point. nasdaq's turned negative, down just a fraction, 1 3/4 points. frontier communications up on the day. blackberry up almost 8%. gamestop up better than 7%. >> blackberry in double digits once again. how about that. that does it for "power lunch" for a tuesday. >> "street signs" begins now. companies with no revenue selling for billions. the nasdaq up nearly 40% in a year. and earnings growth coming mostly from cuts. does that sound familiar? today, we will dig into whether this is a top or whether it really is different this time. hi, everybody. mandy is out. sara eisen is in. coming up on your big show today, if housing has peaked because banks are pulling back on loans, what just one fake twitter account may say about

the state of social media, and twitter's valuation. and all that glitters lately is not gold. it's cheaper. and it is the best performing metal so far this year. sara eisen, are you emotionally and psychologically prepared for this program? >> i am emotionally and psychologically prepared, yes. especially because i heard we will be talking bitcoin. first, on the markets fluctuating between gains and losses, pretty much all morning long. the important thing to point out, we are hovering near a record high for the s&p 500. resilient market. two things to chew on today out there. home prices finished up more than 13% last year, but slowing momentum in terms of price gains toward the end of the year. consumer confidence trailed estimates and earnings still digesting some of the retail earnings. in fact, investors liked what they saw when it came to home depot and macy's. they've got an unchanged line here. >> that's today. we know what has happened in the past year. really, the past four years. consider this. the nasdaq is up 38% over the

past 12 months. more than 20% of the s&p 500 are now valued at more than 30 times trailing earnings and companies with little to no revenue are being sold for billions. by the way, online grocery is really hot. i mean, this time we mean it. obviously a lot of things to point to that could make an investor nervous. but should we be? let's bring in john heiler and mark tepper. john, is this 1999 or really, is this a different scenario? are we smarter? >> hey, brian. hey, sara. you know, i think you cannot worry about whether this is top or not. the market is very different than it was five years ago, ten years ago, or is it exactly the same. i don't mean to be flip there. what i'm talking about, does anybody know if the red sox will win the world series again this year. we didn't expect them to win last year. i think what i'm trying to say, there will be good and bad days, there will be market peaks and market valleys, and basically, i

think what people need to do is look at the way they are investing. they have to understand there's going to be volatility in this marketplace, both when times are good and times are bad, and you have to build a portfolio that helps you with stand that. that's our discussion -- >> i hear you, and i love the optimism because we want to be an optimistic society. we want our retirement portfolios to grow. but when i hear that 400 of the 500 of the s&p 500500 companies are up more than 10% over the past 12 months, that we're seeing 50 plus companies trading at 75 times trailing earnings, i was running all these today myself and thinking wow, unless we get real revenue growth, forget about cutting our way to prosperity, making me a little nervous. why am i wrong? >> i do understand that. i guess when you look at the unemployment numbers and the lack of movement on job growth, you look at some of the earnings growth and where it's come from over the last few years, more from efficiency cost cutting

productivity gains, you do get concerned. i guess the way we approach the marketplace and the way we talk about it, the way we built our company, we've had ten years of positive net flows at our firm. it's because we have tried to build a diversified model that cuts across investment disciplines that helps us ride through the storms. so i think investors have to look at that same thing and say okay, if i move out of the market, okay, so you sold in january and you missed a movement in february. i guess we're trying to say look at the market over a long period of time, not just these short windows and we have something positive going for us. we heard out of washington nothing is going to get done this year. washington may not affect it negatively. that might be a positive. >> my question to you is this. even if you have a long term view here, we're already in the fifth year of the bull market. how much longer does it run? >> i would agree -- >> one of the things we were talking about -- >> wait, wait, wait. >> -- one of the big drivers for people right now is retirement or health care costs, this idea of individual benchmarking, what

people need to do to meet some of the needs they have later in life. if you are looking at needs later in life, if you have the five, ten, 20 year horizon, when you start to get out 10 or 20 years, the five year number is probably not as important as if you were looking at for long term investing. to me, that's what people have to start looking at. 89% of people today, investors in america, believe they are going to meet their retirement goals. only 45% of them have any goals at all. so there's a real disconnect there. i think it's because people worry about -- too much about the dow and s&p and not about what is personal for them or what they need for a benchmark. >> hang on there. mark, i want to get your thoughts about where we are in this bull market cycle. >> yeah. we honestly think this bull market is not -- it's definitely not at a top and in fact, it's probably got another three years of life left in it. reason being, valuations very fair right now. p.e. multiples are in line with historical averages. we're expecting earnings growth of high single digits for this year.

