And james comey on the hill today. The released testimony making waves. Well go live to d. C. Shares of alibaba are surging in the premarket. Well dig in on those numbers and the impact on yahoo. Voters headed to the polls today in london today. Well look at the latest and how the markets are reacting. First up, james comey due to testify at the top of the hour. The stocks did rise yesterday after the release of the former fbi directors prepared testimony in which comey says the president sought his loyalty and urged him to quote lift the cloud surrounding the russia probe, but many suggest theres no smoking gun. Its being called the rorschach test of sorts but the bar to obstruction is high in large part because the republican hold that key. Thank you, thats it. I think that we have to its a political issue. I waffle between comeygeddon and comey those. That was good. I have worked on that all night. Its like like focused on General Mills and kellogg. I have not heard that. Thank you. Thank you. But my problem here is that when i read the note after i read the note, the note is not if youre republican, i think you just say okay, look he was calling he was just saying, hey, listen, honest, loyalty. But if youre a democrat youre saying its loyal honesty. These are literally it hangs on the words. Almost like the definition of is. That goes back a ways to another investigation. Of course kenneth starr. Thats the point i wanted to make which is you do have the special prosecutor here in the form of mr. Mueller. And just as though ken starr moved far beyond whitewater, a real estate deal youre really going there. Im saying this is still going to be going on. Regardless of what we hear from comey today. Its not going to end. So its going to be a continued potential distraction to the trump administration. Regardless of whether it gets to any point that moves the republican majority to make a move against him in some way. It still will be a distraction, enough so that you do wonder about the future of his legislative efforts to the extent he has any efforts. Exactly. Thats the focus of the of what he was trying to get comey to back off on. The agenda. The agenda the cloud. Not the cloud we talk about. No, this is a chance to buy service now viva, youre laughing. But this a chance to buy the salesforce. Because this market is going up. Those stocks are going up because this is a logjam. If you listen to draghi talk about no growth, you watch whats happening with some people we had the dr. Woo fella on earlier, talking tab recession in two years, the cloud has to lift or people are going to huddle in the cloud stocks. Im going for everything today. You are. I love i. Its great. If we can all agree this will be a sort of low grade fever, right, a long overhang on the agenda, does that change your view of stocks or no . No, it does not. It just says that youre going to get more and more people in the funnel in the funnel of stocks that have growth regardless of the economy. And thats where people are going to go. Periodically youre bog to see youre going to see theres a nordstrom where theyll go private and people lift all boats on speculation. Then it goes right back to yes, the new 15 that i have. Its no longer faang, because everybody obliterates faang. We want to get to that jim is referencing a dow jones headline actually, a press release as well, carl. The Nordstrom Family is announcing that it has formed a group to explore the possibility of pursuing a Going Private Transaction involving the acquisition of 100 of the outstanding shares in nordstrom. Its huge. Were mad as hell and were not taking it anymore. Every store is profitable. I dont know what the ownership stake is in nordstrom. Certainly a very difficult time for retail. A go private transaction which would involve of course putting more debt on a retailer is one that you would have to think long and hard about. For example, think j. Crew and the troubles theyre having in part because of that money that was that was borrowed heavily by the company to take it private some time back. But that is having an impact on the stock you see it right there. The family they own a lot. I dont know what the numbers are. I interviewed bruce not that long ago. Look, these are guys if you were on the nordstrom conference call, you basically heard them saying theyre not going private, but will people stop saying were dead . We are not dead. Well obviously they want the whole, they want what they see, which is they have a very good ecommerce. They have profitable stores. And they just think their stock got too cheap. That is something. Its something. It is big. Without a doubt, at least the idea that we want to step up and explore the idea of buying the company. I dont think that would be an issue for them. Again, i dont i certainly want to see the stake is, how much they need to borrow. What they need to buy. We can assume a premium of some kind. This is big. But would expect that financing might not be the issue. The issue simply would be do they have the plan to be able to guide this company as a private one with all of that leverage on it and what is an incredibly difficult environment. Well, look, i think that all of these guys when you look at the macys presentation the other day, listen, our cash flow is really good. Look at kohls where theyre talking about a solid balance sheet. Buying back a huge amount of stock. Look at the bed, bath beyond and the endless buy backs. What nordstrom is saying, even if amazon come out with both barrels we still have a business and if you dont like it, well take it. Every time i have focused on the nordstrom people and when i sat down with bruce what theyre saying is listen were very profitable. Were just not liked in the market. We sat here yesterday and asked whether or not the private takeout of retail, whether that chapter is fading, ending. Its still legit. I thought it would be. Because i think theres tremendous risk to what theyre doing but if youre kohls which is buying back the gigantic amount of stock you start thinking it. I sold macys bonds when i was at Goldman Sachs and macys went bankrupt. Then it had to reformulate. But this is i think the big picture take away simply is hey, this is the founding family which controls i have bruce at 15 . At 9 , the other brothers at 1. 