paul kerry talking with your hands. >> oh, my god. >> there you go. >> i want to see you blackberry with those things, you know? >> no. it doesn't work on an iphone, either. >> and then she has graciously lent me her cheese head for the packers this evening. >> that's how much i love you. share the cheese head. >> thank you very much. "street signs" begins right now. see you tomorrow. go packs. u.s. economy is looking good. and a strong dollar is good for america. but is a strong dollar bad for stocks? we'll show you why history says it just might be. hi, everybody. lots on that. plus our picks for ceos who need to go and the chosen ones who should run them. the one sector of the stock market you probably have not realized has done spectacularly well. and finally, a feel-good airline story, mandy, that may restore everybody's faith in humanity. >> i certainly hope so, brian. we have had records a go go

earlier on today. let me take a look. s&p record, dow record, dow transports record. and gaining this year by almost twice the s&p up about 16%. by the way year to date what do you think has been the biggest gaining stock in the transports? >> delta? >> same for the sector. airlines love luv is the ticker. southwest of course is the airline. we've got our market reporter standing by, dom chu, kick us off. >> reporter: it's interesting that luv and dal, southwest and delta are jock can i go for position right now who's going to be the best performing stock in the s&p. but overall if you look at the airlines, yes, those transportation stocks have been a headline grabber so far with stocks going for record highs. so far in the s&p we're about 3 points off session highs. still a positive day. it continues this trend of melting up, not a huge explosion higher but the trend has been to the up side for stocks overall.

of course everybody's going to be watching what happens tomorrow with nonfarm pay roles co rolls coming out. also materials, telecom and energy the notable lag ard so far today. we're seeing gains there. again something to keep an eye on at least. the eem doing well despite the fact that ukraine and russia tensions are still at least maybe looking to be resolved. but all the geopolitical risks not preventing the eem from going high. >> thanks very much, dom. let's send it over to rick santelli in chicago. ricky, what do you take of those comments this morning saying it is the beginning of the end of the bond market rally by mark bove, we are done? >> reporter: i'll tell you what. for the last couple of years i would say i don't agree with those statements. today i'm not going to say that. i do think that the signals for seeing higher interest rates are in place. we're just several basis points

away from a close that would turn me personally bearish. we need to settle above 248, 245 and three basis points of slippage. but i still think as big as that story is, the bigger story is what did mr. drage accomplish? if you really want to know look at the european forces flying high. a positive for equities. >> rick santelli, thank you very much. >> rick, thank you very much. okay. so your top market story maybe not stocks today. it's actually the greenback, the u.s. dollar jumping as europe's version of janet yellen decided to do their own form of stimulus. let us bring in sarah eisen and talk about the dollar's move. you're a currency maven. you get excited about this kind of stuff. tell us why we should get excited about this. >> reporter: it takes a lot to surprise the largest and most traded market in the world, that would be currencies. that is why what happened today was so impressive. after the euro had already been weakening and pricing and action

leading up to the meeting since drage had been dropping hints in jackson hole it cratered after the drage decision today proved to be more aggressive than expected. drage announced he's cutting interest rates, stimulus program bond buying and left the door open for a full-blown qe that leafth your ror sitting below 1.30. first time since back in 200013. on the flip side weak yeeuro strong dollar. that has been reinforced by the surprising data in the u.s. from manufacturing to auto sales. tomorrow's jobs reports could add further fuel to that trade. add it all up the two biggest economies in the world moving in opposite directions and expectations for central bank policies in those two large economies moving in different directions. with the federal reserve on super easy street or excuse me the ecb easy street, the federal reserve transitioning into higher rates or tightening mode. interest rate expectations are

the number one driver of the currency market. so for the very near-term, one morning here watch out for short squeezes or mini rebounds because shorting the euro has become a very popular and crowded trade. but overall, strategists say the dollar rally is set to continue here. yen's said 1.27 on euro dollar by the end of this month on that aggressive ecb move. wells fargo says 1.22 in a year, weak euro, strong dollar. and there's an etf for it. if you don't trade currencies, eup is a strong dollar play and short euro is euo. no surprise, guys, those have been doing very well this year. >> all right. sarah, thanks very much. so the big question for investors is the stronger dollar actually bad for stocks? here with us on set larry kudlow, nbc senior contributor. steve liesman is here as well and tobias ludkovitz equity strategist with citi. we switched it up a bit. earlier i said the euro dollar

