leaders. the administration is actively consulting with members of congress and we will continue to have these conversations in the days ahead. president obama has also been in close touch with leaders of our key allies and the president will be making an informed decision about how to respond to this indiscriminate use of chemical weapons. but make no mistake. president obama believes there must be accountability for those who would use the world's most heinous weapons against the world's most vulnerable people. nothing today is more serious and nothing is receiving more serious scrutiny. thank you. >> secretary of state kerry there with a forceful response to sir why's use of chemical weapons. the united states says it has undeniable evidence that it was used on citizens last week and the secretary pointed out that

he had reviewed video from the aftermath of that attack last week and was struck as a human being and as a father by the video, mandy, of that father holding his young, dead child as a result of that attack. we welcome you now to "closing bell" for cnbc. >> we were just listening, of course, as secretary of state kerry and, you know, bill, it was heart wrenching, sol of the commentary he was making. of course, one of the big things he said was accountability. someone needs to be accountable for this. and also, that our basic sense of humanity is not only offended by the crime but the attempt to cover it up. meantime, we are, of course, watching the markets for you. we have one more hour of trading so go. we haven't forgotten all of that in all of this. we'll get you more. >> let's get to bob pisany on the floor today.

yields on the 10-year dropped. the stock market holding on to fractional gains here, robert. >> the big question is, are we going to see the june swoon again? the answer is at least not right now with the data we have been getting. lets's take a look and look back to may and june. remember that big june swoon? that happened in the beginning of may. actually, second week of may. when there were discussions about taper talk beginning. that's when mr. bernanke said, well, it was a possibility to begin tapering towards the end of the year and maybe finish completely our program of buying bonds in the middle of 2014. that caused a 7.5% decline in the s&p from the high to the low towards the end of june. there was the whole june swoon thing. bottom line is mr. bernanke got better at communicating what they were thinking. the markets came off the bottom. look at july and august. we rallied. 9.5% rally from the ral by to the historic highs we had and that was the very beginning of

august. once again, we have been sputtering around trying to figure out whether the taper will begin. the bottom line is most of the traders down here betting when tapering begins, it is a taper-light form. not an aggressive stance and i think that's where it's going right now, guys. bottom line, new home sales, the numbers of durable goods, argue at best for a taper light. back to you. >> thank you very much. we have had the fractional gains today a. narrowly traded day for the major averages in the stock market and as i said the yields on the 10-year continue to move lower perhaps on the economic data. let's talk about it all. is this a repeat of june? we'll talk about it with our panel. you are expecting a bit of a pullback in the markets in the fall. why? >> well, look.

the market thus far has been able to go up despite the fact we have had no earnings growth for last six to nine months. i do believe going forward we will need significant earnings growth to power the market higher and as a result i think some of the negative revision that is we expect between now and october could drive the market lower from here. >> david, do you agree with that? do you think the markets go lower from here? it is certainly clear going in to september history is not on its side. i think for many decades now, the dow has been lower in september and indeed one of the worst months for about 60% of the time. >> sure. and i think that there's been the assumption that the driver of growth in the economy was recovery and housing and whether it's the new home sales or looking back a little bit further, we began to see a selloff of lumber in march and the home builders themselves were selling off aggressively in may with massive insider selling in that sector at that point. i think that should have been sort of a lead to us orca that

ri in the coal mine for things to come in the sector. we have seen declines in the real estate sector, the general malaise in the third and in to the fourth quarter in terms of the general economic numbers and gdp stats, so i don't think we're going to see the earnings growth that we need. and with that in mind, we could see multiples expand the wrong direction and i think the market react negatively to that. >> rick, let's bring you in here, my friend, let's ask you how much of this has the yields have come down and gold has gone back above $1,400 today, is that the economic fundamentals we're talking about or how much of that is what's going on in syria, do you think? >> gold, some of what's going on in the region could impact gold to the upside but i really do think it's more towards the adage we had a very long time. all roads lead to the stock

