so 2014 is the year of the blackberry. we're not talking about the phone we're talking about the fruit. blackberry is the flavor of the year. lime was this year's. >> i was just getting used to pomegranate seeds. >> "closing bell" is next. and hello and welcome to the "closing bell". i'm kelly evans at the new york stock exchange on this boxing day where the santa claus rally keeps delivering big gains. >> a lot of big boxes being packed up here on wall street with a lot of big gains. the dow and s&p i don't know if we can show you and intradition day chart yet. slow melt upward on wall street. the dow set to post its best six day win streak since march of

2012 and get this we're on track for the best yearly gain percentage wise for the dow since 1996. there it is. there's not a lot of volatility. just a slow roll upward. >> a reminder for those listening in their car we're at 117 points on the dow. .7 of 1%. nasdaq up a .25%. home depot is adding to the dow's strong performance. >> without we can top that can't we? >> oh, yes. if there's one stock that everybody is talk about on the floor is twitter. it's up big again. the shares are up more than 170% since the ipo just early november. adding 3% today. 72 bucks a share. of course we want to know if twitter can flying to a new high. >> it was up 6% at the peak. it was up to 74.75.

>> the volume we've traded 70 million shares of twitter. this is for a company that had a 10 million share floated in its ipo. here on the floor we're only doing 240 million shares. that's only 20% of the total. if you say that's roughly more than a billion twitter a huge piece of what's happening in the market as the only reason why we're open. >> definitely a phenomenon. let's show you broader averages. the dow up 116 points. up 122 at the peak of the session. now trading at 16,475. nasdaq marches ever closer to the magical 5,000 level hit all those many years ago. up 11 points now. 4166. s&p record territory as well up 8.75 points at 1841. let's talk about it in our

"closing bell". mark, you're telling your clients look at some point we're going to get a 5% correction in this market. the big question is when and from what level. we keep raising the bar here don't we? >> we do. we keep raising the bar. happy holidays. we keep raising the bar. and this pull back should have come back at least five times this particular year. but frankly as you can see we've only had two down months in the market the whole year. the market keeps rising. the fed removed a lot of policy uncertainty out of the market. when it announced it would begin tapering next month by 10 billion a month from their $85 billion qe purchase bond purchases. so i believe between now and the end of q1 sometime in late

march early april somewhere between there we'll see a 5% to 10% pull back and i believe it's extremely healthy for investors, institutional and retail investors to feel that and to take advantage of that as well. >> i'll rattle off a couple of stats here. if you talk about sentiment on this market we have bullish sentiment, a poll at 55%. bearish sentiment below 20% compared with 30% average. s&p 500 well above its 200 day moving average in other words all of these signs that indicate the market is over bought here. rob weiner you're telling clients they shouldn't rebalance out of equity stick with their allocation which may be up sharply after this rally this year. why? >> we didn't rebalance all year. so those were 60/40, became more like 66, 67% equities. we decided to let it run. we don't see any reason for the market to go down a lot. 5%, 10%, unless you're a market

timer and good at it it doesn't make sense not to be in the market. take the hit. it's okay. it's healthy as the other speaker said. the truth is the world is growing. it's growing moderately. u.s. is growing solidly. so, you can just invest in solid u.s. companies, mostly multinationals, and stick your toes in europe and maybe even a little emerge markets because they are cheap but if there is a pull back we don't see it being more than five not more than 10%. go for it. >> greg let's remember this rally, the latest leg start when the fed didn't, when they announced they were going taper beginning in january. it was off to the races. rather ironically. yet the economic data since that time has been pretty good haven't they? >> well that certainly vindicates the fed decision to lay out that punch they that they had in that punch bowl.

but i think mark put his finger on it when he said the fed has taken a lot of uncertainty out of the outlook and by the way the fed and congress have taken a lot of the uncertainty out of the fiscal outlook as well. to the extent that all the question marks what will the dpoed, what will happen on the budget will weigh on people's minds. you add in the solid above consensus outturn for the data and that sounds like a pretty good recipe for strong bullish equities the. >> we know it takes a while for higher interest rates to work their way through the economy. i wonder this if the federal reserve members wake up in january, see 3% yield on the ten year, fire year yield has moved up significantly is that something they will worry about the impact to the u.s. economy down the road and something they will try to push back against do you think? >> they won't worry about it insofar as they think it is strong economic data because that's how the world is supposed

to work. what will concern if it's a company moving up the date by when they think the fed will raise short rates from zero, if that date starts to look like it will be later in the middle of 2014, the fed might worry about that. on the other hand, kelly, if the economic data continues to surprise to the upside the fed itself may rethink their commitment to holding rates at zero. this could be a choppy year for fed connections. >> kelly mentioned that american association of individual investors served 55% individual investors surveyed see this market growing. >> sentiment remains strong. i mean identify always held through don't fight the fed notion. you always remain speculative and cautious, but i don't think i would be a contrarian at this point. i'll throw another statistic at you. when the markets are up 20% a

year historically the following year they are up 75% of the time. averaging returns of 8.1%. so right now as we know we'll encounter less monetary easing, sentiment is still strong as you noted and alluded to. a company with higher rates and if we can get a pick up in sales growth that may favor stocks in 2014. >> rick santelli what about you? do you read this environment the way -- the stock market is holding up in face of or even as yields are moving higher as permission from the market to the foed taper, to exit the picture? >> no not at all, actually. i think greg summed it up best and i wish i could live in that disney world. he said the fed removed uncertainty and congress removed uncertainty. that may be true. how do you define uncertainty. congress isn't addressing all the things that will get us in the end. they kicked it. fed announced a taper it's a small one but they haven't

embarked on it until january. bill, this is a clear zone for stocks. this is secretariat in the last couple of fur loss. of course it will gallop. but what happens when higher rates filter in. it's not about crossing the finish line with interest rates it's about running more races with higher interest rates. and sooner or later it's going to make a difference. not to mention how all the fed's activities put money in on the corporate side for stock buy backs, less stocks on the investor side more margin debt. i think we've had three months running over 400 billion. we haven't been below 300 billion in any given month since august of 2012. we can see how this is going. if everybody wants to wear rosy glasses towards the end of the year i don't think they will be blinded at least not this year. >> you're the guy that sits in the back of the classroom and say teacher, teacher you forgot

to assign the homework lay it on a friday. >> i want to know if you investment advisors anybody buying twitter right now? would you buy it here? >> mark seemed a little bit more -- >> 75% of revenue comes from advertising. i don't know. i never clicked on an ad. i'm not sure. >> i have. i'm really embarrassed about that. >> i didn't know there were ads on twitter. >> i can't comment on twitter directly but i can tell you if you haven't rotated some of your portfolio into the technology sector you better get in it because it's a sector i like in the new year. >> ron? >> i have to tell you technology, once ceos feel they can actually invest they feel comfortable there's a backlog of cap x that hasn't been done. unemployment, i don't care if it

goes up or down very much because technology is taking care of a lot of that. more importantly i think the financials are going to do terrific and the industrials, i think they will come back because the world is growing modestly. but there's so many people in the world that it's going to result in really good sales and i think profits will go up. not like this year. but i'm happy with 12%. >> we got to go guys. >> let's not forget energy. >> we're out of time. >> we enjoyed the discussion. >> greg congratulations. you're going to disneyland. you didn't know that. >> that will be nice at the end of the year. >> see you later. where are we going? 50 minutes left in the trading session. dow is up 117. here we go again, another rally day. another record for the dow and the s&p. absolutely. a new survey finding more than half of individual investors think stocks will keep rallying over the next six months. is that a reason to get cautious about this market? >> also the holiday shopping

season has come and gone. up next we'll wrap up which retailers turned out the be the big winners and which were the losers. >> no losing these face when it comes to twitter. stock up 170% since going public last month. how high can it keep going? keep it right here. you're watching cnbc first in business worldwide. bny mellon combines investment management & investment servicing, giving us unique insights

which help us attract the industry's brightest minds who create powerful strategies for a country's investments which are used to build new schools to build more bright minds. invested in the world. bny mellon.

