this obese dog. fat cats need a little love too. the humane society in washington is running a special program called "big and beautiful." they're trying to place older cats who are overlooked because of their age and weight. these cats will be out for adoption at a discount. give them a home. >> thanks for watching, everybody. >> happy birthday, rosa lee in massachusetts. our producers aunt. "closing bell" is next. hi, everybody. good afternoon. welcome to the final bell and the "closing bell." we enter the final stretch. i'm maria bartiromo at the new york stock exchange. the dow on track for a two-day gain even as oil takes a real plunge. >> that's been the key feature. oil continuing in the slide. we have reasons for the oil slide. supply coming from saudi arabia. big jump in crude inventories reported this morning. that has pushed crude below

several key technical levels. we'll talk more about oil and that plunge in just a moment. first, a look at where stocks stand right now. modest gains across the board with the dow up 50 points right now at 13,613. you can see we're just about near the high of the session right there. the nasdaq is up 10 1/2 points. that's the high for this session after a pretty volatile open this morning now at 3188 on the nasdaq index. the s&p 500 is up 51/3 points. can this market continue the winning streak even if it is in baby steps? will lower oil and gas prices help if oil keeps heading lower? that's been a leader in this market. there's also a new survey that shows investor confidence is improving, something that hasn't happened since the crisis of 2008. >> pretty amazing, actually. it's our closing bell exchange now.

in a moment, our rick santelli will be joining us. let's kick this off. you point out that in terms of investor sentiment, it's up from a low level, and the markets has more room to run. how much do you believe this is attributed to the price of oil? >> well, the price of oil is impacting the market, but it's all about the qe at this point. quantitative easing is really significantly impacting the market, irrespective of what the economy is doing. you're seeing a decoupling between the market and easing. the investor sentiment survey you talked about, yes, it's high, but there's still a lot of runway to go, given where it has been in the past. >> bit of a disconnect there with mutual found outflows you're a little more cautious ahead of the upcoming profits reports. what do you see going on? >> yeah, i think when you look closely it's the last earnings

report. we saw a sharp falloff on top line surprises. if you look at just the last few months, we saw roughly about 40% of the larger firms surprised at the top liner sale side. if you go back a year earlier, that number was 80%. this sharp falloff tells us that at some point some of the slow down that was occurring in europe that's hitting asia, it was at some point going to hit us. i think that's under way. what this is sort of coming headlong into is this global easing that we're witnessing right now. >> go ahead, brian. >> the oil trade is so hard for people to figure out right now, but in terms of that investor confidence, i mean, we're obviously still underinvested here in the marketplace. whether you're retail or not, people who aren't fully invested in equities don't quite know how to jump in. it's the same apple argument. some people say, it's still cheap at these levels. other people say, how can that be? the separation from the sticker

shock of where the level in the market is from where the value is making it very difficult, not just for the average retail investor, who is still far away from this market. >> but there's such momentum in this market. we're going to be talking later with thomas lee from jpmorgan who's out with a report about chasing beta. we're going to have huge pools of money chasing this market. i would say until the election, if that's true. we don't really have the uncertainty there. what groups, do you think, will be chased? >> even though it's a risk on market right now and beta is being chased, there's still a lot of value in certain pockets of the market. even though energy is selling off today, there's still a lot of attractiveness given that the companies being sold off are attractively valued. we like a lot of health care names in the u.s. and some technology names. when you go outside the u.s., i

agree that the u.s. market is generally more pricey than the rest of the world. europe having gone through the crisis or still going through the crisis is exhibiting a lot of value plays there. there's a lot of attractive opportunities there. >> so are you among those that are starting to nibble at europe right now in the equity market? >> in terms of on the u.s. front, i think we're going to be a lot more cautious. we're seeing estimates in the last four or five weeks of cuts. we think there's more to come. with europe, i think we have to be a lot more selective. there is -- i think the pull back on the consumer side, the last we looked, says that the valuations on the consumer side in europe looks a lot better. on the u.s. front, though, we think that what's striking is the level of estimate cuts we've seen in the u.s. in the last four, five weeks. it's going in the face of the way the tape's been going. this is very unusual. >> we are seeing strength into what's expected to be a weak earnings report. rick santelli, join the crowd