market. where else will you put your money? i think periodically gold becomes a little avenue. granted, it is probably a one-way street and it really doesn't make sense when you really think it through. but i think that dynamic will stay in place. as for interest rates, the key is, it's not symmetry. there's no symmetry. it's asymmetrical. we closed -- we are, what, 10 basis points of off of that 290 area. with two bad data points. i'm not sure we're selling off and not sure that the calibration to strong and weak data is going to be symmetric for a while in interest rates. >> yeah. it seems that we are back to the old days, not necessarily good old days but the days with bad economic data is good news for the stock market. brian, i don't want to leave gold in light of what's going on in the background there and of course the gold bugs feeling vindicated since they come off

the bottom. how do you feel about the precious metal as an investment? >> well, from the bullion side, the commodity itself, we feel better about that. with the respect of the stock side of things, remember, these are companies that have a hard time meeting revenues. we have seen institutional side with respect what's happening in holding and think they're oversold. could see a continued bounce here. we still think that the stocks as a group, mandy, are part of the prior cycle leadership and rather be in industrials, technology and financials in the states relative to global precious metals at these levels. >> are you among those that keep a portion of a portfolio in gold anyway as a hedge? 5% or whatever? >> well, we do for some of our blended portfolios, bill, when we take a look at holdings both in canada, in the united states. but our u.s. portfolios we look

at are benchmarked toward the u.s. and what we want to do is be cautious here in the materials space given where fundamentals are. 2% or 3% position is prudent in the u.s. at these levels. >> can i follow up on what you were saying about industrials, brian? you know, a lot of industrials, you know, they have assets in various geographies around the world and in light of the fact of seeing stabilizations in the regions, brian, do you feel that that hasn't yet been priced in yet and could be part of the upside you see? >> it's an excellent point, mandy. i think the big thing on industrials are investors over ten years used industrials for the incremental volume growth, momentum growth out of china. we think it's recovery growth where the stronger, consistent growth is coming from north america, especially in the u.s. as the manufacturing renaissance really drives earnings through cap x.

you want to be more diversified within your industrial space and less so focused on the areas that only focus on china and emerging markets or europe. you want to be more diversified across sectors. >> dean, the pullback, do you invest in defensives or what do you do here? >> yeah. i mean, so right now the areas we tend to overweight are technology, health care and to a lesser extent consumer cyclical. we are reducing the exposure. the tricky part is we're not really seeing a lot of pent-up growth from our perspective particularly in the areas tied to the industrials and so you're trying to balance out the area that is are particularly attractively valued with some of the -- still can find the health care names where expectations have been set low enough to be met or exceeded where some of the tech stocks come in. >> david, in light of the very low volume, i think today could

be potentially on track to be the lowest volume day of the year so far. would you be just sitting out for the next couple of weeks and just waiting and seeing what happens in light of the payrolls number which could be a big decider in september for the fed meeting? would you be sitting this out? >> i would be cautious and if you have long positions, i would be creating hedges against those, raising cash and silver and gold is attractive even with the rise of price off of the lows. and i think it has room to move higher. we haven't really fixed any of the issues that were driving the price of gold two years ago. fiscal issues, monetary measures are still in place and i think you're seeing this on a grand scale, on a global scale in terms of demand for the physical metal itself. four weeks is unprecedented and worthy of note.

the physical demand for the metal is running at record rates even with the price declines, it is worth noting. >> rick, do you think this decline in yields today is the market saying that maybe we, because of the sort of weak data we have been seeing lately, house sale number on friday, today's durable goods number, maybe the fed will have to cool the heels for a little while before it starts tapering? >> no. i think 10-year note rates are down because the data is weak. will they go up faster than came down with a 200,000 jobs report? that's the question. don't pay so much attention to whether we'll taper or not. it will happen sooner or later. stay in tune with the market and treasuries are in tune with the market. >> thank you, gentlemen. appreciate it. let's get back to gold and silver by the way, as well. soaring today. courtney reagan watching that action for us. >> that's right.

