today on a day where we can show the major averages basically sitting at session highs two hours or so ahead of the deadline for the greek debt swap deal. we'll have the latest headlines on that obviously at 3:00 p.m. i'll see you for the "closing bell" with maria. follow me on twitter. "power lunch" begins right now. >> thank you, scott. and we have three hours to go in the trading day. and the bulls are clawing back from tuesday's selloff. investors are pretty optimistic now about the greek swap debt deal and about tomorrow's jobs report. but the bull market turns three tomorrow. so after a huge runup, does it still have room to run? ty. >> three years old, a toddler by any standard. doubling down on dividends. the cio of equities at black rock, runs $255 billion and a big, big fan of dividend stocks. he's going to tell you why and which ones he likes best. brian. >> like the old college dining hall. it's taco thursday. well, specifically locos tacos.

it's a new taco bell treat served in a doritos chip. the ceo will spill the bean on his new partnership with pepsi's frito-lay division. >> i'm sue herera with tyler mathisen and brian shactman as well. "power lunch" begins right now. >> of course we'll know details from the greek bond swap deal overnight. then the big jobs number comes out. for today stocks higher for a second day in a row on optimism for both. as scott wapner said, we are near session highs. we gathered steam in the last hour up 75 in the dow, almost 1% in the s&p. the nasdaq up over 1%. the pulse of the markets, i want to check out the s&p sector heat map. everything in positive territory. it's a bit of a mixed market. not totally risk-on because health care up 1.25%. materials and industrials up as well. midday movers, i want to focus

on a few retailers. coach hitting a new high. the ceo will be on "closing bell" today in the 4:00 hour eastern time. american eagle added to the buy list at goldman sachs. and hot topic, a hot stock. up 12% better than expected earnings and guidance. now, on the downside mcdonald's in a bit of a pickle international growth slowing. same store sales lower than expected. down a big 3%. and, again, it's down below $100 a share. aig up more than 2.5%. the treasury selling a chunk of shares in the company. and green mountain is lower by 3.5%. starbucks planning a new initiative in the single cup category. herb greenberg deep in thought on this one flt he'll have a full cup-by-cup report of course on "street signs." let's head to bob pisani. we've picked up a little steam here. >> it's three-to-one advancing to declining stocks, brian. for a second day in a row that's a very strong number. don't usually get back-to-back

like that. we also had volume slightly picking up but not appreciably. the euro up, dollar down, all in all that means good news for most of the market. specifically for those old risk-on groups. it to put up the sectors today. very important point that's going to happen here, see the materials, industrials, discretionary, technology, financials, those are the leaders today. we're at the third anniversary of the bottom in the stock market in 2009. remember that? the s&p went down 57% to about 670. look who the leadership is. since then it's the same group that's the leadership today, the consumer discretionary, industrials, tech, financials and materials. exactly the same sector. the classic risk-on group. look at the chart of the s&p 500. remember, we dropped 57% from the historic highs in 2007 all the way down to around 675 or so on the s&p 500. and, sue, if you double 675, you get to exactly where we are now, about 1,3 60. so the s&p 100% above where it was exactly three years ago.

of course, sue, remember it was the same way in 2007. >> absolutely. it sure was. >> here's your leaders. >> bob, thanks a million. >> okay. >> appreciate it. let's switch on the "power lunch" power surge and drill down on the stories driving the day. key economic data out today. and of course tomorrow on jobs. and there's some new release data on how americans are bouncing back since the financial crisis. our steve liesman is here. steve, one of those data points is that people are ever so slowly starting to take on a little bit more debt. >> that's right, sue. that was kind of a surprise just an hour ago when we got the data. the first increase in household debt in the fourth quarter since the middle of 2008. not sure that means deleveraging is over, but perhaps people are just a little more comfortable with where their balance sheets are right now. the increase just 0.25%. nothing to get excited about. you can see where robust gains in consumer debt were. it came because of a 2.2% gain in consumer credit. that's the best gain since the recession. and a 0.4% decline in mortgage

debt. that's the smallest decline since the second quarter of 2009. household net worth gained $1.2 trillion. overall that's because home values fell by $ 213. and equity values rose by about $900 billion. there's some other stuff in there to round it out. one issue on jobless claims sue just mentioned. while the level of claims has come down, that's the inputs into the system, the total number of americans drawing jobless insurance remains very high. 7.4 million americans drawing on jobless insurance. down from a peak of 11.5 million. but still, you can see right there way above normal. and that's in part due to continuous series of extensions come from congress. critical question, with the job report tomorrow is the job market strong enough for government to dial back on those benefits even more than it already has? sue. >> indeed, steve. let's build up on that and bring kelly evans into our conversation at this point. kelly, when you see these figures and those data points, what does it say to you specifically as it refers to the benefit question?

