Year. But keep in mind we are still about 20 lower than where we were one year ago. The question, of course, now is where do we go from here . Lets bring in our all star oil panel now. Lima croft of Rbc Capital Markets and john. Two things, number one, you called this nigeria thing back on january 27th. Yes. Congratulations. Thank you. Is the output cut thats happening in nigeria enough to sustain higher prices long term or just short term activity . One thing about nigeria is we had supply outages in the past and they lasted a long time. What i keep telling clients is if nigeria goes off line, its sticky. Theyre intent on shutting down production and they have the capacity to do. So its the biggest upside ris nkt oil market. Is there any other sector where you have a group called the avengers having an impact . This is what theyre calling themselves. Its really a men take two. There was a group that kidnapped oil workers, shut down facilities and parade them around on tv. They do things with great style. So, again, i dont think we should write them off. These guys are armed to the teeth. Wow. Okay. Theyre all about the marketing, michelle. Yes. But can you say, john, that given what is happening in nigeria, given what happened in canada, yeah, were up. But wouldnt we be expected to be higher than 47 a barrel given the two things . Or is everybody putting enough oil on that it doesnt matter. We have strung together some significant outages from the kuwaiti oil worker strike, the fire, now this, venezuela ready toim ploe to implode. Foofrt year or, so a the love the oil went unsold for points of time. There were scores of cargo sitting throughout with nowhere to go. But thats why we think it is important. The nigerian barrels is the homeless barrel choking the market. We cleared off nigeria. So Goldman Sachs in the note, theyre specific. They say the market went from being overly saturated with oil now do being indeficit. They go that far. Have we made that pendulum shift already in your opinion . I think were pretty close, actually. Between canada and nigeria, nigeria may be down 700,000 or will 800,000 barrels, if they keep getting worse, well be down. It would suggest the price gains we have now hold. Am i wrong on that . There should be some stickiness to them. But i think what youre vulnerable to is whether or not the vents are transitory. Libya keeps coming on and off potentially on the market as an example. Iranians have come back to the market much quicker than most folks calculated. Even here, all you have to do is pay them off and theyre back in the market. Thats what did it for mend and thats what could do it again. They ran an anticorruption aagenda yachlt hes not going to pay them off and nor does he have the money. All the producer states, the weak ones are failing right now. May not just be nigeria. Remember, we spoke to Nigerian Oil Minister in doha. They were onboard to sign this deal. Everybody was onboard except for the vowedies. I think we found out. But i know youre not an equity analyst. Look at Sand Ridge Energy today. A formerly and mid sized oil Company Filing for chapter 11. I dont want to throat bear case on all the bull stur that were talking about, 47 still not that high for oil. Do you see any were going to need higher prices for a lot of the companies. Do you see those coming . This is going to be the test z this run at 5 50 bring on the Oil Production . I think there is a lot of desperation out. There i think youre go to see the folks try to lock in 48, 50 barrel oil here. What is the prediction . 52. 50, not much higher than where we are. No doubt about it. And, too, i think for the demand forecast that are out there, our projecting in that asia hangs in there. I just keep seeing worse and worse data out of all of the asian economies, not just china. So i question the demand Growth Numbers. India is doing well. Theish sue inventory overhang. You have to work off the inventories. Opec in three weeks. Are we going to get a deal in vienna, austria . We didnt get a deal in doha, i see no deal everybody says that they didnt amount to anything. You called it. I called it irrelevant on the air. Any big surprises you expect from the opec meeting . I dont see the saudis changing their mind right now. If you look at this pain that everyone is in, i think theyre ready to blow up opec. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Okay. Thats a big one. All right. Some big oil etfs are on the move today. Lets get to dominick chu with an example of some ways can you trade that market. So the stocks and rally mode today in the Energy Related etfs are helping to lead the market higher. Funds being used to express energy views in these stocks include spdr. 14 billion in assets. Its the biggest Energy Related stock out. There another big one that people use is the vanguard etf which is close to 5 billion on assets. On the more industry specific side of things, you have the exploration etf. This two billion funneled focus oz companies that hunt for and produ produce fossil fuels. Then the oil services etf, oih, it focuses on the companies that help service oil producers. They provide equipment supplies, that sort of thing for xbloration and production companies. Now after a rough couple of years each as managed to rally alongside oil prices so far this year. As brian pointed out, were below where we were a year, two years ago, melissa. Back to you. Thank you. Kohls, gap, and nordstrom are rebounding, theyre coming off double digit declines scht worst over for the retailers . Liz dunn, good to have you with us. If i am looking at the price action for a lot of the guys, macys for one, nordstrom, gap, dillards, theyre not bouncing at all wlachlt do you zmekt week from this weeks slate of retail earnings . Right. We have a lot of earnings coming this week xlug gap. I think what were hearing from many of these retailers is they dont know what the problem s thats the biggest concern for me. You know, its one thing if you miss earnings. But we miss earnings and we dont know what is wrong with our