of the chairman and ceo of coca cola. he is angry about the compensation plan to be voted on at the next shareholders' meeting andupped the ante, questioning the dual role. coca cola says our board is satisfied that combining the roles of chairman and ceo has served our shareholders well over time and will continue to do so. just looking at coke shares, pretty much unchanged from the latest between david winters and coca cola. back to you guys. that does it for us. >> that's right. "street signs" begins right now. what is the value of a millisecond? it is the question that has lit up wall street and main street and it is the question that brian and i try to answer today. indeed, it is a day where the s&p is making new record highs. hello, everybody. welcome to "street signs." >> thanks very much. it's been about 24 hours now since that epic debate on cnbc

but it is still resonating around the financial markets. cnbc.com, twitter, reddit, even pigeons are talking about it, all exploding over the debate and the conversation. both sides still swinging on their view of the practice. let's bring in bob pisani, who was part of that debate slash brawl yesterday. also jeff killburg, who says high frequency trading should be banned and keith ross from pdq enterprises, who argues that hft is good for the market. keith, first to you. make the case for hft because it is taking it on the chin in the last 24 hours. >> absolutely. it's highly efficient, extraordinarily competitive. it's never been less expensive to execute an order in any of our markets. if you banned hft tomorrow there would be virtually no market. they are responsible for 60% of the volume and 98% of the quotes. >> do you disagree with that, jeff? >> i think there are certain components of hft that i'm okay with. the market making, the market

taking. even in the market making, i don't think folks should be allowed to send in a million orders and cancel 999,000 of those in a picosecond. the problem we have on the floor and a lot of investors around the world is the market snatching. when you see an order go into like a bats exchange, then get disseminated from there, when they get a glimpse of that order, that's the problem. that's where it's unfair. the playing field is not level. i want to use jon najarian's analogy of nascar. what do they do to keep them on a level playing field? they put restricters on the engines to allow them to only go so fast. why not do the same thing on these shops? >> listen, i think here's the argument. so people say well, why do we care about an eighth of a penny, mom and pop shouldn't care. i made that argument myself. michael lewis would say yeah, but multiply that by a million trades, a million times a day, a million times over, it adds up to a lot of money. would you be in favor of changing the way the current practice is done?

>> well, actually, pdq does change the way the current practice is done. i think it's a problem, a solution for all the problems. we offer a 20 millisecond auction per each order that comes into our system. in that 20 milliseconds, we force the high frequency guys to compete to fill the order. we give them the symbol only. we don't give them information of the order. and they have to respond similar to the way they have in the chicago pits for decades with their most competitive price. >> hold on. let me in here once more. then i will have you respond because i need to follow up with this. keith, you said a 20 millisecond auction. we are going to get into the measures of time in just a moment. it's about 20 milliseconds is about one-fifth of the average time it takes for a human being to blink. how do you do an auction in 20 milliseconds? a thousandth of a second. >> in the first millisecond, we inform the high frequency traders that we have marketable

microsoft or whatever the symbol is. they respond very quickly with their market. we assemble a book, the same way the books used to be assembled on the floor of the new york stock exchange and at the 20th millisecond we execute the order against the book. it can't be front-run, it can't be gamed. they have to respond first. >> bob pisani, come in on this. i know jeff certainly -- yes, go ahead. >> i think brian's concern here is a normal person sitting at home is not going to be able to put in an offer. i think what we are doing here, what he is trying to say is this is a way at least to create a modern day book, modern auction. it's in milliseconds but it is an auction book about what people want to buy and sell and they are real bids and offers, not phantom ones. am i correct? >> absolutely. the orders are committed. we have over 100 broker dealers using our system and we receive over 500 million shares a day. >> got to bring in now -- stick

