9749.61. it just caught our attention, this story out of phoenix, arizona. a new law takes effect today, final day of september, barring restaurant owners will be allowed to carry concealed weapons into establishments that serve alcohol. when you go into a bar -- >> carry them into the bar. >> you can. >> whole meaning to the phrase "shot and a beer." >> oh, please! >> you've been waiting two hours to say that. >> no, just a couple minutes. >> call me crazy, but guns and liquor not such a great idea in the same place. >> those beer commercials when you fight over tastes great, less filling, take out the ak-47. >> he's here all week, by the way. hey, it is a great last day of september considering everything. we'll see what october holds. that will do it for us on "power lunch." see you tomorrow. "street signs," erin burnett begins in 30 second.

dennis, see you tomorrow. stocks have erased earlier losses and moved higher at wall street finishes september in the third quarter. averages had dropped earlier following a weak chicago purchasing managers report. annual business traveler's survey by american express says airfares will go up around the globe next year but average hotel rates should fall in most places. in a major scoop, the "wall street journal" says chili's is bringing back its famous baby back ribs jingle as a three-year absence. that's cnbc.com news now. good afternoon, everyone. hello, i'm erin burnett, live from washington. wild ride day for investors. stocks taking a big turnaround. maybe it was that last headline

you had. fears about the economy still front and center for the consumer. we'll talk to two ceos and get their read of what's really going on on the front line. plus here in washington, a hot debate over how to fix the financial system. we have the man in charge, chairman of the senate banking committee, chris dodd, live exclusive this hour. and new rules for mortgage issuers start tomorrow. what do they mean? we have a special report here in washington from our own diana olick. 90% of the stocks in the s&p 500 are up. >> 15.3% gain. traders want to protect those gains. yes, we had a disappointing chicago pmi this morning. five times as many stocks declining as advancing a little after 9:45 when that number came out eastern time. then we started moving up. i want to show you the dollar chart. this is the single most reliable trait of the third quarter here

as the dollar moved to the downside, lows for the day -- as the dollar moves up, excuse me, stock market moved down. as the dollar moved down, the stock market moved up. the dollar hit its lows around 1:00 eastern time and that's when the stock market hit its highs here throughout the day. let's talk about what else is moving. stocks were helped by energy. oil moved up here in the middle of the day. all the energy stocks also moved to the up side like eog. ibm, tech stocks, one of the first groups to come off of the lows a little after 10:00 eastern time. they were followed quickly by the financial stocks like american express. now breaking even, about even number of advancing to declining stocks. nasdaq had a great quarter. >> we're hanging on here up .2% both the dow and s&p really on that flat line. talk about some names here. dell still hanging on .6%. research in motion well off

highs but still strong. cisco in the overall dow perspective has been a leader of the dow 30. still up 1.8%. for the second day in a row somebody elevated their estimates on yahoo!. up 1.8%. it's been surprising based on the way the trajectory of the day's gone how many 52-week highs we've reached. starting with med ap, they have pulled back. joy global. all dp scripts its 52-week high is 20.32. citrix has pulled back a little less than a quarter. chips are the leadership today. just about every name in positive territory. back to you. the market bouncing back but it is hard to ignore some of the worrisome data. we had plenty of it today. showing the economy is still very weak. account market rally last?

is the economy really recovering? the answers come down to one thing and sometimes we forget that one thing. but it's the consumer, the majority of our economy and two headlines of note today. bad news first, worry from walmart. chairman of the world's biggest retailer says the recovery will be "lethargic." but the ceo of starwood hotels counters and says leisure business is picking up. >> we saw the leisure traveler come back in august. we're hoping that that reflects the demise of the staycation. >> in october we'll probably give us a better handle on the momentum of the business travel. >> so what's the truth? the state of the consumer is the most important question facing everyone in america. we've got it from every angle all on the front lines of the american consumer. they are the ceo of vail resorts, the president and ceo of orbitz worldwide to get us up on the ceo side of things.

