the south african olympian wept as prosecutors said they would pursue a charge of premeditated murder for the killing of his model girlfriend. if convicted, he could spend the rest of his life in jail. his family issued a statement disputing the murder charge. the chief magistrate though delayed the bail hearing until next week until then pistorius is being held in a police holding cell rather than prison. just a tragic chapter for what was one of the great feel-good stories from the summer olympics last year. >> and story that continue ns to unfold and we will continue to follow it, bill. >> let's look at market before we turn it over to "street signs." industrial average up about

eight points just a fractional gain flirting with the unchanged mark and nasdaq composite is up one. one of the worst performing markets this week is the gold market. bill, it did manage to hold above the 1600 mark. but you know, the adage and kmod commodities markets, it feels as though the market builds up in the selling of the geld market today. >> i haven't understood gold for years. the huge rally it wasn't through for a decade, was that telling us that there was an inflation coming? where is the inflation? we went through the recession and all that and now with the easy money around, i could understand that and now it is falling. so i don't understand the gold market and especially with currencies going lower as well. it should be going higher. >> i know. we will talk to the ceo. >> thanks for joining me. have a great weekend everybody. "street signs" is next. >> and welcome to "street signs," everybody. where we are looking sky high

today, literally. right now a massive astroid is barreling toward earth and you don't want to miss a thing. watching it live so you do not have to turn away. meantime, it looks like the sky is falling on gold with the metal having a major melt down today. we will get the trade on gold ahead. plus carl icahn says bill ackman's rampage, his words, by the way, help him make money. that is bill ackman through the roof. clash of titans continues and we have the full ahead. and air travel more of a nightmare. happy friday, everybody. in the meantime, seven is a our number of the day. s&p 500 now gained for a seventh week in a row, and it is up nearly 7% year to date. as for the nasdaq. it has climbed to a fresh 12-year high while dow transports small and mid caps are hitting all-time highs.

and let's get straight down to the floor. rick santelli is in chicago. bob, we are very close to record highs for major ind sees and yet we just can't seem to get there. what do traders say about this some. >> traders are not surprised at all. we have been outperforming all other major indicies all over the world. a little bit aftof a stall is n surprising. this is commodity-based stocks. again, can you own these different sectors of the markets. but for example, oil service names today have been very weak here. here is the major indicie s.e. there is gold miners. silver miners. again these are baskets of different parts of the market that you can own. gdx and sil notably weak, down 3%. on top of the commodity countries are weak.

this is the beauty of exchange frun funds. you can trade on russia. canada, australia, all skoesated with commodity producing events. let's move on and talk about the airlines. remember yesterday a big down day on that u.s. air merger with american. but all this has reversed today and essentially we were back to where we were three days ago. finally i want to poent out, mandy, 1.5% gain on s&p 500 so far in the month of february. just near new highs that outperformed every other major country in the world. everybody else is to the down side. we are to the upside. we may not have a great economy but it is still better than the rest of the world. >> i wonder if we will wheel out that old world. >> thank you bob pisani and rick santelli. when you consider higher gas prices, how is that playing out in yields today?

>> well yields today are up a bit and without a doubt nice to see data point. up since november. if you look at year to date chart of tens, we are up basically a quarter after point. i'm not saying that's not a lot. but it is not huge and everybody of course and he has to go up and so there is a bias for higher rates. dollar index, up three quarter a cent on the year. remember, it is very euro centric and our greatest strength in the dollar hasn't been necessarily against euro. it's been against the yen that goes a long way in saying dollar denominated commodity can be lower but down here where they trade gold, they think the reason gold is going down is because it is securityized. you don't really trade the metal. you trade the etfs and paper. that's one of the reasons put forth down here for some of the price behavior in gold. back to you. >> we put that to our guest later on p when we do talk about the falling gold to six-month