around, guys, don't go anywhere. great discussion there. we have another guest waiting in the wings. >> i want to bring in larry taub because i started michael lewis' book last night. the first chapter basically, michael lewis talks about this guy dan spivey who started this fib fiberoptic network, and he says he got the idea from a paper written by a guy named larry tabb. we have spoken to each other many times over the years. i was not aware of this paper, probably because it's multiple thousands of dollars to buy the full thing. it was done in 2006. please help our audience and me understand how do we value a -- we are dealing in measures of time that are so fractionally small, you feel like carl sagan trying to describe it. >> the issue with the report, actually, the report was very different from the whole idea of high frequency trading. it was just the title, the value of a millisecond that i think caught dan's eye and brought it to us. it was a very different concept. we are talking about in terms of

value of the millisecond in the paper is traditional brokers, if they wind up being off a couple milliseconds, basically their executions turn lousy and their transaction cost analysis becomes negative and they wind up looking bad. so they wind up losing a lot of business. that's a different value of a millisecond than the value of a millisecond we are talking about with dan and within the book. that is really looking at all the different arbitrages that go on in the market really now electronically at fractions of a second between s&p futures and the cash between options and their underlying instruments, between etfs and their underlying stocks, and all of that happens in a fraction of a second. so that's more where the spread analysis came in. >> also, i would like to bring up something here, larry, that you mention in your report. you estimate that you as equity hft revenues have declined from about $7.2 billion back in 2009

to just above $1 billion in 2014. you say that hft profitability has also declined. essentially what we're doing here is we are arguing over something, the s.e.c. is looking into something which is on the decline anyway. >> exactly. the issue is that 2006, 2005, 2006, 2007, the markets radically changed and so what winds up happening is that trading changes. the guys who have an axe in this figure out where all the leaks, where all the issues, where can i actually leverage speed to kind of make a profit. what happens is the guys at the hedge funds and the guys in the long markets say i'm getting my pockets picked and they complain to their brokers and say guys, you better create a better mechanism for me to trade. that's what's been happening. plus also, volume's down and volatility is down but a lot of

it's the broker algorithms are getting better. >> do you also feel, very quickly, that all the good things that have come out maybe out of computerized trading, the fact that it's a lot cheaper, faster, more efficient, this sort of thing, the good things outweigh the bad? >> i think the good things generally do outweigh the bad. but the market does leak. there are challenges. a lot of the things in michael lewis' book are accurate except you need a whole new set of tools to trade in this kind of environment. you can't go into the market and put in a 20,000 share order. you are going to get ripped to pieces. you need better technology, better infrastructure. you need better tools. you can't go into an uzi fight with a knife. >> do you think, larry, mom and pop are carrying a knife? >> no. i think mom and pop's orders get represented by the citadels, ubss and other players in this market who can adequately

represent their interests. >> let's bring back in -- hold on. sit tight. we will continue the conversation. bring back in bob pisani, jeff killburg and keith ross. you have a question for larry? or make your comment on hft and the impact on the every day investor. >> keith, i think what you're doing is adding value. let's think about this. i hate to say but there's a thousand milliseconds in a second. when the human blink is 300 to 400 milliseconds we are talking about putting a 20 second space and some people are condoning the fact it's okay that mom and pop are getting ripped off by a penny. when in the sam hill do we start condoning stealing despite the severity? >> i don't want to step on keith, but if you go back a couple, if you go back, it took 11 seconds to execute an order just behind me. 11 seconds. in 11 seconds, somebody can sit, walk around, take a spin, see what's going on with the market and then decide if it's in their

interest, they buy. if not, nothing done. at least we are dealing with milliseconds here, not eternities. >> i love the fact that you are standing up for mom and dad. you are standing up for the so-called little guy here. i know you talked about the fact that you feel trust in the public markets are at all-time lows but my question to you, if we outlawed hft, would that trust be restored, in your eye? >> i don't want to see all hft outlawed. i just want to see some regulation, some restrictions, so it's a uniform level playing field. obviously there is liquidity but keep in mind the flash crash. i was in the pits here in chicago during the 9/11 strike and we had a very orderly process there and we didn't see a 1,000 point drop. i think there are pros and kons but this could be done proper lichlt. >> we keep talking about the flash crash. we haven't had one in four years. we put in system-wide circuit breakers that have worked

effectively. is it bottom line that we have the market structure that's got problems, what we really need to do to address your issues is make sure the regulators have the tools to adequately determine whether there are some people engaging in manipulative and abusive market practices, if there are, they should be fined and/or imprisoned. >> let's bring it back to mandy's point. high frequency trading seems to be changing, evolving. maybe not going away but slowing down in its own right. what are you trying to do to help mom and pop, liquidity and order flow? >> instead of banning it, let's talk about taming it. let's create a process whereby those that are active in the market that want to buy and sell have an opportunity to do it in a fair fashion. i agree with jeff. if there's illegal practices going on, let's root them out of the business. we can't have that.

