However, this morning, futures are indicated lower once again. Dow futures down by about 20 points below fair value, nasdaq down by 5. 5 points. Keep an eye on treasuries today. There is an auction of 21 billion in reopened tenyear notes at 1 00 p. M. Eastern time. Traders note that the sale comes after a recommendively weak threeyear note auction. Hsbc says the dream run in u. S. Stocks is set to end. In a report today, the bank says that the fed cutting asset purchases and the market setting to cut rates will present a turn for equities. Hsbc is forecasting it will rise just 4 this year to 1900. We have got Corporate News this morning. The Parent Company of chuck e. Cheese is reportedly looking for buyers. Also this morning, facebook buying a start up that builds Performance Analysis and monitoring tools for the mobile android applications, apps witness as theyre known. The india based company is called little ilab. Reports suggest the price is also tiny, less than 15 million. Micron Technology Posted betterthanexpected earnings and revenue. That happened after the close yesterday. Results were helped by strong sales as it recently acquired a memory business and a recovery in its memory chip business. Were going to talk to the companys ceo at 7 40 eastern time. Joe, i think you have the most interesting tech news of the morning. More interesting that alipida . I believe so. Elpida . Ive never heard of it. Who cares. Anyway, alan mulally ending the speculation that he could be heading for the west coast. By that, were talking about microsoft. The ford ceo says hes staying at the automaker at least through the end of this year. Okay. That means, i guess, he also added hes not going to become microsofts next leader. The tech giant is reportedly close to naming a new chief executive. And we continue to watch the weather. Before you go to the weather, can i ask one question . Do we believe that he took himself out . Do we believe that he was just not chosen and he was both, right . Could be a little bit of both. I was trying to read the tea leaves and i havent done enough reporting around to see what the answer is. But have you guys seen anything to suggest one way or the other . People have been waiting for a long time. Theres been an awful lot of speculation. If anything, this has taken a long time to clarify. Its taken too long. Anyway, well find out. It is cold. It was Single Digits against this morning. Were watching the weather. Record cold temperatures in the midwest and the plains are now putting the wheat crop at risk. Meteorologists are worried about winter kill damage to some of the dormant wheat along the ohio river valley. Snow cover usually protect dormant wheat when temperatures drop below zero, but without significant snow cover, damage can prevent that crop from reaching its full year and the potential of that next summer. Analysts say frigid temperatures slowed livestock and grains to the heartland. And it just its funny because its almost like you can view the economy almost like molasses. As it gets colder, it gets thicker. And the whole thing sort of moves. You wouldnt think that cold temperatures could do something to gdp, but people dont leave, people dont go shop. Its like it gums up the works. The Airline Industry, all the planes being jet fuel starts getting, like, actually starts getting thicker. Theres a lot of problems. Yeah. I didnt even think about the winter whooit wheat situation. Because i was thinking, oh, its a good thing this is happening now because its not freezing crops in atlanta. Youre a firm girl, among all the other my grandfather owned a farm. Oklahoma. No, indiana. But he was a cattle farmer, not a wheat farmer. He grew cattle. Raised cattle. He took them to the stockyards and hopefully the cows are okay. We needed 22 s p points to get where to where we closed on december 31st. We got 11. If you look at futures this morning no, i dont think its going to happen. And hsbc, no flies on them. Apparently the fed could be a headwind since theyre no longer going to be as accommodative. Someone told someone at hsbc, you know, the fed did taper and youre going to taper next year. That might but then again, all they said. They said 1900. Thats all anyone said. Ear come that come in are not saying the run for stocks is over. Theyre just saying 1900. These people are saying the run is over, but its still everybody covers their butt on what they think is exactly exactly what is the statistical wives tail . The first five days, youre going to have a they say the first five days is an indicator of january which is an indicator of the whole year. So its an up or down year for the whole do we know what the percentages are on that . Its like 80 if its up in the first five days. 90 if its down in the fifty five days. No, but its really good if its up. Im willing to if its six days or seven days. Government work. Good enough for government work. We went up so much after we this is an indicator and it doesnt tell us what we want. Santa claus was late this year. And then came with a vengeance. And so when they came and if you look at the last week and a half of the year, you would expect it to be a tougher time picking up because of the gains we saw so late in the year. We kind of are wasting breath talking to people about their predictions and talking about our predictions. We probably should let it happen. Its going to happen in this anyway. So well know in due time. In the meantime, lets talk about the weather impact. Joe mentioned there are so Many Industries that are impacted. Oil prices this morning are a little higher, 93. 78. But this has been after some significant slides. Among the catalysts being cited by analysts today, expectations for another drop in u. S. Crude inventories and worries about libyan supplies. 93. 76 is well below where we had been up until a week ago. In our on energy news, the eia predict tess pace of Energy Growth will be slow next year. The government forecasts say that this will allow opec to pump more crude for the first time in three years. Why dont we check on the broader markets. We showed you what was happening with the futures. But if you take a look at the dollar, its up against the euro and the yen. Trading right now at 1. 