Because there is some, not a lot but some cautious optimism starting to trickle out around both the markets because they ended their day and they ended their week higher as well. Perhaps some hope on the horizon about america getting healthy and getting working again. But tim seymour with 22 million filing for jobless benefits in just the last three weeks wiping out a decade of job gains, no doubt some very hard Economic Times for millions of people still to come. Is there really any good reason for markets to be rising like they have been i think its a liquidity squeeze. Its been a skepticism trade that has squeezed markets higher it has been a combination of the Federal Reserve expanding its Balance Sheet to 6. 1 trillion. Its been all of this well ahead of the recession frankly its been a dynamic where i think the positioning of markets allowed markets to push on higher it doesnt change from where we are but obviously we started all this on covid19 as weve gotten more clarity on covid19 not only in terms of the progression, the peak, the apex, the curve, but also as the rest of the world begins to open their markets. We do have a couple weeks of data points coming out of asia, most notably china we had pmis and import export data that came out of china significantly better than expected we talked about apple on the show and those smart phone shipment numbers to say that 2850 to 2900 on the s p you havent seen an enormous run that is something to be worried about is to misjudge here i dont see how equities have to get away from us, but i do think the confluence of events here has taken us victoria, lets talk about the Macro Markets before we start to get micro i ran the numbers before the show when you look at the s p 500, 112 members of the s p 500 are higher year over year. So in the past 12 months basically well call it onefifth of the market is still up were facing the greatest Global Pandemic in at least the last 50 if not 100 years the consumer economy is completely shut down, yet a lot of stocks are still outperforming. Can you please help us, help me make sense of whats going on . Brian, im not sure that was the case if you look back to when we hit those lows on march 23rd we have come back about 30 from that point in time you have certain sectors and companies that are going to benefit from the situation that were in now obviously proctor and gamble gave really good earnings numbers. You saw that they had sales moving higher, that pantry stocking thats going on you have other Tech Companies that are going to benefit. Its not surprising that you have a handful of companies driving the market higher. But across the board we have come back quite a bit from those lows i think the market said maybe 2200 was too low but 3400 was too high its trying to find somewhere in the middle and thats a little bit higher than a year ago but a lot of this that we saw today was purely on the optimism for the economy reopening and on the gilead news. I think some of that might be given back next week you think so . Okay guy, weve got elliot management out this week saying we could go 50 from our high. We have some optimism. I get it i understand where thats coming from, but at the same time theres been a huge pile into basically the same names is there more risk to the upside or the downside . Well, today is a great illustration people ask all the time, you know, the difference between the real economy and the stock market if you want a thesis or a paper on it, just look whats happened over the last couple weeks data thats probably the worst weve seen in a century overlaid with a stock market thats going up 30 from that march 23rd low. People have to be scratching their head because i know i am to me, it comes down to this at current levels in the s p f you assume we have 130 worth of s p 500 earnings and thats a stretch. Right now the s p is trading at 22 times, which is very rich now, the counter is the fed is buying everything and theres so much liquidity in the system that none of that matters. If thats the case, were going down the same rabbit hole we went down for the last decade. It just sets us up i think in the longterm for more pain ahead. I think guy nailed it i hear the criticisms and i get it the stock market is going up while 22 Million People are filing for jobless benefits. It makes no sense. But when you look at a fed that has thrown 5, 6, 7, maybe 10 trillion with leverage from the treasury at the problem and you just think dont fight the fed is there any reason to go against the fed and the twoweek trend here well, i mean, obviously, you know, strong Monetary Policy is to try to bolster the market are going to have an impact. The fiscal policies that were seeing will also have an impact. But i think people ought to be asking themselves this question, which is while we have these winners like amazon and proctor and gamble and we have other stocks that have held up very well like home depot, the question that you might ask yourself is, we obviously have a very bad economic situation. Its obviously hurting businesses very badly and its going to continue to those are not the only companies in the market and how much higher can they go if the best performing stocks have already given us what theyre going to do and the bad news is going to continue to trickle in, then to me the risk is necessarily on the downside as people begin to digest that were just at the beginning of that now were coming into earnings season this is probably the most important earnings season and the least