technically, the market should rise in line with earnings growth. a lot of the technical froth we have seen over the course of the last year or so has worn off over the past few months. and the thing that really ended the last two bull markets is when the ten year treasury yield began to exceed nominal gdp growth. so with the current ten year yield right at about 2.7%, we feel like there's about maybe 2% of wiggle room that we have before that begins to become problematic. we don't expect the fed to raise interest rates until at least the latter half of 2015 and we don't expect them to get to that equilibrium rate until 2016 or the beginning of '17. >> what could change your mind? >> do you see a lot of volatility in the next three years? a month like january, then like february? >> absolutely. there will be a lot of volatility. when we are managing money, we are looking at three to five year outlooks. what could change that, the biggest thing would be if the

fed were to begin raising interest rates ahead of the economy, showing us all that it really can stand on its own two feet, that's the thing that can choke off growth and derail the stock market. >> just quickly, you guys came out with your retirement index. we like to be number one, right? we are 19th in the world in retirement security. how do we fix that? people are -- you know what, we have lost confidence in equities and to me, that makes me nervous because stocks despite their pain are still the greatest wealth creator asset class we have. >> do understand not one size fits all when it comes to global retirement. it's kind of comparing health care, national health care programs to what the u.s. is doing, what they do in norway. do understand a lot of the plans that do do better than us are funded by governments. in the united states, we have government retirement initiatives, but we also have the corporate and then we have

individual responsibility. in the u.s., we have to do better with individual responsibility toward our retirement goals, much more so than some of the countries that are on that index and are up above us a little higher. look, iceland is higher than the united states and iceland's got true economic issues ahead of them. so even though you may look at it and say boy, the index puts us at the bottom, it's really based on more of the responsibility of individuals more than some of these other countries. >> thanks to you both for your perspective. the message to me is patience when it comes to this bull market. drilling down further into today's action, home depot is on fire after reporting a better than expected quarterly profit. picking through the report, pretty clear that cold weather did not keep shoppers away. home depot says u.s. same store sales rose nearly 5% last quarter. meantime, luxury home builder toll brothers reporting a 10% jump in quarterly profit but,

and this is a but, big one, toll said that new orders fell nearly 6% last quarter. let's bring out diana olick to make sense of all this. i know you have pushed back against this idea that the weakness we have been seeing in the housing numbers is due to the weather. >> exactly. part of it is due to it and we will get that back when the weather warms up a bit. but really, what's happening is a weakening affordability. that's why that toll number really plays into that. toll has been doing very well. why? because they sell luxury high end homes. that's what's selling today. we had home sales in january above $750,000, jumped 20%. sales of homes below $100,000, down 19%. that's because the first time home buyer has dropped out of the market. those are not toll brothers buyers and the higher end buyer is able to get in. demand is there and they see prices going up so they want to get in now. but again, when you look forward and say well, how much affordability am i going to have later, toll brothers is saying wait, maybe there's a ceiling,

how much can we raise prices because you are seeing the orders start to pull back as we get into spring. we start to hit that affordability issue and that's what's happening as we go into the spring market on both the low and the high end. yeah, it was great for prices to rise, but there's just so much buyers can afford when they actually have to put money down on a home nowadays. >> shocking concept. let me invest a little in my future with real money. thank you very much. if you are an owner of bitcoins and perhaps you are just waking up because you are watching us from guam, turn off the volume because one of the biggest bitcoin exchanges has flat out disappeared. tokyo based mt. gox simply went offline and it took a whole lot of bitcoin with it. bitcoin themselves are tanking. let's bring in mary thompson, who has been following the story from the beginning. mt. gox was a big player. what is going on here? >> first, it hasn't completely disappeared. that was certainly the concern last night, because a number of people went online trying to get on, you type in mt. gox, nothing was happening. we finally got a statement from

