and trading was closed until about 1:00 p.m. eastern time today. none the less, the dow is up 87 points. >> that's right. we will see you when you get back. street signs begins right now. >> we are calling it the energizer bunny rally. not because it's pink and furry but because it keeps on going. we're going to push back on the fed a bit. gold making a come back. new claims. you just heard sue and tyler tell you. and a huge options that literally has traders standing around. we will bring you another piece. you're going to meet a woman with an incredible tail of survival.

>> let's take a look at what is happening. the s&p 500 in the midst of the best five day stretch since early january as both the ap p s&p 500 and the nasdaq are up for a fifth straight day. a lot of the focus today has been on the soft wear glitch that took out options trading earlier. bob down on the floor of the nyse. why does this matter if you don't trade options? it is not trivial. it doesn't matter, i don't care

if a horse tripped over a wire, it's not good when a major system goes down. by the way, i just got an e-mail and they told me all the systems are up and running. i like the comment. remember the names that were doing so well before? not this week. two points away from closing historic high. all the names that were out of favor two weeks ago, they are back in favor. the rotation this week has been in all of the names and less interested in more consumer names. >> just a second. we're going to get more on whether the bunny can keep on clapping. i think it is also worth noting that an executive has said the delay of the open was not a hacking incident.

>> firstover all the traders are not happy because a lot of humans would have liked to have helped to be a back up system. but that wasn't possible because some of these glitches obviously wouldn't allow information to be disseminated outside of the cboe. alls i can say is two words. connectivity and complexity. those two issues, you know, no matter what position you have, if you have a little vix and options, your position as a whole needs all of these exchanges and inner connectivity and complexity to work all the time and it is not going to happen all the time so i think we need to be more reasonable and try to work things out because i can't think this is going become less frequent in the future. >> why is that? why do you think it's going to not become less frequent.

. >> upgrades and making inner connectivity better and i think the other issue is the more complex the world gets, the more platforms involved it will always have the potential for glitches. >> a lot of horses, wires, and tripping. >> zero computers, score one humans. >> we are calling this the energizer bunny rally. it just keeps going. the dow has more than doubled. seven dow stocks are up 20% just this year. and all of that, increasingly concerning data. how does this thing just keep going peter? is it all central bank buying? >> i think a lot of it has to do with quantitative easing. a lot of it has to do with the

fact that the data has remained fairly consistently positive and supported. that said there are clearly issues that the market seems to manage to migrate around, specifically eu and slow down in china and certainly not the most encouraging data in terms of employment. this week clearly underscores that. technology, basic materials and telecom are all leading the charge today and many of those sectors are seeing earnings releases that supports some enthusiasm. and the potential for significant price improvement given the guidance. >> when you dig into the earnings and bob has been beating the drum about this one. guess what? a majority are actually coming up short on revenues which is telling a completely different story. >> that's a great, great point. a lot of what we have seen has been positive in terms of dumbed

down or reduced earnings. revenue remains a concern. revenue growth has larngly approximate been absent relative to the strength in earnings. that's a concern. and it's really a concern because it goes back to the broader story that we have talked about. and failing ignition of credit demand that the fed has been trying so, so hard to engage in. >> how -- just briefly how high can we go this year? >> this year? how high can we go? i think we can tack on another 5 to 7%. but it's hard for me to imagine that the head winds that we discussed don't come in and really start making havoc on the trend. >> certainly nothing goes up in a straight line. thanks for your thoughts. >> you know what else is higher today? that is gold. gold is coming back. joining us, cnbc contributor is andy bush. andy looks like maybe that 1400 mark of support actually

supported gold for once. >> yeah. it really did. the talk of bernanke resigning and the discussion of janet taking over. she is the uber dove on the fed and my guess would be the markets would look at uncertainty as a negative overall for risk. but it's really a positive for gold because you know she will have the foot on the gas. she may hammer it down with nails to the floor. and that's where i think gold will continue to go up. >> i will tell you who is looking clever right now. the central banks in russia. while everyone was sell selling. seeing lots of outflows. they were buying on the cheap. good for them.