relevant earnings season because youre looking back rather than forward everybody is going to be on every conference call, saying how much risk is there we dont still know exactly how much there is. For some cases you might have 46 weeks worth of complete run away and its not a big thing. If you extend that, those businesses are going to face additional risk. Then you have to really worry about what equities are going to do. Extremely well said, mike, most important but least relevant its very nuanced. Lets continue on that path. Weve got to remember that every week that we get through each week is one week closer to maybe coming out of the other side of this scary moment in history but time doesnt stop for Corporate America and they are still churning out their quarterly numbers and a flurry of Big Companies are set to report their numbers and maybe perhaps give us some guidance on what they see ahead. I guess heres the big thing with earnings. The number of companies withdrawing guidance continues to grow. So thats got many asking should companies simply ditch guidance . Bob, its a very good, very relevant, very important question right now its been around a long time. But with all of these companies all of a sudden coming out declining to provide Earnings Guidance, look what weve got here, uber, abbott, bed bath and beyond, audi, volkswagon over in europe, the list is really long of these companies declining this has been around for a long while, but theres a renewed debate a lot of people coming out and saying lets kill Earnings Guidance in general. Its outdated. The arguement against it is it two much focus on shortterm, its linked to lower Earnings Growth in general. People want longterm guidance go years ago jamie diamond and warren buffet argued the same thing. They said we should dump the whole argument and move on and just provide guidance on a yearly basis ill tell you why im not so enamored with this idea. 1 in 5 companies provide Earnings Guidance. Number two, Companies Still have to file their Quarterly Earnings report it doesnt eliminate that. If the companies dont provide guidance, wall street is going to provide guidance. Their analysts are going to say heres what we think is going on that means less commentary available to the general public and wall street is going to step into that vacuum how about having ceos stick around a little bit longer the average ceo only lasts five years these days their compensation is largely based on whether they can get the stock price up theres a shorttermism if you want to deal with it well said bob fired up on a friday we appreciate it have a great weekend well see you next weekend victoria fernandez, what do you think . Do you want to hear companies, the ceos of the companies that you own for your clients, do you want to hear them give some kind of guidance and get it wrong or simply say, we have no idea, were withdrawing guidance whats better for you . I dont think investors want to see Companies Just throw in the towel, throw their hands up and say we dont know whats going to happen. They need some type of guidance. Maybe you give a broader range of what you had before or at least give me some kind of scenario, give me a worst Case Scenario or a best Case Scenario or some type of information that lets me know whats coming i understand it makes people focus on the shortterm. The guidance could be a little bit longer looking if we want that to happen, extrapolate it out over a longer period of time, but i think Companies Need to provide something otherwise, its going to be heft up to the investors and whatever they can create in their own minds as to what they think is going to happen. I think that would cause more volatility in the markets. Maybe i can see that. Tim seymour, if they give you a little but get it spectacularly wrong, thats a risk too. Right yeah i think theyre concerned about that first of all, everybody gets a mulligan on this quarter i think it would be potentially it would not necessarily help investors to get some of the insights that ceos are seeing right new in the shortterm because they have no idea so i do think overall guidance has a function on a quarterly basis. I believe in as much transparency as possible i believe in reg fd. I believe in some of the rigging of markets out of it i think ceos and cfos can decide what metrics they want us to listen to, but i think they need to give us something think of apple a year ago they gave us some sense that they didnt want to give iphone shipment numbers and the market was a little disappointed apple which gets a Corporate Governance premium suffered at that time whether they should have or not. The market is a discounting factor Corporate Governance is a scoring system i think it will feed into how companies are valued if companies dont want to be transparent, i think they will trade at a discount. Thats Something Else to think about. Mike, im going to ask you, what did you mean by most important but least relevant i thought i understood it. Now im thinking maybe i didnt fully why is it not relevant . Well, obviously one of the things about earnings reports is theyre telling you what has happened and what were going to be dealing with is whats behind us now what most people are interested in is whats going to be happening Going Forward. I have a feeling that a lot of the questions that are going to happen on Conference Calls are going to be trying to dissect what happened at the tail end of the quarter ending at the end of march. Thats when we began to see the impact