>> yeah. steve mentioned, there's more focus on how much more we need to continue extending benefits and what impact that's having on unemployment. i would push back a little bit on this idea that extended benefits are causing any degree of unemployment. basically there's not as much hiring activity. the climbs were broad based. still very, very high by historical standards. in the 40% range. is that caused by extended benefits? unlikely. there's been some work taking a look at the impact what this has been. may have boosted the unemployment rate by about a point. but once people started to exhaust the benefits -- >> kelly, i think you look too narrowly if you just look at unemployment. work done by none other than alan krueger, president obama's top economic advisor, has shown that things like job search increase when jobless claims come to an end. and also there has been work that shows at least part anywhere from a quarter point to maybe a full percentage point in

the increase in the unemployment rate is the result -- >> steve, i don't think there's any question it's having an impact. i think it's a matter of do you turn around and point to the extension causing unemployment staying higher or this high. i think it's too much of a reach to say it's the cause. >> i think one critical thing is whether or not, you know, what we're debating right now. how big is what we call the output gap out there? if the fed is getting a false sense because claims are higher -- or the unemployment rate is higher than it really would be if they dialed back on claims, might be making a policy mistake here. >> steve, what's the estimate for tomorrow? especially given the adp number we saw earlier this week. >> i think everybody's kind of comfortable in the 200 range. i would say 170 to 220 would be something that would be in the market's comfort zone right there with an 8.3% unemployment rate. i have read some things that it may tick down to 8.2%. the market really didn't change off of the adp. the estimated adp accurately and adp has been on top of the bos number the past several months.

>> sue, watch the 200,000 level tomorrow morning. i think after the adp numbers when people generally expecting a strong report because of the lower jobless claims figures we've seen lately, anything shy of that could be a disappointment. >> indeed. thanks all. appreciate it. all right. speaking of jobs as we just mentioned, the monthly employment report is out tomorrow and it's usually a market mover. but is the data being leaked to wall street ahead of the official release? serious issue with huge ramifications of course. eamon javers is investigating that part of the story for us. and he is in washington. hi, eamon. >> hi, sue. as we get ready for tomorrow's jobs numbers, cnbc has learned that government officials are concerned about potential early leaks of the employment data to wall street. the department of labor has commissioned a review of security procedures surrounding the handling and the release of that data. and that review has been conducted by sandia national laboratories. the same organization tasked with protecting the nation's nuclear arsenal. cnbc has also learned that

officials at the energy efficiency administration which releases market moving statistics on natural gas, oil and electricity markets have blocked the ip addresses of computers they say appear to have a malicious intent to slow down the website's release of data for the general public while speeding up access for themselves. now, officials i talked to would not provide many details here, but they described the moves as a new round in an ongoing battle between the government and financial market players armed with large amounts of money and sophisticated high speed computer technology. so, tyler, as you look at this issue, this is an ongoing battle here, but in the era of high frequency trading, the question is what kind of advantage are high speed traders getting in terms of government data that they might be able to get before everybody else in the investing public, tyler? >> seconds, even milliseconds can add up and count here. eamon, i know this is a story you'll keep following. >> you bet. >> meanwhile investors also keeping a close eye on what else, greece.