here. do you agree here? >> absolutely. all you have to do is look at the dollar index. all you have to do is put yourself in the shoes of the bank of japan as they watch their currency remain strong. or germany, the third largest export economy. much more worried about what's going on in china. one of their great customers that may be issues going on in spain and greece. as far as confidence, the best way to understand why confidence is important but not as important as some want to make it out to be, instead of confidence, substitute what a man earns working. he was making $60,000 in '07, $70,000 in '08, then he gets fired and gets another job. his income today is still less than it was in his hay day. it's a step in the right direction, but we need to get to pre-crisis levels. >> that's for sure.

gentlemen, thank you for joining us. all right. we got a market flash right now with jackie deangelis. what's going on? >> we're watching a couple of stocks here. viacom happens to be one of them. the stock is popping 4% today. we have the ceo speaking at the goldman sachs conference today. there are some upbeat tidbits. one sees scattered pricing up in teens over rates up front while overall demand looks good. that seems to be moving the stock. also, want to take a look at questcor. it was halted earlier today. the company issuing a response earlier today saying it's continuing to review the clinical policy bulletin. also, the company does not believe that the bulletin represents a material change in insurance coverage. that's really important.

this stock looks like it's resuming trading now. down 42%. bill. >> jackie d., thank you very much. biehl we' let's get back to oil. if you joined us, are we set to hit $98 a barrel after hitting a high? we have jeffrey grossman joining us to talk about what he's been seeing. we have all kinds of reasons now, jeffrey. we had a huge plunge on monday. nobody could figure out why. now we think we know why. >> we think we know why. everyone seems to be sure it started with a big player over there. brent ran into the a go rhythmic traders. yesterday's activities showed you it wasn't a mistake. the market showed a little weakness. today was the real kibosh, the eia numbers that came out. they were much more bearish compared to even the api numbers that came out last night.

so that was a dual-edge sword. 91.25 is one of the last numbers there. we go through there instead of below there, which we did not today. the next stop is about $87.50. >> do you need a catalyst for that next stop? what brings it there, if that's where it's headed? >> a few things would come into play. if the dollar stays firm, again, we need any sort of bad economic report, if the stock market weakens a bit. i personally think tomorrow will be a rebound day. i won't say how much. i think we're on our way back to probably about $94 on a bit of a retracement. then we'll have to take a look. that's going to run into the resistance levels, which are anywhere between 94 1/2 and 95. this market has legitimately broken down f you look at the charts. it's a it tough case to make for the real upside here. again, i think this is a market that will stabilize here a bit. again, long term, i always said we were on our way back to the

mid-80s. this is not a tremendous surprise to me. i was more surprised we were crowding $100 three days ago. >> you weren't alone on that one. jeffrey, thanks for joining us. >> my pleasure. >> in the final stretch of trading here. about 50 minutes before the closing bell sounds for the day. holding on to gains. >> stay with us. much manufactuore ahead on this action-packed edition of the "closing bell." >> coming up, falling far from the tree? apple releases its new operating software on the heels of the iphone 5 phenomenon. is this a clear sign the company is the model for american business? or has it finally hit its high note? plus, warning shot. >> under current law on january st, 2013, there's going to be a massive fiscal cliff. i think it's very important to say i don't think our tools are strong enough to offset the effects of a major fiscal shock. >> the fed chairman has been goading congress to resolve the

looming fiscal cliff for months. but will his meeting with senators today resolve anything? and rage against the machine. are exchanges letting rapid-fire trading firms cutting in front of every day investors to buy stocks? the surprising answer is ahead on the "closing bell." [ male announcer ] when a major hospital