well the mad rush to buy last minute gifts has come and gone. now the mad rush to return unwanted presents like that sweater that your co-anchor gave you that you didn't like. >> thanks a lot. >> i'm kidding. julie boorstin wraps it up for us. what's going on? >> reporter: bill, nearly 80% of shoppers saying they plan to shop those post-christmas end of year sales and the deepest discounts we've seen in years today is expected to be the fifth biggest shopping day of the year according to shopper track. now a lot of that spending will be with gift card gift card spending projected to grow 4% to nearly $30 billion. that's an average of $163 per holiday shopper. now retailers hope that those

shoppers will use those gift cards soon to give december's tepid retail sales growth a much needed boost. those cards are not booked as revenue until they are redeemed so they want them to use them soon and the hope is shoppers will spend more than the value of the card. other than cash and gift cards the other big thing on shoppers to-do list is returns which is not so good for retailers. $60 billion in returns are expected bringing the amount to $258 billion. that's according to liquidity service. americans will return at least one gift. a third will be completed before the new year. another down side to the returns is that nearly 6% of returns are fraudulent according to the national retail federation. after black friday's spending decline we'll see whether significant returns leave retailers with excess inventory or already those discounts bring enough people into the stores. guys, back over to you. >> our next guests are

unwrapping all the related holiday sales data. zeroing in on this year's winners and losers. you always get such different numbers, you know. and different interpretations of those numbers. what's your number? how did we do this year? what's your interpretation of that number? >> i think we did very well. first and foremost we're up 2.3% for the holiday season that's november 1st to december 24th. and that is in the holiday spending categories. if we cake overall retail spending it's higher up 3.5%. the consumer is not dead. they are out there and spending. >> eric you look at those same figures and say that's why this holiday season has been a disaster and has been for the last couple of years. >> when you combine it with the inventories that the retailers put out the discountings were

way higher. overall it was fine but if i look at how much retailers will make and bring back to investors it's not that exciting. >> what your seeing that he's not. it depends on the category. what was really interesting the strongest category was jewelry. that's truly a discretionary purchase. apparel was also up but only children's apparel. men's and women's apparel, excess inventory. there's validity and the devil is absolutely in the detail of this. overall the point is we had a 10% drop in gasoline prices this year. that gave confidence to the consumer about that additional consumer spending. >> any bright spots? >> the discretionaries work well. if you look at players that had strong brands did extremely well. they had less inventory and less discounting. >> and that's what's interests cigarette to look at how savvy consumers have gotten and all

the tools at their disposal to get the best deal and if that works in favor of making the holiday season successful or undermining black friday. >> it's very interesting is that we've seen that take a sector like jewelry where the consumer actually likes to buy it online now for the first time. 7.6% of jewelry sales are actually done online and at a higher price point than most people expect. when we look at transactions like this we can see that distinction and that's what they were able to do to get people to spend. >> online shopping we've established on this program how important it was this year big year for that but did come back to bite people at the end of the season with the bad weather and overload of the system with fedex and u.p.s.. what role did that play? >> relatively small role. the consumers use online as a great shopping tool and got great bargains. it's going to become the next major thing. it already is.

it's coming in year in year out. the challenge is who can expand upon it even more. >> the small part of it were the stumbles. >> if you went -- let's put it under the tree a little note you'll get it tomorrow it will be okay. but if i look at it the story in the retail world has been the expansion of online from more than just amazon up and down the line big and small retailers having to be bigger. >> you agree. >> what's very interesting is the consumer moves between two. they want the social experience of shopping. we see this. then they go online. the difference is one of the things that's a boost for retailers is we know that we see that prices stay up online versus the discounting we see in bricks and mortar because people don't choose to go to multiple stores. >> fascinating. >> good stuff, guys. happy boxing day. absolutely. go shopping. >> do you spend time in london?

>> i wouldn't have to be working because boxing day is a holiday. >> glad i asked. >> coming up much more on how the retail industry fared this holiday season when we here from matthew shays. we got now about 40 minutes left to go into the close. so while we remain focused on the holiday season mean while the story here is the markets. >> yes. absolutely. 2013 has bean record we're for stocks but will 2014 see the rise of underperforming alternative investments? commodities, for example? will we finally see them return? that's coming up. >> one stock that's pretty much outperformed every other one since going public twitter. coming up next we'll hear from someone who says this stock is actually just now about to take off. be right back. >> really? still?

(announcer) at scottrade, our clients trade and invest exactly how they want. with scottrade's online banking, i get one view of my bank and brokerage accounts with one login... to easily move my money when i need to. plus, when i call my local scottrade office i can talk to someone who knows how i trade. because i don't trade like everybody. i trade like me. i'm with scottrade. (announcer) scottrade-proud to be ranked "best overall client experience." [ sneezes ] [ coughs ] i've got

a big date, but my sinuses are acting up. it's time for advil cold and sinus. [ male announcer ] truth is that won't relieve all your symptoms. hmm? [ male announcer ] new alka seltzer plus-d relieves more symptoms than any other behind the counter liquid gel. thanks for the tip. [ male announcer ] no problem. oh...and hair products. aisle 9. [ inhales deeply ] oh what a relief it is. ♪ ♪ so i c an reach ally bank 24/7, but there are no branches? 24/7. i'm sorry, i'm just really reluctant to try new things. really? what's wrong with trying new things? look! mommy's new vacuum! (cat screech) you feel that in your muscles? i do... drink water. it's a long story. well, not having branches let's us give you great rates and service. i'd like that. a new way to bank. a better way to save. ally bank. your money needs an ally.

welcome back. here's a look at the major indexes. the dow up 120 points on this day. santa may to be done with delivering presents to kids this year but still delivering record gains to stock investors. morgan brennan, what is driving this post-christmas rally today? >> tesla keeps on trekking.

climbing about 2.5% today after the national highway traffic safety administration reaffirmed its five-star safety rating. that report separate from the administration's investigation to recent car fire incidents. the stock is trading up more than 8%. on monday e-bay shares falling today, down by 2%. likely cause a report from channel adviser showing holiday sales were up about 10% in thele holiday season versus a much heftier 30% for the five days associated with cyber monday. twitter social media giant coming off from its intraditionay high. >> we traded 2 1/2 days this week. >> trading about 75 million shares on what was roughly 80 million float of shares going back to the ipo.

>> our favorite stock to talk about. so is the twitter rally sustainable? should you be betting on it now? neil, make the case for twitter at these levels. >> there's a number of reasons why we're still bullish on twitter. we did a survey of 1700 twitter users fairly recently and over 90% of them said they will still continue to use twitter the same or more over the next 12 months. those same twitter users said they are excited about the ads that they've seen on twitter. the ads have been light but pretty tar get and very relevant and when we ask them if they believed open to seeing more ads on twitter, resoundingly over 90% said yes. we think the company has been putting out a lot of new ad products. we think the multiple is high but this is the fastest growing internet out there. there's room for this company to

grow. >> when we started the week your price target was 65. it's blown through that. will you raise that? >> we take a long term perspective on the price target. the trading has been relatively light this week so we'll see what happens when everybody comes back network. but we feel that you know, the stock at 65 or where it is today, we think that there's still room to grow from there. >> larry, i have to hand it back to you because i was looking back through a lot of 2013 predictions. facebook would do well. introduce video advertising. trade where it is today. >> but you're wrong on blackberry. >> underingstanding that thesis what is it you don't like about twitter. >> to make an argument it will go up based on people liking the ads coming out, with all due vap horrible argument. the whole issue with twitter is it's unprofitable and the growth is unsustainable.