we are less than two hours away now from a crucial deadline for bondholders to decide whether they'll go along with the debt restructuring deal. our chief international correspondent, michelle caruso-cabrera, is live in athens with the very latest. michelle. >> reporter: tyler, we are on the verge of a watershed moment in modern economic times. for the first time in more than 60 years, a developed nation will tell the world it cannot meet its financial obligations. tomorrow, when this deal is announced and we believe it will announced, greece officially becomes the largest debt restructuring in history. and you can call it officially a restructuring, but a default by any other name is still extremely painful for everyone involved and deeply embarrassing to the european union. once this hurdle is passed, there are still many, many struggles for greece. they see deep, deep recession for the rest of the year, high

unemployment rates and a population that is extremely angry. we're showing you video right now of workers once again cleaning the doors of european central bank. these are beautiful brass doors covered with graffiti every time there are violent protests. this is the third time that the workers have had to clean the doors. they don't bother to clean them every time because it's been so repeatedly -- it's happened so repeatedly. this is a nation that is extremely frustrated. and they know there is a lot more to come. we interviewed one man bho is an unlikely protester, 40 years old, a father of two, but he is angry like the rest of the population. he's got two young children. he's been without an income for a couple of years. his wife's salary has been cut by 60%. his parents' pension cut dramatically as well by 30%. they are helping him and his family with food and expenses. and he says he sees across the

population just how angry everyone is. >> there's a lot of anger. there's a lot of distress in people. we see it every day. we don't see it only when you see it when you see the major events in center of athens. we see it every day out in the streets. >> reporter: the details are 3:00 p.m. eastern time the deal officially expires. the numbers that have been reported by the wire services say the deal absolutely gets done, but not without triggering credit default swaps to make sure they can get enough participation from bondholders. guys, back to you. >> michelle, take us through the next 24-36 hours. what happens? what do we expect to learn? and then looking farther down the pike, what will go on? >> reporter: okay. so at 3:00 eastern time that's when the deal closes. we expect at 1:00 a.m. eastern time, which is 8:00 a.m. athens time, they are going to officially announce the results.

we think at that time based on those numbers we're going to know whether or not that means a credit default swaps will be triggered. there will likely be discussions with brussels either tonight or tomorrow in brussels to make sure they get official sanction from the european partners to do exactly that, trigger the credit default swaps. gets 86% participation at least and we have to see whether or not that brings down greece's debt to a level that is sustainable. remember, even though this deal reduces their debt by 100 billion when it comes to the private sector, they get 130 billion euros of new debt from the european partners and they have to make a lot of changes to their economy to grow so that way they can hopefully pay back that money. >> michelle, thank you very much. we know you'll be following it for us through the night and into tomorrow. now, this has been one heck of a power surge so far, but guess what's coming next? brian shactman's here to explain. >> it gets even bigger. the largest solar storm in five

years heading toward earth. sounds like a good bruce willis movie, but it's actually real. there's a legitimate concern that it could disrupt utility grids, satellite knanavigation airline routes. the gigantic cloud of charged particles sped through space at 4 million miles per hour before landing has already caused airlines to reroute planes flying over the north and south poles. flares of this time have been known to effect gps and oil pipelines as well as knocking out solar panels, tv, radio and phone signals and could cripple entire city power grids. there is one silver lining here. tonight the stargazers could be treated to one heck of a northern lights display as far south as the mid-atlantic states. tyler, i know last night was pretty much a full moon. if you get a clear shot, you might get a treat for sure. >> it was beautiful last night. jupiter and venus up there in the sky. it was gorgeous. i wonder if my onstar's going to work tomorrow.

>> maybe not. you never know. >> up next, a milestone three years ago tomorrow the market bottomed and started to turn up. the s&p is up 100% since then. nasdaq up by 130%. is the bull tired? does it still have legs? we'll talk about how to play the market. so let's take a look at the three-year performance of the likes of the russell, s&p mid caps and transports. russell three-year move to the upside 128%. the s&p 400 mid cap 138% and the transports 133%. back in a minute.

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welcome back to "power lunch." rick santelli here on the floor of the cme group. two-day chart of 10-year note yields pretty much says it all. yes, yields have moved higher as greece looks like they're going to get the debt swap off the ground. but remember we're still at 201 up three basis points on the day and about 8 basis points underneath the top of a four-month yield trading range. intraday euro, definitely a good day for the euro. many would have thought 132 would be 136 it isn't. while everybody's talking about a birthday, there's another birthday i'm looking at. on saturday, march 10th, will be the 12 year, one dozen years, since the nasdaq had its close above 5,000. 5,048 to be exact. look at the 12-year chart. something else happened around then. look at a dollar index chart