lows. thank you, rick. markets seem to have hit a roadblock since we hit dow 14,000. what sucked the life out of the momentum and what does it take for us to break out and soar to record highs? president and portfolio manager, portfolio funds and research president james -- oh, i see, he will be joining us now. i thought it was going to be a second. michael, first of all, as i was saying to bob pisani, we have reached a strong ceiling. what will it take for us to break through and hold there convincingly? >> well, i think stocks have performed very well despite a lot of questions or head winds. whether it is anemic u.s. growth and whether worldwide growth concerns, whether it is the tax hikes that kicked into effect this year and next due to obama care and recent fiscal cliff issue or budget issues coming up. those are substantial head wind and stocks perform largely in

spice of those. i think investors are looking for return. stocks provided that, corporate earnings provided a foundation for stocks and so, those have basically offset concerns at this point in time. the major issue is going to be at what point do those concerns override the good feelings on equities and when do you get off of that ride? >> how do you know to get off? we talked michael about how to buy stocks wisely but what about selling stocks wisely? what is the indicators to you that now might be the time to take profit? >> i think the biggest indicator is a a reduction in the rate of growth of corporate earnings or complete fall-out. that would be substantial because that does provide support for dividend yields and also does provide support for pricing. so that would be a big one. more globally and more longer term, i think the state of the u.s. economy and worldwide economy, i think if we do the right structural reform things, budgetary attacks wise, et cetera, then you unleash more

animal spirit. i think you see the unemployment rate come down faster and you see businesses spend more. absent that, i think you bounce along for the next few years in the u.s. kind of like what we are doing. and then the real engines of growth become the rest of the world where we participate but are not driving it. >> as bob says, we are outperforming the rest of the world. jim, let me bring you into the conversation. holding above a 2% range and one of the concerns for investors might be that we see a sudden spike in yields. is that at all likely if we see improvement in the economy, is there any danger we will see yield spike up at a rate that is too fast for the market to handle? >> it is always a danger but you have to remember who the buyer of treasury securities are. it is not an investor, an retail investor. a central bank and primarily federal reserve buying treasury in month and augmenting that with 45 billion of mortgages a month. as long as federal reserve is in the game buying treasury

securities. the perception is that inflation is at least an problem. i dent want to go as far as say under control. fsh treasury yields should remain where they were now. the fed decides if they stop or inflation starts it creep up. you could see yields move higher. but keep in mind, that over the last hundred years, every time yields have moved up, stocks don't have negative returns. so for those that are saying that at some point the bond market is going to blow up and yields go skyrocketing. stocks have negative returns when that happens so you want to be very careful we don't get that to happen because it could upset everything. >> certainly on the point of inflation, jim, if you look at what has been happening with gold alone, down to six-month lows, that seems to be suggesting there is absolutely no inflation out there at all which of course a lot of us field might be different if you good to the grocery store, et cetera, et cetera. >> yeah. gold is a little more complicated. you're right.

and one level of gold is an inflation measure. on another level it is a confident measure in central banks or currency levels too. rick santelli said something i had been subscribing too. most is bought and told through etf or some kind of derivative or paper product and what drives gold purchases or sales or going up a or down is people buying paper gold, not actual gold. you've had stories of some large hedge funds that have been selling off say gld, gold etf or some others and that seems to be bothering the paper gold market today. so you have to separate the two. now if you do that, you look at golds return over the last ten or 12 years, it is well off the performing stock market over that period. >> indeed it has. i see the picks list, a handful of stocks and gold. would you advise people to buy at these levels? >> yes, i would. i don't think anything is

fundamentally changed on the groe gold story. it is not direct correlation to inflation but perception and confidence like jim said. i de don't think think fundamentally changed. you still have liquidity around the world. g growing demand on investment. and an lot of supply in the market. so i think long-term, it is does go higher but it is volatile and today is a good day if you haven't been in it or around these levels to possibly think about instituting a longer term position, in front of that. i would also say it is behaving very expectantly as you would expect it to do, i guess, with respect to rising stocks. it generally does not correlate exactly to stocks and it does for a while, which was unusual, but this behavior is not unusual for gold in long-term, vis-a-vis stocks. >> back to the relationship there. michael, james, thank you for joining us. have a great weekend. up next on "street signs,"

carl icahn is at it again. he is taking new aim at herbalife and bill ackman. big battle, coming up next. could last night's meteor explosion in russia have anything to do with the massive astroid that is barreling towards earth as we speak? we are all over this story. we will have live pictures for you as well on the show. when "street signs" returns. ♪

