The dow, 20,792. Our Leslie Picard starts us off with the comments that have wall street talking. What did jeffrey oven have to say . Two words to describe the markets. They are bad stuff. He was speaking at a reuters event on activism and says he is disinvesting and sitting on 3 billion in cash. Ubben is focused on the risk of inflation. Everything about trump i think is inflationary. Its the last thing anybody is worried about. Interest rates are going up. There is no talk of fighting the fed at all. He did concede that tax reform would be positive. The devil is in the details. If there is a border tax, which is very inflationary. Trumps agenda has been a boom for his investments. He invested in Morgan Stanley and the stock has doubled since. He said he got super lucky because you didnt expect trump to win and all of the sudden, regulatory relief looks to be on the horizon. Rates are going up and volatility has returned. He still owns Morgan Stanley but sold some. He doesnt know how to make money that fast. Steve weiss, at extremes, the stock market is baiting you to do the wrong thing. Are investors making a mistake by chasing the trump rally. He is sitting at only 20 cash. He is still at 80 invested. He still things there is some up side. You buy position. You buy stocks. You dont buy markets. You are being baited somewhat. The market is diskoicounting everything positive without the fear of anything going wrong. Inflation is good. We are still at 2 or below and rates are still at alltime lows. Sure, they will go up but they are going up for the right reasons, because the economy is improving. I pose the same question to you. Are investors making a mistake by trying to chase this rally . I think there are better ways to play it. By playing it, judge, i mean to participate in the rally. We talk about options all the time. So for those that dont trade options, ill not go there. I think broad Market Participation at this point to steves point is exactly what i dont want. I want stocks specific exposure. I have talked about a number of them, talked about ralph lauren, restoration hardware, r. H. As it is called, some of these stocked that are so battered i think they have pretty good up side from here. Rather than chasing the broad market. The implication that ubben and seth clar man are making, it is going to end badly. They are value investors. Deep value. There is deep value out there and expensive stocks. The mistake is to talk about the market. Thank you very much. Talk about the market overall. What john was saying is absolutely right. Dont throw money at the market overall. Buy the cheap stocks and sell the expensive ones. They are easy to identify. Boeing is right in the squares of my eyes. It is up about 50 , 60 . It goes up every day. I will wait a couple of days for it to be down two days in a row and then it will lighten up. It is getting harder to discriminate . No, no. I will throw you two pages of in alltime highs at minimum. I will show you stocks that we have been talking about for several weeks. Look at the pharmaceuticals. They have been flat lined for three monds. Old line tech, intel, qualcomm. Cisco hit a 52week high. It is still cheaply priced. You can still buy that. Dont look at the market overall, individual stocks. You hear overbought, over exuberant, overbought. 20,800 on the dow. I totally agree on these guys. One of the things that we bring at the Halftime Report is that we are much more individualized. When we do talk some sectors, there are some sectors where i could broadly say, the financials. The financials had paused for quite a long period of time. Then, what did they do, scott . Even after earnings, they were still in that paused state, suddenly, it finally broke out to the up side. You look at the tech stocks. They are hitting the highs. I think they are going to hit a pause and as the pause and the consolidation occurs, then we take that next leg up. Tech has not had a down day the entire month of february. I know we have talked about it on the desk day in and day out. The earnings have been pretty phenomenal across the board. Look at sisco. This trades at a multiple under 15. They have incredible growth. The growth yar area of apple. Depending on where you look, you are going to be able to find growth and you are still finding value. Where you are overvalued, take a look at u. S. Steel. Take a look at what happened to you. That stock went up 100 to 40. It should have improved, yes. The restrictions on china dumping steel were already in place. Prices are a little better, sure. That stock shouldnt have doubled. Thats where the fluff is. It is up 380 in a year. The one thing i have to take issue is, it came up in that little tape, everybody talks about, there is so much volatility in the market. We are under 12, scott. When you look at the vix measure itself. There is a lack of volatility. There are individual names and thats always the case. It is low and there are times when it is high when it is low. The overall broad market volatility is very low, a great protective device you can use. I think that volatility is no longer as useful of a tool as it was. If you want to look at volatility, look at rotation. It is extremely useful. They are in 90 days. It was yesterday, i think. 90 days, we havent had one move down more than 1 . 