards the latter part of the year. So i think at best, most people think that this is going to be short lived, but theyre hoping its not going to crash in any way, of course. Eunice, thank you. Also out today, chinas beige book on the First Quarter survey. Joining us now, China Beige Book International president leland miller. Good to have you. Thank you. We had a very smart economist on yesterday. We talked about both cyclical releveraging versus a longterm structural deleveraging. He says at this point were back in kind of a releveraging environment where near term things might improve. I was surprised to see that the gdp in china was the lowest weve seen. Is it a bottoming process now, or is there more slowness to come . Yeah, we dont agree with that at all. Agree with what . Well, what you said that she said. This is a temporary blip or youre hitting a bottom. Were at the beginning of a longterm structural slowdown. That doesnt mean the next several months thats what she said. But in the near term, she thinks it probably has bottomed, that theyre releveraging at this point and were putting in the lows on the gdp numbers. But long term, theyve got 1. 2 billion or 1. 3 billion that are going to be on facebook. So theyve got some things to do in the way whether you own private property, whether youre able to say what you want, whether youre able to go to Tiananmen Square without worrying about it. But have we hit bottom near term . I dont like to say weve hit bottom. I like to think were on a continual slide. The Chinese Government has stopped their reform process and decided to ease off the gas and slow down reform, slow down restructuring. Thats what releveraging means . It means theyre taking more debt and putting off their problems for longer. So it just means theyre spurring on the economy. Well, tomato, tomato. One of the things were seeing across data is they havent been spending for a while. Theyre borrowing much less than they have been each and every quarter. Now we finally have a hiring problem. The last two quarters weve seen job growth take a major hit after two to three years of stability. If you have firms that dont want to the hire, youre going to have a hard time goosing growth no matter what youre doing. Interesting. So the reforms youre talking about are purely business related. Youre not talking about societal or becoming less repressive. Here im talking about the Structural Reforms from an economic perspective. The jobs picture in china, are there is there overcapacity everywhere in all the industrial pretty much everywhere. The problem is that is state overcapacity. What were seeing in our numbers are state firms are not combatting this. You hear theyre saying theyre going to combat. And lay off people and do all these great things. It hasnt happened. Private firms are doing these things. This is painful for growth, but its good for china. But it should not be considered a bottom. This is the beginning of a long, torturous process. Im starting to see what youre saying. So if they dont close factories that are not necessary, if they dont lay off the people, if they just releverage by throwing money at projects, thats not addressing reform. And thats the chinese way. Thats what they been doing for decades now. Is there a slow way to do it . You dont expect to see them turning into a capitalist nation overnight. These thuings usually come in grades of change. No, there is right now. When you have an opportunity stimulus is dying in china. Fiscal stimulus is an open question. What they should do is use what stimulus ability they have left to cushion the pain of reform and push it along. A lot of people think, well, theyre just waiting until xi jinping gets more people in 2017, then theyll start reform. Well, putting it off and putting it off, this is not good for china. Can you tell anything about the Global Economy based on whats happening in china . The United States, we have our own domestic issues. China has their own. For some reason, not only as a socialist winning in most polls in the United States, we dont charge to lend money anymore. We pay people to lend money. Things seem upside down. Whats is china part of that problem . Well, from a political standpoint, the chinese dont have the ability to blow off steam by tossing bums out and bringing in the next guy and tossing him out. You have a buildup of pressure against the party in order to do something more dramatic. Sometimes that means pulling back on reform and not being as aggressive. As a smart guy that happens to follow china, im trying to figure out whats wrong with the Global Economy. Can you explain why growth is so slow and why we cant seem to get out of our own way . We have negative Interest Rates in many parts of the world . Too much supply, not enough demand. Is it a demographic thing . Probably, but those are the things that are going to kill us slowly over time. Were all getting killed slowly over time. This is killing us faster slowly over time . Something like that. For all the dangers, it is actually something china is looking at very happily, i think. If you have an environment thats going to zero and below globally and all the sudden these yields on these risky chinese investments start looking better. People are misunderstanding what a lower Interest Rate in china means. It could be a very good thing for the chinese economic transition. Okay, leland. Thank you. Nice to see you, sir. Its somewhere over 50, andrew, you start realizing were all terminal. Youre immortal, i know. When you say 50, im thinking 50 tax rate. You are. Hes pretty sensible about this. Im a risk i live like a risk manager thinking about all the worst things that could happen at every moment. Becky knows. In every aspect of my life. Thank you. Its good to see you. Coming up, the dow will start the final trading session of the week at its highest level since last july. If you were a risk manager, you wouldnt have realized that one. Were going to talk strategy next. At 8 00 a. M. Eastern, our special guest today will be snav senator ted cruz. Were going to talk about the economy, his tax plan, china t and a lot more. Back in just a moment. Sor richa. You are called the father of behavioral economics. Ive been called a lot of things. I have read all of your books. Did you learn anything . I learned that humans are complicated. Were emotional. Absentminded. And we make some really bad decisions. My tradeoff analytics can help Companies Make better decisions, but i am still learning what makes people tick. What makes you tick watson . Natural language processing, reasoning algorithms, statistical parsing. Now you are just showing off. Lets get back to the markets. Joining us now is ed campbell, qma managing director. Jason is also here, chief investment strategist. Gentlemen, im going back to the same issue. Im going to say joe and becky kind of called it because they kept saying the market was going to go up, as it seemed everyone else was saying it was going nowhere. Is that right . I think its probably going to go up really by default. I find myself bullish. Essentially all the things that we talked about before, in a world of negative Interest Rates, you know, what are your choices . You could see multiple expansion in a very small group of stocks. So its not indiscriminate. I dont think its quite indiscriminate. I also dont think theres enough earnings gains or Economic Growth. Nominal gdp growth is still quite weak, which makes it unstable. So i think people are going to be continued to be attracted to the big uglies. The 50 largest stocks that could be seen as proxies for sovereign debt. Did you coin t. I. N. A. . I did. There is no alternative. I have to say, i backed off that a little bit just because i think negative Interest Rates are such a bad idea. There is a chance there is no alternative. Its not happening in japan. But by the same token, i think the large cap equities are going to continue to rally. Ed, would you buy the 50 ugliest stocks. What did you call them . The big uglies. You like the big uglies . I dont know if i like the big uglies. Id say were reasonably constructive here. Weve used the word constr t constructive. I dont even know what that means. I wont use that anymore. Im curious what you think constructive is really supposed to mean. All the brokers call you up and say were constructive on the market. Cautiously optimistic . Weve come a long way from where we were in february. Global stocks have rallied 13 , 14 . I think earlier in the year we were pricing in too high a probability of a recession. Weve now taken that out. I think thats appropriate. But i think it gets a lot tougher from here. As jason mentioned, corporate earnings are lousy. Theyre projected to come in on a yearoveryear basis at negative 7 . I think some of the things weighing on earnings like the dollar and oil will dissipate as we move into the latter part of the year. Then you have another headwind from rising wages, which are going to cause a margin squeeze. So at the beginning of the year, i said 3 to 5 returns for the s p 500. I think thats probably still a pretty good estimate of where we are. So thats not a great year by any standard. But it looks a lot better than where we were at the end of february. Let me throw a different one at you. Were going to have ted cruz on in the 8 00 hour. Weve had a couple different guests who say in an Election Year some people have said in an