looking to do it and add to the largest amount of equities they own over the last 20 years. so i think what's interesting is not only are central banks. >> got to leave it there. thank you very much for joining us. >> you bet. >> not the kind of news you want to hear. mayor bloomberg and police commissioner addressing the media right now and they are confirming that times square was a target of the boston bombers. sources telling nbc news that initially the surviving bomber that following the boston attacks they intended to come to new york to party. however, he subsequently told investigators that he and his brother discussed the idea of exploding the rest of their bombs in times squares. they had six bombs prepared that

were undetonated. officials cautioned the idea was undeveloped. it was undeveloped and aspirational at most. but remember, handguns, rifles, six bombs, three of which exploded w found at the scene. >> speaking of scary stuff. we're going to show you a clip that i think is incredible of a woman who was shot in the movie massacre lost four units of blood and lived. >> syria used chemical weapons to some degree on its own people. we will bring you a lot more on that right ahead. ♪

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>> to recap the breaking news. speaking now about officials uncovering that the two brothers after the boston bombing had planned to come to new york. they initially came to new york to party but the younger surviving brother apparently telling investigators that they planned to come to new york to potentially bomb times square. remember they had a number of undetonated bombs at the scene. so again, scary stuff.

>> something else on display in boston this week aside from courage. the ar-15 rifle. right? it is a weapon that is immensely poplar. and how a gun bought for the military has now been bought nearly 4 million times in the united states. >> looking at this 23-year-old, you would not know that it is astounding that she is even alive. >> i remember hearing pop, pop, pop. that fast. i took a step to grab my friend mike, and my organs came out. so my intestines and my stomach and what was left of my spleen.

>> on july 20, 2012, she became part of a select group. people who had been wounded in a mass shooting and survived. the accused gunman, james holmes, had several firearms including a shotgun, a pistol, and the same type of weapon later used in the newtown massacre. >> you said that you got down on the floor. >> uh-huh. >> why did you do that? why did you know to do that? >> i was really hurt and my first instinct was i need to lower my blood pressure. >> i have seen a lot of gunshot wounds but these were completely different. >> camilla was one of two emergency physicians on duty t. >> not only was it the sheer number of people coming into the emergency department who had so many horrible injuries but some of the injuries that they had

had i had never seen before. >> we play it straight. we show both sides to see maybe a little bit of the points of view of the other side. with everybody screaming, nobody is listening. and right now that's the way the gun debate is. there are normal law-abiding people who own this weapon. we take it down the line. >> tonight is the premier. >> comparable store sales rose 24%. but if you back out guns and am in addition, they rose only 9%. >> is there something else at work here? >> good afternoon. clearly those categories are helping. but what is much more exciting to me is the growth in their

other categories. this whole double digit growth in women's and children's clothing, footwear. some of the categories may draft off of the gun business but some of them have nothing to do with the gun business. >> we have seen an acceleration over the last few quarters. it's a function of better marketing. higher quality branded products. those results were held back by the late spring. i think when we get warmerwetter in some of the upper states you will see the categories start to rebound.

>> what are they doing right? >> part of it is marketing. they brought on a new team in marketing recently and they have made some changes to their website. their web business has been down five years in a row. so new team on the website. new marketing. great new commercials. and a lot of it is on the product side. >> will be sequester fuel a

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>> it's great to have you with us today. is a sequester going to be good for you? >> you know, i don't think most business takes place in about 13,000 vacation markets around the world. we see over the last few years there have been several natural disasters that affect markets but typically those effects are short lived. as we have seen in any of the last five years. >> could it be a good thing for you, brian? going to the airport, frankly, sucks. now it could be worse so people might get in their family. is there -- have you thought about that at all? less people flying and more people using home away?

>> i have not given it a lot of thought. the majority of people who rent vacation homes are doing it within a 500 mile radius of their homes. so the extent that people do want to avoid airports and stay closer to home, that could have an effect on the business. >> by competition i'm thinking of one that i have used several times. the hotels hate people like you. what do you offer that for example, that they do not. >> home away is helping people

stay? second homes that are in vacation markets. the companies appear to be similar, the inventory is different and the people who use them are different. that's about 85% of our business. >> is now a good reason to take a shining to solar stocks?

these were the suspects talking about what they were going to do next on the fly during the carjacking. that wild shoot out. according to the police commissioner and the mayor, you talked about wanting to bring their six remaining bombs to new york. five of them pipe bombs and one pressure cooker bombs and set them off. that night ot the chase. stopped at a gas station. victims escaped and called 9/11 and that is apparently what foiled the latest idea or plan. it was on the fly. it was aspirational. there is no indication that they had come to new york and did any planning or plotting here.