it's a bland model and most of the business is outside the u.s. so if most of the business is outside of the u.s. in emerging markets it should be booming about 300 million users should have a billion plus users. you have to get into video advertising. that was the catalyst on facebook that i liked and continues to grope. the issue is what do they have? you need a dramamine to sit and look at it. we're talking about unprofitable. facebook came out with a billion dollars in profit 3 billion in revenue. i don't see this thing sustainable. this is an emotional stock. trying to get in on the next big thing. i'm not into shorts unless it's 100 degrees out. >> neil where do the earnings come from for twitter? >> there's a number of reasons that twitter should able to grow. this is a platform company. we look at companies like facebook google we've seen

platform companies grow. the growth will come from users. they will grow that user base both in the u.s. and internationally. secondly this company is about network effects and scale. when you get network effects and scale you'll see operating margins grow from low single digits to 20%, 30%, 40% operating margins. what we're starting to see twitter is putting a lot of rich media inside the tweet so you don't have to click open a tweet, you'll start to see videos and ads and finally you look at tv advertising. $76 billion of tv advertising coming online. we think twitter is a great place. is it going to happen in the next three to six months? maybe not. over the next year or so you'll start to see brand advertising dollars move on to twitter. that's where the growth and profitability will come. >> this will sound like a softball question to you i'm curious use think -- set aside the speculation, the bubble aspect of this.

but why do you think that stock has doubled in the last month? at this point. why now? all of a sudden does this stock take off, do you think? >> it's a couple of things. owe institutional investors behind it that's driving it. possible short squeeze happening. i think what's happening end of the year people want to throw some money into a growth story. in tech they see what a great job facebook did. you can't compare to it facebook. people think social media, next big thing. they see google flying. tale of two cities in tech. big profitable companies that are growing. microsoft had a great year also. and then you have companies like twitter that are, you know losing growth no revenue. i'm sorry no ref news unprofitable. this is an emotional play bill and i see what they are trying to do is get into it before the first earnings call happen. when the first earnings call happens you'll see this thing start to go back down. >> all right. >> we have to say, neil we you

know love this stock. we were looking at the chart. it's unbelievable how it has done in the last month. thank you both more joining us. that chart there does not do it justice with what's gone on with twitter. heading towards close we got 30 minutes left in the trading session today with the dow up 121. art cashin came by. it's a negligent amount on the buy side. >> they say there's no such thing as a free lunch. but we'll serve up some free lunch stocks that you can gobble up. >> also the price of a first class stamp is going up. how much it is right now? >> 46. >> you know that? >> i was curious. the thing is i didn't know. >> whoshs any more. it's going up to 49 now. 25% increase over the past seven years but that's nothing compared to the gains in stocks and gold and oil.

are stamps actually a bargain at these prices. we want to know what you think and read your best tweets coming up on the next hour. stay tuned. the ocean gets warmer. the peruvian anchovy harvest suffers. it raises the price of fishmeal, cattle feed and beef. bny mellon turns insights like these into powerful investment strategies. for a university endowment. it funds a marine biologist... who studies the peruvian anchovy. invested in the world. bny mellon.

♪♪ ♪ [ male announcer ] they are a glowing example of what it means to be the best. and at this special time of year, they shine even brighter. come to the winter event and get the mercedes-benz you've always wished for, now for an exceptional price. [ santa ] ho, ho, ho, ho! [ male announcer ] lease the 2014 e350 for $579 a month at your local mercedes-benz dealer. welcome back. maybe one man's trash can be another man's treasure when it

comes to stocks. as investors dump their losing shares to gain a tax advantage. some of those names according to our next guest could be a free lunch for your portfolio. >> joining us to explain, give us a few examples of his best free lunch picks to nibble on as the editor-in-chief of stock traders almanac. jeffrey always good to see you. >> happy new year. >> give us very quickly what qualifies in your view as a agree lunch stock. >> every year they make new annual lows. they can't be anything but a regular common stock no preferred, no splits no funds, no special dividends. they have to have some liquidity, some volume. and nothing crazy going on in the news. we glean that list over the weekend and put it out the our subscribers everyone can see the whole list at stocktraders.com. >> roll the names. >> the four biggest cap stocks.

microcap stocks on the list. these four stocks are all mining, precious metals. gold super. one from peru mining giant there, hecla iamgold and kimross. what's happened with this list since 1975 it's beaten the new york stock exchange over the period from mid-december to mid-february with an average gain of 12.9% for the basket and beaten the last 14 years it's outpaced the market by a substantial amount it beats the index by 9% or 10%. >> this is such a dangerous strategy. >> it's for the quick. >> there's a reason like if you take iamgold, because of the sinking gold price, their investments don't make sense, they have to suspend a dividend. >> this is not an investment.

quick trading strategy. playing off the santa claus rally. santa claus is back on wall street. the russell 2000 beating the russell 1000. we found the most volume most action. it's a quick trade for nimble traders. >> who was on the that's year? >> the big winner was herbalife. seven second delay you were missing there. so that was the big winner up 60%. one of the little stocks up 30%. i picked up the four i mentioned earlier plus a few others. i don't like to chase them and it's something if you get a quick gain you dump them. get out. if it drops a little bit cut your losses. tight trading strategy. >> for the investor who wants to give this a try how do they know when to cut and run from it

doesn't pan out. >> we like tight spots 7% to 8% down 20%. if they are 1% or 2% above the close on friday. we will tell them usually about mid-january that it's time to digest the gains or get the check and send it out to our subscribers. >> keep an eye on that. thanks jeff. happy new year. >> all the best. >> thank you so much. got about 20 minutes left the go into the clones this day where the dow is adding another 120 points to the record levels we've already seen in the last several trading session. s&p is higher by eight points opinion nasdaq up too although apple is weighing a bit. >> here's the question facing many investors take the money and run, or keep riding this wave? history says let it ride. dominic will explain why. >> find out how the double

whammy of a target breach and late deliveries. keep it right here.

you make a great team. it's been that way since the day you met. but your erectile dysfunction - it could be a question of blood flow. cialis tadalafil for daily use helps you be ready anytime the moment's right. you can be more confident in your ability to be ready. and the same cialis is the only daily ed tablet approved to treat ed and symptoms of bph s swelling of the lips tongue or throat or difficulty breathing or swallowing, stop taking cialis and get medical help right away. ask your doctor about cialis for daily use and a 30-tablet free trial.

and this will be your premium right here. sorry to interrupt i just want to say i combined home and auto with state farm, saved 760 bucks. love this guy. okay, does it bother anybody else that the mime is talking? frrreeeeaky! [ male announcer ] bundle home and auto and you could save 760 bucks. alright, mama, let's get going. [ yawns ] naptime is calling my name. [ male announcer ] get to a better state. state farm. . welcome back. dow up 120 points. we're minutes away from another record close for the dow and s&p 500. >> this is the best six day

rally we've seen for the dow going back to july of 2010. 3 1/2 year phenomenon now. after a big year for stocks should you take profits or let it ride into 2014. >> reporter: so when the stock market goes up by a lot like it has this year it may mean something good for the coming year. since 1950 there have been 17 times where the s&p 500 has gained at least 20% in the year. these 17 times. now here's the interesting part. over that time span in the following year 14 of those 17 times were actually positive again, so you can be here gains are followed by gains. that's a big point. now if you take a look at the numbers behind it. 17 times the s&p 500 has gone up 20% in one year. it's been followed up 14 times by gains. the average gain in the stock market during those 14 up years is nearly 16%. if you factor in all 17 years

including the negative ones the gain is still 11%. so when the good times are rolling they may continue in the coming year at least that's what happened since 1950. back to you guys. that would suggest perhaps why we haven't seen more people bearish on the market. >> yet even though the sentiment surveys show that there's a predominance of bullishness now you don't feel it. volume is not there for one indicator. i can't believe i'm arguing volume. >> if you look at portfolio allocation most people are under weight or starting to take whatever increase they got from being exposed to equities and bring it back down. lot of people in the fourth quarter go to cash money market funds have been getting a big inflow. >> why were you looking at target. >> twitter now has a market cap on par with a company like target. they are both in the 38-39-40

billion range. target in the headlines because of a data breach. that brings us to another stock to watch, and that's fire eye. >> what was name. >> feye. they are up. look 9% today. >> that's amazeing. i was playing that game this morning as well when i saw twitter's market capitalization got to $40 billion at its peak. fedex, $44 billion is the market cap on one of the largest shippers in the whole world and twitter has a market capcom cap comparable. >> 15 minutes left here gradually moving higher. the dow up 123 points right now. >> that's great.

