more unpredictable set of tea leaves out there. some of groupon's earliest backers are getting out of the company. "wall street journal report"ing four pre-ipo investors have sold or significantly cut their stakes in reason months. take a look at that stock at $4.77. that's assad state of affairs. miss quick, welcome back. >> thank you, andrew. great to be back. look at all those early investors and you figure those are the guys that made money in these new dot-com ipos. jpmorgan's board has tapped former exxonmobil ceo to chair the committee that's investigating the banks multibillion dollar loss. the committee will have the foretalk to anyone in the company. also double check the bank's previous finding. raymond won't complete his review until late fall or early winter. people say he's someone jamie dimon has gone to and asked for counselling but pointed out he's a tough cookie and not someone likely to blend the truth anywhere, he'll say exactly what he finds. the paper reports the committee can impose a number of punishments on jamie dimon. former j and j ceo the chairman of j and j a jpmorgan director and is on that panel. more drama in men. best buy founder said he's disappointed and surprised his offer to buy the struggling electronics retailer has been rejected by the company. he expressed interest in taking best buy private for more than $8 billion. separately the "wall street journal" reports best buy has named former carlson chief as its new ceo. carlson is the parent of radisson hotels and tgi fridays. >> i just got off a source. schultze. it seems to me that he is either trying to torment the company. what happened over the weekend was they tried to come to some agreement so he could move forward with a transaction. the board of best buy is not convinced that he has the financing, that he has the backers, they have that famous letter from credit suisse that looks like a confidence letter. but over the weekend what they said to him was look if you want to make a bid go ahead but you need to also sign what's called an agreement which is traditionally what happens when you try to do a friendly deal. we'll let you in and you can see the center fold of the magazine, see everything we got but you can't then try to launch a hostile deal on us at least until after christmas, try to get them through the holiday season. they want this period. he said no. the question is that an excuse because he really wants to go hostile or is that an excuse because he doesn't have it lined up? >> or he thinks they are trying to tie his hands and not go friendly with him until after that. by the way, that deal is crossing the wires now the one you had been talking about before aetna and coventry. that's official at this point. what were you saying at the top? you were saying that they get the chance to buy, to have more patients -- >> this is a play, a medicare play in a very big way. you saw it earlier this year, wellpoint but ameriprise. the interesting part of this from what i understand is there's a real sense in wash that somehow the republicans are going to roll back obama care. that roll back may not happen the way some people talk about. >> we have peter orzon talking to us about medicare, paul ryan's plan, problems he has with paul ryan's plan. that gives us more to talk about coming up at 7:10 a.m. >> former barclays chief executive bob diamond lashed back at british lawmakers who claimed he gave highly selective evidence about the libor scandal in a report that was issued saturday very early saturday morning. lawmakers accused him of holding back information when they questioned diamond last month. diamond who resigned last month said he answered every question truthfully and candidly and he refuts any suggestion to the contrary. one other piece. mervin king looks like he is singularly responsible for the ouster of bob diamond. they said that the government should not be trying to manage, if you will, who is the ceo and who shot this. there looks like there was an implicit threat the night that bob diamond was forced to resign in part because they were worried that he might offer some damning testimony the next day against paul tucker who works for mervin king. there's a whole sort of back story to this. >> as their regulator what authorities should they have? >> this is always -- this is the million trillion, billion, gazillion dollar question. >> if you hadn't noticed the idea of selling in may and going away that was the exact wrong strategy that you should have employed because while you were away and not paying attention the dow, the s&p, the nasdaq all of these indices have been climbing higher. the s&p is up 12% since early june. the dow has been up for the last six straight weeks in a row. up 9.7% since june. last week you did see some modest gains. s&p was up boy 0.9%. nasdaq was up by 1.85%. if you haven't been paying attention there's been a slow and steady climb and stocks have come roaring back. >> you