their credit cards cancelled or they just don't want to pay the interest rates, some are turning to kmart and its corporate sister sears, which have restarted layaway. you pick up -- here's how it works. you pick what you want to buy, you put down a small deposit, they hold the merchandise for you until you come back with the full balance, which at kmart has to be within eight weeks. >> well, they took it away in a lot of spots because it used to be that kmart, sears, and all the other bigger stores had it, and then they took it away for a while. so to see it coming back, it's kind of nice. >> layaway has a 21st century twist by going online, elayaway.com lets you buy this way from 1,000 retailers. and business has supposedly doubled. sxur not going to believe what else is making a comeback. the christmas club. >> the clubs were normally at a bank where weekly you would go and make your payment to the bank and they would accumulate and pay you interest at the end of that time. >> those were the days. well, kmart now has a christmas club which is like a debit card you that add cash to and whatever total you have at

mid-november kmart will add 3% of that amount up to 100 bucks. it's gaining some traction. not only that, they are bringing back the blue light special with blue lights, melissa. what is next? green jell-o? macrame? >> jane wells. all right. we love it. thanks so much. thanks for watching "street signs." i'm melissa francis in for erin burnett. have a great weekend. "the closing bell's" up next. >> announcer: this is cnbc.com "news now." the new york mets are denying claims that the wilpon family will have to sell the team because of mad jo-related losses. the team calls the assertion by the author of a madoff book completely false and irresponsible. whirlpool closing an evansville, indiana manufacturing plant and cutting 1,100 jobs. and a court has struck down a rule that limited cable companies to serving no more than 30% of the overall pay tv market. that's cnbc.com news now, first in business worldwide. i'm mary thompson. there's a live shot of the floor of the new york stock exchange on this final trading

day of the week. welcome to "the closing bell," everybody. i'm bob pisani. maria bartiromo taking a break today. let's take a look at how stocks are shaping up on this final hour of the trading day. there's the dow jones industrial. and frankly we've been in a bit of a trading range. we were down as much as 85, up as much as 40. i guess we're sort of right in the middle now where we've been throughout most of the day. nasdaq same situation although it's on the positive side thanks to positive comments from dell as well as intel. semiconductor stocks have been leading the nasdaq higher all throughout the day. s&p 500 basically flat on the week, folks. we'll talk about that in just a moment. what's next? where are we going in september? let's take a look at where we've been here, what sort of the theory is about what will happen in september. remember, august and september are traditionally the two weakest combinations, two weakest months of the year, but wait a minute, everyone's been wrong so far. august is up 4%. we've got a couple days to go, one day to go p but it's looking pretty good right now. so the s&p 500 is sitting right on the edge of a breakout. it doesn't feel that way. but a few more points and we're

in new high territory and can smooth significantly higher from there. that's got bulls and bears very, very nervous. i've never seen a situation where bulls and bears with looking for a correction. but the bulls are still in their long positions. so they're waiting for a better entry point to come in where they can buy even more, a little bit below the market. so september may not be the time to necessarily just go long. maybe it will be a time to do a little bit of rotation. that's what some traders are trying to argue. i haven't seen disparities in sectors like this in years. take a look at the big gainers so far this year, some of the big stocks. your tech stocks like ibm and cisco. your financials like bank of america. your material stocks like dupont, your big industrials like 3m. 20%, 30%, 40% gains. but wait a minute, what about the rest of them? there's a lot of big names out there, folks, that have gone absolutely nowhere. the laggards. the consumer staple stocks. like coke and kraft. the pharmaceutical stocks like pfizer, many of whom are down. you don't know it, but chevron down 4%. exxon's down 11%. procter & gamble's down 14%.

this is a huge disparity in big cap names. and again, it's evf even a mode rally continues some are arguing investors are going to start looking for broader exposure by moving into some of the above names. we'll be talking to phil orlando and robert pavlik. 1026 is where we closed on friday. 1029 is where we are today. that's flat trading, folks. high beta financials, same story all week, where still even today we're getting very heavy volumes in the big names. citi's going to do over a billion shares. again, those three names, 25% of the volume at the new york stock exchange. still sitting right near new highs. our team covering the markets right around the markets, let's go right now to scott who's standing by at the nasdaq. and you know, scott, intel said what everybody wanted. better top line, better revenue growth, and yet it still -- outside of that very small group, not helping. >> no, because internally the market is weak. take a look at the nasdaq late in the day because definitely