from the same period. mr. greenspan, the maestro, liquefied to monetize that big bubble trying to of course fuel some other investments. it's sad it turned out to be houses. back to you. >> really good points there, rick. remember that 5,000 on the nasdaq. >> oh, yeah. >> whenever you think about where it sits today. there you see it up 133% in the past three years. don't forget that 5,000 in the rearview mirror. tomorrow of course is the bull market's three-year birthday. bouncing toddler since then. the dow, s&p and nasdaq all surging as you see right there. so the question is, is there still room for this bull to run? joining us with their thoughts, president and cio of castle and chief market strategist with bell curve trading. bill, when you were here about two months ago, you said it was the time to take money off the table. that you thought that the valuations indicated that maybe there was a little bit more to run, but you were defensive. has anything changed your mood

since then? >> not really, tyler. when we spoke in january, i talked about our range for the s&p for 2012, 13,070 1370 on the upside. talked about the dow trading up to possibly 13,000 so far that's where we've peaked. i wouldn't be surprised if you push those numbers a little bit on the upside, 1400, 1420 in the s&p. maybe 13,500 for the dow. you are closer to the upper end of the range than lower end. so we begin to reduce not add to it. there are far too many issues domestically and internationally to see the market just run here on the upside. remember last year, s&p fell basically flat, but in between from may through october we had a 20% selloff. that's t pitfall you want to avoid. we think you're vulnerable to a decent sized down move here.

take profit and play a little defense now. >> jerry, do you agree? are we going to have a trending market for the rest of the year? and if that is indeed the case, certainly makes your selection process very, very important. >> yeah. i think most folks don't want to get too far out on a limb talking about the real structural positives in this market. we're on the other side of that. we'll acknowledge that days like tuesday and issues in the world economy are always going to put us at risk. we're of the mind though to look at now as it has been a big change in the structural underpinnings in these markets. i don't think anyone can argue 12, 13 times earnings makes any group of stocks expensive. what we have to ask ourselves is what will drive them higher. world liquidity wave about to hit the shores of all these economies that we think will do that. and you just can't ignore when now the european problems have been put behind us in a broad context. and their economy's willingness to absorb some of these bad

credits, it's going to put all markets in a more positive framework. and this could last for two or three years. we're just really getting started. and that's why, you know, we can debate over what issue matters. tuesday was a perfect example of how much upside there is, though, when you look at what people worry about. >> i saw you sort of react there. i want you to respond to jerry. obviously you come from different disciplines in the way you analyze the market, more technical on your side. maybe more fundamental on his. so why don't you just respond there? >> well, i think, tyler, a lot of things jerry said have been reflected in the fact that we've rallied 28% off the october 4th lows. i mean, a lot of the improvements in the economy over the last five or six months, the liquidity injections, that's already been reflected. i mean, basically people want to make the assumption that we're in a whole new bull market here because we rallied, you know, significant amount off those october 4th lows. all that's really done is got you back toward the upper end of

the range. as i said, maybe push a little more on the upside, but the real issue here in our opinion is the risk/reward doesn't make sense here. at these levels there is still many, many issues to get through. our own economic recovery is still fragile, not to mention what's going on in europe and potentially in the middle east. >> so, jerry, where do i make money if indeed you are right and we have a two to three year time horizon now where we may have a market that moves upwards, where do i put cash to work? >> we've grossly undiscounted the upside in the cyclical part of the economy. we are not paying nearly enough for the earnings of energy companies, as an example. a lot of these stocks are still well below last year's levels and price of oil comfortably in the 100s. same true in technology and apple the bellwether there. i don't care what you say, at 12 times earnings, it's not an expensive stock and there's a lot of growth left in apple.

same true of qualcomm and the others. do the industrials, do the transports, you have a long list to choose from. and don't forget the financials because as the world recognizes that the governments have now taken big systemic risk off the table, the opportunities and financials are going to begin to blossom. >> gentlemen, you have made your cases. thanks very much. we appreciate you being with us. >> all right. straight ahead, what's the deal on deals? the morgan stanley global head of m&a has his finger on the pulse of that. >> he's at a big conference in the big easy. and we're paying bounties. get the reference there? paying bounties for his advice. he's going to talk live in two minutes. [ mujahid ] there was a little bit of trepidation,

not quite knowing what the next phase was going to be, you know, because you been, you know, this is what you had been doing. you know, working, working, working, working, working, working. and now you're talking about, well you know, i won't be, and i get the chance to spend more time with my wife and my kids. it's my world. that's my world.