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hello. let's get back to jackie deangelis right now. a couple stocks seeing a good pop today. >> hey, bill. just a little bit more follow up on viacom here. getting notes that the ceo is talking about opportunities and challenges over the next one to three years. believes the creation of quality content will be a main area of continued focus. also saying content creation for and across multiple platforms will be a focus, digital linear content with multiple screens, et cetera. a 4% pop in that stock. also watching shares of facebook. starting to test its mobile ad network yesterday. we had a note out saying there's a favorable take on that plan. we're seeing facebook pop, up $1 today. >> thank you so much. meanwhile, let's look at apple here.

the stock yesterday closing above $700 a share for the very first time, thanks to the iphone 5 and the incredible demand for that. today, we're looking at the stock continuing the upward move and heavy volume. at $2 higher. the company's latest unveiling is no longer the iphone 5. the timing of this is not a coincidence either. a little more than two hours ago, apple made the latest operating system available for download. how's the demand? last time we saw a major software update, the servers were overwhelmed. it took forever for people to download the system. >> yeah, looks like those servers are getting slam the again. i'm seeing lots of users complaining that the down loads are taking a long time. keep in mind, the size of this download is almost a gigabyte. it's going to take a while anyway. users complaining it is a bit slow. the major change in ios6 is google maps are gone.

the maps app now has apple's back end. a question on whether as many users will upgrade to this version of the os who already have ios5. as a benchmark back at wwdc in june, apple said of the 365 million users of devices that are out there already, 80% of them had upgraded to ios5. it will be interesting to see if ios6 hits that benchmark when you kind of back out the number of devices that shipped with ios5. about half of people, it looks like to me, were upgrading to ios5. will they do the same with ios6 since it has apple's maps app? it doesn't have google street view. it doesn't have transit and walking directions. a few people already complaining about that on twitter as well. back to you. >> all right, john. thank you. so will this new upgrade ensure apple stays on top of the field?

>> jay says the tech giant is the michael jordan of technology. this is what i love, guys. let me start with you, james. the reviews for the iphone 5 have been good. you call it a disappointment. 2.5 million people in the first 24 hours would disagree with you. >> you know, those are good numbers. however, let's compare those to maybe some of the numbers that samsung put up with the galaxy s3 and 20 million over the first 100 days. those are big numbers too. what apple didn't do with this device is deliver on near field communication and some of the more advanced applications. also, ios6, you know, has got some good stuff in it, but it's nothing spectacular. >> wow. you're tough to please.

>> jay, what about you? you say it's the leader in the field, but can it stay that way without steve jobs? obviously the markets think so. what's your take? >> when you say 20 million galaxy phones from samsung, if apple did that, it would be a disaster for apple. to compare the two is not even comparab comparable. apple will be looking at 50 million in the holiday quarter. apple is still there. i think the reviews are unbelievably positive. once people get hands on with this phone, they no longer say it's disappointing. they no longer say it's boring. they get blown away by it. apple has a tendency to use technology when it's ready. this just isn't ready yet. >> james? >> you can actually utilize nfc in multiple places, not only for payment but also for security purposes. some of the things that ampple' failing to deliver on, they're

building a vanilla device. it's one size fits all. other companies are building multiple form factors and oss to meet the masses. samsung has sold more devices than apple. let's get that straight. apple does do a very good job, but they're lagging behind a android right now in terms of total activations out there. they are doing a good job, but they're not doing what apple did when it came to market. apple was an innovator. they're lacking that innovation. they're not going to collaborative communities. they're not getting the new, cool, small app. they're going after facebook integration and things like that. the big stuff. not the small stuff. >> maybe. but certainly, you know, if you want to look at innovation, that's where it's been. it's been at appleapple, in the several years. is this announcement big enough

to move the needle that it would create further market value for this company? what are we talking about? $800 billion company? are we talking about a $1 trillion market value? what's your take on investing in the company right now, today? james? >> i think apple is still a good hold. maybe a small buy. long term, they need to change. they need to innovate more and take cues from the smaller guys out there just innovating. >> jay? >> i would say, look, apple is going to sell a lot of iphones. it's going to sell a lot more ipads. it's going to have an ipad mini that's going to sell like crazy. sales are going to go up. profits are going to go up. >> bottom line. thank you, gentlemen. appreciate your time today. >> thank you. >> thank you so much. >> thanks, guys. >> 45 minutes before the closing bell sounds for the day. a market holding on to gains, about 46 points. >> coming up, food fight on wall street. general mills getting a pop from its latest earnings report.