3586. Gold prices this morning are down by about 4. 50. Where is the tenyear . Did you ask them to take that out . No. You dont want to look at the tenyear now that its 2795 . Lets take a look at the tenyear. But thats over. That is not over. I was trying to figure out why its going down. My new bet is all these clowns that come in and are just so sure at 3. 5 , 4 , theyre the same ones that said it for five years. Theres no guarantee. I was asking some questions yesterday trying to figure out why if were going down i mean, and when you think they were saying Insurance Companies are looking at the long end and are locking in some rates. Good good old days when we were at 7 and 8 , you would get 100 point moves. Thats something to talk about. 2. 87 and the. 93 . Not a different. The trading range think about that. 2. 87 versus 2. 93 . Its pennies. And pennies dont buy anything any more. But well watch. When we get down to 2. 87 , any bowing that i was doing are you going to take it all back . I may. Which would be turning like that. You dont want to see up my nose right now. I can hear. And off camera, im making all these sounds, too. They should keep you down in the makeup room with cora. They should. Right now, its time for the Global Markets report. Ross westgate is standing by in london. I hope youre feeling better than some of the people around the table here. Ly, becky. Good to see you. Good morning, everybody. European equities just about down on the low point for the session. Its been fairly flat to start electives this morning. Just weighted to the downside, around about 5 to 4 decliners outpacing advantagers on the dow jones stocks 600. The ftse 100 was up some 24 points yesterday. First meaningful move of the year. Today, its down 27. So absolutely flat in 2014. The xetra dax and the cac 40 both down 0. 2 . We had the latest snapshot of unemployment that has maintained this record high rate in the eurozone of 12. 1 now. Despite the fact that investors have coming on, no impact in the Unemployment Rate. In italy, it ticked higher today, 12. 7 . The youth jobless rate, now 47 in italy. And with forms flirting with the flat line, theres still concern very much about the economies with italy and france which together contribute around 40 of the eurozone economy. Jack lew, treasury secretary, is landing as well today in germany. He says there needs to be more to demand. There is one stock work looking at today. Air france klm reported an increase in passenger traffic. Investors like the news. The stock is currently up 7 . Thats the stand out to look at. Thats where we stand right now in europe. Back to you. Ross, thank you. Well check in with you again soon. A little bit more news this morning. Yahoo s Ceo Marissa Mayer delivering a key note speech at the Consumer Electronics show in vegas. Jon fortt joins us now with the highlights from vegas. Good morning. You can always expect a good presentation from marissa mayer. She had a number of things to say both about the strategy and specifically about product. They kicked things off talking about yahoo s latest acquisition. Interesting start up on android home screen launcher, basically takes over your home screen. Shows you different apps during the day based on things that you want to do. Take a listen to how she opened it up. Future of search is knowledge. And we are investing to be part of this future. Were incredibly excited to kick things off today by announcing that we have acquired ava. As we look tow foorch of mobile, we believe home screens should be smarter and more personalized. Did you hear her say mobile there . Were putting content front and center but wanted to make the point that yahoo is moving away from desktop to mobile. Mobile is all about growth. Today, total worldwide smartphones are up 27 year over year. While tablet usage is up 78 year over year. By 2017, we expect to see 3. 8 billion devices connected to the internet. That is nearly 2 billion more than we see today. Lots and lots of numbers. But what it comes down so to is yahoo is investing in putting content on mobile so hopefully eventually we know money is important. They have made a number of our ad Network Announcement which hopefully might goose some revenue in the near term. Back to you. John, thank you. Now, katie couric was there. Who else was on stage with her . David poge came out. She had some announcements around food also. It was a big yahoo shindig. They wanted to show all the different aspects of did you feel there was a singular strategy . Did i feel there was a singular strategy. Meaning one of the things that singular strategy. The thing that occurs to me about yahoo is theyre trying to do so many things all the time and its unclear to me how it comes together. I think thats still unclear at this point. They clearly want to grow in mobile. They brought out the kid who told us a while ago to great effect. Hes only 17 and they bought his startup. Clearly, shes throwing a bunch of stuff out there. Not looking for one off, loor fog things that come back to again and againen to hopefully something something going by tend of the year. Its only 6 14. We cant go to break. Obviously theyve built in some time here. Real quickly, i want to compliment your paper. The gates story. Heres gates, Washington Post lead story. Gates sharply critical over obama in memoir. They thought that was important enough to put there. Without street journal thought it was important enough to put here. Gates faults obama administration. Saus today thought it was important enough to put here. And then, lets see, New York Times we got pregnant and forced to stay on jpmorgan saudis, youve got every story but this. But i page 12, they call him a bipartisan critic. I was watching the news last night and the first thing they said was republican roberts gates. That sort of diminished it. Hes thought of as someone who wouldnt do it on a partisan basis, gates, right . Why would you want a again ache story that every other insurance has, why would you put that on the front page . Dont you think they call it all the news thats fit to print, dont they . I just thought if everybody else put it there, it seems like a pretty big deal. The stuff he