We dont need to dits cuscus things. Were on the same page. I need you here some other days, when the other guy is sitting there. He shut off my commuters. Did he do this . This is work from the inside. Ill help you get in. Okay. We will. Steve is with us for the hour. Weve been watching the u. S. Equity futures this morning, after the markets ended on a mixed note yesterday, similar story today. Yesterday we watched the averages slowly, after some weakness at the open, well see things even out. Calm trading throughout the day despite the attacks in the uk and despite concerns about whether or not the healthcare reform bill would get passed. The average closed around the session highs. Right now dow futures are indicated down by two points. S p futures indicated up by one. And the nasdaq up by 1 1 2. Overnight in asia, the nikkei was up by 0. 25 . Slightly higher for the hang seng and shanghai composite. In europe, in the early trade, after everything that we were watching so closely yesterday, the attacks in london, you can see the ftse this morning down by just 0. 1 . Dax is higher by just over 0. 1 . Cac is weaker. This morning crude oil prices, were watching, too. Crude settled down 0. 4 yesterday. That was the lowest level since late november. Picked up a bit of ground this morning. Wti up to 48. 41 a barrel. Fed chair janet yellen will give opening remarks at a conference in washington at 8 45 a. M. Eastern. Minneapolis fed president Neel Kashkari is speaking at that event. Dallas fed president , rob kaplan, is talking about the economy and Monetary Policy at a gathering in chicago this evening. As for data, weekly jobless claims at 8 30 eastern, followed by the february new home sales at 10 00. Antiterrorism officials in the uk have made seven arrests in the investigation to yesterdays terror attack outside parliament. Willem marx joins us with more. Reporter seven arrests, six addresses across the country in london and birmingham and elsewhere were searched by police last night. 29 injured yesterday. 7 of them still being treated in hospital in critical condition. The attacker came across Westminster Bridge behind me in speed in a car mowing down pedestrians. One woman was forced into the river thames behind me. He then proceeded on foot having crashed that vehicle inside the parliamentary estate, the grounds around the palace of westminster where he attacked one Police Officer with a knife that man sadly succumb to his injuries. The attacker shot three times by armed police, at which point the incident parliament was on lockdown for several hours. Last night theresa may speaking publicly saying this was an attack on the center of british democracy. The london mayor here with a defiant tone saying brits will not be cowed by terrorism. Willem, thank you very much. We appreciate that update. We know that youre watching things closely for us. We will continue to check this out this morning. Our thanks to willem. Been there enough times to be very familiar with that area. Walking back and forth across that bridge a lot of times. Right across from big ben, and then you walk up the street eye of london, the museums are there. Really it hits home. Exactly. Our top story in the u. S. , republicans scrambling to secure votes for todays healthcare, a vote late last night the white house reportedly expecting to tweak things. Kayla tausche is down there with more. Mark meadows, his tone was different. All of a sudden it was we want to work together, we want to get somewhere. That i dont know how these negotiations work. Maybe it is really you stake out this position to get what you want, pretend you will never budge and maybe it is a negotiating tactic. Do you think this passes the day given what happened late yesterday . I think its a guess at this point if the white house and house leadership can make the changes you talked about. You referenced the chairman of the House Freedom caucus, the Largest Group of holdouts in this whole situation. The chairman of that group last night at various points, he said they would hopefully get there, he wanted to get to yes. Even at one point that they had an agreement in principle. That is not different from the tone he struck throughout the course of the negotiations. But it is quite different from other members of that caucus that he has differed with. At 11 00 p. M. Last night, which is an eternity in legislative time, the spokesperson for the group tweeted there is no deal yet. Many members still had issues with the text. The white house will keep pitching this. The president and Vice President will meet with the House Freedom caucus at the white house following a meeting with top staff yesterday. As they move to placate this conservative faction more moderate republicans seem to be defecting. Charlie dent of pennsylvania in havent days said he opposed it. If we do Something Different, it is hard to do it right. I will be quite blunt with you, twothirds of this bill is exactly what i think is right. A third has been in negotiation. Thats what you get with a compromise. Thats what you get with a compromise. The market shrugged off a lack of compromise yesterday. But when you look at some of the statements of the 20some republicans that still oppose this bill, they say things like i cannot support this right now, or in its current form, or at present. Its unclear how far the white house can go to actually move to win them over and what the sticking points are. For each member of congress it seems to be Something Different. Were deep in the weeds here. What i gleaned from what you said, while some of the conservative guys want to lore the benefits that are required, are some of the moderates saying they want to keep those in there . Now theyre sounding like some of the senators, who you will have another problem with if it passes here. If you push this bill too far to placate the members of the house, the senate will have a really tough time. Shes talking