far to the right. on the major problem going >> one would hope -- nice try. forward. >> we'll talk to stanberg. let's just leave it at the fact that brazil at 3% is not a good tom knows what is going on. and thank you for being here. sign for global growth and >> oh, my pleasure. that's one of the reasons that it's great being with you. other markets around the world >> thank you, ken. all right. are weak as well. finally, greece. that does it for us today. >> we're down to the wire again. so the whole story is the iaf make sure you join us tomorrow. right now it's time for "squawk on the street." supposedly let out a document or leaked a document that there could be 1 trillion euros in losses if there is a hard we begin this tuesday default, if the greek private morning with the sounds of pink debt swap deal doesn't go through. >> then you lose portugal and ireland. >> right. >> that's a lot more than any -- floyd as david gilroy turns 60. >> there are two questions that matter. one, is this kind of estimate, it's oreo's birthday. $1 trillion in assets accurate? i'm melissa lee. because it includes portugal and carl quintanilla is on all of the other countries. assignment this morning. this is a picture we have not i think it's plausible. seen for quite some time. secondly, how many bond holders are going to vote in that greek at the open, it looks like the deal? we don't know right now but a dow will lose about 95 points lot of them are auto people who are not actually in the deal. and nasdaq is down about 20. there are hedge funds in this deal that would benefit if you looking at europe, they aren

get a hard default. >> all right. it's de ja vu all over again. back to you. >> we're seeing the dollar move and our road map this morning higher. starts with the pressure in the we're seeing energy and metals across the board soft in today's futures that we are seeing. session. fears about global growth, let's go to bertha coombs. pervading the markets as equity bertha? >> it looks like the s&p is holding 1350. mutual funds are seeing the that may be a critical level second outflows in february. that may help overall across $5.4 billion in outflows this year. and qe 3 a sure thing. commodities. the story, today we are focusing on economic growth and the morgan stanley says it sees concerns about the greek debt worries, especially with news that it looks like the u.n. future easing. security council will resume perhaps one of the most talks about iran. important days in the republican nomination. so that pressure pushed off to super tuesday. ten states holding to the polls. the back burner for the time being. and too soft to watch? as melissa has been mentioning, it's in the copper pits and gold pits. the metals are getting crushed qualcomm boosts dividend merck. for the third straight day. yesterday silver led things down. but as gold crashed through 1675, a real support, we've seen did we see it peak at dow the precious metals taking it on 13,000? opening lower as a concern of

global grow weighs on markets. the chin. take a look at palladium. in february alone, mutual funds that is the worst performer at experienced a $5.4 billion this hour. david, back to you. >> i want to reference something outflow. one may not anticipate that in a that i said yesterday. market that has been as strong as ours has, mr. cramer. i've got could correct the score now, i know money goes into yesterday from leap wireless. it was down sharply yesterday. etfs. but nonetheless, if you told me we reported the fact that there the numbers from last year, i was a new registration of shares would have anticipated that mutual funds would be taking in from mhr, the largest single money month after month after month. >> right. shareholder there, holds about i think it's important to point out the etf numbers. 30% of leap shares. the presumption was that they were going to be selling. but it was simply a renewal of i was looking at some of the corporate issuance the other day. the rate of return that you get shelf registration that existed on this corporate issuance and people move into corporates is a he there is no intention to so minuscule that it's almost sell. he's chairman of the that inconceivable with oil at 126, company. down again, though. >> >> i wish that companies or with food rising, with a hidden inflation that could burst out, the s.e.c. would point out when a shelf is filed, what the that anyone who thinks they are intention is because i've been going to do anything other than caught up myself in a couple of lose money -- >> you're talking about corporate bonds, of course. stories that i've told, beware and the duration risk there, giving a ten-year at less than of this filing and it's not 2% and many people think if you

go out lower than a couple of meant to be filed and i feel like i've hurt the stock because years, it's certainly going to i've done my homework but the be higher and yet that seems to be where money is going. later today, i'll speak with jim homework betrays us. casey about the high yield and that wasn't the intention. market. >> my fault there, racing unbelievable the dynamics in through yesterday. that market and what is going reading the filing but not right on. more money than they have supply right now coming into funds and at the beginning. wanted to correct that. and then let's take a look at yet equity mutual funds not the web m.d. winner. >> what does this mean for the we've taken a look at this asset management business? if we're seeing it return company in the past. through the etfs, one would they embarked on a buy back. believe, one would think that they are going to have a harder it has commenced slower than time. >> and yet there's been a series of upgrades. this right around here. you can see that stock after a blackrock upgraded. this is really precisely when huge fall up over 1% bucking you would think that you would not want to own these stocks. what is a negative trend at this >> right. >> as david mentioned, jpmorgan, i run the cash part of the point. >> and you have advertisers, drug advertisers pulling back street that i found a long time and -- >> so many generics now. >> in 2012, a wonderful year for ago, and the shows, what jpmorgan shows me in two and so many drugs where it doesn't three-year paper is .46 is the pay to put money behind it. lipitor, it was such an a average. .46 is not enough to be able to powerful drug.

sustain anyone in this country and yet that's what people want. you really want to put a lot of advertising? i know that there's -- that you're struggling with that. it's counterintuitive to me. this has been the knockoffs. >> right. and we should say there's still plenty of money on the side lines. think think they could be hurt it does give you the notion that perhaps a retail investor is not by johnson & johnson. again, i'm a diplomat in the name of thomas jefferson. participating in the s&p 500 and >> yes, you are. there is still that incremental buying that could happen in the that's what i always think of coming months. when i think of you, jefferson. it will come around to this rally. >> it will be interesting to >> at that time i think i was a see. we'll having a first-class selloff and it's one of those selloffs that may justify retail staying away. one of the things that has not little more like dr. strange love. happened in this period is >> all right. let's send it over to melissa. you'll get -- we have about 20% >> thanks, david fresh on the run without a break at all but opening at nyse, the recent you'll get breaks and it does not breathe retail coming in. launch. hedge funds are short. index etf, fund under nky is up retail just basically said, i more than 8% year to date. think since the flash crash, it's not an asset clash that i you're no stranger to this land because you've actually designed a lot of the etfs and i'm sure want to be a part of. merck has a good yield.

people say, you know what, i investors are including the don't care about that yield. spider gold in. >> right. that could be taken away in a our primary business has been to heartbeat. develop ets to allow companies so i continue to believe that the individual thinks that with a larger distribution bring them to market and the spider gold product that you referred stocks are suckers game that they don't want to take advantage of any break and it's unfortunate because stocks have to. this was an opportunity that we been fabulous. >> they have. and, again, we should point out, couldn't pass upbringing the nikkei brand to the u.s. and etfs, which is a product that has only been with us in a mitsubishi asset management. robust way for a number of years are taking in money. that ends up being an equity it's been a tremendous product, no doubt about it. opportunity for us. >> i want to talk about the but it is fascinating. space in general, we were talking about numbers in terms of outflows from u.s. to equity i wonder after 11 years of the s&p doing nothing, you've just lost a generation of investors. mutual funds. particularly after '07, '08, and $5.4 billion year to date and it would imply that money is coming '09. back to the markets and not and then there was a question as necessarily traditional mutual to how much money do people really have. fund for stock investing. >> great question. they are going to the etfs. is that what you're finding when you see tremendous demand for we had the yelp ceo sitting here the other day and i keep thinking about that interview your services, to launch etfs? because almost every one of >> yeah. i think what we're seeing is the younger generation much more these dot-coms had its high and comfortable having access to their money in realtime. etf is an exchange. it's about an access opportunity

yet many people say, i didn't get any yelp. and the ability to get the under should i come in now? they lose money then on yelp. they lose money on buying a hot stock. there was a really interesting lying opportunities in a general manner. >> i'm sure there are plenty question put to matt the other people out there, younger people, who invested ten years day. the headline was, shouldn't a person's savings for retirement ago and they have not made a put all of the money on apple single dime so they don't feel stock? and i read that and said, oh, no. i don't want to see that kind of the same as someone who has been headline. also, it was very interesting. in the game for more than that. >> right. put all of the money on apple i think you need to look at the stock market more broadly than stock. when i used to go to the equity opportunity. if you look at the amount of racetrack, you talked about inflows into bond funds, for putting money on a horse, not in instance, or the commodity products out there today, the a horse. >> there was a staggering stat. investors have a broader range of asset classes to chose from if long-only manager did not hold apple in the last month, i in the past. >> and one last question, in terms of demand for designing would have lopped off 7/10 of new etfs, what areas, asset class would that be in the most? would that be currencies or 1%. that would have been the easiest commodities? way to perhaps improve returns and attract inflows. >> we see a tremendous amount of >> we saw a similar reversal not interest in activelily managed etfs, nontransparent or people that long ago and the stock came right back.

obviously we have this new ipad. who want the same transparency as mutual funds today. that's what we're looking to bring to the etf world. it's ipad hd, which might >> okay. thank you. appreciate it. coming up, we'll talk live resurrect the stock or will the downturn continue. this is a stock that retail does with dendreon. feel it's in as opposed to the hedge fund? this morning's bright spot on wall street as we see the dow is >> we're seeing the apple premarket trade. certainly that will weigh down 1.4% or so. heavily on the s&p and nasdaq stay tuned. optionsxpress, where you can trade your favorite products, where it's 18% of the nasdaq 100. we're also seeing pressure on the bank stock. goldman sachs, morgan stanley are down about 2% apiece. and there's still questions about the economy. i know you're bullish with the economy. >> right. >> morgan stanley saying don't write off qe 3. he expects qe 3 to happen come the april or june fed meetings. there are three reasons for it. one of them is political timing. the fed will be off the side lines and the second half of the year when the presidential

campaign speeds up. they are expecting a slowdown in the gdp in the current quarter. >> i watch brent go up. this meeting with netanyahu and obama, i think it's fair to say a lot of people -- our producer put a great idea in my mind. people that know what is going on, talk. those that don't are blathering. and brent going up every day says, please be careful if we can get out of this with a real confrontation. it's one thing to talk about $4 oil and i think we're fine. i think we're fine at 4.50. north of $5, we're not fine. >> of course, it moves up as we get closer and closer do spring and then the summer. let me be the first to say it -- >> i go to downtown and i go --