start, rob katz. it is coming into ski season. there are a certain number of people who commit to coming and skiing in the winter, in bad years not as many people that do that. what's this year going to be? is there we've seen our season pass sales this season before the season even begins up 15% which we think is a very good sign going into this season. we've also seen as the ceo of starwood mentioned, we've seen pick-ups on the travel side. we think last year was so bad that any improvement will be a positive for this upcoming year. >> i guess that's one way to put it. last year at this time the world felt like it was coming to an end. do things look good relative to how you would define a healthy economy? >> i think we are starting to see early signs of recovery. what we're see sthag those signs of recovery are being led on the consumer side. couple of trends i talk about, we're seeing consumers on our website, orbitz.com, are

increasingly booki ining four a five-star properties over two and three-star properties. occupancy and booking levels are strengthening more weekends than during the week. signs that really the consumer is leading the recovery. a lot of what's going on here is the promotional environment really helping. we've got something like three times as many promotions that are available on our website right now that we had before the recovery. i think that's making a big difference for consumers. the final thing that's going on is that there's been some big changes that sites like ourselves are doing to make things better value for consumers. we took booking fees off airline tickets early this year and saw an increase in the yearly growth rate of over 20%. just this week we removed orbitz hotel change cancel fees. you will not pay a fee for changing your hotel booking or canceling your hotel booking on orbitz anymore. >> you think you'll make more money because people will like

you more for not having insidious little nasty fees so you'll get more volume? >> i think consumers see that as a place to book your hotel, flexibility's very important, especially these days. the more we can do to make our booking experience better for consumers, the better i think we'll see the reaction in the marketplace. >> i think most people would like that no fees. i'm curious how it will pay out on the margin side. he said you have three times more promotions now than a year ago. it is working, getting consumers in there. we have to start somewhere but do you have a sense that if you weren't having all these special taxes that you have, would people be spending money at all? >> well, i think one of the things that we saw last year, our overall skier days were down in colorado only about 3%. but we're doing everything this year, whether on food, ski school, retail or rental, new packages, new promotions, new

ways to get people excited even once they get to the resort to really start spending. we're already starting to see traction on a lot of those fronts. >> consumers are spending. maybe not as much as you'd like, but in order for their spending to help your bottom line, help your stock price, have the whole economy get better they have to start spending more, have you to be able to promote less. is there any chance of that happening? >> my sense is, no. certainly for this year i think the traveler's going to expect a good deal and that's something that everyone in the travel industry's going to be providing. i don't think that's going away but i think there is still a lot of room for to us do better than last year. that's part of the guidance we gave out for our company only a couple of weeks ago. >> the ceo of starwood, you heard his little piece. he talked about how leisure travel was coming back but he'd have a better sense of business in october. you have any sense of business bookings on airplanes? >> i would like to first forecast what's going to happen in october.

but what we are seeing are some forward-booking opportunities are becoming extremely attractive. right now the best deal out there on the web, some of the travel for christmas and new year. we're seeing 20% prices of a package 20% down year-on-year for christmas travel to places like puerto vallarta, loss cab and cancun. now you've heard the view from the ceos. what does it really say about the consumer? are we going to have a recovery in our economy and are we going to get more jobs? really if we're consumers, it comes down to that. an economist with the economic policy institute, a professor at georgetown university, also formerly of the paulson treasury department. good to have you both with us. a few months ago all the promotions in the world wouldn't

have brought consumers out there. should we just be celebrating? they're spending a little bit. >> so consumer spending is still better than it was. it's actually flattened offer. it is not getting worse but it is still in severe recessionary territory. and that's actually where we're going to stay for a while because the fundamentals are bad for consumers. we have a terrible labor market with unemployment approaching 10%. it's going to continue to rise likely for another roughly nine months to a year. it's going to remain elevated for many years to come. wealth has been really cut by the bursting of the housing bubble, so cash that people do have they're putting toward rebuilding their savings rather than spending. it is going to be a long haul until we get consumer spending back up. >> okay, we start with promotions, and then -- what do you think? >> no good news here. i agree with heidi. it is going to be a tough ride. i think consumers are looking

for policy and certainty, what's going to get us out of this business investment, hard to see it. exports, hard to see it when the rest of the world is behind us. i don't see a real strategy from the government. the stimulus is kind of here and there, it will support growth but there is no real strategy here. health care, the same thing. i'd really like to see more forward thinking on the economy. >> heidi, is there anything in the january 1-on, we have $400 billion left of the $487 billion stimulus package. they have that much left to spend. i think a lot of that is going to go toward the infrastructure side as we go out. anything to change this consumer situation? >> the make or pay tax cuts. what we get from the remaining stimulus package is the stimulus to the economy which means more people get jobs which put those people that spend which creates

