>> yes. we're ready. [ inaudible ] >> thank you very much, everybody. >> thank you. thank you. >> mr. president -- >> thank you. love it. i really love ireland. i'll be there. absolutely. >> thank you, press! thank you, press! >> thank you. >> all right, a short but sweet pool spray in the oval with prime minister enda kenny. it will be a busy day for the president with regards to ireland. they're going to have an annual friends of ireland lunch around midday, and then to this afternoon, a st. patrick's day celebration, in which the prime minister will present the president with a bowl of shamroc shamrocks. >> oh, okay. that's a nice tradition. i couldn't make out much except president trump saying "i love ireland." and that is the story here, right, a historic bond between these two countries, ancestral ties. they are our 15th biggest trading partner. we have a trade deficit with ireland. we have a lot of irish immigrants, and it's a friendly relationship. there was a little controversy back at home, unpopular policies from president trump, like the recent immigration order, something that eamon javers addressed in his exclusive with the prime minister yesterday but something that this prime minister played down and says we're here to talk about, you know, the relationship going forward. it's a long tradition. >> the president, obviously, knows the country well from its business dealings. a couple minutes past the hour. 8:00 a.m. at oracle headquarters in california, 11:00 a.m. on wall street, and "squawk alley" is live. ♪ ♪ welcome to "squawk alley" for a thursday. jon fortt, aria eisen and me at post 9, watching the markets, the budget. dow has gone into the red to the tune of about 30 points, jon. >> yes, indeed. and a big interview to get to. oracle reporting third-quarter results after the close yesterday, and they were strong. the cloud having to do with a lot of that. investors watching the cloud quite a bit, looking for growth into the future. our own josh lipton is live from oracle headquarters with a very special guest. josh. >> thanks, jon. i'm here with oracle's ceo, mark hurd. mark, thank you for joining us. >> my pleasure, josh. >> stocks surging this morning, and are investors really focused on the cloud bookings number? surged more than 70% in the quarter. walk me through what drove that growth. >> you know, josh, it really is nothing in particular. there was no one deal, there was no one geography, there was no one part of our business. it was really broad-based across our erp pillar, our hcm pillar, our platform as a service, so very broad-based in terms of the number of solutions that were part of it, as well as all of our geographies. it was a very exciting number for us. >> and i see you guys are sticking with that call, double-digit earnings growth next year. what gives you confidence, mark, to make that call and what are some of the risks to it? >> well, it's a combination of all the things you've seen. i think if you looked at our core, our expenses have been very well managed. you begin to see what's happening with the cloud not just in revenue growth, but our margin performance in the cloud. you know, it's a bit -- i've tried to use the analogy of building a hotel. when you start off on the cloud, you build a bunch of infrastructure, but you can't rent any rooms until the hotel's fully built. and as we start to pour more revenue on top of that infrastructure, that performance from an operating perspective gives us a big lift. >> i want to talk about the competition. on that call it was clear oracle is gunning for amazon. infrastructure is a service. you guys want to be a player there. right now, amazon dominates that market, mark. so, what are going to be oracle's competitive advantages in that fight? >> let's start with our strategy. our strategy really started out in the applications business, or if you will, software as a service, s.a.s., and we've had tremendous success. last quarter, idc named us the leading enterprise s.a.s. player in the marketplace. we have important technologies and our platform, java, the oracle database and et cetera -- and that's much of the success in our platform business -- our infrastructure business will do two things. first, it's going to be in a great position to run the oracle database. it has millions of applications running on it. our customers have hundreds and hundreds of thousands of oracle databases. so that becomes a huge differentiator for us. in addition, once we bring those oracle workloads, there are so many, josh, other workloads associated with the oracle workload, and we can run those better than anybody else in the world, bar none. >> hi, mark. it's jon fort here in new york. congratulations on the quarter, particularly the cloud. i've seen you make this pitch, the hotel metaphor and all of that, and part of the pitch is, you can run applications more efficiently than customers can because they don't need all of these bodies in i.t. anymore if they turn this over to you. now that your cloud business is ramping, how long before we start to see massive workforce reductions in i.t. with cloud taking off with so many big customers like the ones you named on the call? >> well, i don't know it's so much just reductions, jon. i think it is the reapplication of that talent to different opportunities for the customer. the customer today has to do so much work. they have all these different configurations, different versions of technology that, to your point, uses up a lot of their labor. in fact, the estimates are that over 80% of our customers' budgets are used just to keep the existing things running. the opportunity we have is to now do a lot of that work for the customer. they can