5. So were talking about 40 some odd 48 not quite 40, sorry. Lets call it 25, 30 . 26, 27 of the outstanding shares. Theyre saying, hey, we think theres value here. Were going to explore whether we can actually take advantage of what we think has been a beaten down sector. And obviously, operate no longer having to worry about quarterly numbers. No longer having to worry about getting punished by wall street in an unrelenting difficult retail environment. By the way this stock was at 60 last year. Do you know what terms you used, dont have to take it from wall street anymore and we dont want to think about each quarter. Right. In the end, nordstrom is a little white neiman, where is neiman in terms of the bonds . Not pretty. Not pretty at all. Not for j. Crew either. Shareholders may be happy to share them to go private. By the way, j. Crew shareholders should be happy that was done years ago by tpg, even though they got sued in delaware for paying too little. Thing is very, very important because it took us away from comey for 30 seconds. That was awesome. Now its im comey tose. We will be watching the arrivals this morning. Eamon javers, reportedly some of the lines for the public seats began at 4 00, 5 00 this morning. Yeah. Thats right, carl. Theres a real crowd up here on capitol hill this morning trying to get into the hearing. They generally rotate the spectators in and out so everybody gets a chance to go in and see a moment in history. I can tell you that reporters who are inside the room have been tweeting out pictures of the seat reservation chart, they put down a placard thats reserved. One of them apparently has been reserved for preek fa regard a who was fired by President Trump that can add a moment of drama to this. Look at the crucial testimony, he details the moment in which the president told him he needed loyalty. The president said, i need loyalty, i expect loyalty. Comey saying i didnt move, speak or change my facial expression in any way during the awkward silence that followed. That is a dramatic stare down in the greenroom inside the white house over dinner just comey and the president. And mark warner the top democrat on the committee has released an excerpt of his remarks and what hell say to james comey. He says to james comey, i have never had any reason to question your integrity, expertise or intelligence. You have been a straight shoot we are this committee and you have been willing to speak truth to power even at the risk of your career which makes the way in which you were fired by the president utterly shocking. We have asked the republicans on the committee to give us their statement as well. We havent heard from the republicans yet. But well bring it to you as soon as we have it. Back over to you. All right. Ill take it, eamon. Thank you. Well check in with you often as we know. Lets get back to some corporate news. Actually, very upbeat news at least if youre share owner of alibaba or any number of any ecommerce place. The shares itself, you can see they have been up even pore than that earlier. But up dramatically in the premarket. They delivered an upbeat guidance at the investor day in china. Alibaba now seeing 2018 revenue up 45 to 49 . The analysts had been around in the mid 30s i think. 14 higher. This is an incredible reacceleration of Revenue Growth for this company, jim. Incredible. Did you see when it was announced people were stunned. Its not having an impact not only on alibaba shares but yahoo shares. The yahoo is up at a new high i believe. But remember that plan to buy back stock as they get very close to the close of the sale of the core business to verizon and the creation of altaba which owns 15 of alibaba as the main asset. Thats happening tomorrow on alibaba shares. Remember, they set up a ratio between 0. 37 to 0. 42. And just the timing couldnt be more interesting. Theyre going to get hit without a doubt theyre going to fill their tender now. May get extended a couple of days is what im hearing. By the way the shareholder vote on yahoos deal is today. It will be of course in favor. The deal will close next week, next friday is the last day of Index Trading before it gets dropped from the index. Lets keep an eye on that. You have those who are short alibaba and locking in the spread between the shares that yahoo owns of alibaba and what theyre actually worth in the open market. Thats a big spread based on of course the discount for tax rate an a lot of other things. But people expect that will narrow over time. So theyre playing that. Today theres a bit of pain because alibaba shares are going up more than yahoo share. But thats all right. Theyre lokd in. Let me pain today, but pleasure they think overall. Agony then ecstasy . Lets not forget i dont want to get town the weeds here on yahoo. Alibaba reacceleration of growth. I dont think this is like walmart coming out and saying, were going to do 2 comps we are going to do much more than that. I think people are stunned because it says something about china. Because the u. S. Did you see the value for the u. S. Did not go up. China and the ecosystem, david. Remarkable. We have alibaba retail in china and we have Nordstrom Retail in the u. S. Talk about the areas we did not expect upside from today. And theres a belief that the additional profits that will come with it will be plowed back to growing their b to c business. The analysts said that the largest e Commerce Platform should drive upward momentum in these shares and others. Well, i mean, just to get perhaps