maybe not complete enough. so this is the dollar index, dollar versus the basket versus the dow over ten years. not perfect, larry kudlow, but there does seem to be an inverse relationship. is a strong dollar negative for the dow? >> is the dollar the green line? >> the dollar is the green line. >> it looks pretty steady to me. >> well, yeah. unfortunately that chart sort of flatten out. >> down about 6.5%. >> if you go into it a little deeper you can see the moves more volatile. >> once that blue moon. once in a blue moon a falling dollar helps erase deflationary fears. we're got a lot of deflationary fears. 2008, 2009, 2010, 2012011. the bottom of the dollar however august 2011. and the stock market's gone up 70% since then. go back to the 50s, i hate to pull this but i was here. 50s and 60s the dollar was steady tied to gold. 80s and 90s the dollar was basically firm particularly in the 90s, huge stock market gain. dollar holds down inflation and

attracts investment. >> and certainly nothing works in a vacuum, right? we can't necessarily say strong dollar equals weak stocks or strong dollar can also be concurrent with strong stocks because there's all sorts of other factors that play in the economy, right, steve? >> that's right. i think what that chart shows and i think larry made the point a stable dollar is good for stocks. a stable dollar is good for the economy. if you look at the vast trend of all things that have been tried over the past several years, the whole concept of euro unity other than the other problems has been to remove currency volatility. what you're going to have is a short term effect. translating u.s. multinational earnings back into a stronger dollar will help for awhile, but it will challenge u.s. exporters. i will say the idea of a weaker euro has been an idea that's been around for three or four years. it is finally moving in a way that the economists think it ought to have moved relative to the outlooks and the performance of the economies out there. >> no, no. i don't agree on the exports. these multinationals, they have

big treasury operations. they know how to hedge. and down through the years, a steady dollar, a keen dollar has been synonymous usually with better profits. but let me tell you what i love. the dollar up gold down. i love that trade. the dollar up oil down. i love that trade, okay? the dollar up, inflation's going to stay down. look at gasoline prices by the way. >> commodities have come down. >> i love this thing. this tells me the fed has room to normalize interest rates. this tells me that the economy is getting better. tells me a lot of other things. keen dollar. >> tobias, i make charts like that for fun. you make charts like that for a living. is there any correlation between the u.s. dollar and the equity market? >> not really historically. if you go back 20, 30 years for example the 90s you had a strong dollar. everybody was buying u.s. stocks particularly in the areas of technology where really the story was buying the dotcom tech stories and the stocks went up. i found that there are periods

where the strong dollar markets go up, periods where it goes down. trading just on the basis of currency issue in equity markets is challenging. there are other things, some sectors. larry mentioned gold. so material stocks tend to do poorly when dollars are strengthening. tied to the commodity markets. energy stocks tend to have some challenges. financials and health care tend to do better when the dollar is strengthening. but it's not the only thing. you've got to think about what's happening to loan activity for financials, regulatory framework, valuation. i'd love to be able to make it so easy buy this sell that when the currency moves. but if that's the case we'd all be billionaires. >> it is never that easy. it's very much a sector by sector thing. >> we don't want to spend too much time looking overseas and not right here at our foot. almost boom-like numbers in the data today. the service sector on a tear. the claims numbers are low. productivity rebounding. everywhere we look it's good. and that to me is almost -- is going to be way more important than what's happening in europe.

>> people should not obsess about europe. europe, whatever. they're doing everything wrong monetarily. look at the united states. we are the world's economy the center of it. the boom point, these numbers have been boom-like quality. what does that mean? that means the fed is going to start leaning in a hawkish direction. that means the fed will start to normalize, right? aka raise their short term rate target sooner. i regard that as a big plus. and the dollar will continue to strengthen. final point, 1990s. the dollar was, i don't know, 30, 40% higher than it is today. you know what a gallon of gas cost? >> no. >> 1.25. that's why i love the strong dollar weak gasoline trade. >> and nothing is better for brian sullivan than a desire to ride gas-guzzling high powered machines than 1.25 gas. >> by the way, sullivan welfare. >> we drive the same car. >> but he's got more cars than

