adame. our ironman. less than 24 hours away from competing in the new york ironman. pete? >> good luck to you, guy! >> hope all you guys have a great weekend. look forward to talking to you again on "fast money." "power lunch" begins now. "halftime" is over. "power lunch" and the second half of the trading day starts right now. thank you very much. welcome to "power lunch." in the midst of the awful drought, the worst since 1954, one of the most anticipated crop reports in years is just out showing how much damage is done. you know, the markets angling for a fifth straight up week but we're lower today. not by much. hope springs eternal. we're watching the markets and also watching a very important chart. it's the vxx. many call it the fear index. right now, it's pretty low.

as a matter of fact, one-week change shows a loss of 5% there. and as an individual investor, a very important question. do you often feel as though you are lost at sea and the sharks are circling? yikes. well, don't worry. this australian sailor was rescued. today, we are here to help you through some shark infested markets. and tyler starts us out with that. hi, ty. >> hey, sue. thanks very much. you know, the most anticipated usda report of the year is out this morning giving an outlook for corn, soy and wheat. in the past three months, corn up 35% in price. soy bens, 14%. 15% for wheat as you see on the graphic. jane wells with more on the usda report. jane? >> hi, tyler. it was bearish for wheat and soybeans are the only commodity up right now. corn spiked and came back down. it appears a lot of traders think the usda got it right this

time and dramatically slashing expectations for corn. ratcheting down projections much more quickly than they normally do. justifying the current price. the u.s. is projected to have the smallest corn harvest in six years and lowest yield in 17 years. prices could get close to $9 a bushel but the usda also predicted demand will drop as a result. they're not seeing that. >> we actually could go to $9.50 and start to ration. everybody talks about demand rationing. i don't see it yet significantly. i can tell by the volumes and the market trades that it's very nervous at these highs but the numbers justify where we're trading right now. >> piper jaf ri says less this year means more planting next year and jpmorgan says it likes dupont making pioneer seeds and going to pioneer's lab in iowa next week and numbers just out

from the association of equipment manufacturers so farmers in july bought more tractors than a year ago, especially big ones. sales up 34%. they're not holding back the capital purchases yet. back to you. >> that's good news, jane, for caterpillar and those stocks. thanks a million. >> deere. >> that's right. as far as ag stocks go, tractor supply is down 7%. deere is flat. monsanto up. jim, what are your thoughts on this, jim? i guess the question is, is there a way to play the drought right now or already pretty much in the market in. >> well, even if -- think of it this way, sue. even if you think it's fundamentally going higher because the devastation is dramatic, if you think that's the case, imagine the people long in the trade for the 60% run-up over 3 or 4 weeks?

they take money off the table. if you turned $10,000 to a $5,000 investment, playing with bigger stakes now and could be some selling pressure in the corn market. corn is the etf trading at 52 right now. if it came to 46, 48 range, i'd be interested in this. this is a real live disaster in corn. >> thank you very much. guy picard is a rancher in kansas. he's on 11,000 acres in strong city. guy, welcome. good to have you with us. how are you crops right now? >> well, we are primarily in the grass business to feed cattle and we have had about a third of our normal rainfall, and so, needless to say, things are at kind of a dire situation. >> what does that mean in terms

of the amount of grass that you can till and the price you get for it? >> well, we don't till any grass but i will tell you that our protein level from the first of july until the 23rd of july dropped one full percent to levels that it should be in late september or early october. and this means that we've got to supplement these cattle to keep them alive and hope we get enough wart so that they can drink. otherwise they will not reproduce. >> your cattle then are deeply affected by the quality of the grass. these are solely grass-fed cattle then, i take it? do you supplement with corn which must be more pricey than it has been for you. >> we do supplement our cattle.