to others so people get the whole thing. We did red fang on mad money. We feel that most important ten cent, but doesnt trade here and weebo. You will see those go up. Jd is probably the best obviously it would be ten cent if they traded there. Red fang just in case you were thinking not the band in portland. Right . You know theres also apparently a volkswagen thats red fang. But i have what can i do . I cant patent it. I did not get credit for faang. I thought that was just fine. Just fine. Because you know what . You know how the times is doing. Its got the largest single increase in subscriptions. Havent you heard of twitter . When we come back, a lot more to get to, including the election in the uk. Well go to london for a live report. Of course were counting down to james comeys capitol hill testimony. Q a with the Senate Intelligence committee. It was russia and comey and the president , all these leaks that led to the worst day of the year, may 17th. So we do expect it to perhaps move markets. Back in a minute. In life, with help from our advisor, we made it through many market swings. Sure we could travel, take it easy. But weve never been the type to just sit back. Not when weve got so much more to give when you have the right financial advisor, life can be brilliant. Ameriprise hey ron theyre finally taking down that schwab billboard. Oh, not so fast, carl. Oh no. Schwab, again . Index investing for that low . Thats three times less than fidelity. And four times less than vanguard. Whats next, no minimums . No minimums. Schwab has lowered the cost of investing again. Introducing the lowest cost index funds in the industry with no minimums. I bet theyre calling about the schwab news. Schwab. A modern approach to wealth management. You know by know the level of anticipation for the hearings at Senate Intelligence today with james comey on the hill. But just to give you a sense of what the ion the lines are like to get into, we turn to ian mui. Check out these lines here. It stretches out behind me from here in the Senate Office building into dirkson. People have been waiting in line for hours in order to get into this hearing. And its one of the hottest tickets in washington. We are told that there will be several senators who will be attending the hearing even though theyre not part of the Senate Intelligence committee. Senator john mccain will be here asking questions of fbi former fbi director comey as well as senator jack reed. Theyre already letting people in here early even though typically it doesnt start until half an hour before this hearing. Theres a lot of anticipation here, guys. People are waiting to get in. A good reminder, ylan, senate judiciary, they may be weighing in today as well. Ylan, well talk to you if a bit. Voters in the poll in uk t general election, taking place ahead of the brexit talks. And wilfred frost has more on that. Hey, carl, good morning to you. Yeah, polls have been open here for around about seven hours. The letters themselves cast their votes some time ago. Very early this morning. And this Election Campaign is really framed by a terrible campaign by the prime minister, theresa may who has seen the 20 point lead fall dramatically and Jeremy Corbyn capturing the imagination of many with such hard left points of view. But that slippage by may needs to be put into perspective. She given an eight point lead at 44 of the vote. The current conservative majority of 20 seats delivered by David Cameron in 2015 was achieved with a 4. 5 and thats why people are confident that may does deliver another majority. On top of that n the last 48 hours she has turned things around a little bit. Two days ago, the polls showed the lead at six points and now at eight points. If we look at the oneweek chart of if british pound you will see theres correlation between mays performance improving and the pound improving. That is why in around eight hours time, when the polls close an we get the and we get the first indication, the currency strategists expect the pound rise on a Strong Performance from theresa may and a pound fall if she does poorer than expected. Guys . Wilf, well be looking for those exit polls tonight and watching currencies in the meantime. Wilfred frost in london. Well get cramers mad dash. We await the comey hearing. Were back in a moment. We created the ripple the doughnut in a doughnut in a doughnut. 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The travel rewards credit card from bank of america. You realize the smartest investing idea, isnt just what you invest in, but who you invest with. Whos the new guy . They call him the whisperer. The whisperer . Why do they call him the whisperer . He talks to planes. He talks to planes. Watch this. Hey watson, whats avionics telling you . Maintenance records and performance data suggest replacing capacitor c4. Not bad. Whats with the coffee maker . Sorry. We are not on speaking terms. The opening bell is brought to you by brighthouse financial. Established by metlife. All right. Were we have 2 1 2 minutes before we get to the opening bell. Oil is down yet again. We want to keep people focused on that. But lets get to the mad dash here. We got hit with the important nordstrom news at the stop of the show. You want to call kohls. Theres companies that have been very aggrieved at how their stock is trading. Some people speak louder and some buy stock. Kohls have bought back 170 million shares in five years because they have an ongoing buy back. They felt their stock is undervalued. The cfo cfo of nordstrom, just retired. Okay. He had been iron fisted in terms of being a fiduciary, trying not to he just retired. Isnt that interesting that the nonNordstrom Family member, cfo, tough guy, leaves. New cfo and bingo so im staying focused on who feels that its okay to go private, who is reserved. Who is trying to keep cash. I think that kohls are the ones that i thought was most l