That is not going to take place because of the slowdown in china and what that could mean for the economy. Also lets look at european equities at this early hour. You will see now things are in the green. Dax up about. 2 . The ftsi about. 3 . And opec ministers meeting. A live report in a bit. And todays squawk planet. Waiting to hear from the ecb. Decision due at 7 45. Followed by a draghi News Conference about 45 minutes later. The central bank expected to keep rates on hold but perhaps raise inflation forecasts. Two notes. Adp private payrolls due this morning. The private sector forecasts have added 170,000 jobs in maybe. Adp not always a reliable indicator for the jobs number but last month correctly fore shadowed. And a pair of central bankers to watch. Fed governor jay powell and rob caplan both speaking. In Corporate News uber in the biggest 3. 5 billion. That is just the total in saudi arabia. The total i think 5 billion. Ride sharing most recent funding gives uber a valuation of 68 billion. And a whistle blower hitting oracle with a lawsuit over cloud accounting. Claimsing she was terminated in retaliation for complaining about improper Accounting Practices in that unit. And shares falling after hours down over 2 . And apple reportedly plans to raise up to 4 billion from a bond sale in taiwan and australia. As of march apple had a cash pile of 233 billion. 90 of that is held abroad. They need dont need that back here. And expected to help fund apples Share Buyback and dividends. And other news, Goldman Sachs is trimming estimates and price target for apple on lower smart phone growth. I would like to know. I would like to know to where. Where were they . And where are they now . Ill look it up for you. I had that report in my email box. Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg taking center stage with recorrodes kara swisher. Commenting peter te. I know this is actively discussed here and it should be because issues of independence and the media are key to democracy and key to all of us. It is what you are about. It is what the conference is about. Peter did what he did on his oen. Noz as the facebook board member. We didnt know about it. And . And you should talk to him. Swisher also pressed sandberg about her future with facebook. You could be a ceo of disney. Did you want to be the ceo of disney . I love my job. Dont want another job . You dont want to are run for office. I love facebook and my team. We will have more highlights from the code conference throughout the morning. 1. 24 from 136. I want to know what the high was. And put a market cap on you ought to go out. Take week or a month. And do the math and come up with what you should be known for, which is your law of large numbers. There is a place and there is a level. They get there and i it is a sell number. It is either 750 whatever that number is. They never they reach up against it. It is some percentage of total corporate profits. Some number. It is theic r ii ii iic ras ear there is an expression. Jack and the bean stalk. That wasnt real. In reality no tree. Climbs to the sky. And you county even need to know anything else. It i dont need to do any research. I just if you could pinpoint the number where they get to some percentage of the total market cap. I get it 5 they never could sustain that. 6 or 700 billion and cant sustain that. 600. Most companies. Cisco. Microsoft. Any google. I dont know there are some that have made to it 600. Who was it . Kevin landisch yesterday . It was someones point. One of the stock pickers we talked to is the reason he doesnt like amazon right now is because he thinks its richly valued and anyone who made that argument before he said people use to give him grief about that with microsoft. Apparently think i saudi ramco already is so there has been one. Can be done. But when apple is at 130 and serve at 200 for a price target and when i ask i go thats 1. 4 trillion dollars. So. Analysts. Dont do the math on both sides. Tree. And then a forest the question, analysts or economists . No. Climate scientists. They are the lowest. Beneath journalists are higher than them. Yes. But second to the bottom. Opec leaders meeting in vooen that to discuss production levels. Vienna that to discuss production levels. High profile brian at the high profile meeting. Thats right. We heard from a couple of them this morning. They are in there now meeting trying to work out their differences, maybe come to some kind of production freeze or a cap. That is really the idea. Is it expected by the market . Probably not. But that does leave them the ability of opec to shock the market. If we get that it would be expected oil would move higher. You kind of bum rush in. Everybody talks to the Oil Ministers they are all sitting at the tables and you get a couple of comments out of them. The one thing weve gotten so far is that really the current price even though we are well off the low is not nearly high enough. Especially for more cash strapped nations liking an e iio la. Ang la ministola minister. They want higher prices but how do you get there . The only way is two fold. Either demand jumps which nobody is really expecting or you get some demand or cut. How do you do that . It failed at the doha meeting. So the venezuelan minister is proposing a per country cap. Listen. We are talking about some new ideas. The possibility to have like a supply production range per country. Not to have a definite number. To have a range of value for the evolution between minimum and maximum and have that band of production. So really at any time we could get the decision that opec is going to keep things the way they are, which may put downward pressure on oil. They could come to a keel. We dont know. Thats why were here. Thats a nice. Thats not a junket. Youre working. Vienna. Enjoy it while you are there. And tell you what. If i was a faster runner i could cover boast the ecb and the opec for you. Because the ecb is meeting like three blocks that way. Im just slow. I cant do it. Im not kidding. Wow. All right. All about vienna. Its total sausage fest. [ laughter ] to the broader markets now. Another check on u. S. Equity futures. Now down about 11. Yesterday it was wow. Crazy wow. Closed up two. The yield on the ten year now about 185 or so. You know, like watching paint grow. And lets take a look at the currencies. Quick 112 this morning. On the euro. 108. I dont know whats goin in japan. Well talk about it. Cant even put sales tax on. Raised from 5 to 8 and caused a recession so hes a little reluctant from 8 to 10 . Well, you know. 10 consumption tax. Not a lot happening over well see. Chief Investment Officer of the Portfolio Solutions at baj of america. Merrill lynchs Investment Management and guidance unit. Okay were out of time. Okay thank you. Anything else you need to where did you go to grade school . Kidding. I went to st. Mary star of the s p dow and our guest host for the hour, former chairman of wells fargo. And andrea always ask you is the market bottom . So im going to ask you what is your price target dick on the s p over the next 12 months no im not. For you. This is what i have for you here. Weve been in tightening mode. Markets gone nowhere. And its only a quarter point why dont we just admit this is not a time for equities. Goldman sachs said it. In a tightening cycle you are probably not going to make much money in the stock market. We agree with you. Our target is 2,000 on the s p, which is going nowhere. Is there a reason after how long a an easing cycle now the Inflection Point has been hit and its just harder . Part is you dont have earnings. We may be troughing. We have signs estimate revisions are going up but weve had the worst Earnings Period since 2008, 9. The market is not cheap. Volatility is low. Were seeing lending tighten. Economic growth is just okay. So we think the maybe what explains zero economic or zero Interest Rates is slack Global Demand that weve had for a couple of years which has made it hard for corporations. So why should the market go up at this point. When its been sort of juiced already. So we agree. And we also are expecting episodic volatility. Which weve been getting so we think this is a time to be more neutral on the markets but pick your spots. Not everything is bad. In fact the you look at whats working, it is whatever has income. So many of our clients, particularly the baby boomers going into retirement need income. They are not generating the income from the fixed income market they thought they would and they are coming to the equity market. So you are seeing even sectors like staples, reit, utilities, telecoms doing fairly well. The market itself it hasnt done anything but it is on alltime highs. Not far from there. And what is a pretty bleak scenario that we just talked about you would have to say the fed has orchestrated asset values to be at high levels. That was supposed to induce the underlying economy to improve. Were they successful or not . I think looking back at the old adage of you cant push a string. We are seeing that sort of play out here. More and more were leaning towards the limitations of Monetary Policy and how much impact we can have with those moves. Dick, do you think that leishman, you told me you get the animal spirits going. You get the asset values up. Make it so there is nowhere else to invest. I told you all that. It is true. The stock market goes up. Economy follows suit. It is true i told you that. The it is also true joe there is Something Like a 70 or 80 correlation between rising stock prices and rising investment. And dick would tell you why thats true. Right . Business investment . Yeah. When stock prices go up because the value of the existing assets people buy new stuff because it pays for them to do it. Thats different from the correlation being that if stock all this to stop talking about dicks answer and let dick answer. Thank you. When every six weeks for the last seven years, the fed says things are so bad out there were going to keep Interest Rates t zero forever. And the general public thinks the fed know what is they are doing. Which of course they dont because their forecasts are at about 50 . Economic forecasts up about 50 . And look at janets perspective versus everybody else. And when you keep every six weeks saying things are bad t Business Community decides that is the case so they dont have to worry about animal spirits and increasing constitutional right Interest Rates. The consumer is doing find. So we have a monetary and fiscal policy that is antigrowth basically. And its been that way for basically eight years. Weve been told the supply side has trickled down. And 4 and 5 by doing the things that have worked in the past this is different did you read the piece today. I did. He said it started much earlier. Started earlier but not going to be solved by keynesian policies and different because of what were talking about right here. Im not going to agree but im going to have to least take a nod that were rewriting the economic textbooks now about the impact of the Monetary Policy and keynesian stimulus and how to get things going. The idea that the central bank cannot pick a inflation rate. It was the one thing we thought they could do. And they cant do it. Why would you want a 2 inflation rate . That is a discussion im hear interesting the control and we dont have time to have. But there is a reason for it because it is not one and because it is not three. That is essentially why they picked two. If we had 2 inflation our economy is growing less than 1 today. What target do you want . I dont want that target. I think you let you need a target. You need some sort of goal. Hitting it. Fair enough. Stay long . The equity markets. I think one of the challenges now is whether what is your alternative . You have low yield and fixed income. Where else do you go . And you are aware that the s p is above where your target is right . Yes. I do. That means but were not a end of the year, joe. It is not at the end of the year. So it could be going down. It could. You are at bank of america, Merrill Lynch and you are saying dont buy stocks. No we love stocks. We think we are in a