thuiveth enthusia enthusiasm, sue. i look forward to tyler's absence. >> the pleasure is all mine. we will see you tomorrow afternoon on "power lunch." greet signs begins right now. i love that intro. welcome to street signs. today it is all about "the most." it is a show truly of superlatives more than normal, like which stocks are the most likely to succeed. which stocks are the most popular. the most underrated. mandy and i will break down our most ridiculous stories of the year. you can tweet us your suggestions.

just add the #themost. a very mixed day for the major averages today with the dow managing to erase an early 75-point loss and has been moving between gains and losses over the past half our or so. the dow is trying to avoid what would be only its fourth losing session for september. as for the s&p, it is down for a third day in four after talking up four straight gains to end last week. dow, s&p and nasdaq are now on pace for their first losing week in three weeks, though of course they still have the rest of today and all of tomorrow to make up for that shortfall, if they can. what better way to kick off the show than a look at the most widely held stocks an how they are doing this year. the most popular stocks owned by hedge funds, mutual funds and institutional investors are -- that's no surprise. right? apple. everybody knows that. everybody seems to love it. they should. stock's up 73%.

but did you know that microsoft is also one of the top five most held stocks out there? that's right. you heard jim chano said he's long microsoft. ex exxonmobil. also google one of the five most held stocks out there. maybe a bit of a surprise, oracle one of the most widely held stocks and it is up 28%. what does most popular actually mean? does it mean most likely to succeed? it is kind of like a high school year book. isn't it? most popular but not necessarily the most likely to succeed. right? >> yeah. you know what's interesting about that list is, you could overlay a market cap ranking and it would be almost the same for the top 20 most widely held

stocks. look, mutual fund managers, especially larger mutual funds, they're typically cap weighted mentality when they're constructing portfolios. so the biggest companies are going to be the most widely held. also there are additional benefits like daily liquidity, they can move in and out of these. when they take in new money they don't have to wait for dips necessarily or events. so that's what you see in that list. don't know that that means it is going to give you the best performance a year forward and a contrarian actually would tell you the opposite. that's actually the list you'd want to steer clear of. >> are you a contrarian to josh's view? >> i certainly agree with josh as to why they are the most widely held. obviously market leaders in all of their key industries. if you take these five stocks, you've got 13% of the market cap for the s&p 500. obviously most professional investors are benchmarked to somebody, typically the s&p 500. so it makes great sense to own these. if you look at the prospects on the next 12 months, it is

certainly going to be -- you'd be hard pressed to make an argument that any of these companies will have a poor performance over the next 12 months but to josh's point, do you stock pick and pick five or just buy the s&p index. then probably have a little more protection in a more volatile market. >> art, i was the most surprised by oracle being on that list. listen, big company, good company, but i didn't realize how much of an annuity stock this has become. i know you guys like it at. you've got a buy rating on it. are you surprised it is on that list though? >> no, not at all. when you think about the multiple it is trading at, this company has done a great job at acquisitions. they sit in the sweet spot of middle ware and software. when you back out the amount of cash they have on the balance sheet, you are looking at a multiple of only nine times. obviously a reasonable multiple when the s&p's trading at 13 times. they do a great job of managing their business. >> talking of the best prospects

going forward, josh, do you dare leave alone the popular people and go off with those that are going to succeed? where would you rather put your money? >> i was never an "in" crowd kind of guy. oracle i probably like the least out of that group. the company's trying to make a transition to cloud. i'm sure they'll be successful but it is probably not the greatest time to be in oracle. but i'll give you two ideas. the first is exxon is worth $400 billion. unless we discover that oil also cures cancer, it is probably not going to be the hottest stock going forward. but if you want to stay in that space, the integrateds, and you want safety, i like chevron better. there is a higher dividend. it is about half the size market cap wise technically speaking, broke above $110, $112. there's no one selling this stock so i would do that. the other name i bring up that everyone talks about but it seems like no one owns, except the lifers who never sell -- is berkshire hathaway. specifically the "b" shares. >> that would be your mvp. >> that's my personal -- i mean we have this as a pretty

