Of Consumer Spending. Many Factory Services continued to show modest to moderate gain. Construction expanding, Energy Activity generally improved except for call. Employment continued to show modest to moderate pace of expansion. Industriesge of reported, difficult to find qualified workers, particularly for construction and i. T. Jobs. Labor shortages are a barrier to expansion. Case, thet is the labor market continues to tighten which groups only at a modest to moderate pace for low and high skilled workers. Overall prices continue to rise modestly across a majority of districts. In some districts, they may ease. Report thatoderate should have a modest impact on wall street. Mckee. Ks so much, mike lets get a check on where stocks are trading following Janet Yellens testimony earlier. Julie more reaction to janet yellen. We have got the dow that has flirted with a record close today. We have included here. Big and small, looking good. Today. Aining by 1 for the fourth session after the last five. The rally, 2. 7 . A fiveday chart, you will see the again, pretty clearly here. I want to bring up a chart again that we talked about yesterday. We found a note of caution about the gains we had seen on the nasdaq. The 50 Day Moving Average has moved above the level over the past few days. We have seen a number of lows exceed the highs. Technical Research Says it is not necessarily a good sign for a continued rally but it is something to watch. To power helping things higher. Likely to continue outperforming in the coming year because of upside, especially data center for Artificial Intelligence applications. Those shares up 4 . Western digital gaining after a court victory, a temporary restraining order so the unit will be sharing information, a step toward buying the chip unit and devices rising as well after a positive review of its new service processor. Much. Nks so lets stay with the markets. U. S. Stocks near record high, most investors shipping overseas. Month, lowe, who is best known for his campaign in the u. S. , made a 3. 5 billion bet on nestle. Now is david. We will get to your specific thing in a moment, but i want to get a sense of how you alter your approach to activism and in this is starting it europe today different from an 2016 . The difference is there is a lot more stability in terms of the Growth Profile of those companies. You look back a few years ago and growth was anemic in those countries and the fact is today were starting to see inflation and growth pickup and the valuation disconnect growing. We see that is opportunity. We saw that with brexit and we continue to find europe to be a strong alternative. Finde is it easier to unloved companies, which you , orified specialized in when we are nearing the peak like in the u. S. . That is right. The key with europe is a lot of in todays market, everything is traded on momentum. Youre getting the undervalued value stock, you see them ever push higher. Thesek at a lot of , it takes place in order to get value out of the companies. It takes management changes, longer time frames. Sethave to bring a specific to the situation. She says it is focus on operational activism, which is what youre getting at there. What is the welcome in comparison with the united states. A buzzword three or four years ago. The chu activist taking part in taking hold as well. On thehey are focusing corporate Balance Sheet companies and strategies. My background is and that is what i am looking for today. We are not worried about a one year time horizon and i would say a lot of european companies, is a level ofere exploitation and we can take advantage of that and we can come in and push some of those changes. Lies the activist strategy youlving, fun punishing if you are just an activist stage. You have to have more parts here. Exactly. You need more hard and at the same time, you have to find opportunities and the opportunity is in the value portion of the market, which is on following in research. A lot of allocators are focusing on hugging indexes. To me, there is a massive disconnect going in the market today. Make money over a. Of time overtime and i think it does a good job with that. Retail revenue, what is your confidence this is the start of a path toward Sustainable Growth . Is it enough to steer you away from the idea of a buyer . No. We have the new team coming in now in terms of the new ceo. I personally think there are more changes that need to be had on the government side. Is some issues with others pushing back with some of the senior managers there. If you are a senior manager and you do a good job and can obviously make profitability, you should be rewarded but you should not be simply because you are hitting a benchmark. It is something that needs to stop at it needs to start with larger institutions to get behind groups like myself an activist investors and say, here is a proportion of misallocation in terms of bonuses. That is from the top down. There is a share price appreciation there. I recently saw comments about their. I will not say it is our influence. That was when the market would completely be disconnected and we saw the opportunity and we are opportunistic in the approach of a very strong and solid job. In the past two years, the stock has more than quadrupled. Annuity at this point. Ahead. Runway forward, it is much more directed toward the rate. I think most of the money was made in that stock, i think at this point it will be more of a Slower Growth path for equity. We like the company and we like the management team. Over the next decade, there is a lot of room. David, breaking news. Bonds have been confirmed by s p. The outlook here saying it no longer believes it is at risk of expensing liquidity crisis in the near term. Due to a passage of a state budget here and much more on this