Positive territory here by the closing bell. Volume is lighter than usual. A lot of asian markets closed, western markets. Many are waiting for the start of earnings season. Fargo first. Lls perhaps investors will be forgiven of money misses but it is the commentary at any kind of planning we are looking forward to hearing from these different ceos. Romaine you brought up the idea of the banks kicking off earnings season. A pretty strong route in financials today. Index down about 4 . The regional index down more than 6 on the day. When you overlay that with some of the concerns here that whatever sort of economic beound we may get may not Strong Enough in the way that some investors may have wanted. Scarlet earlier about earnings. Sherry in terms of earnings, i do think there are traditional tools in the traditional toolbox that analysts will be looking towards in addition to corporate identity. The traditional things are going to be balance sheets. Thisve heard a lot about over the last couple of weeks, freebility to demonstrate cash flow, dividends, to retain talent. Ofe the bridge building sort arcs us into the First Quarter of 2021, which is where i think we end up, that these are the companies that will end up being winners along with the sort of thematic investing. There are plenty of places for investors to be looking even though there is one big blind spot which i know is uncomfortable for people, but there is light at the end of the day. We are at a moment of seismic change. We need to look for those exciting opportunities as we kind of move through. Romaine i want to ask you about some of the broader issues, specifically as they relate to the fed support to the banks and Financial System as a whole. We heard from vice chairman Richard Clarida and he talked about this idea that we should expect some sort of deflationary effect disinflationary effect. Not necessarily a deflationary effect. There seems to be this distinction being drawn between the two. When you are looking at your investment thesis, your beat aios, does it disinflationary or deflationary environment matter to you . Sherry yes and yes. I think that is a fairly finessed way of saying that we are in Uncharted Waters in terms of whether or not this stimulus could lead to a shock of inflation on the back and. If basically we had a vaccine early, i think people are hedging for the back half of this sort the front half of next year. At the same time, we have this massive deficit building. Over the last 10 years, you had a lot of traditionalists who wanted to use the old tools before the manmade tools came in, to say that this was a false bull market. My simple answer, it is what it is. Portfoliosuilding for clients, and at the same time understanding where we can see value from a thematic trend standpoint, then hedge that risk through portfolio rebalancing. The heels of what the fed announced at the end of last week, its plans to buy fallen angels, or at least recent fallen angels, where do you stand on credit . A lot of companies are getting ready to tap the market, take advantage of this opportunity. Should investors start looking at highyield credit as a good place to be . Sherry we kind of go back to that ageold dont fight the fed. Principally, it feels like it does not make sense because if it is highyield, there should be some risk to it. It fundamentally changes the nature of that investment. I think we have to sit and evaluate that. That was true for the mortgage industry. It will now be true for the credit industry. The bond market has been the most transformed asset class. From a risk standpoint, it does not present the same way. Credit i dont view other than treasuries and to some extent Investment Grade bonds as being the asset class that it once was. Because of that, it becomes highly politicized which makes it more difficult to evaluate portfoliorratic in a with corporate earnings. Would much rather anchor a longterm strategy around cash flow and diffidence. Sherry share scarlet sherry paul, thank you so much. Great insight as we get ready to kick off earnings season. That does it for the closing bell. Whatd you miss . Is up next where we will be looking at the earnings season and how analysts plan to put together their estimates. This is bloomberg. Romaine i am Romaine Bostick in new york city. This is whatd you miss . Joined by michael scarlet fu and Joe Weisenthal joined by my cohost scarlet fu and Joe Weisenthal will be joining a. Scarlet u. S. Stocks giving back a little bit of the big rally from last week, closing out their biggest one week rally since 1974. We will be keeping an eye on oil and talk a little bit about the turnaround in oil prices after donald trump rocher day Production Cut deal between russia, saudi arabia, and some of the other producers. Governors across the u. S. Are joining forces to coordinate plans for reopening the economy. Lets bring in a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins university. On emergingfocused infectious diseases, preparedness, and bio security. Investors, governors, the president are all looking ahead to figure out how we go about reopening the economy. Ideally, a plan would also involve widespread testing. I wonder, the other part of it, how long it would take to get a vaccine. With vaccines, we have four in phase one clinical trial. That is record time. We have new technologies, what we call platform vaccine technologies that have really propelled companies to get to an early start. It is still going to take some time to get through this to understand the dosing, the schedule, the side effect profile. Then you have to be able to basically make enough vaccine to vaccinate the world. We are still looking at a 1218 month timeline even in a best case scenario. Romaine i guess the question that a lot of folks want to know, in the interim