of that thats going to be the best tell to the degree we can get any transparency from an open economy to a closed one, thats going to be the best lens Going Forward as to whats going to happen youre looking at a number that has nothing to do with the quarter year end, but theres a little piece of it that might give you clue. Obviously investors want as much transparency as they can have as often as they can have it. The fact of the matter is if you invested in any business in any anything you would want to get Financial Information provided to you as much as you could get as soon as you could get it to the degree they can offer guidance even if its wide, thats really helpful. I did not know that only about 20 of companies provide any kind of guidance as well. Speaking of earnings and guidance with the big banks wrapping up a big week, the Group Reporting all their numbers for the most part, lets go to wilford frost number one, the biggest focus for the week has been the level of reserves the banks have taken against potential future loan losses here is goldmans analysis of the amount of allowances banks have taken just the quarter compared to their entire loan book Goldman Sachs knows the average of the big seven banks they cover is 2 and the same measure peeked at 3. 5 in the last recession in 2010. The second takeaway, while there are different tones on the causes as to whether this would mark the peak of those provisions or they could increase next quarter, all the ceos and cfos seem to agree that the economy had a huge uphill battle on its hand and would be unlikely to open significantly any time soon. We all love to wish and to hope i wish i hope for it to be do i expect it to be no, i dont. You cant have this kind of dislocation and expect people to bounce immediately your best case is some sort of year recovery. If i were a betting man, somewhere between a u and i guess an l i think its through the end of next year were going to be working through this global recession. Hopefully it will be sooner rather than later. June, july, august, Something Like that. And the third point to note is that Interest Rates and their impact on Net Interest Income expectations have also been key. In fact, the biggest daily declines in Bank Share Prices this week came on wednesday and thursday, which were the two days that treasury yields fell the most if you look at week to date performance, the most Interest Rate sensitive names have declined the most, wells fargo, the regionals declining much more than the investment banks regardless its not been a good week for the banks, but concerns over margin of profit you can make on Interest Rate related products is clearly less severe a problem to have than fear your loan book is going to blow up. Thats the key question now for banks. Do banks face an earnings problem . Bad, but not tend of the world if they do or do they face threats to their future with a Balance Sheet problem . 40 year to date suggests the market is still trying to work out between these two possibly eventualities. A big week for the banks. Wilfred, thank you very much in Jp Morgan Chase you had lots of down days and you had a huge up day. I cant remember seeing this kind of volatility in a name like Jp Morgan Chase they seem to be telling different stories every day. What story do you buy . I think a lot of people are struggling to figure out what banks are going to look like in six months i am not some raging bull here in the market. I think theres another turn to the downside with that said, jp morgan game out and told us the tangible book for the company was basically 61, which is much better than i thought it was going to be. At its peak when jp morgan was trading 141 not that long ago, that stock was trading close to 2. 3 times tangible book. Maybe we wont get back to those levels but i think reasonable to think we could get closer to 2 do the math. You should be looking at 115120 stock i think people are trying to struggle with what the banks look like. If you think jp morgan is best in breed and you think they deserve that premium valuation, youve got to be looking at a stock that can rally 15 from here. 4 down, 9 up. Crazy week for Jp Morgan Chase on deck, can tesla thrive even in the shaky economy where under 2 a gallon gasoline is widespread well talk more about tesla and its big week plus, is there any reason to invest in any Casino Company right now . Some are indeed making the case and were going to hear that case coming up on a special live bonus hour of fast money on a friday welcome back just a reminder, the white house is holding its Daily Briefing on the coronavirus. Any Key Headlines there about reopening the economy, economic aid, the Small Business program, the payroll protection act, of course, we will bring it to you or bring you live into that press conference for now, lets do what we do on cnbc and talk about the economy. But lets focus in on one company. That is tesla, because tesla through it all continues to make money for its investors, Global Pandemic or not. In fact, shares of tesla up more than 30 this week, up 80 this year and have now jumped 177 in the past 12 months tim, at least to me its starting to feel like the amazon. Com of old for cars and batteries. What i mean by that is none of the criticisms, none of the fundamentals, nothing seems to matter to believers in tesla look, ive said for a long time and i can tee up the tesla box that will come after me on twitter that i dont think tesla share price is any reflection of fundamentals in the