The day. Halftime report starts now. Welcome g good to have you with us our Investment Committee at the table today. Also with us on set today is cnbc senior economics reporter Steve Liesman in a few moments, as you heard, joined by adam bain stocks focussing on the fed. The twoday meeting underway why they expect to cut rates tomorrow the question is as we asked at the top, is it the week that sets stocks on a course for a new milestone or not its possible i want to be constructive here so if youre looking at if youre looking at technicals, you can say, okay, for the First Time Since last september, youve now got 72 of the s p 500 above the 200 day, which means more than twothirds of stocks almost 3 4 are in their own structure bull market. That happened last october i dont know how forward looking it is. It is a positive especially when you consider the fact that were getting participation from across the market its not very narrow its very broad. That being said, theres junky retail
Attempt to quell protests, she said the controversial extradition bill that sparked the demonstrations is, quote, dead lam said there is no plan to restart the legislation and earlier work to amend the bill has been a failure lam suspended the bill but protests continued with calls for it to be withdrawn completely lam did not say that she is officially withdrawing the bill. She said the bill is in the coffin, the bill is dead and no one needs to worry that there will be any tactics to resume the bill in the lenggislative council term Richard Bransons Space Tourism company now planning to go public. That is according to a wall street journal report it will list shares as part of the deal with social capital company, spac. Weve talked about it in the past it was created by a friend of squawk box, spac will invest 800 million in Virgin Galactic, it will get a 49 stake. The stock market listing is expected to take place later this year. Virgin galactic so far sold 600 tickets to space at
Employees globally over the next five years, and why the company is setting such an ambitious target in the middle of a media firestorm. But first to our top story. Facebooks plans to create its own cryptocurrency, libra, is not getting love from lawmakers. And you can add fed chair Jerome Powell to the list. Take a listen to what he told the House Financial Services committee on wednesday. While the project sponsors Public Benefits including improved Financial Access for consumers, libra raises many serious concerns regarding privacy, money laundering, Consumer Protection and financial stability. These are concerns that should be thoroughly and publicly addressed before proceeding. Facebook has a couple billion plus users so you have for the first time the possibility of a very broad adoption. If there were problems there associated with money laundering, terrorist financing, any of the things that we are all focused on, including the company, they would rise to systemically important
The number of female employees globally over the next five years. Why diversity seems to be the one big problem big tech cant solve. Itst, ibm has closed purchase of red hat, finalizing the worlds secondlargest tech deliver. Ibm was once synonymous with mainframe computing, but has been struggling to adapt in a cloudbased world. The company is playing catchup to market leaders and Offering Software and services over the internet. Bloombergs david westin spoke to the leaders of both ibm and red hat earlier. I think, a lot of times people think everything is going to move to one public cloud. That is not what we see clients need, want, and are even targeted to. I have an estate, like a house, im going to modernize it. And i have five to 15 public clouds already, private clouds, app, ii modernize an will put it where i want and secure all that. We give them a platform between red hat and ibm that runs on any can runand they it anywhere, secure it, and manage it. That is a distinct capabil
Firefighters it looks like better access to the metal that is in the center of this fire. At this point, we did just see some flames jumping up over the fence just a few minutes ago. You can see some water being thrown there from the equipment as well. Fighting these flames. The Fire Department got the call here about 3 00. We do have some video from sky fox. We want to show you give you a better perspective of what this looks like from above. Sims metal, a scrap metal yard here on seaport boulevard in redwood city. Oftentimes you you find cars being recycled and scrap yards which have that flammable material, maybe gasoline still in the tank. And if theres a spark that lands at the right spot, youve got the potential for a fire. Of course, although theres no indication yet from the Fire Department of what may have caused this firefighter fire out here. Rather, we did hear from a witness a few minutes ago. He says that this is the biggest fire hes seen out of the several hes seen worki