period, that 18 month period before we ave that vaccine, is there safe protocol to be able to go back out, go to our jobs, socialize and do things without putting a high risk of infection. N ourselves dr. Adalja there are going to be risks. We know there will be more cases that occur once you end some of these social distancing. We want to keep the case count below so that we do not put hospitals into crisis. You will probably see regional type plans. Be everythingg to goes. It is going to still likely private Mass Gatherings and other types of events where there might be disproportionate risk. We still are likely to recommend that elderly individuals and others with medical problems stay in isolation as much as they can. It will hopefully be data driven and based on the context of what is spreading in the area and based on capacity and testing. Scarlet where what School Reopening fit in . Children and young adults are not necessarily the highest risk category. Homeeople are stuck at watching their children. I think School Openings would be something done sooner rather than later. There was a lot of controversy because a lot of the data over School Closures was extrapolated from influenza. We do not know what the role of children are in the spread of this virus. There are a lot of secondary consequences. There were some countries that did not close schools. On the something that is sooner rather than later timescale, at least in terms of how i am thinking about it. We have been talking, representatives from apple and google have been holding conversations about this Contact Tracing an. When it comes to the general idea, how effective do you think that can be in minimizing the , at least betion able to keep better tabs on those who might have been infected . Contact tracing will be very important. It does take a lot of manpower. One of the Health Departments i am in contact with is using medical student. We want our Health Departments to have as many things they can have to act as a force multiplier. The better our Contact Tracing, the easier it will be to reduce spread. I think these Technological Solutions offer a lot of promise and hope. And i hope to see them flourish. Romaine the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins is supported by michael bloomberg, who is of course the founder of this network. Weing up a little bit later, will talk about the worlds Top Oil Producers coming off that Historic Deal everyone is talking about. Up next, the conversation with the oil minister of saudi arabia. This is bloomberg. Scarlet after opec process deal, thestruck that Saudi Oil Minister said he expects it to ease. Hordern with annmarie earlier today. Prince abdulaziz we are keeping all options open. Includingements, cooperation with other producers, mindful of national circumstances, including the new spirit within opec, the new ,uts, what else to demonstrate they decided to see it as a way to be up and running and acting responsibly. With that in mind, it does not take a hero to predict that this , be itrrangement structured or generically created as a result of this extraordinary situation, would also not be any further requirements. We are still hoping that this situation can be mitigated within the next couple of months and less uncertainty will prevail as opposed to more uncertainty. Once we turn that curve away, things will be a lot enter and things will be. In terms of readiness, i believe arabia,eak of saudi that as long as all of our partners already to do anything be the first would to commit in the last two abandon. Annmarie just five weeks ago, you and russia were headed toward a quite nasty divorce. Where does this leave the. Elationship now could we see another price war come back . Prince abdulaziz i would not call it a nasty divorce, but like any family, they go through distances. Usually, a family, they keep it to their inner circles. It all depends on the bond of the family. The bond of this family is family, it like any actually improves the resilience of any family. Sayi am perfectly happy to much more resilient, much more to any crisis that may emerge in the future. Statese is the united now part of this family . Prince abdulaziz sorry to disappoint, we dont need any divorce lawyers. Annmarie i want to know, who were the most important people in this deal . We have seen President Trump tweet a lot about it. Are you surprised that an american president is pushing for Higher Oil Prices . Prince abdulaziz certainly, it is not my job to defend the president. But i have to be fair to him and speak up with the truth. Jobs, creating communities, creating growth, creating income, creating contributor to gdp. And its be protected wellbeing looked after. I hate to see any president of any country that would not do that job. Romaine you were just listening to the saudi arabia and Energy Minister giving an interview a little bit earlier. Earnings season set to kick off in the u. S. This week. Coronavirus forcing most companies to pull their guidance, how much of this will really matter . Sarah ponczek covers the markets for us and covers earnings. Normally, this is the time of year when we start looking at earnings estimates and matching aem up this period will cover significant portion of the covid19 lockdown. Sarah we dont really have consensus estimates technically because a lot the estimates we have are still very stale. They have not updated. Analyst estimates, actually near a record high. Starting this week, especially, there is no right number two really compare this to. At the same time, countries will be pulling guidance or not even issuing guidance, last month saudi Second Lowest number of guidance issued since 2000 according to bank of america until the month of march. The question becomes, how do you go about measuring these companies because you cant do it as