gold popped up to $1,407 and seeing the weaker than expected durable goods number it did pop again and then settle down and like your guest was saying, this really all has to do with what the fed will or won't do with the tapering, whether or not it does it, an extreme level or light level. many traders bet it happen at least on an extreme level at september. for the third week in a row there's significant traders adding to the net long positions for three weeks now in both gold and silver. and silver closing today and settling at three-month highs and data out of europe and china adding to the idea that there could be increased demand for silver as an industrial metal and that's helping to prop up the prices of silver. mandy? >> okay. courtney, thank you very much. let's throw it over for a quick market flash. what are you watching? >> look at what's happening. there's really some ideas of what's happening with bid,

sotheby's. the hedge fund run by dan lobe has announced a boost in their stake of south by's. they had 3.7% in terms of the outstanding shares and now a spike on that piece of news and watching the ticker for sotheby's. seeing some action on the hooels of the activist investor saying his fund has boosted its stake and may look for talks, again, that's a big move here in terms of what's happening with them. back over to you. >> indeed it is. >> bidding up bid. >> they are bidding up bid. >> thank you. >> okay. well, we have about 45 minutes left in the trading day before the closing bell. the dow is hovering on the flat line. the s&p is marginally positive. that's the operative word here. very, very low volume. >> what would happen if suddenly you were not allowed to make

anymore trades in your 401(k)? none, never? that's happening to some american airlines employees. the fund manager of those 401 ) 401(k), how does that happen? we'll find out next. >> we ri lie on the cloud, right? more and more every single day. just how reliable, though, is it? how secure is it? for many, we have the answer last night. and it was not good. that story is just ahead. do not go away. [ male announcer ] i've seen incredible things.

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welcome back. suddenly seeing a bit of selling here. the dow was in a pretty narrow range. the lightest volume day of the year as you mentioned, mandy, so far. the dow down 24 points a moment ago. now coming off that low. not sure if it has anything to do with the statement by secretary kerry you saw here live on cnbc. they have more evidence of chemical weapon use by the syrian regime. we have ammon javier javers.

>> hi, bill. secretary of state speaking here in washington. forceful words. here's a little bit of the secretary of state explaining what the stakes are here. >> our sense of basic humanity is offended not only by this cowardly crime but also by the cynical attempt to cover it up. at every turn, the syrian regime has failed to cooperate with the u.n. investigation. using it only to stall and to stymie the important effort to bring to light what happened in damascus in the dead of night. >> a couple of key points here. the secretary of state saying that although investigators are still getting access to the scene, some of those u.n. investigators in particular have been actually fired upon as they try to get there to see if that i remember determine which chemical weapons may have been used here, the secretary of state saying chemical weapons were used in syria. he also said that the president of the united states stands ready to make an informed decision about what to do in response to that.

he said there must be accountability. the secretary of state saying an international norm here cannot be violated without consequences. now, the question over the next coupling hours is what are the consequences that the obama administration has in mind here, guys? >> ammon, the president has to make the decision and weigh out the information on hand to make that quoted informed decision, is secretary of state kind of putting us on notice there's an action? >> reading between the lines here, it seems as if they're trying to set the table for some sort of forceful action by the united states over the next 24, 48 hours. you pick the time frame but it seems very clear that the united states would be in a very difficult position doing nothing in the wake of the forceful words of secretary of state kerry saying that the president will make an informed decision and talking about the real humanity of these images that he and others have seen coming out of the syria, the anguish and

suffering of women, children, civilians in syria relates to what seems to be clearly now to the u.s. administration a chemical attack. >> and of course, not to be taken lightly, president assad himself spoke with russian media today warning the united states not to get involved in anything. so, i mean, we are hearing from both sides on this issue right now. >> look. the relationship between the united states and russia is extremely fraught right now. first of all, over syria, but also, over edward snowden. there's an international, diplomatic component and a military component as well as a domestic/political component for the obama administration. the speaker of the house's office released a statement saying if the president intends to take action here in syria he owes it to the american people to address them directly and explain what he's doing and why and what the outcome will be he expects. drama here at home as the president appears to be

contemplating an activity overseas, bill. >> thanks, ammon. we're watching the market, still. back to the lows on the day down 24 points right now. the big investment firm td rowe price banning about 1,300 american airlines employees from trading in and out of td rowe price with funds in their plan. >> they said they repeatedly warned the employees who made the moves based on recommendations from an airline industry news letter that their activity would result in higher fees for all planned participants and make it difficult for managers to manage their funds. >> one of the co-publishers of the news letter joins us now. easy tracker 401(k). t. rowe price declined to participate in this interview. what was your reaction of banning trading of funds that t.