about in the house there are moderate members. And the other thing, kayla, i dont know why making sort of less requirements in healthcare, i dont know why that violates the byrd rule, its not budgetary or something . I think youre referencing what Chuck Schumer said yesterday. The republicans promised phase two and three. Phase two being what tom price will be doing in terms of making rules, relieving regulatory burdens for the Insurance Companies and other companies that operate in this space. Phase three is what theyre calling the robust legislative process. Senator schumer tried to argue last night because this is a comprehensive program and reconciliation is one part of it, we should treat this in its entirety and that the senate will put up a fight on that. Its unclear whether there are claws to that argument but its something he wanted to put out before the vote. We dont have a cbo score on the change to the bill. It was supposed to come out at some point yesterday, last night. But you could expect criticism if members of the house are expected to vote on something that either has not gotten a fresh cbo score or gets one that comes out right before the vote and they have not really had time to sift through it and figure out what this will cost but have to vote on it any way. One thing i wondered about, it sounds like theres a carrot and stick approach with the white house offering carrots to bring more people on board. Ive been waiting for the sticks and tweets. Is there a point where individual congressmen get pressured from tweets from the white house they may not want to deal with if this doesnt go as planned . I think the stick nature was when the president came to capitol hill on tuesday and threat ened congressman meadows and others who wanted to vote against this saying in essence they would be losing their majority in 20 18 if they chose to vote against this. There are two aspects to this. On one handsome members of the Freedom Caucus say its a loselose situation. We lose the majority if we vote this down or we lose the majority if we vote this in and its not popular and people dont like this. On the other hand republicans are saying good luck for the president getting a border wall or a tax reform which i dont support if they go against me on Something Like this which i cant support idealicall icallo cant support. The president has not been tweeting but found ways to turn the knife. And from what im hearing it hasnt necessarily been working. You know, he certainly likes to win. I cant imagine if this doesnt work out. Not nice to fool mother nature. There will be hell to pay. The twitter storm will start after that. Did cruz have ted cruz supposedly had a fancy way of getting around the byrd rule, didnt he . Getting what conservatives wanted . That would be amazing if ted cruz came in on a white horse to save this deal for the president , wouldnt it . Joe, being on capitol hill yesterday, senator cruz was sprinting back and forth between the two chambers. He was in a meeting in one of the house buildings yesterday with the Freedom Caucus in the afternoon. Some reporters tried to ask limb questions afterwards. No dice there. He has been working both sides of this. Kayla, thank you. Dont go to lunch. Yeah. Be ready. Dont ill order pizza or something. Stare at twhafr whatever you millennials yu s use . Iphone, blackberry no blackberry. What do you snap on . I have a smartphone, not a dumb phone. Its a smartphone. Very good. Thank you. Lets find out how that healthcare bill and trumps other proposed policies could continue playing out in the markets today and beyond. Joining us is vinnay panday from ubs wealth management. Our guest host is steve grasso. Lets talk about this. I was surprised to see how calmly the markets dealt with things yesterday. Do you expect that to continue today . I think first of all, thank you for inviting me here. Fundamentally from an investors point of view, three things matter. First is valuation. Thats supportive of the equity as a plus. Second is policy, which is what were talking about. Being supportive across the world, not just the u. S. The third is risk management. The issue that you just raised is basically straddling those last two points i spoke about. I dont think the markets are as concerned about the healthcare proposal directly as they are about what it means for the implementation for for taxes and beyond. Yes. And i dont think anyone ma imagined that healthcare would be easy. Whether or not he can deliver this in the senate as you were discussing, can he not deliver to his constituents what they need, had is a tax cut . President obama delivered healthcare to 20 Million People. Those were his constituents. I find it hard to imagine that the tax reform or tax cuts wouldnt be forthcoming. I agree. I dont think its about valuation, i think its about rotation. Weve seen so many people loaded into bonds the last eight years. That transition has to take time to unwind the bond mo signaposi move into equity position. That provides support for equities. Absolutely. The question is tax reform. To your point, if they go with healthcare light, it seems to me theyre looking over healthcare now. They want to do it as part of the reconciliation. Get it out of the way. They dont care if its light. The House Freedom caucus does. Thats the problem. They do but its a lot of posturing on both sides. But now youre starting to see the innards of the Republican Party posturing. If we get tax reform and deregulation, this market goes much higher from here. So as long as it passes its okay, even if it doesnt pass and they quickly pivot to tax if you get a healthcare light, are you going get a tax light . Is the Corporate Tax rate going from 35 to 25 instead of 25 20 . Rid 20, and President Trump wanted 15. 