in this multiplier effect, which creates more jobs. macro effect people will see the -- continue to get this boost from the stimulus. >> a lot of people watching are going to start to see really good numbers versus a year ago. the economy's going to grow. it is going to be a big number. holiday sales might be up rather sharply. hey, psychology matters. could you give us a sense of what really would be a good number and what might look like a good number and really isn't so good because it is just compared to last year which was so bad? >> i would look at the job market. if we get just flat jobs this friday, that would be superb. just an indication -- it will be terrible if we were. i look at retail sales. if we see the ceo of walmart changing his tune a little bit, that would be -- >> he's been saying lethargic. >> that's terrible because that's where i'd go to look for

good spending. >> just because we'll start to see retail sales plus sign, 2%, 3%, 4% -- >> given how deep we were, it is hard to be super excited about that. >> i was just looking at, with the hole that has been blown through our labor market right now, in order to fully fill that in, in order to fully recover in two years, we would need to add over a half a million jobs every month between now and then. the hole that has been blown in the labor market is absolutely enormous. >> you say just to get back to break-even will take a long time. >> yes. >> this is the whole issue of taxes. there's going to come a point where we have to either cut spending, whatever that might be, or raise taxes. one or the other. that time could come in the next couple of years. you're making the point of we're not even out of the hole on jobs yet. is it safe to say we're going to end up having a tax increase before we have a recovered labor

market? >> that's an interesting question. one of the things that i think is crucial is that we need to make sure that that's not happening at the state level right now. because states are facing an enormous budget problem and most states have budget requirements. if the federal government doesn't help shore up their balance sheets they're going to have to either reduce spending or increase taxes. >> it causes anger because, oh, a state went and behaved badly and now they're getting bailed out of their bad behavior. i guess that's the world we're in. >> but -- then you have these 52 little herbert hoovers out there pushing against national policy to get us out of the economy. >> final word. >> i supported the stimulus. not this stimulus, but a stimulus. i just wanted to see a strategy going forward to address our fiscal situation. right now i don't see it. >> all right. next time we'll talk about

market indices. we might have to go rates go shockingly high, 10%, to scare the government, whoever's running the situation there. thanks so much. up next on the show, he's rewriting the rules for wall street and he thinks a super regulator in the answer. he'll tell us why in an exclusive interview. christopher dodd is here next. new rules for mortgage lenders start tomorrow. does that mean we're going to have an improved housing market? special report next. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 i want everything right where i can find it. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 anything that makes trading easier. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 i want to be right in the middle of the action-- tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 you know-- i have to see what's going on.

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jabil circuit leading the nasdaq today, up just about 10%. cit is on the break. will shareholders be wiped out, including $2 billion that taxpayers put in the company. it is a financing company for equipment. our own david faber with the story. >> in the next day or two, cit will launch an exchange offer, the details of which are still being worked out. at the same time it launches that exchange offer, the company will also begin soliciting from its debts holders for a prepackaged bankruptcy filing according to people familiar with the situation. it is cit's hope this restructuring plan which it has been discussing with the steering committee of its bond

holders for the last two months will allow it to emerge as a far better capitalized company that pursues lending opportunities with a so-called bankcentric business model. proposed returns of the exchange offer are still being negotiated. it is unclear what percentage of its debt holders will be signed on with the plan when it is announced and then presented to the remainder of cit's creditors. the exchange, say people familiar with the negotiations, will involve a reduction of an amount of debt and the extension of maturities of that debt and an equity component for debt holder. but exact terms, i couldn't get them. at least not yet. at the same time, cit seeks that exchange it will also present creditors with the possibility of a bankruptcy filing by seeking their consent to pursue a so-called pre-packaged bankruptcy in case the exchange offer fails to produce the desired reduction in overall debt. all of this is designed to put cit on firm financial footing so that it can move many of its