rowe price manages in the 401(k)? >> this is going on for several years now. this started in 2010 -- >> what is that? >> the banning of subscribers. in 2010, t. rowe price threatened some of our subscribers with a ban. in 2011, they actually banned some of our subscribers for a period of one year. and now, in 2013, they have banned a number of our subscribers for life from purchasing t. rowe price funds inside the american airlines 401(k) system. >> this is not totally out of blue then. this is an ongoing process for a few years here. >> that's correct. and we have filed a complaint with the s.e.c. in may of 2012

about this action on the part of t. rowe price. we felt it was beyond the scope of any s.e.c. restrictions allowed and we felt we were really being singled out. nobody else has to comply with this restriction that we're aware of. >> also, if i'm right in thinking, sir, these investors are still allowed to get back in to a t. rowe price fund through payroll deductions and sell out of a t. rowe price fund in their plan? they're just restrictions opposed to a ban. >> in terms of trading but not a regular basis of investing through the direct deposit. >> right. >> sir? >> in other words they can -- yes. they can direct their payroll contributions to t. rowe price funds. they cannot go in and say, i

want to purchase, i want to have 10% of my 401(k), for instance, in the t. rowe price mid growth cap fund. that would not be allowed. >> you know, there are going to be those, paul, and, you know, who say, 401(k), a retirement plan is no place to be short term trading, to be market timing. you know? all of those things that people -- i know people who day trade 401(k) plan money. is that appropriate in this case? >> it is -- it is not. for instance, in all cases, in all cases, the funds that t. rowe price has accused our subscribers of violating their prospectus, in all cases, these were not short-term trading violations. these are things and some cases where the funds were held six,

eight, nine months. >> right. >> so, these are -- this is not in and out. we do not advocate short-term trading. that is not the focus of our news letter. >> do you have any recourse? do you have any recourse? if you feel this is not the right zigs, is there any recourse on this ban? >> it's the complaint with the s.e.c. and, you know, we hope that arising out of that they will tell t. rowe price this is a policy that is not allowed in your prospectus. we don't know of anyone else who does this. t. rowe price is a huge company. fidelity doesn't do this. vanguard doesn't do this. >> and are you confident -- are you confident, paul, that the s.e.c. will make the decision that they want them to or do you

feel this is a lime ball call? >> no. we're confident that the s.e.c. will find in our favor. >> all right. let me -- i did say we did contact t. rowe price. they did send us a portion of the prospectus in the funds where they point out, it says excessive transactions and short-term trading can be harmful to fund shareholders in various ways such as disrupting a fund's portfolio, management strategies, increasing a fund's trading costs and negatively affecting its performance. such persons may be barred without prior notice from further purchases of t. rowe price funds for a period longer than 30 days or permanently. it is in the prospectus and you -- you know, the subscribers were warned. so i'm wondering what recourse you possibly have when it's right there in black and white. >> well, here's the thing.

this is being unevenly applied. if you look at the specific details of their prospectus, in parenthesis, it says eg following the advice of a news letter. well, it doesn't talk about following the advice of a publication. it doesn't talk about following the advice of an investment adviser. it doesn't even talk about newsletters plural. >> right. okay. we'll leave it -- >> they're not applying this -- we have to leave it there. thank you for stating your case. paul burger joining us there. we have 30 minutes before the bell. the dow is really losing steam here, folks. we are at the lows of the day. down by 61 and sticking the neck out on this one a little bit but it does feel like the market took a turn for the worst as secretary of state kerry said the use of chemical weapons in

syria is large and indiscriminate and losing steam going in to the close. >> we have bob pisani for an update on that. they say a dollar doesn't go as far as it used to and at dollar tree stores, some analysts are not impressed. we are talking dollar tree numbers and that stock coming up here next. and coming up, clouds, everyone wants their head in their or their business in them. it's creating trouble for amazon and major websites like netflix. we'll tell you what happened and what the forecast is for amazon's cloud. ♪