company. I think without getting into, to me, where i think it should be valued on valuation, yes, its very expensive yes, these delivery numbers that suddenly mattered a month ago or six weeks ago didnt matter for a along time talk about transparency or lack thereof or guidance, its a company that guides all over the place and is never right it has burned cash its entire career until recently. The model 3 which was supposed to be the car for the masses is not really affordable, at least at the price that they make it at meanwhile, the cash cow or the most profitable parts of the tesla line, weve actually seen dramatic fall in sales so the shanghai story has been driving, i think, the last 34 months in the name as has fed liktt liquidity. It doesnt matter what the valuation is, because people will line up all over the place. I am obviously not one that lines up on the bull side. Okay. Victoria fernandez, theres probably another side to tesla thats not just tesla. Its esg, environmental social governance ou v its a way to invest that is for environmental reasons. Climate change, whatever it might be im sure tesla is getting caught up, is a big part of that story for any esg investor by the way, dont laugh off esg. Its generated tens if not hundreds of billions of investing dollars in the last couple of years. No, brian youre absolutely right. Before covid19 really dominated the headlines here and around the world, esg was something that was becoming more and more popular with investors it was something that more people were looking at in regards to the companies they were choosing for their portfolios tesla is a perfect example yes a lot of valuation is drive by passion but also the esg component. Its going to drive investors to companies that otherwise they wouldnt invest in they like that esg component and will add it to their portfolio i think thats another reason why normally when you see oil at low prices like this, that wouldnt be a boost for tesla. Its usually the Higher Oil Prices that drive people to it but esg has been affecting the Oil Companies before covid19 as well that was part of the reason you saw some of the oil names start to decline prior to the demand concern that we have now tesla can benefit from esg and i think well see that more once we come out of the covid19 issues i feel like its a big lesson here if you get caught in a wave of investing, esg came out of nowhere. Its this huge thing it soubds like maynds like mayb better get out of the way. You get run over. Theres going to be 22 Million People filing for unemployment the economies are basically going to be at a standstill. Wheres tesla the stock here we are to your earlier points with a meteoric rise in the stock people again are left scratching their head one thing ive learned, i had a decent run in talking about this stock years ago. When you find yourself offsides sometimes the best thing to do is keep your mouth shut. Thats what ill do until i get a handle on tesla. Its been you and a lot of other people as well the stock has just powered over the last quarters. Coming up, were still down 15 on the year from the dow has that created the perfect storm for some activist investors to go after some companies. Plus, what Company Insiders are placing the biggest bets on their own stock . One name that is very well known to us in the nbc family whos llkwnering a lot of one vy weno stock we need to unite all the trolls. Like rock, reggaeton, and techno. Get ready for the drop wait for it wait for it come on man hit me wait for it just do it already one more time yeah. The World Premiere is now in your home. Welcome back shares of Gilead Science is perhaps the big stock and really the big humanitarian story today after reports about a possibly coronavirus drug trial showing some very favorable results hit the market last night and the stock spiked one thing that is important to remember is that it can be a little bit confusing, because were often talking about three Different Things at the same time were talking about Companies Working on testing were talking about Companies Working on treatment and were talking about companies who are trying to work on a vaccine. It is confusing but weve got to remember there are multiprongs to this coronavirus story. These three areas are moving at different paces lets start with testing we got news today from roesh they they plan to produce an Antibody Test that they same to bring into the European Market in early may and theyre working on authorization in the United States the Antibody Test is the blood test to determine who has been infected and who might have immunity there is excess capacity in the commercial testing likes Companies Like lab corps, quest diagnostics. I spoke with the mayo clinics. They say theyre running at 60 capacity right now thats pretty weird. It seems like theres a clunkiness in the system you mentioned gilead we have expecting data on the drug from gilead in late april. The ceo was saying that through the partnership with gsk if all goes well on that Vaccine Development they should produce 1600 doses of their vaccine next year all of those things moving at different paces but a ton of different work underway. Why are we having so much trouble getting the test is it literally because its the weakest link we dont have the plastic to make the cotton swabs to stick up peoples noses . Wheres the broken link in the testing chain . That is a problem with the supply chain getting the simple things like reagents to run the test thats an issue. But the big