we use a protein pellet at the present time. well, let me back up. the cost of our protein last year jumped 33%. it's in the last week it's up over 25%. on top of that. and i'm unable to buy that on the futures market for future delivery. >> all right. mr. picard, thank you very much. we wish you good fortune. the networks of nbc will host live coverage of the drought on wednesday, unprecedented team coverage event. on the agenda, we'll go to the state that is are hardest hit, the impact -- look at the impact of food and commodity prices and the long range weather forecast. that is wednesday, all day right here on cnbc and all of the networks of nbc universal. now let's go to seema mody for a market flash. >> hi, tyler. look at bally technologies. slot machine giant reported

better than expected earnings on revenues. earnings rising 4.2%, bally tech up almost 8%. sue, over to you. >> thank you. facebook and the federal trade commission. they could be new friends. they have settled charges that facebook was deceiving customers of more personal information than they thought. shares of facebook are still down since ipo day, down 43%, in fact. a little bit of a bounce. 55 cents today. julia boorstin's live in los angeles with more on the deal. hi, julia. >> reporter: hi, sue. well, the ftc and facebook settlement addresses rising concerns of privacy violations giving away user's personal information. facebook has agreed to give users, quote, clear and prominent notice and obtain express consent before it shares information beyond privacy settings and needs to maintain a comprehensive privacy program with third party audits. the network agreed to the terms in november. there was a public comment

period that just ended. though there's no fine, facebook could face penalties up to $16,000 per violation and facebook's privacy issue is bigger than ftc. it's in the social network's best interest to assure users that the information is secure. if people worry that facebook is sharing personal information facebook will have much bigger problems than those fines. tyler, over to you. >> all right. thank you very much, julia. the corporate story of the day, of course, one and up on only. jcpenney, the aging brand. the bold vision of the rock star ceo there and now today's disappointing quarterly numbers. take a look at shares of jcpenney up to the second before we go to courtney reagan covering retail for us. there you see jcp. the stock, courtney, moving higher today despite it all. >> reporter: that's right. the stock price is up after ceo ron johnson gave the financial community clarity in to the concept in today's earnings

presentation but the quarterly report reveals the transformation's growing pains. larger than expected loss, revenue fell short just over $3 billion. same store sales, a key metric of retailers, fell 21.7% year over year. last quaertd, jcpenney dropped the full year gap guidance and now vacating all guidance for the year. financials tell a story of consumer behavior. jcpenney's margin on full price merchandise is up sharply and even with very heavy markdowns, clearance sales increased to 17% of total sales of 15%. that current jcpenney customer wants her sale. johnson said it's no longer in the vocabulary and divulged details first time noting it's a seasonal experience changed every two months with light refreshments and even yoga. sue? >> goodness gracious.

well, we'll have to see how that plays out. jim iourio, we have heard of mr. johnson what he plans to do. do you like it or do you hate it? >> i do like it and the reason is kind of contrarian. everybody i hear dogs jcpenney. and this is going on for months and months. and despite all of that, despite the earnings, the market lies it here. it's beaten down enough. forgot to mention the free hair cuts and i don't do yoga. >> listen, neither do i. is that simply short covering in jcpenney? >> i don't necessarily think so. i think it's a bigger deal than that. i think people think that at this level after the beating it's taken, i think it's time maybe to take a shot. >> all right. jim, take a look. does this change your opinion, moody's downgrading the debt rating. >> no. as a matter of fact, that galvanized it even more. everybody's jumping on it and dogging it. to me, that means that, you

know, it is time. >> all right. and that rating now stands at ba-3 from ba-1. thanks, jim. jcpenney despite today's bounce, better than 3% is down 30% year to date. would you take a chance on the stock? especially after the moody's action. the results in the yahoo! finance poll coming up, ty. >> thanks very much, sue. pepsi pouring out the rest of the low calorie g series fit gatorade line and wasn't catching on. one report says pepsi is planning to revamp and relaunch that product by 2014. pepsi produced it for hard core fitness types and probably why i never tasted it. shares of pepsi, look at pepsico, down 17 cents at $71.97. in the last year, those shares are up by about 20%. traders in a fevered pitch about the pitch down here this morning. the english soccer team manchester united started

trading behind us it would appear. priced yesterday at $14 a share. now at $14.02 a share. $14 price point put the club's value at about $2.3 billion. a little more than magic johnson at el paid for the dodgers. it was a carnival-like atmosphere with supporters and the ceo down here today. lots of kids kicking balls through the hoops. a sea of red jerseys. the reds as they're known and outside set up fields. next half hour, a closer look at man united and the team's owners. goal, right there. from austin to kalamazoo, sea to shining sea, everyone wants to know who mitt romney will run with. john harwood talking veep stakes in a two minutes. we told you about the young d.c. couple that ordered a television set and got an assault rifle instead. now we know what happened. more coming up.