secular bull market with a period of when do i start seeing better earnings thats hard to forecast. The easiest way is to look at earnings estimate revisions what arnlss are doing with their numbers. Were just starting to see avnlss start raising numbers but we need to see that continue. Because if earnings dont come through the markets really cant go up. You have to have the revenue growth. And theres been no revenue growth. And no margin expansion. Im afraid in response to the recent lackluster revenue that what we are going to see is a another round of cuts and that is going to have a negative impact if we yeah. All right. Thanks to chris and mary ann. Im not going to say read your title again. People can use a vcr if they have to. Coming up. Much more from our guest host dick kovacevich. And squawk box is coming right back. singing you wouldnt haul a load without checking your clearance. So why would you invest without checking brokercheck . Check your broker with brokercheck. She once topped forbes list of americas richest self made women with 4. 5 billion. Now her net worth forbes says has fallen to zero. Lowering the net worth down to zero based on the fact that the current worth of the company. Their response. As the privately held company we declined to share confidentiality information with forbes. As a result of this is based on speculation and press reports. Dick, this is something weve talked about in the past. But obviously the tensions have ratcheted up. There is a criminal investigation, the sec is looking into issues and there is just questions about the basic Lab Efficiency and effectiveness at theranos. What do you say as the board member given the circling attacks that are coming . Well i still believe in the vision of elizabeth and theranos and the technology and, you know, i think well see what happens in the future. And the information that will be coming out. But i believe in it. You believe in the vision of edison. But does it work . What weve heard lately is that the company has stopped using edison, which is the finger prick technology that was supposed to be this great promise where you could take less blood and have just as accurate testing. There is a lot of miss information lets just stop at that. And as i said i think there will be some information coming out in the next few months that will be much more accurate. Why is it taking so long . Well what you do in again im not an expert in this. But the Scientific Community brings in experts. And testing the equipment and activities. And then there is a peer group that comes in, checks to see if that information is correct. And then there is articles written in scientific magazines. So it is about a six month process as you go through the peer review part. Because that will verify indeed that the information is correct or help verify the information is correct and that process is going on. The Cleveland Clinic told us in the past they would be involved in with some of this. Are they still. I dont know the specifics of whos involved. But there are a lot of people involved. And the medical board is doing the analysis internally and the peer review is by different people. The president and coo, stepping down as well. Saying he retired but hes 51 years old. And that raised questions because he had been so close to elizabeth homes for so long. And there are some personal reasons why he decided to do that. But again, you know, i think these are all normal things that happen with a start up. And it is just theres been excessive publicity for something that is not unusual in start ups. There were financing rounds 9 billion. And now she with whats left she doesnt have claim to any of it. Now claiming there is 800 million valuation. Doing this pace opd 723 million raised she was worth 4. 5 billion. And we looked at that and thought wow it would be tough to catch her. And now i think im above her. And you will be too. If the people this is income equality. Shes no longer worth 4. 5 billion. And now were tied at zero but were all equal. And is there no story that you cannot link back to some democrat republican liberal conservative . This is about start ups. It is a medical issue joe. It is not a political issue. I tied her. I know. Income inequality. You have it all wrong. The big thing about the election is blood testing. That is really the big issue. I tied Elizabeth Holmes net worth and well done. Thank you. And this is a conversation i dont want to have. And dick, one final question about this. The huge issue, is it safe for patients . People who have been going in and getting results a lot of results have been thrown out. And there are questions answer patient safety. Can you say patients are okay with these testing results . All but one of the stores where consumers come in is in california where the lab determined to need work and it did. The arizona lab has passed all the tests and that is where 95 of all the tests have been done. And they have passed that test and they are accurate. Dick, were their discussions among Board Members of the notion this whole technology is so proprietary that we cant let anyone try to reproduce our results. It has to be this black box things. You have to take our word for it that it works. Most of the time and peer review, you need to know what the technology is. You cant go like original recipe chick on something. Have they shared the technology . Cold fusion didnt work, remember . You had to try to see if it really did before you believe it does. The medics side of the board. The people who really understand this have been involved in it from the i dont know from the get go but certainly since ive been a board member. So the rest of us are not exactly expert bus the medical part of the problem we point out you got some of these 90yearold guys with great reputations that are on the board only for star quality is when you ought to have some scientists. On the medical board. Who den this may have not worked but then they refine and it it eventually works. That is yes. I believe that. Thank you. Dick kovacevich is our guest host. And goin