Good morning it is 8 00 a. M. At uber headquarters in San Francisco, 11 00 a. M. On wall street, and squawk alley is live. Good tuesday, welcome to squawk alley. Joining us this morning is walter isaacson. On cnbc newsline kara swisher, good morning to everyone. Quite a market rally we have on our hands here. We have attentions of actual armt and gender bias leading a team to lead the probe. Dierdre has more on that. Eric holder will lead the investigation joined by uber board member arianna huffington, and also leann hornsey. These are quick first steps, but it will be important to see what comes of the review that is p e facing questions if their independent enough. Susan fowlers explosive post over the weekend alleging Sexual Harassment at the company. These numbers tell the story here. They said yesterday that 15 of ubers Technology Staff are women, and the others its not much better. Dierdre, thank you for that, they have done a lot of work on this front. Is there something endemic to uber. Still bad, i hear stories like this over and over and over from women and engineers in Silicon Valley. The numbers are terrible overall, that creates a real problem, but it is also a tone of culture where this stuff is not handled quickly enough. A lot of younger managers, power, and arrogance and it gets to this. One of the things that disturbs me is that anyone that thinks this is okay will be fired. But if the details are accurate, and she has a lot of details in here, its not only a manager sexually harassing her, getting transfers blocked, letter jackets were ordered for more than 100 men on a team but the six women were not given jackets. If youre the ceo and founder and you bought this over eight years, if you dont know that this sort of thing is going on, and you have to hire all of these big names, isnt that in and of itself a problem . One of the Silver Linings of this is that everyone should read her blog post. It is haroeralding. I think kara swisher and rico in the front of this, peach should be reading their stuff as well, but youre facing three things. One is a general arrogance and brashness money some of the engineers in the Silicon Valley. They have to learn to coexist without being sexist. You can be brass without bying sexist. Women and people of color are just not in the pipeline. I go down to new orleans a lot and try to train people from all backgrounds, women, blacks, others, young kids, how to code and how to become engineers. We have a Wonderful Technology teaching curriculum done, they have developed it, but you want to make sure it is not just the wealthy white gaming boys doing it. People creating games are people who are less privileged backgrounds or from minority groups or women. So that you end up having youre not going to change the culture until you have 40, 50, or 60 of the people from these firms being from diverse backgrounds and being women. Kara, when it comes to pressure on these companies to change their practices, is there any asymmetry between companies that are public or private. Does uber get a pass . No, google, microsoft and others had these problems early on by the and and they still have these problems and they have more systems in place to deal with them. I heard it and all kinds of stuff. It is continuing. I think the issue is why, i mean, talking about the pipeline, but there are a lot of women in technical positions in Silicon Valley, and why cant they solve the problem of culture. This is not something that is easy to fix, but it is also not hard to fix. Why make the people there unwelcome at this point with these practices. The Leather Jacket thing is the least of the problems here, but it is ridiculous, you know . On its face, its insane they did that. This company that is so funded, they have more money than god and they could not do a simple thing like that. They cant do simple things, and then the consequence for women, like look at them, that was enormous, we covered that like crazy. I dont think a lot of she suffered and she lost, of course. But at the same time she was bringing to light very important issues. But you know who lost in that trial . Ellen powell and nothing has changed in the attitudes. So will it matter . What can actually change this and get it to really matter, and i think it has to come absolutely from the top, from the ceos, and there are a lot of ceos that have to do this. The same thing around immigration, the same thing around diversity in general. It has to be calculated into these cultures. Fowler says the organization that she was part of was 25 of women, she left only 3 were women. The pipeline is stuff if you have a leaky pipe. Lets move on to the snap ipo. Company executives attending a luncheon to pitch the offer to investors. Leslie picker is on the scene with that. Hey leslie. Hey, carl, thank you so much. About 30 minutes ago, we saw them here at the mandarin oriental. The chief Strategy Officer making his way in. They will be pitching their three billion dollar idea to investors. Following that meeting, Atlantic Equities put out a note that they titled ephemeral value. One of their main concerns of snaps ability to expand beyond a core demographic. Sustaining User Engagement which it tries to monetize through