commercial labs are telling me theyre figuring out their supply chains. Theyve got that stuff right now. What it seems like is a lack of kmaun case and coordination in figuring out whos got the capaci capacity more testing platforms have come online in the past couple of weeks. So theres just kind of a clunkiness in the system where we have some capacity that can still be used but its not being coordinated. We have breaking news right now coming out of the White House Coronavirus press briefing it has to do with farm aid what have you got . Reporter the usda just announcing a new 19 billion aid program specifically for farmers. The secretary of agriculture says it will be broken up into two parts. One is a 16 billion direct payment for farmers. The second part is a 3 billion Purchase Program where the government will step in as a customer and buy milk and Fresh Produce that will otherwise spoil or go unused and deliver that to food banks and others in need this follows two years where the usda delivered tens of billions of dollars in aid to farmers because of some of the hurt they were feeling because of the china trade war. President trump is delivering more aid to a sector that has been feeling quite a bit of pain the last several years and is critical to his reelection later this year. Breaking news there on farm aid and ranchers as well coming up, getting active. Why the recent market volatility could present the perfect opportunity for activist investors. A live bonus hour. Jim and the gang with a welldeserved day off. The market turmoil may have created the perfect opportunity for hedge funds and those who want to buy a bunch of stock and shake up the story some people call them activist investors. Ive never liked the term activist investor. They used to be called corporate raiders. To you, what defines a socalled activist thanks for having me, brian i agree with you i like to use the term shareholder activist shareholder activists are stockholders taking long positions in companies th theyre aligned with other shareholders and theyre paying for the cost to improve the company and all the shareholders should benefit from it. Fantastic good stuff there talk about why market volatility might increase this kind of activity norm ally you think run for cover, youre under your desk because youre worried about the market volatility. You say its kind of the opposite in the year or two years after the selloff activism tends to folourish. Activists are Value Investor who is create their own catalyst for closing valuation gaps when the markets are down like this and the gap between price and value becomes so large, theres so many more opportunities for them to choose from secondly its much easier for them to get their agendas implements in down markets its harder for bad management to hide the question is when an activist takes a stake in a Massive Company like apple can they really implement some change. I look at activists in Mega Cap Companies as trying to turn around an ocean liner whereas in small and mid companies youre trying to turn around a boston whaler its very difficult to make a lot of big changes in a company like apple the best activism happens in smaller and mid companies that are less liquid and might have infringed boards or operational issues ken squire, new cnbc contributor. Ken, pleasure to have you on in the cnbc family. Best to you and your real family as we navigate through these turbulent times. A reminder that kens activist spotlight column will be published tomorrow on cnbc. Com a little saturday reading outside of all the news that you know were talking about coming up, casinos hit among the hardest of any type of company by the Coronavirus Crisis thats what happens when youre mandated to close down were going to talk about the possible path forward. Plus, the president s plans to try to reopen the economy sending some stocks popping, others dropping. soft music [female vo] restaurants are our family. The cornerstone of our communities. And our family needs help. Right now theyre facing a crisis. And theyre counting on your takeout and delivery orders to help them through. Because if we dont treat restaurants like family today. They might not be around to treat us like family tomorrow. Grubhub. Together, we can help save the restaurants we love. We have an up date for you on the casino stocks Las Vegas Sands cut its dividend today, which is a huge deal the casinos are hurting in a wig wa big way. Inside Caesars Palace on the strip it is still and silent the las vegas mayor calls this nevada shutdown total insanity, her words. The governor says, look, the state has not passed a Severe Health risk and yet already casinos nationwide are beginning to game out what reopening would look like. Because properties likely will have to ensure social distancing for some time, every player becomes vitally important. Deutsche bank gaming analyst says casinos may implement crowd control based on Customer Loyalty and theoretical spend. They may hike table minimums and the at least profitable slot machines would be turned ff. Also location, location, location where the casino gaming revenues matter visitation is still only about a tenth of what we saw this time last year because the government still restricts tourist visas. The ramp is benefitting wynn, Las Vegas Sands and mgm even though its slow in the u. S. Regional properties are likely to see a quicker return to business that includes greater nevada and the las vegas locals market. So thats red rock resorts, el dorado, boyd finally