bye-bye. we are now deeply concerned by reports of military movements, taken by the russian federation, inside of ukraine. the united states will stand with the international community in affirming that there will be costs for any military intervention in ukraine. >> that was president obama moments ago from the white house briefing room commenting on the escalating crisis in ukraine. earlier, unconfirmed reports of russian military intervention in the region sent the s&p lower. the whole episode underscoring just how sensitive the market is to this situation. the question now is, if the situation gets worse, what could that mean for stocks, could russia be the next black swan? we did see people during this

session wanting to take risk off. in response to various reports that crossed the screen. >> risk off, other than u.s. equities. when you think about it, you talked about it just before, it was at five-year lows. it's a very cheap index, but it trades very poorly, there are risks that have been taken off there all along during this thing. and then bonds again. u.s. treasuries, the world forgot during the taper, there's one safe haven in assets and it's u.s. treasuries. they've been well bid. >> mike? >> we have to remember that we still are obviously basically right on all-time highs in the s&p and although it has bumped up from its low, it's still a relatively low number, it didn't close as if it saw a disaster on the horizon. i think it probably would have closed a little bit lower if we heard obama's comments before the bell rang. that said, we actually heard this kind of language before. we heard it when we were dealing with syria and it's kind of hard

for me to believe that either nato or the united states is actually going to intervene in that region, i think it's time for tough talk but i'm not anticipating tough action. >> i think mike makes a good point. if you're really worried to go out and buy some puts or take off any risks that you might have had, the bond markets and the options markets have been skeptical in this rally for quite a while. they've been skeptical for a couple of weeks. one thing, it's never good when traders talk about geo political problems. because the people on the ground now in the crimea, they don't come with a fistful of buy orders for our equity markets. this has an opportunity to be bad and not good for us. >> let's take it a step further, here's a country, ukraine, that's ready to default on 30 billion, $50 billion in debt. is russia going to be pumping money to kiev where the revolutionaries start to kick up?

backed by the west? i don't think so. you have a situation where this potential financial contagion that could spread to other markets. potential financial con ten on. when you think about the volatility in january into early snz february, it was kicked up because of emerging markets currency and fears. let's bring in our chief international correspondent michelle caruso-cabrera, what is your take of the ripple effects of the situation? >> well they could be big. nbc news has confirmed from u.s. officials that uniformed russian officials are flying into crimea, they're not in position to confirm the numbers used by ukraine officials. but officials say they have no reason to doubt basic

information. we know there are some kind of paramilitary troops. they have seen russian armored vehicles. they had russian flags on them. clearly, there are a number of russians moving in there. the question is, is this a situation that's going escalate into war? or is it not? the russians are going to argue, they're there to protect a lot of assets they have on the ground and a lot of russians on the ground there. one thing that we didn't hear from president obama, there would be consequences. but not what the consequences were. he didn't use any hard language like he used with syria. sewing -- saying chemical weapons were aligned. so, to agree one of the panelists, i'm not necessarily leads to war by the u.s. or nato. certainly it's going to lead to far more tensions and uncertainty over the coming days if not weeks. >> certainly, let's assume, michelle, we spoke to general wesley clark, he made it sound like the involvement of nato or the united states would be an

extremely unlikely scenario. if that's the situation, a contained war in the region, in terms of the ripple effects in that region, what do you think it could be? we're talking also about a nat gas pipeline. >> ukraine is a very small economy, their gdp per capita is less than 4,000. vast majority of their trade has been with russia, more than 50%. exports had declined sharply in 2009 when the world financial crisis happened. they never really recovered. i'm not sure of the massive ripple effects to the west. russia will do things if the west steps in with a lot of financial aid. beyond that, you know, it remains to be seen exactly how much broader it would be.

>> all right, michelle, thank you so much. michelle caruso-cabrera, our chief international correspondent. the backdrop to this is the markets close to record highs at this point. let's bring in carter on where his take on the markets stand. we want to know technically can the markets hold? >> we don't like the market here. what i would cite that's important, we know that is well-defined uptrend over the last year, but one of the rules that's very important is, when you encounter a brisk selloff and then you return to the scene of the crime, you don't break out, you get stuck. take a look at this last analog. we got stuck here. stuck at the top and ultimately rolled again. we're doing that same thing, we're churning here at the top, the presumption is that we are not going to break out but that we are going to roll again, just

as we did after the last time when we had a big selloff and big recovery. >> that chart to me, an amateur out here, looks okay, even though it rolled over, the markets still bounced off that line you had drawn on the bottom. if you bought those you would be okay. >> to your point, it turns out buying weakness has been quite right to do. but here is a circumstance that is into the, let's say, reflected here. more and more stocks that are in the s&p 500 having been in uptrends themselves have started to roll over. big financials. big consumer discretionary names. big retailers are doing this and the only way that the market has stayed many an uptrend, we have these things like google and facebook, if you net this and this out, you get the market but the market's structure is not as healthy as the trend line would suggest. it's comprised of a lot of vulnerable extended names and a lot of rollovers. that and that is not as healthy as the picture of the market