advertising, and improve their margins relative to their peers. These concerns echo those of investors and those that prepare to discuss at todays meeting and their prepared to work on corporate governance. Walter, im curious about your view. Snap got where we are, some argue by doing things different ways. Let me say im friends with some of the people at snap, so im very favorably disposed to it. And i think there is a larger context here, snap is changing the way that people communicate. It used today be that pictures and video were done for documentary purposes. You wanted to document something, you wanted to keep it, you wanted a photograph of that moment. Now photographs and video and snap is about 50 50 photographs and video, are done as tools of communication. As words used to be. And in some ways words are the tools that we use to communicate, but on a new snap generation, people are using photographs as these tools of communication as opposed to using words that way or using photographs to document events. I think the real question will be can they create a platform on top of that just the way facebook has. They are allowing people to create their own products on facebook. Will people be able to create products on snap. Kara, is it a question of whether or not they can pull an hwo on facebook, create and sustain a high engaged Premium DevelopmentMarket Experience faster than facebook can do the same with more resources . First of all, im not friends with anyone there, but i think what is interesting is nobody, nobody is friends with me. But the engagement thing, and if you can take someone like my son, who is a rabid snap user. If you can take them into adulthood. The second part is can they get out of the the problem that twitter has with being too compared to facebook. You dont want that comparison because facebook is a j juggernaut. If it is a highly profitable company, if it is smaller, that is probably good. You start to have expectations that it is a Facebook Like entity. That is billions and billions of people and thats where they fall into a trap. Can they keep innovating . Can they keep the engagement of the people that use it, and can they keep those people over a long period ofd time, and these are just basics of business, and thats really their big issues that i think investors will probably be thinking about. But if they go up against facebook, i would avoid that at all costs if i were them. If i may say, trying to get into hardware. Everyone since steve jobs has wanted to get into hardware. It has been a rousing success. So i would be interested if they can do Something Like that that makes them a sticky company, not somebody who moves on to a Facebook Messenger app or whatever it may be. For someone that made his living using words, are you active on the platform or are we all out of the demo. Im out of the demo. I have used it because i try to at least know what is happening out there, i do not find that for me, taking videos or pictures as a form of communication is better than just texting you, carl, when i need to say something. Yes. We know that feeling. It will be an interesting few weeks here. Watching the market this morning, all three indices make record highs today, the dows eighth straight day in the green. John, all 11 sectors are up, and we put together the west monthly gain for the s p, you have to go back to march to find a better point or percentage gained in a month. The nasdaq is lagging behind, but there are tech names doing quite well. Look at amd, up nearly 5 . Today up nearly 620 over the last 12 months. Theyre doing okay. When we come back, the cnbc exclusive. The Parent Company of several popular brands. And well get the latest on the new National Security advis advisor, and a look at even spiegel. Ways wins. Especially in my business. With slow internet from the phone company, you cant keep up. Youre stuck, watching spinning wheels and progress bars until someone else scoops your story. Switch to comcast business. With highspeed internet up to 10 gigabits per second. You wouldnt pick a slow race car. Then why settle for slow internet . Comcast business. Built for speed. Built for business. Welcome back to squawk alley. One of the firms in attendance here is conagra. They have worked to meet the needs of younger Millennial Consumer who is are demanding healthier options. Shares of the company are up 23 . Joining me now is sean connolly. Thank you, big food is so x sexy right now between the deal making and the innovations for is a industry that was not growing. There is always Something Interesting going on. Our priority is on transforming a 100yearold company to unlock value. It is all about upgrading our volume base. We debuted a lot of it last night, exciting times. How hard is it to transform brands you mentioned have been around 50 to 100 years out alienating some of the loyal fans but also trying to get them to appeal to a new generation . Its not rocket rocket science. You have to make them contemporary and important again. If theyre dull, they wont sell. It is important to do and then you have to execute. Making good innovation that is coming. Exciting stuff over the year. What will we see for results and sales growth. You will see it