Market Insight and Analysis. You're listening to the opening bell of CNBC, Squawk on the Street.

Good Thursday morning. Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Carl Kinteneer with Jim Kramer, David Faber, Post 9 of the New York Stock Exchange. Bulls looking for some relief, at least on S&P NASDAQ, and they'll get an assist today from a high-profile Apple upgrade, an upbeat guide from Taiwan semi. Yields do bounce bounce, though, as Java's claims hit a 16-month low. Our roadmap begins with three straight down days for the Dow. Apple, though, is trying to lift the group as B of A upgrades the stock, calls from more than 20% upside ahead. We'll talk about that. Plus, shares of Eumann are getting crushed in the pre-market. This is after the company did slash its earnings outlook.

It had higher than expected medical costs. It's also dragging down some of the other insurers as well.

And layoffs at Google, CEO Sundar Pichai, saying, yeah, we're going to need some job cuts in 2024 to reach the company's, quote, ambitious goals. Let's begin with the markets, as we said, trying to bounce after a couple down days on S&P, three days down on the Dow. Jim, we mentioned the Apple downgrades so much to start the year. How much attention should we give to B of A? I think it's big. This is as happens to be the level that it had to hell. The technicians will know that the reasons why they say you want to buy it.

Frankly, what they do is they take that immediate short term off the table, which is very smart.

And talk about a series of reasons that I think are really kind of very sound.

And this is talking about AI and it's talking about the notion of the company, Vision Pro, really reinventing.

And you know what? The negative sentiment is just insane versus what they're talking about.

I'll just give some of these points here.

Risk around the legal, we just saw that. Don't worry about. It's manageable.

The recent unperformance, they actually like,

most people dislike. Stronger motor year iPhone upgrade. I thought that was interesting because

people thought that was not the case. And David, higher growth in services is my theory

of why you can stick with this, because the customer loyalty is such that when you take their

products, you take the service and the service stream is very sticky. There's no doubt about that. You're charging your credit card. I mean, I don't know about you. I see, you know, now it shows up on my phone. Apple's getting charged, I don't know, numerous times a month for various things.

Do you think it's sneaky that a lot of times is 3.20 a.m.? I'll be watching. I'll say, holy cow, I just paid Apple. That was $9.99. I guess that was for the Apple Plus. I don't know. Is that for that? And then that was for my storage and I'm not sure what that one was for. But of course, and that's why we've talked about it for years, Jim, and it does get a higher multiple in part because of the recurring nature of those revenues and the fact to, to your point, that they are very sticky, as opposed to coming out with a new phone and you never know how it's going to be met in the marketplace. That said, the multiple still gives some investors pause. I'm not going to disagree that. We sold,

we tend, you know, our goal is not to sell any Apple ever, but they moved up a great deal.

It's becoming, we were becoming the Apple Fund, and I didn't like that. Apple Fund's fine if

it's 20 times earnings, not if it's 29 times early. So I understand exactly what you say.

That said,

this is a roadmap, this bank of marketplace, that really defeats the defeatists who basically say, this cycle is bad. Now, we're, I'm struggling with Vision Pro by the way, because candidly,

I was hoping, and Carl, you, you watch a lot of things on Netflix. And I was hoping so much that.

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