first, five really big friday movers.

time for a quick bond

report. rick santelli usually in chicago taking a day off today. let's look at where prices sit right now. we had trade data out of china that shook the market and pushed the treasury curve a little bit. the global slowdown at play, once again, with a 30-year bond yielding 2.745 and the 30-year is a big focus today. the yield on the 10-year is 1.65%. the 5-year is yielding less than three quarters of a percent. as you can see, the 1-year t-bill is basically flat on the trading session. now to the campaign trail. >> all right. sue, mitt romney kicking off his big bus tour tomorrow as a slew of new polls show him falling further behind the president. many are looking now to his vice presidential announcement as a way to jump start his campaign with the convention just about three weeks away. john harwood at the white house. a crucial time for the romney

campaign, right, john? >> reporter: it is and a tricky choice to make. as you mentioned, those polls indicate that president obama may be opening up some significant lead over romney after they've been deadlocked for a long time. you saw the nbc/"wall street journal" poll last week with a six-point advantage for the president. reuters with a seven-point advantage. fox news last night, a nine point. obama creeping up to about 49%. romney in the low 40s and adds pressure to the vice presidential choice. paul ryan, a lot of conservative intellectuals are pushing paul ryan but for the reasons they're pushing him, very serious about cutting the budget. that makes him a risky choice. democrats say they would love to run against paul ryan and the plans for medicare. you have tim pawlenty, may be the safest choice in the field. former governor of minnesota. didn't win many votes but drew some applause from other republicans for the dignity of

his campaign, some working class appeal, been a loyal surrogate of mitt romney. and then finally, rob portman won in the state of ohio. 18 electoral votes, crucial. rob portman is a senator and was a congressman and they think that raising the profile of former bush budgets and bush administration is risky for mitt romney. no easy choice and we expect him to make it though in the next week or so, tyler. >> john, you began with some of those poll numbers, of course, this week many people have been talking about the very harsh, negative advertising that the president has taken out against or not the president i should not say, a pac, a superpac has taken out attacking governor romney's record at bain. is there any connection between those poll numbers and those very aggressive ads? >> reporter: sure. one of the things we have seen in the polls may be driving the result is that the unfavorable

ratings for romney have risen substantially. a lot of that due to the attacks on the bain record, not necessarily the most recent attack suggesting that mitt romney caused the death by cancer of a worker that was laid off. that's not been on television although we're talking about it in the press and a pounding over mitt romney over the tax returns and money invested and record at bain and taken a toll. >> all right. thank you very much. sue? ty, an update here. yesterday you might recall we told you about a washington, d.c. man that ordered a tv through amazon. somehow he got an assault rifle instead. so we called amazon for a comment. we're still waiting for one. but u.p.s. did get back to us. we wanted to get back to you. u.p.s. says it found the tv that was ordered. the company sent us a statement saying, quote, as was suspected, the label separated from the tv and was affixed to the other package. when we learned of the situation, we began that search

process to match a missing item notification. the tv we found and contacting the shipper and receiver to complete the delivery. end quote. u.p.s. added it does not accept packages containing firearms. shippers are responsible for complying with the rules so amazon, we are waiting the hear from you and update the viewers, ty. >> right-o, sue. straight ahead, the retailers poise to score bigger than ever in the back to school season and the new strategy for making it happen. but up next, wall street's busy with upgrades and downgrades, even on an august friday. on the list today, big lots, broadcom and tim hortons. we'll analyze the analysts when we return in two minutes but first five more big friday movers. well another great thing about all this walking i've been doing is that it's given me time to reflect on some of life's biggest questions. like, if you could save hundreds on car insurance by making one simple call,