says about biden is funny. He was critical of a lot of people. He was. He said about biden, on four decades, hes been on the wrong side of every feern policy decision. Biden voted against the 91 iraq move, voted for the other iraq move, voted against the surge, wanted to split iraq up into three different areas. I liked jonah. I read the bob woodward extortion. Then at the end of the book he said by the way, i think every decision president obama has made have been the right one. And he breaks the news that their opinions about the surge had to do they both admitted it was due to political she said she took that position because she was up against obama in iowa. None of this should surprise anyone about, you know, what goes on in washington. And the truth is, some of the stuff he started talking about where he said he was ready to quit when he was being flogged by congressmen, he said it was like going up against the inquisition and fighting a war there, too. When you watch the haefrearingsu understand that. Wore when you watch senator homewood. Oh, youre out of homeland, now back in. But hes a classic politician, isnt he . Hes going to be in charge of the cia. Is he supposed to be a republican or democrat . I dont know. I dont know. But the show is so lost to me, i dont killed some guy with a bobble. That was kind of gory. Anyway, coming up, getting googlers to work by any means necessary. How about a boat ride across the bay . Thats coming up in todays executive edge. First, though, lets get the National Forecast from alex wallace. Good morning, guys. Good news for us. The worst of the cold is overwith. We saul over 55 record temperatures. Got down to 6 degrees. You dont see that very often. Theres the arctic air mass starting to retreat. You get a chance toot least thaw out a tad out there for you. A lot of areas stuck in teens and conditions. By the time we get to friday, youll see some 30s out there and the south has been been immune from the cold. Well see some warmer numbers, 40s and 50s. Good news on the way. More squawk box on the way, as well. Welcome back on, everybody. Right now, its time for the executive edge. The wall street journal has a piece on how amazon uses current employees to screen new hires. The workers who must sign off on wouldbe amazon editions are call barmakers. This is something they do on top of that fulltime job. They can veto any candidate, even if their expertise is in an area that has nothing to do with perspective employees. This is almost like a secret society way of getting into this. You have to pass the test with the current employees. Jeff bezos looks at this as a way of protecting the culture. And it is a culture that you want to protect at this point. Is there a wedge there between valuation and whether the company ever, you know, makes that kind of profit . Right. My favorite story, its not really an amazon story is what zappos says when you get hired, on your way to getting hired. They take you out to vegas, put you on a bus from the hotel to the headquarters and then you go on the bus on the way back. What you dont know is that the driver of the bus actually also fills out a form about how you treated the driver because oftentimes the most interesting information is when you get back on the bus and you say that was a long day of interviews and it sucked or if you treat them well or badly and that apparently has as big of an impact if not more than the actual interviews that youre in. I like the idea of having a hidden camera to see how you treat other people. That would be a great thing to say. Its kind of like invasive, though, isnt it . Yeah, but this is like if youre bringing people into their culture, and their thought is, look, were really good is a big part of why were so good is our people. The people who work here. We want to make sure we continue to have great capital. For amazon, now they have about 110,000 employees. This is not something they do for the Distribution Center workers and some of the bigger things. You draw the line at, like, going into a persons house and putting some cameras up and i draw the line of putting up cameras in the bathroom. That freaks me out. And it gets out good to get out the yeah. I mean, you have to draw the line somewhere. I dont know. But yesterday hearing how these people in a position to hire, they ask questions like on a scale of 1 to 10 how weird are you. That is just kind of youre trying to set ive never been a fan of if you were a tree what kind of a tree questions would you be . I think thats weird, too. You use that on the ten most interesting people. You know what i read . Is Justin Bieber going to be the vanilla ice of our generation . Hes already bigger than vanilla ice ever was. I dont know. I remember vanilla ice. I remember vanilla ice, too. Justin bieber has been out there for, what, four or five years . That was positive yesterday. Who was bigger, vanilla ice or mc hammer . Mc hammer, was he hes a religious man now, isnt he . I think both are religious men and venture capitalists, if i recall. We had him on. We need a costume for my son to be in this place as a king. We are shopping for some mc hammer pants. I thought you were going to say you were going to shave his eyebrows and give him the vanilla ice look. No. Were not going to i know whose eyebrows i would like to not shave, but just thin them down. Well work on that. Were talking about the need for shuttles in silicone valley. Now google has hired a catamaran to transport workers. They kicked off a program this week ferrying over 100 employees. Seems like a good way to miss the traffic on 101. Dont they do all sorts other or things . The special google busses. Yeah, but that made people mad in the city and there were protests saying we dont want all these people making these high tech salaries forcing the rest of us out. Plus they were mad those buses were used the public bus stops and they said the public buses were getting slowed down from it. How about the flying drones that could take you from your house and deposit you in the morning. Drones, did you see how theyre using drones . Everything that the cia does involves droeps. But theyre up high. You dont know theyre there, right . This is true. We can