really should always listen to george castanza. >> volatility has been dropping. headline late friday said the vix was down to 1.5. that was the lowest level since june 19th of 2007. you're talking about markets that are back near five year highs at this point. again, if you haven't been take attention sit up and start paying attention. futures are indicated slightly lower. losses in tokyo. >> did you see this story about monday. monday are historically -- >> volatility rises on mondays. >> every other day of the week, historically because markets have gone up over time you'll make money on tuesday, wednesday or friday. >> everybody talking about monday. wake up look at the rally and look out for mondays not the greatest. volatility rises. volatility rises on mondays but the vix was at the lower level since june of 2007. take it for what it's worth. take a look at oil prices. at this point you'll see oil prices are down six cents, 95.95. the ten year yields have been creeping higher once again bouncing off those multiyear low. the ten year is yielding 1.8%. bounced from last week after record lows set. 1.5%. even below that. breaking 1.4%. again if you haven't refinanced as you got your -- >> don't look at me. you might have too. >> i locked in a rate. yield is 1.8% on that ten year note. also gold prices are -- we didn't look at dollar. absolutely nothing is happening in the for maerkts. dollar sitting at yen 79.47. euro is -- euro has always been in the middle. euro at this point, dollar euro at .8116. this is a different board than we were using. >> i'm not sure when that happen. >> why are we looking at the dollar instead of the euro. >> that might have been the right choice to have the euro at the top. >> let's take a look at gold prices too. gold prices this morning are actually sitting down about 2.7%. 1,616.70 an ounce. you have to watch the stock markets. will the fed act as people have been suspecting when you see better economic numbers? >> or maybe not which is the new prevailing wisdom and maybe we should listen to george castanza. kelly evans standing by in london, kelly we had a cameo of ross westgate i think on friday we missed you. how are you doing? >> yes. i know. i'm back. great to see becky back as well. hello, i'm sure ross will be back by popular demand. picking up on the theme you were talking over in the u.s. where we saw this slow and steady rally in stocks. 15% is what the europe stoxx 600 is up. this morning quiet up about .1%. this is the theme. the rally that happened while you western looking. taking a closer look across the board. xetra dax up .4%. ftse slightly positive. ibex 35 in spain is up 27% over the last month. again we're talking about a huge declines prior to that. talk being about relief in snap back rallies driven by short coverings or bank stocks. the rally has gotten to be significant. asia overnight more mixed picture. the hang seng was down. shanghai was lower. flirting with about three year loss earlier. xetra dax up .4%. deutsche bank in particular one of the biggest components here down 1.2%, markets rallying. this is on reports it is now being probed by u.s. regulators over payments linked to iran follows all the news we had on standard charter in the last couple of weeks. to get a broader sense of the tone let's look at the bond. we had a little bit of return of the european politicking to the forefront comment this morning first saying ecb was mulling a program whereby they would cap peripheral bond yields. now german finance minister said he doesn't know of those plans or would support them. tlip's ten year and spain both seeing yields lower on the day so not too much of a concern. 5.7, 6.2 are the levels respectively. france, germany there we're seeing selloff. euro/dollar, becky the way you're used to see it. 1.2321 down .2%. we were higher but then got this remps from the german finance minister. key meetings between the greek, germans and french and have a lot to do with how markets trade. watch for that headline mix over the next couple of days. back to you. >> i needed to see it that way. appreciate it. 1.23 makes sense to me. we'll be waiting to hear what happens between the germans and greek but there has been a lot of tough talk and thank you for the update on that. >> let's get a monday morning outlook from our next guest joining us from houston, texas, the vice president and portfolio strategy for core investment management. good morning to you, sir. >> good morning, andrew, how are you >> there's an article in today's "wall street journal," i don't know if you can see it here, epic stock rally finding few fans. there it is. >> right. >> are you with aretha franklin? can this thing get any respect or rodney dangerfield, name your person. >> getting a lot of respect from professional investors. >> but if you read through this piece and i'm not suggesting this piece is right it says ultimately right now everybody is on tender hooks and by the end the year we