technology stocks getting a lift from the likes of dell, intel, and marvell, and i'll get to each of their individual stories right now. but the nasdaq is barely holding orrin to negative territory right now. why? because there are hopes of a turnaround in technology spending. that's what the take away is from dell, intel, and marvell today. restaurants, retailers, pharma. they're weak today, and that's why the overall nasdaq is giving a little bit back today. take a look at dell, for example. earnings were ahead of expectations yesterday. baird raised the price target to 17 bucks, bmo bumped it up to 17 as well. baird raised it all the way up to 19. jpmorgan cites the gross margin surprise there and wonders whether it is sustainable. intel raised its revenue forecast up to 9 billion from 8.55 billion. marvell just blew away the expectations on the earnings number there. but take a look as i said there, the retailers because bb stores posted a second quarterly loss in a row, forecasted a loss for the current quarter as well. sears holdings is off today. biopharma stocks very weak today.

amgen's off along with celgene and genzyme as well. definitely almost a 2 to 1 ratio of declining stocks to advancing ones. let's go down to the nymex and matt nesto. >> yeah, we did rise for a second day. but wow, what a battle. add 25 cents to the price of crude. we were up, we were down, we were sideways and finishing, yes, as i said, higher for the second day here today. you step back a little bit, you look at the five-day picture, you're going to see a price of oil that touched 75 and never got back there again. but still, intermediate term in that $70 to $75 trading range. traders telling me you look at the board here, you look at gold is up, the dollar index is stronger, the dow is k weak, and oil is up. so there's really people are looking for a reality leader in this marketplace. economic data is being received way shrug of the shoulders in many cases. but we did see the price of oil managed to pare losses and get back to touching $73 a barrel and getting close to that at the finish here today.

the natural gas story continues to be one heading south. new contract for october starting trading here today, and it was down around 4 1/2%. down also for the week. rbob gasoline was down -- was rather up on the session. the september contract expired there, and the new october contract was up about .6%, this on a day when the eia had reported the first increase in u.s. gasoline use since september of 2007. heating oil for its part little changed on the session. that's the nymex picture here. let's get to rick out of the cme. >> thanks very much, matt. you know, i also like to look at the weekly charts. we just saw the s&p. we're going to show it to you again. 2 3/4 points, let's call it. but notice the pattern. you can see it isn't aggressive, but it certainly isn't any giveback. it springs back. look at the next one. of course, this is the dollar

index. and even though it's up a whopping quarter of a cent on the week look at how that one day in the middle took away so many gains. the proactive trade in many ways is still obviously down on the dollar index. there was a roll here, it gave you a little volatility in the early part of the week, but nonetheless at 1:02 it closed up the old guy at 1:09. we shaved up. the ten-year which -- you can see it's not hard to see that interest rates are pretty calm with a bias toward lower, meaning higher price, maybe than counterintuitive would supply, but underscores nervousness that lingers and the light volume in august. a week from today we have the employment report. but many of us think the ism non-manufacturing service on wednesday is going to be a big number as well. bob pisani, back to you, and have a great weekend. >> consumer sentiment hitting a four-month low in august. that's hurting a lot of the retail stocks.

but there is one stock that's bucking the trend. julia boorstin joins us now for more and of course we're talking about tiffany, julia. >> bob, the pullback in consumer spending has taken its toll on tiffany but now things are looking up for that icon of luxury, that little blue box. tiffany trading higher as the jeweler beating analyst expectations. results sequentially better in the second quarter than the two previous. and the company upped its full-year forecast. the high-end jeweler suffered as a recession forced consumers to tighten their purse strings. net incomes fell nearly a third from the quarter a year ago. the company responding by reducing marketing spending administrative costs and offering early retirement to some employees. still, tiffany refused to move down scale, protecting its brand, so it's well positioned to benefit from rivals shuttering, consolidating, and discounting when the consumer and the stock market recovers. >> i think the biggest driver is the stock market. there's a very strong correlation over time between stock prices and comp store

sales at tiffany, and usually it's bay one to two-quarter lag. >> also today beauty product giant l'oreal getting a boost from better than expected first half earnings, the ceo saying the worst is over and he's looking for an acquisition. and airmays international says it will still invest in opening or renovating ten new stores mostly in the u.s. or asia. this despite the fact the famous scarf maker reported a 7% drop in net profit in the first half of the year. cost cutting protects luxury retailers, while maintaining their high-end image ensures that down the line consumers don't ever expect a sale. back over to you. >> and that's of course the hope. and we've seen these retailers move higher on the cost cutting despite the lack of top line growth. let's talk to two guys. phil orlando, chief market strategist at federated investors. bob pavlik, he's the chief market strategist at banyan partners. you know, nobody believes this rally. go out in the middle of america, i go out and talk to people, cousins or something like that. i say, you know, the market's up

