Yesterday was a standout day. It was the best day for the dow since may 19th the best day for the s p 500 since may 24th and the best day for the nasdaq since december 11th of last year. Things are looking cautious at the open overnight in asia, the nikkei finished up by 0. 8 . The hang seng and shanghai were weaker hang seng down by 0. 3 in europe, some of the early trading thatsalready taken place, you can see right now it looks like there are some modest advances for many major indices. The dax and cac are up the ftse is flat crude oil prices were under pressure yesterday crude settled at the lowest level since november of last year it was down 54 cents to 44. 20. This morning its down another 8 cents. Testing that 44 level at 44. 12 you got the beach on your mind a little bit. Okacean i was thinking ahead to stocks i have not had coffee yet. Following a developing story in barclays. Uk authorities filed criminal charges again the bank and four Top Executives under undisclosed payments to qatari fund raisers in 2008 after a fiveyear investigation into the banks dealings with the country at the height of the financial crisis the stock not doing a whole lot there. The head of the bank of england says now is not the time to raise Interest Rates speak together london Financial Community this morning, mark carney warned of weak wage growth and a potential hit to income as britain begins talks to leave the eu. Carney says businesses may need to soon activate contingency plans. The pound, 1. 27. Off the lows we saw postbrexit. Right now not budging that much. Lloyd blankfein speaking to jim cramer last night on mad money. He said the economy is looking pretty good he said he is not completely on board with President Trumps agenda but tax cuts, Infrastructure Spending and deregulation would be good for the economy. He also weighed in on the roll back of banking regulation and the volcker rule the overall need to regulate activity is good for us. The biggest risk of Goldman Sachs during the financial cray sis is that our counterparties may not be good for us we were worried about our counterparties to the extent you have certain things like stress tests, higher capital rules, certificate ain e tests, thats fine but if you put layers and layers, you bog down the system. Blankfein defended ben bernanke and janet yellen. He said they may get the blame for shallow recovery but credit for avoiding a deeper recession. I like how he showed up in no jacket take off the jacket go with the shirt sleeves. You cant get to pick and choose when you want res regulation or more regulation. It sounds politically correct when he wants to advocate for social justices. Thats probably the message thats gotten lost in terms of finance over the last decade because of whats happened with the financial crisis fewer people want to go into finance, fewer people think its a a good place the evil mask that got put on the banks. Same thing with healthcare. But with finance, the whole run after the election, onethird was from Goldman Sachs you do need these financials to participate. They have lagged incredibly so when he talks about social mission, finance is the wd40 of the economy. You need it. Make sure people it sounds selfserving for a ceo to say this, but its true. He goes back to gods work. Difficult to resonate with Middle America when you talk about finance. They think about high paid ceos. Part of what is lost is this idea of thats how you can buy a home because you can get a loan for your home, get your kids to college. It does take and lift people up when its used properly. Sure. Lets talk about some washington news. President trump meeting with tech ceos in the white house yesterday. Eamon javers has more of the headlines on that. Good morning good morning. It was an allstar cast of technology characters at the white house yesterday including apples tim cook, eric schmit of alphabet and google. A whole host of Top Executive theres with a market value of 3 3. 5 trillion. The president joking with them that thats about the amount of market capitalization he generated for the stock market since he took office a little tease thereing there fe president of the United States ultimately the president made comments to the tech ceos on immigration. Listen to this sound bite. Its a more conciliatory tone on immigration than weve heard from the president ial candidate who was famous for building that wall and a harsh tone on immigrati immigration. When it comes to what were here for today, american technology, were working very di diligently with everybody, including congress, on immigration. So that you can get the people you want in your companies its been a tremendous problem that youve had over the past long period of time. Well see if that indicates a change in direction for the white house or if that was part of his welcoming tone to the tech ceos. They were there officially to advice the government on how to improve i. T. Systems, Government Services to systems more broadly. Well see what ideas came out of that session as well as that was happening, swirming around the white house were the rumors that sean spicer might depart as press secretary. I talked to the white house about that they gave us a statement we have sought input from many people as we look to expand our Communications Operation as he did in the beginning, sean spice ser managing the communications and press office. Technically those twoare two different offices. The suggestion im getting is that spicer might be pulled from the podium but kicked upstairs to a more management role in terms of communications, replacing mireplac ing mike dutke who resigned a few weeks ago. Then also possibly bringing in somebody from outside, and that somebody is tbd. Of course today there is no briefing at all scheduled at the white house. Yesterday they didnt do it on camera this white house has been trying to dial back i briefits briefin schedule with reporters. One of which is they have not been happy with the results of what theyre getting they