but an auction, a very short auction, gives the opportunity for everyone to participate, it reduces the speed race, it makes a very efficient process. this is what pdq is doing. it's very similar to iex. we are an ats. we have our own client base and we are a growing company, as people discover us and decide they want to use our system, hopefully we will have a bigger impact on the marketplace. >> thank you, all of you. bob, jeff, keith, larry, fantastic discussion. i'm sure this discussion will continue. >> we will get larry back on, talk about the value of a millisecond. we never got to that issue. larry, if you can hear us, please come back on to talk about why we booked you, please. still ahead, break out the bubbly because hopium is back. larry kudlow will join us to talk about the news parade. today's mystery chart. it is the best performing global market this year. here are your hints.

madonna and wine. plus, the united states of rentals. herb is back raging against the machine.

welcome back, everybody. one of the hottest sectors in housing right now is in rentals and there is some pretty big money to be made as well. diana olick joins us with more. >> reporter: a lot of folks thought that the housing recovery would weaken rental

demand and in fact, that sentiment hit the apartment reits pretty hard last year. investors were concerned about overbuilding. fast forward to the first quarter of this year. rental demand is still very strong. vacancies down 20 basis points to just 4% according to reit. rents continue to grow up over 3% from a year ago. they would be higher but landlords say that weak income growth is holding them in check. so with all that, it seems that investors have come back to apartment reits this quarter with a vengeance. the sector returned 12.75% in q-1 making it the top yielding of all commercial reit sectors. take a look at essex, avalon bay. there was that concern about overbuilding but demand so far is meeting that supply. as for potential buyers, we are hearing that there's a lot of buyer traffic out there but those potential buyers are just not signing on the dotted line.

>> people quite frankly came out and got sticker shock because they are coming out to shop now or they came out in january, february to shop, and they picked up the price sheet and saw wow, that's way more than what i thought. because home prices had gone up so much in 2013. >> reporter: now, mortgage rates aren't providing much of an incentive for buyers because they are not really moving at all. so people aren't jumping off the fence. concern that rates might move higher any time soon, in fact, mortgage applications to purchase a home were up very slightly month to month -- week to week last week, but they are still down 17% from a year ago. we've got lots more of this online. realtycheck.cnbc.com. you got stocks at all time highs, got a pretty strong adp jobs report today and even car sales surprised almost everybody to the upside. is it possible the economy is finally set to turn the real corner? we don't know. but a guy who probably does, larry kudlow, cnbc senior

contributor. you know we have been screaming about this hopium concept for going on three years. hard to believe. time flies when you are anchoring a television show. do you think we are finally there? >> i don't. look, we are in a 2% to 3% range. i think we will stay there. i don't see any breakout. i'm an optimist by temperament but i just don't see it. like you, i have been waiting for big numbers to come in. they don't seem to come in. one small point i will make, i know the jobs numbers today were okay on adp. business investment long term what we call capx business investment has been lousy since this entire recession ended and that's what creates good paying jobs and it's not happening. the numbers today on factory orders showed it again. we are in lousy shape. >> what would change all that? >> that's a really important question. i will just give you one idea. they are profitable and got a lot of cash. we know that. why aren't they investing or