reapply that budget, that manpower, that talent, to things that help the company gain market share, to help the customer deliver better service to their customer. so, it isn't just a displacement, it's a reapplication of that spending and that talent to higher order tasks. >> we talked about competition with amazon. you also still clearly have salesforce in your sights. you said if these trends continue, you're going to catch and then you're going to pass salesforce. are you going to do that, mark, organically, or does oracle need to keep making some big acquisitions? >> well, we grew -- we had significant growth this quarter organically. organically was the blind share of our growth. and we think we're in some of the most exciting opportunities in the marketplace. you talk about erp, hr, which is really the entire back office, the opportunity now in the front office with not just saelst automation, but marketing, service automation, et cetera. we're really the only ones, josh, that have a complete suite of applications. d i do not believe customers will want to have ten different cloud providers, eight different cloud providers. they want to have as few as they possibly can so they can get as much leverage across their infrastructure as possible. we sit in a very, very advantageous position relative to being the one that can bring that full suite, not just in applications, but also platform as well as infrastructure. >> switching gears here a bit, mark. you know, this new administration pushing forward some policies here, big on cutting taxes, cutting regulation. as ceo of this company, does that make sense to you? is that smart public policy is up skripsioubscriptions? >> we're for everything that drives growth. for us, we're a global company headquartered here in the u.s. we'd like the opportunities to compete in as many markets as we can. things that will help us grow, things that will help us invest. as you know, we're a big hire here in the united states. we hire a lot off the college campus. we do a lot of r&d right here in california. so, we're a very technology-focused company based on talent that comes out of the u.s. things that help us invest, things that help us grow we're huge supporters of. >> mark, you said on the call last night that software and platform as a service together are growing 85%. but before long, infrastructure as a service is going to be your largest cloud business. how long before that happens? and why do you expect that in particular to happen? is that just because of the raw dollars that are going to be spent on infrastructure? >> yeah, well, the size of the market itself in infrastructure is very large. just the size of the infrastructure in the market today that runs the oracle ecosystem is extremely large, jon, in addition to the other workloads we think we can attract to our infrastructure that's not oracle. don't take that as anything except we are very, very excited about our opportunities in applications. in fact, i made the statement a few months ago that our applications business, jon, including our on-premise support, license, and now our s.a.s. business -- next year we'll grow roughly double digits in totality. that means our infrastructure business is going to be that exciting in terms of the scale that it's going to achieve. so, we're very excited with this next generation, too, of infrastructure that larry talked about on the call yesterday. it's very exciting. >> when it comes to infrastructure, mark, any big wins you can tell the audience about? >> well, somebody on the call hinted to that last night. i'm going to wait until we have some of those to report, and hopefully, we have some soon that can be very exciting for us to share with you. >> thank you, mark. good to see you. just wanted to follow up on josh's question on policy priorities. you guys are proponents of the border adjustment tax, which makes sense. you're an exporter. do you not think, though, that it will lead to higher consumer prices on everything from clothing to cars to energy, whatever else we import as a nation? >> i'm going to stay away from that, sara. i really appreciate the opportunity for you allowing me to comment on that, but i'm going to stick with what i said a few moments ago. >> well, what about this issue of trade? >> i'm sorry, go ahead, sara. >> you have clout with the administration, as josh alluded to. your co-ceo is on the president's transition council. what about trade? what are you pushing there? if you won't talk about the border adjustment tax. you get most of your business from overseas. >> yeah, i mean, listen, for us, trade has multiple dimensions. so, for us, getting into the various markets globally, as you know, is one of the issues in cloud has had to do not just with trade but also data sovereignty is a big issue in cloud, one of the reasons we've had to put as much infrastructure around the globe as we have. and, frankly, we don't enjoy building data centers. one of the reasons we built as many as we have isn't just a technical reason, but it's actually in some ways a political reason. data in many cases is sovereign to the country, whether it's data on employees, financial data, et cetera. and so, for us, that has been an issue. and so, we have now put data centers really around the world, not just for the sake of performance, but also for the sake of the reasons i described. >> and is that a potential challenge for the cloud business going forward, mark? one issue would be whether this administration pushes on that access to data stored overseas? >> well, i think -- listen, i think that this is bigger than the u.s. in this issue. i mean, you have many countries, particularly even in the u.s., where