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i don't like ackman,

everybody knows that. i don't respect him, everybody knows that. actually, i thank him for calling me a great investor. i think that's a point. i do not, as great investor, that what he calls me, buy things just to get even with everybody. i'm not buying this company and putting money into it unless i've done a lot of research on it and believe in it. >> that is carl icahn just a short time ago on cnbc. he has taken, to the tune of what, 13% of herbalife. i love that line where he says, i don buy things just to get even with someone. so basically he is saying, this is not vindictive. i'm doing this to make money. do you believe him? >> i'll take him at his word if you consider it this way. let's flip it a little bit. is he in it it make money? absolutely. does he look at in his mind as legitimate business? absolutely. is his extreme motivation to get bill ackman? no. if bill ackman's financially hurt by the process, would he be

disappointed? no. take all those things together, and i think that what you have. >> and i guess a big part of this is the stakes aren't quite as high for icahn as it it is for ackman. if he loses money, so what, it is his own money, he has more. but ackman it is an investment. >> yes, it is his investor's money that he would ultimately have to answer to. and this wsh herb speaks to the power of icahn. why he is so extremely successful in the types of investments that he makes. the guy's got money. capital, permanent capital to put to work. and he can afford to take a little bit after of a loss and not lose sleep over it. >> he also has great bravado --

>> showmanship. >> showmanship. compared to your prior interview, he toned it down. even complimenting and very sort of interesting way ackman. i think you know -- >> he want to get above the noise, if you will, that is out there for everybody to focus on the investment that he made. now it's on, right? this is big time, for real. this is not the side show in some respect that this battle on our air three weeks ago, became between these two guys. it's on. and it is real. he has real money on the table. >> raen he toand he told you th things that are undervalued. and how do you work out that this is undervalued, right? there are things that dodged, i felt, when you tried to put him on the spot. >> every time you asked him certain questions, i don't -- i can't hear. what were you saying? >> like how much work he has done. >> that's the best. how much work he's done, is not germane to the subject. after saying he has done a lot of work. research here to the underlying

fundamentals and questions that bill ackman raises in that long 200 pages of questions, anyone who want to be long the stock should good through those, get answers to those. those are things that could come back and bite you. >> you think it is more germane to the topic just because of the controversy surrounding herbalife? that that makes it even more imperative that he has done above and beyond what perhaps he would normally do in terms of due diligence, research. >> also very quick to accuse ackman of not having an expert in terms of his paper also, right? >> well, he was trying toed to go to goad him. i keep saying this over and over but this something you just can't go into and look at the way -- one of the traps, let me just say, is a trap in this company. potential trap. it looks so great. looks like a great investment

opinion a opini. and maybe it is. >> bill ackman says he has done 18 months of research. >> yes. >> he is playing with his investor's money. playing, so to speak. more than a billion dollars of it on the line. in his case does he have to do as much research as possible, if not over the goal line extra? >> yes. >> carl icahn is using his money. he is not made as big a bet, if you will, as bill ackman has. so why does he need to do as much research as bill ackman has done on his side of it if he has less at risk at the end of the day? this is a -- i don't know, you call it invest many, a trade. he believes in the company. his motives are different than bill ackman's. >> when he comes out, he is bringing people in. people look up to carl icahn and look up to him to know what he is talking about. in this case, again, does he fully understand the nuances of

the investment? the real nuances that could actually trap him where he said -- he said -- >> well, carl icahn doesn't operate like that, a million dollars down the drain. >> he has a great nose. someone was pointing out to me, he smells blood. but does he really understand, again, he says he doesn't have to understand it. i say in in this case he has to understand it. >> where are the regulators, by the way? >> it is regulators, attorneys generals, anyone in congress. we don't know where they are. but thing he brings up employees. sadly, employees, sadly they lost their jobs because after situation that has to deal with a company that sort of presented itself as something it wasn't. and that is -- that doesn't matter. ftc will look at this, if they come after it, they will look. is it a pyramid scheme? they have experts. he says ackman, he says, who has