them. this is what they had to say. basically they are saying in the event of recent news reports and potential repercussions on mt. gox's operations in the market, a decision was taken to close all transactions for the time being in order to protect the site and our users. we will be closely monitoring the situation and will react accordingly. little bit of background here. mt. gox and a number of other exchanges have been plagued by problems recently, in particular mt. gox, a number of accounts have been frozen recently, et cetera, and people can't get their money out. so this is what we have right now. as a result, we see a decline in the price of bitcoin extending its drop from december when it peaked. it's up about 54% right now. it is rumored and we have no confirmation on this, some 770,000 bitcoins are locked up in mt. gox. the company did not say anything about those bitcoins in particular when they might be released or whether or not they are actually still available. >> here's the thing. we were getting into this. >> don't sugar coat it.

you are screaming at each other before the show began. >> when you have one of the major exchanges go down like this in this massive technological problem, it really does raise into question the viability of bitcoin, the enthusiasts will tell you this is just part of the process. >> that's what enthusiasts do. they are enthusiastic. >> because the idea behind it is still there. >> what's the idea? digital currency? what's wrong with money? works fine for me. >> mary has a good quote on this. >> couple things. first of all, yes, they say this is just weeding out the bad actors, it's part of a process of any kind of nascent technology or product, et cetera, and as you can imagine, the bitcoin advocates were out in force. i want to pull up something written by eric voorhees, the co-founder of coin-apult. he wrote these last night. because as to why they are so concerned about mt. gox and why it's so important they do what they do. because -- this is from his blog the other night, this letter he

sent to others -- because the world needs what we are building, it needs it desperately. if that matters to you as it does to me, then hold on to that thought. you will see through the smoke and your wounds will heal. tonight my heart is with you all. his bitcoins actually are with mt. gox. he reportedly according to some twitter reports or posts on twitter, i should say, unconfirmed, has about 270,000 or so, 200,000 plus dollars with mt. gox right now. but again, a lot of people will say it's just part of it. we had benjamin lofty, head of the department of financial services in new york who basically said the same thing, unlike an alabama regulator who yesterday issued a warning to consumers saying don't invest in this. your money gets tied up, you may not be able to access your account, et cetera. it is a new technology and it is rife with problems. >> it's like the gold crew -- we got to go, i know. you can't buy anything with gold. i'm not taking -- >> you can buy with bitcoin. more retailers are accepting it. >> agreed. but alternative currencies are

so subject to the fluctuations of what people want to accept. if i have something nobody will take -- >> have you ever bought anything with bitcoins? >> i have not. >> do you own bitcoin? >> i do not. but i read a lot about it. >> i understand that, but everyone says you can buy a lot of stuff with it and we have had people who have gone and lived on bitcoin, et cetera. there is demand probably from a small group when you look at the total global population. what we have to ask about bitcoin is what is its future benefit. how does it serve a larger population. and that will be the question that a number of people have to answer. >> i would suggest the op-ed in the "new york times" on this. really helpful. >> people have invested in it because he has a vested interest. >> he doesn't own any bitcoin. >> trying to get rid of $28 in russian money. on deck, what exactly happened at pimco? plus, we put this company on your radar months ago. actually, back in january. two months ago.

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you don't have to scratch the surface too far to find articles written about such things as a classic strategy with you, about tense moments

between the two of you, not to mention of course your signature funds performance last year which i think was the worst since 1994. did that not have anything to do with it? >> no, i don't think so. you know, mohammed and i have been good friends for 14 years. i hired him twice. so that couldn't have happened unless we got along. >> that was pimco ceo bill gross on this show a couple weeks ago. it was just days after then co-ceo mohammed el erian announced he was leaving pimco. now word there was more to the departure than gross may have made out, according to an article in today's "wall street journal." joining us is the excellent writer who wrote that story, greg zuckerman, one of the best reporters out there. thank you for joining us. >> glad to be here. >> the article, listen, our viewers know, i've got a relationship with bill, this show does, this network does, he's a good guy, he's a smart guy, he's built a lot. it did not paint him in a very positive way. >> well, pimco is a difficult