data had to be resident in the eu. in some cases, it has to be resident actually in a specific country in the eu. and so, you know, we don't really get a vote in all that, josh. i mean, to a degree, we have to go where the market takes us. we have applications now with the cloud that's put us into a position where our total available market has gone up. we can now compete in all countries around the world with the best technology in the world. we can now compete in midmarket all the way to enterprise. and so, we have to be in all these countries. and so, that's -- those positions have put us in a situation where we've had to build out that infrastructure, and that's what we've done. now, to be clear, because now of our growth, that infrastructure is not just capital where we've put it in and we wait for business to come. we're now in a position where we've put out most of that infrastructure, and we now pretty much invest on a rev share business, so as we get orders, we invest more infrastructure, as opposed to having to build out a lot of infrastructure before we get business. but it has been work. if you look over the past two or three years, we've had to put a lot of data center infrastructure for the reasons i've described. >> final question, mark. you mentioned earlier, oracle hires a lot of people. i know one concern here in silicon valley is president trump's tough talk on immigration. as ceo of this company, have you seen any side effects of that? for example, that's become tougher to attract talent from overseas? >> you know, the issue always is that we want the best talent in the world. and there's a lot of talent here in the silicon valley. there's a lot of talent that has come to the u.s. from outside the country to learn their trade here in this country. obviously, we'd like to be able to hire those people. and so, for us, we do go to the college campus, we look for the best talent. our objective always is to have the opportunity to get those people, particularly those that have excelled in their trade in college, to stay here in the country. so, we're a very aggressive hire and very supportive of trying to keep that talent here. >> all right, mark. thank you for your time today, sir. >> thank you, josh. >> appreciate it. >> appreciate it. >> guys, back to you in new york. >> great stuff, josh. thank you so much. the latest on the president's proposed hard-power budget. which companies benefit and which should be worried. later on, a cnbc exclusive with go pro's nick woodman, his stock doing well today. and henry blodget. we'll talk snap, some canada goose and spotify when "squawk alley" returns. uh, yeah. it's over, larry. what is? the whole wheelie thing. what do you mean? i just got this baby to get around the plant floor. right, but now ge technology monitors every machine. yeah, it brings massive amounts of information right to you. so you don't need that. well, it makes me look young and uh..."with it." time to move on. oh i'll move on... right into the future. ...backwards. you're going backwards. the future's all around us! not just on your little tablet, my friend. i'm ricardo, a sales and service consultant here at the xfinity store in bellevue, washington. here at the store, we offer internet, tv, phone, customer service, home security. every situation is a little different. it could be about billing, simple questions like changing the phone number. sometimes, they want to upgrade, downgrade, but at the end of the day, you want to take care of the customer. one of the great things about comcast, there's always room to move up. of course, it depends on you, how hard you work. ♪ the white house releasing its first budget proposal this morning, boosting defense spending by $54 billion, slashing funding for 18 other agencies. let's get over to our john harwood in washington, who's watching that and more. john? >> carl, as you indicated, the core trade in this budget is a $54 billion increase in defense, a $54 billion decrease in domestic programs. this budget does not increase the deficit, it doesn't reduce it, either. now, you look at the individual agencies -- the pentagon gets 10% more, homeland security gets 7% more, veterans affairs 6% more. and then on the flip side, the epa's cut 31%, state department 28%, big cuts in agriculture, also in education and in commerce. now, mick mulvaney when he was asked on "morning joe" this morning whether or not these cuts contradict some of president trump's campaign promises to those forgotten americans, had this to say. >> i can point to you speeches that the president gave during the campaign that said exactly those things. in fact, that's how we wrote the budget. we pulled lines out of speeches, out of interviews, talked with the president and turned his words, his policies into numbers. so, folks who voted for the president are getting exactly what they voted for. >> now, here's what president trump and mick mulvaney are going to run into, and that is the sentiment on capitol hill among republicans as well as democrats that over the last few years through the sequester, the discretionary side of the budget has already been cut as much as they want to. here's john thune from an interview that i had with him after the election. he said, "obviously, we've done as much as we can on the discretionary side." republicans on capitol hill want to focus on entitlement programs, medicare and social security. this budget does not do that, and president trump says he won't. potential conflict there. guys? >> john, thank you. john harwood running through some of the highlights from this budget blueprint. for more on which areas of the market trump's budget proposals may have an impact, terry haynes is