business. Obviously some is going to digital. I think there are bigger problems. And just an overall consumer that is shunning this category that is worrysome and doesnt look like its going to be fixed any time soon. What is your read on home depot . Right now its at session highs in anticipation of earnings. Im wondering this is probably going to be one of the stocks where if they dont deliver, its going to hurt the sector once again. Fwhaz a home depot this weekend and it was quite busy. I think its a category where consumers are spending and were seeing this bifurcation of consumers spending in certain categories and completely walk ago way from other categories. I think home goods, you know, Home Products continue to be one category where the consumer is showing up. So i think earnings are going to be strong there. You mentioned that a lot of the retailers that have had problems dont know what the problem s if one were to take a flyer on some of the beaten down names, is there one you put money into . You know, i like nordstrom longer term. And like the fact that they got a little more conservative on earnings. But i still think that theyve got a difficult road ahead of them. The reason i like it longer term is i think theyre doing some things to bring newness and excitement into the stores. Theyre focused on some of these growing, exciting brands. One thing ive been saying about Department Stores is a lot of the brands are bypassing that channel. Thats a very dangerous trend for macys. Nordstrom is still in the game and longer term, its a stock that works. In the short term, im not excited about any of those that we heard report last week. Liz dunn, thank you. I have breaking news coming in. Lets get to d. C. The u. S. Attorney in newark, new jersey, is announcing that a ukrainian man is pleading guilty to conspiracy involving the accessing of Computer Networks of press release companies that are issuing Market Making news and then stealing that information and using it to trade. The u. S. Attorney is saying the ukrainian man, 28 of kai environmen kiev, ukraine, pleaded guilty. They said the news wires were market wired. And business wire. And all told, he stole 150,000 releases and made up to 30 million in illegal profits. They say he pleaded got day before a u. S. District judge madeline cox to a threecount information charging him with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and computer hacking and identity theft. This is the new wave in Insider Trading and cybersecurity is people getting access on information that lives on computer servers and trading on it. Thank you so much. Were just Getting Started on power lunch. A new law goes into effect today that could be a game changer for startups and the investors who want in on them. The full details ahead. Later, winter is coming for wall street. Well explain the big business version of the game of thrones when power lunch returns. The eclass has 11 intelligent driverassist systems. It recognizes pedestrians and alerts you. Warns you about incoming crosstraffic. Cameras and radar detect dangers you dont. And it can even stop by itself. So in this crash test, one things missing a crash. The 2016 eclass. Lease the e350 for 499 a month at your local mercedesbenz dealer. Jake reese, day to feel alive jake reese, day to feel alive jake reese, day to feel alive you no longer have to be rich to get stake in a startup. It took four years to get equity in early stage private companies. So who can invest . Individuals that make less than 1 l 1 lun hundred,000 can inves 2,000 or the lesser of 5 of their annual income or net worth. People who make more money, of course k. Invest more. Until now, under title two regulations of the 2012 jobs act, startup investors will to be accredited. That means they had an annual salary of at least 200,000 oregon or a net worth of more than 1 million. The funding cap for Equity Funding is 1 million in a 12 months period. These are not like uber or lyft. They warn investors to do Due Diligence before deciding to back the Small Businesses. Finally, how can you invest . Portals must register with the sec and seek membership to connect investors to Companies Much as of monday, they registered eight portals, registered broker dealers are also another venue for funding. Why stl a Million Dollar limb sflit. They dont want the Small Businesses to make too much capital because it is risky. People real proponents, they think that 1 million cap is too low and this is not going to do as much for Small Businesses as they originally hoped. They wanted to see that hit 5 million. All right. Thank you. Brian, over you to. Lets dive in more. Some argue this is a great way to democratize investing and get the little guy back in the game. The only thing good about it is its a good way to separate mom and pop from their money. We have two ceos with different opinions. He says title three is a disaster waiting to happen. And another guest that is participating in the new rule. John, first you to, why is allowing individuals to invest relatively small sums of non a startup a bad idea . No, first of all, i dont think that at all. I think that democrat tiesing access to startups is a great thing. I run a crowd funding platform. We operate under title ii. We allow credited investors continue to vest. Im also excited about ervin vesting. But there are certain problems with the way that this is now being proposed. For example, most of these sites are going to put up the deals are not doing curation. They are not checking the deals. Theyre not diligencing them. Theyre going to let the wisdom of the crowd decide. The overall model is just raise the money and then move on. There is no one there to watch the shop. After youve handed money over to a little start dwrup with a and gal and dog. Who is going to provide the ports. So you dont mind theed in b mind the idea but youre annoyed by the structure. How you would structure it to make it work . First of all, there is a resolution in fronlts of the house subcommittee on finance called fix crowd funding