heavyweighting and a lot of the models that we run for clients. i'll tell you why. you don't see a lot of mutual fund managers owning this because they almost view buffett and berkshire as their competition. they don't want to own another fund themselves that they are a fund. the way to look at berkshire, 60% of this business is driven by insurance. unlike being a common stockholder, because buffett owns the insurance companies themselves, he can use that cash flow to make other investments. this stock technically speaking broke above $87 which was the prior high. there's really no resistance until $100. stocks breaking $90, $100 tends to happen a tractor beam, we call it the $100 roll. i wouldn't be surprised if there are 12 more points here. >> art hogan, who's your mvp? >> we gave you a couple of theme attic names but the one we like the most is liberty ventures. we really like that. we look at that as the champagne fund at a bargain price. basically what you have is a

john malone run private equity fund that you can buy right now at 666 cents or 70 cents on the dollar. i just think you are betting on a winner and you have an opportunity to buy it at a bargain price right now. >> you have a price tag on liberty ventures of $69. josh, thanks very much for playing on our "the most" show. it's been a pretty wild year for ipos. remember the bats bdebacle and how can we forget facebook. the most successful ipo -- annie's. up 350% since its market debut in march. on deck, the firestorm behind the most watched video on cnbc.com so far this year. plus, what is the most single important issue for the election? jobs? taxes? health care? we'll discuss and debate coming up.

also, we're going to reveal the most tweeted stock in the world all ahead on this very special edition of street signs, "the most." [ male announcer ] when a major hospital wanted to provide better employee benefits while balancing the company's bottom line, their very first word was... [ to the tune of "lullaby and good night" ] ♪ af-lac

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if you look at seasonally adjusted, a fresh low participation rate going back to december of '81. what does that mean in english? shrinkage. shrinkage. 1.2 million people are now not considered unemployed anymore. they just have left the system.

>> so, that was rick back in february and it is now the most viewed video on cnbc.com this year. so rick joins us. rick, to say that you are maybe a bit dubious of the way the government calculates its monthly jobs report might be the most understatement of the year. >> well, kind of. but let me rephrase that. i'm not necessarily dubious about how the government or the labor department put together their numbers or seasonally revise their numbers. what i'm dubious about is how an industry of experts and analysts and economists and how all the ivy league educated people that are in the likes of the federal reserve, i'm dubious about how they continue to ignore the effects of the labor force participation rate. 31-year trends. they continually point to a dropping unemployment rate. mr. bernanke did it his last couple of trips to the hill without mentioning that dynamic. that is what's dubious in my opinion. >> so if everybody quits, we'll

have no unemployment. >> to me, the battlefield of this election and the battlefield of everything everybody in congress and the white house should be partaking in is in the employment battlefield. i think that's why there are so many cross currents because the performance of employment an jobs has been so dire. >> i'm also dubious about how qe3 is going to create more jobs but that's a whole different discussion. thank you very much, rick santelli. so our jobs, the single most important issue in this election? let's ask jared bernstein and tony frater. both of you are cnbc contributors. thanks very much for your contribution today. tony, what do you think is the most important issue in this election? number one, what ought to be the most important issue? >> oh, great.

su i think it is a no-brainer. there are a lot of really important issues for different subsets of the population out there, whether it is immigration or foreign policy or spending and the deficit. the number one issue, what's the most persuasive issue for voters in this election is really job creation. which candidate out there can talk about a plan going forward that would really create jobs going forward. what ought to be the number one issue, the most overlooked issue, an if you follow me on twitter, you hear me ranting about it every now and then, this crisis that we have in high schools of dropouts. here's a statistic, mandy. of all of those chicago school students that went back to school yesterday, about 40% of them will not earn their high school degrees at the end of four years. that is a crisis in america. it is a long-term hit on our productivity and our standard of living and i'd love to see both candidates talking about that. >> i completely agree. over a million kids drop out of

school a year costing the economy hundreds of billions of dollars a year in lost productivity, forever, as well as costs. completely agree. jared, now to you. what is the most important issue in november? >> i think it is the double deficit. it is the budget deficit and the jobs deficit. the former is longer term. the latter is near term. and i can think of two very good plans to solve both of them. one of them is that -- everybody talks about bowles-simpson. actually, there was another budget plan suggested by pete ae min chi. folks with good street credibility around here that -- they came up with a plan that stabilizes the budget deficit in the long term but does a lot for job creation in the short term. i think that's mechanism by which you might be able to achieve this so-called -- >> i don't disagree with you that tapping t