s&p 500 up about nine. coming up it looks like the dow and nikkei could be in a race to 20,000. 16,480 for the dow. 16,174 for the nikkei. we'll get into this discussion. fascinating one here on "closing bell". keep it right here. ies recover and rebuild. for companies going from garage to global. on the ground, in the air, even into space. we repaid every dollar america lent us. and gave america back a profit. we're here to keep our promises. to help you realize a better tomorrow. from the families of aig happy holidays.

looking at covered call strategies to generate income? with fidelity's options platform we've completely integrated every step of the process, making it easier to try filters and strategies... to get a list of equity options... evaluate them with our p&l calculator... and execute faster with our more intuitive trade ticket. i'm greg stevens and i helped create fidelity's options platform. it's one more innovative reason serious investors are choosing fidelity. now get 200 free trades when you open an account.

about 13 minutes left in the trading session here. it just keeps going. the dow up is 124, almost 125 points. that's the high for the session at 16,482. the nasdaq is up 1. the s&p up nine. any positive close will be another new all time high and we were just pointing out this six day win streak for the dow is the strongest six day win streak we've seen since july of 2010. for those of you who keep stats like that. we do. joining us right now nicholas and in ben willis. what's going on? >> not a lot going on. you can tell by the volume. >> you can still make money whether the volume is up or down. >> absolutely. without a doubt. especially if you're in these stocks, much exxon trading up

ibm. and the volume is not there but interesting trade so if you're in the twitter or t stocks tesla, twitter you have some volume to trade with. if not it's more difficult. vix index was interesting. >> earlier this year nick we were talking about a rotation in the market. the possibility that as they sold bonds they would buy stocks. right? and yields were going up. and now they are going up. the ten year -- i don't know if it actually hit 3% today. did it? okay. the dow is up 124 points. is that what's happening right now? >> if it is it's just starting to happen. while we've seen a great rotation it's out of commodities. and out of munis and into equities in the mutual fund space.

it will have to come from fixed income. >> do you think that's appropriate? as yields rise in the bond market would you see that as attractive at some point? >> it depends on bond marke volatility. if fixed income investors get a big shock and we go from 3 to 3.25 to 3.50 it could be risk adverse and get that pull back that we're looking for. it's more moderate and modest then equities should continue to rise. >> when the market you know how sirkts when we turn a page on the calendar sometimes the whole tone can change. last year that happened. we had a modest end of the year and then a monster rally first day of the year. we presaged what will happen this year. will we see a change in tone. >> a lot of people are expecting we had such a great year going in. i'm not really part of that trade right now. i think the possibility because of where we've come from the ability to continue to go higher, the fact that a lot of

money is in the bond fund and a lot of money in the money market fund that hasn't come in to this market so it's going to be -- very unprofitable to be bear in this condition, very unprofitable to be in bonds. once again, tina, there's no alternative but to be in the equity markets. the pricing of the equity markets not a great deal of extremes as a whole in the market. point to individual stocks but as a whole of the market this is still a pretty safe to be a place where i would put other than those people in muni for pure income very elderly i don't see a reason to be in bonds. >> where do you see us in the equity market? >> there's a question about january. money floss in 401(k)s switch back on in january as people max out contribute again. as we put a more moderate think about the schiller p e*trading six times. the schiller pe is an average of the have ten years for the s&p 500 divided into the current

price. the average is roughly 16 1/2. we're currently at 26. in 1929 the stock market crash that happened here took place at 30. >> was that created by our latest nobel laureate. you're arguing we're not there yet. >> not yet. i do take the argument that valuations do feel a little stretch. only because we haven't had a pull back. haven't had any kind of correction. for anybody that trades stock you're looking for that correction right here. >> we keep harping on twitter. everybody knows what is it. and it captures the imagination and now we've seen this great rally but that is symptomatic in what's going on in some circles. >> absolutely. it has several different hats and symptomatic of the bubble mentality but symptomatic of the volume begets trading elevate.

day traders in today, that's a stock they can trade. tesla is another example. even pictures of cars burning at stop signs is not enough to keep that shine off that stock. it has that own momentum within that group and i don't disagree. i've seen the schiller studies and again i'm one of those people, i've been looking for that correction. best correction we got last year was 5% 4.5% not enough for a truly healthy market to continue but it's been very difficult to trade and stay in front of this bull market for the way we've moved. >> it's bull market for teenages. gentlemen, thank you. >> happy new year. >> we'll come back with a closing countdown as we head towards the close and stocks are as we mentioned at new highs. the price of a first class stamp will also hit a new high of 49 cents come january 1. stamp price are up now 25% over the last seven years but stocks are up 20% by some measures and

gold up nearly 90%. are stamps pretty cheap? tweet us your thoughts on that. we'll reveal the best responses later on the "closing bell". you're watching cnbc first in business worldwide. check on a claim...you know, all with the ah, tap of my geico app. oh, that's so cool. well, i would disagree with you but, ah, that would make me a liar. no dude, you're on the jumbotron! whoa. ah...yeah, pretty much walked into that one. geico anywhere anytime. just a tap away on the geico app. ♪♪ ♪ [ male announcer ] what kind of energy is so abundant it can help provide the power for all this? natural gas. ♪ ♪ more than ever before america's electricity is generated by it. exxonmobil uses advanced visualization and drilling technologies to produce natural gas... powering our lives...

while reducing emissions by up to 60%. energy lives here. ♪ ♪

♪ ♪ [ bell ringing, applause ] five tech stocks with more than a 10%... change in after-market trading. ♪ ♪ all the tech stocks with a market cap... of at least 50 billion... are up on the day. 12 low-volume stocks... breaking into 52-week highs. six upcoming earnings plays... that recently gapped up. [ male announcer ] now the world is your trading floor. get real-time market scanning wherever you are with the mobile trader app. from td ameritrade. welcome back. about three minutes left in the trading session here. if you're just joining us the rally continues.

i mean it's been that kind of a year. we were reminded about that monster rally we saw at the very first trading session of this year and that first week and how strong it was. that was strongest trading week of the year for the stock market here in the united states and, in fact it did foreshadow another big year for the bulls in the stock market. here's the dow today. and, again not a lot of volatility. just this slow move higher here. we had a gain of 115. up 123 or so at the peak. but we're at 16,473. i want to go back and look at a longer term chart. this takes us back to the low set in march of 2009. this is where it started that climb. that bottom we call the hanes bottom and moved higher and up 93% in that time from march of 2009. by the way the ten year while that's happened. the ten year went back to 3%. hit it early in the session and we pulled back at 2.99 at this

point. we're talking about the stock once again twitter up 4.8%. this is a one week chart. this is just in one week up 27%. it's been up 170% since the low it hit in late november. tell me you bought some twitter at 38. >> unfortunately i did not. but that's not -- >> i don't know many people did. >> it's an extraordinary run. twitter is roughly about 20% almost 25% of the volume. people love the social media stocks and don't rally. >> 81 million shares right now. the float son lie 70 million. >> 70 million, green shoes 10 million. trading its float today. >> we talk insider talk. what about this rally? where does it end? what keeps it going?

ems especially when it's a slow mover. >> people don't realize the s&p 500 super4% since december 12th when we hit that low. the market is trading in a perfect seasonal pattern. it's been quite elegant this month. we usually see every year a selloff. then it rallies in. we got a good old-fashioned santa claus rally. >> ben bernanke rally. >> it is. again everything was timed perfectly. teen yield on the ten year pushing up 3% is not enough. people are looking at it favorably. think bonds are getting hit. they will rotate some money back in. they are looking at stronger economic growth. people got back to looking at fundamentals as opposed to the fed. >> and there are some fundamentals to look at. >> indeed. >> always good to see you. thank you. if you don't see you later happy new year. heading towards the close with record highs for the dow and the

s&p and for twitter as well. much more to come now the second hour of the "closing bell" with kelly evans and company. i'll see you tomorrow. >> hello and welcome to the "closing bell". i'm kelly evans. santa claus continues to deliver some big gains for investors. dow and s&p 500 are closing at new highs again. i feel like a broken record. here's how we're finishing the day on wall street. the dow up 122 points about three quarters of a percent. s&p 500 adding eight points to 1842. nasdaq lagging a little bit. up 11 points. 1467. this is a record breaking year and let's bring in our panel on that note.