♪ we always like to look at the cboe volatility index, otherwise known as the vix and it is down yet again today. 1790 coming down i guess it was tuesday that it was up there back above 20. let's check in now with scott wapner. he's back after a couple of days out. what's on your radar, sir? >> there's been a lot of talk, tyler, over the last 24 hours about the apple ecosystem following the announcement of the new ipad. that's why i'm looking again today at armed holdings. look at the stock. it's up 4% today.

morgan stanley out with a positive note. it's in the ipad and iphone. those are the chips arm holdings makes. morgan stanley raises the stock to overweight. says earnings estimates should rise. says it also has an advantage over intel and mobile commuting and also it's a player in the new windows 8 operating system for mobile. so it's in a number of key areas here. they say the selloff that the stock has seen has been overdone that the fact people are worried about it losing market share to intel was overdone. and now is a reason to pick up some of those shares. and investors seem to be doing that today, ty. highs of the day up 4.25%, sue, for arm holdings. >> thank you very much, scott. well, 2011 certainly was not a banner year for deals. market volatility soared, but will m&a activity pick up this year as the volatility has subsided somewhat? let's find out from a special guest at two lane university. andrew. >> reporter: sue, thanks. you are asking the right

question. i'm here with rob kindler, vice chairman and head of global m&a at morgan stanley. thanks for being here. >> good to be here. >> sue just asked the question. you get a chance to hear it but 2011 not a great year, 2012 in terms of m&a deal making and i think of m&a deal making as sort of the ultimate barometer of confidence in the boardroom. so far not so hot. i was at dinner with some of your colleagues last night. it was sort of a pity party. >> oh, they should get over it. >> so what's going to happen this year? >> last year actually it wasn't that bad. it was a flat year, little up from the year before. what happened was last year was pretty good early on and then got fairly slow. >> right. >> and i think the reason i think it got slow is all the volatility in the fall. big swings up 500 points, down 500 points. and people just stopped talking. this year there's less volatility, but there's a lag in m&a. and people i think are starting to talk now. >> so you have all these metrics, so much cash on the balance sheet. all the dynamics you would have thought would be there, i would

argue should have been there last year. do you really believe they're coming back? and how big? and what's your backlog like? >> would i ever do that? come on. the backlog actually started to get good in the last few weeks but because of what i said, people weren't talking volatile markets at the end of the year. i think you have to do m&a. if you're a global company, which most companies are, you can't get organic growth in your business. >> what happens -- iran, something happens there, greece, we still don't know what ultimately happens. is that going to put a damper on this? >> well, it may slow things down. but the fact is at the end of the day you're looking out three to five years, where are you going to get growth in your business? >> okay. big issue at this conference in particular is this el paso decision that came out late last week around goldman sachs and what happened there, morgan stanley was involved. judge strooin who was is here

was very frustrated with goldman sachs. i'm curious if you will comment on that. you were the second bank on that deal and seemed like an inherent conflict representing el paso in a deal with kinder morgan where it also owned a stake in kinder morgan unrelated to morgan stanley or you. >> ha ha. look. i'm not going to comment on that case, but i would say that the judges in delaware i've known him for over a decade. these guys are very smart. they're very sophisticated. they understand banks do have conflicts. in fact, i toured a law school class on conflicts. so it's not that they don't understand that banks have conflicts. in fact, he has said many times that he understands that these big full-service banks that you actually want them to be involved because they have the capital market, expertise and all that. >> you want the conflict. >> you want the expertise. and with that comes conflicts. the point isn't that there are

conflicts, the question is how do you handle them. so from my perspective, i think the lesson is that these judges are smart, they look to see where the conflicts are and how people deal with them. >> okay. we're going to have to run in just a second. tell me about this idea that you hired a second bank to work on a deal because the first bank is conflicted that that's somehow the new technology "cleansing bank" sounded like a lot of bogus to me. >> that's not new. the reality is boutique firms and others have been brought in for years where there's a view that the bank that has been there, the incumbent bank, has some kind of conflict, and that can work. in fact, the courts recognize that can work. >> okay. we're going to have to live with that. robert kindler, morgan stanley, thanks for joining us. >> appreciate it, andrew. >> back to you, sue. >> thanks, andrew. brian shactman will be here. and bertha coombs is mining the metals. >> means, ends and dividends. black rock's chris lee vee says