talked to experts. he hasn't ruled out experts. >> the other side of it too, the gi we haven't heard from at all is dan loeb, who is also said to be long. in truth we don't know where his position stand at the current time. he made the accusation that the notion that regulators will stand up and take a look at this company because a hedge fund manager, activist investor thinks they should, after 30 years, suddenly regulators stand up and say this is a piece of crap is preposterous. and preposterous is, i believe, the word dan loeb used. >> in the past, did the regulators want to be the guys who say, oh, we missed this one? >> once again, icahn doesn't think regulators will act. once again, great job to you, scott. >> thanks, mandy pz. >> big money-making bold moves.

kayla has been doing whale watching. what are you seeing. >> maybe more behind the scenes that herbalife, that for sure. but the most notable move was in apple. big hedge fund managers are setting up on either side of this trade, nearly a dozen funds dumping apple completely. dan loeb's third point and league leon cooperman, and leon keeperman selling apple and adding facebook instead. there are a few more in that list but those are the notables. we should note though many funds bought the stock in 2010 when it was in the $300 range. they are definitely taking profit off the table. some funds just decided to trim holdings. among those julian robertson and philippe la font. but bulls stood their ground with profilers claiming this will go up, foeting with dollars that other guys are wrong.

apple nearly doubling his stake adding 913,000 shares. most vice able apple picker, david einhorn posting a stake of a billion dollars in apple. 1.3 million shares and 275,000 o 07gs options worthing over $130 million. losing 24% by the end of quarter, which is when these filing he end. so we will see, was it smart to sell or was that weakness of buying opportunity? mandy, of course the debate will continue. >> the debate will continue. but in the meantime it is certainly worth watching whales. moving on. just ahead in "street signs," mega melt down in gold today. is that a sign that gold rush is over? plus an astroid, if you haven't noticed, is barreling towards earth as we speak and is expected to whiz by at the closest point to earth at any

point now. you don't want it miss a thing because we will take it live when "street signs" returns. mine was earned in djibouti, africa, 2004. the battle of bataan, 1942. [ all ] fort benning, georgia, in 1999. [ male announcer ] usaa auto insurance is often handed down from generation to generation because it offers a superior level of protection and because usaa's commitment to serve the military, veterans, and their families is without equal. begin your legacy. get an auto-insurance quote. usaa. we know what it means to serve. great, everybody made it.

we all work remotely so this is a big deal, our first full team gathering! i wanted to call on a few people. ashley, ashley marshall... here. since we're often all on the move, ashley suggested we use fedex office to hold packages for us. great job. [ applause ] thank you. and on a protocol note, i'd like to talk to tim hill about his tendency to use all caps in emails. [ shouting ] oh i'm sorry guys. ah sometimes the caps lock gets stuck on my keyboard. hey do you wanna get a drink later? [ male announcer ] hold packages at any fedex office location.

you are looking at nasa television, monitoring an astroid called 22da 14. it is approximately 17,000 miles away. let's listen in right now to nasa monitoring everything that's happening. >> they are all collected and all used in a combined solution to figure out its orbit. >> all right. so what next for nasa missions regarding astroids? >> nasa has a planned mission to go visit one of them. >> we have some footage of it in fact that we can show folks. now this is a mission that actually will visit an astroid? >> yes. it will good to a near earth astroid, a little larger. here you see the spacecraft approaching it. it is launched in 2016. approaches it in year 2019 approximately.