place to work, when you talk to employees, current employees, people who have been at other shops, they all say the same thing that relative to other places, wall street can be a tough place, but it's a tougher place to work. there is some genius that comes along with that. bill gross is a tough boss. he can be testy. he can be worse than testy. the results speak for themselves. >> so was steve jobs, right? allegedly. so were so many of the women and men that we have talked about who have built these spectacular companies, because you have to have a little bit of the iron hand, do you not? >> oh, i think that in some businesses you really do, yeah. our story isn't saying that he's a good or bad guy. our story talks about why mohammed el erian left. it was because of concern by him but also by others within pimco that this way of operating can't go on the way it is, and they have to do something different. our understanding is that

mohammed couldn't get it to change and bill didn't want it to change. >> it was said that bill gross should just retire or should just leave to save pimco. have you heard that response? is that a correct assessment -- reaction to your article? >> i'm not sure you want to go that far. they have been outperforming, they outperformed last year as well. i do think he needs to share power more than he's done in the past and give authority to others. they've got a huge bench there. every firm says that. my understanding and my reporting suggests there are all kinds of really smart great investors over there, but bill runs the shop. he's had control, he's talked about giving up some control but really hasn't and people inside are skeptical he's going to. he's 69 and you do want to see if you're an investor of pimco and they manage almost $2 trillion, you want to see him sharing more of that power. >> greg zuckerman of the "wall street journal," excellent story as always. thank you for taking some time

for us today. appreciate it. >> sure thing. if you needed yet another reason to watch cnbc, here's a reminder. on january 13th we traveled to san francisco for the jpmorgan chase health care conference and there, we interviewed dan welch, ceo of intermune. we found the company by running a stock search and talking to analysts about companies they were excited in. at the time, intermune was about a $17 stock. today, it is more than $35, more than $36, actually, after positive drug trial data. joining us, the president and ceo of intermune, dan welch. stock up 162%. dan, great to chat with you again. thank you very much for joining us. listen, obviously the drug trial results, very positive. however, your employees no doubt are happy because they will get richer, too. when you see your stock go up 162% in one day, do you worry a little bit because of that volatility? >> well, obviously we are very pleased with the stock movement today. what's most pleasing to us, we have been working on this field,

ipf, a deadly disease for which there is no approved therapy in the united states, for over a decade. these data bring hope to patients that we can bring this product to patients suffering from this disease in the united states as we have already done so in europe and canada a couple years ago. so what we're focusing on is now putting together the file to bring it to the u.s. food and drug administration so they can consider it for approval for this deadly and debilitating disease. >> it's an awful condition. we talked about it in san francisco. how big is the market opportunity for our viewers and also, for us, how many people suffer from this and how big is the opportunity for you to try to help fight it? >> yeah. it's a so-called orphan disease but it's a large orphan disease. 50,000 to 70,000 americans suffer from this disease, perhaps more, because it's perhaps underdiagnosed.

a similar figure to that suffer in the european community as well. the situation is this. for cancers like the colon, the breast, the lung, these diseases are very deadly, rapidly deadly. idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, there are no drugs approved for this disease and it is more lethal than these cancers. so unlike cancers of colon, breast, ovarian, where there are many therapies, there are no therapies for patients suffering from ipf. so 50,000 to 70,000 patients suffering very debilitating rapidly lethal disease. we feel there's a very, very strong market to put in perspective, 50,000 to 70,000 patients is a bigger market in terms of numbers of patients than many cancers that are out there. >> dan welch, thank you very much for joining us.

congratulations to your employees and keep fighting against ipf. it is very debilitating. thank you. how about that, 161%. still ahead, big business weighing in on a controversial bill in arizona. we'll have the latest. later on, we now know the man behind the notorious goldman sachs elevator twitter account. why he and so many others like him could be the biggest threat to twitter itself. says me. they're the days to takf business. when possibilities become reality. with centurylink as your trusted partner, our visionary cloud infrastructure and global broadband network free you to focus on what matters. with custom communications solutions and responsive, dedicated support, we constantly evolve to meet your needs. every day of the week. centurylink® your link to what's next.