50%. they say we don't understand why. we're afraid, we're worried about our jobs, we're worried about it. this is the rally nobody believed in. does that mean we can go higher? >> it it absolutely does. and i'll confirm that. i spend a lot of my time in my role traveling around the country talking to investor groups and i walk in a room and start talking about a 50% rally in the economy and people look at me like i'm crazy. but an hour later once we've gone through all the slides and explained it then people realize what's going on and i think the market is starting to get that message. >> and robert, everybody's looking for a pullback. every bull i know thinks this is non-serngs we don't like the market. i say what are you doing? oh, we're long. >> right. and they want to own stocks because they believe stocks are going to continue to move up throughout the rest of the year. they know down in their heart of hearts that the economic conditions are improving, earnings are starting to improve, guidance is improving. you take a look at some of the economic data, manufacturing, personal spending, low inflationary environment, credit markets have loosened up, bonds, people can come to the market with bonds, they start to sell them.

what better environment can you be in? >> traders say why is ev so bullish on cnbc? they keep asking, the bullishness has really increased in the last weeks since the summer rally. >> and traders are very bullish now. look what they're doing to the momentum stocks, aig, freddie, citigroup, they're running them all up because they know that's where the profits are going to be. >> but doesn't that smell like a blowoff of some kind? i mean, come on, fannie mae and freddie mac, when you get this kind of volume those are -- >> i absolutely agree with you. i wouldn't be touching those with your money. >> good. you do it with your own money. phil, where do we go from here? everyone thought august we'd see 5% to 10% decline. we have a 4% increase. august, september two of the weakest months. what's going to happen? >> we've had a 56% rally here in the last six months. it's a huge rally. every economic data point we've seen over the last couple weeks has been great. the market this week is just sort of treading water. is the market wants to go down 5% or so. but there's a lot of cash on the sidelines looking to come in. the economic turn we think is

definitive. and corporate earnings, as bob said, are going to continue to get better. this market is going to grind higher about 1100 or 1200 in the next quarter or two. >> one of the points i showed in my report a couple minutes ago is the huge disparity in sector outperformance. you've got your techs doing great, got some of the commodities doing great, got some of the financials, but health care's been a mess this year, and it's not just because of health care legislation. consumers, staples have been a mess. energy's been a mess. isn't there any argument if the market's going to grind higher we ought to get a little more rotation here into the groups that have really lagged notably? >> we think that's going to happen. certainly tech has been our favored area as well. and the news we've gotten over the last 24 hours from dell and intel is very positive. not just for those companies but for the sector as a whole. i will disagree with you on health care. i think health care's under pressure because of what's going on in washington. and we get some word, good or bad, as to what the plan is, we think like when hillary care died in '94 we think health care stocks are going to rally as well. >> isn't september, could you make an argument, sticking with

my theme here, that it's time to stop just going long and start trading the market a little bit more? doesn't that argue for some kind of rotation? >> a lot of people have been saying for a long time, this is a trader's market, but we're long-term investors. we can't invest based on the turning of a page of a calendar. i mean, that's sort of like trying to guide yourself to washington from new york city based on where the sun is located. so really what you want to be doing, like phil said, you want to be looking at the cyclicals. i told you back on the end of march that early cyclicals is a place you want to be. that's why we loaded up the truck and that's where we are now, and i continue to believe that's the place to be. >> we're going to see -- we have still seen people putting more money, far more money into bond funds than stock funds this year. despite some modest inflows into equity mutual funds in the last week since the summer rally, bond funds far -- getting far more money. when will that reverse, and is the retail investor once again putting money in at the top-k and shouldn't you be cautious about that? >> post-labor day we're going to get into confessional season for

the third quarter, and as we saw in the month of june there were no negative preannouncements. so what happened come july? the companies blew the numbers out. i think that's exactly what we're going to see in october. as professional investors begin to see that happening, knowing that the end of the statement period is coming at the end of september, that money is going to have to find its way back into the market. >> so we're a little over 1,000 right now. december 31st where is the s&p? >> between 1,085 and 1,100. >> 1,100 to 1,2 p00. >> so we're talking another 8%, 9%, 10% higher. >> i like that. i'll take that any day. >> absolutely. >> and is there anything -- what's going to derail this scenario? i'm a little worried about the fact you both are so unvarnishedly bullish here. what's going to derail this scenario? >> certainly we could get some bad news out of washington. but i think these meetings that the congressmen have been having in their districts back in the month of august is a positive because i think these folks are going to come back to washington post-labor day with a newfound sense that they've got to work from the center, not to the