operations and pursue its core business from the confines of cit bank, which it believes will be in the top tier of well capitalized bank holding companies should the exchange offer prove successful. one big loser here though would appear to be the federal government whose $2.3 billion in preferred stocks granted under t.a.r.p. will essentially be made worthless under either scenario. of course, under either scenario the equity, erin, will also be severely diluted. but again, don't know terms of the exchange offer so more to add there. back to you. >> all right, thank you very much, david faber. a saga that so many people have been watching for so long. it really began right when the entire crisis began. we have a new report today on the state of that. nearly 12% of american loans were past due in the second quarter. now this came as actions by some of the services to keep people in their homes improved but didn't keep up. more than half of the homeowners

modified last year missed two months of payments. we have details. that's a frightening situation. >> it only gets worse. report shows how poor underwriting really -- poor underwriting and dismal regulation of the mortgage market is continuing to plague housing's recovery. look at one product that the report highlights. this is the pay option a.r.m. where you can choose what you want to pay for a while. 25% of those are either seriously delinquent or in foreclosure. starting tomorrow though, new federal regulations will aim to put an end to this kind of risky lending. >> it used to be that someone would get a subprime mortgage that maybe started at 6% but went up to 10% in six months or a year. that's the kind of thing you're going to be regulating in terms of the ability to pay. you not only have to determine the borrower's ability to pay on day one, but also four, five years down the road. >> okay, so the new rules under the truth in lending act target

expensive or higher-interest rate loans which are fewer today granted but could include jumbos or reduced documentation loans. rums require verification of income which should have been a no-brainer and of the borrower's ability to repay the loan. a ban on prepayment penalties and on pyramiding late fees. >> the rising delinquencies that we see across the board highlight the fact that nobody was really policing lending underwriting over the past few years, particularly in the subprime market and we're paying the price. to some extent, i guess we're closing the barn door after the horse has left in terms of it, but it's trying to make sure this doesn't happen again down the road. >> there are also prohibitions on deceptive advertising, by selling low-rate loans without saying what the conditions are. some these may seem like, duh, that they should have been in place before. but believe it or not, they believe that they have to put these in place so that we don't have yet another subprime market. >> it's pretty incredible.

to your point, that somebody would come in and take advantage. diana olick, thank you very much. next, will washington corral the wall street bull. we'll ask senator christopher dodd, head of the senate banking committee, the one drafting the new playbook for wall street. "street signs" is back with that. and the ultimate bull, jim cramer, after the break.

a new set of rules is coming to wall street. we have a special interview with the man writing the rules, senator christopher dodd, and of course john harwood. we're very grateful to you senator dodd for being with us. my question is a very simple one. with all of the conversations about consumer protections and changes for wall street, and what might happen, i still don't really know the answer of once this legislation passes, will anything noticeably change for normal people? >> well, we hope so. again we haven't written anything yet, erin and john. i think you both know this. we're in the process of doing so. senator shelby and you are working closely with the

administration and the house. we have 25 hearings in the last several months. including one yesterday with some very knowledgeable people about the single prudential regulator concept. there's going to be a lot of people involved in this. some wish we would act more quickly but my view is to get this right. this is very, very complicated stuff and getting it wrong could create a lot more problems rather than help the average person. one thing we need to get back to a little bit on this thing is the consumer protection idea. who do i mean by that? shareholders, policy holders, depositors, people who are the users of financial products. we've sort of walk away from that over the last number of years. you were just talking about underwriting standards when it comes to residential mortgages. so we need to get back to that. if we were a new country writing the rules for the first time, we wouldn't have the myriad. number of regulators that we do today that have historically grown over time. i think most people agree today this needs to be consolidated and simplified with a lot more clarity and accountability than we have today.