92 days. Thats why the vix is as low as it is. Exactly right. We are not disagreeing. I am saying thats true in the top line averages. If you go to the sectors and look at financials, they got hit earlier, a couple of weeks ago. You look at biotech or health care, they got destroyed. Thats not reflective. You get lull nood this false sense of security. If ubben makes a suggestion it is not going to end well and we are going to get into an overly inflationary environment. If you are running his 3 billion and he is sitting in 3 billion in cash, where would you put it to work . You say there are still opportunities, individual stocks. You tell me where then. Most of the companies that have a lot of cash and a lot of dividends. If there is a market correction, and i think thats all that is going to happen, america ket correction, not a bear market, the companies that have the most cash on the balance sheet, the highest dividends, the safest places to be, pharmaceuticals, old line technology, intel, qualcomm, cisco. Thats some of the cyclicals. We will talk about g. M. Later, others that have plenty of cash that should resist a downturn. I agree with ubben, this is ahead of itself as far as the market goes. What i dont agree with is that you have to have that much cash right now. I agree with him. I am sitting in more cash than he is. I am happy where i am having that cash on the sideline when is these things fall apart. Intel has moved up quite a bit. It is on. It is off sgchlt will t. The problem is waiting for a pullback that you may not again. If i dont get it, great. If it keeps going, im participating. Are you in as much cash as you were. You and i sat here about 40 . Im a little bit less but not a lot less. One of the things that ubben pointed out was not so much where you can find value in the market but the markets reaction to certain events. For example, he looked at kraft heinz and its play for unilever, 150 billion deal. He pointed to that and said that is an example of something where you have got two companies with culture that is do not mesh well together and the market says, bravo, you are doing something good for you. He looked at that and says, thats a scary sign. Corporates are taking all this risk. He pointed to what private equity was do in 06 07 and compared it to that. He had a falloff in m a activity. It has picked up a little bit. I dont see that euphoria. I see one deal. The deals you have seen have been so large. They have skewed the number of deals. Kraft unilever is not just positive, anybodys view on the markets except for his. The deal fell apart. It is no longer. I am not worried about that. Leslie pick ard, we apprecia it. Manufacturing ceos meeting with President Trump a short time ago. We expect that to wrap. You will probably see some of the ceos at the microphones in a matter of moments. We will take you live to the white house as we do that. The conversation we have been having, stocks have gone virtually straight up since the election of donald trump. Becky quick asked Steve Mnuchin whether it is a report card for the president . Absolutely. In is america ket market to ma business. There are very attractive Investment Opportunities in the u. S. I think necessary reflective of the administrations goals and what the market thinks of it. Dangerous game. If you want to say the market going up is a report card for the president , you better own when it goes down, right . You do have to. What he outlined were regulatory relief. We have all talked about it here on the desk. I think universally, we believe it is going to happen. The tax and the implications of simplistic tax application for the middle class and also for business, over and over in the interview with becky, he talked about for the middle class. Thats my focus like a laser. That is huge in terms of driving the economy. Aman jabers at the white house. Reporter it appears a bunch of them have just come out the front door and are approaching the stakeout position here where we have some cameras set up. I see jeff immelt coming over. Im trying to get a sense of who else is coming over here behind these trees here. It looks like we are going to get some words from some of these ceos here momentarily, scott. One of the questions that i know a number of other reporters are going to want to ask, what specifics came out of today. They allowed some reporters to sit in and listen to the ceos and talk about infrastructure, trade, tax. All of that. What specific ideas are they going to take from this and include as policy here in the white house . Here we see some of the ceos coming out. Lets see if we can get a word in here while we are live on the air. Reporter mr. Emmelt, give us a sense of what happened . It was a great meeting. Reporter any specific takeaway . Well let the president talk about that. A lot to talk about, trade, education, reform, it was really great. Good discussion. Reporter there you hear, tax, trade, regulation, from mr. Immelt, a great discussion. Reporter a couple of the other ceos are coming by as well. They are going to let the president speak for this group. We expect some will come out momentarily and talk to the larnl larger group. It is chockfull of ceos here today. Love watching you do what you do outside there. This is the second such meeting for this manufacturing group. Immelt has been there before, doug oldman, andrew liverest of dow chemical. Reporter some of these ceos have been here four times. Elon musk may have met with the president five times since the election. Clearly, there are some people that are now regular visitor toss this white house. This is the west wing of the white house here. Some of the ceos are coming out. A little bit of an unusual procedure. Typically, they will just come out of that door. Thats why we are spinning around with the camera. I see Peter Navarro coming out there trying to see who else is with him. Clearly, some of the white house officials here now coming out as well. Here is mark fields. Well wait and see whether they have anything to say. Mark fields of ford. He is with some of the other officials. Let me see if i can talk to mr. Fields. Can you give us a little about what happened in the meeting. It was a very productive meeting. Reporter what specifics are coming out of it . A lot of working level things to do. Reporter what did you tell the president about immigration, if anything . Sorry. We have to go. Reporter a lot of the ceos are on message in terms of it being a productive meeting, a good session. Thats pretty standard. You dont necessarily get a lot of detail from the ceos. We want to jump on them immediately and get a sense of what they have to say. Typically, you will get one or two ceos who are designated spokes people. With he we are waiting to see if andrew liverest will come out. You can tell that Peter Navarro, the fact that he is in the room, you have to believe that china and the issue of what to do about trade with china, not to mention