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all right. forget -- i know gold, it's gold, you know. look at silver. yes, slightly lower but it's been one of the hottest precious metals this month. silver is near a four-month high, up 10% alone in february. traders cite bullish technicals for the silver surge. silver outshining gold. sara, stop reading papers. >> i'm reading about this next story which is unbelievable. big business weighing in on a

controversial bill that would -- that made its way through arizona state legislature. simply put, the measure would give arizona business owners the right to refuse service to gays and lesbians on the grounds of religious beliefs. scott cohn has been digging into this story. the question is whether or not the governor will veto or sign the bill. >> right. it's really all up to governor jan brewer. the latest word from the nbc news political unit is she is leaning toward vetoing the bill but it is not final. nothing decided yet. the controversy rages on. this is the bill. to be clear, nowhere does it refer to gays or even discrimination in general. what it does do is expand the ability of people and companies to use religious freedom to justify their conduct. now, that has set off alarms and protests, particularly in light of a series of court cases elsewhere in which florists, bakers and photographers refused to provide services for same sex weddings. business owners said they were just exercising their religious freedom but some of the most powerful voices against this bill have been businesses.

marriott, apple and american airlines, big presence in phoenix, especially now that it's merged with u.s. airways, have urged brewer to veto the bill, saying it would hurt the state's competitiveness. >> we had four companies call to tell us we will be dropped from their list as a potential investment location unless governor brewer vetoes the bill. >> state competitiveness? that's where we come in. arizona comes in a mediocre 20th in hour annual america's top states for business rankings, 16th in the subcategory of business friendliness which looks at the regulatory climate. in 2009, the year before their controversial immigration law took effect, the state was 18th overall so about the same. but 7th for business friendliness. still, the libertarian cato institute since all this competitiveness talk in connection with the bill is overblown. >> it is not an invitation to discriminate. it's a way of reinforcing that religious liberty is an

important value just like equality under the law is an important value. >> today, governor brewer is on her way back from arizona from the national governors association meetings in d.c. she has until friday night/saturday morning to make a decision. as we said, nbc news is saying based on people that are familiar with her thinking that she's leaning toward vetoing it but a lot could change between now and then, including voices at home when she gets there. >> no other state actually has this kind of law in effect. >> well, actually, this state in a lot of ways mirrors the federal law and there are states that are looking at updating their laws because of the move towards same sex marriages, to try and give some stability to all of this. so this could be a sign of things to come. >> scott, thank you very much. all right. still ahead, what might just be the biggest threat to twitter. plus, midday mcmuffins and southern sweets. we're playing with our food.

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have a look at shares of real page, a name put on our radar yesterday. the rental housing software company tanking today on an earnings miss and poor full year

guidance. herb greenberg here for a little victory lap. >> you know, we don't talk about victory laps. i wrote about this originally -- >> don't tell her what to talk about. >> what do you mean? did you or did you not say there was a red flag around this company? >> two weeks ago in my newsletter reality check i did put a red flag on it. the issue was is organic growth actually slowing but being masked by some creative accounting. yesterday, the company came out, it had said it was looking for 20% to 25% organic earnings growth all along. what happened? 12% organic growth. that is a huge shortfall. it is even less than one of the biggest bears on the stock market had expected. he thought if the company kept its accounting the way it had been, it would be 15% a quarter ago. something's going on there. this gets you looking at the company. we red-flagged it. the red flag remains. i talked to roberts this morning. he said he thinks the stock is probably valued around $10. >> because your newsletter, what's the name again? >> herb greenberg's reality check. >> look what i did for you. see what i did just there?

>> yes, i did. >> when does the red flag come off? >> it comes off once the stock -- well, the red flag comes off either if the company's acquired, if there's some private equity deal -- >> you will keep the red flag on, the stock is down 25%. why can't you go to like orange? >> because i think there is still a lot of risk considering that this change happened so fast, you would have to wonder why. what's really going on beneath the surface. we knew there were issues going into it. here you have it. >> any response from management? >> no. they did what they did yesterday. the company, by the way, believes that the organic growth by the end of the year will be coming back pretty strongly in the second half of 2014. >> we are giving you a victory lap anyway. good call on that one. thank you very much. 320 bucks a share. a new note that is now at morgan stanley says tesla is worth, folks, that's 25% higher than the current price which is already up about 630% in the past year. on your technicals, rich ross. on the fundamentals, jamie alberteen.

