Flat. The ftse is down by 0. 1 in italy. Crude was the big story yesterday. Wpi this morning is up once again by 1. 6 . Gain of 77 cents to 48. 10. This comes after it looks like additional countries from opec are standing with saudi arabia saying those production cuts need to be expanded and also we saw a surprise decline in the supplies here in the United States. Now lets talk about todays corporate story. Shares of snap plunging after the Company Released its first report since going public. Snap missed on the top and bottom lines. The company struggled to keep up with user growth validating a lot of concerns about its ability to take on facebooks insta fwram and tgram and the s feature. Heres what evan spiegel had to say about competition on that call. People will copy your product if you make great stuff. When google came along, everybody felt they need a search strategy. When facebook came along, everybody felt they needed a social strategy. With snap, we believe everybody will develop a camera strategy. Just because yahoo has a search box, it doesnt mean theyre google. Not a good day for mr. Spiegel and his cofounder, robert murphy. Each lo. We have some deal news that broke overnight. Verizon reportedly winning a bidding war to acquire Straight Path for 3 billion. The deal could be announced as soon as this morning. Straight path uses High Frequency radio waves which could give verizon the edge on developing a fifth generation or 5g network, which is what the hole whole at t time warner merger is about, moving to 5k, bypassing cable. Finding faster ways to get more data. Straight path, the original deal was broken when we were on the air. Nobody seemed to know or care what Straight Path was. Its been remarkable to watch the little battle for this. Now we know. Some other stocks to watch today. 21st century fox reporting quarterly revenue below wall street expectations. The tv and film company weighed down by weaker box office results. That stock down by 3 . Whole foods getting a bump after posting earnings that were in line with forecasts and announcing a dramatic board shake up. The highend grocer adding a new cfo and five independent directors as it changes more than half of its board. One month ago management was pressured to deliver better results. The stock up by 4 this morning. Symantec shares getting hit on weak guidance for the quarter. Results for the most havent quarter were in line with expectations. The stock off by 6 . The top political story of the morning. More fallout over President Trumps firing of fbi director james comey. Its on the front pages again of every single newspaper. Eamon, tell us more. Were learning more about the circumstances behind that firing of the fbi director, james comey, earlier this week. It was a surprise to almost everybody in washington. But apparently the president had been considering it for quite a long time. Heres how sarah huck babee sanders referred to this in the press briefing yesterday. I think its been an erosion of confidence. I think that director comey has zone over the last several months and the last year of a lot of missteps, mistakes, and i think that as youve seen from many of the comments from democratic members, including mr. Schumer, they didnt think he should be there. That was a different rational than the white house initially offered. Initially they said it was Rod Rosenstein who came up with a reason for firing director comey, and it was due to the fact of how he handled the Hillary Clinton email investigation last year. There you heard Sarah Huckabee sanders say there were a lot of mistakes by director comey, implying there were more reasons to fire him than just the letter released by Rod Rosenstein. Director comey released a letter of his own to his staff at the fbi saying it doesnt matter ultimately why he was fired. He said ive long believed a president can fire an fbi director for any reason or for no reason at all. I wont spend time on the decision or the way it was executed. I hope you wont either. It is done. And i will be fine, thoughly miss you and the mission deeply. The Washington Post has a new nugget. I cant independently verify this reporting, but this is intriguing nonetheless. The Washington Post reporting that Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy Attorney general whose letter was cited as the main cause for all of this, theyre saying that rosenstein threatened to resign after the narrative emerged from the white house on tuesday evening that cast him as a prime mover of the decision to fire comey. If thats true, it adds an element of chaos to all of this. This is a decision that clearly caught a lot of people including a lot of people inside the white house by surprise. The white house has been on the defensive over the past 24 hours or so and trying to explain why they did this, what they did and what comes next. Today we will hear from the new acting director of the fbi who will be testifying up on capitol hill later this morning. Maybe well get more answers there and some indication of what direction the fbi plans to go going forward. Preet bharara tweeting overnight, does anyone believe the state the reason for comeys firing was the actual reason . Interesting how outspoken Preet Bharara has gotten in recent months now that hes no longer employed. He has the freedom to say what he wants. Hes skeptical here. He is somebody who has also been fired by donald trump. Look, the real question here is what happens to the russia investigation inside the fbi. Will those officials be able to continue moving forward, making progress and wrap up that investigation . The white house says they want it wrapped up. They dont think theres any there there. They would like the fbi to continue its inquiry, do everything it needs to do, button it up at the end and say there was never anything there. There were two pieces from the Washington Post yesterday that caught my attention. The