would suggest. >> the uncertainty that we see actually creates more certainty for investors and that certainty is consistent with what carter is talking about. what do i mean? there aren't a lot of reasons the market should be propelled higher here. if you were sitting here in the beginning of this trading day trying to figure out whether you were tried to trade -- you have a good reason not to. >> the president used some very strong language, but the general said that u.s. involvement and nato involvement is unlikely. michelle even said the results and ripple effects will be contained because it is such a small economy. why should we be upset then? >> the market prices are driven by sentiment that seems to be absorbing every bit of economic data that we have been getting in a positive light. tack a look -- take a look, for

example, at pending home sales. that's not a positive data point. in the early part of today, everybody was saying, i got a little something of what i wanted. i don't think that same sentiment is going to be shared on monday. >> when the soviet union invaded afghanistan on christmas day, they didn't have afghanistan paper. everything that came after between the united states and then soviet union, i think that's where the problem is going to arise. >> let's trade it, okay, we started off this year on january 3rd, if there are going to be troubles for u.s. investors who own u.s. stocks it's likely going to come from overseas. if you're a long and strong u.s. equities and you have to protect yourself from the outside events and i think this situation over the last couple of weeks demonstrates that, i think there's going to be a lot of uncertainty. over the next couple weeks. and it could last longer. to me, when you talk about reverberations, you have to think about what happened in january, i think i the spillover if you have a default in ukraine, i think it happens.

and you go to turkey. look at that chart right there. it's banging up against technical resistance. i think this this is a good spot to put on some protection. today, attend of the day, the april 39.5 put could have been bought at 1.35. that breaking even at 38.15, down about 3%. the price of options is higher than it is in the s&p for good reason but it will be perceived to be very cheap if things heat up. >> between now and april expiration, it's likely going to move 3%. that makes this buy a pretty compelling value, especially when you look at -- >> interesting thing about this, i don't want to pick a top on

s&p. but it's already started to roll over. i'm going to follow the weakness. >> dan, just to be clear, if you were an owner of em already. >> if you're an owner of u.s. stocks. listen, you'll get your most bang for the buck from outside. to me, i think this is a pretty cheap way to kind of offset some domestic risk here. got oo -- a question, send us a tweet. scott has a clever trade on the triple q. here's what's coming up next -- >> is tim cooking up a deal. >> it's a market that we have intense interest in. >> we'll tell you how apple could be on the verge of making a big move? plus, what $5 stock traders love? >> please tell me. please tell me. >> we will, john, when "options action" returns. ♪

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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. apple shareholder meeting concluding today. josh lipton was on the scene, joins us with the latest. josh, any new news on the deal with apple? >> we're here at apple hq in cupertino, california, the ceo did field questions. we have done 23 acquisitions in the past 16 months, we would be interested, also, in a big acquisition, but it would have to make strategic sense for us. acquisitions, we have done 23 in

the past year and half. but we'll keep looking for ones that make long-term for the company. he was also asking about product innovation. some share holders were asking, why don't you talk more about the products in your pipeline and tim cook responding, listen, we're not interesting in laying out a road map for our rivals, nor are we interested, he in his words, being ripped off by our rivals. finally, he talked about the emerging markets and the growth the company is seeing there, we talked about brazil, cook said they did less $4 billion in revenue last year. last year, over $30 billion. finally, of course, shareholder were here, a couple of hundred of them. they drove here and flew here. they were to listen to cook. they were also here to cast their votes on a range of issues from executive compensation to the stock plan. they decided to re-elect their directors including william

campbell, tim cook, al gore, bob iger and ronald sugar. melissa, back to you. >> all right, josh lipton, thank you very much. big deals, could they find ways to monotize them. stan is at the plasma and has this one. >> this eye-popping deal, we saw facebook buy what will be $19 billion whatsapp, the messaging app. people think of apple as hardware company, they make their own software. it's been a fantastic story in that regard. lot of things brewing at apple, the fastest-growing businesses don't have actually their hardware. the whatsapp acquisition, they're doing 50 million -- 50 billion messages a day on whatsapp. tim cook told us they're doing 40 billion a day. that's on a closed network, just on ios. i find that interesting. look at the active users that

facebook bought. 450 million. imessage, it may be difficult, between 250, maybe 400 million devices. that's ifiend -- iphone and ipa bbm, blackberry, 50 million. maybe, just maybe, apple, they're just buying back their own stock. at a time when facebook was readying to buy their 10% of their market cap for whatsapp. you know what they can do, they can could halt that growth at whatsapp, make facebook one of their competitors, certain areas look is silly. if it stops whatsapp growth, maybe at some point, share holders cause it to spin out.