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my mother was so wrong about you. next, we get priority boarding on our flight i booked with miles. all because of the card. and me. okay, what's the plan? plan? mm-hmm. we're on vacation. this is no plan. really? [ male announcer ] the united mileageplus explorer card. the mileage card with special perks on united. get it and you're in. take a look at bottom line technologies. epay. posted better than expected quarterly results as revenue of sub skringss and transactions increased. a fourth quarter revenue of $61.4 million, an increase of 13% on a year over year basis. the stock having a good day, up better than 21%. sue? >> don't you wish you had that one. thanks very much. time to do some analysis. jim iuorio of course is here and starting out with jpmorgan downgrading big lots to

underweight from neutral and basically they're saying that the core demographic is a bit stretched, saying big is in the wrong place at the wrong time with a stretched core consumer demographic. do you agree? >> i do. i read the jump-up in crude oil prices makes that demographic stretched. rallied 23% since may. seems like a perfectly legitimate time to sell it. they have a close correlation with walmart. >> down 6% on today's trading session. let's move on to bernstein upgrading broadcom. they say they believe the revenue profile is poised to resume some growth. it's up almost 3% on the day. >> i like it. you want exposure to wireless and apple and samsung. one thing i don't like is up 3% and within that sector you look at maybe texas instrument and qualcomm. they all kind of trade highly core lated, as well.

this is fine, though. >> all right. let's move on to a little bit of food on the menu. >> my favorite thing. >> "power lunch." upgrading tim hortons to outperform noting the stock provides an attractive return to the target. this surprised me to a certain extent because of the food inflation talk throughout. >> no doubt about it. but when you talk about tim hortons, talk about coffee. i like coffee and ice cream and canada. i like just about everything about this stock, particularly they're expanding more in the single serve segment. that's what the market likes. it's got to stay above 51. probably not just today but a couple of days and then take a shot. >> 51.19. >> i see that. >> all right. all right. year to date up about 5%. keep that in mind. 51. still a lot more ahead. twitter, can you trust it to move the national agenda? metals market about to close shop for the week.

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welcome back. seema mody here. take a look at shares of viacom

downgraded. the reason? its high valuation, trading around the 52-week highs. digging through the report, the analyst writing he sees an operational challenge in both major business sectors and reducing the estimate douns to more conservative levels. so that's why the stock is currently down about .7 of a percent. back to you. >> i'll take it. thank you very much. gold prices are about to close in about a minute's time and sharon epperson is tracking the action as she so ably does every day. go ahead. >> thank you. we are looking at gold prices here that are about to close right around $1,623 an ounce. gold is the only commodity today in positive territory and also seeing gold prices right now above the 100-day moving average. when's helped to support gold? part of it may be due to the inflation concerns raised by that usda report on the grain market. and the fact that we're seeing, okay, very high prices for corn

influencing the ethanol market and gasoline prices sky high in a few weeks and all of this raising inflationary concerns and traders say helping to support gold prices. elsewhere in the metals market, though, lackluster performance. weighing on the industrial metals and components of the precious metals, as well. longer term, going in to next week, what are we looking for in terms of gold market? marketers say a weakly gain here for gold and the highest level since the beginning of august. but we're looking for gold prices to still be perhaps in this range. we have been stuck in. not giving above 1640, traders say it's hard technically to break out and get to the 1,700 level and the 1,640 level is key for the gold trade. back to you. >> all right. sharon, thank you very much. we appreciate that report. now trading action right here. bob pisani joins me.

you were mentioning there's interesting rotation going on. >> modest but noticeable. it's healthy sign for the market because we want to see people rotating in to other areas somewhat neglects so cyclical names in the last week doing better than overall market. when's that? talking about oil refining companies, steel companies. take a look here. that's the s&p up about 0.8% on the week and see the cyclical names doing better. when's lagging and doing better is dividend payers. drugs. real estate investment trust and they had been the market leaders and you can see they're trading a little bit better where the average market is. reits in particular down this week. the big story, of course, tyler, manchester united. ipo $14. 16.6 million shares. right now, 25 million trades. 150% of the float. that's because this is a party for high frequency traders. supporting at $14. a syndicate bid there.