>> that's a lot of miles. think about it, jim. how much more money you spend per gallon of gasoline for all those miles that you drive? >> look, i went to fill it up and, you know, now it's $94 and i'm thinking $94 it was $75 not that long ago. am i be moaning that? >> why are we seeing a decline in brent as well as t.i., in your view? was it the meeting between obama and netanyahu, was that bearish oil? i mean -- >> i think it comes down to demand of structure. >> right. >> at a certain point, if you go back and look at 2008, the first stocks that rolled over were oih, which is a little ironic given the fact that they have a long cycle. and i've been seeing that for five days now. i keep thinking that's got to reverse but i think that's seeing destruction. >> so you think at 126, that's all in one account.

keep watch on the markets. or use our exclusive tools to help find ideas. demand of instruction? >> i think the stocks in 2008 it's powerful, easy-to-use technology for trading stocks, options, and futures. began to roll over at 120 and they foretold 147. keep trading whether you're at home, in the office, i'd hate to see that happen again because obviously you need or on the go. that underpinning of some optionsxpress, the broker smart traders deserve. strength. and you're right. i am bullish in the u.s. economy. but the wrong things have been open an account today at optionsxpress.com. said in the last five days, brazil in terms of trying to slow their economy. china, slowing their economy. i think we're beacon. but the beacon will get extinguished. i think the president knows that. >> so qe 3 is on the table? >> one of the things that i felt was missing last week when bernanke testified was he basically said, the big new change is that oil is too high. there are people talking about the petraeus reserve. the reason you you have that is because of turmoil in the middle east. the reason you have high prices, it seems counterintuitive.

and we are watching the >> it does. market sell off. it's interesting to contrast the dow is down by 1% here. what morgan stanley is saying transports, perhaps the most with dow president fisher, troubling. markets compare themselves to leaving the likes of unp down by wean them from their dependency on qe 3. 4%. >> and that's what the market if you believe in the dow took from the absence of any theory -- >> and jim and i also noticed comments from bernanke or the that the banks are particularly hints that -- weak. bank of america, 3.2%. >> was that dr. kevorkian? >> yeah. that's got to be greece, to some >> if oil goes up big, it is -- extent. >> lock, stock, and barrel. greece is taking hold as a theme look, if we ignore oil when it goes to 147, we're ignoring what happened 3 1/2 years ago. again and the market is not set >> and yesterday goldman sachs up for that. let's take a look at the hopeful jim o'neill said the same thing. >> i thought that was situation for health. interesting. two years ago, the first he put it out. therapeutic cancer vaccine to be on "squawk box," everyone is talking about oil. approved by the fda. the natural gas, other than boone pickens, have not heard it's placed a plethora of politicians go for natural gas. challenges. what does this biotech need to do to turn around? it was, this is fanciful.

brand-new president and ceo, mr. as if electric cars are not fanciful? >> that was one good thing that johnson, welcome to mad -- oh, came along with the bailout, the willingness of the automatic makers to increase mileage greatly, something we did not do welcome to "squawk on the in this country for decades, street." how are you, sir? much to our chagrin. all right. >> good morning, jim. i'm doing great. election day. >> don't interview many ceoos on yeah. today is super tuesday. this show but i do on my evening voters in 11 states heading to the polls to cast ballots in show. we have meta static cancer-reducer, which is very primaries and caucuses. more than 400 delegates up for grabs. the big prize is ohio where a shocking. this is rather remarkable with number of polls show that mitt romney and santorum are in a anything that has gotten us this dead heat although romney seems far and analysts are saying that they are surprised that the to have a deficit in terms of uptake isn't as great as it should be. is that because of the price the polls. we'll get a presumptive nominee, tag, $90,000 plus or because of education? what is going to get this i guess, and that may have an vaccine where the analysts thought it would be at this impact on the market if that is point? >> well, i think there's a the case. >> don't you think the gop is going to lose the house? and this is something that is couple of things, jim. when you look at this, if you thought ten years ago that you would have had a product that

perk lati actually would help one's own percolating. body fight cancer, that would be you've got these people, gingrich has adelson. thought to be far-fetched but santorum has foster freeze, the that's where we are today. great money manager. and any time you bring in they used to not have money to something that innovative and this complex, you're going to continue. >> citizens united is the decision of the supreme court let bumps along the road and that's part of being a pioneer. who decided this super pac idea, the good news is, we have a good reimbursement in place which was a challenge early on and what that they can keep them in business. the team and i are focused on is it's incredible. growing the top-line sales and reducing the cost of goods. >> and it creates a discord. by the way, in terms of oil, ohio is a battle ground state for oil. >> you gave up some hope in because both marcella shale and terms of -- you mentioned the last time you spoke that utica, which is oil, is absolutely key for the attempt to be more self-sufficient. scripts, prescriptions, have neither candidate talking about accelerated since january 12. has that continued, sir in. it. >> right. >> yeah, it has continued and of course, ohio will be one of even last week we saw them strengthen. those key battle ground states. we shall see. we entered the year after the holidays which isn't that unusual. we felt good about the momentum >> does it change the market sentiment if romney is the of our business right now. nominee after super tuesday? if we know it is romney, does it we maintained our hesitancy to make a difference in the market?

>> i think it does. >> why? >> because i think any clarity with the republicans makes you think that the republican party is not in disarray. provide clarity beyond quarter a lot of pieces this weekend saying maybe this epiphany that the democrats had with george one, they regard a negative signal and contradiction to mcgovern, the extreme left awareness of your product. what do you say to that kind of captured the democratic party criticism? >> i think they are trying it's and that caused the clinton revolution, the extreme right -- >> ron dale did not help. very challenging. what i'm confident is that the >> so liberal. >> there are a lot of people product is going to continue to writing off -- we had that grow. on the first day that i was named in the job, i did a call discussion today. with investors and met with the presidency writing it off. i think the campaign will not be over and these candidates will dozens of physicians. what we need to do to ensure not resign. i think santorum, until the day that it is the foundation of we get to the convention, because he is not about winning. care and i had a great meeting. he's about agenda. i walked away from there with a >> don't forget ron paul who renewed sense of confidence. also has committed to staying in i think giving guidance is the race and has a number of supporters as well. >> they don't seem to be -- no always very good.

>> sir, your treatment costs one seems to care. $93,000 for about three they have checks. they have money. so they don't quit. not like the old days. let's talk stocks now. treatments. a couple of mega caps. there is competitors such as itiga. mercury seeing guidance and $5,000 for a month's worth of earnings below estimates. pills. that's an awful lot of money, qualcomm is announcing a $4 isn't it? >> well, when you look at billion buyback stock plan and programs, we believe that it's priced appropriately. raising its dividend from 15 and let's remember that one of the great things for patients is seants share to 17 cents a that the duration of therapy is only six weeks. it's not six months. chair. it's not 16 months. the currency impact was enough. you get your therapy on board and quickly and with a tox is >> oil is way up so a lot of see profile that is favorable for patients. it's a benefit for patients in companies transport. they are going to miss numbers terms of how they are treated. off of that. beyond that, if you look at and currency they are going to standard chemotherapy agents, miss numbers. numbers are too high after these you not only have to look at the trends. and so i think that merck is -- price of the agent but dealing let's say not alone. with the side effects of those products. when we look at the data and the a lot of the drug companies have

tremendous exposure. >> so estimates will come down across the board? >> i think they have to. they have to because the doll total cost of care, including all of those costs, we felt that it was priced in line with other chemotherapy agents. similar too strong and if you're a packaged goods company a. >> thank you very much for your tremendous amount of gasoline spent, just getting your stuff update on dendreon. to the stores. >> right. >> as we see, of course, the a new ceo coming on and setting german dax down and ftse down. us straight. thank you, sir. good to see you. we're still seeing pressure we have yet to have a triple digit decline in the dow this across the markets. year. >> yeah. >> i know melissa probably knows apple is down 2%. financials across the board down by just 2 to 3%. the number from last year. >> i don't. much more "squawk on the street" you give me too much credit. straight ahead. >> it's early march. >> announcer: coming up, how we have had so little many stocks can you talk about? volatility. that would be a real positive for this market and positive for and how fast can you do it? see if you can do it better than something for m and a. cramer. >> don't forget, this was the six stocks in 60 seconds when beginning of the big down 7% "squawk on the street" returns. correction that started in february last year. ♪ accelerated right about now. i'm not trying to be like an uber bear here. i'm just saying that i'm upset about oil not coming in at any real level and merck is a [ male announcer ] offering four distinct driving modes company that people have looked and lexus' dynamic handling,

to during this period and merck the next generation of lexus will not be contained. is a canary. >> yep. the all-new 2013 lexus gs. >> let's take a look at there's no going back. ♪ qualcomm. qualcomm can benefit on apple or android. there's no going back. are you still sleeping? it's swept up from the downdraft just wanted to check and make sure that we were on schedule. of futures being under pressure. >> and a remarkable company is 4g. you've spoken about that in adoption. it's been less than spectacular. >> moving up to the price point that you need for the verizons the first technology of its kind... mom and dad, i have great news. is now providing answers families need. and at&t is not as quick as it anticipated. talk to people that have 4g, the siemens. answers. speed is incredible. looking for a better place to put your cash? here's one you may not have thought of: >> it's much faster. fidelity. much faster. >> i've been waiting for the now you don't have to go to a bank ipad to get the 4g. >> as have i. to get the things you want from a bank. so we can talk to each other via like no-fee atms -- all over the world. free checkwriting and mobile deposits. now, depositing a check is as easy as taking a picture. free online bill payments.

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time for 6 in 60. >> coal is just in a bear market. it's taken down the transports because of the rail. be careful, coal. don't like it. >> tech data. >> he's talking about germany, uk. netherlands being strong. it's greece pulling down

countries. >> cutting off cotton exports could mean that their stalks are going up. >> baxter? >> this is driving really big. it should be doing better. >> panera bread. >> seeing the ceo, they've locked in the raw costs maybe at higher prices. got to find out. >> and mosaic. >> i think this group is not where you want to be. may not even hold 80 and that is the crucial. >> i'm going right from here to the new panera. ever since they have been putting up the calories, i've been gravitating to the salads. >> too much carbs.