you. >> i do have more cars. >> i actually just bought a hybrid which is why gasoline prices are falling. >> nice. nice. all the carbon you burn to dig out the batteries for the lithium ion should make up. >> besides this stuff, if you have a chronic weak currency -- and the dollar was chronically weak, by the way, in the 2000s. bad. dropped to third. chronically weak currency, investment flows away pretty. and it's bad for the economy. >> tobias, then to larry's point, whatever about europe. why do we hear so many people saying if europe goes down, we're doomed? >> i think the question is, how bad europe's doing. i don't think anybody was really expecting europe to have those incredibly robust recovery. what we're not getting is even meager recovery. that i think is frustrating. but 70% of s&p 500 sales are in north america, about 11% in europe and probably half of that european component is noncyclical. so selling food, beverage,

tobacco, those kind of products, drugs. that's not really tied to the cycle. the other piece will just not go as well. i think people are taking it way out of context. certain industries have more exposure. but again i think just looking at europe and trying to make everything -- it's 70% here it really matters what's going on here. and probably the best piece of news is credit conditions continue to be supportive of economic activity growth over the next nine months in the u.s. and the second best part is i'm going to europe next week so i'm going to be able to buy some paper. >> tobias, don't you think mr. tepper is right? get out of u.s. bonds? >> we have a real hard time getting excited about u.s. bonds. >> but not in drage will be leaning on it. i know we've got to wrap, tobias, but isn't drage helping yellen here? isn't the drage qe going to help ease the fed-ex it. >> no. >> yes. i would say yes in the sense you won't have as sharp a move bond yields but you'll probably still see bond yields moving higher.

>> why did you say no, sflair. >> larry? >> you have to focus on what's going on in the usa. ten-year going to 3%. >> it could have gone up 100 basis zbloints you guys are making the case to why my chart is garbage. >> exactly. >> bonds will send people back to u.s. equities. >> i think that's very true. and just add oil and gasoline into that mix. i think all that is true. all that is bullish. the real measure-i'm old-fashioned. the real measure of the dollar's value is not against the euro, it's against gold. and gold is falling from 1900 to 1250. gold is going to continue to fall. and that's so bullish for the economy. it's the signal that people are making productive investments, not anti-inflation.

>> king dollar jess ter court jess ter gold. we've got to leave it there. gentlemen fantastic discussion. thank you very much. steve, larry, tobias. a very big win for the biggest little city in the world. we have more on how tesla could breathe some much-needed life into reno, nevada. speaking of charts, it is mystery chart time. here you go, folks. this stock's been a summer sizzler up about 30% in the past three months. that's all you get. tweet us your guesses. more clue clues and the answer ahead. roughout the state. and startup ny companies will be investing hundreds of millions of dollars in jobs and infrastructure. thanks to startup ny, businesses can operate tax free for 10 years. no property tax. no business tax. and no sales tax. which means more growth for your business, and more jobs. it's not just business as usual. see how new york can help your business grow, at startup.ny.gov

gas up 20 cents per gallon through october could bring the price below $3 in some areas. currently the national average is 3.43 a gallon. so 20 cent would not be under 3 if my math is correct. that's way down from last year's $3.58 a gal. by the way one of our viewers i asked on twitter anybody see in sub 3 a state that go mart in withville, virginia near where virginia tech is, i called them up they confirmed it. 2.99 a gallon. the sweet woman behind the counter i talked to. can you take a picture? she goes, honey, i don't have a smartphone. 2.99 at go mart in withville, virginia. >> do you remember we had that guy on a couple of months ago he predicted we could see below $3 a gallon? you're like oh, my goodness

there's christmas come at once today. happy christmas in withville. tesla shares up more than 2% today and up about 90% year to date to record highs. the electric carmaker is expected to announce later on today that nevada will be the site of its gigafactory which will make factories not only for tesla but for other automakers as well. nevada beat out arizona, california, texas and new mexico. tesla does expect, however, the winning state to provide nearly $400 million in tax incentives which may require legislative action. for its part, tesla plans to spend at least $4 billion on the factory and hire up to 6500 workers, which brian by the way i think is an absolutely fantastic thing. my producer and i were driving through that part of town just recently when we made the trip out to lake tahoe. it is an area that desperately needs jobs. so i think it's a really great thing. >> good stuff. >> yes. >> happy note. in the movie "the graduate" mr. mcguire told a very young dustin hoffman to invest in just one thing, plastics. had the movie been a today