left. >> i think what you're going to see is a potential for a small correction to turn into a major correction because so much money has flowed into the market just since the lows of july. market's up like 19% since july lows. and i think some of those weaker hands could pull the market down lower if they all begin to sell in sort of a bit of a panic mode. >> bob pavlik, phil orlando, always a pleasure. thanks for the insight. we'll talk more about this of course in the next hour, but the important thing is coming up next on "the closing bell" take a look here, the cftc considering major changes to how commodities are traded. but will that damage the commodity etf industry? we're going to have a very important person who can give you some answers in the next few minutes. after the bell, just because the market has had a historic rally over the past six months, it doesn't mean there aren't still some good bargains out there. five names you should know today. 4:00 p.m. eastern time. take a look at the most actively traded stocks on the new york stock exchange. nothing's changed. it's still citigroup.

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welcome back. good to see you all. concerns over the future of

commodity etfs continue to grow amid news of cftc investigations into speculation in the commodities market. a fourth commodity exchange traded product halted issuance of new shares this week. how are these actions affecting your investment portfolio? commodity etfs, can they survive in this environment? joining us to discuss this, john highland, chief investment officer at united states commodity funds. he's in the middle of this whole debate. and matt hogan, he's managing director of etf analytics for etfuniverse.com. thanks for joining us. on, let me start with you. describe to our viewers very briefly, how did this happen, number one? and number two, what exactly is the cftc asking of you? are they actually conducting an investigation? are you being interviewed? tell us what's going on. >> well, bob, the genesis is last year's run-up in energy prices, i think. obviously, you had price rise a great deal, and then they subsequently fell. but in that you have people looking for somebody to be the fall guy, somebody's got to be

to blame, trugs traditionally wd blame opec or oil companies, for some reason, maybe because of some lieutenant lunatic fringe economic sphere, people decided to blame passive commodity index funds in general and to a degree the commodity etfs, that somehow we were the responsible party. unfortunately, of course, the data suggests the actual opposite is true. the big oil etfs were sellers as prices were rising, not buyers. be that as it may, the cftc is out looking for somebody to lay the blame on. they're talking to the etf providers and they're talking about put limits on the amount of contracts that can be held by financial investors. obviously that is a great concern if you are a retail investor using etfs because at the end of the day what this is going to accomplish is it's going to cause your cost of investing through these vehicles to get higher and yet i see no

evidence this is going to improve the situation in commodity prices. >> let me just get in here and bring in matt hogan. matt hogan, is there any evidence that commodity etfs are somehow involved in this run-up that we've seen recently, that they're speculators, that they're evil parts of the market here? what evidence is there? and so what if they were part of the run-up recently? because people wanted to own commodities. >> actually, the truth is just the opposite, bob. the commodity etfs were buying when prices were falling, and they were selling when prices were going up. if you actually look at the data, you know, it makes intuitive sense that they would drive up markets on a basic lay level, but if you look at what actually happened, it's just not the case. >> i want to ask you, matt, and maybe one of the things we ought to do is the head of cftc ought to bring in the chinese. bring back that first full screen because this week i thought it was startling that the chinese government, that there was an acknowledgment that they had been actively buying commodities earlier this year,

that they had stockpiled 570,000 metric tons of aluminum to figure out what to do with it later on. and then of course we saw what happened with aluminum prices and we saw what happened with copper prices since they started buying in march. they went up. look at that. mr. hyland, maybe mr. gensor of the cftc should subpoena the chinese premier, ask him whether he's a speculator or not. and he'll say he's a hedger. i'm being facetious. but you can see where i'm going with this. there's an example, someone who definitely affected the commodities market. >> i would agree. it's quite clear that the run jp in commodity prices was revolved -- revolved around supply and demand, as you would expect. it's not a function of financial investors taking positions in the futures market. that's just clearly wrong. it's wrong theoretically and it's wrong based on the data, as matt has pointed out. but at the end of the day the cftc doesn't really exercise jurisdiction over opec. it doesn't exercise jurisdiction over china and india's buying of

commodities. and it only somewhat exercises jurisdiction over oil companies. they do, however, exercise jurisdiction over users of futures. that's why i think we become the focus. >> right. is it possible -- gary gensler is the head of the cftc. he's been on our program many times. is it possible to say that mr. gensler is between a rock and a hard place right now, that he's got a lot of pressure, that there are people who honestly believe there are dark, maybe mysterious force that's are manipulating things, particularly commodities out there, he wants to get a satisfactory answer? how can he do this without causing so much damage to the markets? what should mr. gensler be doing? >> he's got to look at data. he's got to look hard at what's driving the market and not just take the simple story at face value. if you actually dig in, there are probably good regulations to be had in here, but excluding individual investors from the commodities market by getting