welcome to you all. sara, we were talking, joking to some extent about whether it was the dow and nikkei in japan on the race 20,000. what's going on with the correlation between these two. it's strong market. you're talking about the superlatives. the nikkei outdoes it the japanese stock market in terms of how good a year it is. best performing major world index up more than 50% so far this year because of the massive stimulus and the weaker japanese yen and i know dennis gartman is dying to jump in on that one. >> dennis really, if there's people sitting here in this country that think the u.s. stock market can do well next year does japan have to work for that to be case? explain to people what's going on here. >> well as sara said we have to understand what's going on.

bank of japan said they will supply reserves even more aggressively than our fed. mr. abe has made it abundantly clear he'll for the bank of japan to continue in that fashion, going take part in what reforms they need. they made a mistake bypassing a consumption tax. they have to do what they can to overcome the deflationary be impact on that. they will weaken the yen. i continue to think the nikkei will outperform even the united states stock market and the european stock market. >> the reason i bring it up there's so much focus on what's happening in this country on the strong economic data that we've had certainly on the markets at these levels. but there's a global phenomenon. is it because the rest of the world looks like it's holding and rebounding that the rest of the u.s. looks good or is this something what we used to hear in the past how you want to be invested in the u.s. when everything else looks unstable like a china, for example?

>> right now this is all about the u.s. and all about fed. the equity markets are benefiting from the best of both worlds. remember the fed just recently reiterated their commitment to keep accomodation well through 2014. they took the first steps towards tapering. so, really both very positive signals for the equity markets as we come to the end of the year. >> michael farr you have clients that have done up x percent whatever in equities. do they say do i pull back or increase because we're in the mid all of historic rally. what do you tell them? >> first of all, they like me this year, kelly, which isn't the true at the end of every year. what we say is that it's time to go through your discipline and as good as everything feels discipline will keep you out of trouble over the long term. go back and see if you're over

allocated to equities. >> what does over allocated mean. what are the tleeshhresholds. >> if you decided or at the stage where you should have 70% in equities and crept up to 80 or 85% as carl feels, sell it. people are waiting until after january 1 to sell a little because they will push those taxes out the 2015. >> who is buying twitter here? >> a lot of people. >> not me. i realize tech investments aren't your forte give end your market history perspective when you look at twitter you think what? >> when i look at a twitter i think who in god's name is willing to buy this. bill had a wonderful comment when fedex with airplanes and all of the attendant equipment involved in moving packages has the same market cap as twitter, who is kidding who? so somebody else can go ahead

and trade it. if you're a trader you look at it. the trend is obviously from lower the tloichter right. you don't want to be short. i'll let somebody else trade it. i won't. >> sara. >> there's a lot of interest in this. i was going over google trends. if you type in twtr you see the spike it started right before. you see it for facebook. you think there's not a lot of growth stock opportunities so perhaps investors are giving those guys those social socl a moon shot in the last few weeks the benefit of the doubt as they look for growth stocks in the 2014. >> i wonder if we have this chart ready, yes tweeted out a chart that kind of takes a look at the price attorney general's multiple for some of the tech and social media names and i want really has shot up justin last week or so and what's interesting who would have thought we would have been

seeing a ramp in some of these names or next generally starting on the day that the fed announces the taper. >> exactly. but this is just very indicative of the is santa claus rally 2013. the idea that the economy is on stronger footing but even as we gain firmer footing the fed will be there to continue to prop up the market throughout the next 12 maybe even 24 months. >> michael? >> well, you know i don't always get these new dot-com stocks. i tweet, believe it or not. i tweet. i got my facebook page. i told my friends on facebook that i was going to be on cnbc on the close bell today. i'm on linkedin and it's opened up a whole new world for me. there's something there but i don't know how to price it. i'm with dennis on this. i'm on the sidelines when it doesn't make sense. >> let's rattle off some numbers. twitter looks like it closed right about $73 a share. this is a company, again, that

has more than doubled, almost tripled its ipo price. we earlier said it's up 20% just this week and that's three trading sessions. it did 82 million shares in terms of volume on a day when we're not seeing much volume generally in the equity indexes because it's a holiday in many parts of the world as well. dennis, i wondered, if you use twitter and so many people do and it generates a lot of revenue and got growth prospects i understand the earnings are not there the way people would like to see them but this isn't necessarily a castle built on sand, is it? >> i think it is. i don't twitter pop paraphrase dick i don't twitter and therefore i don't. >> it's tweet. the verb is tweet. not twitter. >> that's right. i don't tweet. >> he was the english teacher. >> it does look like to me it looks like a castle built on sand. give me aluminum, give me

copper, give me railroads. you can keep tweet or twitter whatever it's called. >> all right. leapt me ask you about this, dennis, what in your universe i'm thinking about the metal names. teen alcoas of the world that have seen a big increase in volume and to some extent people bidding them up in2014. is that all about rebounding u.s. growth prospects or are people fooling themselves? >> i think alcoa and strength in aluminum, strength in steel stocks is indicative of global economic growth not just the united states and i think that's what we have to get our arms around is that things are doing better every where around the world than they have been for quite some period of time. here we are five years after the great recession and growth is beginning to pick up every where around the world. so pay attention to what all could squa is doing. pay attention to what big steel is doing. pay attention to what the railroads are doing. pay attention to what the shippers are doing.

that's the basic things of global growth. >> pay attention to what the ten year is doing. as he eke up to that 3% level or more, mortgage rates will go up. it slowed our markets, slowed our economy over the summer. i think that really could be the governor on any really move to the acceleration for this coming year. so while i'm kind of positive -- >> it's the builders that have -- pulte homes which tells you to some extent this is pro cyclical. >> you don't have broad revenue growth until you have gdp growth and you don't have gdp growth until you see consumer demand. they haven't seen income rates increase. i'm constructive. i'm positive but watch that ten year. it's going tell us. >> michael michael -- >> sound like a cumgeon.

>> we've seen 11%, 12% yields. 3% on the ten year is really nothing. let's not get too excited about that. >> no. but if it's just enough to stall it dennis, meaning the mortgage applications stop it's a relative number. i agree with you, absolutely. my first mortgage was 8.75%. >> right now we're still talking about 13 million americans that are actively seeking employment. there's no wage pressure, no income growth in the economy right now. sure 3% not the 16% that maybe last generation used to buy a home but it still is talking an additional 100, 200 300 dollars a month which means average family will delay that purchase. >> given all of these notes of caution in the economy yes not everything is perfect but the signals we've gotten specifically into the year end here have been positive.

look at jobless claims. employment picture which is arguably the most important what the federal reserve is watching is all painting a better picture. the fed is starting tapering and say hey we won't pull it back quickly in a soothing manner. by the way the economy -- with thin volume and better economic signals this is why you're seeing record after record. >> i think the signs are better than expected but not on a relative basis. >> got to leave it there. what a mess. coming up fedex and united states plagued by gremlins. and christmas is over but some retailers may be depending on post-christmas sales to reach their bottom lines. matthew shay ceo of the national retail federation will join us to explain what's going on. keep it right here. you're watching cnbc first in business worldwide. don't make excuses.

you make commitments. and when you can't live up to them, you own up and make it right. some people think the kind of accountability that thrives on so many streets in this country has gone missing in the places where it's needed most. but i know you'll still find it when you know where to look. ♪ i wanna spread a little love this year ♪ [ male announcer ] this december, experience the gift of exacting precision and some of the best offers of the year at the lexus december to remember sales event. this is the pursuit of perfection.