hiring? i think they're worried about policies out of washington, d.c. i don't think it's the fed. i think it's taxes and regulations and obamacare and the epa and the national labor relations board -- >> we have been using those excuses for god knows how many years. at some point you got to say okay, i'm going to put washington aside and move forward. >> who has been using those excuses? who is we? don't throw me in that we. >> a lot of companies have been using the excuse -- >> lot of companies make excuses about everything. >> we don't know what regulation is going to be, we don't know what obamacare is going to be. there has been a lot of excuses. >> there are a lot of whining ceos out there. >> which is my point. they have been using those excuses for too long. >> you could say on a different plane they have used those policies for too long. sometimes the definition of insanity is when you keep trying the same thing over and over again with the same lousy result. so you might say to yourself if you are a member of congress or in the white house, we got to try something different. look, yesterday is a perfect example. we got 7.1 million sign-ups on obamacare. well, fine. we don't know what's inside

those numbers. we don't know what employer insurance is going to be like. we will get the premiums coming out this year. these are costs that businesses are going to incur and they won't move until they know about it, and every time the administration changes their policy, businesses recoil. >> not to go off on the political side but i did read an article in the "new york times" two or three weeks ago that said talking about the obamacare sign-ups, one fifth of those who signed up hadn't paid and four-fifth of those who signed up were eligible for subsidies for some or all. i was thinking obviously there is overlap but who's paying? those costs are going somewhere. if 80% are subsidized and one fifth aren't paying, who is paying? got to come from somewhere. >> the companies are going to pay or shareholders. they don't want to pay. they want to wait. what yellen said yesterday, okay, i happen to think she's right. i want to make this point. i think there's plenty of slack in the labor markets. you can look at a number of indicators. she is right.

she's right. this has been a very weak recovery. very low wages, unfortunately, are contributing to very high profits. that's a lousy balance or imbalance. but, but, but, i don't think the fed can change employment and unemployment. it's something milton friedman taught us 40 years ago. that too is a function of taxes and regulation. make it easier to hire, all right? make it easier to hire and therefore, more profitable to pay more. so she's got the story right. i think she has the solution wrong. that troubles me. >> i think you very elegantly rained all over our hopium parade. >> two to three. not a recession. >> 16.3 million annualized run rate for car sales. >> you're right. the economy's not that bad. we are out of recession. i never worried about a double dip. i just would like to see a breakout. coming off a deep recession, we never got the 4%, 5% growth we expected to get which you got in the '90s and the '80s, which

once upon a time we got in the 1960s. that's what i'm waiting for. you look at these studies, $3 trillion short in gdp from where we should be, four, five, six million jobs short of where we should be. i don't want to be overly pessimistic. i'm just saying i don't see the breakout. >> the irony is that you were the original mr. hopium. we took our cue from you. >> i was. i was. >> the weather is a whole different discussion we haven't got time for. thank you so much for joining us. hope to see you again soon. up next, another quake has struck, separate from the big one in chile last night. will international shipping be affected? later on, what may be the single best thing that apple can do with its giant cash award which might be the single worst thing it can do. stick around. i've always kept my eye on her...

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within the past hour, magnitude 5.8 earthquake has struck the western coast of panama. it was an even scarier scene in chile last night.

a magnitude 8.2 earthquake struck off the nation's northern coast. let's bring in michelle caruso-cabrera. that's massive. >> it's huge. two countries that are very significant economically which is why we are covering them on cnbc. panama first of all has the panama canal which is this key maritime trade route between the atlantic and the pacific. so far, all reports are panama canal is doing just fine even though it's 275 miles from where this quake happened just within the last hour. we will wait and see if there's anything more. chile, the reason we are interested in chile, it is the largest producer of copper in the world. we all remember the chilean mining disaster. this is up in that northwestern region of chile is where it occurred. iquique, chile is the location. look at the video. just incredible. so far it appears all the copper mines are functioning. it's an issue of shipping the copper because of the situation of whether or not the tsunami was going to cause issues at the ports, et cetera. so far, the waves appear to be