rid of commodity etfs can't be the right answer. >> i want to put up the u.s. natural gas fund versus natural gas. i wonder if we can do that. and matt, you can explain here what's happened because because there has been a suspension of the issuance of new shares, keep that up for me, you see that the fund itself is trading at a premium to natural gas, which is below it. that's the white line. the yellow line is the fund itself. and they should be trading roughly in tandem. >> absolutely. >> as a result we've got a distortion here. what does that mean for somebody who would buy this? >> it means you shouldn't be buying it. it means people who are buying now are overpaying by about 20%. they're not getting the true net asset value of the fund. and if that premium comes back down, and we have every reason to believe eventually it will, they're going to get hurt. >> do you think, john hyland, that the cftc may somehow make some statement? i'm trying to figure out where they might go with this. that commodity etfs should be exempt from this investigation. when does it end? when does it conclude with some kind of finding? >> well, we're obviously

expecting by the late september or october that they will probably announce some action. i personally believe you're right, they are between a rock and a hard place. i do believe, amazingly enough, that the cftc needs more resources, needs more economists, and they need more tools to keep track of flows. on the other hand, we do not agree at all that they should be restricting the ability of ordinary investors to invest in this area, and in fact to a degree there's a little bit of playing with matches in a dry forest. it's not just my 500,000 or 600,000 shareholders that are going to be negatively impacted by badly designed rules. or there may be a million shareholders between all the commodity etfs. there's another issue here. if you put restrictions on financial players, the futures market will probably suffer a noticeable drop in liquidity. and that will lead to a noticeable rise in volatility. >> yeah. >> and we could have -- a year

from now there could be another set of hearings where chairman gensler's going to be asking how come the market got so much more volatile after our wonderful solutions. and we're going to say we warned you. >> that's the law of unintended consequences. gentlemen, we only have a few seconds left. what are you doing to get around this problem right now? i mean, people are -- want to own the fund. you're not issuing new shares here. what are you doing? >> well, we're working on reducing our reliance on the listed futures that the cftc has evidenced concern about. we are looking at doing trades with physical players and other over-the-counter parties. we are working on trying to get back to a point where we can do creations and obviously get our market price closer to our nav. but ultimately, we're dependent on what these rules will be and whether these rules make sense or whether these rules are, you know, catering to what i described as sort of the economic lunatic fringe who are

just looking for somebody to blame and they don't care who. >> and the important thing, matt, and we've got to go right now-s if there is some ruling from the cftc exempting commodity etfs, that premium on the u.s. natural gas fund is going to collapse. >> that's absolutely right. and it's not just ung, it's gaz and a handful of other funds. >> it could be a serious problem for commodity etfs. we're going to be on top of that all through the next several weeks. thank you. appreciate it. let's go to mary thompson standing by at the break news desk. more headlines on cerberus? >> that's right, bob. you probably saw them flashing earlier during your interview there. this is just to fill out what's been reported. the "wall street journal" saying 71% of the investors in cerberus's hedge fund have asked for their money back. these are two fund vehicles actually asking for a total of 5 1/2 billion. cerberus, a company that's probably best known for the fact that it's a company -- excuse me, it took chrysler, the automaker private. its chief saying they were surprised by the response from the investors. but cerberus's capital partners actually had a negative return of 24.5% last year.

so in restructuring their hedge fund cerberus had offered investors an option. you could take your money out or you could put it into a new fund with a lower fee and a longer lockup period. 71% of investors opting to take their money out. $5.50 billion will be withdrawn. it will be put in a special vehicle that's going to be wound down. and cerberus is going to charge its customers about half a percent on those assets in order to wind that fund down. bob, back to you. >> thanks very much, mary. up next, the cnbc nifrtd network. the commodity index has been underperforming the s&p 500 over the past six months. is now the time to buy into xhd 'tis? some answers when "the closing bell" returns.