welcome back. stock market surging nearly 30% this year but if equities are nearing a top as some expect should you turn to alternative investments. current circumstance commodities, real estate even for some big returns in 2014. no one better to ask joining me with their best alternative investment ideas for the new,

chief investment officer of tegris and ceo of u.s. investors. frank, first to you. happy holidays, guy. it's been a happy time of the year for the stock market. where now? where should investors look for the biggest opportunity now in 2014? >> well i think it's interesting that when you look at resort sector most underweighted even though it's 13% of the s&p 500. when you look at overall analysis of weightings dramatically underweight. the dividend yields are attractive. and you have what's most important four listerners global pmi. it's rising. >> do you like the sector generally or are there individual names? >> you take a look at energy stocks usually are not the biggest, although energy prices are rising. copper strong. should be stronger next year. take a look at zinc.

steel prices picked up earlier. bhp is a class injuries our top ten holdings as a big dividend payer. i think that it's important to follow this global pmi. >> that's so true. jack, in that case as well do you like investing in the companies here who might have exposure to these areas or what about the metals themselves. some of these industries have been so volatile, investors i think are learning their lesson. >> i would leaveninvesting and commodities up to those who know what they are doing. stores a sector that's going to do pretty well over the next year. industrials, almost anything cyclical. our risk right now in this economy is risk to the upside not the down side. the stimulus is actually working better than i think people expected. and i think that would push people a little bit more towards what i call the cyclical side of the economy. i don't know that that's going

to happen immediately but as we get through the year i think as this economy continues to perform well i think we'll see commodities do reasonably well. >> okay. speak of alternatives would you consider real estate one of those reasonable alternatives. >> real estate is an alternative. i consider an alternative something that's not a stock or a bond but even within the stock or bond category i think you can consider long short equity or long short fixed income as something you can do that is an alternative. >> okay. frank, what about our real estate play. you focus typically on more of the metals and resource but what about some of those investment those areas of the economy to invest in? >> we've been long lumber stocks participating in this growth and housing stocks, i think that's another factor to take a look at. car companies, which use a lot of midwestal almetals financing is

inexpensive. those will remain strong. mlps is an alternative asset class that pace 6% yields and is key to the infrastructure build out for the huge economic boom we're seeing in energy. >> that's true. master limited partnerships. jack last question. bit coin is an alternative. >> bit coin is an alternative to gold. but let's get back to the alternatives here. when you have a run in the market like this, everything goes up. everything goes up. it's now time to start looking more specifically at individual securities and once again i think alternatives are the way to do that. i would be looking at managers who are prepared to take both the short side as well as the long side here, but i would include that in real estate as well as in equities and fixed income. >> alternative asset market. thank you so much. have a good one.

>> it may be the best deal for 49 cents out there with all the headaches over fedex and u.p.s. christmas deliveries. the u.s. postal service is in on the news. a price hike. first class mail delivery is the best deal even though a price increase sixth time in four years.

announcer: where can an investor be a name and not a number? scottrade. ron: i'm never alone with scottrade. i can always call or stop by my local office. they're nearby and ready to help. so when i have questions i can talk to someone who knows exactly how i trade. because i don't trade like everybody. i trade like me. that's why i'm with scottrade. announcer: ranked highest in investor satisfaction with self-directed services by j.d. power and associates.

[ male announcer ] here's a question for you: the energy in one gallon of gas is also enough to keep your smartphone running for how long? 30 days? 300 days? 3,000 days? the answer is... 3,000 days. because of gasoline's high energy density, your car doesn't have to carry as much fuel compared to other energy sources. take the energy quiz. energy lives here.

welcome back. the grinch who stole christmas swapped his green complex for a brown one. many deliveries didn't make it under the tree yesterday. we're joined by diana oleck. the question is longer term what does it mean for the companies? >> reporter: this was a big black eye for u.p.s. today and obviously a pr storm that follows and is going to have to be cleaned up, a lot on social media. but when you look long term what happened that is this huge growth in sales over this christmas season that resulted in their inability to deliver is a good thing for the economy. when you looked at the stock of u.p.s. and fedex it wasn't that down. when you look at the bigger picture it's actually a sign of a better economy that we did see more sales we did see more online shopping and if u.p.s. has to add more workers next year it's a good lesson to be learned. >> we'll see how they resolve this with some regulators out

there saying they should refund some people. it's a mildly positive pickup in sales to retailers but will retailers need big post-christmas sales to wrap a nice bow on the season. joining me is the ceo of the national retail federation matt it's great to have you with us. >> merry christmas. >> 3.9% that's what you guys are projecting for the holiday season. what can you tell us? how do things stand today? >> well, first of all, i love the way diana framed the conversation a minute ago. let's focus on the positives. we know from the beginning that we got off to a great start on black friday weekend. consumers were out in big numbers. we exceeded all the estimates in terms of traffic. we beat last year on every day of the weekend. we came out strong. in the last few weeks we ran into the inevitability of this truncated holiday season because we had six fewer days in the season and that led to this

incredibly promotional environment. we knew that's what it took to get people out in the stores. we saw people online and incredibly positive numbers. >> do you think we'll come in below your 3.9%. >> no. we'll come in at 3.9%. we're confident about that number right now in spite of the challenges, the logistic issues, the weather it's a tough environment. at the moment we feel good that's a strong number and accurate number. >> i want to bring in the panel on all of this matthew. sara, we were just discussing this issue but one is how do you account for online sales in the total when we talk about retaillil e commerce. do you have an opinion on how retailers should be reporting what they did in both stores and online? >> the ceos that are part of our membership and are on our board, retail is retail and sale is a sale. at the end of the day it goes to the bottom line. that oversimplifies the

challenge of trying to adjust your capital investment. but the truth is consumers are channelling agnostic. at the end of the day we're glad the numbers are positive and they are increasingly positive. >> your figure then includes all online as well. >> it does. >> what your seeing in terms of the why? why so sluggish? we're seeing better economic signals, better job market than we thought this time last year confidence is higher. why aren't consumers spending? >> well you know that's really the story line that we've been talking about, and with you for the last month or two and it's sort of this tale of two recovery. you got this top line macro economic indices that look great. and yet you get this lingering high unemployment rate choppy consumer confidence. things should be better this year than a year ago because the indices are so good.

but they are not helpful to many people in the united states who don't feel like they've been a part of the recovery and they've been in some ways left behind. we haven't -- here in washington and on capitol hill we haven't done the things we need to do to make everyone feel that they are moving forward and benefiting in this growing economy. >> it caught my attention. was the fact luxury this holiday season is flat. matthew what can you tell us about that trend? >> well i think it's early to make any predictions. i talked to a number of ceos today and the response from most of them is it's way too ear try to make a call on how the season went. today is one of the busiest five days of the entire shopping year for a couple of retailers this is the busiest day. so it's too soon to make a prediction. >> lindsay? >> you know one thing i want to point out we keep hearing about these better indicators in terms of the labor market but there's a difference between quantity and quality job creation.

now we are seeing nonfarm continue to improve but the quality of jobs remains lackluster. since the start of the year nearly 50 puerto rico of the jobs created are low wage jobs. so i think that's where we're seeing part of this disconnect between the labor market improvement and that lack of consumer spending. >> yeah. there's a lot of people concerned, more of the population is holding those kinds of jobs. we should use jobs plural when we talk individuals now because so many people are working so many different jobs to string together a full work week. >> that's right. part time job creation since the start of the year since the recession popped up to 20% of job creation. since then we've seen little improvement, since the start of january 19% of job creation. if we add part time low wage that's the vast majority of jobs being created in this economy. >> last word matthew. >> to that point we would like to see more jobs created at a faster pace and more people with

increased wages and household income go up and all those things should and could happen in the new year if we can get tax reform done, immigration, trade deals done all the things that need happen in washington to move the economy forward. >> that should be a piece of cake. no sweat on that front. no issues there. matthew shay thank you for your time. happy holidays. >> michael we'll save you for the next segment. we know about thaking of consumer credit accounts most recently with target but our energy industry is under attack. who are they will surprise you and the details on this story are coming up next. keep it right here. get most of its energy? is it africa? the middle east? canada? or the u.s.? the answer is... the u.s. ♪ ♪ most of america's energy comes from right here at home. take the energy quiz. energy lives

here.