>> exactly. next, paul o'neill. we'll be right back. all right. happy birthday. the oreo turns 100 years old today. tell us what modern day innovation you think will not be around a century from now and why. tweet us. cnbc@squawkst. >> can i point something out, when you split it, this is tio2. is a a white ner.

it's not a natural color. it could be soil and green also, plydothone who takes commandment on the way down. okay. dupont has raised prices twice on tio2. how long can oreo stay at this price? not clear. the filling is too expensive. >> so double stuff is even more expensive. >> it's through the roof. >> it's really good. >> that ended the competition. >> i can't imagine it had that many ingredients in it 100 years ago. >> no. it's monopoly cookie. justice department, are you

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welcome back to the second hour of "squawk on the street." heading to the polls today with more delegates on the ballot than any other election. my dad and grandfather spent their whole careers here. and joining us is former [ charlie ] we're the heartbeat of this place, the people on the line. treasury secretary paul o'neill. we take pride in what we do. when that refrigerator ships out the door, and we're going to tell you it's us that work out here. [ michael ] we're on the forefront of revitalizing manufacturing. what you need to know to stay we're proving that it can be done here, ahead of the tape. apple is gearing up to and it can be done well. [ ilona ] i came to ge after the plant i was working at unleash its new product tomorrow. we're separating fact from closed after 33 years. fiction ahead of tomorrow's big ge's giving me the chance to start back over. unveil. and trans canada causing [ cindy ] there's construction workers everywhere. so what does that mean? it means work. it means work for more people. couldn controversy with the

[ brian ] there's a bright future here, construction of the oil and there's a chance to get on the ground floor of something big, something that will bring us back. pipeline. let's just focus on where we not only this company, but this country. ♪ are with the broad base selloff. sliding lower now you see morgan stanley down 4% and you can see some of the moves. and the rally on the way up as we come back down so people book profits effectively on where we were. we also want to show you some of welcome back. the coal names. we have about five minutes to go they have been hit quite bad. before the opening bell so we to a certain extent, you can see have cramer's mad dash. this coming. you saw the dollar strengthening we have kraft. up. you saw the dax that fell in advance very heavily, >> there is going to be a growth portion which is chiefly snacks international and a grocery anticipating wall street.

portion which is going to have a if you're in the ten-year, good yield. i think it makes a ton of sense and i think this stock can make its way higher. >> we were talking about gold spaniit has fell 5%. >> to oh see where the action is within the dax and european trading, it's been in the but the action of gold is very financials and ahead of the troubling. march 8th deadline on this bond if people are concerned about the uptake in terms of the swap in greece. >> i don't think it's participation by bond holders insignificant but the viewer woke up and looked at the fisher comments which were extremely negative on the idea that the market is desperate for more qe and the greek bond swap, would you think that this would 3, inappropriately in his view. benefit. here we are down 2%. >> i think that's a great point. we peaked in gold when we began as we went through the european to hear rumblings that the gold central bank with that half a trillion euro being pumped into has fallen apart. the his seystem, that could be there is a discussion about pumped into the banks. whether everything falls apart and the center doesn't hold in >> all central banks, that could europe. i think you're absolutely right. it's the wrong kind of tale in be it. more liquidity unless something bad happens. >> we may all be tiring of this environment. >> what is the tale? we're seeing pressure across metals. it's gold and flat and greece. it seems as they we get the same story week after week. i believe it's having a significant impact today. >> we have a deadline on thursday. >> we have the u.s. financials palladium. >> there are others that must down. we have credit deteriorating in

follow. >> we have four minutes until the opening bell. europe and today you're seeing much more "squawk on the street" it reflect in europe and here as straight ahead. e playing field. that deadline draws near yet again and while it may be de ja vu, it is still something that people need to pay attention to. >> but you're coming off a substantial rally in peripheral bonds and high-yield debt. this is not a doom's day scenario. this is a booking on profits from those rallies. i think that's a very different environment. >> and interesting to note, spanish ten-year above italy. >> it is the new bad boy, no question. let's bring things back to super tuesday. 437 delegates up for grabs. what can we expect? we ask john harwood. >> this is the day that mitt

romney campaign hopes they will begin turning the lights out on his challengers and beginning to move towards a phase where everyone perceives that he's wrapping up this nomination but there's a big battlefield to play on. look at the map. you've got 11 states. caucuses out west, big primaries in the eastern part of the country and in the south. georgia has and newt gingrich home state where he has to win take the privileged investing tools of wall street and make them simple, intuitive, in order to stay in the race and polls show that he's favored but and available to all. you've got states like massachusetts, mitt romney is distill all that data. very strong, virginia, gingrich make information instinctual, visual. and rick santorum are not even introducing trade architect, td ameritrade's empowering web-based trading platform. on the ballot. and then the number one state that everyone is going to be watching is the state of ohio. critical battle ground in the take control of your portfolio today. midwest. 63 delegates at stake. trade commission-free for 60 days, this is where rick santorum is going to get a one-on-one match and we'll throw in up to $600 when you open an account. with mitt romney going forward. extending into the late spring and early summer even, if you look at the polls in ohio, follow the pattern that they followed many michigan the week

before, that is, rick santorum had raced out to a lead in michigan, then mitt romney came and pounded him on television, diminished that lead, passed him by 3 percentage points. you see mitt romney has got a lead of just over a point when you average all of the polls. in what passes for common sense. just above 39 -- or 39, rather. used to be we socked money away and expected it to grow. then the world changed... 37 for rick santorum and if mitt romney can hold that lead, we and the common sense of retirement planning may be seeing the beginning of the end, guys. >> all right. became anything but common. thank you very: john harwood, a reminder, special coverage of fortunately, td ameritrade's investment consultants super tuesday with john and can help you build a plan that fits your life. maria bartiromo here on cnbc. take control by opening a new account or rolling over an old 401(k) today, in the meantime, lots of and we'll throw in up to $600. hot-button issues front and how's that for common sense? center. here is paul o'neill, the former treasury secretary. it's good to have you with us. >> thank you. >> i want to get your take on

the overall economy. there is this debate on the street whether or not qe 3 is warranted, is necessary. president fisher said, no it's time for dr. fed to wean this off. probably april or june meeting we will need qe 3. the bell is ringing. here at the big board, you see a what do you think? >> i don't think we need qe 3. i think -- i guess i'm on the side of we will see a fairly communication provider positive, consistent, not gang celebrating 15 years on the busters growth cycle but i think nasdaq. we wait to see the stocks open this year arguably we're at 3% and i imagine the financials will be very key to watch as gdp and, you know, i think there are limits to how much more will be industrials. >> right. the industrials -- let's use caterpillar as an example. it has been acting horribly for strain we can push at the fed. days and that would be one of it's unbelievable how much we the crucial ones because they have done with $10 trillion or did give you a very good forecast. >> right. >> i'd hate to see it have chips so. and so i don't think we need more liquidity and action that the fed can supply and i in it.

i think the banks could be a think -- you know, the thing go-to place, the domestic banks, because they do not have greece and i still think that they can be strong. i would watch wells fargo. that is my favorite bank. that is holding us back is the if you're going to see a turn in architectural president who is guiding people every day by the banks, wells has to bottom. telling them the truth about i don't see it. things that they don't want to i think that the group is in freefall but i'm looking for stability. >> and talking about free fall, know. >> i'm sorry. we're seeing bank of america but the fact that it seems out of reach doesn't seem to me to be a reason not to want it. >> well, let's come back to down 3 1/2. in terms of the domestic banks, those structural issues. i assume you're talking about bkx, it's a more the deficit. >> if you look at the programs domestically-centered banks, of the four republican sparing better than the xlf. we're seeing heavy selling candidates, they are, at best, pressure on some of the internet mildly better than the predicted stocks, nasdaq stocks. interestingly, microsoft is down tract that president obama has by only three pennies into new laid out, which means that a continuation of mind boggling deficits and adding up to the today's session. >> there has been a lot of debt going up to 75% gdp which

is madness. >> when i talked to ceos, chatter about microsoft windows 8. it's not an expensive stock. particularly behind closed doors, because they are not outspoken on this issue as a group, they say it's the number the ipad is going to be the one issue. and it's distressing to them that both parties seem unable to replacement. it talked about what is going to go away. i think the majority of people come anywhere near something that would immediately reduce are going to say that the the deficit and get us turned personal computer is going away which is quisical why microsoft ala the simpson-bowles plan that is out there but doesn't seem to is doing so well. be grabbed by anybody. you're a republic. you still are, right? >> this is a sentiment change a >> kind of. >> and there are plenty of republicans like you. and i'm not hearing anything set of circumstances with less urgency because they were less about the deficit from your candidates either. >> when nifts washington, i went than 24 hours ago. as a career person in 1961 and i >> you got up early this morning, saw that europe was became a republican by association when churchill asked down big, and i think that it's still with us. >> uh-huh. >> i think when europe has me to give up my career status been -- we forget how about

to accept an appointment job. benign europe has been in 2012. i think it's going to be a very people say he must be a republican. i tell you what, more and more i important moment, melissa. don't want to be associated with you'll be here when the european markets close to see if we can a party because i'd rather be catch bids, particularly in our banks. that will be a very telling moment to say whether it's the associated with good ideas instead of with some ideological beginning of a 7% correction or madness which is what i think we have right now. whether things are more benign. >> you wrote very eloquently but when i see a cummings about what it takes to be a real rollover, a caterpillar leader. real leader is your hot button rollover, and merck, drugs and issue. a hunger to make a difference and the ability to resonate with industrials, not good. >> it is in europe where we're the people that you are leading to make the best for them. would you look at how do they seeing heavy financial pressure. that's really taking off. it appears that it's not just invig rate the american people as a whole. can you get that through the china. also, whether or not there will be enough participation by primary process particularly within the republican party that has to appeal to a core and set range of issues? is that possible? >> you know, i think so. private creditors in this brief bond swap. the deadline is march 8th. markets are a little bit on edge, especially given the weaker than expected european and actually i had an opportunity in the 2008 election gdp number.