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welcome back. let's take a look at some of the widely held stocks, how they're trading right now. big financials generally on the mix side. citigroup banks of america, what we now call high beta names, generally on the up side. jpmorgan on the down side. some of the other stocks as well trading outside the financial groups here. you can see our parent company, general electric, down fractionally. that's held at the 14 level but had trouble getting significantly over that. exxon has just been a difficult story all day. down about 11% so far in 2009. pfizer same situation. at&t, telecom stocks. all this group you're looking at is generally underperforming the

overall market. for other takes on the market let's turn to our cnbc investor network. rick schottenfeld, chairman of the schottenfeld group. rick, are you in the pullback camp here as everybody else seems to want to be and is yet not positioned to be? >> i think next week is a quieter week, and i don't think we're quite ready for that pullback yet. i think we've got a few more days of up side. but yeah, i'm in the pullback camp. i think this earnings season is a little different than the last in that the rally's got you higher expectations. expectations were so low that stocks were moving up on numbers that were better than really low expectations but really in the context of what the companies have been doing previously they weren't good numbers. and i don't really think we're going to go straight to -- straight up for the rest of the year. i think we need to correct a little bit. and when the small stocks and the really garbage naimds names look the ones that are playing right now start to move, that's usually an early warning sign or a late warning sign we're getting near the end of a rally. >> there was a flash there saying you think the federal government is heading down the same road as california. what do you mean by that?

>> i think we're going to run out of options sooner or later that, you know, they've been calling it a sugar high, but i think we're on something stronger than sugar right now. and i don't really think that when we run out of stimulus that the economy's going to be able to go on its own. i think our economy is structurally impaired. that being said i think we're going to have good numbers in the third quarter. what you realize is there is a point in time where you run out of options. california right now is resorting to yard sales to try to prop up their financial situation. and so it just sort of shows that they're running out of options there. >> is this it for the year then essentially? we've got intel saying revenues are better than expected. better than expected economic news in the last two weeks and yet we're essentially sideways here. is this a warning sign? >> well, the economic news is not good. the banner numbers everybody looks at are good, but below that you see personal income and you see personal spending and mortgage delinquencies. you see things that are showing that the pressure is build up on consumers, not alleviating. and eventually i think that's

going to give way. >> rick schottenfeld, pleasure to talk to you as always here. we've got about half an hour to go before the closing bell. dow was up 40, down as much as 80 points. right in the middle right now. we are largely flat on the week. it's been almost a year since lehman brothers collapsed. up next, on-air editor charlie gasparino updates you on what lehman's former leaders including ceo dick fuld are up to right now. welcome to the now network. population: 49 million. right now 1.2 million people are on sprint mobile broadband. 31 are streaming a sales conference from the road. eight are wearing bathrobes. two... less. - 154 people are tracking shipments on a train. - ( train whistles ) 33 are im'ing on a ferry. and 1300 are secretly checking email... - on a vacation. - hmm? ( groans ) that's happening now. america's most dependable 3g network. bringing you the first and only wireless 4g network. sprint. the now network. deaf, hard of hearing and people with speech disabilities access www.sprintrelay.com.

welcome back. with about 30 minutes to go to the closing bell here, here's how the markets are shaping up. dow jones industrial average right in the middle of its trading range here. up 40, down 80, and right now down 43 as you can see. nasdaq flat largely on the week. been up and down, positive territory all throughout the day. it's held mostly positive due to the influence of dell and intel. s&p 500 also 1026 is where we closed last week. 1028 is where we are right now. as we approach the one-year anniversary of the collapse of lehman brothers, the top players at the firm, former ceo dick fuld, president joe gregory, and cfo aaron callen no longer wall street power players, yet they're far from forgotten as investigators continue to discuss what led up to the firm's bankruptcy filing in

september 2008 and whether key lehman executives made proper disclosures about the firm's financial help as it was imploding. as we approach that historic date, a question often on wall street is where are they now? nearly a year after the firm's demise. well, we know because we have charlie gasparino. he's joining us. they're not here. let's start with dick fuld. >> can you believe it's been a year? it's amazing it's a year. it's amazing they fell from grace, how far they've fallen, and we'll go through each one of them. you know, fuld, eesz lohe's loor work. he start aid financial advisory firm. from what i understand, he has a couple clients, but he's out there pounding the pavement, looking for work, entirely working out of an office in mid-town manhattan. he has a couple of clients, he's contacted some old friends for business, when i say financial advisory, he wants to do m&a advisory work. it's slim pickings. i'm geing it from his friends. he knows there's legal issues surrounding lehman. there's a major investigation involving whether lehman

disclosed things properly. but dick fuld is looking for work. and the reason he's looking for work, bob-s because he lost a lot of money in the implosion of lehman. what friends are telling me is while i guess he's still rich we shouldn't be crying for him-e feels he has to work. >> and what about joe gregory? >> that's an interesting question because joe gregory lost a lot of money, too, as we've been reading lately. he's been selling assets. from what i understand he's not working. he's spending a lot of time at his home outside new york. but as you know, recent reports today, he's looking to recoup some of his salary from lehman. i think $233 million tied up into bankruptcy. so he's not working. he's selling assets. by the way, fuld is selling assets as well. they're all selling assets. but unlike fuld he's not working and he's filed this lawsuit trying to get the bankruptcy judge to pay him some of those back wages. >> and cfo aaron callen was sort of a bit of a superstar for a while, got a lot of attention, and she too has sort of quietly fade add way but she's still