welcome back. shoppers are still feeling the impact of that mega data breach at target. in the meantime there's another kind of data breach going out there, one that's not a hack or a theft. it seems computer programs can be set up to scrape data from the internet from government websites that hold economic information and use to it trade before it becomes public. here to explain what's going on is the vice president of security compass. thanks for being here. >> thank you for having me. >> you know this "wall street journal" article hit and i wonder what the reaction has been if you are seeing people

more people come towing and saying what can we do to protect ourselves both in the public and private sectors. >> most people in the private-sector are pretty well aware of this issue. nothing new from the perspective of the kind of activity that's going on. i think in the public sector might be a bit different specifically in the case of what's happening in the department of energy. having information on the website that people are looking for to gain competitive advantage in trading before it's publicly released. >> is this illegal? >> well that's an interesting question. it actually depends on the intent of how people are using it. so what's happening here is they are accessing data really quickly, much faster than any individual can sort of click on a browser and you know access a website. so what the department of energy is saying is based on how quickly it's happening it looks like it's a computer programmer than a human being who is doing it. they could be doing it for legitimate purposes let's say to download everything on the site

for internal archiving purposes or trying to bring the site down. if they are trying to bring the site down that's illegal. >> my understanding what's happening there's a lot of computer allgorythms. >> it's not clear what the intent is. >> what could the intent possibly be. now i understand some media websites may have accidentally or in some cases intentionally gained access in order to distribute the information for an edge but, obviously, if it's a trading firm the intent is to profit off of it. >> well, yeah. if it's coming from a trading firm it's hard to imagine that there's case where it's you know, legitimate usage. there might be other places. i think one of the i guess,

entities that was responsible for this actually had a corporate planning division. it was an oil and gas company that downloaded this information for corporate planning purposes and wasn't really for trading at all. >> right. in which case it's not necessarily about front running the system. what it does illustrate is how easy it is to get access to this information and what's the response then got to be and how expensive is it going for all these agencies to beef up their security? >> that's a great question. i think some agencies already understood this. i think what the department of energy is doing is bringing visibility into this issue. previously key economic indicators were distributed through media. now some of these agencies are sort of distributing it online directly and they may not have had any real reason to beef up their internet security presence. the department of energy showing the volume of potential attacks that are happening and you got to wonder for things like perhaps real estate indicators places where information security hasn't traditionally

been, just a key focus if they actually have the same sort of investment in place. >> especially it's one thing when it's a private company competing against one another it's another when it's a government agency and more or less the age of austerity. so what is the solution? what should to be done here? >> well i think, you know immediate takeaway is that any agency that does house information that could be used to move, you know economic markets needs to take their internet presence and the security of their internet presence very seriously. they need to be monitoring for these kinds much activities. they need be putting in proactive patrols to make sure they don't have well-known security issues. >> this is an issue of some urgency and not a cheap thing for them to resolve. how much is it going to cost and this ultimately going to be footed by taxpayers but if it's that important of an issue does this need to be priority right away? >> i mean you know

realistically should always have been a priority. these websites are sort of the front door into that organization. if somebody can break into the website there's a chance that they can use that as a launching pad to get into the internal network and cause much more destruction while they are there so this is really sort of just bringing to light how important the topic is and how important always has been and you're right. you know the investment is going to be pretty significant in most cases if that particular agency hasn't been invests in security already. >> i imagine is that theme for 2014 and that's why we're seeing some of these companies that specialize in it. thank you very much for your perspective. appreciate it. >> thank you. >> have a good one. coming up next we'll run down what's heating up cnbc. the hot list is straight ahead. mailing a letter is getting more expensive in the new year. price hike for first class stamps is much less than stocks and commodities. are stamps a bargain?

let us know what you think. we have your responses coming up. d. for companies going from garage to global. on the ground, in the air, even into space. we repaid every dollar america lent us. and gave america back a profit. we're here to keep our promises. to help you realize a better tomorrow. from the families of aig happy holidays. (vo) you are a business pro. seeker of the sublime. you can separate runway ridiculousness... from fashion that flies off the shelves. and you...rent from national. because only national lets you choose any car in the aisle... and go. you can even take a full-size or above, and still pay the mid-size price. (natalie) ooooh, i like your style. (vo) so do we, business pro. so do we. go national. go like a pro.

in today's markets a lot can happen in a second. with fidelity's guaranteed one-second trade execution we route your order to up to 75 market centers to look for the best possible price -- maybe even better than you expected. it's all part of our goal to execute your trade in one second. i'm derrick chan of fidelity investments. our one-second trade execution is one more innovative reason serious investors are choosing fidelity. now get 200 free trades when you open an account. welcome back. what are people reading about on our website. our retail reporter has the low down. >> reporter: our biggest story right now obviously 2013 is quickly coming to a close so people are starting to look ahead to 2014 and what the stock market might bring. we take a look back at what

historically has happened after a strong year. apparently there have been 17 times since 1950 when the s&p has closed higher than 20%. so, 14 out of 17 of those times the following year also posted big gains opinion he basically makes the argument the rally may not be over. we can look for stocks to increase more in 2014. next on the list another forecast but this isn't quite as positive. earlier on "squawk on the street" they talked about how high income earners can expect a huge tax bill for 2013. he was saying basically out of his clients who earn more than $400,000 a year they will see their income taxes increased 7% on the year. so he's saying yes people are aware that these tax increases are coming but not prepared to deal with them. also up on our list something from jeff cox talk about how cutting benefits will cut the jobless rate.

this is based on analysis by u.s. economists saying the opposite of what ben bernanke has recently said. he said if you cut jobless benefits the jobless rate will decline because fewer people are going to be in the workforce, people might start accepting jobs that they previously didn't want to accept. so people are really diving into that story. >> i'm so glad you mentioned that one too. thank you very much. have a good night. we should mention, again, when it comes to this issue, one to watch in 2014. if you look at north carolina for example, they ran out of unemployment benefits and people dropped out of the labor force instead of taking that next worst job not the kind of improvement you want to see. keep that in mind next week. can twitter keep soaring in the new year and can facebook get a vast majority of its revenue from mobile devices. our top social media predictions are next. keep it right here. ♪ ♪ ...you deserve a cadillac, the fastest growing full-line luxury brand in the united states.

including the all new 2014 cadillac cts motor trend's 2014 car of the year. get the best offers of the season on our award winning products. like a 2014 ats and srx. hurry in, offers end january 2nd. tdd# 1-800-345-2550 searching for trade ideas that spark your curiosity tdd# 1-800-345-2550 can take you in many directions. tdd# 1-800-345-2550 you read this. watch that. tdd# 1-800-345-2550 you look for what's next. tdd# 1-800-345-2550 at schwab, we can help turn inspiration into action tdd# 1-800-345-2550 boost your trading iq with the help of tdd# 1-800-345-2550 our live online workshops tdd# 1-800-345-2550 like identifying market trends. tdd# 1-800-345-2550 now, earn 300 commission-free online trades. call 1-888-628-2419 or go to schwab.com/trading to learn how. tdd# 1-800-345-2550 sharpen your instincts with market insight from schwab tdd# 1-800-345-2550 experts like liz ann sonders and randy frederick. tdd# 1-800-345-2550 get support and talk through your ideas with our tdd# 1-800-345-2550 trading specialists. tdd# 1-800-345-2550 all with no trade minimum. and only $8.95 a trade. tdd# 1-800-345-2550 open an account and earn 300 commission-free online trades. call 1-888-628-2419 to learn

more. so you can take charge of your trading. welcome back. more links for linkedin, more faces on facebook. we asked julie boorstin to peer into the future of social media and here are her predictions for 2014. >> reporter: social media companies will become even more prevalent next year and as their popularity soars consumers will become more aware of how social media impacts their lives.