may be dialing back on some briefings, but President Trump is not stopping tweeting he just tweeted, karen handel for congress she will fight for lower tacks, great healthcare, strong security, a worker who will never give up. Vote today that points to this election people are watching closely. The president has been tweet being that campaign for 24, 48 hours now. We will see whether he can mobilize the base with those tweets they want to put pressure spawn spicer said yesterday the president from the white house can exert his influence in some of these companies well see if that has an impact. Thanks a lot. Paul ryan will give a speech on taxes this afternoon. He will wash against wa warn agg down tax reform and urge washington to complete reforms before the end of the year then he will join the power lunch crew at 1 30 p. M. He doesnt appear to endorse the Controversial Border adjustment tax, of which he was one of the original architects. Keeps saying its dead on arrival. He makes the case for evening the Playing Field and using all the words that were used around the border adjustment tax. There was a time when this kind of event would have powered the markets higher finally they get focused on tax reform when you look at the market at alltime highs, its difficult to see what will power the market with any type of rhetoric you need to get something passed weve seen this too many times before the fact were hanging in here, tremendously bullish for the overall market this is almost the cherry on top. Right now the market has been rallying for a host of reasons, earnings, pro growth policies, less regulation is the number one reason why the market has been rallying. If we get these new things, market blows through a lot of resistance levels to the upside. I wonder if part of the run looks like there may be an end game on healthcare reform. Win or lose, the thing is finally going to come to an end some way, that was a big hurdle you had to get out of the way. Regardless of what happens it. If they can put that to bed, they can move on to tax reform once you get a budget, you can move on to tax reform. Yep at least you have the money now when you Start Talking about it, especially now when you talk about the environment or the paris accord, how much money that will free up, now you can start allocating some funds going forward, even though were talking about years out, you need to have these scored in a more favorabiliorgavavorable fan or scored at all. Until you know whats happening with health reform, you dont know whats happening with those revenues you may end up changing those years for budgeting from 10 to 20 well talk to steve steve abomn later in the show about that. Joining us is Rick Steinberg and mark lucinni from janney monte dei pascgomery scott good to have you here. Mr. Lucinni, same question i had for mr. Grasso paul ryan making a key speech about tax reform if theres anything Market Participants want wanted, its tax reform. Is this all baked into the cake . I think it has the chance to pull the market higher weve seen the congress cry wolf a couple times i think the market would otherwise be a bit benign in terms of the reaction to the prospects of ryan speaking on tax reform it seems the sequencing of thing that need to take place are finally in the front and center. As a consequence, plus the market having cleared through earnings season, its desperate for new news, new catalyst to take prices higher, which i think the market wants to go is higher i dont think its going to necessarily tack on 5 from here, but the fact theyre talking about it in the leg legitimacy thereof ignites Market Participants interests. That is faded and has turned from not only disbelief but perhaps also to pessimism. Is this the catalyst that the market needs to move higher . I think its one of them. The other catalyst that we saw last week was that the bond Market Participants have basically gotten on the liquidity train by keeping the tenyear under 2. 20. The world is awash in liquidity. We underestimated politics politics dont matter now. To sooefs point if we get some foe ward motion in finally rhetoric turn nothing realiai turning into reality, we could get the boost. If we see some of those, well focus on 2018 earnings the rotation before the feeding frenzy yesterday in tech looked good to us, because money was going back into value, banks we think there needs to be some churning here unless we get good news out of washington why do you think tech came back a couple reasons. One, the greed factor is there two, money flows into etfs are forcing money into big names three, algos, and the fourth is maybe a bit of window dressing for pcortfolio managers and mutual funds who dont own enough of the top 5 or names that are driving the market including these tech names so they show on their books. Do you know anybody who could put money to work during that downturn a lot of guys put money to work when you think about what were doing, you have to place a bet on whats proven already to work or what you think is going to work, which is the laggards, the financials, energy and dividends exactly dividends. We had an options exploration, russell reweight and quarter m. You have to, if youre a money manager, show you are owning these Technology Firms which are done great xlk, up 5 basically the xlf up 6 . So if you want to survive as a fund, you have to window dress a bit for quarter end, but then decide how you will do on the back half of the year. Are you going to get another 10 of that tech probably not mark what did you do during that selloff in technology did you use it as an opportunity or are you looking back and thinking shoot, we should have bought some of that . No, i didnt think we should have bought some of that its already 23 of the s p 500 from the sector weighted perspective. Its almost onefourth of the market at large. So you either have a market waite there as a big participation. The other side of it, we had been nibbling into the rotation we thought would occur