>> could you repeat that? i lost you. >> we don't know other than the fact they had lived in boston and spent a good amount of time there as to why the marathon and why that city. we still have not heard as for time squares. at least twice in the last year. there is a photograph of him with friends in times square. he was clearly familiar with new york city and times square and much more familiar with boston. >> thank you very much for joining us today. we have more braking news with check hagel and john kerry saying the u.s. government believes syria has conducted at

least two chemical weapons attacks on its own people. >> the u.s. intelligence community assesses with some degree verying confidence that the sirrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale in syria. >> he said with some degree of varying confidence. how sure can we be that this is the case? >> we have seen evidence come out of syria. doctors who have worked in the field hospitals there saying that the attacks have been consistent with the suffering that would be in line with

chemical weapons being used. it's one thing to say the regime has used it but it was a military unit that was desperate to use it. >> what do you think is likely to be the response from the united states? >> that goes back to the point we were discussing earlier. was this a one off usage of the

inciden incident? when you ask about president obama's red line comment. hundreds of thousands of review gees. i think there has been a real reluctance to see u.s. military intervention despite the fact that that is what rebels have been flying for. >> i want to switch gears and talk about egypt. if i look at the egypt etf, it has fallen back again. >> it's in a state of collapse, really.

>> a series of legal challenges pushing through its democratic or economic agenda. trying to secure that loan for about 5 billion dollars. it's hashdly a drop in the bucket. really what it comes down to is whether or not the egyptian government can make the mess reforms in order to start bringing in so much of that investment. that's the key question. so many of the questions corporations are reluctant to invest. and to reduce the government subsidies. so far they have not seen the government deliver on those promises. >> situation to keep an eye on. >> coming up next, your chance to score real face time with

apple's ceo and later on, why the battle is shaping up to be better than the red sox yankees rivalry. all those things coming up including the closing bell. >> and the coffee talk continues with starbucks. are leased after the bell tonight. delivered profits big time. i will see you at the top of the hour for closing bell. revolutionizing an industry can be a tough act to follow,

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we're more than 78,000 people looking out for more than 70 million americans. that's health in numbers. unitedhealthcare. >> welcome to earnings stories. we help you trade the stories that you might have missed. i'm joined by the earnings squad. we begin with the score card so far. actually about half of the s&p have so far reported and about

two-thirds of them, 68% we start with one of the biggest names reporting after the bell. starbucks. >> they have got to hit the revenue number here. revenue growth had been falling for the past four quarters. so they have got to come out. they can't disappoint here. >> very close to a high of $62 john. >> i think it goes through the highs into the summer. but i think herb could be dead on here. i think a lot of people want to like the stock a lot because the price of coffee has come down.

they have got a bunch of other inputs. you know, what does it cost them? a dime? >> hedges are only part of the story, john. you look at the trade and your people looked at the trade and i think there has got to be more about the strategy panning out. >> when they get the iced drinks in the summer, that's why they will hit it in the summer. i would be neutral. >> speaking of summer holidays, we are watching expedia, which reports. >> seemingly handed off to travels lately. we're watching that. that's price line easter tory.

it is relatively stable. the hotel business will be stable. pay attention to the margins. you have got the competition coming in line. such a loser in this earning's season. >> i am watching this one. >> up or down. i like that. >> it was not a fixed rate. it was not just a buynary bet. they are playing for movement. >> sadly guys, we are out of time. >> if you want to join the conversation, tweet us at hash tag earnings. we'll be back tomorrow morning.

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>> back now is today's return on retirement. a new study reveals women have major retirement planning issues. only one in five women say that saving for retirement is their greatest financial priority. the majority are focused on current needs like paying off debt or covering living expenses. check out retirement.cnbc.com

for more tips on how to prepare for your golden years. >> here is your chance for literal face time with the ceo of apple. auctions off to have coffee with tim cook. and the current bid is $1090,000. >> folks are going to sit there and go lovely tea isn't it? >> it's not going to be really tea. >> what about the queen of england voice ewe eyou're using? >> queen of australia. >> if it raised it by one cent more it would have knocked down apple. exkp exxon reducing share count for

45 of the past 50 quarters. that's not what you do. but based on the share count reduction, the numbers you sent us are staggering. average return of about 13%? >> that's correct. a lot of it is the dividend. the one that they missed is because they did a merger with xto. they were restricted. their share count have been reduced by a third. they have increased their dividend every year since 1983. the numbers are amazing. the steadiness and increasing of it is not something you really attribute to exxon. why are they doing this?