head of political analysis. good morning. >> good morning, sara. good to see you. >> which parts of this do you think will actually see the light of day, if any? >> well, what i think fundamentally is that, you know, this is obviously good for the defense sector, but that's been no surprise. i mean, the trump administration has telegraphed that for some time. it's important to understand that, essentially, the way this is going to work out is the way that it's worked out in budgets for the last four fiscal years, where what we've had is stable federal spending with small increases in defense and nondefense spending alike, and we'll move forward from there. it's important to understand -- i've already gotten client questions about this this morning -- what's this mean for infrastructure, for example? it doesn't mean anything negative for infrastructure. you're talking about the department of transportation budget, which is very different from how much money congress might appropriate or bring in through public-private partnerships for infrastructure. this is a very different sort of things. but generally speaking, it's good for defense. and the other thing it's good for, frankly, is tax reform. because what a budget is, it is a nonbinding document, of course. the president doesn't even sign a budget resolution. but in the end, this is the kickoff to the fiscal 2018 discussion that will end with tax reform. so, congress is pressing ahead, and people that want tax reform ought to be happy today. >> well, that should be music to investors' ears. i hadn't heard that. thank you. let's bring dan suzuki into this conversation, bank of america, merrill lynch, equity strategist. dan, i don't know if you heard what he said, but winners are defense, clearly, and also those hoping for faster tax reform. do you agree? >> i agree to some extent. i think, you know, one of the issues here is that the fact that we're going to be focusing more on tax reform creates a lot more volatility in the markets from here. so, over the last few months, there's been really three drivers of the market -- better growth, better confidence, and the trump put. now, the fact that we're actually going to be delving into the details and getting into these big, public arguments around tax reform i think will spark volatility in the markets. we've done some in-depth analysis on tax reform and there are a lot of negative elements in there. clearly, border adjustment taxes are getting a lion's share of the focus, but when you add up all of the elements based on the blueprint proposal, it's basically not very much of a net negative -- net positive, and there's actually a lot that can influence that. so, i think once you start talking about it, it actually could be a near-term negative for the markets. >> hey, terry, you know, a lot's been made in the media today about the national endowment for the arts and pbs, but when you look at things like eliminating funding for the appalachian regional commission, i just wonder, are the savings you're getting worth the headache in going potentially back on promises you made to coal country? >> well, there is the fundamental promise that was made to coal country is to revivify those industries. there are a lot of people out there -- and this has been true since the reagan days -- there are a lot of voters that think the government spends too much on the wrong sort of stuff, and some of them think that wrong sort of stuff is spending too much money on the arts. congress never agrees with that, and they won't this time, either. you know, as i say, what the net-net of this is going to be something where there's a small increase in defense. republicans will like that. the president will tout it. at the same time, democrats will tout that they've saved domestic programs, and they'll be partially right, and we'll move on just as we have in the last few years. >> so, you think all the drama over public broadcasting, you think those survive? >> oh, yeah, of course. >> hmm. >> oh, yeah, of course. absolutely. >> a final question, dan. i wanted to ask you about health care stocks, and you can take this in any direction you want. they're obviously in focus as the republicans continue to debate and sell their proposal. within this budget plan, i notice that the costs for health care companies like medical device-makers and drug companies, actually doubles to get fda approval for drugs and for other products. what are the implications for these stocks right now? >> yeah, i think it's one of the reasons that you don't want to get bearish on health care stocks. there's a laundry list of items that support owning health care stocks right now, and i think that's one of them. i think people got really bearish on the outlook for, you know, biotech and pharma, given the pricing issues. but as you mentioned, i think there's actually a lot of positive for the sector. that would be one of them. the fact that their valuations are still near record lows. and actually, our positioning shows that the positioning in health care's actually close to the lowest we've ever seen in our data. so, people are overly bearish, the health care sector, and i think they're forgetting a lot of the positives there. >> there's also a lot of uncertainty. for now, we'll leave it there. good discussion on the winners and losers out of this budget plan. terry haines and dan suzuki. when we return, gopro shares are surging today. the company says it might be able to become profitable on an annual basis again. nick woodman is going to join us next in a cnbc exclusive. stocks losing steam throughout the midmorning here. dow started out in the green, now down 45. welcome back. gopronouncing it is cutting