the cars are spectacular. they're beautiful. technologically advanced. but if you look at the valuation, on a rough basis, i said it before, over $1 million per car, they can produce. at what point does this company get overvalued? >> yeah. look, i'm a car guy like you. i agree with you on the model s. but i tell you, we are decidedly bearish when it comes to the vehicle side of the equation here. where we are incrementally bullish is off the news last week having to do with the factory and the opportunity that can potentially open up in the energy utility space. that, we do think has more room for growth and could substantiate the current if not higher valuation. that's how we would bifurcate the situation at this point. >> speak english. >> we are looking at cars sort of one vertical and we are disconnecting that from the opportunity they have to sell battery packs into the energy

utility space. >> okay. so rich ross, let's go to the charts. that was our fundamental take. consumer reports, you don't care about that stuff. you are looking at the technicals. i don't even know how to read this chart anymore. do you? >> the technicals have served me well thus far so i'm going to stick with them. when i look at this chart, i see a perfect storm of upside potential here. i do think the stock can trade over $300 a share. we have a very bullish stock chart with extremely high short interest of over 37% of shares outstanding. and a compelling fundamental story. we all know about that big decline late last fall when the stock comes down 40% on fears of that one car fire. we hold the 200 day moving average and carve out a very nice rounded base of support. you see that textbook flag in there. that's a continuation pattern. we get a beautiful base breakout and then today, we get this runaway gap with the shares up over 13% or so. that tells me there is still upside here. once again, i think the stock

can trade over 300. keep one little fact in mind here. $30 billion roughly market cap, very close to netflix, very close to twitter. ten years from now, bet on one of those three companies, who do you think's going to be around? i like tesla's chances here. i would be a buyer. >> all right. hey, thank you very much. jamie, appreciate it. >> thank you. >> consumer reports named it the top vehicle in their latest survey. fantastic. be sure to check out the online edition of talking numbers. i will do what they call ad lib right now. it's called audible, what peyton manning might call it. got an e-mail from pimco. bill gross wants to talk to us. bill gross can talk to us. we will take a short break and hopefully patch in bill gross. we will do a market flash with seema mody while we dial klondike 552. what have you got? >> that's right. take a look at zinga, the stock spiking after dismissal of a lawsuit in which the online gaming company was accused of

misleading about its prospects before and after its ipo. shares higher by around 4%. >> you are supposed to do a longer one so we can stall, so we can give bill gross the phone. have anything else you're looking at? >> we'll take a break. how about that? >> let's read the wall. okay. on deck, we now know who is behind the goldman sachs elevator tweet. hint, it is nobody actually at goldman sachs. but is this another example to me, maybe not to you, that goldman sachs or twitter will have bigger problems than it already does. >> i know you do -- >> you say no, i say yes. we'll fight after the break. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 trading inspires your life. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 life inspires your trading. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 where others see fads... tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 ...you see opportunities. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 at schwab, we're here to help tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 turn inspiration into action. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 we have intuitive platforms tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 to help you discover what's trending. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 and seasoned market experts to help sharpen your instincts. tdd#: 1-800-345-2550 so you can take charge

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♪ welcome back to "street signs." let's welcome in pimco's bill gross. we had a segment on earlier reacting to the "wall street journal" article about mohammed el-erian's departure from pimco. bill must have heard it. joining us by phone. thank you very much for joining us. i'm assuming you're calling in to react to what you heard from greg zuckerman. or maybe yell at us. >> no, i am, brian. i respect greg. we've been good friends for ten or 15 years, but like the old radio announcer paul harvey

said, it's time for the rest of the story. i think he only had half of it. he suggested i think on your program that basically, you know, we were an autocratic type of company and that i needed to share power. you know, what he didn't say and perhaps didn't know was that before mohammed left and probably three months before he left, we presented a plan to the executive committee that was affirmed and about to be carried out that shared responsibility with six deputy cios which we have announced publicly and advertised in the press and the "wall street journal," by the way, and those deputy cios have power that is not independent

but certainly is something different than the autocratic style zuckerman proposed. what we were going to do even with mohammed in place was to put six deputy cios on the investment committee and they have been put on the investment committee. mohammed was aware of that. basically it was his plan. a month or two months before he resigned, he basically told the executive committee that he thought it was a good plan, an excellent plan, but that he wasn't the man who carry it forward. so all of this discourse about an autocratic style from my standpoint and conflict between mohammed and myself is overblown. >> bill, did you feel there was anything that was factually incorrect in the article or did you think that the tone, perhaps