act. It will raise the limit to 5 million. Because why should you punish a company thats doing great and actually wants to raise more than a Million Dollars and can and the government is going to say, no, thank you. Thats nuts. That makes no sense whatsoever. I allow people to build what are called spvs or special purpose vehicles where all of the investors, the little guys, can be aggregated and managed by professionals. On our site, our crowd, what we do is we select 2 of the deals that have been pitched to us. And then we offer them to the crowd. But we manage them. We sit on the board. We provide reports. We provide assistance. There is somebody who is not asleep at the wheel. Youre not being left to the mercy of essentially a tiny little startup who has 1,000 people. You know, who might invest. Wloz going to be there to watch . It sounds like johns argument is there is a lot more trash than treasure and that people are just going to submit their money, money is going to be lost. Its not structured right. How do you counter the criticisms . Yeah. We would disagree with that, actually. Indigo was founded in 200 will 8 with the goal of democrat tiesing access to capital and giving individuals the opportunity to invest the way that they would like and to support business thats they want to support. The law did not support it in 2008. We believe that individuals are capable of making their own decisions if presented with the information that they need to make those decisions. We want to make it easier for individuals to do that. Do you think, david, that individuals, whether i go on, lets say i have 5,000 i want to invest and i see a company description. Do you believe under the rules as you know them the disclosure for what these companies do and by the way how they may be already doing is going to be enough to allow mom and pop to make informed smart and relatively safe investing decisions . I think its enough for people to make informed decisions. Theyll be able to see how those companies intend to use the funds. Theyll be able to see histories of the people that are vafd in the companies. Yes, i believe theyll have enough information to make an informed decision. You know, john, its a little bit side ways. Im sure that youre aware of the problems with lending club, prosper had some issues. I understand thats a different model. Im going to lend you mb or youre going to lend me money. But this whole pier to pier thing does seem to be sort of operating under a cloud. Does that hurt the entire premise of this idea . Not really. Were talking about professionals. We have over 100 people working at our company that are engage fld selecting, curating, managing deals. What weve done is we opened up venture capital. We coinvest with the big guys with horowitz or sequoia or excel. We dont just get you into a deal. We hopefully get you into a good deal. We operate under title two so were legal. We can engage in public solicitation. Go to our website and youll see a full Company Presentation not just 200 words, youll see essentially a one hour webinar with the founder. And then we engage in hundreds of hours of diligence. Were checking this stuff out. The most companies dont have revenues so a Financial Statement means nothing. Ill going to invent something brand new. How does mom and pop on 200 words in a 30 second iphone video make an informed decision . We want to democrat ties. We want people to be investing and to make money from the private companies which is essential. I salute them. Theyre a great site as well as our crowd. But were worried that mom and pop when they get involved in this kind of a platform and are looking at individual deals that have not been curated and not managed and where the economic model we have to go. Do you think that is the case . Mom and pop in the phone on the passenger seat driving through jack and the box and watching a presentation and decide lets invest 5,000 of our money s that how easy it is . Or do people use more self activation and Due Diligence than that . Absolutely not. People wont be making decisions at the drive through any more than they make decisions to buy public stocks. We expect people to make informed good decisions. Theyll do it thoughtfully the way they do with other forms of investing that they do. And at least now for first time individuals will be able to make their own decisions and twhoent have to be reliant on venture capitals, venture capitalists or others to make their decisions for them. We believe flt power of the crowd. And were excited about this opportunity for a new class of investors. You both agree on that in your own way, particularly. John and david, either way, fantastic discussion and debate. Gentlemen, thank you very much. We appreciate that. All right. Call it the buffet bounce. After will investors making none day after buffets Berkshire Hathaway revealing a big stake in the company. But before you go out and the drive through at the jack and the box and buy apple stock, youll want to hear from your next guest. He thinks apple is set for a fall. Later on, more on big techs Charm Offensive in china. Are the real opportunities overseas or is this all just a game to win favor with chinas leaders . Well talk about that and much more when power lunch returns right after this. The first stock index was created over 100 years ago as a benchmark for average. Yet many people still build portfolios with strategies that just track the benchmarks. But investing isnt about achieving average. Its about achieving goals. And invesco believes doing that today requires the art and expertise of highconviction investing. Translation . Its time to bench the benchmarks. Welcome back to power lunch. Gold is off the session highs. Higher by 1. 10. Flat trade at this hour. True for almost the entire metals complex. Silver, copper, palladium and platinum flat trade. Platinum is higher by 70 cents. Copper is higher by one penny. Silver higher by two cents. Lets get to the bond market. Rick santelli is tracking the action. Well, ill tell you what. After looking