about 270 jobs in an effort to become profitable. also, from the high end of revenue guidance, the stock surging up more than 16% today so far. nick woodman is the founder and ceo of gopro and joins us now from one market. nick, good morning. >> good morning, jon. >> now, on the call last night, as part of this effort to drive efficiency, you said over the last couple of quarters, "we've undergone a cultural shift, institutionalizing the quest for efficiency." put a fine point on that, if you can. what exactly has changed? what are you no longer doing at gopro that you used to do that has resulted in a more efficient culture? >> well, we've recognized over the last couple of years that we need to focus keenly on our number one customer, and that is the person who buys a gopro. and we're focused on helping them capture and share experiences that they otherwise couldn't, and that in the quarters after going public, you know, we had -- we were making different investments, placing different bets. some of those bets didn't work out, and we're refocusing on building upon what made the company, what made gopro so successful in the first place, and that is serving our customer, and specifically, our customer and focusing investments on that and nothing else, and -- >> does that mean -- >> we become more -- >> does that mean no more talk about a media strategy? you're focused on people who are using action cameras and maybe cameras on drones? >> hardware and software devices, hardware and software solutions that help our customers capture and share great stories, capture and share great videos and photos, and do that more conveniently than we've been able to in the past. we're focused on making the smartphone central to the gopro experience. so when our customers capture footage with their gopro, that content will move over to their phone and be immediately accessible and easy for them to share, because that's what our customers want to do. and as we narrow our focus to these solutions specifically, we see significant opportunities to run our business more efficiently and reduce costs dramatically, as you saw yesterday. we have targeted cost reductions that get our spending down $200 million from below 2016 levels. we're now forecasting spending of less than $495 million, and that's going to make a significant impact on our ability to achieve profitability in 2017. >> nick it was good to see you at the consumer electronics show earlier this year. as i said, i stopped by your booth, saw the software. i was impressed. it looks good, but at the same time, i'm looking at these analysts' notes. they don't seem to believe in the action camera strategy writ large the way they did. so, over the next three years, is it really about action cameras for you still, or are you redefining exactly what gopro does in this space? are we going to hear you articulate that in a different way? >> you know, our mission has never changed from, really, from 15 years ago when i founded the company and up through when we took the company public, which is that we believe that there is a megatrend of consumers who are visually expressing and sharing themselves more and more online, be it facebook, instagram, or others. and gopro is an incredible enabler to help people capture and share themselves in more engaging ways. if you look at the rate at which consumers are sharing themselves online, that is increasing dramatically year over year, and that's a phenomena that benefits gopro. and i think where we fell out a little bit in our post-ipo years, was that we failed to make gopro contemporary and failed to align gopro with the smartphone movement. and the smartphone has set a new bar for convenience and a new bar for how much work a consumer's willing to put in to sharing themselves. and with our new software solutions, we are much better aligning gopro with consumers' use of a smartphone, and you're going to see over the course of 2017 it become less of a question of should i use a gopro or my smartphone, and more about using a gopro with a smartphone to share yourselves in incredible ways. >> yeah, i think a lot of us, nick, who cover you guys and also use the product understand exactly what you mean. as you're talking, we're showing a lot of video of drones, and i still remember the night you laid out that idea for the first time at the code conference out west. have we overshot on drones? has that peaked? >> no, i don't think at all. we're still very early in the drone industry. you know, karma is a fantastic product. i'm really proud of what our product team has developed with karma. it's incredibly versatile. karma's designed for the gopro community with its removable stabilizer that you can also hold for incredible, stabilized handheld footage, or mount and wear during your favorite activities for very stabilized body-worn footage, and that's something that no other drone can provide, and that's a meaningful value proposition that we're going to build upon into future products. so, we're very committed to the space, and also being involved in robotics. you know, drones are not just drones. they are robotics. and this is giving us a lot of experience and opportunity for breakout of new products in the future. >> i'm trying to read between the lines, nick. i understand you're controlling what you can when it comes to costs, laying off people, trying to maintain the bottom line, and a lot of the shorts are getting squeezed on it right now, but what can you tell us about actual demand for what you're seeing from the products right now? does this mean, is this a sign that it's not looking up? >> sales are good. sell-through at our retailers are good. our asps, our average sales prices, are