and unlock shareholder value. itunes and the apps store in 2013 probably did $30 billion in sales. growing much faster than any other businesses. imessage, if they can monetize it. >> it sounds like a very unapple thing to do. >> i'm probably not thinking he's going to do that himself. you know, we have seen this play out before, it seemed like it would have been made a lot of sense back when they were competing with pcs, the way the pcs got the upper hand. apple seems to be doing a very good job on their own, thank you very much. take a look at the imac pros, these things are sold out at this stage. people can't -- people can't wait to get their hands on them. i don't know if they need to do that. if they can take a look at their existing user base, with the whatsapp acquisition.

if that's worth $30 billion, start splitting all of apple's business, you know, that's a lot. >> some of the valuation is only good if you can sell a part. until then it's just the valuation oo oo oon ---on a pie paper. >> you know what's important, independent of what they're going to do, this this is quite speculative, apple, as there is trouble in the market, apple is the place to be and it hold up. >> if you listen to a lot of people the whatsapp acquisition was defensive on the part of facebook. i don't think tim cook is going to want to license to any android users. my takeaway, don't you think the guys at blackberry have to be a thinking, oh, my god, we let a great thing in blackberry messenger get away from them?

>> this is the whole point, they can pounce. if they were willing to do something different this time, think about their market share globally for smartphones. it's getting destroyed by android. >> i need to get a bottom line, though, dan, let's say they don't license, would you be bullish, apple. >> melissa, there are some very fast-growing businesses at apple. some of their competitors, they're paying ridiculous multiples for. with 150 -- >> so you like it. >> it's a cheap stock with some fast-growing businesses. >> all right, so you like it, bottom line, good. coming up next -- they say one man's trash is another man's treasure, could that be true of blackberry. carter will tell us after this break. it told him what was happening on the trading floor in real time. ♪ the shell brought him great fame. ♪ but then, one day, he noticed that everybody could have a magic seashell.

[ indistinct talking ] [ male announcer ] right there in their trading platform. ♪ [ indistinct talking continues ] [ male announcer ] so the magic shell went back to being a...shell. get live squawks right in your trading platform with think or swim from td ameritrade.

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the s&p is at a record. not just blue-chip stocks leading the way, but they're seeing big moves higher, including one much-maligned smartphone maker that we were just talking before. let's find out. call to the chart master. new firm, same great charts. carter, what do you see? >> this is a nice setup, this stock has doubled from 5 to 10,

that's the first circumstance and the second is, it's moving mechanism is now flat, it's no longer declining. a bunch of prior stocks that did just this. this is hewlett packard, it doubled from 10 to 20. it started to flatten. hold that, this stock doubled, best buy, from 10 to 20. it started to flatten. next one, this one, netflix, 50 to 100. also a double. finally, we'll go back through them. green mountain, 20 to 40. the common circumstance of all of these they double off the low, and the 100-day starts to flatten. talk a look. working backwards. let's go forward. after doubling, hewlett packard it went to 30, up another 50%. how about best buy? off its low, 10 to 20. it went from here to 45, up 200%. how about netflix? a double from 50 to 100 and it

went of course, as we know, to 450. final example, here's green mountain, 20 to 40, now it's 120. here's the principal of this, once the stocks doubled off the bottom, 9 of -- 95% of the market is already out because mentally they can't buy it. so, it has plenty of room to run. here's a comparative chart of the stock we're talking about, blackberry, compared to all of these others, the inflection point, let's go back then and what we have a double off the bottom, 5 to 10, we have if you would like, a head and shoulders formation. we have a neckline, we have a smoothing line flattening. this throws to 15 by my work, a buy. >> wow. carter is very adamant. >> carter, that's extremely

convincing. >> fundamentals aren't the reason. my way of doing this is by simply drying a calendar call spread. i can buy those june. tharp -- they're so well bid at 35 cents. cheap way to play to the upside, i don't feel like having naked exposure. >> let me tell you thing, earnings are declining so fast. it's real problem to turn that upside-down. their earnings are getting cut and cut. up next, the final call from the options pits. [ indistinct shouting ] ♪ [ indistinct shouting ] [ male announcer ] time and sales data. split-second stats. [ indistinct shouting ] ♪ it's so close to the options floor... [ indistinct shouting, bell dinging ] ...you'll bust your brain box. ♪

all on thinkorswim from td ameritrade. ♪

[ 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. back for the final call. scott. >> this week's web extra the special dividend in qqq. >> i like the put protection against u.s. stocks. >> i also like that put protection just be careful,

don't wait for the market to bottom out. >> all right, our thanks of course to carter for joining us tonight. our time has expired. i'm melissa for more "options action" go to our website. check out our daily segment inside "fast money" as well. we'll see you back here next friday. have a great weekend. paid presentation for derm exclusive instant anti-aging, brought to you by beachbody. [ cheers and applause ] >> wow. hi, everybody, and welcome. i'm deborah norville -- journalist, author, wife, and mom -- and today i am joined by grammy-winning music superstar chilli of tlc. woo-hoo! [ cheers and applause ] and television phenomenon turned entertainment reporter mindy burbano stearns. [ cheers and applause ] now, what do i have in common with these two talented ladies?