cycle to meet with candidate >> and gold has been an accurate predictor of people doing the obama and i said to him, i wrong thing in europe. why? because it would be deflationary believe presidential politics, from the american people, needs if that debt were destroyed in to be about telling people the truth about something they probably would not want to know this era. the truth about and and he >> microsoft, it is worth noting, is turn to the green. >> which would you rather have? apple or microsoft? started going around the table after 15 minutes he stopped and >> from a microsoft standpoint, looked around paul vocker and apple. but in terms of what the term means, i would rather see said to me, you know what, paul, take your idea and i'm going to tell as much of the truth as i microsoft. >> >> i would like to think that think i can get away with in the we can perform better than europe. rest of the election cycle and we have some growth. still get elected. i don't want to get too bullish, obviously, because of this china i thought, oh, my god, that's great. story which continues -- the he knows they are not telling the truth but unfortunately when he became president and he papers today reinforce the decided that health care needed notion that china is really to be the most important issue, going the wrong way which is going to make all of those industrials just be terrible insfed of educating the people,

performers. >> under pressure today. for example, about how health >> yes. >> bob on the floor, bob ? insurance works, he demonized the health insurance companies to get his legislation passed. >> it has been brazil, the so today we have a population that still does not understand the principles of health fastest growing -- >> this rally that we had is insurance. >> or perhaps more importantly, going through this process, neither side, as mayor bloomberg whether china would muddle said, neither side is telling the american people, we've got through 8% growth and the rest of the world would do okay. to find $8 trillion in cuts. today we find out europe is in that's the bigger question than what seems to preoccupy the headlines at the moment. >> simon, there are a couple of things that we can do. recession. >> your point on bra sdplil, first of all, the tax code we shocking. brazil is not a 3% gdp economy. have is an abomination. it costs us billions to we're a 3% gdp economy. remember brazil, one of the administer it. fastest growing countries in the if we had structural reform, world, they did 10% in 2010 to some kind of a value add tax, 3%? >> we all went through the roof. not as an add-on but a

replacement tax, it would we would stop wasting resources that we really need and the tax people could look at the tax >> the brazilian stock markets system and say, this is fair. had a good year. this is what we were need. particularly today, it's down. your point is right. it's up maybe 40% since 2009. it's had a huge run-up. brazilian industry is very and the obama health care did concerned because they are nothing about that lack of exporters and obviously the high is killing that. productivity and the four republican candidates don't even have a clue about where the they've got real serious issues down there. opportunity is to improve the taxes are the other big problem. therefore way too high and i think you're going to see efforts of some kind of productivity in that part of our stimulus, tax cut, incentive to society and if you don't know, 30% of our 10-year-olds cannot read and write and compute. get things going. >> is there anything that we're if i had a machine that had a aware of that says -- defective product, i would >> the industrial part of the gdp actually dropped even more change the machine. and the comment i saw blamed it tell the people, first of all, what is wrong and what really worked. >> focus on contraaccepting.

we need a coalition of the sensible, secretary o'neill. >> alcoa, international paper, maybe that's the criteria. >> he was our treasury secretary and as he said, he got fired because he didn't support the bush tax cuts. >> not only that, i did not agree that there was not weapons of mass destruction. >> secretary o'neill, thanks for that uplifting moment. it's great to see you. look forward to having you back. let's take a quick check on the markets. the dow continuing its slide. we have yet to have a triple digit loss in that average. we'll see if it's the first day of the year where we have that. the s&p is down 1.3%. a decidedly poor day for stocks today. much more, by the way. we'll have him back in just a

minute. apple is causing a fever pitch ahead of the unveiling of the new ipad. we'll separate fact from fiction. you know, typical alarm clock. i am so glad to get rid of it. just to be able to wake up in the morning on your own. that's a big accomplishment to me. i don't know how much money i need. but i know that whatever i have that's what i'm going to live within.

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i'm bertha kooms. gold is really seeing a lot of

pain. it went through first this morning at 1688. that was the technical support level that was fairly critical and crashed. we held at around 1673. traders are watching to see if we can move back there. we've been trying to get back. we've been seeing a rally to that point but it's been failing so far this morning. a number of traders say what they are seeing is a speculative long that gets out of the gold trade. one trader saying it started last week when ben bernanke threw cold water on the prospect of qe 3 and that is part of the reason that we're seeing the rest of these precious metals, including palladium, one of the worst performers. >> let's look at the major indices. i believe we've stabilized after

what was quite clearly a rocky open for those that were long or are long. >> according to oppenheimer asset management, we ever not seen a session with 1% decline. we've gone 46 sessions straight with a decline of 1% or more. that's the longest streak since may 2007. imagine that. >> let's continue our exclusive sit-down with paul o'neill. one of the things that a lot of participants are concerned about is the price of oil. >> what should policy makers be doing and what can they do, in this environment? >> i think there are not a lot of short-term fixes but you have boone pick ens on earlier this morning and i think the idea of

rapidly developing shale gas in this country makes an enormous amount of good sense. i think the producers could do a lot of good if they could make a declaration that they are going to spend whatever money is required to assure that there is no environmental degree degredation because we could put in more options. >> what insurance company will come through after that type of event with bp and say actually we can cap environmental losses? >> well, i think the proof of the pudding is, as i understand it, the oil rigs that work in the gulf are now a more significant number than they were before the spill.

we tend to make a big hoopla and i think there is plenty of opportunity for us to develop natural gas resources in this country and we have to convert the end user market so there's a market for using it in lou of diesel trucks. the clugss that we need to put in place, i hear candidates say, i know how to -- do you think there is a president who wanted more unemployment? the answer is obviously no. why do we have unemployment spiking up and down from time to time? because there are other portions in the market and the idea that some president can actually fix things on the day after the election is just madness. i don't know why we let them say that to us because it's obviously wrong. president obama likes 8.3?

i guarantee you, he doesn't. >> one thing for the business leaders, it would be attacking the deficit in a meaningful way. do you agree? >> i agree with you. if we even had a structure phased in for a new tax regime that didn't take place for a couple of years, i think the market would discount it into the future and they would say, we're going to be in a better place so we don't have these aching long-term concerns. that's the problem that we have now. we can't see a way out of the dilemma we're in. it gets worse and worse. so i think if we have structural things that guaranteed we would have a better future, we would be better off. let me take you back to dodd-frank. we only needed two pages for dodd-frank. the first page would say, when anybody gets a home mortgage in the united states, they have to put 20% equity down and needs to be stapled to the instrument so it can't be diluted by financial

engineering and the second would be reserve requirements for every financial instrument. so now mary shapiro is talking about reserves for money market funds. hey, hallelujah. how about we need to do that and she doesn't have any support at the s.e.c. so there are structural things that we could do that would make a difference and give confidence to the market. so instead we produce a 2500 page bill, nobody can understand it and 350 pages interpreting the rule. >> you would disagree with treasury secretary geithner in in "the wall street journal" that we should not back the 2500 page bill? it needs to be -- >> if we had clear signals. >> right. >> i believe we need regulation but it needs to be unambiguous and clear.

if we had a 20% market rule, the market would clear itself. people would not put our financial system at risk. if every bank had a 10 or 15% reserve requirement against all of the financial instruments that they have, hey, our system would be golden. individuals could still make a bad decision but the system would always percent veer. >> maybe you should run for office. >> i'm too old. but thank you. the s&p is down by 1.5%. the dow is down by 1.3%. we are seeing tremendous selling pressure on the coals and the rails. they go hand in hand, of course. rails transporting coal. we've seen those groups under heavy pressure. citigroup is down. bank of america is at 7.69. this is a market selloff. exclusive interview with the president of trans canada, can

da's largest company. alex pourbaix. stay tuned. how did we do it last time? i don't know... i forget.

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all right. we are ceiling the most significant selloffs in 2012. this has been marked by a lack of volatility again until today

the s&p up over 18 moints. a 1.35% loss there. there is a look at the vix. up over 16.5%. europe is in recession. brazil gdp not looking so good and worries about greece. let's get more on this market from bob pisani who joins us on the set. bob? >> the weeping and the railing. you would think we put up a new dark age. first, where are we? we're at 1345. do you know, we're at the levels that we were at 12 days ago. i think it was february 15th was the last time we were here. i think we'd be down to the

levels of february 2nd. maybe we don't go that far but, face it, we're at 12 trading day lows. as david pointed out, we haven't seen a triple digit decline since december 28th. and i'm talking about a closing decline. so we're not closing yet. put up the dow jones industrial average. the weakness, as you might anticipate, are in the companies that might be associated with global growth. the coal names and those with the transportation stock. i want to point out that the brazilian stock market is down. dave, we were talking about this earlier, 2.7% in the gdp. we are a 3% gdp growth country. brazil is not. now they are talking about 2.7% for the fourth quarter of 2011 and that was major stock. people are saying it's got to be more than greece.

they are right. >> it's the fear that it's in the united states which is why morgan stanley is suggesting that you get qe 3 out. >> are we talking about the united states? >> yes. >> do you know that we're going to get 3% through the second quarter here? >> no, but that's certainly a reasonable assumption. >> all right. bob, thank you. it's not just brazil or the u.s. trading lower. russia's stock market is lower. is it a sign? time to go trading the globe. also, a fast money contributor, tim, good to see you. >> good morning, mel. >> what is going on here? i thought putin was going to -- is this just derisking in today's market? >> you can't take today's move in russia emblematic.

in fact, putin's mandates was clear even without any potential voter manipulation. the gap between him and the second runner up was so far. there's no question, he has more than 50% of the power base in russia. so what's he going to do with it? i think the key for this market will be liberal market reforms. as always, putin has said he wants to bring are russia to a climate that attracts foreign multinationals and that's what we need to do. russia was up 19% versus 13% for em. the whole asset class is outperformed and russia has done that much more. >> and you think russia is going to outperform em even despite reaching his new eyes? >> domestic conditions are

positive. it's very much opposed soviet record low. they are making $900 million, almost a billion a day. that's russia's problem, too. they need and there's no question that the consumer and the uprising and russia's version and something that putin and the establishment is paying attention and closest competitive valuation comparison. they are actually fighting off google. it's a fantastic world technology company. if you want beta and you buy gas because to me that's the cheapest of the oil and gas sector. they are going to pay a 4% div. they may cut a gas deal with

china. it's a major catalyst for this. >> tim, thank you. tuesdays right here on "squawk on the street." >> our viewers should know that apple is hosting a big media event tomorrow. is the ipad 3 rumors heading into full swing, what you need to know about tomorrow's event and trading ahead of it. that's next on cnbc. >> announcer: last month, we gave away a mug. this month, it's a tote bag autographed by the entire gang here at "squawk on the street." you want to win it? all you have to do is guess friday's nonfarm jobs number. tweet us your guess. good luck. sometimes investing opportunities are hard to spot.