that tackling the budget deficit is very important. if you're moms and dads at home and you have these guys campaigning and up on stage talking about i'm going to do this or that for the budget deficit, does that hit home to you? is that the most important thing that you want to hear about? doesn't it come back to am i going to have a job tomorrow or not? >> see, i'm playing a little bit of the inside game here. i think that's actually appropriate. i do think that the jobs is number one, but i don't think you're going to get any movement on jobs unless you can convince people that there is a smooth, sustainable budget path in the future. in order to actually do something about jobs in the near term -- i'd argue that neither campaign is talking about the near term job creation enough -- what you'd really need to do is some pretty serious jobs measures of the type the president talked about in the american jobs act a year ago. near term jobs measures. now they get into the system, they get out of the system, they can't contribute to the long term debt. but unless you give people a sense that you've got a plan to get the budget deficit under control, i'm not sure they're going to listen much to your jobs plan. >> tony, is there any chance

we'll get the most important group hug if history by the end of the years, which is republicans and democrats coming together in the capital to say let's work together? or is that the most impossible thick of the year? >> that's the most important cliff that we have to face, we could say that. i have to tell you, i'm an outlier on this. everybody seems to think there's going to be some kind of solution that we're going to get through, but i have to tell you, i don't see it. look at all the incentives of everybody involved and a lot of the different scenarios and i have a hard time seeing how we avoid going over the fiscal cliff. >> one of the most tragic things of the year. >> that reminds me of my other top thing, the thing that you asked what ought we be talking about? it is a very simple from economize, not particularly sophisticated -- it is compromise. what we tend to hear for people running for office these days is i'm going to go there and hold fast and i won't take any crap from the opposition and i'll cut

this and slash that. what we just don't hear enough of is i'm actually going to try to work with the other side to solve problems. that may sound corny but to me it still really means a lot. >> what's so corny about peace, love and understanding there, jared? >> easy, don't paraphrase elvis costello. >> jared, tony, thank you for playing. thank you to our most friendly cnbc contributors. what is the state of american states? and staying with our theme of the day, specifically what are the most expensive? perhaps the most improved states? scott cohn, our statesman, is here to break it down for us. >> you're the host with the most, brian. let's talk about top states. we do this every year. we rank america's top states for business. you may recall texas was america's top state for business this year, followed by utah, virginia, north carolina, north dakota. but to get there we analyze all 50 states on more than 50 metrics. all of that data gets us some interesting mosts.

let's look at america's most expensive state for business. it is hawaii which finished 49th in overall rankings. location is an issue. but some problems are self-inflicted. hawaii has the nation's highest tax burden, among the highest business taxes overall. it also has the highest commercial and industrial utility costs. if you want to want office or industrial space in hawaii you will pay dearly. the least expensive state is kentucky. the year's most improved state is idaho which finished 13th overall this year which is a big jump from 31st last year. idaho was a low-cost state, no great surprise, particularly for utilities though there is room for improvement there on taxes. the state got its biggest boost for an improvement in business friendliness. our category that looks at the legal and regulatory climate. speaking of business friendliest, the most friendly state for business in our study this year, was south dakota. it is one of those states that often very quietly makes its way into the top tier of america's top states for business. we found a very pro business legal climate in this year's

study which looked more closely in than in past years at tort activity in the state's courts. regulatory regime in south dakota means lots of business freedom and that helped south dakota improve to seventh overall, its best ranking in two years. you can do your own slicing and dicing of your numbers, see where your state ranks, what it has the most of and least of at topstates.cnbc.com. >> what was the most surprising result out of this survey? >> well, the most surprising thing that we've seen over a number of years, we've looked at north dakota. i was surprised last year that it didn't make it into the top five. we talked about this back in july. north dakota did rank as number five this year. it has the big shale oil boom but also has a lot of areas that are -- still needs improvement on things like technology. also, texas, the top state for business this year, we talked about this with governor rick perry back in july, was way down there in quality of life. the reason -- one of the main reasons is because texas has so few people with health

insurance. new statistics just out today show that texas again has the least insured population they say in texas. that's a matter of personal choice. but it hurts in quality of life and it slightly hurt texas in the rankings. >> indeed. sometimes these headlines mask the problems beneath. thank you very much, scott cohn. next up, the new most powerful women in business list. then we rev up the testosterone with the most manly stocks around. jane wells was given have very special assignment. she's all over that one, jane. >> that's because i like men! and boys and their toys. some of those stocks have done very well. we look at four of them through the eyes of one manly man. brian? >> well thank you. and as we head to break, take a look at the five most downloaded songs on itunes right now. >> number one, smash hit that everybody's talking about. you're going to hear it. the song is also making its mark on youtube where it has received