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welcome back. so this sudden decline in the dow, we were up 23 at the top of the hour. down 61 a moment ago. bob, when's going on here? >> well, obviously, there's some concern, some of the traders expressing about secretary kerry's comments about possible action by the united states. his -- put up the spdr. there was no market reaction, only long after he was gone did we see a drop. there was a volume pick-up. bill, the right way to look at this, there's almost no volume. normally the spdr trades -- the same with the nasdaq 100. here's another big area people

go in and out all day long. very model sell pressure. i think we can't do anything more than say thin, thin volume, a little bit of news. not a lot. russia says syria headed for western military strike following u.s. secretary of state statement. that was on one of the other wire trasites. bill, back to you. >> bob, thanks. >> okay. well, a really big vacation week and not everyone is off. of course, we're here working hard at it and there are also major market movers, as well. dom chu is hard working. >> how about these? dollar stores, dollar store flip flop if you will. this is from analysts that cut the rating on family dollar to a hold citing fair valuations and meanwhile they upgraded the competitor dollar tree to a buy rating kritding less risk from

big box discounters and possible boost in stock buy back and a tale of two different retailers of deutsche banc's point of view. >> thank you. technical side, carter worth. on the fundamental side, mark lichtenfeld. carter, which dollar denominated retailer looks best to you? >> virtually identical and we like them both on the long side for the higher moves in the weeks ahead. >> you would buy neither? >> both. we like them both. core lating at about a 95% rate over 18 months. we like them both. >> i'm not that tight on time but thank you. >> i was trying to be brief. >> thank you. mark, who do you like better? >> i think there's a clear winner and that's dollar tree. i like companies that make

money. cold, hard cash and dollar tree generates tons of cash flow and family dollar is free cash flow negative for two years and backed up to operations, dollar tree generates 60% more cash flow despite 40% fewer stores and it's a no-brainer. you go with dollar tree of the two. >> carter, i still have a couple of minutes here. >> sure. they're not even above their year ago highs and not recent highs and what we think is catch up plays. the interesting lead-in you said as an analyst downgrading one to hold and upgrading the other to a buy, that's the consensus on the street. most people have dollar tree as buys. two thirds to one third in terms of outside analysts and reversed for family dollar. most have it as hold or sell. that analyst is getting in line with consensus. we think they're quite similar and the prospects are good for higher prices relative to the

market. >> for the last six months they have been tracking each other pretty closely. thank you. and your brief answers there. mandy? >> thank you very much, bill. someone else hard at work, ammon javers. we have breaking news on the debt limit. what is it? >> hi, mandy. the dow jones news wires breaking news. u.s. treasury to reach debt limit in mid-october. also saying over at dow jones once treasury hits the debt limit it's difficult for the u.s. government to pay the bills. mandy, we have been waiting for some kind of an announcement from the u.s. government about when it is this fall that they would not be able to pay the bills and that sets up this fiscal battle we are expecting when congress returns here to washington in the fall as they try to figure out something to do with the u.s. federal budget. that's going to be a political fight that could tee up some brinksmanship well in to the fall and now that october time frame of when they hit the drop dead here, mandy.

>> thank you very much. meantime, let's get a very quick check on the markets. we're off the lows here, bill. we are off the lows towards the close. 20 minutes left in trading. down 41 points on the dow right now. >> well, you heard thousands of times regarding the internet, the future is in the cloud. they say. but the cloud rained all over companies like netflix over the weekend. was it just a summer shower or are stormy times ahead, he asked. later, millions of college students returned to school this week and never has the quality and cost of their education been more questioned. today, we begin a five-part series called "school daze." about where the college business is and where it should go and we quick it off with former education secretary william bennet coming up. stay tuned. i've been doing a few things for a while that i really love-- tdd#: 1-800-345-2550