the Las Vegas Strip may be the slowest of all to return pause because it relies so heavily on tourists arriving by air travel. A few fridays ago we were looking for green shoots wynn resorts actually traded pretty well on a pretty miserable tape ill make a comment that i made the other day. The time to own these stocks are when things start to get less bad. Things are getting less bad. I think citi just upgraded the stock. They did upgrade the stock to buy. In earnings on april 29th this is a stock that can really 1015 on literally air. I think theres room to the upside in wynn for sure. Coming up, stocks ending the week with a real positive tone well talk more about that as well as our exclusive look at what Company Insiders are buying the most of their own stocks whos placing the bullish bets on their own names president trumps three phase plan to reopen the economy had markets moving this week Planet Fitness getting a move higher in the stock market while workout from home stocks like peloton moving a bit lower it is not just gyms. Certain restaurants had buyers come in as well. That caught us thinking here on fast money what other stocks or sectors should you be looking to buy as we slowly start to creep back hopefully toward a new normal what names or names are you looking at one of the names were looking at is American Tower i think when the economy starts to reopen, you talk about the new normal were not going to go back to the way that we did business, the way we ran our daily activities back in january or february people are going to have a very different approach to things and technology is going to be a key component more than ever weve always talked about names like service now or aws, these cloud names to support that. What about the infrastructure behind a lot of things including your cable or data providers American Tower is a great name that will be part of that infrastructure should be a good longterm in your portfolio what name or names do you think is sort of a reopen trade, guy . I think you want to have a bank we mentioned jp morgan it has to be one of them you have to look at stocks that have done extraordinarily well in this environment. Eli lilly is making an all time high the other one i think people learning about Dollar General now and people who have shopped there realizing maybe the experience is something they want to continue another name making alltime highs on a pretty dicey tape those are the three names i would look at of the weekend. Mike, what about you . I mean, if youre going to speculate on a rebound, you kind of have to start digging around a little bit in the trash. This is a dangerous place to be but i would look at commercial reach with call options only that would actually give you some convexity to the upside as a longterm play i dont like them but as a shortterm bounce i do you know, tim might not be kidding. Im looking at all the boxes on everybodys driveway im thinking is there a recycling or trash play there. I kid. What are you looking at . The boxes on peoples driveways are improved b to c shipping so fedex if you think about fedex which was down 40 into this crisis and then it went down another 40 i think its a selfhelp story. I think integration of ground and express have started to figure out some of the cyclicality of their business. These shipping stocks tend to bottom well before the recession. Fedex i think is a buy true story, tim the fedex guy in our neighborhood, theyve got a penske rental truck because theyre running two guys instead of run coming up, an exclusive look inside the Big Companies that arof saw their insiders, ceos, bod directors buying their own stocks who are the top five welcome back youre watching a bonus hour of live fast money on a day where the dow finished up 704 points the nasdaq outperforming, up 6 this week on optimism that folks, we will start to reopen and get back to a somewhat se semi version of normal life at some point. Now for something we have done the last couple of weeks for you here on fast money, tracking executives that bought the most of their own stocks in that week, in other words, who might be showing some bullish tendencies toward their own company. These are not buybacks these are individuals buying their own stock. Heres the data from insiderscore. Com your top insider buy is a name that we know Jp Morgan Chase is the stock and steve burke bought 75,000 share totaling a couple of million dollars. Steve burke very bullish on the company that he sits on. Next up, simply good foods check this out, according to insider score, seven different insiders totaling over 2 million of buying. Next up, Ryman Hospitality the ceo there bought nearly 600,000 worth williamssonoma as well and w winnebago seeing insider buying as well. Those are the five names that saw the most insider buying. By the way, this segment weve done, were going to move it to another 5 00 hour. 5 00 a. M. Because starting monday i will be back on world wide exchange. Love kicking off the day with you. Wex. Melissa is back on monday as well our special is next. Have a great weekend good evening on day 110 of the Coronavirus Crisis, stocks end the week with another big push forward and in one hour, a new mandatory face mask rule goes into effect here in new york state. Big rally to end the week on wall street. Stocks pick up more lost ground were nowhere near where we need to be on testing. One reason, optimism a virus fighter is coming soon. The results are looking encouraging. But is the marketplacing too much hope in a