up. our retailers are doing better with gopro this year than they did last year. our flagship product, hero 5 black, is far and away the most profit -- successful, high-demand product that we make, which is terrific. it's always great when your top-of-the-line product is your best-seller. we're seeing engagement rates for our software higher than ever. our cloud service, gopro plus, is successful. we're seeing very high conversion rates for free trial to paid subscriber conversions. churn is lower than expected, and we're seeing roughly three to four times increased share rates for our customers that are subscribers to our software services, which means that our customers are getting a lot out of the software offerings that we have for them. so, i think it's all good signs that we are improving our business, and that's something we intend to build upon throughout the year. >> investors like it this morning, off the lows. still a fight on your hands. nick woodman, founder and ceo of gopro. thanks for joining us. >> thank you very much. >> down 70% since the opening trade on ipo day. all right, let's get over to sue herera with the "news update" at this hour. hi, sue. >> hi, sara. here's what's happening this hour, everyone. secretary of state rex tillerson meeting with japanese prime minister shinzo abe in tokyo as part of his three-nation tour of asia. a bit later at a news conference with his japanese counterpart, he addressed north korea's missile program. >> north korea and its people need not fear the united states or their neighbors in the region who seek only to live in peace with north korea. with this in mind, the united states calls on north korea to abandon its nuclear and ballistic missile programs and refrain from any further provocations. >> vice president pence welcoming irish prime minister anda kenny to the naval observatory in washington this morning. the two, along with their wives, meeting for breakfast as they kicked off st. patrick's day celebrations. a letter bomb exploding at the french office of the international monetary fund in paris. one person was slightly injured. it is unclear who sent the letter. no other damage was reported. that is the "news update" at this hour. let's get back downtown to "squawk alley." sara? >> all right, sue, thank you. when we come back here, watching markets at this hour. we were within striking dance of new record highs but have lost some momentum in the post fed-fueled rally. the dow is down about 56 points. the s&p is the biggest loser of the three right now, down 0.3%. and today's ipo, canada goose, surging in early trade. more on the stock and whether it opens up the ipo market any more. it is now trading higher by 30%. we'll be right back. welcome back. let's get over to morgan brennan for a quick "market flash" on tyson. hey, morgan. >> the usda confirming a second case of bird flu in tennessee, two miles from the farm infected earlier this month. like the first case, this site supplies tyson. tyson says it's coordinating to euthanize the chicken. all of the chicken quarantined, being tested. the company doesn't expect disruptions to its chicken business, still plans to meet customers' needs. nonetheless, shares are down almost 2.5%. we're also seeing pressure on other chicken producers, pilgrim's pride, sanderson farms as well, and that is in part because, as we saw in 2015, contagious, lethal strains of bird flu have the potential to wreak havoc in the poultry industry and spur some trading partners to ban u.s. exports. i'll just note, we're talking about a chicken health issue. at least at this point with this strain, not a human health issue. back to you. >> thank you very much, morgan brennan. this morning, luxury apparel-maker canada goose surging in its ipo debut. this is ceo dani reiss talking to us on this set this last hour. >> it's been a long time in the making. the company's been around for 60 years. the last 20 or so years, we've been a consumer brand, we've been growing around the world, building in the right way, and you know, we're just really excited. this is not a finishing point. this is a starting point for us. and it's overwhelming. >> joining us this morning at post 9, business insider ceo henry blodget. good to have you back, "h." >> great to be here. >> another relatively high-profile ipo working out okay for now. >> yes. seemed to be priced reasonably, not crazy pop. settling in. that's good. i'm in. >> what do you think it says about the appetite for new issues? >> i think we saw with snap and others, there is now an appetite for new issues and there are a lot of companies in silicon valley that have at least begun talking about going public. this is the wave after the consumer internet. it's really the enterprise internet and the huge group of companies that have been created, growing incredibly fast, have a lot of metrics, start to look like salesforce.com and others, that kind of model. so, i think there will be a lot of appetite for that. >> should we read anything into this about the appetite for domestic production? canada goose, it's a made-in-canada company. its supply chain is also in canada. it fits a lot of the sorts of things that the trump administration is talking about, or at least people are talking about wanting to see in america more. the fact that a company like this is going public and having a pop and can charge 1,000 bucks for a coat, do you think that bodes well for some efforts to do things differently? >> i think you can read that into it. that's great. i don't know about the stock reading all that into it. but you certainly can. >> i think they're reading into the fact that it's a profitable company, 25% revenue growth last year. it's been