Earnings walmart going on a hiring spree. Home buyers are rushing for mortgages. Is the consumer stronger than you think . Power lunch starts now and welcome to power lunch, im Frank Holland in for Tyler Mathisen nike hitting an alltime high soaring 9 on a blowout Earnings Report Johnson Johnson also higher on its vaccine progress for more on whats driving the action, lets get over to bob pisani hey, bob frank, we are sitting at the lows for the day, 3,280 on the s p, about where we ended on friday and the problem is this seesaw in the megacaps and workfromhome names take a look at megacap, this is a down day yesterday was an up day. Monday was generally a down day. You get the idea hard time figuring out what the right values or prices this high same with the workfromhome stocks theres a theory out there that these will be beneficiaries of worsening coronavirus cases in the United States, maybe, but theyre starting to split. Theyre not always up on the stays when some start moving on
I know youre loathe to lay into fiscal policy but given forecast for Unemployment Rates, do you think its important that congress extend the extra unemployment benefits. I think were trying to keep our comments on fiscal policy at a high level ill come to your specific question let me just say this, this is the biggest economic shock in the u. S. And in the world really in living memory we went from the lowest level of unemployment in 50 years to the highest level in close to 90 years and we did it in two months extraordinary. Appropriately the response there fiscal authorities has been large, forceful, and very quick by the standards of these things roughly 3 trillion congress has authorized, and thats benefiting households, laid off workers, small and medium businesses, hospitals, state and local governments, 14 of gdp, its in a class by itself in terms of both the size and the speed of it. Its also pretty innovative. Both the ppp and Unemployment Insurance are quite innovative in th
Phase four stimulus package of some sort or another two of the most beaten down sectors of all, energy and financials are todays best performers how about that well have more on that big move lar later, one pandemic thats surging. Scotts miracle grow we tend to our gardens stocks are staging an epic rebound. Lets get to dom on more of this midday comeback. From tylers kitchen to the main set to where you are, to behind me, we have the dow its green its not as good as it was the s p 500 slipping slightly to negative territory the red over there at the lows down about 458 points at the opening bell at the high, the green you saw in last hour we were up about 260 odd points there. Thats the intraday moves. Meanwhile the laggards, youve got industrials and real estate. If you look at the stocks that are really leading the charge, check out some of these. You can see wells fargo, capital one on the financial side of things as some optimism returns about maybe some Consumer Spending and pion
10 , but lets be honest the markets are still down big time this year so cold comfort for investors who may have gotten in toward the end of last year well dissect all of that. One big theme today is the Federal Reserve effectively riding to the rescue of the bond market and even the etf bond market look at the hyg, something we have been highlighting and were going on more than a month now up 7 as well as the fed as it says there goes all in and we are all in with a great lineup for you again. We have guy, tim, weve got karen and weve got steve grasso it is going to be a beg hour we have Paul Macaulay with rare mineral supply chains and i want to get to steve grasso because the Federal Reserve, and i know it is very difficult for the audience out there who is not doing this every day to keep track of the alphabet soup of acronyms the Federal Reserve came in today with another 2 trillion program. Did they effectively bail out a big part of the etf market yeah. I think they did so the f
Bloomberg. You mentioned housing and todays gdp data when you look at that, do you believe that you have achieved a soft landing or are achieving a soft landing in the sense that removing to trend growth the rest of the year and next year that is our outlook overall, is for moderate growth of around 2 , pretty close to trend. Thats our outlook could be better. Could be worse you know, you never say youve achieved it. But thats our outlook we feel like our current stance of policy is appropriate as long as that remains broadly our outloo outlook. Donna borak with cnn. Chair powell, setting aside expectations for todays rate cut, obviously 97 sort of expected this would happen today, can you tell us more about the rationale behind moving at this particular meeting as opposed to waiting six weeks and cutting in december and if there was any discussion about that around the table . Thanks. Yeah. I think this seems to be the right movement you can see we had our usual range of prospects, ra