reach out, take a sample. you saw a puff of dust. >> yes. >> it'll put the sample into a return capsule and bring it back to earth so we have samples of a near-earth astroid. >> all right. we are -- we are through. da14 is onity way. we will continue our observations of it and be seeing it here in the united states pretty soon. >> okay. let's bring in jim, nbc space analyst and former nasa mission controler. jim, great to have you on the show. this is freaky, right? in the space of 24 hours we have the russian meteor, is this just a freak coincidence or is there more to it? >> we're still working on that, mandy. because the issue is, they are not quite from the same orbits. but is it crossfire? just random cries fire or is it a message? the people who do the orbits tell me they are really coincidence. they are separate objects. the one that hit over rush why

and they are talking about it being bigger than an atomic bomb. a 1500 till why ton midair explosion. it has could caused a lot of damage, not just glass damage and serious injuries but structural damage in some cities over there and still collected. so even car size astroid that caused all that damage. the one that missed us and just passed us now heading away is a football field size object. that is much more serious. then we are not talking about broken windows. we are talking about broken cities. >> right. it is skimming, as i believe, atop the eastern indian ocean. we are very lucky it will not hit us. but this begs the question, jim, what's to stop a future astroid and meteor from hitting us. is there anything we could do, if we saw that such an object was flying towards earth, what could we do to stop it from hitting us? >> a lot of people have seriously been looking at what we would do to deflect an

astroid. the sooner you detect it, way out, the less force you need to push it off course. what you want to do, the tricky part is, you want to speed it up toward you. the difference is that it would get to the crossing point with earth before earth got there. imagine two cars racing toward an intersection and both ignored stop signs. if they reach the intersection at the same time, you're in trouble. if either one gets to the intersection first, passes in front of the other then you have a miss. that what we had this time. this astroid and earth chris cross in their paths around the sun. last night, over russia, one didn't quite miss. it grazed, hit the atmosphere, came in and add horrific explosion. it might have been associated with this. doesn't look like it. i'm still waiting for the numbers. >> still crunching those numbers. thank you so much for giving us what you know so far, jim. in the meantime, what about that massive pemeteor in russia

overnight? a battle overbling is going on between costco and tiffany. later on, coffee is trading near three-year lows. but don't expect your cup of joe to get any cheaper, unfortunately. this is real caffeine buzz kill, i have to say. "street signs" will be back in a couple of minutes. [ laughs ] now this is a test drive.

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welcome back to "street signs." i'm courtney reagan. quick market update for you. wal-mart and other retailers moving sharply lower. february sales for wal-mart are the lowest or slowest start in seven years. we just received a statement from wal-mart saying quote as with any organization we often see internal communications not enentirely accurate that lack proper context and represent individual opinions. well release fourth quarter earnings onners thi thursday, f 21st. >> you know, we got the consumer sentiment numbers. better than expected. when they say better than

expected because they weren't expecting much at all. they have higher gas prices, i think record highs this time of year. and you've also got payroll tax increase which kicked in this year so people were thinking maybe the consumer would be more soggy which maybe feeds into what they are saying in wal-mart. >> maybe and we had the blizzard. >> we had the blizzard. yes. weather the storms, everything. >> perhaps that a big part of it. >> okay. in the meantime let's get straight to other stories. we've got amazon.com moving lower because both democrats and republicans have reintroduced legislation that could force internet retailers like amazon to collect sales taxes in order to end a handicap, if you want to call it that, on brick and mortar stores. now over a million dollars, effected here. this coulding significant in terms of leveling the playing field. >> totally leveling the playing field. whether it is home depot or wal-mart or macy's, they are all

taking it very seriously now. the jn line threat they are putting so much into on-line. i will say something. one thing amazon has that i don't know that others can match yet, is tremendous customers service. and in the end, if all things are equal, who will you go to? ultimately people go to lowest priced person out there and when you have sales tax shipping thrown in but their customer service is really good, they built that up. so is that going to be the next battle ground in that situation? >> i think we should say politicians aren't doing this out of the kindness of their hearts. they need the state revenue mp they need the cash. we also have avon moving higher. what is interesting herb is that it's the best week on record, about 25%. stock up nearly 47%. all raising price targets this wreak. they did report a fourth quarter loss earlier this week. but the core earnings still beat, feel like the turn around