con agra out with its numbers first thing tomorrow. we'll tell you which one with could fatten your wallet most. and then mining for profits. gold looking bright at a seven-month high, with some saying it will go to 2,400 soon. and then in oil, it's saudi arabia to the rescue. opening the taps wider to keep oil prices from crippling the global economy. more on how low oil and gas prices could go at this point. then it's not just the market set on fire lately. we'll show you this video of a fire tornado. it's the real thing. we'll tell you where it happened and how it happened. look at that video. >> unbelievable. >> a fire tornado. back in a memt. and a big first step. for the spender who needs a little help saving. for adding "& sons." for the dreamer, planning an early escape. for the mother of the bride.

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call it a tale of two markets. stocks have been higher today but oil's going the other direction, which is unusual because energy has been a leader of this market this year so far. the dow is up 43 points. that's a little off the high of the day. the nasdaq's up nine. s&p up four. oil itself, both in new york and london, down sharply today. there's the new york quote. down 3.5% to $91.94. just last week we were at $100. supply concerns, demand issues, and technical selling all contributing to this decline so far today. maria. >> all right, bill. thank you so much. general mills stock mean while up better than 2% today after the cereal giant reported better than expected earnings this morning from general mills.

it also said that price increases have failed to offset lower volumes. will the same go for con raragr? they're expected to report earnings tomorrow. some are concerned about the back of rising food prices on their bottom line. let's talk numbers now on the two stocks. on the technical side, mark newton with grey wolf execution partners. charles ortel is with newport value partners. nice to have you on the show. thanks for joining us. charles, let's talk fundamentals. what will this ultimately mean for the food companies? >> i think it's going to create trouble for both companies. the consumer in the bounce of this year is going to shift more of the purse to the lower brand or the off brand products. both ones are going to be in trouble. that said, of the two of them, i like con agra a bit more than general mills. >> let's take a look at the charts, mark. i think you're on the other side of the trade. >> i am.

general mills is much preferred in my opinion. the stock has been a consistent outperformer over the years. it still looks likely to outperform in the weeks and months he months ahead. >> do you have a problem with con agra? >> you can see over the long term the stock has done hardly anything over the last 15 to 20 years. it made a peak in 1997 and hapt been able to get back over that peak. as you can see, that consistently poses a problem. even though both stocks have been up since '09, the stock is once again heading towards an area where it's going to experience a little consolidation and trouble breaking through. >> and general mills is a much better looking chart? >> it's night and day. general mills has been rising over the last 20 to 30 years. it's been tough. it's been boringly bullish. it's been tough to even buy dips in this thing. here's a relative chart between the two. general mills, really since '06, has been a consistent outperformer. con agra has been neutral.

a lot of the consumer staple stocks have underperformed recently following the mention of qe-3 and the ecb meeting. defensive stocks have been underperforming. my thinking is it's time to step in and take a look at some of these. in particular, general mills today getting above on this earnings announcement. it looks like it's got a lot of momentum. >> you put more money into general mills right now then? >> i would. it still pays to stick with the stocks that are stronger. we haven't seen any sort of snap backs. it gets a 42 1/2. >> all right. mark, charles, thank you. bill, over to you. >> heading toward the close, the dow up 40 points. about 30 minutes left here. still to come on "closing bell" -- >> if the fiscal cliff isn't addressed, as i've said, i don't think our tools are strong enough to offset the effects of a major fiscal shock. >> fed chairman bernanke taking his fiscal cliff warning directly to key senators today.