syndicate put it together, brought it public. doesn't want it below $14. going to 14, there it is. there's a bid there and somebody's making a penny here and there. >> before you know it adds up. >> you can do the business. supporting it, we don't know how long. >> when it stops -- >> more volatility. a five-cent range most of the day. >> we have more coming up later this hour and throughout the rest of the day. bob, thanks. let's go up to nasdaq now and jackie deangelis. >> good afternoon, tyler. we're marginally lower here at the nasdaq and a friday in august and not expecting much more than that. meantime, looking at the advancers and decliners on the nasdaq 100. just about even today. looking at the decliners, monster beverage, yahoo! monster beverage continues the fall lower after the company announced that one of the drinks is being investigated by a state attorney general and yahoo! shares lower after the company

re-evaluating the current business strategy. we have a downgrade there from a buy to a neutral. some of the big stock that is are weighing the nasdaq down, google, microsoft, cisco and amazon and apple in the red and when they're down, hard to have an up day in terms of index as a whole. i wanted to end on a bright note and looking at shares of rim, up 3.5%. some reports out that rim is moving higher on a positive ruling in a small intellectual property case but at the sam time there's rumors that ibm is eyeing the business enter price unit. sue and tyler, back over to you. >> i'll take it. thank you. ty mentioned this a couple of minutes ago. man u went public today and we showed you the stock but it's worth another look. it's trading at $14 even on the trading session. robert frank is cnbc's wealth editor as you know and here to give us a better picture of this media shy family counting on a big cash infusion of the

investors. >> exactly. malcolm glacer is a millionaire and now the fondness of debt is a liability. he used junk bonds in the 1980s. built an empire with real estate, retail, food, local tv stations. he bought the tampa bay buccaneers for $192 million and leveraged taxpayer money for a stadium. in 2005, he bought manchester united around $1.5 billion and saddled the team with $600 million in debt. that debt is a lightning rod of criticism. many fans say the borrowing hurt the team's performance and threatened the future and now malcolm glazer is prooit. he doesn't appear outside of the mansion in palm beach but the three sons have really become the face of the company saying the team is still winning and growing revenues and half of the ipo proceeds or $100 million

going to pay down the debt and the rest of it to the family. that's added to the claims that man u is living on borrowed time and borrowed money. sue? >> it's very interesting because the fans of man u are -- they're fierceless devoted to the team so this is either going to work very well for him or not. >> exactly. and it's really an unusual situation because it's the debt that's really -- that's eating away at the fan base and making them angry and rare to see a fan base angry over a financial issue. really, the issue is how much debt the team has and can they survive it over time? >> thank you so very much. >> thank you. >> all right, ty. back over to you. >> thank you sar much. headline time now. chesapeake energy reporting the federal government is checking to see if they violated anti-trust rauls after purchases in michigan. chesapeake says it will cooperate as the board conducts an independent investigation. look at shares of chesapeake down 79 cents at $19.52. pfizer reporting a late

stage of a cancer drug did not meet goals. shares are higher at $23.92. u.s. import prices falling unexpectedly in july, that's the fourth straight drop. costs fell for imported oil, industrial supplies and another sign that inflation is in check. at least on that front, at least for now. well, there have been a few high profile issues for twitter and anyone who follows twitter in the past few weeks. including a false tweet possibly designed to move the oil market. next up, can those tweets be trusted? can any tweet be trusted? we'll put it to the test now with a panel of tweeters, insighters. more coming up. plus my tweets.

let's talk a little more about jcpenney. it's down 30% this year. would you take a chance on this stock? let's see what you said. yes. 23%. no, 77%. now let's see what's coming up on "street signs." oh, she's not there. well, let's go to a new segment, sue, shall we? >> always something interesting on "street signs." we have a new segment that we need to get to calling it the power lunch tweeterati. a group of writers in new york with a national dialogue, today we have the same thing. those very conversations are happening on social media like

twitter and right now on "power lunch." let's meet the tweeterati. joel joins us. catherine rampel. with "the new york times." and our own john carney. a pleasure to have you. i want to start with how you all came together and made -- because youasically hold court on twitter. talking about the financials of the day, the big stories of the day. so, joe, how did this all come together? how did you guys find each other and start to do this? >> took me a little while to get on to twitter like i wasn't among the very first people to get on to it. >> that makes me feel better. >> wasn't long until i realized it's a useful way to see headlines, what's happening, and it's been a great tool for bouncing ideas off so before i write a lot of posts or stories, i just sort of try ideas out and

see if something interests people or get the feedback. >> this is more than this. i feel like we should have martinis like they did at the hotel. maybe we can do that. catherine, how did you get in the group? john, you kind of hold a lot of power on twitter. >> i wouldn't say that it's like a formal group of us. i mean, this is our first gathering as such. it's very organic. that's what twitter is. and that's what its value is, that people are just sort of throwing things out there. they're sending out links to things. they're commenting on numbers of reports. you know? the fed minutes come out and then you see people pulling out excerpts of interest and it's very organic. it's not as structured as, you know, reading a newspaper or watching a tv broadcast where the news is sort of cue rated for you. >> sometimes we're organic, as well, right, john? >> following these two, following the people that we communicate back and forth is it's a two-way street.