may not continue to go up from here. do you agree with that? >> absolutely. you have to look back, take it in the context of the last 10, 15 years. we're at the top end of the trading range. we've been in this big broad trading range in the s&p 500 and now we have silently creeped up to the top of the range. woe look at it as a good time to be patient and take your foot off the gas pedal. >> your saying sell? >> i'm not saying -- >> rebalance? >> be opportunistic. look for opportunities but not at these prices. we've had a big surge in the last month so it makes a lot more sense to let the market breathe, let the market come in a little bit. becky just mentioned with the vix printing in the 13s all of a sudden not time to press your bets, lay off your bets a little bit. >> if you had to pick or two to be opportunistic with they would be what? >> europe. there's a lot of opportunities in europe >> you're going there. >> a lot of good valuations in europe relative to the u.s. yields are lower, p.e. ratios, a lot of good things. siemens relative. you can buy these. europe is extremely compelling. >> what's your sense much what will happen over the next couple of weeks. post-labor day that one week will be critical especially as this conversation in europe develops. this week unto itself may be a pivotal week as well. >> that's a great point. we have jackson hole. >> that's true too. >> two years ago pre-jackson hole is when bernanke came out with his first quantitative easing discussion and the parkt took off. maybe we just had sort of that surge pre-jackson hole and really again in my view is a time to be less aggressive because maybe the market is anticipating what might be coming out in a week or two. >> what your anticipating out of jackson hole? >> i suspect, you know, the fed has been giving very much telegraphing more of the same. i don't expect them to press aggressive stances. they are telegraphing that status quo. >> thank you so much. >> thanks for having me. >> coupling we'll talk the low down on lowe's the retailer released quarterly results a couple of moments ago. should you add some home improvement to your portfolio? plus house minority leader nancy pelosi making the late night round where paul ryan's ads were center of attention. take a listen. >> how about romney's pick, paul ryan. what are you thoughts on him? ? he's a nice person. >> yes. [ laughter ] >> i don't really know him well because i've never been to the gym. [ laughter ] >> the gop convention and "newsweek" cover story that's generating a bit of buzz this morning, john harwood will join us next from washington. you're watching "squawk box" back after this very quick break. wanted to provide better employee benefits while balancing the company's bottom line, their very first word was... [ to the tune of "lullaby and good night" ] ♪ af-lac ♪ aflac [ male announcer ] find out more at... [ duck ] aflac! [ male announcer ] ...forbusiness.com. [ yawning sound ] > welcome back, everybody. home improvement retailer lowe's rolling out its quarterly results a few ming ago. the results were not good. the company came in earnings with 65 sharnts when you strip out certain items. five cents below what the street was expecting. company is warning it's going to be coming in with earnings of just $1.64. they expect at this point the street was 1.80. these numbers well below what the street was expecting. joining us now is brian nagel, managing director with 0 p oppenheimer. what happened? >> everybody will look at these results relative to home depot. clearly softer than home depot. the real key here to keep in mind this reflects lowe's issues and not, you know, some type of weakening in home improvement demand. home improvement demand is picking up. the company is going to through a rather significant remerchandising of its stores. something it should have done more aggressively over the last few years. they are going product by product, line by line deciding which items work best and weeding out those that do not. what happened here, we had a very challenging weather throughout the past few months. i think given the transitions happening in lowe's stores they were not as quick to adapt their business to the weather as home depot was. >> i know that when you were looking at these two stocks you warned before we got this number lowe's was going to have a tougher time than home depot. home depot came in with strong numbers last week. if you had to pick between these two stocks on the expectation this stock will trade down today, it's hard to say exactly where it is now, looking at the bid ask, if the stock trades down today would you then be a buyer of lowe's or is this something you need to see some real results first. >> in the nearer term, looking shorter term much better to play home depot. investor wants to play home improvement, play home depot. both home depot and lowe's are well positioned. lowe's will get its house in order and benefit from improving