small. we saw a six foot wave come ashore but the damage could have been far worse. >> of course, we are waiting to see whether or not we will see more seismic activity. >> the u.s. geological society says the two are not related. but intuitively, you think they are pretty close to each other and they are both pretty big. i don't know enough about tectonic plates to tell you. if the u.s. experts say they are not related, okay. >> there was somebody who put out a map on sort of the power zone from this quake last night. you don't realize the magnitude scale, the old richter scale, was exponential. 8.1, 8.2. >> 6 to 8 is much bigger than 2 to 4. >> exactly. the spread zone went all the way to australia. they were warning people on beaches of australia, watch out. >> there might be a tsunami. exactly. >> it's still causing problems. >> you know this little cultural issues with earthquakes in latin

america? latin americans sleep outside the next couple days. they won't go inside. >> that's interesting. since you mentioned copper, it's at its highest in three weeks because of the potential disruption of shipping it out of the country. thank you so much. coming up next on "street signs," why investors are loving children's clothes and motorcycles today. plus here's today's mystery chart once again. i was going to say stick around but you took your microphone off. best performing global market year to date, our first hint was madonna and wine. mcc. >> if you know it, don't shout it out. (announcer) scottrade knows our clients trade and invest their own way. with scottrade's smart text, i can quickly understand my charts, and spend more time trading. their quick trade bar lets my account follow me online so i can react in real-time. plus, my local scottrade office is there to help.

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and tomorrow you'll do even more. that's what comcast business was built for. slow dsl from the phone company was built for stuff like this. switch to comcast business internet. then add voice and tv for just $34.90 more per month. and you'll be ready for tomorrow today. comcast business. built for business. street talk time, our daily rundown of stock news and views that believe it or not you can use to make more money. worthington industries is the first stock. upgraded to a buy from a hold at key bank. >> okay. key bank, noting what it calls long term positive growth thesis for the metals company. tha their target $46, 15% more than the current price. stock is down about 5% this year. >> laredo petroleum upgraded to

buy from neutral. >> sun trust target increased by 24% to $36 from $29, about $9 more bucks of upside than current prices. stock is up by 50% over the past 12 months. lpi, the ticker. >> let's take a look at children's apparel company carter's upgraded to overweight from neutral. >> more people having babies. the baby trade. improving birth trends and expectations for solid retail execution both cited for the upgrade. not just baby making. target increased to 92 bucks from $74, 15% higher. >> take a look at harley davidson, hog with wells fargo lowering its estimates. the stock is saying meh. >> here's why we put this in here. this goes to what we tried to talk about with larry, the weather. they have expectations of poor sales in the first quarter. it's a weather call. they are saying next year, next

couple quarters, sales will rebound. that's the thesis we were bringing up that retail sales probably won't get killed, they will just get pushed forward. >> absolutely. >> if you want a motorcycle, you are going to get a motorcycle. i should not have had that second cup of coffee prior to the show. i want the motorcycle! >> i get it. today's under the radar company is mannkind. you might remember if you are a loyal "street signs" viewer that we did flag this stock earlier in the week. look at it today. >> here's what happened on monday. piper jaffrey downgraded the price target, says that affrezza may not get approved. unfortunately for that analyst, the fda recommending approval. the stock up 77% today to $7.13. tough timing of that. >> indeed. talking of timing, it is time for talking numbers. this is our daily look at stocks

where we take the fundamentals side and technical view. today's topic is monsanto. shares of the world's largest seed company are higher today. they reported higher than expected earnings due to strong corn and soybean demand. with agriculture on a tear this year, should you plant monsanto? >> the world's largest seed, is that their only product? one giant seed? >> jack planted it. okay. let's talk numbers. on the technicals, jonathan krin ski and on the fundamentals, frank mitch of wells fargo. talk to us about the fundamentals of monsanto. >> the fundamentals are fantastic. if you think about coming into this earnings season, we have seen negative preannouncements on the ag side because of weather from dupont, from dow, from fmc. what happens this morning? monsanto knocks it out of the park. very solid quarter, moves right past the concerns that others have had.