continue to make progress into the marketpla marketplace. We debuted a new slate of innovation. That is just the beginning when you really restart a company the way we have done, you have to rebuild the immigration pipeline. It is the first wave and it will co compound from here. How much more retooling will there be. We are a branded food company. It is one thing for building great branding and driving fall for our shareholders. We will do that or beganically, question do it inor beganically. It will be part of the mix here in the years to come. And youre mostly domestic right now with the tax reform plans in place. Expecting a 15 bump in your earnings if we get a lower tax rate down to 20 . No one knows exactly how that will playout, but our view is that the best thing that can happen in this country is to get back to growth. The more that we can invest in innovation, upgrading our brands, the better growth and environment we see, and the happier our investors, employees, and customers will be. What about the border tax. It is a big importeder. It impacts everyone differently. What is more unique is that we are basically a domestic company. The vast majority of our sales base is u. S. Brands and ingredients here, factories here, customers here, so it is not as much of an issue for us as others. But we will try to sit and watch how it unfolds, it is too early to tell yet, well see. What about deregulation . But two regulations need to be rolled back for every new one . Does that hurt safety rules . Nothing gets in the way of food safety for our company. Food and company safe itty is job one and job b. It is like tax reform, no one knows exactly how it will play out. We have to watch and adapt as we see things unfold. Im hospital mystic. We have this business and country going the way we want it to. What about immigration. We talked to tyson foods, how does that affect the company . You know, we have being a u. S. Food company, we have 13,000 employees, the vast majority of them are here, theyre excited about what were doing as a company. We cant be successful without our employees. We will give them every bit of support that we can. We value them, they make our great products. They drive value for our shareholders and were proud to have them on the team and everyone is making tremendous progress. A company in transition. John, back to you. Thank you, sarah, for bringing us that great interview. Still to come, the president happening a new National Security advisor, it will be James Jeffrey and he is next to weigh in with us. And also big stock movers. More is coming up on squawk alley. Were out here in San Francisco this week. And to be fair to this market, which i dont think ever gets its due, i have never seen so many break out at once. After a week of uncertainty following the resignation of michael flynn. There is also a new ambassador, and he is joining us, James Jeffrey, good morning, thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. Mcmasters past, a famous book, hawkish on some elements of the world, what should we know about him . With the selection of mcmaster, President Trump put together one of the most en extraordinarily strong policy team thats i have seen in my lifetime. This team if allowed to do their job will be very good for american security. When you say if theyre allowed to do their job, are you referring to reports that some cabinet appointees have struggled to get their deputies named . What concerns you right now . That and this separate policy Planning Committee that steve b bannon set up in the white house. Neither i or anyone else knows how that will work. The way that president s carry out Foreign Policy is mcmaster as a National Security advisor has to coordinate the activities of secretary matthis, secretary tillerson, the secretary of treasury and others to make sure we have a consistent and coordinated Foreign Policy guy. If he is not the goto guy, he will have problems. Ambassador, what would give you more confidence about the way forward . Is it reorganizing the National Security county . Along more traditional lines, or something short of that that the president can do to reassure folks like you. Thats a good question. First of all the president should and must be advised by whoever he wants to be advised by. People have that, we have people like Harry Hopkins and the roosevelt administration. Its not, to some degree, the fact that steve bannon sits on the National Security county, it is probably a good thing. Will they have the authority to carry out policies and have a day in court with the president. If the log jam breaks at the sub cabinet level, the department of defense, the department of state, and the security counsel staff, that supposely mechanic masters got a commitment that he can do what he wants. If that occurs, this will be a good sign to play the heavyweight role in the administration that theyre capable of doing. Do you think that brings to an end the conflict between the white house and the Intelligence Community . I think it will go a long way, but between what we and a Foreign Policy establishment think of the world and how to deal with it and how many think of that, and President Trump is legitimately reflecting that. There is attention