perhaps he should have said, rail cars. old school rail car companies have been some of the hottest investments around this year. in fact, they've trounced the returns of companies like google, apple, twitter, facebook, everything else. let's bring in sal fatal. why has green briar and trinity to name two done so well, sal? >> in a word you have very strong rail car volume. if you look at the rail car traffic that's reported on a weekly basis, if you look at the year to date numbers it's pretty much 5% across the board across all different types of commodities. petroleum car loads up about 30% year per year. one of the factors. then you have very low spare capacity of rail cars in storage. then you also have rail car productivity is actually pretty challenged. so essentially train speed are down and terminal dwell numbers are up. which basically means in layman terms it takes more rail cars to move a given quantity of good. >> green briar and trinity

despite the fact both of them are up spectacularly year to date, 126% for green brie, a trinity 80%. you're still saying buy them. you still see a lot of up side. >> i do. i think our street estimates for both stocks are still pretty light. i'll give you an example for trinity for example they just closed the myer acquisition, $600 million deal. they closed it a few months ago. i only think about half the street estimates are actually incorporating that into 2015 estimates. then i also think that deliveries estimates for 2015 are low for both companies. >> if the shale boom like george soros says turns out to be a bust, will these stocks bust? >> if that turns out to be a bust? and time will tell on that. i think so. because i can tell you -- >> so this is a shale boom-based rally in part for tanker cars. >> that's one of the drivers. there's also cars that are used for hauling frack sand which is used for hydraulic fracturing. but it's both driven by the

energy. >> but if you say if it is a bust. how high would you put the chances of it being a bust? >> i mean, i'm not an energy analyst. but if that should happen then stocks will react poorly. there's no doubt. >> what's the difference between these two companies? we like to lump things together in the media. trinity and green briar, besides having different names? >> green briar has a larger market share on the intermodal car side whereas trinity -- >> boxes onto trucks and ships. that's what you mean? >> correct. that's right. which is driven really by imports from asia. that's the main driver. >> so if we see the china import data start to slide, we should be more wary of green briar. >> right. because that would drive a decline or deceleration in intermodal volumes and probably impact green briar more. trinity benefits disproportionately on the train car side. green briar has made inroads there so they're getting a lot of orders there, too. >> freight car america is a buy.

up 16% year to date. sal thank you very much for joining us. good thing it is not dinnertime because we're digging in on two taboo dinner tabletop ex, money and politics. robert frank says rich people simply will not be able to be elected anymore. plus a back to school stock stud and one commodity in serious need of a pop. that's your hint. a little later on in the show, have you had enough of all those stories about passengers fighting on aierp airplanes? we have a feel good story. we love those kind of stories on "street signs." who work with regional experts who work with portfolio management experts that's when expertise happens. mfs. because there is no expertise without collaboration.

frothere's no reasonn average 17 we can't manufacture in shuthe united states. here at timbuk2, we make more than 70,000 custom bags a year, right here in san francisco. we knew we needed to grow internationally, we also knew that it was much more complicated to deal with. i can't imagine having executed what we've executed without having citi side by side with us. their global expertise was critical to our international expansion into asia, into europe and into canada. so today, a customer can walk into our store in singapore, will design a custom bag and that customer will have that american made bag within a few days in singapore. citi has helped us expand our manufacturing facility; the company has doubled in size since 2007. if it can be done here in san francisco, it can be done anywhere in america.

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i'm courtney reagan. welcome back to "street signs." check out universal display. "wall street journal" reporting the company will be part of an apple iwatch which analysts are predicting will be unveiled at apple's event on tuesday. universal display trading up more than 12.3%. it keeps climbing like a staircase today. back to you. it is the day after a big brawl down south. candidates squaring off in a debate in one of the most closely watched senate races of the year. both candidates got very passive at one point last night. let's go now to cnbc's john

harwood who is in raleigh, north carolina with more. what happened last night, john? >> reporter: well, brian, we all know the country is outraged and angry about what's happened with isis in syria, the beheading of those two journalists. we also know the country is weary after more than a decade of war. we saw that on display in this north carolina senate race last night. both candidates, democratic incumbent kay hague an, republican challenger tom till his criticized the administration, said it's time to get tough. but when the moderator pressed tom tillis on whether or not the u.s. military should go into syria he answered very cautiously. >> should the u.s. strike isis in syria? >> i think that the u.s. needs to take all actions to protect american citizens and protect freedom-loving people all over the country. >> now, nora o'donnell also pressed kay hagan, the democratic incumbent, on sending