>> ever since they did the merger with mobile. they just continued to return shares to out of the public market which reduces the flow into their treasury. got about 200 billion dollars. they spun that off by itself. it's an amazing nu they do it every quarter. they have given guidance the next quarter that they will do about net $4 billion in reduction. >> in terms of giving money back, something that every single shareholder loves to hear, apple is now the biggest dividend payer in the world. >> they would have been on top. they are now authorized the big eest authorization to buy back shares. the question is how much will they buy? how quickly and will there be

share count reduction? we have got to see the trades. >> i don't know if you want to comment on this. isn't it incredible that apple wants to borrow money to pay its dividend rather than re-import its cash? >> not at all. willing to go into debt to avoid paying u.s. taxes. >> it works out on the bottom line. you need to do it that way. the way these people just came out with their first rating on them the our day. and they are balling. a lot of corporations are now financing even though they have the cash because it's a choice that they could do. if they squander the cash and

end up with debt they could have a follow. it is real debt on both sides. >> okay. we have got to leave it there. >> there could be a lot of questions. we will get to herb in just a minute. first jane wells is live outside that meeting in beverly hills. >> they left the beverly hilting. i did manage to walk into their private board meeting and didn't get to stay, shockingly. here is what we don't know. what awe tore is going to replace the kpmg. allegedly giving inside information about herba life to a friend. sketchers announced it has hired a new auditor.

it's not there yet though it stands behind the results reported under london's watch. what about the long and short of it between the spat disputing the future and business model? i asked david simon who was here today as a share holder and says he owns a decent stake in herbalife. >> what do you think of the ackman icahn spat? >> he is a smart business man and saw an opportunity and bought the stock. >> does it bother you if a majority of sales are to distributors and not really outside the network? >> you know, you can't say that is the case. >> would that bother you? >> no. if they use the product, it's -- look, you get a discount if you

could get a discount? absolutely. >> we should get more distributors might actually be reclassified as preferred customers, buying at a discount with no intention to sell. guys? >> jane wells, thank you very much for that. let's bring in herb. what do you make of all of this? >> it's very interesting to see david simon there, a very smart guy. and he is an interesting opinion. i think what we're looking for, of course, earnings are coming out monday afternoon. what i think people will be looking for is any indication that distributor growth isn't quite what people have been expecting. whether there's been defections. there are other companies out there. there's a private company called vima. they have been aggressively going after their group of distributors. so, that will be just an important metric, and i think that's what many investors right now in the short-term will be hanging out. >> are you surprised by

herbalife's rebound, sort of from the ackman call? >> no, it's in between where it was and, you know, where it was, where it has been. this is a market with a lot of psychology. people are investing because they think they can catch a bounce. whether they generally believe there are not issues here is something else. >> and whether or not it's personal or not personal between ackman and icahn. >> oh, it's not personal. >> it's never personal, right? thanks, herb. for more on the herbalife story, you can check out herb greenberg's story, "setting the american dream," it's online and it's fantastic at sellingthedream.cnbc.com. first solar down more than 1% today after it got smacked by a downgrade by raymond james. by the way, our next guest still thinks it is a buy. his name is darman and he joins us now. why do you think it is a buy while others are downgrading it? >> hi, amanda, hi, brian, thanks

for having me on. first of all, we like first solar because even with the big run-up this year, mandy, as you mentioned, up about 45% year-to-date. and even so, it's still only trading about one times book. so none of its growth or future revenues or price streams are being accounted for in its stream right now. so we think it's good growth. furthermore, you might remember a couple of weeks back, they had their analysts day and gave themselves pretty wide goalposts for their earnings. but for 2015, they mentioned that they expect to earn between $4 and $6 a share this year. but it's still between about 7.5 and 11.5 forward pe for 2015. those are great numbers, particularly for a growth company like this. i think a company with growth numbers like this would say back up the truck.