he seems to have the message for lawmakers. do your job. we'll have an update on that coming up next. later, do main street investors stand a chance against high speed traders? some new questions are being raised about whether the playing field is level or not. don't miss that, still to come. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 when i'm trading, i'm totally focused. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 and the streetsmart edge trading platform from charles schwab... tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 gives me tools that help me find opportunities more easily. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 i can even access it from the cloud and trade on any computer. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 and with schwab mobile, tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 i can focus on trading anyplace, anytime... tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 until i choose to focus on something else. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 trade at charles schwab for $8.95 a trade. : 1-50 open an account and trade up to tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 6 months commission-free online equity trading tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 with a $50,000 deposit. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 call 1-866-294-5412. oh, hey alex. just picking up some, brochures, posters copies of my acceptance speech. great! it's always good to have a backup plan, in case i get hit by a meteor. wow, your hair looks great.

didn't realize they did photoshop here. hey, good call on those mugs. can't let 'em see what you're drinking. you know, i'm glad we're both running a nice, clean race. no need to get nasty. here's your "honk if you had an affair with taylor" yard sign. looks good. [ male announcer ] fedex office. now save 50% on banners.

welcome back. federal reserve chairman ben bernanke is worried. about what? let's listen to this. >> under current law on january 1st, 2013, there's going to be a massive fiscal cliff. if the fiscal cliff isn't addressed, we anticipate the uncertainty associated with the fiscal cliff will have economic effects. a shallowy session would occur next year. about 1.25 million fewer jobs would be created in 2013. financial markets don't like uncertainty. particularly uncertainty of this magnitude. >> those are all familiar refrains we've heard in the past. in about an hour, mr. bernanke is going to take his message directly to the senate finance committee in a close-door meeting. wouldn't you love to be a fly on that wall? we won't know exactly what is said in that meeting, but we can imagine it's going to be

something like, please do your job. everything the fed has done really won't matter. >> reaction now from the senior managing director at tangen capital investors. chris, it is a bit exterr extraordinary, but it's understandable given the fact it's the economy and the recovery has been all on the fed. congress has done nothing. >> yeah, congress is the primary bailout recipient, aren't they? we've had no action from the congress on housing, on all of the important issues. the only thing i think chairman bernanke is to be congratulated for speaking out, but i wish he would have done this earlier. we have a deficit in this country in terms of leadership. we talk about debt. we talk about the deficits on the fiscal side, but the real deficit is that the elites in this country and the business community, the political community refuse to engage. they say, well, it's not our problem. so the fed has had to carry all of the water. it's ridiculous.

>> we're in the midst of this glow from the quantitative easing. the markets continue higher. do you think they would be much higher if congress had acted earlier on the fiscal cliff as well? >> that's an interesting question, bill. i think that put in another way, we're talking about breaking above this year's sideways trend. the fed has really, and ecb to a lesser extent, has inflated the s&p 500 up to its current levels. right now we're actually starting to see the commodity complex start to break down. we've seen a tremendous decline in crude over the last couple days. i think that could be actually ahead of, you know, potential move by the s&p 500 and the push the other indices back down. >> i don't know. largely, this rally is because of the fed. it's all the easy money out there. it's all about the fed action. i don't even know that you could look at will this market be much higher if congress acted. >> don't you think it would be

if corporations would start hiring again? >> i think in this economy we are in a very good position. corporates have an enormous amount of cash on their balance sheets. they're doing incredibly well. except for the uncertainty. >> 8% unemployment right now. >> unemployment because of the uncertainty. because of that fiscal cliff. >> corporate treasurers have the cash because they're afraid. i just got done having lunch with three bank cfos. they're hoarding cash because of the government's uncertainty, because they're afraid of changing all the rules. >> we have to remember something. qe-3 really wasn't needed here. if we look at inflation, it's near normal, relative to the hiring mandate. it's really keeping a slow shuffle around the bottom. what it is doing is increasing m-2, put iting liquidity into t pie. >> the housing market -- you