you normally would. Scarlet everything becomes very fuzzy and the numbers we are used to relying upon goes out of the window. The idea that investors will be forgiven of money misses but not moral misses. Investors want to hear with companies about how they are sharing the pain and doing the right thing. Bloombergsf stories put out today, sam, a footwear analyst, he said almost the exact same thing. He even named a few companies, for example. Executives at under armour took cut, but they have laid off or furloughed many of their employees. For someone like that, they might see their talent go elsewhere. Once this is over, they might have to spend more to rehire talent. You really do have to take a holistic view. It is not just about, how are they going about slowing cash burn. Yes, liquidity and leverage issues are very much being watched. Certainlyquestion does come into all of this. Romaine certainly that will come into play as well. We thank you for your time. We head into the earnings season kicking off this week here in the u. S. Today on this program, we will talk about americans finally starting to receive some of those stimulus checks. We will talk to one of the main members on the Congressional Oversight Commission to make sure that money gets into the right peoples hands. This is bloomberg. Beyond the routine checkups. Beyond the notsoroutine cases. Comcast business is helping doctors provide care in whole new ways. All working with a new generation of technologies powered by our gigspeed network. Because beyond technology. There is human ingenuity. Every day, comcast business is helping businesses go beyond the expected. To do the extraordinary. Take your business beyond. Torlet lets get you over first word news in our new york studios. President trump is not firing dr. Anthony fauci. The white house says the member of the White House Corona Task force has been and remains a trusted advisor to donald trump. Trump earlier retweeted a post calling for algae to be fired after he acknowledged that shutting down the country earlier may have saved lives. The governor of new york with a tone of cautious optimism. Governor andrew cuomo said, the worst is over if we continue to stay smart. He said it will not be completely over until dars a vaccine. President Emmanuel Macron said he will extend the lockdown by another four weeks. Macron said he hopes to gradually open up schools again. Nearly 15,000 people have died. Tightening controls along its border with russia. Avoid china is trying to a new wave of infections. Infections have become a major threat to rekindling the virus in china. Global news 24 hours a day on air and on quicktake by bloomberg, powered by more than 2700 journalists and analysts in over 120 countries. I am ritika gupta, this is bloomberg. Scarlet as promised, Joe Weisenthal is back. And you have a special guest. Joe . Thank you. Americans will start to receive stimulus payments this week, the centerpiece of the 2. 2 trillion rescue package. Our next guest, appointed by senator schumer to the oversight ,ommission, Bharat Ramamurti former deputy policy director for warren for president. What is your goal for oversight . Bharat thanks for having me on. The Treasury Department and the fed have approximately 500 billion to allocate throughout the economy. The goal should be to ensure thatmoney is used in a way improves the lives of working people rather than just going to enrich shareholders, making sure executives get their full bonuses, and reward investors who by and large have done very well over the past years. The goal should be making sure the public gets good return on its money. Joe obviously, there are differences between this and tarp. Your former boss Elizabeth Warren was obviously a tarp overseer. That crisis was very much generated by the industry that needed to get bailed out. It is logical that very tight oversight was necessary. Does that change the calculation now given the general view that a pandemic is not really anyones fault . Israt i still think it incumbent on the treasury and fed to use the 500 billion wisely. The billion is more than federal government is expected to spend on medicaid this year, and several times more than they are expected to spend on housing education. On thursday, the fed and the treasury announced what they were going to do with about one third of the money allocated. Sendingrt of it is lending support to big businesses. No stringscomes with attached on stock buybacks, dividends, executive compensation. What you can see is companies receiving public support from taxpayers, turning around, cutting payroll, giving full executive bonuses. I think it is reasonable for the public to wonder whether that is a good use of his money or not. With the Small Business, obviously there is stipulation that these loans go toward payroll. Do you think there should be that makein place more explicit that companies receiving aid not be allowed to do buybacks or dividends, and cant decrease payroll . I think it is worth exploring. Again, i think the public should return they is the are getting on this money if the money is going to support share buybacks and dividends rather than keeping workers on payroll, keeping workers connected to health insurance, avoiding strain on the unemployment system. The goal of this money should be to keep people as employed as possible, not to make sure executives dont have to take a cut in bonuses. In the meantime, how should the people tasked with dispersing the money balance the question of oversight with the urgent economic need to get the money out the door quickly . Is an i do think there urgent need right now. I think whether you are a democrat or republican, or independent, you want to see the money used well. I think the concerns here are different than they would be in a Small Business context. I thi