joe tweets something out. people answer you and you do get live action feedback. you know, at the time you're having a thought, you get people telling you their reactions right away. it's amazing. >> it is. we're going to put you to work since we gathered you all around the roundtable as we call it. we have a segment as you know that we call the power rundown. guys, find your cameras. we'll put you to work and bring tyler in from downtown, as well. topic number one, tweets, rumors and the markets. earlier this week, something we told you about here, crude bounced up at least a buck after a false twitter rumor that syria's president had been killed. joe, start with you, first of all. my basic question is, when you see things like this, why would anybody actually believe the social media versus, y, the traditional media? >> well, i think one of the great things of twitter is the way, yes, false rumors spread, news is incorrectly reported and also corrected really fast.

so i saw that tweet about assad being killed and didn't take me long to realize it was a hoax account. >> right away you can ask somebody. that's one of the things you do seeing something you're not sure about on twitter. go out, hey, can anybody confirm this? you get people coming back. no way, that's not true. i just googled that account. it was set up yesterday. >> you have a record, as well. >> right. >> as joe was mentioning. >> of the person who tweets? >> yeah. >> so things are shot down pretty quickly and that's the case of someone purposely starting a false rumor or established news organization from time to time happens. they get things wrong. >> it's interesting moving markets, right, ty? >> that's true. sue, you mentioned earlier the idea to serve martinis during this segment. i just want to stipulate i think it's a bad idea to tweet after martinis. >> to tweet afterwards, yes. >> you don't want to do that.

>> that's probably very true. >> let's move on to topic number two, which is the romney campaign. and the -- he's going to kick off the bus tour tomorrow. it appears, folks, that wall street has changed its view in 2008 it was very strongly behind obama. now seemingly more behind romney. catherine, do you agree? and if so, why? >> if you look at the political l donations, bloomberg had a story out i believe today looking at numbers of open secrets.org which compiles all of this data and showed that of i think it was like the top 30 biggest contributors in terms of employees of different companies a lot of them had flipped from supporting obama in 2008 to romney in 2012. and that's some of the big financial giantins, goldman ande and other companies, as well.

>> catherine, do you think this is mostly -- joe, too. is this irdology? wall street is mad at obama or do you think that it's a question about whether or not they want to bet on a winner and maybe they think romney win this is time? >> could be. what do you think, joe? >> i think if you look historically at past election cycles the big pat concern that wall street usually likes to bet on the winner. i mean, one thing you do have this sort of diver intelligene intelligence. there's a huge shift in financial donations from 2008 to 2012 so this is a very rare thing for wall street to at the moment anyway be choosing the candidate -- >> unusual times from wall street in terms of profile, the headline. >> exactly. >> an enmost of it is not good. >> i think a huge part of it is that really there's a big reaction against george bush in 2008. and so, the move for obama wasn't so much wall street

falling in love with the democrats or obama but having just absolute loathing for george bush. >> i think there's loathing right now on wall street for obama which obama's supporters i think sometimes find ironic because he gets a lot of criticism from the left he is not hard enough on wall street. people on wall street -- >> he's mentioned that. >> people on wall street believe that he's insulted them repeatedly an he wants to, you know, regulate them out of business and that sort of thing. so i think that there is some actual ideology here. it's not just, you know, a bet. >> the president, guys, uses repeatedly the phrase billionaires and millionaires and i think people on wall street see that as code for meaning people like they who are on wall street and who happen to have some wealth. and then i think that the president is probably also tarred with the same brush. i think there's anger over congress and the dodd-frank legislation, the way some of the

wall street people were treated by senator levin a couple of years ago and in the goldman hearings a there's a lot of anger and loathing out there. >> a lot of layers to it. moving on to topic number three, the top story of the hour as we brought you was the drought. it is resonating on twitter, catherine? >> yeah. i think you see people tweeting a lot today about a report that came out from the department of agriculture about what the affect will be on prices. and that report in particular said that things are actually much worse than expected, that yields for corn are going to be at a 17-year low. >> right. >> prices are going up. and so, i think you see a lot of anxiety in social media, in these types of gathering places and elsewhere. >> there's been a lot of twitter's been useful for following the drought. a lot of farmers tweet and they tweet pictures of their corn crops and say this is -- the crop is 8-foot tall right now.