around somewhere. >> after a meteoric rise, remember, she was a rock star of wall street, and then she had that tussle with einhorn where she basically things were basically -- everything was okay in lehman's books, david einhorn, the short seller came out and says you're wrong and david einhorn was right and much of what she said turned out not to be right. she was one of the casualties. i actually broke the story about her and joe gregory being demoted. she was left as cfo. gregory left as president. shortly after she left as cfo. and here's where it gets interesting and complicated, she goes to credit suisse to basically deal with hedge fund clients and then -- >> taking a leave, right? >> no, no. then after several months at credit suisse in february she went on personal leave indeterminately. she has not been to work at credit suisse since february. in other words, she's essentially m.i..a from wall street. which i've been asking around, why isn't she at work? you really don't get much out of credit suisse when you ask them

that. by the way, they get downright nasty with you, which i don't understand. i just got in a screaming match with a pr person at credit suisse because i asked a simple question, why isn't she back at work? her attorney is not saying it either. from what i understand, and this is from people who know her, say the incredible stress from the lehman demise contributed to her taking this leave indeterminately. as you know, there's an investigation going on. whether that has anything to do with it, the attorney is not saying at this point. we have calls in to them hp we're trying to get to the bottom of this. his name is steven eckhouse and i'm trying to get exactly why she isn't back at work. it is kind of odd. since february erin callan has not been at work at credit suisse, and nobody will provide an explanation for that. the most interesting thing of those three, i would say, bob, is dick fuld. you know, listen, one of the richest men on wall street, one of the most powerful men on wall street, now is working out of a small office in mid-town manhattan asking people to

basically give him work. it is an amazing fall from grace. >> they approached the form yes head of aig recently. so who knows what can happen in i know it's a slightly different situation but people do get resurrected on wall street as you well know, charlie. >> this is a little different because hank greenberg wasn't the reason why aig went under. right? and hank greenberg actually predicted a lot of this stuff that actually would happen at aig. i think dick fuld is widely regarded as, you know, by his peers and by employees as someone who, you know, didn't work hard enough, didn't do the right things. and listen, i kind of unfold this thing in my book that's coming out in october, "the sellout." his decisions leading to the demise of lehman brothers. >> thanks so much, charlie. 20 minutes to go before the "closing bell." dow held up by a few names. but most of the names in the red. now, the weaker dollar's been helping the recent stock rally but will the dollar remain under

pressure and which stocks will see the biggest benefit if it does? we'll get to some answers in a moment. then after the bell jpmorgan's chief u.s. equity strategist thomas lee calling for the s&p 500 to hit a range of 1043 to 1053 by labor day. he's going to tell us why and where the markets will head from here ahead at 4:00 p.m. eastern time. some people buy a car based on the deal they get. others by the car of their dreams. during the lexus golden opportunity sales event, you can do both. special lease offers now available on the 2009 es 350.

welcome back. good to see you. taking a look at some of today's research calls, here's the latest upgrades and downgrades. pacific sunwear upgraded to buy from neutral at poly capital on the belief the apparel retailer will beat third quarter earnings expectations. the analyst there also saying the company's new ceo could help improve sales. and williams-sonoma up to buy from neutral by goldman sachs because of improved merchandising, stronger profit margins, and cost management. goldman also hiking its price target on the stock to $21 from 13. williams-sonoma had great earnings a couple of days ago, folks. and jefferies initiating coverage of newmont mining with a buy rating and a price target of $52 because of expectations of a rebound in gold prices and increased frux its new mine. maybe. gold has been 950 for noz now.

time for the "fast money" final call. our next guest says a weaker dollar means stronger stocks, a theme that will likely benefit the basic materials sector. jim iuorio director of tjm institutional services. jim, not only is the euro stronger but heck, even the yen has been stronger. >> remember the yen, that's a different trade. that's not part of the same dynamic. yeah, the euro's a little stronger, but yesterday when the dollar weakened fairly precipitously i think it gave people confidence that perhaps at some point in time it's going to tack a crack at those lows that were put in about a month and a half ago against the euro, against canada, against aussie. it is lower against aussie but against the other two it was rejected a little bit, and i think that was one of the reasons why the stock market traded off in general a little bit. but i do think it's given us confidence it's going to try again and that's why base materials is one of the bright spots today and it brings the miners back into play. you mentioned newmont miners. i like the miners generally. freeport-mcmoran specifically.