20 or 22 , you think the market continues the market continues to go higher. I believe markets dont care about valuation now. Money is moving into the equity market. Thats obvious. Thats an interesting point. So many things seem to be supporting equity prices and not letting them fall below a certain point. Do you agree with that . Yes. I think valuation does matter. The people who act on value have not been investors. The flows in 2016, they remained until the end of the year into bonds and away from equities. And they made a mistake by doing that. If youre still sitting on the sidelines, you missed a lot. You have allt lot of money cash, and you are overinvesting. The spread between Corporate Bonds and equities, the way we reckon it, was in mid year last year 200 basis points higher than on average the last 30 years. The enormous flows that have come from stock buy backs and Corporate Events like m a has more than offset the flows that we expect. So the client base i think is in cash, overinvested in fixed income. To beckys point, if this market continues to move higher, and we see tax reform, those people that are in bonds or cash will have to chase the market regardless of valuation. An important point about the tax cuts, youre saying its in the market. Bottom up eps expectations have not risen at all in the s p since the trump election. Thats to say the bottom up analysts have not yet pencilled in the certainty or near certainty is that is that something that is good news . It means theres more potential upside there or is that because yes. Yes. You think all signs are pointing towards support for the market . That is correct. In response to the horrible events in london, for the market to be so calm in the face of an attack, basically across the street from parliament knowing these arguments, you were sitting there thinking yesterday, wow, this is a market that has much more support than i had even anticipated. It is shrugging off bad news and is embracing the prospect of good news. This goes beyond the u. S. Action. Even President Trump has not tweeted i take credit for the recovery in the world economy. Its fiscal policy, whether its in japan, china, brexit, canada, now the u. S. When you say that, though, when you look at the market and the market rallied on the heels of the election and the market rallied a quick 10 , that was not about the rest of the world. That was a kneejerk reaction to the United States. Agreed. I think gdps have been moving higher, now eventually theyre moving lower. You cant discredit that with donald trump either, right . And anything from here on out, above break even since the leak shun election or down 10 since the win is what prognosticators have said since the election. To their horror, as it went up 14 , they attributed it to global strength, not him, until the first correction. Now, that was donald trump. Ive watched it happen. Its pro growth if you didnt have anything above break even to people that thought the market would crash on donald trump, if we were break even now with his awful presidency and this terrible whackosacko, if w break even that would be a win. Globally, not just the u. S. I understand that. But it moved 14 it moved 14 agreed. But have you seen how many days were up days . How many days were down days . You get 1 down, and suddenly this is not anything trump is doing. Its people in the house that are not look at the performance of emerging markets. Its dramatic this year. That was also a kneejerk reaction. If the u. S. Does better, emerging markets do better, they fear the rising dollar, we didnt see that. They fear rising rates, they didnt see that. Those were a bunch of rebound effects. I would stress strongly its a Global Growth story. Watch out for Global Growth. But Global Growth is coming in a bit now. If thats the case, then the markets maybe dont have a rosy future. What we had for the past eight years, we had qe and zero on Interest Rates. This is in the face of rising rates. Was there a single rate increase during the last eight years of the Obama Administration . Not a single rate increase. Weve already gotten two. Thank you for being with us. Steve will be with us for the rest of the hour. Coming up, Trucking Companies are hoping that trump deregulation will give their industry a boost. Well look at the possible changes and how it could move the companys stocks next. Wanna get away . Now you can with southwest fares as low as 59 dollars oneway. Yes to low fares with nothing to hide. Thats transfarency. The Trucking Industry is one area of the transport economy that is looking for deregulation. Morgan brennan joins us now from the swamps of new jersey. I take issue with that. What are we calling the swamps of new jersey . Were at a truck stop in central new jersey. There are a lot of folks here resting overnight. Thats part of the regulations. Trucking is in focus today with President Trump meeting with ceos and drivers this afternoon to talk healthcare. The industry is the biggest employer in 29 states, including 3. 5 million drivers hauling 10. 5 billion tons of freight a year. This is highly regulated and there are a truckload of rules that carriers would like to see scrapped or tweaked. One example is the epas emissions standards. We had four engine mandates since 2004. Since that time my truck prices have doubled. So the industry has been in a very tough position the last few years from a profitability standpoint because our costs have been rising much faster than what our pricing has been able to rise. So parker and other truck executives would like to see the age requirement to move freight across state lines lowered from 21. They say that would help ease the driver shortage. But all of that said Companies Still wanted a couple pieces of sweeping regulation to stay put including the Electronic Logging Device mandate that goes into effect later this year that tracks hours. I would expect this to come up later today with the president , stricter or better testing methods for Drug Screening of drivers. Thats good to hear. You can understand why they want t