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vine and suffered an outage. they're hosted in the cloud by amazon's web server. >> it brings up the question as cloud computing gains traction, more and more companies and vftss using it, how safe and dependable is the cloud? joining us from a couple of security firms is our guests. thank you both for joining us today. i mean, is this just growing pains or should we be concerned about the future of this service which is growing so much by leaps and bounds? >> well, you know, i think it's something that is indicative of the services. if they had its own infrastructure, you wouldn't hear about it. because so many services went down at the same time, it may make it seem worse than it was.

but for the companies, it's a lot more cost effective and from a security perspective in particular, often a better choice for them to delegate their infrastructure needs to another company who has the resources to invest in it. >> is it possible to say whether or not, like, chris, as a host, amazon is less reliable as others or just bad luck? for example, there are a lot of cloud hosts right now and amazon is one of the biggest but has it got a less reliable service or all about as reliable as each other? >> the bigger they are, the harder they fall. i know that these are large enterprises and they put a lot, a ton of resources behind their engineering efforts in terms of building out the data center that is will scale and support the demands as they grow and they plan for all sorts of disasters but, unfortunately, the disaster you don't plan for

comes up and bite you in the rear. >> chris, are we expecting too much? it's more cost effective for the smaller companies, growing concerns to farm out security and their storage services but are we expecting too much? can they handle the growing use of the cloud right now? >> well, i think if you were to ask some of these companies that went down and others, they might say it's the cost of doing business these days because if you were to try to scale out that system on your own, it would be incredibly costly. we have amazon and other providers out there building these infrastructures for other companies to leverage. so, it's really unfair to say that -- excuse me? >> bottom line, are we safe? are we the consumer safe in the cloud or if we see more outages, do you think the people pull back from the cloud? >> well, you know, i think it's kind of a red herring. i don't think it's so much the

infrastructure that these services are deployed on to be concerned about. as much as it is the software that they're building. this is really where we see most of the security issues and in the websites themselves, opposed to the website infrastructure is where the attacks come from and where we should be putting our concerns. >> thank you, gentlemen. good to see you both. thank you for your thoughts today. >> thank you. >> okay. very quick check on the markets for you. 15 minutes left in the trading day. on a very low volume day, guys. okay? so just remember you get swings and exacerbations of a move and at this stage the spx is down by about .2 of a percent. coming up next, paying tribute do a stock exchange legend. bill? >> for sure. where pioneers are few and far between, we'll look at the life and times of the woman she was truly the first woman of wall street. first woman to have a seat at the new york stock exchange. the life of mickey see bert coming up. clients are always learning more

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wall street lost a legend and a great friend over the weekend with the death of muriel siebert. she was a legend, the first woman as we know to hold a seat

on the new york stock exchange. she bought it back in 1967. boy, when that happened, it was big news because it still was, of course, an old-boys network at time. maria is on the line with us and safe to say, marimaria, maybe my had a greater impact on your career than she did on mine just because she was a trail disease blazer for all women. >> absolutely. hi bill and mandy. she really set the tone for women. back then, it was tough. you know? the people don't recognize. today it feels so much easier to be a woman on the floor of the new york stock exchange. back then, it was very difficult. it was a boy's club. she broke through it. got the seat. also, you know, she was a real friend and a mentor to me. we served on the board of the new york economic club. today it's a statement wishing her family well. she was very, very passionate

about financial literacy. we shared that very much. we tried to work together a number of times in terms of -- she came up with a big program for kids so that kids would be smart about money and financial literacy was so important to her and i also want to mention she had an adorable little chihuahua monster girl. >> monster. >> she would go to the new york economic club meeting and after the meeting walk her out and monster girl would be in the car with the driver. she took that little dog everywhere. she was a treat. my heart goes out to her family. i feel glad to be able to call her a friend. >> tough on the outside and a marshmallow on the inside and i was struck by how small she was in size but a large stature she has on wall street and, mandy, looking around the floor of the new york stock exchange today, look at the number of women around there now. that would not have happened had it not been for mickey siebert. maria, you would not have been

on the floor as soon as you were. you were on the first female reporter on the floor of the new york stock exchange. >> absolutely. >> yeah. and, you know, today, there are reporters on the floor. you know? she was very proud of me having been the first person on the floor as a reporter to broadcast live. she always would say to me, you go get it. she empowered women. she empowered me and so many other women behind her. she really has a wonderful, wonderful legacy. >> we all owe her a lot, indeed. a good friend, art cashin popped by and whispered guess who's ringing the bell today. women's equality day. i think there's something to be said in that sending out our hearts and thoughts to the family of muriel siebert. everybody loved and adoring her on wall street. r.i.p. my friend.