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welcome back to street signs. our market flash on jcpenney. this one getting whacked today down more than 10%. ceo ron johnson made some comments yesterday during a presentation to investors. he also said some good things about the new store model, but then he warned that sales weakness is going to persist into the second half of 2012. that's what's hitting the stock today. $26 right now. mandy. "fortune" is out with its annual ranking of the 50 most powerful women in business. by have next to me, ellen coleman, chairman and ceo of dupont. helping the 210-year-old company transition into agriculture and also nutrition. here at number four, irene rosenfeld, chairman and ceo of kraft which basically she's been leading the plmove split kraft into two companies. number three who took over exactly one year ago today, meg

whitman. she is the president and ceo of hewlett-packard. she was brought in to turn around that struggling company one year ago. it's been a little rough so far. profits were down 19% in 2011 and the stock is down 19% year to date. coming in at number two, chairman and ceo of pepsico. she's focused on shifting consumers to pepsico's good for you line of products and at number one, the most powerful woman in business, president and ceo of ibm. she's been at the helm of some of big blue's biggest transformations and hence she is newman ber one on that list. from the most powerful women to the most manly stocks. which stocks may be not suffering from low "t"? jane wells claims to be man enough for this challenge, jane. >> brian, we pick four stocks and a regular joe trying each one on for size.

roll stock number one. men men's warehouse. up 28%. earnings this month surprised to the upside and a new ad campaign reaches out to young male hipsters. >> suits today aren't like suits from yesterday. >> analysts at johnson rice say mw is poised to return to peak earnings this year. wary of slowing comps. manly stock number two. harley-davidson. despite growing sales to women, this is still very much a man's machine. august sales slowed as the new model year was shipped this month. ubs says soft have been soft all summer. 22% earnings growth for the

year. stock number three. deere underperforming the broader market with shares up only 9% a year but august retail sales for large tractors were up at healthy double digits along the to the research company that says 2013 could be a good year as farmers plant more to make up for the drought. finally, stock number four. boston beer. up a frothy 43% in a year. deutsche bank thinks shares may have too much of a head though it adds the company keeps finding new growth outlets. >> back to you guys. >> it was absolutely fantastic. we were wondering who the guy was who you roped in to dress up and do all the -- >> that is -- he is the manliest man in the los angeles bureau. that is video editor robert simons. they don't get any more macho than that. >> jane, great stuff. now to the three most awesomest videos of the day.

first up, this is kind of the opposite of fun. this ride at california's knotsbury farm just stopped. stuck there with 20 people stuck 300 feet in the air for three hours. they finally made it back to the ground. no one was hurt, just kind of annoyed. and file this one under the most awesome animal rescuing another animal video. baby goat is struggling to swim in a petal zoo pond but then jumps in a hero pig who plays lifeguard and nudges the goat to shore. and this is my most favorite animal story of the year -- let's take a look at the adorable swimming koala. for those of you who know anything about koalas, normally they typically drown in water. this one however spotted some guys who were out canoeing on gold coast of australia. he took to the water, swam over to them. they pulled him into the canoe. gave him a little cuddle. he happily just left them do that, then he was put back on

the shore again. back to his tree. >> cool stuff. >> that is the most aww video i think of the year so far. next up, perhaps the most bold analyst call of the year. and the short list of the most shorted stocks of the year. and the rich list. we show you the most expensive everything. you know, house, boat, car. even, pudding, yes, pudding. "the most" back in two minutes.

it is time for street talk, our daily look at some of the most talked about stocks of the day. first up, credit suisse making retail calls, limited brand getting a bast. >> credit suisse upgrading limited from outperform to neutral. some of their chains include victoria's secret. they also like the international expansion opportunities around that store. they raised their target to $59 from $51 because it already hit the target obviously. that stock up 26% over the past year. let's move on to number two. yesterday's big loser making back some of those losses today, most comeback story. >> and the most fought over stock perhaps of the last 24 hours, got to be questcor. the stock up 13.5% but it lost

half its value yesterday. aetna reimbursement concerns. the company held a conference call at 11:00 a.m. eastern this morning, basically try to soothe the market, said the sell-off was overdone. aetna's just one insurance company and it reiterates that there are others that do cover its drug. hard to figure out how it is not material when it is basically binary -- cover or don't cover. let's look at another stock which is carmax. it is in need of a tune-up today. >> carmax has falling earnings, they missed estimates and expectations. sales were flat. carmax sells bulk to other car dealers. those selling krofts actucosts costs. the ceo was on "squawk box" this morning. check out the website. >> the important thing about that was also that prime, subprime customers increased to