between what he might want the United States to do, and what they might be willing to risk their young peoples lives for. So attention is okay as long as you have procedures and people who get through in a regular fashion. What we have not had is that regular fashion. Ambassador, speaking of, there was headlines this weekend around the discussions around sweden. Perhaps not very significant, how does it affect the United States relationship with its allies when it comes to topics like National Security . That is a different interview. First of all, he may vo gotten wrong, but what he put his finger on, regardless of the half bakes report that he saw, is a real problem in europe. It is a problem in report after report that i have read from the main stream media about the role of immigration in these countries where like in sweden it is 10 of the population. Crime is up some, but they remain a foreign element in these societies and that has a huge impact on the regulations. They dont want to see that happening here. Its not an ill legitimate point to make. You can koogle the immigration in sweden problems and you would have hundreds of pages. Theyre taking up a lot of the jobs in places like the uk, thank you, please come back soon. Counting down to the close here, we have the close in the u. K. And across europe. It is all about the economy, first it was about the uptick in growth inflation. And now moving to the fastest pace in six years. The comp composite coming out a even, france at 566. 2, and germany went to 56. 1 helped by growth in manufacturing. The flash results mean that euro zone gdp could reach 0. 6 in the first quarter. Now the improvement in europes economic landscape comes as the temperature heats up across europe. It shows that marie le pen continues to gain support now at 27 versus the other two. Theyre telling us there is still positives on europe despite this. If they continue to improve they will stay positive on europe. Attacking of earnings, lets look at hsbc. Sharing are down sharply after the bank posted a wider than expected quarterly net loss. They also announced a 1 billion share buyback, but that is not as large as what some investors were anticipating. If we go on to minors, a different story. Swinging back into the black, more than doubling their dividend payout. Reflecting a sustained demand as china cuts down on production. Returning to profit able ahead of the results. Keep an eye on the minors that have been a big part of the rally that we have seen. Some white house staffers calling it the app to end all leaking. Talking about confide. We know jon brod well, he is coming back to talk about that. The s p 2360. President trump is denouncing recent threats against Jewish Community centers. He was touring the museum. The threats against our Jewish Community and Community Centers are horrible and mainful and a very sad reminder of the work that still must be done to root out hate, prejudice, and evil. Two trains crashed outside of philadelphia this morning. There are no reports of life threatening injuries. The trains were not in service at the time of the crash. The popular giant panda, bao bao, will be returning to china today. She riding in style on the panda express. Lets get back to squawk alley. Thank you, contessa, as there ever been an unpopular giant panda . No. I dont think so. And our next guest founded this a, confide, that is being used to avoid leaking sensitive or embarrassing information. Jon brod, the journalist in me seems like its a great app for leaking Sensitive Information because people dont know that you leaked it. Sure, the whole purpose is to make Digital Communication as private and security as the spoken word. So there are tons of use cases. Think about hr issues, think about deals, think about job references. Tips for reporters, and i think leaks in politics fits in that category. So they yiet about it last week or the week before, and the washington postf followed. Every month has been a new record for us across substantially all usage and e engagement methods. We have seven times more user every week from the prior week. We have, we have seen accelerated ground since the u. S. Election, but nothing like this. This puts us, catapults us into a new category. There is criticism saying there is some logging of at least who youre talking to, is that valid in the way that you see the app being architected . Are there changes you have in mind that might make it more secretive . All of the meta data is aggregated and anonymous. We know how much messages are sent. I think youre referencing that we do ask you to have an act. User name, email address, but everyone should be on confide, right . If you think about the offline word, we confide all of the time. And so the idea that youre on confide is not confidential or secretive, what youre confiding in and with whom certainly is. Do people have the right to ask about foil laws, president ial records, can a chief of staff use this. You bet they have a right to ask. There are Certain Industries and Certain Communications that are regulated. If you are regulated, you must use it in a way that complys with that regulation like you would with any other platform. Do you think this last political cycle