u.s. forces into syria. and again, the caution was bipartisan. >> i believe we need to work with the moderate syrian rebels. we need to work with our allies. and being the strongest military in the world, i do believe i want to see the president's plan and i'm ready to take action. >> so what it shows you, brian, is that while lawmakers in both parties have criticized president obama for saying we don't have a strategy on dealing with isis, a lot of political candidates around the country this fall who aren't quite sure about their strategy for this issue, either. >> all right, john harwood. john, thank you very much. we do appreciate that. let's bring in robert frank now. robert, you have been looking at just how much independent wealth can play into election outcomes. what have you found? >> certainly work against the new scarlet letter in politics seems to be r as in rich. of the 263 millionaries self-funded candidates running for congress since 2002, 84% of

them lost. this election cycle could be even worse as wealthy candidates around the country take a beating for their financial fortunes. let's take a look in illinois. gop gubernatorial candidates bruce rounder, private equity billionaire is being attacked for having nine homes, $53 million salary and membership in a wine club that costs more than $100,000 just to join. his opponent pat quinn is taking meanwhile a minimum wage challenge living on bananas and graham crackers to prove that he actually understands the people's suffering. now, in georgia former dollar general ce oh, david purdue is being compared to mitt romney. one ad shows workers laid off while he took a fortune. >> he walked away with his $1.7 billion and didn't care about if we had a dollar in our pocket. >> wealthy democrats are not immune this time around. congressional democratic candidates bruce bailey in iowa and shawn eldridge in new york both being portrayed as out of

touch plutocrats. then hillary clinton whose famous comments about being almost broke ran hollow given the clinton's wealth and her demands for luxury hotel suites and g 450 jets when she's speaking. and look, this is all a continuation of the very successful campaign that obama ran in 2012. and all the comments in my web article today were saying look, since when is success a bad thing. and just because somebody's been economically successful doesn't mean they should not be a successful governor or congressional person. but it's interesting how it's been politicized. >> they're unapproachable, right? >> it's the kiss of death to be financially successful. yeah. >> that's a shame. >> disinjegenuous if you try to hide. >> it you won't appreciate this as much as mandy will. get your tape recorder ready, mandy. i have to admit that i said something wrong. >> oh, i lyle do need my tape recorder for this.

>> i said in my segment i had soros on the brain, he said the economic share boom is going to be a bust. he has invested in argentina and said share shale boom will be big. but you can't extrapolate that out. andrew hall who reportedly said recently that the american shale boom will be a bust. i had soros on the brain. it was andrew hall. but the point is, the question is relevant if the shale boom goes down, tankers may go down as well. i had the name wrong. >> the question was still relevant but the name was wrong. but thank you for making that. i've got my tape recorder. i'm going to play it out to you next time you say i'm always right. >> when do i say that? >> except for when he says he's wrong. >> you actually can't say that i say that now because i just said that i was wrong. >> i hope you got that on tape recorder as well. talking casinos, lumber and one pharmaceutical stock that is getting crushed today. "street talk" on deck. >> stop smiling. don't forget about today's mystery chart this. name has been a summer stock stud up 30% since june. one could say that this stock has been doing it right.

back after this.

okay. let's take a look at what the markets are up to. we were telling you earlier on

we did see the dow and the s&p hit record highs earlier on in the day. right now we are actually down at the low of the day. still slightly higher but at the lows of the day for both the dow and s&p. what were you pointing at, brian? >> the anemic volumes. >> look at that. we had exceptionally low volume last week was the lightest of the year so far. but people i guess aren't necessarily back from labor day weekend. time for street talk our daily rundown of stocks, news, views and analyst recommendations. first up las vegas sands cutting into a hold from a buy. due to a slow of the world's biggest gaming hub. >> mccow. analysts concerned about slowing in mccow -- revenues dropped 6% in august. they're partially blaming a smoking ban in the casinos and mccow driving people off. chinese slowdown corruption crackdown everything. next up bmo capital.