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okay. a big day for the markets. we're in negative territory. kraft foods is the only one in positive territory. morgan stanley, we mentioned the coal producers. at the nyse, you can see it's 13 to 1 and over at the nasdaq i'm getting a big thumb's up by

melissa. and over at -- the nasdaq is 6 to 1. >> yeah, he's really improved. it's worth noting here the vix is up by 15. meantime, as we are one hour in, let's head to chicago with much more on the market's latest moves. rj o'brien is at the cme group. what is going on here? >> there's been a little bit of a repricing coming from continents outside of ours. the greece situation continues to drag on. of course, china has lowered its growth but it's not going to feel recessionary. keep in mind, and in terms of

consumption and investors, this is a modest repricing of risk expectation and around 1320, 1325 s&p, they have to perhaps add to longs. because there is more upside. >> i feel like we could have had this conversation, john, 24 hours ago. what has changed in the last 24 hours? europe broke up. it seems like the concerns about greece hit hard in today's recession. >> that's right. they are running up against this clock. it should expire on thursday around 3:00 p.m. east coast time and really at the end of the day markets want transparency and visibility. to try and force the psi down investor's throats is what markets don't want and thus you're seeing the modest repricing of risks. >> are you sure this is what is

going on? are we going to get through the threshold to show the default there? this is perhaps a few weeks past, isn't it? >> yogi bear once said, it ain't over until it's over let's move forward. in the meantime, there's still remaining investor concerns and the ltro has done its job in terms of the funding european markets so let's move forward. >> taking profits off ahead of that report? >> i think the balance of risk to traders is a pretty solid number on friday there are whispers in the market in the nonfarm payroll number. >> john brady at the cme, great to speak with you. >> let's move over to technology. apple one day away from the product launch event.

here to help us sort through fact and fiction is cnbc's jon fortt. what do we really know? >> let's look at numbers. it doesn't seem like investors are too hyped up. to keep things in perspective, the stock is up 25%. let's look at what is plainly expected. i doubt it's called the ipad 3. the most important thing is what apple is doing with that extra horsepower in this a6 chip. if so, it's like that karate kid moment where they say to take daniel out, it could crush the already hobbled competition. will we get fast wireless lte in a an ipad? maybe. which could see an update to the

television set and when these ipads go on sale after the announcement. the sales could be important for schools, too. >> jon fortt, thank you. we were talking about greece before and whether that's an issue or not. we're going to go live to athens in the next hour of the program, 11:30 eastern. well, transcanada announcing it will split a pipeline previously rejected by president obama. the company slated to begin building the oklahoma to texas pipeline shortly. we'll talk to the president of transcanada alex pourbaix. that's next. in america, we believe in a future

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a check once more on the market. the nasdaq is down by that much. apple is down by 1.5%. it's paired its losses on the session and the dow is down by 1.25%. ibm and caterpillar, two of the biggest dow components are leading the losses for the dow. i want to point out a big bright spot that. is amazon.com. it's higher by 1.5% or so. 1.25%. reaching its high moments ago. no new news now but we are looking into that and we'll bring you developments as we have them. one of the major concerns

for the market is clearly oil and gas. transcanada, meanwhile, announcing that they will move forward with part of their plan to increase the crude from the east to west coast. joined by transcanada president is bertha coombs. >> reporter: good morning, simon. the president of oil and energy pipelines from transcanada is joining me and it's been a hot issue politically and a very big issue for traders and analysts looking at the differential between brent crude and wti prices. you announced that you are moving ahead. what will you concur first? >> we announced late last week that we have decoupled the southern portion of the pipeline

and we've announced that we're going to go ahead very quickly with that pipeline we don't expect any problem and there is a southern portion early this morning. >> we will start to see the spread and may see the spread between brent and wti between $17 right now and could get as low as a couple of dollars. >> clearly the bottleneck in pipeline transportation pushing to the gulf coast has had a significant effect on wti and the basis differential with brent. it will be about 700, 730,000 barrels a day moving oil from cu cushing to the gulf coast. it will go a long, long way to reducing that spread.

>> is there enough supply there? >> the experts that i have seen have calculated that over the next few years there is going to be as many as two million barrels a day of light sweet in the cushing region. >> the portion that goes through the sand hills area in nebraska, the state department has been worried about that. have you found an alternate route now? >> let's be clear, the environmentalist may be using sand hills as their they are trying to prevent the canadian oil from getting to the u.s. with respect to the actual issue of the oil sands, we have agreed with the state of neb bra ska, we're working with the governor,

his various state agencies, including his department of environmental quality, we're working collaboratively with him and by the fall we should be in a position to have a fully approved route around the sand hills. >> and, quickly, five years, ma years, that the u.s. will actually be energy dependent on north american oil and gas? >> that is a very interesting comment. i was speaking at a panel at this conference this morning, and one of the gentleman on the panel suggested to me that with the growth of oil sands oil, the growth of bakken oil in montana, north dakota and the gas, the shale gas, the u.s. could be north american energy independent in as little as ten years. what a change that would be over where we were even three or four years ago. >> certainly. thank you very much, alex from transcanada joining us and we will of course have many more live interviews coming here to you from houston.

>> lovely, sharon. thank you very much. where are we on the retail investor? it is interesting to note that as the market running through yan and february, domestic equity mutual funds still experienced outflows, $5.4 billion last month alone. why is there the disconnect amid the recent rally? david faber will be talking about the hunt for yield next with j.p. morgan's global pro head of capital markets. optionsxpress, where you can trade your favorite products, all in one account.

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the hunt for yield drawing many investors to the junk bond market, so many in fact that there may not be enough supply to keep up with demand. it is a strange dynamic with potentially interesting outcomes and here to help us make sense is jim casey, the global co-head of did he want capital markets for j.p. morgan. we have seen new flows into mutual funds that buy high yield bonds, junk bonds, and we haven't seen enough supply to keep up. what is going on there? >> as you said, it is the hunt for yield. we're only nine weeks into the new year, and already we have had about as much cash coming in the high yield market as we saw all of last year and doesn't appear to be stopping.

as investors get more comfortable they're putting their pony in high risk assets like high yield. >> and looking for yield there but i assume for the issuers it is almost paradise, isn't it? >> it is. what's interesting is a lot of these issuers refinance the debt already in the last couple years. coming out of the credit crisis they didn't want to wait. they're looking at a great market and not a lot have that. >> that maturity while we talked about a great deal has been taken out already. >> it is gone. >> the refinancings you are talking about at much lower rates. where is the supply going to come from if not from those refinancings to sash ate the demand from the money coming to the high yield funds. >> we think there are two opportunities. one is europe. that's arguably the bigger opportunity. it is already happening. so european companies represent about 30% of the global supply and that's growing. that's up pretty dramatically from prior years. what's going on in europe is that a lot of the commercial banks in europe are pulling back, and that's creating a void

that j.p. morgan would like to step into and -- >> how big are those numbers? it is interesting, the lending is not happening in europe. we all know they're trying to constrict their balance sheets and take the asset level down to a certain extent, at least those assets are not given to the ecb. >> exactly. >> you can step in in the high yield market. what are we talking about when we talk about numbers there? >> so the opportunity set is very large because investors in the u.s., they want to price risk. they believe that they can get a higher yield by going into the european market and taking the commercial banks out of their paper. so the opportunity is very large. it is in the tens of billions of dollars, and that's going to play out over time. >> are some of these funds taking in money now without the adequate supply to put it to work giving money back? >> they are. in fact, i haven't seen that in 20 years. the problem, if you're a portfolio manager, you have one job. that's to meet the index. the index has no cash in it. if you have too much cash and can't deploy it productively, you are pretty much forced to give it back. this is the first time i have

seen that happen. >> i covered m&a for a long time. not as much anymore but why haven't we seen more leveraged buyouts? when i hear you talking about a dearth of supply i wonder at the borrowing rates they can get and the cash that the lbo firms have on hand why aren't we seeing more and bigger deals? >> you know, that's a great question. i can't answer it. i can postulate that it is a concern about paying too much for assets, and perhaps it is a concern that in before the credit crisis i think some sponsors are taking a more cautious approach to how they construct these deals. as you say, capital is plentiful. they have the equity capital. we certainly have cheap debt. it is confidence and a little bit of history, i think, is the answer. >> even if it wasn't a buy outper se, we have seen dividends paid to the owners of those business bss and it would

seem to be a good time to go out, borrow cheap ler and by one of those dividends r we going to see leveraged buy outs and dividends? >> we're certainly using that pitch for proceeds and dividends are a great way for sponsors to deal with getting capital off the table without going to the ipo market. they can time that more precisely perhaps than you can in the ipo market, so we think that's going to be a major theme in 2012. >> is there a bubble being created in the high yield mrkt? >> not if you look at credit spreads. credit spreads are still relatively speaking, they're somewhat wide and the high yield market has not rallied as much as some of the other markets. it is not rallied as much as the high grade market, for instance. >> which we're seeing record issuance right now in terms of investment grade. >> and great yields as well. >> what are your expectations for the course of the rest of this year. >> all of those inflows, not enough supply. do you get a lot of people to

issue that might not otherwise do so? >> i think it is the combination of europe and i think it is the lbo sponsors will be the key for this year because maturities in 2012 and 2013 out of the u.s. are relatively low. >> thanks for your insight. one we don't talk about that often, but it is extremely important. looking over here, looking over there. hi. you're back. >> yeah, i am back. >> they got me all over. >> thank you very much, david faber. we'll see you next week. >> right. i will be out of town for a few days. >> here is what you might have missed if you are just tuning into sidewalk "squawk on the street." >> here is what's happening so far. >> if you thought last summer was exciting, around the debt limit, just wait. early next year will be enormously more complicated. >> republicans have a great chance of winning under ospices