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welcome back to "power lunch." brian shactman here. let's reset the markets because there are some interesting numbers here. we have a bit of a weaker dollar, see the 10-year note back above 2%. we have crude up, gold up $14. we'll get to that in a second. the nasdaq is the story of the three major indices up more than 1% and definitely outperforming. i want to look at the dow 30 heat map. mcdonald's at the bottom of the barrel all day long and energy a bit of a laggard. exxon mobil up and alcoa up more than 2% but mostly in the green today. little under the radar wanted to point out housing stocks. take a look at dr horton up and lennar up 5.3%. strong moves here two days in a row for housing stocks. i'm a little obsessed with sears holdings. i'm not sure why. not an easy one to understand with a company with sales slipping so much, but it's up more than 140% year-to-date and up another 4.5% today. if you're in it, you love it. let's go to gold.

and other metals. bertha coombs at the nymex. hey, bertha. >> hey, brian. gold rebounding after that big drop earlier this week. today really it's been moving along with the euro very strong today on the hopes for that greek swap deal tonight. when you take a look at gold and other currencies in the euro, gold and euros has the weak point today as mario draghi, ecb head said, he doesn't see more need for quantitative easing there, but gold and yen is what's on fire these days. dennis gartman telling me in fact that's his real long buy. it's really very strong right now. as far as the rest of the metals, recovery there as well. if you look back three years, silver has been the outperformer there. up more than 160 points. back over to you, sue. >> thank you so much, bertha. all right. today's power player is chris leavy. he hails from black rock where he advises on the fundamental or actively managed equities.

given that fire power under his control, it's interesting to note that he's doubling down on dividends despite the fact dividend stocks have lagged the s&p as companies continue to horde their cash. in a cnbc exclusive, we are very pleased to welcome chris to "power lunch." good to have you here. >> good afternoon. >> i am interested in the fact that you're so aggressive on the dividend stocks because they did have such a decent run last year. a lot of people think that what worked last year is not working this year. make the compelling cases as to why you should add on to the dividend play. >> there's three things with dividend stocks. the first is that we've hardly seen a medium. if you look at flows into the equity income category last year, it was only $22 billion. which sounds like a lot of money until you compare that to bonds. flows have been over $100 billion for three years in a row. >> that's true. >> secondly, the valuations just are not that stretched. 12 to 14 times earnings for a lot of these companies that pay reasonable dividends is also

compelling. and the third thing is for people who need income, which is a growing percentage of our population, this is the best deal in town for income. >> uh-huh. >> and given where interest rates are and people trying to make it on savings, they can't do it anymore. so the dividend stocks are -- when you say a reasonable dividend, what does that mean? >> what it means is that you don't necessarily want to stretch for the highest yields possible. >> that's what i'm asking. >> what you really want -- you want an above average dividend yield, but you really want to focus on dividend growth. and that's especially important for the investor base that owns these stocks. >> uh-huh. >> most people are going to have a very long retirement. and a fixed coupon may feel very good in your first year of retirement, but that purchasing power -- >> where do you find the dividend growers that have acceptable levels of dividends but not outlandishly high, number one? and number two, give me an example of one that in your portfolio, you say here's a

classic pick of mine? >> sure. i think there's a couple of areas that come to mind. one is in some of these global consumer companies, like coca-cola, where you can really ride the growth of the emerging middle class in some of the emerging economies, still reasonable valuation. the dividend yield just a little under 3%. and that's going to grow nicely at 7% to 9% for years, we think. another area that doesn't get talked about a lot with dividends is in the financial services sector. obviously we have a lot of dividend cuts and eliminations there, but we think dividend payout ratios will be on the rise. so something like jpmorgan. >> you would love to see apple pay a dividend? >> we would. >> should they? >> yes. >> and return cash to investors? >> that's a lot of money to put to work without giving any back to shareholders. >> you know, i wonder how you look at this. i think of investors who