efforts here, starting to bear some fruit. >> too early to say. stock taking a hit today. one thing to point out, when you go through earnings, one thing they called out is they talk about mexico and how mexico sales growth is starting to slow. and they talk about the mexican gdp following and i say that because if you want it look at the real big out there, herbalife which is reporting on tuesday, we talk a lot about herbalife, mexico is a big part of their business. so is this mexican slow down big enough that it will also affect the likes of herbalife? >> real quick, tiffany and costco. tiffany's alleging costco is selling knock-offs. not just recently but for many years now. we will try to find exact numbers of those supposedly counterfeit tiffany rings that costco sold and the source of the jewelry and to seek damages. we are seeing a bit of a sell-off in gold today. let's get straight to sharon

epperson. >> you could call $30 a sell-off. we are at lowest levels we have seen since august for gold right few. we are continuing to drift lower in electronic trading at the close around 1605 an ounce. the biggest loss we have seen for geld since june. there are a number of reasons. world gold council showing demand last year was below where it was the previous year. add it that the fact that a number of top fund managers are cutting their etf holdings for gold and that is another factor that some traders here are talking about and technical selling we have seen just dipping below previous low of the year. below 1625. now below 1600 earlier today. that kind of paves the way for perhaps as low as 1580 some are saying. rotation we have seen all year long out of gold and into equities, equities market is stronger. that's where people want to be. liquidating what was strong for them a year ago and that is gold holding. all of that is contributing to what we have seen in the gold market. and what we have to look out for

is whether or not gold will stay above the 1600 level. there are a lot of days when perhaps there won't be that much liquidity. >> that is a level to watch. thank you, sharon epperson. coffee is also seeing a big sell db off. trading near three-year lowes. what does that mean? cheaper cup of joe is coming? please tell me it does, jane. >> you know, it doesn't really for the consumer. it is funny the way consumers freak out about the price after gallon of gas, but not the price of a cup of coffee. stop and smell the coffee margins as coffee prices plummet. retailers in chains like burger king, yums, and kfc, calf nating up their menus to get a toe hold on the industry held by starbucks, dunkin' donuts, mcdonald's. there is a better crop, especially in brazil.

but speculative trades that are long robusta, short rabica. will consumer get a break? probably not. but do they care? >> i will pay as high as $5 for a custom coffee. >> you can't get anything at a form normal under $2. >> i just paid 7 bucks for this coffee. >> it is such a habit that price didn't matter. >> it should stay where it's at. if starbucks is making a living selling coffee for 7 bucks, kind of tells you the economy is doing okay. >> that woman says she is starbucks is her mobile office so it is cheaper to pay 7 bucks a day than $1500 a month on an office. so the chart going back nine years. that's a latte changes with the biggest jump in 2011, mandy. back to you. >> tell you what, at 7 bucks, i would be completely broke with my habit. but thank you very much, jane wells. we are keeping an eye on markets. moving lower here. dow is off by 47 points.

s&p off by 5. we are still up by the s&p seven weeks in a re. still ahead on "street signs," serving up a delicious dose of sunshine. one fast-food stock flame broiled today and yesterday's airline merger making airline travel even more after nightmare? we will debate that coming up next. h a hairline fracture to the mandible and contusions to the metacarpus. what do you see? um, i see a duck. be more specific. i see the aflac duck. i see the aflac duck out of work and not making any money. i see him moving in with his parents and selling bootleg dvds out of the back of a van. dude, that's your life. remember, aflac will give him cash to help cover his rent, car payments and keep everything as normal as possible. i see lunch. [ monitor beeping ] let's move on. [ male announcer ] find out what a hospital stay could really cost you at aflac.com.