of mitt romney. i think santorum would have zero chance, absolutely zero, wouldn't get at women's vote. >> we're importing 5 million barrels a day from opec, 8 million 18 wheelers what, we have in the united states. you could make that conversion in five years if you had the natural gas act. >> one thing to talk about $4 oil and i guess we're -- i think we're fine at 4.50. i think we could be fine at five but north of five. these candidates will not resign. i think santorum until the day we get to the convention because he is not about winning. he is about an agenda. >> the bell is ringing on what could be a very important day for the markets. >> if we had structural of some kind of value add the tax, not as a add-on but as a replacement tax, it would have a marvelous consequence for our economy because we would stop wasting

resources we really need and the tax people could all look at the system and say this is fair, this is what we really need. >> good morning. we are looking at a sharp sell off at the nyse. get you caught up on where the markets stand, the dow heading toward the first triple digit loss of the year, down by 169 points, a decline of 1.3%, ibm, cath pillar weighing on the dow. s s&p, this is the first in 47 sessions. that was the longest streak since may of 2007. as for the nasdaq, we are seeing a 1.5% loss there, down 43 points, apple by the way down 1.5%. we have microsoft down by only a quarter of a percent and worth noting that amazon.com is actually higher by 1.1%. we saw heavy call buying activity right at the open. those calls are trading very actively to the outside right now, so that's the latest color

we have there on that big move upward on amazon, perhaps one of the few bright spots on the nasdaq this morning. banks some of the biggest losers today, bank of america, j.p. morgan, goldman sachs all sharply lower thanks mostly to the exposure to global markets. goldman posting its first loss in asia last year since 2008. tech stocks falling, apple, dell, google, micro, all in the red now. hit the road map for tuesday. we're tracking the market sell off. we'll head and see what the traders are watching and how you should be playing this pullback. as gas prices keep rising, one lawmaker is taking on oil spec laters. we'll talk about his open letter to the cftc, and how to trade the financials in a volatile global market. greece causing problems again. european markets falling sharply today and concerns the country will not be able to secure support for the debt restructuring program. find out how it affect it is markets here at home when we bring you the european close.

that's in less than 30 minutes. all that far and more coming up in the next hour of squauk on the street and to simon hobbs here on the floor with a couple of traders. >> take you right to the cutting edge of what's happening and feels like an important day for the markets. joining us, gordan charlotte from rose and black securities and steven gillfoil from meridian equity partners. welcome to the program. what's going on here? >> what you are seeing, we opened around 1348, a risk off trade going on because of the greek situation. >> it is because of greece. >> it is definitely greece. i know we have tentativeness because of the boe and the jobs data later in the week and right now this is a little nervousness because of the debt swap coming up later this week. >> why suddenly now would you get nervous about the debt swap for thursday night? >> it seems like it kind of snuck up on them a little bit. they suddenly lowered it to 75%, what they need. it was 90. a little nervous here. what they need to do, what's going to happen, is greece is

going to have a situation where they may default. they may drag the other pigs into t i saw the bond yields were a little volatile for all the other pigs and we'll have a situation we have to keep an eye on this for two days. >> the iif and wire agencies picked occupy this and put out a note that was a confidential internal note saying that an unstructured default, a disorderly default from greece could cost a trillion dollars. it is doing the rounds for two or three days. i think increasingly we have spoken about this. this is what we spoke about on cnbc day after day after day. people now are reading it, gordon. that's what's interesting. >> i agree with you. i think there are three things to focus on why the market is selling off today. greece is part of it. i think you can read more into that with the sar cose trag badly in the polls and leads to instability over there and investors don't like to be spooked by uncertainty. you also have a market that's been driven by earnings. we're out of that season right

now. there is no real impetus to be buying into them. that was the impetus, not here, maybe a good reason to take some profits off the table. the third thing we're seeing, interesting sort of side bar here, corporations issuing debt, convert, equity. maybe a little bit of a signal there by corporations that we're getting a little bit -- >> that's good news, isn't it, if they're able to borrow cheaply? >> it is an opportunity to try to raise money now when they can. >> because rates could go higher. >> it sends a sflal this may be an opportunity to try to lighten your load a little bit here. fourth point you want to make is today is super tuesday. this is probably the day when romney starts to separate himself from the pack. investors will probably at this point forward start to focus on the ramifications of a romney and obama presidential run in the fall. >> interesting. where do the markets go from here, do you think? >> i think 1,341 we will find it. >> five points below now. >> 48 where we opened, that's

our resistance level. 58 above that and to the low side 36. now, one other thing to go back to the greek point, national bank of greece opened higher, about 6%. it is still up on the day. if it is a bet going the other way today. >> what i am trying to get a feeling of is are we on the verge of a major correction here or are we just basically booking profits on the top of a substantial run that we've had? >> i believe a technical analyst will tell you that, yeah, this is the beginning of a correction. they have been looking for it for quite some time. i am not completely sold on that due to the excess of money supply or balance sheet that all of these world central banks have right now. i believe there is still room for growth. in this early week of uncertainty you are going to see profits just to cover the bases. >> i will let you get back to work. me lis a back to you. >> time for squawk on the beat. may be reason to believe profit margins have already reached a peak. what does that mean for the

market? kelly joins us with that and i imagine bad things for the markets >> we were just talking about greece and a lot of what's happening around the world. we're still getting numbers about what happened in the fourth quarter and one thing happening below a lot of headlines is profit margins are down. they have fallen from a near record 9.5% in the third quarter to something like 8.7% in the fourth. still by historical standards. some argue they'll stay high, stay that way and consensus estimates and consensus estimates think profit margins basically hold steady if not increase a little bit from here this year, next year, not clear that's attainable. >> it would seem that profit margins would only be able to hold if we believe that oil prices will not go higher and also reached a peak in terms of some of the input costs that a lot of companies are facing. >> absolutely. nice if we thought this was happening because workers were able to get a bigger share of the pie. unemployment is still high. they are facing cost pressures. when you see the situation you have doug shorting retail stocks. you want to be worried about consumer discretionary. that's one place to watch. they're having a harder time

pass ago long higher costs to you remember skoos. people still under pressure, so it doesn't necessarily mean the profit cycles over and the business cycle is over. it is something to watch for when you talk about what did drive them higher from here. >> and the key is there are company that is can still see them peak or contract and still be making money and delivering on expectations when it comes to earnings per share and sales. >> you look at a sector like information technology. we're talking 17% profit margins, much higher than the historical average. the question again, what drives them from here? you walked to barry at barclays and he says it doesn't mean lights out for the cycle. it just means the shares right now may be over valued at relative to what's realistic with regards to profit margins going forward. >> thanks for stopping by. >> super tuesday is under way and voters are making their choice known in 11 different contests around the country with more than 400 delegates now at stake. kayla is live in a critical battle zone, ohio. good morning. >> reporter: good morning,

simon. the buckeye state is one of the key battle grounds for super tuesday, and for good reason. no republican has ever made it to the white house without winning this state. remember, in a home state that is the home to big industry tight ans like proctor and gamble and jm smuker, they have unemployment that's 7.9%. it is below the national average. even considering that statistic, that didn't keep voter from sounding off this morning at the polls about the issues in this election and what the candidates mean to them. take a listen. >> most important thing i think obviously is jobs. the price of gasoline and everything is going up, and i think jobs is our most important feature. >> i spend a lot of my time outside the state of ohio working because i can't really find a job in the state of ohio. >> we're still trying to bring ourselves back from the economy being down so i know that was something that i was thinking about a lot in voting. >> home prices. i am actually in the mortgage

business, so that's definitely driving home prices and also the ability for people to keep their jobs. >> people aren't feel there is a strong person at all. i think santorum could pull it out. >> reporter: of course in the latest poll that was conducted by nbc news, santorum did eek out a front running spot with 34% of respondents voting for santorum. those are likely republican primary voters. romney just 2 percentage points behind and a margin of error, 5 percentage points means this will be a photo finish and as far as voters we spoke to, some did say they were voting for romney and some said paul and some said santorum. this is a textbook swing state. what happens is key. we'll definitely be watching. as one voter put it, ohio is a purple state. back to you. >> kayla, thank you very much. be sure to tune into tonight's cnbc special coverage of super tuesday. it also starts on our network at

8:00 eastern. let's take a quick check on the u.s. markets as we head towards the break. we have begun to cut our losses very slightly. i think you mentioned that apple is now down just about -- there you go. >> 9/10 much a percent in terms of where we're paring our losses most pronouncely on the nasdaq now bun by 1.25%. had been down by as much as 1.5% on this session, so the turn around helped by apple which of course remember got its price target raised by barclays today. >> in 20 minutes we'll take you live to athens with the latest on what is going on with the debt swap and the fears and the lawmaker leading the fight against oil speculation and high gas prices. see how he thinks the problem could be solved, if he sees a problem. back in two minutes. americans believe they should be in charge of their own future.

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democrats are pressing to crash down on abuse, fraud and the oil market.