7x forward pe versus good growth. we love it? >> yes, garvin, except the visibility on earnings is a little saucy. they're saying, 2015, we could earn between four and six bucks. companies normally get between a nickel and a quarter. that $2 gap says we're not getting a lot of visibility from our business. >> i don't disagree on that, those are very wide goalposts, but take comfort in the idea that the low end of those goalposts is still $4. it's still nicely comfortable profitable and showing good growth over this year. furthermore, even if they only hit $4, that still represents a forward pe of 12, which for a growth company is still quite good. and finally, goalposts that wide, $4 to $6, you're right, that's a huge gap, but it means the shares probably will continue to be volatile, meaning great chances to accumulate on some dips. so paradoxically, we sort of

don't mind the broad vision. >> indeed, i think you like another couple of solar names in the american universe. you've got sun power that you like and also solar city, which is a pretty new company and still not profitable. but why are you looking at these two in particular? >> i'll start with solar city. we like -- you're right, it's brand-new, really. it just ipo'd a while ago. we kind of couldn't believe the $8 ipo price that elon musk put on that. we thought it was low for the kind of company it's going to be. what's great about solar city is they're not a solar panel manufacturer. if anything, more than anything, they really are an energy providing company. they're just an energy seller, the same as any other power producer that would make their energy, their electricity, out of something more traditional, like gas or coal, except they just happen to use sunlight, which never has a risk of fuel price volatility or even of having to pay for fuel at all. so what they do is they big build power plants and also take

the excess capacity they can get from the residential and commercial installations they do and sell all that into the grid, the same as if they're a coal plant, but they'll never have to pay for their source fuel. it's a fantastic opportunity. >> gavin, thank you very much for that. thank you for joining us, garvin jabusch. and you can check out more at green.cnbc.com for all those greensters out there. all right, street talk a little bit later than normal, but it lives on. and coming up after the break, we'll have the game face version of street talk and preview tomorrow's show which is going to be, i think, awesome. >> fantastic. >> or a complete and utter disaster. >> either way. oh, boy. [ groans ] ♪ ♪

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okay. "street talk" time. big stock stories of the day. they're under the radar, nonetheless. >> a cell phone company, benefiting crown castle. raising their full-year guidance. revenue was strong. eps, funds from operations, better than before. cory, the australian bank setting a strong dividend potential. a few bucks potential upside. >> my god, you should be a race caller. phusion io is also soaring. >> revenue fell, but it was still higher than expected. more important, forecast current quarter revenue ahead of estimates. must have seen a turn. because back in january, fusion io cut their guidance, but this

was a 40-buck stock back in november of tlechb. >> and on assignment, that's the name of the company. >> maybe a good sign for the job market, a staffing company. first quarter earnings soared, revenue more than doubled, results topped expectations. that stock at about an all-time high of 10%. on assignment, a good way to end up 42% year-to-date. perhaps good news for jobs. >> yeah. we are just 23 hours away from the second annual cnbc stock draft. we did it this year. this way, we're changing up the way we do it. coincides with the nfl draft. we have two teams, the brian ballers and the mandy mavericks. >> my team is going to be abigail doolittle, seaport group, steven white from short hills capital, also josh brown from fusion analytics. that is my team right there. >> a better name for that is the bad guys or the losers. here's the winners, the good guys. reggie middleton, guy adami, and jeff killberg.

jeff killberg, by the way, played college football at notre dame. so we will not be defeated. we'll do it tomorrow. herb is going to be here as well. >> completely insane and hopefully not a total disaster. by the way, check out our documentary tonight, 10:00 eastern time on cnbc. >> "closing bell" is next. hi, everybody. we enter the final stretch. welcome to the "closing bell." i'm maria bartiromo at the new york stock exchange. this market higher, following better than expected earnings and economic data, but we're off of the highs. >> we're well off the highs right now, maria. i'm bill griffeth. the dow is up for four out of the past five sessions. the s&p and the nasdaq are on pace for a five-day win streak. all of this, despite the fact that dow components exxonmobil and 3m are in the red today after those disappointing earnings results. we have much more of the rally and whether this can last, all coming up. >> do you remember the guest we had on who predicted exxonmobil would raise the vi