eventually if we saw better economic momentum reassert itself thats the rotation into finlts whi financials that took place we got a nice bid in june. As the rotation occurred and as a korconsequence the financials outperformed the market. The question is to steves point is whether it persists or not into the second half deep enough that it rewards you for having stayed long or nibbled into the trade a bit. And we think its likely to occur. Youre positive absolutely. Rich and mark joining us. Steve is sticking around. When we come back, putting your money to work in your mattress target investing in casper and selling its product in its stores caspers ceo will join us. Squawk box will be right back. Usaa gives me the peace of mind and the security just like the marines did. The process through usaa is so effortless, that you feel like youre a part of the family. I love that i can pass the membership to my children. Were the williams family, and were usaa members for life. A used car, the future isnt silver suits anits right now. S, think about it. We can push buttons and make cars appear out of thin air. Find love anywhere. Hes cute. And buy things from, well, everywhere. How . Because our phones have evolved. So isnt it time our networks did too . Introducing americas largest, most reliable 4g lte combined with the most wifi hotspots. Its a new kind of network. Xfinity mobile. Welcome back target is getting into bed with mattress maker casper. The retailer is leading the newest investment round. Casper products are now being sold in target stores and on its website. Joining us now is phillip krimm the ceo of casper and we also have an investor in casper phillip, part of the novelty of casper is that this was an online thing you didnt have to touch it or see it it would show up, pop up at your doorst doorstep what happened with this target investment since the beginning we thought about offering our product online and offline we thought that was a key part of the customer journey. We focussed on the Retail Experience of buying a mattress, which is generally a terrible experience so we thought this was a key ingredient for us to accelerate. Do people want to lay on the mattress before it shows up . People today are traversing online and offline seamlessly. We also viewed ourselfs as creating one of the great Consumer Brands. To do that you have to traverse online and offline our product is something that makes a huge impact on peoples lives. So we love the idea of having products they can touch and feel i bought a casper mattress two, three weeks ago very nice couldnt use it for three days because it comes folded up in a box weighs so much i couldnt get it up the stairs. The u. P. S. Guy couldnt help me, so i had to wait for my brother to show up and help me one of the appeals in retrospect, if i had gone to a store, they would have taken away the old one and put up the new one for me one thing that were very focused on is listening to customer feedback. We heard that in the early days. We offer white glove delivery. So we can set is up in your home i didnt see that new york you can offer it we launched it in new york, chicago. By the end of the year well be nationwide with that were looking to improve the Customer Experience. What is your end game here . What do you want to do do you want to be the Biggest Mattress company a roll up . What is casper we think were the next great Consumer Brand we want to have products in the maer k marketplace to help people sleep better and feel better how do y you build out that brand . When i search for a mattress, its an assault on senses. Then theres the addones. Where do you start and where do you stop is it just the mattress . How much of the peripheral do you start to get involved with we think the key to building that brand over the longterm is to take category defining products to market as long as we put best in class products out there in a variety of different product categories, well continue to build the brand in the way we wanted to do it well do a lot of that direct will you casper. Com but also target as well and well continue to launch new products that help improve the sleep ecosystem. Youve been an investor for a long period of time. You were part of the series a funding, this is now part of the Series C Funding you put additional money in. Why . Casper is still a young company. Only three years old its a massive market. The significant opportunity ahead of them gets us excited. Theyve done a great job with early product introductions, building a huge brand. Its still a massive market and were early days in the innovation its incredibly competitive you log in, you google mattress, all kinds of things come up. How do you differentiate im not convinced that casper is any better than any other mattress so you sleep on a casper its a long story i dont. But go ahead fortunately for us hundreds of thousands of people sleep on their casper, love their product and experience arent you worried about barriers being so low . Theres a couple things the brand that they developed is significant. Its built around the product. The product has a lot of innovation we think its done a great job of winning on the product side theres the Customer Experience. You feel like theres salt on the wound. Its a terrible offline experience today so casper has been trying to reinvent that Customer Experience and make it focused and delivered on a great value proposition, which is what we know over a long time is what wins in the market how much of this is getting the word out is that why youre teaming up with celebrities trying to get them to help you get the word out definitely a part of it building awareness is the biggest barrier now. We have to continue to let people knows there a better, smarter way to buy a mattress and other sleep products you need thats why were excited about the distribution opportunity with target and why we love working with celebrities who help tell our story. All those celebrity endor endorseme endorsements, mattresses a