>> bernie sanders joins us for an exclusive. pleasure to speak with you, senator sanders. >> thank you. >> certainly there is a body of evidence that would point to oil speculators for run ups in oil and the federal reserve paper that says 20% of the runnup between 2004 and 2008 attributable to speculators and oppenheimer saying 30% due to speculation. at the same time do you think that strong position limits would not answer to this, to knocking off that premium we're seeing in the markets? >> this is what we do know. we know that it is not supply and demand because supply today is higher than it was three years ago when gas was $1.90 a gallon and demand is lower today than at any time since 1997. what we also know and most people don't appreciate this, is about 80% of the oil futures market is controlled by wall street speculators led by goldman sachs. i think when you have to concentration of ownership in

the oil futures market there is no question to my mind and i think to my other people's minds that there is excessive speculation going on. what is particularly painful and absurd is as you known the dodd-frank financial reform bill language was placed in that bill demanding, telling, the cftc, that they had to address excessive speculation and they had to do it by january of 2011. well, we're in march 2012. guess what? they still haven't done it. that is absurd. >> it seems interesting to me, senator sanders, that you specifically mention goldman sachs is potentially cornering the oil market. are you specifically going after goldman sachs? >> no. no. they are -- what we learned is that what we brought forth information that in 2008 about 80% of the oil futures market was controlled by speculators and at that particular point in 2008 goldman sachs was the leader in terms of the company

that controlled and owned most oil. it is also morgan stanley and other wall street firmsz. >> this is a world market for oil. can you police it in practice with the effectiveness that you want? >> well, first of all, internationally we know that there is more supply than there was last quarter, less demand than there was last quarter. what we have is legislation that says that the cftc has got to end excessive speculation. that's what they have to do. what we to want see on the oil futures market is that the people who own the bulk of oil are people who actually use it, airlines, truckers, fuel dealers, not people speculators whose sole function in life is to buy and sell and make money to drive prices up. yes, i think we can lower prices. >> senator, it is interesting. if the ability of speculators to profit is surely dwarfed by the ability of oil producing nations to profit from a higher price of

oil, are you aware of any u.s. agency who is actually looked at the way perhaps behind the scenes that those oil producing nations behave and whether potentially over decades they found ways to manipulate the price of oil at certain times and keep it artificially high? >> there are a lot of culprits in this problem. i think it is opec and the nations. you get the oil companies in america in the last tenl years exxonmobil leading the pack that made a trillion dollars in profit. what you got is the average working stiff filling up his gas tank in many cases working longer hours for low wages and you got the oil companies making a fortune. you got the oil producing companies making a fortune and getting ripped off by wall street speculators. it is a bad situation. >> senator sanders at the margin there is the -- i don't want to say problem, but there is the force in the market specifically when it comes to gasoline and what consumers are paying at the

pump of exporting. we're an exporter of gasoline in the country, about 4% of total u.s. gas production exported because there simply -- oil companies have to make money. the demand is not here in the united states. it is abroad. they're ex parting it. 4% of total gas production here. in your view is that also a target in order to bring gas prices down or is it simply the speculators, do you think, driving prices higher? >> i think speculation as you have mentioned is not just me. you got the st. louis fed. you got goldman sachs itself acknowledging the speculation is driving up prices. there are a number of factors. all i know is that in vermont and around the country working people are being devastated by these very high prices. we have got to lower them, addressing the issue of speculation is one way we do it and it is beyond my comprehension that we have a chairman who is essentially not obeying the law. he was told to come up with

speculation limits, position limits. he hasn't done that, and what many members of the senate and the house are now saying, you have got to obey the law. do it and excessive speculation. >> senator sanders, thank you for your time. >> thank you. >> better than -- michelle will join us on the ground from greece. counting down to the european close in 11 minutes from now, 10 minutes. more squauk on the street straight ahead. but we couldn't simply repeat history. we had to create it. introducing the 2013 lexus gs, with leading-edge safety technology, like available blind spot monitor... [ tires screech ] ...night view... and heads-up display. [ engine revving ] the all-new 2013 lexus gs. there's no going back.

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two sectors in neck active territory, materials and financials, financials taking a hit in part because of potential exposure to what might happen in europe. we'll have more from greece in a moment. let's bring in tom hagman to talk specifically about the financials. you thought we were right for profit taking anyway, i understand. >> absolutely. i mean, the group, the sectors had a great run since the beginning of the year. valuations in particular are looking stretched, you know,

going into the capital program next week with the fed, and i think investors are using some of the data am coming out of europe in terms of the slowdown in terms, growth profile, whether that is in china or in the eu, and as kind of a starting point to start to take some of the money off the table, particularly with some of the higher data names that we're seeing today. >> you mean an excuse, using it as an execution. >> again, i think the key point is the slowing growth globally. that is certainly something that top of mind with investors today and when you start to see the beginnings of that slowdown and the on going concern in terms of how the eu and globally that slowdown could have a direct impact here on the u.s., investors have to pay attention and given the run we've had thus far you certainly have to start thinking about taking some profits off the table at this point in time. >> todd, which stocks were you

referring to when you said valuations were starting to look stretched and what kind of valuation were you using as your benchmark? >> yeah. what we're seeing today, you know, melissa, is really the under performers being bank of america, citigroup, suntrust, key corp, and a lot of them having well out performed over the course of the year. valuations looking a little bit lofty. right now we're looking at a group trading at just north of 13 times forward earnings, above the s&p multiple. investors are starting to question the run they've had thus far. we're going into a port and regulatory event next week, and i think we're all using between the global growth slowdown, some of the news coming out of europe, the strength in the group, it is a good reason to start taking profits off the table. >> we're out of time. anywhere that you would be a buyer at the moment? >> absolutely.

this is an opportunity to rotate out of the higher beta names and start rotating into the quality names, names like p & c, fifth third, wells fargo. they'll do very well. they have a nice growth trajectory coming on board and i think they'll be rewarded getting into those names. >> thanks for the advice. good of you to join us. minutes away from the close in europe. we'll take you there when the bell sounds and get the details on the impact in the usa and michelle cabrera will be live from greece. what is going on with the greek debt swap that has so worried this market? but proven technologies allow natural gas producers to supply affordable, cleaner energy, while protecting our environment. across america, these technologies protect air - by monitoring air quality and reducing emissions... ...protect water - through conservation and self-contained recycling systems... ... and protect land - by reducing our footprint

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from the close in europe, minutes away, and clearly it is going to be a negative close. it has been a broad base retreat during of the course of the session and the banks in france are hit and look at the price action on the national indices. this is 230, when you get the shutdown, i beg your pardon, when wall street opens and you can see the way in which really europe in advance of that anticipated that it could be rough here and then really a sense with some fray into negative territory. have a look at the french banks and broad based markdown across the board, and you see the french banks have taking a blow today, down about 6%.

interesting also to see the way in which you saw the dollar spiking, right away across the board in anticipation of the move here, so the euro, the pound, and the australian dollar are all down significantly during the course of the session. i think that's important. clearly it puts commodities on the back. >> the markets are closing now. >> here you have it. this is the close around europe. it is across the board. notice spain, france, down over 3%. these are big moves on the session today. in this amid this back drop, let me just point out to you inevitably if you're having risk assets being sold, you are going to get peripheral government debt being sold and if we can have a look at where we are on the spreads in italy and spain, inevitably they have risen. we continue to -- it is not italy that's the bad boy any longer over in europe. it is very much a course and

with the spanish yields that continue to rise after of course a huge rally that brought them down. a lot of people are talking about what's going on in greece. we have a deadline for the private debt swap. let's go to michelle ka brar a my colleague will covering the event. michelle, is this psi going to fail? >> it is going to be a squeaker for sure and that's why you see nervousness in the market. we are 48 hours away from the deal expiring, 3 p.m. new york time on thursday is when bond holders have to decide whether or not they will participate, accept this offer, and analysts have looked through, made their best guesstimates about who owns how much of what. they think that at least 72% of bond holders will tender their bonds, but for this deal to happen, you need 75% to tender their bonds. that's the problem. they added up the greek social security system, the greek banks, the steering committee, the best guesstimate about the

creditors who have come toward to say they're going to participate and you don't know about the hedge funds. it was just a couple days ago the clearing agencies for greece were trying to figure out who even owned the bonds. so the nervousness is this is going to be a squeaker. on thursday at 3:00 new york time if we get no announce meants, we can assume that that means good news, they've gotten the deal done. if they make an announcement, it would likely be they have to extend the offer because they have not gotten 75% of the face value of the bonds handed in. that's what we're waiting to hear. if they get -- go ahead. >> i just want to clarify. i mean, okay, it is a squeaker. what are the levels by which you go from a structured, orderly default that we can all deal with that isn't a problem to something that is disorderly because it is several steps down the line, isn't it? we're not talking about crisis here now, are we?

>> it is from 74 to 75. if you get 75%, then they can go to brussels, get permission to impose this collective action clause which forces all of the bond holders, 100%, to go along with the deal. if they don't get 75%, then they cannot do that. the deal does not happen. the sweetener does not happen, and then the march 20th payment of $14.5 billion becomes a big, large, looming problem that they have to solve all over again. does somebody put up money to pay that or do we have a disorderly default? greece does not have the money. >> are you saying that a disorderly default by greece is possibly on the cards? >> oh, if they don't get the deal done, absolutely. the plan b, what is plan b? you have to figure out, remember, march 20th is the issue. 14.5 billion. if they get this deal done that number is cut in half on the face value, and then you only have to put up 15 cents.

you go from having to pay 14.5 billion to paying under $2 billion. it becomes a smaller payment. that's why this is so crucial just to avoid that deadline. >> got it, michelle. shaw very much. we'll talk to you a lot more over the coming hours. >> you heard it from michelle, disorderly default is on the table and this could be a squeaker. >> i think the big story, we don't know who owns what still. i have never seen a break down. we know the if represents 450 banks, supposedly half of the greek debt, but we don't know who owns the rest of it. we know hedge funds have bought some of this debt, and we don't know whether there may be an interest some of them not have the deal succeed. we don't know what levels they bought in and may be circumstances under which they would be doing better if in fact there was a disorderly default. that's part of a mess associated

with this here is what i do know the declines in the stock market are not exclusively related to the declines we're seeing in greece or the greece worries. it is about global growth slowing down. a tight shot on this. i want to emphasize this is what the market is responding to. when you see headlines like today, 2.1% gdp growth in brazil, that's not supposed to happen. brazil has bigger growth than that europe, gdp, europe is in recession. we got that today. china cut the growth target yesterday and we only have very modest expectations here in the united states. simon and i were talking about this a little while ago, 3% about the best you can expect in the united states. this is about slowing global growth and the stock market is telling you that right around -- right across the board. take a look at brazil and the stock market. all the big names there are down 3, 4, 5% on this gdp story. volley, a big mining company, another big energy company and goal is the national airline. it is down 5% right now.