more importantly, we have seen a pickup in growth in their seeds and genomics part, the higher profit part of the company both on the corn side and the soybean sides. we have all three parts of soybeans as we are calling this the decade of the soybeans working. we have the intacta product in latin america that looks to be a home run. they are getting royalties from dupont. the first big payment came this quarter. they are also seeing continued growth in the ready to yield product here domestically, roundup. there are so many parts that are moving forward. we really like the fundamentals here. >> the fundamentals there. jonathan, technically, do you believe the charts are setting up to plant the seed to harvest future profits later? >> yeah. this is actually a situation where the technicals match up nicely with the fundamentals. you look at a long term chart for the last ten years or so, we can really see this picture play out. there is this long term inverse head and shoulders pattern. it broke out above the neckline around $85 in 2012.

that carries a measured move up to $125, $130 level but really, given the extent of this base, we could see the stock approaching the '08 highs at 140 over the next one to two years. if we look at a shorter term, it's about as steady of an uptrend as you can get. since they bottomed in 2011 it's been respecting this well-defined uptrend line as well as the 200 day moving average which comes in around 107 right now. as long as it stays above those levels, we would be looking to be buyers of this stock as well. >> they are planting monsanto in their portfolio to continue the pun. thank you, gentlemen. >> thank you. >> folks, be sure to check out the online edition of talking numbers, part of our partnership with yahoo! finance. up next, day two of testimony for gm's mary barra. next, we speak with the family of a young girl that was killed after losing control of her chevy cobalt. what they want to hear from gm, next. tdd#: 1-888-648-6021 there are trading opportunities

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huh, fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance. everybody knows that. well, did you know bad news doesn't always travel fast? (clears throat) hi mister tompkins. todd? you're fired. well, gotta run. geico.

fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more. coming up at the top of the hour, google splits its stock after the close of trade tonight in a way that preserves a lot of

the voting power for its cofounders. but is that a good thing or a bad thing for the other shareholders? both sides of that debate coming up. just a week after taco bell released the waffle taco, you had to know it was coming. white castle unveils its own trio of waffle sliders. a top executive of the fast food chain joins us to talk about this fierce battle for your breakfast. kelley joins me. hope to see you at the top of the hour. we have records for some of the major averages. we will talk about it when we get to the closing bell. see you then. >> the s&p and transports at record highs. thanks, bill. look forward to it. the gm crisis. yesterday it was the house. today it was the senate's turn to grill gm's ceo mary barra over the massive ignition switch recall. let's get straight to eamon javers. just fill us in on the very latest because obviously this is a still developing story. >> reporter: that's right. just another very tough day for gm's ceo mary barra up on capitol hill today. again, she apologized and again,

she said that because of this ongoing internal gm investigation, she didn't have a whole lot of the answers that the senators were looking for today. she came in for some very rough treatment from some of these members of the senate committee. take a listen to senator barbara boxer dealing with mary barra this morning. >> in march '05 your gm people said it cost too much to fix me these cars. none of these solutions represents an acceptable business case, quote. that was a public document. gm gave that document over. you can't even talk to that. you don't know anything about anything. >> reporter: it got even worse there for mary barra when senator blumenthal of connecticut suggested that from what he's hearing, he thinks it's not just civil liability that gm has to worry about, but criminal liability here that could be on the table for general motors in this whole ignition switch problem. and it might not get any better any time soon for general motors

in washington, the committee suggesting it wants to have follow-up hearings where they bring in lower level gm officials who were involved in the decision making here. that was part of their frustration. mary barra saying again and again she wasn't involved, didn't know about it at the time but is trying to find out. >> is there any feeling that perhaps gm is getting particularly grilled, specifically mary barra is getting particularly grilled on this because of the fact they took taxpayer money for the bailout? >> reporter: yeah, that was an undercurrent of the hearing again and again. some of these law makers wanted to know hey, wait a second, tax payers were there for you, are you really being there for your customers and for the american people. some wanted to know that because of the precarious financial situation of the company earlier in the decade leading up to their bankruptcy, whether or not gm might have swept all these problems under the rug and avoided a recall because it might have triggered a bankruptcy. they were so fragile that any kind of problem at that time could have tipped the needle for them. those are all concerns they were

talking about today. absolutely. >> eamon javers in washington, d.c., thank you very much. coming up after the break, we will speak with the parents of a girl that was killed four years ago in a 2005 chevy cobalt, ask them what they think of what they've heard so far. ♪ [ girl ] my mom, she makes underwater fans that are powered by the moon. ♪ she can print amazing things, right from her computer. [ whirring ] [ train whistle blows ] she makes trains that are friends with trees. ♪ my mom works at ge. ♪