we're moving in that direction. >> on that point, when the administration laid out their plan in june, i talk to president obama. asked him why he had not gone for a single regulator. he said, look, i'm a practical guy. we want to pass this thing. why do you think that you can accomplish this politically when the white house made a judgment that they couldn't? >> reason to be starting out because you can't win it politically, putting aside whether it has value or not -- >> you're not a practical guy? >> i'm very practical, but i also believe that getting consolidation here, every administration for the last 30 years, john, has argued for this same point. republicans and democrats alike. so you begin at least trying to do what's right. what makes a lot of sense here. you don't start out by saying "i can't win politically so i'm giving up on the idea." i don't believe in that. >> when do you think you can get this done? there is a lot of question about the timing. barney grank frank is moving a o

the house floor by the end of the year. nobody i've talked to thinks you can pass a bill in the senate this year. are you looking at the spring of 2010? >> john, again, if you rush too quickly in the heat of all this you can do things you regret, have a tremendous amount of unintended consequences. if you miss the sense of urgency that obviously this crisis has provided, then you may lose the opportunity. so timing is critical. don't hold me to these dates. obviously i need to work with senator shelby and others but we'll use the month of october now, up to 25 hearings on the subject matter, to see if we can develop a consensus and write a bill. my goal for november is have a mark-up in the committee. depending on the outcosm health care debate and other issues, maybe late november, december, maybe the first of the year to get to consideration on the floor of the senate and working with the house. that's sort of the time frame. again i'm more interested in getting this right than i am meeting some arbitrarily set deadline. >> senator dodd, i have a couple question on our

institutions. in the panel last week there was a picture of jamie diamond sit is next to sheila bair. obvious obviously, jpmorgan defines too big to fail now. doesn't it? isn't that company too big? >> too big to fail ought to become historical terms. i've determined in this bill as i think a number of my colleagues, both democrats and republicans on the committee, to fashion a system whereby we can actually have the unwinding to trusteeship or receivership that companies can fail and unwind without posing the option of either dumping billions of dollars into a failed company or just letting it fail. senator warner, mark warner, of virginia, senator bob corker, a republican from tennessee, along with many others that are working on this, along with the administration, we're going to have a provision in here that i

hope will put "too big to fail" in historical terms and never again be permissible in our country. >> i think a lot of people are confused. jpmorgan has gotten bigger. they still have investment banking, commercial banking and a whole lot of things under one roof. maybe the fundamental question is are we going to go back and should we go back to a point where you have a bank that deals with deposits and a bank that deals with investment banking and those two things should not be under one roof. is that something you'll seriously consider? >> you want to look at this and determine, if you're that size, what are the capital requirements, what other conditions should be imposed upon you if you become that size of an institution so that you don't run into the problems we've seen, taking risks that put those institutions in the kind of jeopardy we saw in the past year or so. so i think rather than naming institutions, rather we need to describe criteria that has to be applied when you become an institution much as you've die described. it would impose criteria on it.

it would make it far less likely that they're going to fail. >> senator, can't let you go without talking about health care, which of course you moved legislation through the health committee. now the senate finance is considering various proposals. we saw yesterday the two proposals from your colleagues senator schumer and rockefeller both went down in that committee. does that tell you that the public option is now definitively dead as a centerpiece of a final product that might come out of the house and the senate? >> no, it doesn't at all, john. we've had 4 out of the 5 committees enforce a public option of one kind or another. in fact the public option we crafted, as you'll recall, john, was adopted by the conservative blue dog democrats in the house as the compromised position. so when these bills are melded, there will be a strong effort, which i'll be very much a part of, of creating a public option. remember "the new york times"/cbs poll last week, more than 65% of the american public, a consistent number, believe that in order to drive down costs, you need a public option.

in the absence of that, costs will continue to rise as high as much as consuming 48% of gross domestic product by the year 2029. that is totally unacceptable. >> as you know though, max baucus says there aren't 60 votes to pass a public option. real quick because our time is short. what would you prefer -- the co-op option senator conrad's talking about or the triggered option senator snowe is proposing? >> those are two of the ones that are being considered. there are others as well. it is a very good question, john. there is a lot of room in the public option discussion and i believe that we can probably come up with one here that will build the kind of support necessary to get the 60 votes. i would not give up on this and i certainly don't believe it's dead. >> we'll leave it there. senator dodd, thank you so much for being both of us. we appreciate you taking the time out of your afternoon. next on the show, get ready to stop trading. i may be here in washington but jim is up in new york, thinking about how to trade on all the news from here and he has a few good ideas.