p pettrobra is down. they have problems. the currency is too strong. the taxes are too high. will you see stimulus programs in greece. here in the united states, the cyclicals. watch the coal stocks, the rail stocks, union pacific, 2, 3% declines and all of the name there is, that tells you you have global growth concerns going on. finally, a little bit of perspective on this. the s&p 500, take a tight shot. this is the year-to-date. assume we're down to 1,345, lost 20, we're at the levels we were last at on february 15th. that's right. this debacle we're seeing we lost 14 days of trading. assume it is a disaster today. tomb we're down another 20 points and the s&p is down at 1,325. that would be the lowest level going back to february 1st. i am not saying it is not a bad

day. it is a bad day. keep perk oif on where we have been. >> wipe out half the gains we have seen this year. >> that's right. >> that's a lot. >> that's still a lot. my point is going back to levels that we had since february 15th, certainly disappointing, but it is hardly a complete debacle. >> today is the an verse of hitting 666 on the s&p. today is the third on versery of doing that. >> yes. >> the third? >> not the closing low, but -- >> that sends chills up my spine. play the twilight zone. that was a favorite for ages and ages of the guys. >> right. all right, bob. >> see you later. bring in dan green house, chief global strategist. what's your take on the sell off today? >> i think bob not surprisingly got it exactly right. one of the big things wall street was talking about is how long we had gone without ai 1%

sell off and the most since '95 was the year and here we are with the 1% sell off we have been talking about a week or two and everybody is throwing themselves out the window. in reality it is a minor giveback as bob noted. i think to the extent that you believe you have built something structurally sound here, toads does no real fundamental or technical damage yet, but if you are someone and that i would argue is most people right now who think we're looking a little topee and starting to turn down, this is arguably the beginning of with what may be a 5 to 10% drop in stocks >> particularly if you focus on the fundamentals, and that's the big issue and what those might be. for example, the fundamentals in europe as strong as we thought they were? possibly not. >> i would agree. i don't have an ear piece in but i gather from what utsd michelle was talking about the prospect of disorderly default in greece, something we never took off the table but it seemed like a lot of people were assuming this would get done. in terms of our investing outlook, btig has been

relatively neutral since 1320, 1325 because of the type of thing i imagined. >> goldman put a note out where they were suggesting they did not see over the next three months now a main case there would be a major correction in equities. that was off the table. you're seeing they're wrong in that? ? i would argue anybody and i don't know who wrote the note because i have varying levels of knowledge and awareness of who writes what, but i would argue anyone who takes off the table the prospect of a disorderly default in greece is doing a disservice zi meant a major correction in the european equity market. >> then that would be a mistake. >> if something goes wrong, this is really quite simple. if something goes wrong, then something goes wrong. it is going to have negative ramifications. it might be a tail risk, a low probability outcome. it is not aoutcome none the less. >> let me boil this down. this confuses me a little bit. you say essentially a minor giveback, really not a big deal. since 1320 the firm has biskly been neutral saying don't add money necessarily to stocks, so you don't -- but you haven't necessarily recommended stocks

since 20 points on the s&p. >> it is roughly 3% or so. i think that's a tolerable move. no one will pick the top or bottom. i was speaking and do speak in the context of a 1% decline. this is not some sort of horrible event for equity markets that have undergone something akin to a 20, 25% rally. >> we have aexceeded a lot of the forecasts for work and the gains we're supposed to get the entire year. what do we do for the next 9.5 months? >> they're more likely to be wrong. generally speaking i think what you see is a lot of people taking up the price targets up the gdp targets and you had lazlo on, and in our opinion based on our meetings with clients a lot of people have taken the view things are better than expected and equities should reflect that in a perpetual circumstance. >> because that is consensus you don't necessarily believe that should be the view as an

investor? >> i am not contrary to that sense. i argue there is meaningful downside risk that exists in the market right now. >> you wouldn't recommend getting constructive on stocks until 1,320? >> i am waiting to see. there is a lot of unknowns right now. i am waiting to see. we have a fed meeting next week. there are things on the horizon that i think investors are long, stay long. if you're short, stay short. there is nothing wrong with taking a step back and say wait and see what happens. thursday is a very important day. >> good to see you. still to come, commodities falling as focus shifts away from iran and back to the u.s. economy. a closer look and first a look at winners and loser from the european trading session.

coming up next, trading down day. should i buy dip today, wait it out or get short? coal stocks dropping to multi-year lows.

how do you treat this? we'll have the outlook on oils prices from the ceo of mexico's biggest oil company, pemex, coming up next on the halftime report. back to melissa on "squawk on the street." as the cleanup effort continues after 150 tornados touched down in five days, new statistics say is caused more than $2 billion in insured damages. mary thompson is live at hq with an update. >> echo cat is estimating the tornados slamming the country caused between 1 and $2 billion in insured losses. during the five-day period the preliminary count of 150 tornados touching down in the midwest and south are much higher than normal number this time of year. the seven year average is 123. this year alone we have seen more than double that number with a total of 272 tornados hitting the u.s. as devastating as the tornados were from an insured loss basis

the damage far less than any of the string of tornados hitting the u.s. last spring. the insurance information institute which tracks these numbers including the tornados and thunderstorms when they add up the damages. despite the wild weather in the u.s., on a global basis catastrophe losses are muted so far this year. they estimated global insured losses including the tornados stand between 2.5 to $3 billion, well plo the 14 to 15 billion reported last year through march. those numbers including closs from the new zealand earthquakes. jose miranda says while tornado activity is tracking above normal this year, it doesn't mean levels will stay this high through the rest of the season. right now it is difficult to gauge how costly this year will be for insurers. last year spring tornados cost aig over half a billion and travelers 1 billion, and chub 2 billion and half a billion at the hartford. far more costly than those reported this year so far and in

total insured losses from tornados totaled a record 25.8 billion in 2011. simon, back to you. thank you very much. we should noticed on the markets stabilized on the major indices and still the materials and financials are edging further into negative territory. more after the break.

this is where we are on the

market, a rough session. financials and materials are taking us deeper in negative territory. 74% of the s&p 500 is showing head. apple, however, is an interesting charge. >> it is a turn around. we saw what it opened at, close to down 2 plus percent and here we are turn around in apple shares for brief second they were positive, but we're turning back to the downside. still well off the lows in session. >> you can see this coming if you looked at the futures before we came into trade today. you saw the move on the dollar. you saw the move on the international markets. in particular, you showed the way in which the australian dollar was being hit. it was going to be a risk off day. on that note let's see what is happening? >> we're seeing a sell off in commodities as well. looks like we're once again going to test the low of the day here in crude. what is interesting is we have bad news on europe, europe in

recession, and potential greek default and looks like they'll restart talks with iran. we're not seeing a big sell off given all of those things. >> that's true. we have come down from the numbers of last week when we had that bogus report out. we did trade over 110. that was in after hours session. we did -- we're going right back to where the gap in the range has been. we were at 103.90 to 104.61. that was the top end of the range for a long time. it is not a coincidence we stop at 104.61 today. we're bouncing off the top end of that i think ra. we have the push and pull going on. today is risk off, gold, silver, dollar rallying, and the safe haven of the dollar, and everything else down. at the same time, mr. netanyahu left no doubt israel is on their own on this. they do not need our okay. how much pullback can you have in the face of the iran escalation of the nuclear program and israel's response to

it? it is a push and pull we'll be with for quite a while. >> even with the u.n. security members say we'll sit down and resume talks here, you think people are still focusing on that? >> i think the prime minister addressed the issue what they think about iran talks and that is just as he mentioned friday night or saturday night that's just running out the clock. it is in iran's interest to stretch this out as long as possible and accelerate the problem at least from the israeli's eyes and i am not sure that works for the israelis and for the u.s. and other members they think that will give sanctions a chance to work and see flexibility on iran's part. i think the prime minister poo-pooed that last night. >> on the domestic front the folk from transcanada expect to start on the bottom leg, the curbing to gulf coast leg of the pipeline and told sharon they expect can to start this summer

and we expect to see the sea way pipeline come online this summer. is that going to relieve some of the situation in terms of bottleneck in curbing, do you think? >> it should. the question is what is the timetable they will start? it was supposed to be april 1st. they moved it to june 1st. >> for the sea way. >> when that happens i think it will affect the spread between wti and brent and probably will gradually narrow. of course any geo political event could make that act differently and a delay in the timetable which is certainly possible could delay the remedying of the situation in cushing. >> great. thanks so much for joining us, ray. am coming up next we head back to the floor to get another word from the traders. back after this. [ male announcer ] if you believe the mayan calendar,

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low here. what's your take on what's happening today? it feels like something that should have happened either yesterday or maybe even last week, to your point, simon, post ltro. >> and we talked about this last night, the inevitable sell off everyone has been waiting on has not been coming and the longer you wait, the more concerned you get. >> last night you couldn't decide where to argue as a buy signal or sell signal. >> exactly. i think it took a day to let the chinese news sink in and apple's action yesterday and combined they said i'll take profits and i think that's what you're seeing today. >> is this the pause that refreshes or the beginning of a larger correction? >> i think the fa account that everyone is calling for somewhat of minor correction, 5, 10% range, this could be the beginning, get us down to a level that a lot of people feel more comfortable jumping in. i don't think this is going to be a terrible thing and may be a good buying opportunity in the short run. >> especially if you think the consensus on the street is for the jobs report to come in solid

will i and if the numbers are higher we could set up for a nice bounce. >> absolutely. two day sell off or three day sell off doesn't necessarily give you too much opportunity to jump back in this market. i think most people look at the u.s. equity market as the best equity market to be in, so any time there is a pullback, i think you'll see people jumping in. >> on that point, in the whisper numbers were rising for friday, the market wouldn't sell off, would it? >> i don't think it would sell off. what i am saying is if they come in as anticipated or as the whisper numbers are, i think you get a pause in the sell off and take another look and see is there going to be continuation or not. >> what about super tuesday? i think is that going to have much impact on the equities market? the only thing i see is if let's say romney has a clean sweep or does a little bit better, you will probably have a little more clarity who the nominee is going to be and i think any clarity is good for the market. >> is romney's stock market positive? >> it is a tough one. i would say he is the most

positive of any republican candidates. that's my opinion. >> in terms of oil, a big over hang in the market. it is down for the second day here at this point. not a positive at all for the market. >> no. i think for the consumer it is obviously a very good thing. for the market, not necessarily. i think unfortunately i think with the uncertainty going on in iran and the middle east, i think oil prices will stay above the 100 for quite some time here. >> thank you very much for that. it does look like we're at session lows right now and on the s&p. >> what is on fast money. >> a preview of the ipad 3 and we'll be on the conference call post earnings after the close. that's all and that's at 5:00 eastern time. >> don't forget to follow us throughout the day on cnbc. we're not just covering what happens with the market but the countdown to super tuesday with the special programming tonight

with both john howard and maria. >> and thatar