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two tech titans making headlines today. amazon unveiling its new stream tv device and microsoft making some software updates. first of all, microsoft. let's get to josh lipton live in san francisco. what can you tell us, josh? >> reporter: yeah, here at microsoft's developers conference, microsoft executives presenting a very different vision and strategy and a different feel. satya nadella was just onstage rocking a teeshirt and jeans and sneakers. he talked about how microsoft thinks about its relationship with developers. take a listen. >> one of the core principles we have is we want to make it possible for every developer to bring their core assets forward and to be able to leverage their core assets they build in a very broadway across our own family, but also across platform.

>> reporter: i'll tell you guys, when you listen to nadella, you had to be impressed by just his knowledge and expertise of the business and also just his comfort level with this community of 5,000 developers. before he took the stage, steven elock was onstage introducing some new smartphones, also talked about some lower end models coming to the u.s. here in july for $159. so an aggressive price point there. some key updates as well for windows phone, they introduced today, a new personal digital assistant, sort of microsoft's version of siri. she can help you do searches, answer questions, basically just do more with your phone. another update for windows 8.1, again, you heard that theme of greater flexibility so now it will be easier to use if you have a mouse and keyboard. both those updates are going to be available for hardware

makers. that's really microsoft's attempt to kind of broaden and continue to strengthen its ecosystem. goe guys, back to you. >> i agree, satya nadella was speaking extremely confidently. about what, i have no idea. josh, the other headline of the day, amazon unveiling a tv set top box called amazon fire tv. by the way, do not go to fire tv.com because it reroutes you to a site that you should only be watching if that's your thing somewhere private, okay? by the way, amazon, buy somebody out, whatever. as for the real fire tv, we will have more on "closing bell" but what's the difference between this and the apple tv, josh? $99? little black box, looks the same as apple tv. what's the difference? >> reporter: well, the same idea here, but i think it's a point you are touching on. beyond amazon, every tech giant,

whether it's amazon or apple or certainly today, there was a lot of talk from microsoft about the xbox, they all want to get into your living room. they realize the great battlefield, yeah, we spend a lot of time on our smartphones and tablets. we also spend a lot of time on our couches watching tv. they all want a piece of that action. >> josh, thank you very much. bless you. >> excuse me. >> what -- >> i must be allergic. >> you checking out fire tv.com? amazon, please buy that thing. elsewhere, the battle over streaming radio continues to heat up and some people say there are already too many players in the market. apple's sitting on a pile of cash 20 miles high. maybe they should buy somebody like, say, pandora. let's bring in the street.com's rocco. here we go. you have been out there on twitter all over pandora like a cheap suit for weeks. i enjoy your stuff, by the way, very much. is there any chance in heck that apple would be interested in buying pandora? >> by the way, all over them after saying buy the stock

today, all the way into the mid 30s. i think there's a chance but the question is what would apple do with pandora. would they keep pandora as it is now and keep building the business. if they did, that means you have pandora on android, on windows phone, and blackberry, and then, of course, you'd have nem on ios. it's not exclusive to apple. it would be the equivalent of itunes on the desktop. or does apple buy pandora for the technology, for the music genome project? you power itunes radio with that which instantly makes it 100% better and then you also get pandora's sales force and you just improve the radio equation of your business. that would really be the question. what would they do with the company? i think they'd want to do the latter. i'm not so sure pandora's board would be happy with seeing the company blown up. >> but fundamentally we just peel it right back to the bare bones, you also raise the very good point that maybe it's just a distraction if apple does buy