the line of i'm tired of cleaning up your you-know-what, that that misrepresented your relationship, or were there actual factual errors in here? >> oh, i don't -- like i say, i don't want to quarrel with greg zuckerman and his article. he gave us a chance last night to go over some of the facts and we dispute some of them, but let's go with the basic article. i think the tone it suggested in terms of conflict between mohammed and myself is just far overblown. it would be wonderful to have mohammed come on your program or some other program and get his side of the story, but i don't think that's going to take place. from my standpoint, how i saw it and others on the executive committee and within pimco saw it was that this was a company that was growing, doing well, you know, had, yes, had an

atmosphere which was a competitive type of atmosphere which is typical of this business. mohammed left because he told us that he wasn't the man to carry out his own plan. and so what i'm really calling to suggest is that we had a plan in place to share authority, not just between mohammed and myself but between six deputy cios. that plan is in place and has been disseminated to clients two, three, four weeks ago and was going to be basically shared by mohammed and i going forward. he essentially came forward to the executive committee once he put the plan in place and said i'm not the man to carry this forward. those are his exact words. >> bill, it's sara. one thing that struck me in this article, and i think that a lot of readers will agree, the personality he described about you, i'm quoting from the article, mr. gross doesn't like employees speaking with him or

making eye contact, especially in the morning. current and former employees say he prefers silence and at times reprimands those who break it even if they're discussing investments, according to the people that mr. zuckerman spoke to. that is an accurate assessment of your personality? do you want to add something to that so people perhaps get the right impression? >> well, sure i do. first of all, i'm not a morning person and that strikes people as odd because i have to get up at 4:30 in the morning but i'm better at 12:00 than i am at 7:00. second of all, i instituted about three years ago, you know, at 8:00 in the morning, a time where a professional or other employee could play their own rock song for four or five minutes within the trading room and actually instituted a congo line, the first time it was done several years ago, around the trading room to let employees know that it was okay to scream

and shout and let it all hang out. so i thought that was very unfair. it takes me five cups of coffee to wake up and perhaps that's the impression that people got. >> i have been out there, as you know. i have seen you and mohammed work together in person. you describe him as a friend a few weeks ago on this program. would you still describe mohammed el erian as a friend? >> he's always been a good friend. i mean, his wife and my wife joined together in terms of philanthropic activities. we see them at their home with their daughter. mohammed has been very private since his resignation. i wish he hadn't been private. but in terms of our friendship, yes. like i described about a month ago on another station, you know, mohammed was hired twice

by the executive committee and by myself, so if we hadn't have been friends the first time, the second time in terms of his coming back, you know, wouldn't have been made possible. to my way of thinking, the competitive atmosphere that exists at pimco and i would admit to that, it is an atmosphere that also existed between mohammed and myself in terms of ideas. but by no means was any one of us dominant. we simply were exercising our intellect not just between ourselves but between other members of the investment committee. i would like to have greg zuckerman come out and sit on our investment committee to see exactly the atmosphere that exists at pimco and certainly now it exists at pimco in terms of deputy cios. >> raises the question around succession. you previously said mr. el-erian would succeed you and you're not

going anywhere. what more can you tell us about that question especially in light of this article? >> well, i'm a young 69. at least i think i am. i think i've got at least a good five years left in me. me. there are bond people and investors, as you know, that are in their 70s and 80s. dan fuss is a good example on the bond side. so it can be done. and, you know, i certainly have the energy and the willpower to the keep going forward. you know, i recognize, as did our executive committee, as did mohammed several months ago before he even thought of resigning that, you know, the situation had to change. this we needed to broaden our authority and to led deputy ci os in their respective areas like credit and merging and other areas have a little more authority, and so that's fine,

and a 69-year-old should be willing to do that, and pimco has been willing to do that. i wish mr. zuckerman had been willing to pursue that a little more thoroughly. >> i guess the takeaway, bill, was if you're disagreeing with bill gross at pimco, watch out. as a reader, that's what i got out of it. what does it take to disagree with you? if i disagree and say, bill, i completely disagree with that thesis, how big of a fight are we going to get in? >> well, i don't think at all. i mean, many of these areas, and as evidenced by our deputy cio structure, but basically it was in place before, each of these units, so to speak, credit, high yield, diversified income, unconstrained, global, et cetera, you know, basically are operating not totally independently but with a division head, and so to