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i'm bill griffith. are those looming across the board spending cuts threatening to send the economy back into recession? now, former congressman barney frank way weighs in. he will tell us if congress will get time in or not. alan greenspan responds in critics who say the dollar is dying and the central bank is to blame. it is an interview you will only see here on nbc. listen to this, one of the founders of xbox is with us and he says the video game console and its rivals are headed for extinction. find outweigh, later on in

closing bell. plus maria and i look at the market right now and we will see you at the top of the hour. >> thank you very much, bill. will today's sunshine onburg ear king's fourth quarter profit nearly double? seeing strong results in north america thanks to new menu additions. as a result, stock is up by 3.5%. could that airline merger gain spell more passenger pain? let's bring in dan gross. he wrote today that american airlines and us airways merger is a big blow to air travellers. we also have phil lebeau. why do you think this is pain for passengers? >> what we have seen over the last five years is a decline in capacity, losing 1.3 million flights over the course of the year. economy is bigger than 2007 and yet the number of flits on any given down is down 13%. number of passengers is down about 5%. the airlines have done a better job of being rational

businesses. they don't discount so much any more. they have their load factors up from low 70s to record 84% in october. what that means is, little less competition. fewer open seats. and they have much better pricing power. so when you look around today, it costs a lot of money to fly around domestically. >> don't they have to be rational businesses. at the end of the day, aren't they in in this business it make a profit? it hasn't always been the case they could make a profit, the airline industry. >> what they were trying to do is mass transit in the sky for the masses. and they discounted each other into bankruptcy repeatedly which was great for consumers. great for business travellers. great for tourists. but we're in a different mode now. i think, you know, it is good for the stake, financial stake holders of these companies. good for taxpayers because it is less likely they have to be bailed out. but it does mean consumers will have to be either looking for alternatives as they do with sell-off from new york to

washington instead of shuttle as they used to. and be willing it pay more when they feel like they need to go somewhere. >> phil, do you think it is this bad for passengers? is it absurd to say that airline travellers become more elitive? >> i don't think it is becoming elitist. only the very wealthy can. that's not the case. look at data. back in 1995, average round fare ticket in the u.s. cost $290. something like that. that is according to the d.o.t. now it is up to 367. average increase of what, $4 of a year for 17 years? that's not a huge increase in fares. he is right, dan is right when he talks about the fact that they are rationalizing capacity. and ultimately, that means that you are going to have to pay more. i think part of the problem here mandy is that americans got used to this idea that it was a flying bus in the air and cheap ticket to do somewhere. those days are gone. as are the days when you can cash in frequent flyers miles and get a seat on any flight you

want. those days are began as well. a there are a hundred million frequent flyers with new american airlines. it's not going to be easy. >> it is almost impossible. is this a caves like the new normal like it or lump it? >> i think so. but there is new innovation if transport tags in this country. better train service between d.c. and new york. new york and boston. and we will start to get it elsewhere. these new sort of express bus systems that now go from st. louis to chicago. chicago to milwaukee. that pick up a lot of passengers that used to rely on cheap flights that were short hops, they are now going on busses. so you take some of that innovation, that's appealing to customers at different price points. it doesn't all have to be air transit. >> understood. dan gross and phil lebeau, thank you very much. still ahead on "street signs," keeping an eye on wal-mart leading the market over. do stick with us. wal-mart is currently down by 2.8%. don't go away.

in breaking news here, we're watching what's happening with a number of the retailers here

because here's the report that originally came from bloomberg. apparently a walmart executive in an e-mail to other company executives said february sales so far are a, quote, total disaster. a walmart spokesperson has responded to this saying often we do see internal communications that are not entirely accurate, and as a result we are seeing some of these stocks, the retail stocks did take a hit on the back of this. they are coming back somewhat, as we speak, but nonetheless it did have quite an impact on the market and walmart is down by 3%. let's get to a retail expert on the phone. jen, what do you make of this? we all do it. we send e-mails, maybe to a friend, someone else may be just getting a feel of the picture and might not be the exact picture. is that something that's happened here or do you think the february sales could have been a total disaster. >> i do think sales are extremely tough for low-end retailers, but i think they have been actually since january 11th