currency, remains a front and center topic and was, perhaps, discussed at that table . Reporter this is a huge opportunity for a lot of these ceos. I believe that was ziado jackly, one of the top lobbyists for ford here in town. I will check the tape and see if that was him. It was an opportunity for some of the washington representatives to come into the bh white house and talk to some of these officials. This is a golden opportunity for them to speak to specific issues that has been pending for a long time n one time. In one of the breakout sessions, i heard one complaining about that he couldnt get clarity on whether this was coming in or not coming in. His investors were worried. He couldnt give them an estimate of how much it would cost his company. It could be 100 million. It could be 300 million. We cant give wall street any clear guidance on how much this is going to quocost us. Even if it is a bad answer, we just want an answer. This is an opportunity for the ceos to sound off. Regulatory that we have been talking about. We are going to let you keep an eye on the doors there and jump back to you as we need to. Doc, to the extent that the stock market is a report card of the president and his policies, do you agree with it . Should it be . It should be, yep. The former president , obama, he cited it time and time greagain. He was pounding his fifty st in press conference and at least three times cited how the stock market had performed and come up since march of 09. Every president looks at the market and try toss create growth. Thats what this president is trying to do. I think the policies will be successful. The investors are clearly giving this president a grade f a. The dow jones, above 20,800 for the first time ever. Well take a quick break. If Steven Mnuchin gets what he wants, the dow will jump 10 , s p almost 14 they say with energy, industrials outperforming bigtime. The stocks that have performed best are apple, united health, caterpillar, boeing and goldman sachs. For more on this, go to cnbc. Com pro. The Halftime Report is coming back in two minutes. Its not just a car, its your daily treat. Go ahead, spoil yourself. The es and es hybrid. Experience amazing. [he has a new business teaching lessons. Rodney wanted to know how his business was doing. So he got quickbooks. It organizes all his accounts, so he knows where he stands. Ahhh. Thats a profit. Way to grow, rodney visit quickbooks. Com. Thank you all for joining me today. Im assistant to the president. We assembled 24 of the leading manufacturing ceos in the country. Among them, they represent over 2 million employees, mostly american jobs and over 1 trillion of revenues. We broke the 24 ceos into four working groups, which were joined by white house senior staff, cabinet secretaries, and other thought leaders. We dove into the issues that are paramount to this president and the administration. Namely, what it takes, the details, to ensure that we bring back manufacturing in a substantial way to the u. S. Economy, that we help these companies unlock the power that they have and we were challenged by the president to make sure we come up with a program to ensure americans and the American Worker is freintrained for the manufacturing jobs of tomorrow. It is a holistic approach. It is an incredible focus of this administration and i am definitely encouraged and proud to say that by partnering and working with the private industry, the ceos that are here today and many others that we are working with, with the leadership of our cabinet secretaries and, of course, the president , that we are going to accomplish that goal in a very meaningful way. Now, im going to furn it ovtur to some of the ceos that are leading the effort on this way. Thank you, read, andrew liverest from dow chemical. It was very much a working session today following a month ago when we first met with the president. We in the manufacturing sector, all the ceos that were here today and in the last meeting are very encouraged by the pro business policies of President Trump and his cabinet. Some of us have said this is the most pro Business Administration since the founding fathers. There is no question that the language of business is occurring here at the white house. We had a couple hours. I think the working groups are going to hear a little bit about each of them. The working group are bringing back manufacturing jobs, all the way from basic manufacturing to advanced manufacturing. They are the type of jobs where technology and manufacturing have intersected. These sorts of discussions on tax, regulatory reform, one of the working groups, workforce for the future, a third and fourth infrastructure, i was in workforce for the future. We really brought back in a very robust conversations, the ceos in the room with the president listening very intently and making great comments on the notion that the supply side in stem and Vocational Training needs a National Systemic fix. Many Large Companies and even Small Companies are doing the right thing in trying to get training around their factories to try and put people into these jobs that are stembased in the main. Many of us are isolated islands. How can we leverage each others best practices on apprenticeship programs, how to put it back in the School System working with betsy devos and the president s team. The whole notion of what we can do with Community Colleges to retool them. So Vocational Training, the noble trades can be brought back to our kids so kids can see these as jobs for the future. We have half a million open stem jobs that we cant fill. We need to fill them with americans and we need to do that as a priority. The next several years, 3 million to 5 million new jobs even without the pro growth policies of President Trump. There will be more jobs to fulfill. Good afternoon, my name is ken frazier. I am from merck. I participated in the tax and trade working group. We are very early in our thinking about these issues but it is very clear that the president is very interested in listening the tax burden on americans, including middle class americans. He is also interested in lessoning the tax