demand within the home improvement sector. new said the home improvement, the improvement in the housing market is here. when do we expect to see that showing up at lowe's and home depot. >> it's starting to happen now. it will gain steam over the next several quarters. what's happening housing activity is picking up. confidence among homeowners to maybe start make being some small improvements in their homes. that's all going to build on these results. >> brian, thanks a lot. great talking to you. >> we're just a week away from the kick-off of the gop convention. should we expect any fireworks in tampa. john harwood will be very every step. way. he's got some answers and joins us now from washington. good morning to you, john. >> reporter: good morning. the short answer is no fireworks that's what the selection of paul ryan accomplished for mitt romney, which is to really unify his the party. they were going to support romney and since he wrapped up the nomination over santorum and gingrich and the others he had been consolidating republican support. this gives real energy to that support among conservatives and as a result you'll see a pretty harmless convention. >> did you see the cover of "newsweek". this week's cover of "newsweek" says "hit the road barack, why we need a new president" by neil ferguson. surprising at some level. tina brown behind that magazine. do you have any thoughts on that? >> reporter: i haven't seen i want but, you know, those news magazines are so desperate, "newsweek" is so desperate to get attention. they did a cover a few weeks ago with mitt romney, a cover that "newsweek" did for george w. bush the whip factor. you go from calling mitt romney a wimp to saying obama should be fired, to me that is simply a reflection of the media marketplace and the desire for magazines to be relevance in a way that, in fact, they no longer are. >> another political issue over the ad. the republican senate nominee from missouri, you know where i'm going with this. >> reporter: that's a legitimate story. i'm telling you that right now. >> he made a comment over the weekend that he said that when there is what he described as legitimate rape, that women's bodies can somehow block an unwanted pregnancy and it's gotten a lot of people clearly and i would argue for the right reasons quite upset. >> what was this guy thinking. >> reporter: that's one of the most stupid, ignorant comments i ever heard a major nominee for a significant office make, and becky's reaction is just the one that my daughter, my 23-year-old daughter had while i was talking about it with her, what is he talking about? and i think not only women, but men with brains are also going to be looking at that and saying where is this guy coming from. >> the romney campaign tried to distance themselves from this. >> reporter: they put out a statement saying they disagreed and a romney/ryan administration would not oppose abortion in cases of rape which is a significant statement by the campaign. you know statistics show there's something like 30,000 bortions from rape every year. todd aiken is a social conservative in missouri which is a socially conservative state. he's been leading the incumbent democrat in the polls. he may win that want race. he's got a legitimate shot to win the race but i think his chance of winning shrunk a little bit and as a result of that the democrats chances of holding the senate got a little bit better because of that idiotic remark he made on television. >> john we got to leave it there. thanks so much. there's a lot of stuff that happened over the weekend. >> how about skinny dipping in the galileo. >> there was a story how some republican lawmakers were skinny dipping in the sea of galilee. there was an investigation into what happened. decided a little bit of drinking could have gone into some of this -- >> reporter: that's possible. there are some lawmakers who have been known to drink alcohol and do silly things. >> i was going ask john about romney opening up his church to the press this weekend. but we'll lafayette it alone. >> reporter: that was smart. >> we'll talk to you later this week. coming up at 8:30 a.m. eastern time republican national committee chairman reinc reince priebus. >> still to come will the nation's appetite for credit put capitalism in jeopardy. plus football starting here at 7:00 a.m. houston texans bob macnir, miami dolphins owner and roger goodell. that has changed the modern world... would define you as an innovator. to hold more than one patent of this caliber... would define you as a true leader. to hold over 80,000... well, that would make you... the creators of the 2012 mercedes-benz e-class... quite possibly the most advanced luxury sedan ever. ♪ join mercedes-benz usa on facebook for the best summer sweepstakes. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 hours can go by before i realize tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 that i haven't even l