pandora. it's a distraction from essentially their core where they really make the money and that is in hardware. >> absolutely. tim cook can say we're a software company all day long, but he knows they're not. they're a hardware company. that's where the majority of the revenue comes from. that's where they make their margin and that's where the focus has to be. my theory is all of these things come together to create part of the ecosystem, but you don't want to boot out the most popular music app in the app store, pandora, right? that really drives a lot of what makes the apple ecosystem attractive. there's no need to own all of these things. doesn't have to be proprietary. you have ios and a few other components of software and services. just like that ride and focus on making great hardware. that's where the money is. don't be distracted but a lot of people think apple wants to dive in other areas. i don't think they will, but you got to give some credibility to those thoughts because it's certainly a possibility. >> i wanted to get into apple's itunes radio why it's not doing well but quickly you did right

just recently, rocco, something about a constant spewing of craziness coming from pandora lately. what did you mean by that? >> well, there's lots of contradictions and it would take i would osenie way too long. brian mcandrews has his own private office. i think, big deal, he's a ceo. a year ago i sat with pandora's co-founder and i was like, tim, this is really crazy. i'm in your headquarters in oakland. nobody has an office. you had him sitting next to the former ceo joe kennedy out in the cubicle area next to the director of corporate communications and her assistant. nobody had an office. tim said offices are bad for company culture. we want intermingling. now mcandrews comes in and has his own office. in and of itself, that's not a big deal, but coupled with some

other things that are happening, i feel like the pandora way might be sort of crumbling and that's not good for the business over the long haul. >> it's not. >> the people in the building aren't happy. >> he is clearly listening to spotify in his office. >> that's what's happening. >> rocco, thank you, buddy. >> thanks, rocco. let's move on. sunshine stock today is the single best stock of any major u.s. index. it is gt advance tech. the ticker is gtat. it's up 112% over what time frame? i can't see. >> what is wrong with you today? sneezing, snots? >> i'm clearly allergic to my co-anchor. it's a supplier of sapphire displays of iphone 6. we're going to take a short break so mandy can get a kleenex. stick around. >> got one. >> what's going on?

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heard so far in the hearings from gm ceo mary barra. >> if i could answer that, not much. she's -- she has not been for forthcoming. at the hearings yesterday with the house, one of the congressmen asked her if she would be providing a full report, and this question was asked to her four times, and four times she answered it, you will get what is appropriate. so my summation from her behavior at the house hearings is if that is the way that she is speaking to a united states congressman, how can she speak any better to the average person that, you know, their child was an accident victim. i was very, very surprised with

that. today when we were at the hearings with the senators, she was very evasive. she spoke continuously about how she was not going to be able to answer the question until an investigation was finished. >> right. >> and the different senators showed her documentation that these questions had already been answered. >> so, mr. ruddy, prior to these hearings, what has gm said to you? what have they communicated to you and have they been responsive when you have tried to ask questions yourselves? >> gm has never been responsive to us to this day. the only reason we got our black box returned before coming to washington was because our united states senator, senator toomey, wrote a strong letter to mary barra about how gm had

treated us and to return the black box. he also wrote a letter to nhtsa. the last two days at the hearings between the house and the senate, the idea that she had a tough time of it, if anybody is reporting that, it's not the case. if anybody had a tough time and has been frustrated and aggravated, it's been the families and the congressmen and the senators who have been trying to get answers from her. they're the ones who have had a couple tough days. she just gives the standard answer which we have to do our internal investigation. they're asking her very basic questions that have been well publicized in the media concerning dates, when there were various recalls, and when they have known about problems. they're asking her all sorts of questions, and she will not even respond there. then when they ask her -- demand more answers such as who was

aware of these problems and when, she refuses -- >> mr. ruddy, the show is just about to end. we hate to cut you off and thank you very much for joining us. thanks to mary ter rea and leo yud which. we reached out to gm and they told us they will not respond on specific cases and extend our regret to those who were affected. >> our sympathies to the ruddies as well. that's it for our show. "the closing bell" begins right now. hi, everybody. welcome to "the closing bell." i'm kelly evans down here at the new york stock exchange. >> and i'm bill griffeth. this is one of those days, the s&p, any closing above -- any positive close is another new all-time high for the s&p 500. the dow needs 44 points to close at an all-time high, which hasn't been done since december 31 of