probably felt going into 2007-2008 into 2009 that i'm in a dividend stock. and those dividends are pretty secure. general electric, they've been paying dividends for a long time. and they've been growing those dividends. and then a lot of those companies either slashed or eliminated it. was that a once-in-a-generation phenomenon or something you need to pay a lot of attention to? >> as a dividend investor, you always need to be thinking about that. and the best protection against avoiding dividend cutters is to really focus on the long-term growth of the dividends. that way you have some margin of safety before you get to a stage where you're cutting them. >> so make the case because a lot of people come on our network and they talk about high yielding corporate bonds that you get the safety, the yield and you can buy the blue chip companies at relatively attractive basis right now versus playing the dividend -- or do you do a combination of

both? >> the ideal portfolio would be low-quality bonds and high-quality stocks. >> uh-huh. >> high yield lower quality bonds, high yield is a euphemism for that. >> right. >> high-quality bonds are good value today for income. and then equities, high-quality stocks those yields are compelling and long-term growth rates are compelling there. i think that's how you would want to barbell those. >> chris, thank you for coming. hope you'll come back. >> my pleasure. >> up next when ty and i continue, we are going to turn orange powder into green taco bell. teaming up with doritos to bring you the latest taco. >> will it be a hit? i have a feeling it's looking pretty good. taco bell's ceo will join us. >> first on cnbc. back in a minute. her, doesn't it bother you that no one notices you?" and i'm like, "doesn't it bother you you're not reliable?" and they say, "shut up!" and i'm like, "you shut up." in business, it's all about reliability.

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ahead on "street signs," is the american consumer ready to consume more? we've got the exclusive results from a new rbc survey. plus we're calling it the trade

can you make serious money by investing in sirius xm? and what's brewing with coors? we'll debate the future of tap. that's all coming up next top of the hour on "street signs." sue, tyler, back to you on "power lunch." >> thank you very much, mandy. now let's get to courtney for a three in 30. hi, court? >> hi, soon. here we go. nasdaq, three stock stories in 30 seconds. dendreon shares lower than more than 8% on news that johnson & johnson prostate cancer drug having positive results hurting shares of dendreon and the possibility of shares for its prostate cancer drug. med vags shares up 15% because it has a prostate cancer drug too that's a close cousin to the johnson & johnson prostate cancer drug. last but not least, hot topic, shares up 11% trading at highs not seen in 19 years after positive earnings, good guidance and increased dividend by 14%. tyler, back to you. >> courtney, thank you very much. this is the highlight of the program right now.

i am telling you, it is so beautiful to sit here and behold a new taco. taco bell today unveiling the biggest product lunch in history -- its history. in its history. they may think it is the biggest product launch -- i don't know. the new doritos locos tacos. that's a taco bell taco with a shell made out of doritos nacho cheese chips. joining us first on cnbc from ir vine, california, is greg creed and darren rovell is here to join us. darren, why don't you kick off the questions? >> greg, i got to ask you this, when you think of it, you say this is a partnership between you and doritos as people know pepsico used to own frito-lay and you have a pepsi relationship. how does this partnership work? is this an ad by a licensing deal?

i know you're spending $75 million to roll this out, but how does the partnership actually work? >> well, the partnership works really in two ways. first of all, frito-lay making the shells and most importantly partnering with the doritos brand with doritos on the outside and taco bell on the inside. so that's sort of magnitude of the partnership. >> you launched this at midnight last night across your 5,600 stores here. reaction, what was the reaction like? >> i was out at restaurants until about 2:00 in the morning. the reaction's been fantastic. both from our customers and also from our crew. i was in a restaurant last night and in the first 45 minutes we sold over 300 doritos locos tacos. that's a big number. >> you're making 50 million of these -- or actually they are making 50 million for you. how much is this needed after that lawsuit, you know, that falsely accused you guys of making meat or selling meat that wasn't meat? >> well, there's a lot of issues at taco bell this year. this is just one of them.

there's doritos locos taco nacho cheese, later in the year we'll come out with a cool ranch. we're also working with chef lauren garcia to work on the can tina bell line of products. we just launched first meal breakfast at 800 stores in the u.s. there are a lot of positive things happening at taco bell. >> greg, let's talk about what's going on in the fast food or quick serve business across the board. >> sure. >> that is the extending of hours to around the clock stuff. ya'll have added a breakfast taco, breakfast burr toes, you're open for breakfast, how is that moving the needle in your business? >> it's doing really well for us. we have a very strong late-night business. sort of between 9:00 and sort of 2:00 in the morning -- >> i'm shocked to hear that. >> i know. a lot of people are shocked to hear that. that's been a strength of ours. we recently ended about 800 restaurants into breakfast. we've been in about a month. the good news is it's kpeeexcee