a long time since we've had a luxury listing. maybe ferrari. i can't think of one. so, clearly, the market was hungry for this sort of thing. i wonder if there are parallels or similarities you can draw between snap and this that make them ripe, or just generally good feelings about ipos. >> i think the opposite ends of the spectrum. obviously, a luxury brand like this, they have to be very attuned to taste and so forth. so it's not a business you can just set it and forget it. snap's on the other end. this is a company wildly speculative. they have a good start, but if they don't do everything great over the next few years, it's going to amount to nothing. so, it's a much more speculative company. and it's been very interesting to watch the reaction to snap. i actually talked to a bunch of advertisers yesterday who worked with snap. i was surprised there was not as much enthusiasm as three to six months ago. one saying, look, snap has invented such a great product with so little friction, where you just tap through stories. it's the same for ads. they say their average ad lasts only two seconds because everybody taps through it. in fact, they've pulled money out as a result of that. they do like other products, are optimistic about some things. but it was very interesting to hear from a client, not so much of the jumping up and down. >> we got another initiation with the sell at moffett today, joining cantor and pivotal and jaffe riaz. we'll see what the big boys say in a few weeks, but you think the model's still unproven. >> very unproven. we know they have captured the attention and incredible engagement of a demographic, they have made a great product, but now they're moving into other products and the growth of users is slowing, which is the key metric. if usage growth does not continue, that's a huge warning sign, even if revenue grows strongly in the interim. >> is this perhaps the result of a facebook f.u.d. campaign? fear, uncertainty and doubt. i've been hearing a lot of this, they were going out to the community, the advertisers, talking down snap and snapchat. they're still an innovative company. they have got enough users to become a big platform in the future. isn't that what you're betting on if you are betting on snap? >> i don't think it's just fear, uncertainty and doubt. i think facebook has observed a lot of very cool things that snap has done and imported them into their products. and you can say, well, it's distill a different demographic, they don't use it exactly the same way. but they are undoubtedly creating the same functionality that some people will find more convenient in some of their facebook products. so, if nothing else, they're taking away some of the opportunity for growth. so, i think it's a real competitive issue. it doesn't mean snapchat can't carve out a piece of that. it will be interesting to watch. >> as the old saying, netflix became hbo before hbo would become netflix and we talked about snap trying to be gopro after gopro stopped having visions -- >> let's hope snap is not trying to be gopro, although that's another question. we're in the hardware business now, making spectacles, which are cool. >> wearable cameras, yeah. >> but will that drive going forward? >> spotify music deals to follow the path with the ipo. who will you be watching? >> certainly high time they go public. they've been massive and growing in private for a long time, so that would be great. i think they do have to get these long-term deals out of the way before then. otherwise, there's just too much uncertainty. >> i like the no-tie thing. >> i'm trying to be like jon fortt. i'm not sure i can carry it, though. >> good luck. >> got to shave that head. >> henry, thanks. henry blodget. we're watching shares of tesla today. the company announcing that offering of $250 million in stock, $750 million in convertible notes. elon musk is going to buy 25 million of the new shares, and those proceeds will go towards strengthening the balance sheet ahead of the model 3. dow's down 43. rick santelli, what are you watching? >> i'm watching a lot of action in the euro/dollar option pits after yesterday's fed rate increase, but hey, you remember the three musketeers, all for one and one for all? well, stocks, bonds, and the dollar were all all for one. things have changed. that's what we're going to talk about after the break. ♪ hey gary, what are you doing? oh hey john, i'm connecting our brains so we can share our amazing trading knowledge. that's a great idea, but why don't you just go to thinkorswim's chat rooms where you can share strategies, ideas, even actual trades with market professionals and thousands of other traders? i know. your brain told my brain before you told my face. mmm, blueberry? tap into the knowledge of other traders on thinkorswim. only at td ameritrade. we're drowning in information. where, in all of this, is the stuff that matters? the stakes are so high, your finances, your future. how do you solve this? you don't. you partner with a firm that advises governments and the fortune 500, and, can deliver insight person to person, on what matters to you. morgan stanley. i'm scott wapner. coming up today on "the halftime report," did the fed just give the trump rally a green light to jump even higher? kevin o'leary, mohamed el erian, and former fed president richard fisher with us exclusively today. plus, our traders explain how they're changing their game plans a day after the fed move. and winners in energy, financials, health care and other sectors if president trump deregulates american industry as he promises. "the halftime report," top of the hour over at post 9. sara, see you in just a few. >> scott, thank you. now we'll