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welcome back. jp morgan chase. what do you have? >> bill, a billionaire private investor has won a victory in court regarding the mortgage crisis that many small investors have not been able to.

in this case, billionaire leonard blavatnik. he's been suing for years. he has won a partial victory. the judge in new york state supreme court has ruled that jp morgan is liable to him for breach of contract and set damages at about $43 million. however, jp morgan is not liable on the claim of negligence. so, this is an ongoing case, bill and mandy, but an interesting resolution and something of a victory for the investor who has been struggling over the years in order to make his case. he was already turned down at a lower court. >> all right. thanks very much. keep an eye on that story for us. ten minutes to go before the closing bell. down 47 points. nasdaq holding on to a gain. joining us with their thoughts, chad, steve and alan. what do you make of the action here? how much of this is about syria?

we had a sudden selloff a half hour ago. >> yeah. it was a lot about that talk of syria from john kerry. but, you know, basically bob was spot on saying any news is moving the market. i don't put much in to it. such a light day. there's nothing to take home out of this. >> if the u.s. did announce they're militarily involved in syria, what would be the impact of the markets, gold and everything else? what do you think? >> just a model selloff at best unless there's a ground troop invasion in to syria. so, you know, you're going to have this political unrest, geo political unrest and maybe 1%, 2% off the market but you have to look at fundamentals, economic and earnings. >> does it build a case for gold as a safe haven? >> perhaps temporarily but, you know, you are looking as if you're getting in to a self sustaining recovery so i would would be perhaps underweight gold. >> you told me last week you stopped buying the dips and raising cash.

where are you putting the money, holding it waiting for a lower price or putting it to work somewhere? >> you know, we are waiting for that jobs number next friday to come out and then get back in the market probably but right now it's all on the sideline. close to $2 trillion in cash on the sideline as of this past july opposed to 1.8 billion in 2007. >> does that jobs number hold even more importance than normal, like would a bad or weaker than expected number push off the taper for september expectations? >> perhaps for a couple of months but they'll go and start taper. >> so it's a case of when opposed to if. >> it's a temporary push-off here and keep an eye on a 4% to 7% pullback in the market. if you get that tapering that comes in to effect going in to september, october. >> all right. >> i agree. i think you have to see a strong number over 200,000 next friday. >> how likely is that? >> fairly unlikely. >> right. bill? >> thanks, guys. see you later. >> thank you.

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heading toward the close. show you the dow. around 3:00 eastern time, secretary kerry came out with the forceful comments taking syria to task for the use of chemical weapons. it was also at that time the treasury gave us a remind tore hit the debt ceiling in early october. we saw a brief selloff. the dow finishing near the lows of the day and gold went back to the $1,400 per ounce range. ben wallace, do you want to buy gold here? you are skiddish on the stock market. >> gold is a thing i scratch my head about. you have to have knowledge of it to stay in the market. this is the war trade and seeing there was some back office kind of stuff going on with concerns of what russia said after kerry left the air waves of a slippery slope and no right to go in. you have the war trade. flight to safety of the u.s. treasuries and yield coming off.

but that's the effect of that commentary. >> we'll talk more about that coming up. that will do it for the first hour of "the closing bell" with the dow down 50, 60 points near the lows of the session. stay tuned. much more coming now in hour number two. wall street welcomed the second hour of -- along with mandy drury. we know how that works. >> i know how it works. >> dow snapping a two-day session winning streak as gains fade by the close after secretary of state kerry delivered the harsh comments on syria today. here's how we're finishing the day with the late selloff this afternoon. we're going to the lows of the session again. down 63 points on the dow. nasdaq which has been b you oyed by some of the high technology stocks dipping