expectations. first meal to round out fourth meal as well. >> you making money on it so far? >> the really good thing is we're only opening about an hour earlier. unlike a lot of competitors who have opened really early, we have found a lot of our customers are still in bed. so opening at 8:00 is really the time to capture when they're getting out of bed and going off to college and going off to work. >> greg, really quickly, you mentioned upscale a little bit. what type of pressure has been put on you by chipotle? >> well, i don't think there's been any pressure from chipotle. i think what chipotle has done is create an opportunity. i believe our food quality is every bit as good with whole black beans and white rice and corn salsa in the new can tina bell range but i think we can sell products every bit as good and tasty but for a lot less. when i'm saying a whole lot less, i'm talking $2, $2.50 less than chipotle charges. >> greg, thank you very much. good luck with the new product, the doritos -- the taco gets

frito-layed. >> that's good. i like the doritos to be spicy. when you have the spicy meat, it kind of overpowers the doritos more. still good though. >> you like it. all right. thanks very much. sue. >> gentlemen, up next on "power lunch" where new tech is finding new money in old media. we're going to head live to beautiful santa monica, california, for one of the biggest tech meetings of the year. that's coming up next on power. ♪

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three in 30. three stock stories in 30 seconds. start with cf industries. chemical names outperforming today reportedly goldman sachs had positive notes noting corn prices and expansion. aruba networks a nice start to 2012 up 21%. the move today comes after an upgrate at william blare. men's warehouse giving back some gains for the year. lost more than expected but revenue a touch light and guidance wasn't overly impressive. sue, back to you. >> thank you, brian. to media and technology now. industry titans meeting today to discuss some new ways to boost revenue growth. julia boorstin is live at the montgomery tech conference in santa monica, california. looking at how social connectivity and mobile devices are breathing new life into old

media models. hi, julia. >> hi, sue. a number of the start-ups here are applying the latest, most cutting edge social and mobile technologies to the oldest and most challenged part of the media business, publishing. a start-up working with all of the book publishers to offer them free ad support to 90 million users. another start-up turned 5,000 magazines into interactive apps for smartphones and tablets. adding digital subscription revenue. >> has a direct impact on the revenue publishers by providing a new audience to them, new distribution channels and new revenue sources. >> we're developing a new unbelievable data around what consumers are reading and liking and clicking on. all that accountability never existed in the old traditional 2-dimension form. >> one of the most talked about media companies here called the

bleacher report put a new spin on one of the oldest and most popular sections of the newspaper, the sports section. it relies on fans turning them into citizen journalists. that niche content generates about $50 million projected in annual revenue here. the vibe here is definitely upbeat. start-up ceos tell me it's not they need companies to create new content, they want to use their technology to make the most of content already out there. sue. >> thank you very much. julia. quick question though, everybody's anticipating the facebook ipo, what are you hearing out there? what are they talking about? >> oh, the folks here love to talk about the facebook ipo. the start-ups tell me the liquidity event of this size is fantastic for the start-up community is going to be easier to raise money in the private and public markets. one thing i'm finding interesting about facebook is a lot of the companies here are actually built on top of the facebook platform. they allow companies to log into their websites using facebook or they help them navigate that world. and they also say that those businesses will benefit from the

ipo. >> thanks, julia. >> and coming up, over two hours left in the trading day. just a little more than that. our charts of the day plus painkillers, antibiotics and cholesterol busters. don't miss the premier of our cnbc special "pill poppers" taking you inside the world of prescription drugs. that's tonight at 10:00 p.m. eastern and pacific. ? are you still sleeping? just wanted to check and make sure that we were on schedule. the first technology of its kind... mom and dad, i have great news. is now providing answers families need.

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markets slightly softer than when "power lunch" began. i want to point out the nasdaq and s&p 500 in the last two days basically made up all of the losses from tuesday. and i want to take a quick check charts of the day. take a look at yum brands. in september like my third month here i did a story on the 10-year anniversary of yum split from pepsico. since then they've more than doubled and it's been a great story since '09 and the market lows and the anniversary. >> growing very big overseas. >> indeed. they have that new taco out. you might be eating tacos and watching some football. nike getting a boost because peyton manning has been