or 12th. as a matter of fact i sent brian an e-mail yesterday saying sales are a mess. they got very tough in the second half of january despite the government numbers we saw in january. the first week of january is where all the good news was. the rest of january was difficult for most retailers and got more difficult as it went on. we didn't see any change when it went from january to february so i'm not surprise that had someone at walmart is saying the first days of february were a disaster because i think for anybody that was selling to the low-end consumer, guys making $30,000 a year, $40,000 a year, saw this big hit, 2% hit to their take-home pay which is 100% of discretionary income. they have seen higher gasoline prices. we haven't seen any growth yet in jobs, really, so not much anyway, and so we're getting a big hit, and i think this is going to continue for at least six months, fine we continue to see growth in jobs because it

will take that long for the more jobs to overwhelm the 2% hit. yeah, i wanted surprised at all. the only bad news is an internal memo got to the outside world but i don't think anybody can be surprised at low-end consumers not spending. they don't have the capacity to spend. >> how much do we attribute this to the blizzards though? is this partly weather-related? >> i don't think the weather could be helpful but i don't think this is a weather issue. i think this is a discretionary income/spending issue, and when gasoline prices are a little higher and you have 2% that comes out of your paycheck, nobody should be surprised that people making say less than 50 grand have seen their discretionary income go away. that's what they were spending. if you have 50 bucks less a month to spend and you're making 30 grand a year, that's all of your discretionary income, and that's what we're seeing and

that's the walmart customer and the dollar store customer so, you know, it's going to hurt anybody selling to that low-end consumer. >> what's your call on walmart as a stock? >> well, you know, i'm still a fan of walmart for the longer term, but i said anybody that would listen to the first half of this year it will be very difficult to be a fan of dollar stores or walmart because they are going to see consumers slow down. i do think walmart is doing all the right things. i think they have better in-stock positions than they ever had and doing a good job putting the right merchandise on the store for the customer. they are directly targeting dollar stores with smaller package sizes at the end of the month. they are doing all the right things but can't change what's going on in the overall economy. >> understood. great you have to on the show. states have another couple of hours to decide whether they want to create their own health care marketplace or partner with the federal government. let's put the political back and

forth on to the sidelines, and we're going to give you a first look at just how to invest on those exchanges. bertha coombs has been doing hard work for us and joins us now. bertha. >> reporter: hey, mandy, it's an incredible task. we're in vermont, one of the smallest states that has decided it's building its own exchange. they have 660,000 people here. they want a seamless experience that will work from the community health center here in burlington where a lot of people come, are uninsured, they will go into the portal and be able to get coverage. there is a small army of people working on this project in this state. they are spending $100 million. it is being spearheaded by cgi, working with oracle, kpmg, and they are now all whiteboarding and getting down to the nitty-gritty of how to make this exchange work. they have until next october to do it. cgi is involved in building six exchanges, including the big federal health exchange that many americans will use to

access care. >> the benefit of the federal exchange is that exchanges need a product to sell. they need plans, and the federal exchange is already starting to do testing and draw information from carriers. >> the fact that they are already fairly far along is one thing investors have been focused on. back in the fourth quarter when government spending was down, cgi, despite missing on the bottom line, had really strong government revenues because of these programs. the big question for them and their competitors like accenture, ibm, oracle and others now is what happens if we hit the sequester because that is going to impact spending, is going to impact cms and could very well hit this program. here in vermont they are really holding their breath because they really need every single penny that's coming from the federal government to make this thing work and get it up in time. >> okay. bertha coombs, thank you very much. an interesting report. meantime, we're keeping an eye

on the markets for you. of course, we've been moving in and out of negative and positive territory today. right now we are down, and one of the reasons that we took a bit of a leg down in the last half hour is because of that report of an internal e-mail between walmart executives, that february sales so far are a total disaster. that is weighing on retail stocks. coming up next though, a penny for your thoughts. ♪ [ cows moo ] [ sizzling ] more rain... [ thunder rumbles ] ♪ [ male announcer ] when the world moves... futures move first. learn futures from experienced pros with dedicated chats and daily live webinars. and trade with papermoney to test-drive the market. ♪ all on thinkorswim. from td ameritrade.

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