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welcome back to "street signs." rick santelli here. what a quarter it's been. if you don't really look at the equities markets and just look at the lay of the land, the landscape, so to speak, mortgage foreclosures, loan modifications don't seem to be working. we don't know much more about toxic assets. the walmart news isn't pretty. in terms of ten-year note rates, down close to a quarter point. now, let's look at equities for a second. whether you look at the s&p or the dollar index, there is a big debate today who led who. arguably it is a close call but one thing that isn't a close call, the end of the half-year in japan is definitely making

the currency market specifically dollar again a lot more volatile. maybe we'll have a clearer picture about the linkage and who's leading who on the equity foreign exchange side in the next couple of days of the new quarter. back to you, erin. >> thank you very much, rick santelli. jim cramer is here with us now. jim, there is a lot going on here today. lot of trades on the back of it. the cap-and-trade bill where they're -- are they going to count how much gas every country and individual emits and just charge him? >> it does seem like it. it does seem like that's precisely what's going to happen. it's an anemic effort just getting under way for natural gas to show how much better it is than coal. a great ceo in air gas, the kind of gases you need to do carbon

capture, he is the kind of guy that would be the biggest beneficiary. but it's exelon who is the real winner, because they are nukes. and nukes has got to be the best single thing under cap and trade. >> it doesn't seem surprising. not that there would be anything wrong with having nuclear prower but we already have a lot of it. we do have a lot of coal. nuclear question has some questions that haven't been resolved. we're just going in that direction whole hog. >> china, france and cube think they've resolved it. what bothers me the most, cuba. raul castro's like a real nuclear engineer. believe it or not. it's crazy down there. right? but the one thing i would emphasize to you, the absurdity of the way that obama's approaching this is that if you really believe -- really believed in cap and trade, you would just be providing 100 percent guarantees and getting rid of the carter ban of the way

it should be. i think it is a little disingenuous not to back the exelon option. the stock's way off. >> you just heard christopher dodd here, john harwood asked him about the public option plan, whether it was dead. he says it's not yet dead. in all honesty -- >> well schumer put -- i was worried about the schumer vote that happened last night. schumer lost. i think public wopgs was just kind of like very heavyweight government straw man. something can happen in the middle because these hmos are really for sale. downgraded by an important firm. i know united health is the worst chart in the group. this group must be sold. it must be sold, erin. >> it must be sold. but i keep coming back to this. i know the public option. initially you might only have 4 million people on it. obviously people who don't like

it say 4 million is just the start and 4 million is just the start. i understand that. but 4 million people going on a public option would not decimate the insurance industry. >> no, but you have to understand, this is an industry that's already been hobbled. the medicare/medicaid numbers that they're getting are drastically below where they want. fundamental's story not as good. the last thing they need is still one more chink in the armor. people don't like them. they just don't like them. there's a perfect villain. they have replaced bankers as an obama target and you just don't want to be an obama target. the guy's too popular. >> interesting you say that. a lot of people have been harping on how the rating's been coming down but you're making it a key point. >> i think the executive office is very popular. i think congress is very unpopular. >> it would be hard to disagree with you on that comment. >> right? i mean isn't that where a lot of people -- i think obama's still in a grace period. i think he's trying real hard.

i think the perception is that congress is pulling him far left and that if they would just somehow relent he would become an extremely popular president. >> last, but not least, there's one other health care trade you have. biotech. >> yeah. throughout all this, it is very clear that waxman's driving -- the congressman from california -- he's driving a lot of what's going on. he's always been in favor of biotech against the me-too fa pharmaceutica pharmaceuticals. we've not had an upward tug yet. they've been underperforming. spl j >> jim, what do you read into a market that was down more than 100 points, 130, 140, and now up? is that just a great sign? >> no. the mechanics in the business is requiring any fudge rehedge fun fighting for their lives right now using any weakness to show they weren't foolish enough to

avoid the big nasdaq rally. i think we're seeing the mechanics of the money fund business working out, not the mechanics of the fundamentals working out. frankly i'm beginning to think september wasn't such a hot market for the economy. >> that will be interesting. we'll keep coming back to the consumer. jim tonight, 6:00 and 11:00 eastern. you'll see him again very soon. while the market soared this quarter, you heard jim's concern about september. retail investors actually took $15 billion out of stock funds. they put $210 billion into bond funds. well, gosh. did they make a mistake? we'll be back. welcome to the now network. population: 49 million.