14% from 7%. >> i didn't see you coming up behind me. let's get to your "most" list, these are things you obsess the most over. >> you know the most i obsessed over was green mountain. there's probably no company i've talk about more for the past year or so, for good reason. i would say it is maybe not over but it definitely is one that i -- from a -- >> and your most undermentioned? >> most undermentioned -- there are two. >> how can you have a most undermentioned because you've never mentionhem thousands of names we've never discussed. >> many. one i have mentioned which is navistar. hasn't gotten enough air time. this is a great story that continues to evolve. bad big bet by management. management tossed out. now carl icahn is in there. written two scathing letters. can't wait to see what the next chapter is here. >> you're saying you should have talked about these more. >> yes. this i wish i had been on much more, even going back a year when i was looking at it but not

talking about it much because lot of people not interested in the name but i am and i should have. >> who needs sleep? >> the other name that i have not mentioned that i wish i had mentioned is verifone. this stock has been killed because of concerns about companies like square ond othans coming after that. yesterday at a meeting with jpmorgan and analysts, the ceo from somebody i know who was there was out there basically blaming the short sellers. when that's the case, it makes me say, gee, i missed that one. >> you are the most desirous of more air time at cnbc. herb, thank you. >> thank you very much, herb. let's bring in the guy behind what is probably the most bold analyst call of the year. he is gordon johnson and his call was first solar. we're going to set it up here, gord gordon. you had a sell rating on it since october of 2008. that stock then was around $140 a share.

it is down 81% since that time. it was perhaps the best short call i have seen personally in a decade. so, welcome. >> thank you. thank you for the setup. >> well, are you still short first solar or pretty much is this as much as you're going to make? 81% return? >> we're still short first solar. in their q 2 earnings report on page 8 of their earnings presentation they stated that their cost to produce their modules are 72 cents. their modules -- 72 cents a watt. their modules are 12.7% efficient. yesterday it came out that the crystal and silicon modules, competing modules, are selling in the market, the selling price is $67 cents a watt. those are 17% efficient. it makes no sense to buy a first solar module right now. we think the only reason the company is making money is because they have projects that they purchased years ago which are allowing them to make money an revenue. >> you threw out a lot of numbers. most of them were well above my head but it sounded like you said the products are -- i hate

to use the term worthless, but they're not going to be well welcomed in the marketplace. >> it behooves you to not buy first solar's products right now. their products are more expensive and less efficient. so effectively first solar has these one-time projects which are going to take them to through probably q4 of next year. then i think the stock goes into single digits. if not, you have a liquidity problem. as that crystallizes, i think the stock goes down. there's going to be volatility but that's the story. >> that's the second most bold call you'd like to make here today. >> one we haven't discussed is u.s. steel ticker x. we love this stock on the short side. we think there's significant downside to this stock. we don't think that china is going to stimulate as everybody expects. key is u.s. still has fixed costs. they have a $5.2 million pension liability so we think that has downside as well. >> some people might watch with the sound down, shame on you. but if they do, we need to reiterate, according to the banner, this is a short call. it's not that you love the stock. you actually hate the stock and

your bet is that it will -- i want to make sure our viewers are clear. this is a short call. you're betting x is going to z. >> when you say it is going to be an amazing stock, amazing stock to the downside. >> we don't hate it, we just think there's significant downside in the stock. >> do you own any of the stocks we've talked about today? >> i do not. >> you better not. is that the most bizarre -- >> disclosure. thank you very much to gordon johnson. sticking with shorts, cole hickey, co-founder of the spoke investment group has a list of shorter stocks as well, talking of shorts. paul, thank you for joining us today. what do you have on your list here? >> what we're looking at is the most heavily shorted stocks in the s&p 1500. one of them is first solar. so the shorts have been right on on that stock. as it's just been decimated as we've seen. looking at the other names on the list though, you have to keep in mind short sellers have been killed this year, overall.