as we continue to monitor the headlines. From new york, this is bloomberg. Scarlet lets head over to sun where Foreign Policy has been gathered for the annual conference posted by allen and company. The weeklong cant this happen for the First Time Since the Trump Administration. It is fitting groundwork for industry shifting deals. One of the power players in attendance. Steve is the cochair and joins me now. Youre on the sidelines. Great to see with you. I will start with the landscape as it exists now. Stock valuations are sky high. What does it mean for private equity at this point . Equity develops a lot of capabilities in capital. Stick and do to and we developed about a thousand people across the world who can do that. To industry has grown companies that can really transform and we are proud of doing that. Stands out to you here halfway through . Certainly in technology, about 250 billion spent on the clout alone this year. 15 years ago, we are zero. That is a major trend conversation. Everything we are doing a daily basis. So it is a great model. One cannot help but gawk at the size of many of these private equity funds. We try to stay a similar size. A little smaller than the rest. They get a high return for investors. They really do not want Access Capital causing those. That being said, it is interesting. A lot more use for private equity than it used to be. Leader in for many years. In this as wet speak with the cloud and all those types of things. You have been attending it for 10 years. That is still the breadandbutter year in and year round . There is a lot of talk about social issues and how you can invest responsibly as well as make a profit. You can 11 is happening in china up close and personal. And now it is important to have meetings with those folks. Shares of our companies and what is happening with the balanced trade, all sorts of issues. It is become even bigger. I scoured the list. Is that a something of an interest of yours . Where is the augmented reality right now . Early we are in the stages now. So ai and security, software security, it is paramount. We helped build that in. Become successful. Regulation kept coming up. Do you have a sense of what the regulatory landscape looks like . Is very unpredictable, as you know. Our institutions are there for the long term and hopefully they will do the right thing. Regulationso many especially after the banking crisis. They really regulated those very heavily and they are back in good shape right now. Question of security commission, the big regret was not finding a way to go public. We have never had a problem taking Companies Public are you have got to do it at the right time. There are good times and that times. A venture fund, they need globalization and they can move to a midsized a private equity fund. Her out created more demand for the. Apital , where dos announced you see the opportunity being in asiapacific Going Forward . Dynamic and itn is a broad term. Many people include china as well. Those economies perform very well. Much more of a Service Economy now. We have the same issues. Controlling that is difficult. They have done a good job of the thing peoples incomes and going to more of a services economy. Last question about the buoyancy in boston. Ive talked to the mayor of boston many times. A real renaissance is happening in boston or what role are you playing in that . We have been huge supporters in the community for 35 years now. The role we play is provide , so we are investing in the community, and then our partners have been fantastic in terms of being involved. Shop a great job attracting it. Some headquarters down the innovation district. Boston is a great place to be. Lost thecognize we tech age 25 years ago and people are committed to bringing that act. Secondly, maintaining the lead, we are the best leader in the Life Sciences because of all of the universities and the startups there. Well. Odes it is a great place to be right now. The red sox are in first place. It is great to be a bostonian right now. Thank you very much. Back to you, julie, in new york. For that. Nk you more straight ahead from new york. This is bloomberg. Scarlet this is Bloomberg Markets p or im scarlet fu. Time for a look at some of the biggest business stories in the news right now. Square held around quarter of its stake in restaurant brands. That is according to people familiar with the matter who say this investment is part of a portfolio rebalancing. Now 14 . Advisors may not be ready for some hopefuls. Tv networks are bracing for a drop in ad revenue next season. A decline this year along with the market for spending cuts by Auto Companies and drug companies. We will have more on this story in the next hour. That is your business flash update. Scarlet still ahead, the ceo will join us and we will get his take on fierce competition in his industry. From new york, this is bloomberg. Bloomberg world headquarters, this is Bloomberg Markets, and i am julia chatterley. Closing in new york. Lets look at some of the biggest movers. The usda reaching calling on wheat and soybeans extending supplies. Than anticipated. Corn down some 4 , taking some of the heat out of this market. Still watching weather on this subject. Prepared testimony released from janet yellen on when inflation will pick up. It might be a more dovish read. Oil prices spiking after reports oil numbers. Y stockpiles falling to their lowest since november 2015. Overall production was up again. U. S. Production added 23year high. U. S. Production only telling part of the story on that point. Ongoing struggle to curb production, specially with nigeria and iran. The secretarygeneral believes balance can be achieved. He spoke to bloomberg in istanbul. We would like to see an orderly recovery that would not theupt, significantly, influence in the market, which is a difficult process. It is longer than expected because the change in fundamentals. Scarlet breaking news on oil. Nigeria will support a cap on its oil production. The nigerian minister says the country will support a cap on its oil production, perhaps removing some of the glut concerns from the global oil market. Changing subjects now, talking about travel. The travel industry is always full of tension with fierce competition, a vibrant m a scene, and then Companies Like airbnb. Expedia is at the forefront of many of these issues. David gura is at the allen co. Conference in sun valley, idaho. David i am with the ceo of expedia. Let me ask about the level of competition in this part of the tech world. How fiercely competitive is this space . Hugely competitive. 