one you mentioned talking about rosenstein threatening to quit over that. Which changed the narrative entirely from what the white house had been talking about what i assumed 24 hours ago. The other piece of that investigation that they pointed out was that this happened after comey apparently asked for additional funds. There has been fak and forback n that. Hill staffers saying comey asked for more fund for this investigation. The Justice Department has denied that but those are interesting and different narrative than we had heard 24 hours ago. Absolutely. Even the white houses own narrative on this has been shifting. They initially stood on the Rod Rosenstein letter, and said this is why he was fired. Its because he mishandled the Hillary Clinton investigation last year. Then we saw Sarah Sanders saying there are many reasons, multiple reasons why he was fired. The president himself said he thought comey was not doing a good job, which is a big umbrella explanation. The explanation has been shifting over the last 24 hours. Can i bring it back to policy, Economic Policy and the ability for the administration to continued to pursue the pledges it has made. How much harder or not does this make it . Is this a story that will continue or will we talk about this for 48 hours or are we going to be talking about this for much longer and it will stymy whats on offer . In the shortterm this consumes all the oxygen in washington th washington. The white house is it n relativy aggressive mode. The real thing is how will this affect republicans on capitol hill. The Trump Administration knows it wont get democratic cooperation on healthcare, not much on tax reform, maybe not much on infrastructure. If this makes republicans go wobbly on trump in general, then that is where you could see it impact the agenda. Otherwise republicans on the hill still have their own vested interest of passing tax legislation. You could see it, they could cooperate on that and maybe not on some of this fbi stuff. Eamon javers, thank you very much. You bet. Lets talk about what is coming up on todays economic agenda. The bank of englands latest rate announcement at 7 00 a. M. Eastern time along with its monthly Inflation Report. Weekly jobless claims and the april Producer Price index out at 8 30 a. M. Eastern. Bill dudley is at a conference in mumbai, india, to speak about the benefits and challenges of globalization. More retailers reporting today. Indicating that were getting towards the end of the retail the end of the earnings season. Kohls, macys, nordstrom, so well talk about those things, too. Lets get to our market roundtable discussion. Joining us on equities is ed campbell, Portfolio Manager at qma, which has 1 116 billion in assets under management. On the economy, we have david owen, chief european financial economist at jeffries. Our guest host for the hour is peter boockvar, from the lindsay group, also a cnbc crib ontribu. Welcome to all of you. Peter, tell us what is driving things. You hear these headlines, the distraction out of washington, yet the s p 500 and nasdaq are setting new highs. Is the market just writing this off . I think so. Theyre focused on 19 trillion economy that will not get affected if comey is in place or not. Theyre focus the on tax reform and believing that something will happen this year. Thats the hope, that could get pushed out to 2018. Theyre celebrating good earnings. Granted off an easy comparison. But after six quarters in a row of earnings declines, to start to see an upward trajectory is important. I think the year will be defined by the hopes for a fiscal tailwind versus the growing monetary headwind. As we get deeper into the year, thats a beg deal. N big deal. You think washington has to move to get things done to produce that tailwind . Right. Its interesting. You listen to eric rosen gr ngre said the more stimulus on the fiscal side if they can improve the economy, get more stimulus into the economy, the fed will have to raise Interest Rates . Right. Hes a nonvoting member, but his comment just right there talked about the battle between fiscal and monetary this year. Ed, where do you think things stand in the markets . How comfortable do you feel with new highs being set almost every day . Yeah. The market has been consolidating for 2 1 2 months now. We had a run up in the aftermath of the election. I do think that the disappointing developments or the lack of progress on the policy agenda has taken the wind out of the sails of the market. Its not that were falling off a cliff. Were talking about modest gains, but enough to put you atny recordat atny at new records. The reason for that is the excellent earnings so far. Were getting 15 year over year, almost 5 Percentage Points better than was expected at the beginning of the quarter. If you look at calendar year 2017, our expectations for Earnings Growth were 6 to 8 at the beginning of the year, we have to move that up higher. We have gotten a lot of returns off the bat here so far yeartodate. I think we need to consolidate more, pull back before we go higher. But we do think the general trend is up between now and the end of the year. In terms of you raising your earnings forecast, youre not necessarily raising the Market Forecast as a result . You think it justifies the levels . I think if we were thinking that we were going to get 6 to 8 earnings, and tack a 2 dividend yield on that, if you upgrade the earnings, you have to add more to the total return forecast for the year as well. Weve talked an awful lot about sorry. But last year, 2016, earnings were flat and the market went up 10 . Can you argue that we priced in the 10 earnings increase this year last year . I think valuation is much more prnt for stock market returns if you look over a longer horizon. If were looking at a horizon between now and yearend or the calendar year, the macro conditions will be more important to driving things than actual