the most heavily -- 50 most heavily shorted stocks in the s&p 500 at the start of the year are up an average of about 19% so far this year versus 13% for the s&p 500. >> can you explain why has it been such a difficult year for short sellers? >> i think when you have an up -- a market as strong as we've had right now, you tend to see junkier stocks do well. part of the big gain, sears holdings is one of the best performing stocks this year and it was one of the most heavily shorted at the start of the year. so that is going to skew the averages a little bit. but you tend to see in these most heavily shorted stocks, you typically see a lot of consumer discretionary stocks as they are -- ten to have more stories involved in them and more skeptics. one of the interesting names on the list that we saw was open table which right before its earnings last quarter had a big sell-off to going into the earnings report, and then after earnings reported better than expected earnings and has been rallying ever since. so that's one where there's been

a bit of pain for the short sellers right now. >> are shorts overall losing their conviction, paul? >> you know what? we're seeing especially in august we saw short interest come down. short interest levels for the overall interseize ull indices there is a lot of talk investors are maybe overly bearish. i think the more accurate point is investors are non-committal and just not excited either way because short interest levels are down so that doesn't tell you that investors are really bearish, but they may not be bullish either. >> on the show we've been asking everybody what their mvp stock is or what their anti-mvp stock is. what are yours? >> one of the names we like here, we find interesting -- it may not be as widely thought of -- synchronoss. they help phone carriers

transfer contact information between phones and so when you get your new phone, it has all your contact information, everything you had on your old phone on your new phone. as you see the tablet market heat up, people want to be able to have their contact information stored in all those phones and transferable easily. that's an interesting play right here. on your whole topic of the most, i think it is fitting that you had it today, which is a thursday, because during this bull market, thursday's been the most positive day of the week as nearly one-third of the market's gains during this bull market have come on thursdays. it's pretty fitting that you pick today to do it. >> most lucky day. there you go. thank you very much, paul hickey. let's get out to jackie with a market flash. >> well, this is interesting. obviously a big coffee day. we've been discussing it. i want to mention pete's. holder gabelli disclosing a 5.05% stake in a 13d filing. it is slightly higher but just

adding to the coffee story. >> wow. very bullish on peet's coffee. coming up next, the most social stocks in the world. which company is tweeted about the most, which company has the most facebook friends as well. you can't have a show called "the most" without mentioning what the world's most wealthy are buying. we're going to show you. plus, at the end of the show the most excellent segment of the day -- the beer milkshake. it's here. bob...

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.

coming up on closing bell, a big day for ipos. five stocks making their debut on the street. but could that actually be a bearish sign for the market? we'll look at that. plus, one of the fed's biggest critics explains why the fed's latest stimulus move could actually be doing more harm to the economy than good. james grant, the interest rate observer himself, will be here in an exclusive interview. then a story near an dear to my heart -- how come gasoline

prices take off like a rocket, but go down like a feather? are refiners and oil companies ripping us off at the pump? we'll have that debate coming up at the top of the hour on the closing bell. >> i'm going to hand it over to the host with the most for this segment, brian. you cannot have a show called "the most" without mentioning what the people with the most money are doing with it. our wealth reporter robert frank is here to enlighten us. what are they buying, robert? >> well even in this economy, the rich continue to break new records for spending. we're going to start with the most expensive home for sale in america. this is the versace mansion in miami. price -- $125 million. the coolest feature about this house is that it's got a 54-foot pool lined with 24-karat gold. if hotels are more your thing, we can take you to the most expensive hotel room in the world. royal penthouse sweet at the hotel president wilson in

switzerland. price -- $65,000 per night. most expensive car ever sold at auction is, of course, a f ferrari. no most complete list would be complete without a yacht. the most expensive mega yacht ever built, this boat "eclipse." it cost $500 million. that's about $1 million per foot. of course, we end with dessert. the most expensive pudding ever sold -- $34,000. this chocolate confection resembled a faberge egg. it's got champagne jelly, edible gold leaf and a diamond. the buyer was a 60-year-old businessman. he was dumped by his girlfriend. he got this to cheer him up. he said, "it only lasted 15 minutes but the flavors will last in my memory for a lifetime." i'll let you make the jokes on that one. >> was the 15 minutes the