especially changed the conversation around encrypti encryption . It wasnt long ago that we had people arguing that you should not be able to create abopps th are completely encrypted because terrorists can use them. First off, it has become even more Common Police station. We had private email servers, hacks, wikileaks and this is finally really coming forward, and second, the encryption, the genie is out of the bottle. This is here for good and to stay. Imessage uses it, whatsapp uses it. So is it an opportunity to do Something Else . Were doing great, we have the best investors in the world. Google ventures, we have tons of cash in the bank and that will allow us to staff up to the extee extent that we want to or need to, and continue on the platform that we have continued to do over the years. Jon brod from confide, i will remember this conversation. Okay, thank you. When we come back, as the snapchat road show resumes, more from ev evan spiegel. Only talk in public and put your hands in front of your lips. Were going to talk about chaos. Sometimes it is a condition that is somewhat normal. Think equity marks, think legislation, think coming back after the break. [ponig at . Y ry. At . Whats with the sized hors im cry ssed trying to figure out this mplex trade whats with the sized hors so i bron myomfort pony, warren, to help me dea isnat rhtar well, you could get supporom thinkorswims pp c it l ls you chatndreour scretly with aive peon r frothe p, so you d need a comfor oh, so what about my titional meeat . App chat thiorswim. Ly atd ametrade. How high can stocks go as we close in on 21,000. One wall street watcher who was skeptical is now changing his tune. And whether or not President Trump and his policies can push stocks to the next level. Giants like macys, nordstrom, and many will do their reports. Well see you soon, scott. Lets get to the cme group and lets go get the santelli exchange. We had the great depression, the agree recession, and now i think we have the great repricing. There is a difference between markets that rally, markets that break, set those to one side, versus repricing on the other side. You know the nasdaq, charts are up about 9 . Alternatively, a ten year note, even though it is well off a Double Bottom low, it is still two basis point, exactly two basis points below where it settled in 2016. So we continuely try to handicap what the equities know or what the credit markets know. My been, first we need to know that repricing is unique. If there are certain issues that are going to cause a very large global market, especially one attaches to the reserve currency of the world, it just cant happen differently. You just cant be. Its not the way it works. What happens it like a thermostat, you can turn it to 80, but it goes 51, 51, 53, maybe faster if you have a good fur nans. There is a chaos baseline that i think many investors are using when they talk about our equity markets. Many investors believe that in some way were going to have lower tacks and in other ways less regulation. They expect chaos. Think about it in just the last eight years. A large piece of legislation. Im thinking Affordable Care act. You have partially written legislation like dodd frank. Does that sound like good operating procedure . Chaos. But chaos is part of the system. Its part of the sausage factory. Can things go wrong . Absolutely. Going wrong is a condition, a normal condition and i think many need to think about it more in those terms. At the end of the dame im not sure how it will turnout, but it seems like anything young some tax lowers, some regulation roll back, could be an added bonus. No one is thinking of even potentially pricing that in. Cha chaos is something more than an old get smart episode. Thank you, as we go to break, look at shares of apple hitting another intraday high today. It is up 52 from the low just nine months ago. Other highs, amazon, adobe, and ebay. Squawk alley is back after this. Where, in all of this, is the stuff that matters . The stakes are so high, your finances, your future. How do you sve this . You dont. You partner with a firm that advises governments and the fortune 500, and, can deliver insight person to person, on what matters to you. Morgan stanley. Did you know slow internet can actually hold your business back . Say goodbye to slow downloads, slow backups, slow everything. Comcast business offers blazing fast and reliable internet thats over 6 times faster than slow internet from the phone company. Say hello to internet speeds up to 250 mbps. And add phone and tv for only 34. 