send it out to the cme group. rick santelli with the three musketeers post fed trading. rick? >> absolutely! thank you, sara. you know, we had a growth trade going on after the election. we had rates moving up. that didn't bug stocks. stocks moved up. dollar index. let's show a dollar index chart. let's start this chart from october, because basically, from october to december 28th, the dollar dollar index did something phenomenal. it went from 96 to 103.30. an amazing move. if you look at 2017, it spent all of five trading days in positive territory. the first five trading days of 2017. so we have lost a dollar index in that growth trade. granted, there are a lot of channels affecting how the dollar relates to the euro and the yen and the pound. believe me, whether it's geo political, mario draggy. what many are nervous about, when the three horsemen break, what does it mean? this is ten-year notes from march to today. what's interesting here, let's go by collar. we have talked about the 260 mark being so significant. major last top before we had the double bottom, which tul goes back to 2012. you're only seeing the second part of the double bottom. that 260 has worked fantastic. 240s are key. 240 to 244 is the support level to pay attention to. the wild card was december of right before the end of the year when we hit a 303. we know 3%. so here's the lay of the land, folks. the dollar index should make you a little nervous. stocks are so close to the records, not yet. but if rates start to dip below the big consolidation levels around the 240s, that would make me reassess the three horsemen riding in the same direction. obviously, the growth trade isn't the only thing to pay attention to. we all know that the fixed income market has a reputation for knowing more than equities. whether it's true or not, i can tell you this. traders believe it's true, which makes it true. carl, back to you. >> all right, rick. thank you very much. good stuff. when we come back, the president's budget taking aim at infrastructure. we're going to dig in on some of that and the timing. when "squawk alley" returns. at fidelity, trades are now just $4.95. we cut the price of trades to give investors even more value. and at $4.95, you can trade with a clear advantage. fidelity, where smarter investors will always be. and at $4.95, you can trade with a clear advantage. i'm ricardo, a sales and service consultant here at the xfinity store in bellevue, washington. here at the store, we offer internet, tv, phone, customer service, home security. every situation is a little different. it could be about billing, simple questions like changing the phone number. sometimes, they want to upgrade, downgrade, but at the end of the day, you want to take care of the customer. one of the great things about comcast, there's always room to move up. of course, it depends on you, how hard you work. ♪ up about 40 and now down the same amount. more after the break. ♪ oh! the things you say ♪ ♪ oh♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ you're unbelievab♪e ♪ you're unbelievab♪e it's not just defense in the epa. the president also making a play for infrastructure. our kayla tausche is in washington. kayla? >> well, carl, the approach to infrastructure in this draft budget is pretty clear. let's money for regional projects in favor of programs deemed to have more of a national benefit. here's where some of the cuts are coming from. first at agriculture. ending what it calls a duplicate grant program for rural waters, suggesting private sector funding instead. trappings targeting grants that had regional proljects like the second avenue subway. at the environmental protection agency, eliminating more than 50 programs for proposing a lower budget for that agency. quote, we believe those programs to be less effective than the package we at the white house are working on. the expectation, they'll funnel savings into that new trillion-dollar infrastructure program to set within the white house. but now appears to be a somewhat lower priority than tax reform which is why the index has lagged the s&p. itemized savings in this blueprint just $2.3 billion. not high enough to make a dent in the white house plan, but also not so high they would face significant congressional resistance. some agencies did see a boost, giving interior later lee way to build energy projects, cyber infrastructure, and energy. to reinforce the nation's power grid. one key component, carl, of having a white house-centric infrastructure plan, the white house needs to win votes on things like tax reform that could offer a local project to offset that. back to you. >> so many, as cramer would say, guys, so many balls in the air regarding washington policy right now. it's not going to change any time soon. >> yeah. i'm just looking at a comment from our market turn-around. early morning it was carryover from the fed and now a little bit of focus on the stalled trump agenda. so speaking of that, potential weighing on stocks right now. >> before we go, we want to congratulate ben thompson, welcoming a new baby boy into the world. campbell brewster thompson, 8 pounds, 21 inches. >> campbell brewster. great name. >> the best. >> congrats. over to the judge and the half. ♪ welcome to "the halftime report". our top trade, the day after stocks nearing new highs and down right now. still not that far away from new highs after the fed hikes, interest rates, what it means for the trump rally. some saying it is far from over. >> i think the stock market continues to grind higher. the problem for the stock market will be, i think, when we get the next leg up in interest rates. ever

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