2014 will be a mobile tipping point. both facebook and linkedin will earn more half their revenue from mobile device as twitter already does. all social companies acquisitions will be focused on mobile and new start ups that take off will mob bill first. meanwhile social giants will target ads. more time people spend on social tools more privacy will be on spotlight. companies will give consumers more controls and with whom they are sharing. expect consumers to push for far more transparency for how personal data is used and shared. 2013 is the year of social shopping. get ready for pinterest to take off and groupon to continue its come back as consumers increasingly turn to their peers to inform shopping choices. julie boorstin cnbc business

news. i want to bring in our parnl panelists for some reaction. dennis? >> i suspect i will have no choice but i'll do it kicking and scratching as they drag me into the 19th-century i guess. >> meanwhile michael, here's another question as well for a lot of investors out there who think they adhere to the warren buffett school of investing what you know and i don't use twitter, i don't get it, i ignore it. can you afford to ignore these names any more in social media? >> i don't think so. you have to take a look at the volumes and subscriptions and huge demographic that's using social media. you have to take a look at all those 20 somethings. >> don't you have to take a look at valuations at this point. twitter is not making a profit. >> you can take a look at some of the other names in tech land. facebook, they still are struggling to figure out how. but amazon in many ways has

proven perhaps you don't need to have real earnings and your stock price can go up because you have a lot of buyers. >> we learned that before but it always ended badly. >> i got to tell you, there's a lot of people out here and a lot of volume that sooner or later does turn into dollars. >> lindsay, i'm curious as well we're talking about the valuations of some of these companies that equal or surpass more traditional american companies. how does this look is now >> whether it's an electronicic electronically based company or a ground up like a u.p.s. the bigger thing we're seeing businesses loosen their purse strings and seeing investment come back. we're talking about billions of dollars that have been side lined for quarters and years. but we're seeing more certainty coming back into washington and seeing signs of a pick up in overall demand, domestically and internationally we're seeing businesses start to put some of those dollars back network in their companies. >> it's interesting there's an

article that caught my attention. 2013 was a lost year for tech. a little bit counter intuitive. we're talking about innovation. but his argument is basically the iphone wasn't a game changer. wearable tech google glass hasn't come to much. companies like apple are pursuing financial strategies to enhance shareholder return than more transformative investments. sara, do you think he's wrong? >> we haven't seen a lot of innovation. we did see the twitter ipo. perhaps this speaks to why we see so much money going into these names. they are getting more respect. wall street has been scratching their head hence the facebook ipo flop and everybody was skeptical. analysts are more sell ratings on twitter than not. do they gain more respect and do they come of age. >> it's an interesting point because you know if something is

growing up if it runs ads. everyone jumps to thing that's outside of the mainstream but eventually the advertising dollars and companies it all catches up with them and we have the cycle repeat itself whether it's television or twitter. >> i guess that's true. i use google 10 20, 15 times a day but never written them a check and i still wonder where they make money. i'm just an old guy and i can't figure it out yet. >> you know they probably figure if they have your eye ball they are monetizing. >> they are getting the majority of their revenue from advertising. the more eyeballs they get and more revenue streams they have and the more announcements that they make in that vein then investors get excited. >> a lot of those companies -- >> don't they have to buy something. >> they get paid for clicks. >> your clicks count. michael, what's your big tech prediction for 2014? >> i think things continue to creep higher.

apple starts to fall and lose some of its luster. i think you'll see think you will see the cloud computer names take off higher. >> there are a lot of puns built into those projections. thanks. we have been asking and you have been tweeting. coming up is another increase. are stamps actually still a bargain hill? price hikes have trailed stock market commodities. your thoughts on this one are coming up next. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [ tires screech

] chewley's finds itself in a sticky situation today after recalling its new gum. [ male announcer ] stick it to the market before you get stuck. get the most extensive charting wherever you are with the mobile trader app from td ameritrade. before you settle for another ordinary mattress, isn't it time you discovered

the sleep number bed? the only bed clinically proven to relieve back pain and improve sleep quality. and right now, it's our lowest prices of the season. save $300 to $800 on our newest innovations. plus, for one week only, special financing until january 2016. only at a sleep number store, where queen mattresses start at just $699.99. sleep number. comfort individualized. [ male announcer ] here's a question for you: where does the united states get most of its energy? is it africa? the middle east? canada? or the u.s.? the answer is... the u.s. ♪ ♪ most of america's energy comes from right here at home. take the energy quiz. energy lives here.

>> welcome back. throughout the show we have been asking you if you think 49 cents for a postage stamp is expensive or not. here are some of our favorite tweets on this one. a 49 cent stamp cost me 49 cents more than it costs me to send you an e-mail. tweets what else in life can you do for 49 cents. of course it's not expensive. and i don't care what the post office stamps cost but it's cheaper than what fedex and ups charge. and finally, what's a stamp? >> who mails letter. it's so quaint.

>> how many stamps do you use a year? >> i do mail my rent check so 12. >> mike vargas goes through what? 250? >> we send out 500 to 600 christmas cards every single year. we have quarterly statements that we still send. there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them. >> why don't you just e-mail them to people. >> we're trying to get clients to do that. a lot of our clients are over 60 and a certain generation want it in print. >> why can't you just rush out now before this goes into effect in january and buy the forever stamp? >> you can. >> just horde them. >> forever stamp, please. >> my second shout out.

>> by the way, people -- this is the sixth increase in seven years. the cost has gone up by about 25%. >> believe me you will be ahead of everybody else in your age group. >> such fabulous wisdom. you're absolutely right. and the handwritten rule of thank you notes. fabulous. >> are you old school when it comes to mailing stuff? >> i think etiquette has been lost with the technology age of e-mails and text messaging. >> wanting it back to markets as well. going to talk about the fact

that we are coming off of record highs from the dough. >> i really do. again, when we look at the underlying fundamentals of the economy, we are on stronger footing relative back to when we began the third round of quantitative easing. if we look at overall growth, which is on average less than 2%. >> i don't know. at the same time for only about the third time since 2006.

>> we could be in the 3% again. finally a decent period of back to back stronger growth. >> we may. and again, my advice is to keep your eye on the ten-year yield. more than that, one of the fundamental rules of investing is to buy low and sell high. if you feel like buying, this is not low by anybody's measure. we have seen markets where they can certainly go higher where we see multiple expansions. >> most don't have the luxury of sitting back and saying i think i will wait. they have to make decisions about whether they can afford to miss the increase. >> it will be interesting to watch the retail flow s

s. >> people rush in when it starts making new highs and they think everybody is making money. that can be heading right for a cliff, too. >> about the mark cap of twitter. that perhaps tells you more about the mood when it comes to this market than anything. and it doesn't tell me that everyone believes that the rally is is great. >> a lot of people have missed the boat on this rally. i feel like we have said that at the wrap of every single year. it's continued to surprise in a positive way.

>> people thought forget about it. it's not going to do that well. look at it today. dennis? >> smart guys i have seen have been absolutely on the sideline or short. and i find it amazing that they continue to be the public i don't think is involved in this at all and there is so much money sitting in the bond market. it sounds sophisticated to be skeptical but the trend is from the lower left to the upper right and there is still money to be put to work. it's still a bull market. >> is that your prediction that more of the public will get involved here? >> oh yeah of course. they have no choice. they have been sitting on the sideline and they will get involved. when the public starts to think that it can only go up 15, 20%, then we have to be concerned. >> thank you all so much for being here. >> fast money coming up in just a few seconds.

>> over to you, melissa. >> fast money starts right now. i'm melissa lee. here are tonight's line-up. social climbing to all time highs. breaking records today in twitter has gone from a teflon stock to cult-like status. is it too late to get in on this investment? no juice for blackberry today and what it means for the smart phone wars. trouble brewing in