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welcome back to "street signs". oil prices up nearly $4, $70 a barrel. a report from the energy department showed a surprise drop in gasoline supplies and also the dollar declined helping oil prices. add to that the fact that oil had been so depressed over the past week or so, we're seeing a nice little short sweep here toward the end of the session going into the close, and also we are looking at oil prices that are right smack in the middle of the range they've been in for the last three months. what continues to support prices -- more tensions with iran. we had those talks in geneva starting tomorrow between iran and mayor world powers, including the u.s. that could help sustain prices here in the $70 range. sharon, don't go anywhere. we just wanted to add anderson armstrong into the conversation from tradition energy. you heard potentially iran could say something over the next couple of days at these meetings that could roil the market. what would cause oil to move

dramatically one way or another that could come out of these meetings? >> i think the thing that we're most closely watching for is any sign that the chinese are going to move their position closer to that of the united states and its allies. china's been goading some serious connections with iranians for their oil infrastructure, they're taking over fields, they're talking about building pipelines so they don't have to go to water born routes to get oil out of the persian gulf. these are serious, serious contacts that are being made between china and iran which is preventing iran from -- or china, i should say, from being fully engaged in what's going on vis-a-vis the nuclear program. but if we saw a movement, if china for some reason started to come towards the u.s. position, i would think that oil trader would sit up and take notice of that and we'd probably get more support coming in to the upside from the market. >> the president of iran is saying maybe they'll let a third party be in charge of the

iranian enrichment for the nuclear program. while they don't want to beny more transparent than this have been on their own nuclear program, maybe having a third party involved is a way to skirt the issue. >> i think there's never been any movement on that. i think what will come out of this meeting likely, the best outcome is that there will be a second meeting. the first meeting there will be a lot of position taking, a lot of people just staking out where they want to be in this. it's pretty clear where the u.s. wants to be. the wild card is what iran and china's going to do and the success is going to be measured, do we get a second meeting out of this. >> sharon, the other question is do we give up that whole missile defense shield in europe to make sure we could get russia on our side and did we accomplish that? >> that's another question. in all of this what's really interesting is what is the effect on the oil market. a year, two years ago, this would have had a dramatic effect, a $3, $4 rise today on more short covering than perhaps even this news is interesting, because really it would have

been a $10 spike two years ago. >> and we would have seen it last week when the announcement was made, like when obama and the leaders of france and great britain stood in front of the g-20 and announced this. like sharon says, we could have seen a big spike a few years ago and the market just completely ignored it. >> interesting point, how far we've come. maybe once we got to 150 people sort of became immune for a while. >> the other thing we the othere conscious of, the saudis have plenty of spare capacity at the moment to meet any production or supply interruption from the persian gulf. they have about 5 million barrels of spare capacity. there is not a problem there. >> and there is not the same demand so that's another factor. >> thanks to both of you. we appreciate it. next, big market turnaround. we'll get a trader's perspective on that. and where we were this afternoon with several presidents.

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the market is flat. it had been up just a little bit. before you say, oh, come on. think about this. it was down about 130 plus points. that's a big turnaround. let's go to st. louis to the floor of the big board to find out what they read into it. final day of the quarter. do you read anything positive into this, brian? is this final day of the quarter, don't read anything into it? >> right. there is a continuation pattern of what's been a successful quarter. we looked at data over the last five years. about 70% of the time the

quarter has been up the last five days. i think we are seeing a little of that as the quarter ends. >> peter, standard and poor's higher for the quarter. >> yes. >> is that something to technically celebrate or cause great concern starting october 1st? >> i'm more concerned about the next quarter and earnings that are coming out within the next couple of weeks. that's what i'm going to keep my eye on. one positive sign, and i know i had a bearish call this morning. the market was down 130 points. pat myself on the back of that one. one thing i did notice yum! brands announced a corporate repurchase. that it's first time i heard that in a long time. that's, to me, a positive sign. maybe there is some hope. i still have this bearish about bent to my feelings right now. corporate repurchases, that is a good, healthy corporate -- i mean, a good healthy economic signal. >> we'll take that as the crocus

of the day. thanks, guys. thanks to both of you. see you soon. coming up, the next frontier for investors. we've got a preview this afternoon. that's why we are here in washington. deals are driving the market again. amer priup 13%.