1 travel business is a trillion plus industry on a global basis. Oftime you have a pool Consumer Spending that is that it, you will have tons of Companies Going at it. We are one of them, but travel, in general, looking at the growth of new travel market, it has been growing faster than gdp for years and years. If gdp is growing in the 2 range, travel is growing at the 4 range. Travel is moving online. You have a lot of players trying to get into the industry, a lot of traditional players trying to invest in technology. Atis very competitive, but the same time, because it is such a Growth Market and industry, you have a lot of winners. David where do you see opportunities to expand your reach globally . Isfirst of all, our growth consistently healthy across the globe. The u. S. Market is our biggest revenueover 60 of our and a higher percentage of profitability. We take that profitability and aggressively invest it abroad. The key market is the asiapacific market. We have hundreds of millions of consumers entering the middle class, and when they enter the middle class, they want to look up and explore the world. I think the power of the toernet and the phone is bring ubiquity of information and availability to everybody. Market, bothl within aipac and from the asiapacific market to the u. S. , to europe, is exploding, and we want to be there. David you look to the asiapacific region to invest in do more business. You see how they approach doing business when it comes to travel. How does that rotate to business in the u. S. . So much happening in the mobile space in asia. Is that applicable here . Very much so. Our strength is that we build Global Platforms. We have a number of different brands, but what we bring is big mobile platforms that are able to innovate at scale and are able to introduce new features that Consumers Want at a fee that smaller players cannot. Having these Global Platforms is very important, but then looking at local behavior, especially in asiapacific, the local behavior, it is an appdriven market, a mobile market with the need to be incredibly fast in an online broadband model that is not seen in the u. S. , which teaches us a lot. The platform gets better and better taking inputs from a bunch of different local markets. David how about the challenges of doing business in europe . How hard is it to do business there . How different is the culture of competition in europe for a business like yours . As long as the payment and hardware platforms are there and are pretty consistent and both are in europe and online penetration is increasing, you have the opportunity to succeed. That has allowed a number of years platforms and Global Platforms, like google and facebook, etc. Amazon thrives there, and we are one of the companys growing well in europe and thriving there. One of the things different about as is that while we are a global business, we are also a local business. We are bringing global audience, travelers, to local European Hotels who would never be able to advertise what and a credible expense they had to a japanese consumer. While we are a global platform, we are actually bringing jobs to local, Small Businesses that are hoteliers. As a result, when we come into european markets, often we are welcome because we are bringing Global Travelers into the markets, and Global Travelers bring money and jobs. David back in the u. S. , i hear there is a lot of concern about net neutrality. Do you have a good sense now of what the regulatory landscape looks like when it comes to doing business as an Internet Company in the u. S. And how that will change with this administration . I would say that the visibility into the landscape has definitely gone down. There is a lot more uncertainty. There is, in general, more volatility. Capital markets reflect that. The environment is more volatile. As a company, you have to stay flexible. You cannot get too set in your ways or get too comfortable. When there are issues like net neutrality, you speak out. We thought it was important to his begot about this issue, because the power of the internet is about giving full information, ubiquitous information, to consumers and allowing any service to have a fair shot at getting noticed versus having an editor or these gatekeepers decide who will have better speeds, who will have a better shot at finding their audience. We think that is a really bad thing. As a result, we have spoken out and a lot of other Technology Companies have spoken out, and we hope the administration will listen. What got us here is an open internet. David thank you very much. Dara khosrowshahi, ceo of expedia, joining us from the allen co. Conference. Julia great interview. Be joined bywill the former u. S. Deputy secretary of state and former u. S. Ambassador to russia. In sydney, 6 30 a. M. Hong kong. Lets go to mark crumpton. Mark President Trumps pick for fbi director told the Judiciary Committee he does not consider Robert MuellersRussian Investigation a witchhunt. He made the comm