valuations. So i think valuation is a little bit rich, but i think it hangs where it is rather than pull back. David, we had guest after guest recommend european equities over u. S. Equities because they think the upside potential is greater there. Does that fit in based on how you see the economy . Its obvious theres a twoway flow. You have european investors actually recycling a massive current account surplus in the eurozone and in particular germany over to the u. S. And in fixed income. The so were seeing aggressive buying of european investors. Which explains the treasury crisis. You have the record gap between the tenyear treasury yield and the tenyear bund yield. You have the ecb yesterday saying they want to taper but at the moment aggressively buying every month. Theres a real hunger for yield. The european recovery is very slow. It will be very confusing going into particularly september when the ecb has to give much more guidance about what it will be doing on the bond buying front in 2018. Peter pratt and mario draghi were clear in frankfurt, they will not raise rates until they stop qe and theyre waiting to see core inflation and Wage Inflation pick up but theres no sign of that happening. You think the reason european equities have done so well has more to do with the stimulus continuing from the central bank and less of an actual rerival . Theres a recovery. But were talking growth of less than 2 annualized. So this is a slow recovery. We have Political Risk coming back on to the rise and the brexit discussions between the uk and the rest of the eu. But possibility of a snap italian election in october. That for mar shkets should be m worrying than france. In italy theres a prospect of renzi calling on aan election i october. You have low yields across the system, but within that you have sort of widespread spreads in s cases, and italy is the standout. For equity investors, the message is clear. For fixed income, its a more confused message. By september it will get much more confusing. Do you think mario draghi says anything in june hinting at a further tapering . No. Weve g theyve got to be clear. It was clear a month ago there was no way they will do that, but it will be difficult to hold the line. You have a council which will splinter, and in september the market also be hungry for clear communication. The problem is they dont know whether core inflation next year will pick up. They have to make a decision about what they do next year. They have to make that very clear. He was almost heckled in the Dutch Parliament yesterday. Yeah. I have to believe the dutch and particularly the germans are going to put extraordinary pressure on him this year to back off. Part of the problem is one of their own making. In germany, theyre running a massive account surplus. There is a limit of 6 on account surplus, germany is way beyond that. France needs Structural Reforms as do italy and so forth. The dutch have space to do physical easing. If you do fiscal easing, bond rates would rise and make Mario Draghis job easier. David, thank you, ed, thank you. Peter will be with us for the hour. When we come back, it will be a bad day for snapchat today. It is plummeting on weak user growth. Well have the reaction from an analyst when we return. Oh, snap i count on my dell Small Business advisor for tech advice. With one phone call, i get products that suit my needs and i get back to business. But weve got the get tdigital tools to help. Now with xfinitys my account, you can figure things out easily, so you wont even have to call us. Change your wifi password to something you can actually remember, instantly. Add that premium channel, and watch the show everyones talking about, tonight. And the bill you need to pay . Do it in seconds. Because we should fit into your life, not the other way around. Go to xfinity. Com myaccount welcome back to squawk box. I dont say this with a smile. Shares of snap plunging after the release of its First Quarterly report. Revenue nafalling short of estimates because of slower user growth. A sign that facebooks copycat strategy may be taking a toll. People will copy you if you have great stuff. When google came along, everybody felt they need a search strategy. When facebook came along, everybody felt they needed a social strategy. With snap, we believe everybody will develop a camera strategy. Just because yahoo has a search box, it doesnt mean theyre google. Joining us is michael graham. Fortune magazine describing evans on that call as trolling facebook based on some comments he made. How bad is the situation . You know, i think its really too early to tell. Snap is still growing users at a fast rate. Its slowing down a lot, though. The question on peoples minds, is that slowdown from facebook and instagram creating another snapchat in a short amount of time or more temporary youre the analyst. Whats the answer . I think its too early to tell. But facebook came out, had a rough couple of quarters when they went public, then rebounded dramatically. The one thing they didnt have that snap what is a big competitor in front of them. So the fact that every month snap will be battling instagram for users is a rel difference in the stories. People say is it facebook or twitter . Those are the two ends of the barbell in terms of what could or could not happen. Where do you put snap . Its in between. Twitter had a dramatic slowdown in users from the moment they came public. Thats the biggest reason the stock has not worked. Snap is still growing the user base nicely and theyre engaged. The number of snaps that the average user is creating is going up even as user growth is slowing down. Thats a big difference between the two. As you know in modya, revenue always follows the eyeballs. So snap is growing its audience. We hear often that the big media companies, big advertisers are trying to spend more time on snap as well as facebook but are attracted to the s