disagree with me, you know, for the most part, you know, one person can't have an overall competence or an overall knowledge of a multitude of areas that the bond market or asset market contain. disagreeing with me, no, i'd give my impressions and my opinions, but for the most part these are relatively independent units and doing very well on their own, by the way. >> have you heard from any of your investors and clients after this article hit? >> no, i don't think there's been much reaction. blog space is active, of course, and the blog space goes anywhere it wants to go, but clients understand it, and i'm not at pimco right now or i'd be in

front of the camera talking to you, but from our understanding the clients are taking it as a sign that a competitive atmosphere is indicative of a firm that's looking out for their interests as opposed to internal interests. and that's really the story, you know, that i want to get out is that competition and exchange of ideas, you know, between individuals and between desks at any investment firm is a necessity for top performance. the minute we give that up, the minute that we basically resolve ourselves in terms of not caring about, you know, a competitive intellectual discussion between individuals and groups, then clients, you know, don't benefit, and the client is our first priority. >> you know, bill, a lot of people may not realize though

you have a parent company now, you built pimco, right, with a lot of very smart men and women over the years. some who have been with you a long time. some a short time. when you read this article, is there a part of you that just wants to say, damn it, it is my company, and i can be tough and that's what it takes to build a good company or do you feel like i need to soften maybe my image now because people are going to view me as an autocrat that compares himself to a triple crown winning racehorse? >> well, you know, i think that's the impression this article gives. you know, my impression would be, and if mr. zuckerman would come to the company and have a more thorough discussion and others too, it would be that for 40 years pimco has been a family. that's the word i use more than anything. it's our family. and so to think that it's my company, you know, is totally an

anathema to me and an an nat ma to the culture we've tried to mr. we tried to share responsibility and we focus on the client. i don't know where that's coming from. i know that, you know, i have my opinions. i know that, you know, pimco has excelled over the past 30 or 40 years that i have been there, but by no means is it my company. i have had a lot of companies, so to speak, to help pimco along the way and we view it as a family operation and a family restaurant so to speak as opposed to an exclusive club. >> very quickly, what would you say to those who are questioning the governance, whether there's good governance at the top of pimco right now? >> well, i'd say look at our deputy cio structure on the investment side, how we've provided a plan three to four months ago, instituted the plan,

and spread the authority. the deputy cios each will lead the investment committee on a separate day and so that certainly doesn't speak to autocratic authority. it speaks to a sharing of responsibility and something that the executive committee and pimco and mohammed and myself all endorsed several months ago before mohammad said i'm not the man to lead it forward. >> we do appreciate you joining us. i have to ask the one question that everybody on twitter seems to be wanting to know right now, which is are you on a motorola star tack under a burlap sack? the audio has been difficult. >> and i apologize for that. i'm on my wife's cell phone. we have a medical situation up here and i'm -- >> that's all you need to say. now i feel like a jerk. i hope everybody is doing fine. i really apologize. i didn't realize you were in a

difficult situation. >> that's all right. thank you very much for listening to me. >> all right. bill gross, in defense of his firm and himself after what was a scathing article. how about that? that was amazing. >> we do appreciate bill, and i hope everybody in his family is doing fine, joining us. here is the real. the guy built the company from nothing with a lot of people. i think you get to a point it's your baby -- i have never built anything like that so i don't know but i would imagine you feel and ownership of it and sometimes things get tough, but you can argue with your friends at work, too. we all have. we're going to argue in the commercial break. take a quick break. we're back with more right after this. the equity summary score consolidates the ratings of up to 10 independent research providers into a single score that's weighted based on how accurate they've been in the past. i'm howard spielberg of fidelity investments. the equity summary score is one more innovative reason serious investors are choosing fidelity. call or click to open your fidelity account today.

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and welcome to "the closing bell" on a tuesday. i'm kelly evans here at the new york stock exchange. >> and i'm bill griffeth. again, here we go again. at this hour we're on all-time high watch for the standard & poor's 500 index, just like we were yesterday. it wouldn't take much to get it done from the previous closing record of 1,84.