know, two-thirds of households can't get an fha loan. so the fed's easing isn't going liquefy households. >> absolutely. it could create a deflationary scenario that, you know, it's unfortunate that ben bernanke is having to overcompensate for congress. in some ways, i think it's questionable whether he should be doing that. but i think that there's some really scary longer term repercussions here. >> what are they? how does this end? >> you know, it's hard to say. if it's not resolved, i really think you have the congressional budget office saying that next year similar to what ben bernanke said, we'll see a recession if those tax -- >> we're going to have a recession anyway. >> i don't necessarily disagree with you. >> you think it's baked in, chris? >> all i can say is it's the missing piece in all of our ear efforts to address the crisis. in the '30s, the fed was a big player. we restructured the economy. we're not doing that. >> agreed. i think it's an art pump.

just trying to keep -- i hate to say it, but the house of cards kind of going along. until there's real organic growth in the system through real gdp hiring, you know, pumping up and reinflation of the risk assets is not going to create that kind of recovery in the economy. it might stir the animal spirits and create that kind of psychological confidence, but until it translates into gdp, i agree. >> on that happy thought, we must leave you. we're out of time. >> thank you, bill. thank you, maria. >> thank you so much. 20 minutes before the closing bell sounds. this market losing some momentum, but still up about 30 points. >> a new report shows investor confidence is surging. so why does that make everyone here want to get out of the market? people are fleeing mutual funds right now. where's the confidence? we're going to talk about that. after the bell, i'll talk exclusively about gold's recent run up. it's an interview you'll only

see on this network. keep it here. back in a moment on "closing bell."

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in case i get hit by a meteor. wow, your hair looks great. didn't realize they did photoshop here. hey, good call on those mugs. can't let 'em see what you're drinking. you know, i'm glad we're both running a nice, clean race. no need to get nasty. here's your "honk if you had an affair with taylor" yard sign. looks good. [ male announcer ] fedex office. now save 50% on banners. [ male announcer ] introducing a reason to look twice. the entirely new lexus es and the first-ever es hybrid. this is the pursuit of perfection. like in a special ops mission? you'd spot movement, gather intelligence with minimal collateral damage. but rather than neutralizing enemies in their sleep, you'd be targeting stocks to trade. well, that's what trade architect's heat maps do. they make you a trading assassin. trade architect.

td ameritrade's empowering web-based trading platform. trade commission-free for 60 days, and we'll throw in up to $600 when you open an account. welcome back. four minutes left in the trading session here. it's still all about oil. this is still the chart of the day here. it continued lower. now we've got all kinds of reasons. monday we couldn't figure out why. now we have supply issues. the eia report out today showed more supply than expected. saudi arabia's going to add more supplies. we have more supply and the price goes lower, down 3.7%. look at this, though. did you know oil has its own volatility index?

it's called the ovx. it's been going higher. it's at a two and a half month high. usually we say the vix is in yellow flag territory, signaling problems with the market. it's at 36 for oil right now. it's very volatile, obviously. goes without saying. by the way, don't blame the dollar. oil going lower doesn't mean we had a stronger dollar today. the dollar index is now at a multiweek low at this point. down to 79.07. especially against the yen, which was very strong today. gold also not going lower following oil, which it sometimes does. it's still at about a six and a half, seven-month high at 1773. the stock market continues to go higher. up 24 points on the dow. it's off the highs of the day. it goes higher, the ten-year yield goes lower. down to 1.87% on that ten-year. as for sector, i think that's what we have next. yes, we do. very strong consumer discretionary. the strongest by far today with

a gain of 1.4%. that was up almost 2% for a time today. where was the strength? many stocks had pretty good gains today. among them, good year tire. the housing data out in the last couple days has helped housing data. d.r. horton also very strong. viacom, we highlighted that earlier with that pop jackie deangelis was talking about. consumer discretionary has been strong. is that a group you would like right now? >> i like a certain play in terms of consumer. i'm actually focusing on the value consumer. that means dollar tree. i just bought dollar tree. i love it because whether you believe there's going to be sluggish growth going forward or some kind of contraction, consumers are going to be