we trade that as a proxy for copper. if the dollar really is on the verge of a fall, it could be mildly significant. probably it will be good for the stock market because for five months it's been that whole reflation trade. >> the weak dollar's been associated with a stronger market because the weaker dollar helps commodity prices but when will that trade end? no trade necessarily lasts forever. >> that's a great question, and i think if the dollar has a big slide and a scary slide then all of a sudden there's a decoupling because we're talking bay whole huge flow of funds argument. people are not going to be investing in this country if the currency is a problem. but i think slow grinding weakness, perhaps we take out these lows, have another leg down that's not scary and it's still good for the reflation trade. this is the point the whole time, i think, was to throw tons of stimulus at the problem in hopes of reflating one, real estate. and the stock market as a whole has been kind of the beneficiary of that as well. that's why we see commodities as being the leader over the last five months. that's why i like these miners

right now. >> how likely do you think a break below a technically significant level? and we're very near it here on the dollar index, jim. we could -- for a few more points here you go to 77 or so on the dollar index, heck, we're breaking support here. >> i think that's good. remember, the dollar index has the yen in it too. so i'd rather look at the individual currencies. i know it's probably 15% of it. but the yen and the dollar kind of -- for the whole risk-averse trade move together. you just look at the euro and aussie, i'm using that as a proxy for the dollar right now. if we take them out it could get mildly scary but as long as it seems like a contain break i think it's still good for the stock market. >> jimmish let's do a 101 for our viewers. for an average viewer who is slightly long the stock market, should they be happy about dollar strength or dollar weakness? what should an average investor want? >> it's the absolute toughest question to answer, mike. thinking is they should want mild dollar weakness. as soon as it becomes anything more than that, then it becomes scary. if you're long the miners in

gold and things like, that then you wouldn't carry the weight because even scary dollar weakness would draw money into those. if you're long the market as a whole you want a grinding you dollar lower for now for a short period until we get back on our feet. i want the day to happen when people are buying the dollar from around the world in order to buy u.s. companies but that day is not really today. >> so modest weakness but not any kind of serious drop. >> exactly. >> always a pleasure to see you. coming up, the dow streak comes to an end at eight. is this setting us up for a bigger slide ahead? the top members of obamas's economic recovery team. melissa and the traders live at 5:00. ten minutes to go. we've been in the middle of this range for an hour and a half, dow down as much as 7880, down pop. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550

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let's take a look at some of the most widely held stocks today. alcoa, hewlett, you can see positive or negative here. the trend for the week is generally consumer stocks have outperformed the cyclical names

here, but you see some of the tech names doing a little better here today. intel had very good news overall. you see it's not helping ibm, for example. now, pharmaceutical stocks are really weighing on the markets today. frankly, they have been for months. cnbc senior correspondent scott cohn takes a look at what's behind the group sell-off. scott? >> yeah, bob, you raised a good point today in your tradertalk blog, i want to pick up on a little bit, and that's the issue of whether there is rotation going on and that the gains in the market thus far have been so much concentrated in things like technology and financials. and the drug stocks, which are traditional safe havens, have been dragging on the market. bristol-myers squibb is a prime example today, down sharply after morgan stanley cut it to equal weight from overweight. analyst david risinger says not a question of fundamentals or bad news on the horizon, it's all about price, and bristol-myers squibb is a little rich compared to its peers. not so much anymore, though. his price target $23 a share. it's below that but still near it. and so that might suggest that maybe some money's supposed to come out here.

here's merck, which is helping it drag down the dow industrials today. as you can see, they've helped as safe havens as the market came back, but maybe sort of underpinning and looking like they're getting a little rich. schering-plough down about a percent today as well. although it is up 39% over the last year. these moves, again, not particularly news-related, it seems. the big pharma stocks traditionally defensive plays, which explains why a lot of money has been moving into the sector in the past year. again, that relative to some others, but as we look at the pharmaceutical index it's interesting to consider whether these stocks really are starting to turn now, and if so do they just get too pricey or are investors feeling less defensive now? are we at some sort of an inflection or rotation point? it's an interesting sector to look at, bob. >> yeah, and the important thing is whether or not investors -- if the market keeps moving up, scott, will look for broader exposure than just techs and financials that have led the market so far. i think it's a very interesting question that you're raising. thanks so much, scott.

up next we're coming back with the closing countdown. after the bell we'll discuss whether all the stimulus spending is actually helping the economy or if it's driving the deficit up too far. you're watching cnbc. we are first in business worldwide.

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