pudding or the girlfriend. secondly, i'm a little bit annoyed with you, robert. we're supposed to have our most ridiculous stories of the year. that yacht was mine. listen, a big boat is one thing. but the kind of excess we're seeing still around the world with this economy -- and i can't believe i'm saying this -- is kind of disgusting. >> it is a vulgar use of one's money. >> they made their money, they can do with it what they want. it's entertainment for us. >> they made their money the hard way -- they took it. still ahead, the beer milkshake. the most delicious or most disgusting? and the stock social club. what facebook, coca-cola and disney all have in common. gs, a crash management system and the world's only tridion safety cell which can withstand over three and a half tons. small in size. big on safety.

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stocks over the last 24 hours, microsoft on top of the list. jpmorgan and ge. i should say for disclosure stake, i'm a stakeholder in this very fine network. >> just because they were tweeted does not mean they were your best bet. howard, you're going to talk about some names, they may soar, they may crash, but either way,

my friend you are adorable. >> how do you run a show -- mandy is adorable, you are tolerable. how do you run a show and know what's going on like this, you're amazeing. the names that are the most tweeted, are those the ones that are most likely to move? >> it's a signal. twitter is quickly becoming much like volume from the largest mutual funds, right? it's become a machine driven, obviously very human at the core. you have to be very careful about most tweeted. and you have to really do your work behind the scenes. it makes sense that people are going to talk the most about ge and bank of america. they have the most news in general. as an investor, you want to peel back and see page ten or what's moving toward page one. i think what's happening in finance, the big banks, they

have a great business. at the core, borrowing money from the government and lending it out at a higher rate is excellent business. scale matters, if we trusted city bank and bank of america and jpmorgan, the stocks would be doing better, but they're complicated. behind the layer is regional banks hitting all time highs every day. i think you can use that kind of sentiment, but then you really need to drill down and go wide. >> if you talk about most tolerable. i think that's what was in ryan's yearbook in high school. twitter's real bread and butter is social media stocks. if you compare the two, the down 30 names, social media stocks are way more tweeted about and mentioned on twitter, reason the they? >> yeah, well, i don't even like the word social media. now social media means i don't know how to make money, and i'm going to screw my users with that. it's a tool. when we look back in seven years

and everybody's using these products. cnbc's using them, you guys are using them well. when we move further into the media, it's going to be about who uses these tools the best. buying zynga or groupon is not buying social media. buying nike, apple or starbucks is buying social media. they are social media stocks. i look at my nike shoe, nike is powering all this data. they're going to be an incredible growth company. maybe not them -- they'll have the capital to acquire people. >> that was a most excellent hit. thank you very much. i know you like csod, cornerstone on demand. i wanted to point it out. thank you, howard, see you again. >> lo and behold, apple. staying on the social beat here, here's the most liked brands on facebook. thumbs up for facebook, it has the most likes on its own

website. runners up are texas hold 'em poker. youtube and coca-cola round out the top five. what do you make of this list? is this ridiculous or what? >> it's the most fun things, right? it doesn't mean they're going to do well in the market. coca-cola's fun. zynga's fun. you can play games all the time, and you'll get mentioned on facebook. the other thing. the problem we get to is, are any of these real? are there guerrilla marketing campaigns going on making these things happen? we never know when we see likes on facebook. it's hard to think the things on facebook are anything other than a culture of the very young. >> what is the most surprising retail story so far this year? >> wow! the most surprising retail story has to be the huge things going

on at jcpenney, right? i was down there yesterday. completely renovated company. the most change ever in the history of retailing. >> and it's going to be good for the stock? >> no. it's not going to be good for the stock. it's still the most change in the history of retailing. >> as we saw earlier. the stock is down by 10% right now on some comments from the ceo. always good to have you on the show. next, a most awesome end to the show. it is the beer milk shake. it is here, and it will be devoured. up. a short word that's a tall order. up your game. up the ante. and if you stumble, you get back up.

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here is the question, will did be the most disgusting or the most delicious concoction yet. we give you the red robin milk shake. >> it's awesome. >> that's definitely most delicious. there's nothing disgusting about that at all. >> kids, do not do this at home, unless you're of legal drinking age. there's beer in here, milk shake and caramel. >> because we're a stock/business show, red robin stock is up about 18% year to date. currently down by 7/10. 18% year to date. close the show, i'm g