last year at this time 10 foot or whatever it is. a picture of a special ear of corn. and beyond that, and traders in chicago tweet a lot. it's actually been very -- twitter's very good about covering the drought. >> we are talking to you guys once a month. we appreciate it very much. we'll be in chicago with "power lunch" next week talking about the drought and corn prices. thank you. appreciate it very much. that's the inaugural gathering of the financial tweeterati. ty? >> like the hotel. next today, innovating in america, a company providing a new avenue for investors and consumers. plus, the new trend for back to school and the stocks that could benefit the most. before the break, though, five retailers on the move. how will they do? this back to school season.

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let's look at where the markets stand right now closing in on what could be a fifth

straight week of gains for the dow. but right now, the dow down very fractionally by 12 points at 13,153. s&p at 1401. the nasdaq off 6 at 3012 and change. all day long we're taking a special look at cnbc at retailing and what is likely to be a very crucial back to school shopping season. this year, buying items online plays an even bigger role as more retail goes mobile and social. courtney reagan with the likely winners and losers. >> thank you. tomorrow is back to school saturday. it was created by teen vogue to unite retailers and excite consumers. a number of retailers andrand on born and love to add another annual shopping event to the calendar. will it get shoppers to the sto stores? this year, they're expected to fill up the carts.

48% of consumers believe retailers offer better promotions this year online. 34% finding better deals online than in the store and retail may me not says 83% plan to use coupons online and offline. because parents find back to school shopping stressful, those making shopping as stress free as possible benefit the most. some schools e-mailing a list of school supplies they need with links to amazon.com and walmart with lists of parents in store and online. multichannel retailers winning in the early goings. most likely to shop at multichannel retailers such as walmart, sears, target, k mart for back to school and then amazon and ebay. sue, back to you. >> thank you very much. courtney. courtney mentioned amazon. more and more not just a retailer for back to school time and making a huge investment in trying to become an innovative

media platform, as well. case in point, audible disrupting the publishing world and giving amazon a foothold in digital content. julia boorstin is back with us for more. >> reporter: well, sue, when you talk about digital downloads, apple is probably the first company that comes to mind but amazon is quickly making headway especially coming to a certain type of digital file. aud toe books and audible.com is a small but key example of howdy verse the business has become. a problem any company would love to have. >> our growth was so fast and so big that the traditional supply chain of publishers couldn't keep up. >> audible.com, the biggest name in digital audio books and growing so fast that it's had to produce its own audio books to keep up with demand. the company launched in 1995 and listed on the nasdaq four years later but it wasn't until the

ipod explosion that it was realized. >> mobile is key to this from the beginning. huge percentage of our customers never come to audible.com. >> reporter: that's because about 30% of audible's business is from downloads on itunes. despite the dependence on apple, audible is owned by amazon. the e tailer beat out apple in a bidding war in 2008. audible's typical users are affluent and willing to spend, downloading about 19 books a year on average. but for audible to keep growing, it has to grow the potential market. only between 8 million to 9 million people purchase audible books each year and not changed in the last few years. the company's trying to tackle the limited market by locking in deals with publishers, increasing marketing spending and teaming ining up with cele. audible is trying hard to change the way people think about consuming books saying it's not just an afterthought to publishing but the bigger point

is that audible represents yet another way that amazon is starting to challenge apple, especially when it comes to these digital files. one analyst told me even if audible is not a massive business, it is yet he said a quote a one more golden arrow in amazon's digital quiver. sue, kind of a fun line there. back over to you. >> indeed it is. thanks, julia. bad lines for britain lately. banking scandals, tough economy. up next, though, can the uk get the groove back by piggy backing off the goodwill they're getting from the olympics? born with. you're and inspires the things you choose to do. you do what you do... because it matters. at hp we don't just believe in the power of technology. we believe in the power of people when technology works for you. to dream.

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