90 more a month. Call today. Comcast business. Built for business. Hits new york city lots of eyes on the 26yearold Ceo Evan Spiegel about to be worth a cool 4 billion. So who he is . Julia boorstin joins us now with one of the youngest billionaires in the world. Evan spiegel once said i got really, really lucky and life is not fair. He pursued design and marketing as early as high school taking courses and doing an unpapd internship fo rel bull. T stanford while studying product design, spiegel was ambitio ambitious. He audited a Business School class and found a mentor in one of the speakers, scott cook. He disappearing messages app first called peek a boo, telling the tost in 2013 he was serving an unmet demand. A bunch of our friends said they felt uncomfortable with the awkward photos of themselves that they posted online. They had silly photos from ninth grade or tenth grade. That prompted this exploration of, hey, what would happen if the media disappeared . Spiegel understands wanting immediate a to disappear. He drew fire in to 14 for leaked emails he sent as his fraternity social chair making defensive jokes about women. He dropped out of stanford weeks before graduation when his first funding round landed in his bank account. He worked out of his dads house before opening an office in venice in 2013. Spiegel met his fiance at a dinner for liouis vuitton. Spiegel usually wears this 60 james purse tshirt. Vneck. His taste in cars is expensive. He bought a ferrari after closing a big funding round and his personal security is expensive costing snap nearly 900,000 last year as spiegel tries to avoid the spotlight. Guys . Julia, im wondering what sort of a public ceo presence you expect him to be. Weve seen Mark Zuckerberg take on this global statesman role, jack dorsey has similarly talked about twitter is changing the world. It seems like evan spiegel might be different. Whats your take . I think hes going to take a much lower profile. I think it will be really interesting to see what he does in terms of tv interviews fr the company goes public. But he has been far more private and camera shy than any of these other ceos in this category, whether its twitter or linkedin before it went public, certainly facebook. Its interesting, we were looking for interviews me he had done and he hasnt done a tv interview in years. He did some interviews on cnbc, on the today show years ago but he has tried to steer clear of the public eye. I dont think hes going to be taking the same public role that we see these other ceos taking. But well have to see if he changes his tune once the company is public. Yeah. Eric schmidt has been very complementary of his management style and well be talking more about what it means to have left stanford and not stayed in San Francisco, gone to venice and done your business that way, in that town. Yes, and i have spoken to him a little bit about how much he loves being in los angeles. Obviously l. A. Is his hometown. He grew up in the pacific palisades. Not far from venice where his offices are now. But theres a lot of talk here in l. A. About how being outside the Silicon Valley bubble gives you a different perspective. Some folks like shawn radd the creator of tindr says it gives them a real since of what real people are like. Real people in l. A. Everything is relative, i guess, right . Yeah. Julia, thanks. We cant wait for march 1st. Squawk alley is up after this. Dow is up 66. Markets hit new record highs today as the rally continues. Lets get to our bob pisani on the floor. Bob . Hello, carl. I dont think theres too much going on here but its curious, we had a great close to europe. Germany closed at a new high. We were selling off as we were going into the european close. Lets say buy europe, sell u. S. Maybe a little sentiment going on. Talking about that trade for a while. Its too big. 23, 65 on the s p. So were five points off. Take look at the Big Industrial names who are a little weak. Caterpillar, for example, started strong, and has been dr dropping a bit, now in negative territory. Ibm, the tech names. All the stocks have been sp spectacular recently. Then we saw tenyear yield weaken, the dollar weaken. Some of the bank stocks like jpmorgan turned around a little bit as well. Ill tell you what everybody is talking about here, carl. Next week the president will be speaking to a session of congress and the talk here is hes going to try to push through tax cut program and Infrastructure Spending program. The talk is without a border adjustment tax. Of course that means deficit spending, the hawks are going to go crazy about this. But theyre talking about this on the floor. That he may try to pull that off, say, were back to the 1980s. Reagan did it. Deficits dont matter when youve got strong economic growth. You heard about possible ideas of him talking about 3 , 3 1 2 gdp. A lot of people are saying thats the reason we keep getting this rally. The trump rally as well as global reflation still very much intact. Of course, carl, you saw the excellent manufacturing numbers, the pmi numbers in europe today. Oh, man. Pushing europe forward. Eurozone, 56. 70month high. Jpmorgan, too. I mean, as if cramer were here he would say growth is literally breaking out everywhere right now. Yeah. And over in japan. The whole market is doing tar f terrific right now. Five big tech stocks, market cap over 100 billion, hitting 52week highs. S p, oracle, amazon, apple, cisco. Big. Courts now in session. Lets get to the judge. Thanks. Welcome to the halftime report. Im scott wapner. Stocks surge. What if anything can stop this trump rally. With us, joe terranova, stephanie link, john najarian. Kevvin oleary back with us. We do begin with stocks if major averages all hitting new highs today. Throw in the russell 2000 as well. Theres the dow. Crossing 20,700 for the first time ever. The question is should stocks be where they are given much