>> they've got outper follows on boise cascade, louisiana pacific and warehouser as well. most bullish on louisiana pacific. they see about 33% up side. still a nice 30% up side seen in boise cascade too. >> let's move on to ironwood farmer. analysts at cohen slamming the stock. >> smaller cap stock here. but this is why it's interesting. they cut ironwood to a market perform but their target is 10 bucks. that is nearly 20% below the current price of irwd. they see their drug lisnes as being fully valued. >> under the radar name of the day independent banks. more cap bank. >> independent bank. $46 implies just over 20% up side. seven analysts cover the stock. they have an average price target of 41.30. nice up side seen by most of wall street. now to talking numbers. and today's mystery chart all in

one. it has been a summer stock sizzler up 30% since june. we said they were doing it right. at least lately it is j.c. penney. the old ad campaign, remember? let's talk some numbers. alex first to you and the fundamentals. the stock has done well. have the fundamentals, though, gotten any better on jcp? >> you know, the recovery here on jc penney has been a little bit faster than we would have thought in terms of comp and margin recovery. we'd be cautious here at these levels, though. i think a lot of the up side here is already priced in realistically you could be looking at high single-digit comps in the back half of the year as inventory productivity normalize. but expectations are starting to catch up to that. i still think even five years out you're looking at a best case scenario about $1 billion in ebit da. about eight times ebit da.

we'll be cautious. >> katie? >> it's a turn around play from the standpoint. the stock had been trending sharply lower for two years until august we saw a 15% rally. that rally was important because it took it above resist tan on the chart and completed what we call a base in phase where the stock had been under accumulation and showing positive momentum now. it's hardly free and clear of resistance on the chart now going forward. to me the risk reward is more favorable with that base breakout on the chart. >> thank you very much to both of you. you can get more fundamental analysis on talking numbers in partnership with yahoo! finance. if you haven't heard of this next company it's definitely one to keep your eye on. $3.13 billion market cap, small for now. up 20% year to date. it is sitting at some say the right intersection of health, monitoring glucose levels from a

smartphone. joining us now dex com ceo terry gregg. we talk about diabetes, obesity epidemic. how big is this for dex com? >> it's a huge opportunity. if you look at the statistics, 35 million people in the united states afflicted with diabetes. over 335 million globally. we've just scratched the surface of what we can do with technology and the convergence of health care into these mobile apps and mobile devices. >> there are a lot of companies out there, big name companies, tech companies, like apple and samsung and others that are really getting into the wearable technology space and the fitness and health wearable technology space in a big way. are you thinking of either partnering with them or have you partnered with any other companies? >> we're certainly in discussions both with apple and with samsung in particular. we have an open architecture

from the utilization of the information. from that standpoint we want to partner with everybody. that's been our agnostic venture into pump companies and integration with our technology. we're a glucose sensor company. we know what we do extremely well. we're the market leader and technology leader and we're going to stay to our roots and our main goal in life has been as stated we want to replace finger sticks. and so anything that we can do to partner that gets the technology out into the larger diabetes population is something that we strive to do with all of those technology companies. >> you're the leader now, terry, but you've got a big pharma company coming after you in part of your market, abbott labs. have the libre glucose monitor they just got a mark from the government for. is that a threat to your product? >> we've long considered abbott diabetes care our main competitor in our space. i will tell you libra is not a continuous glucose monitor. it's a hybrid between a finger

stick and continual glucose monitor. it allows patients to take their blood glucose more frequently without finger sticks. however, what it doesn't do, it does not identify speed and direction of glucose. it has no alerts, no alarms. and that's really the criticality for people with diabetes is the ability to advise them in advance before they run into trouble. so this is a very cumbersome device, the libra. we don't view it as a competitor at this point in time but we're certainly watching it. >> thank you very much, terry gregg, and best of luck with your product. >> thank you for having me. >> no problem. s&p dipping into negative territory. currently down by 0.02% at 2,000. we're about to play a game by the way of ceo swap. we're going to be taking a look, brian, at what companies are in serious need of some new leadership and who would be stepping in their shoes. >> that's going to be interesting. we've each got our picks by the way. for now let's go to bill and kayla. guys you have an incredible lineup. what i want to know is, what are

you going to ask manny pacquiao? >> that's a very good question. >> he's going to throw some jabs. he's been warming up all morning. >> put him if the ring with sarah eisen our resident boxing expert believe it or not. she's going to be asking a lot of the important intelligent questions of packman. but it's tough to say who's not on the show today. we have plenty of ceos coming. >> really the entire gamut. every single industry we could be covering today we are. we start with marathon oil ceo lee tillman. we have boxing champions manny pacquiao and chris a lkz geria. the housing market right now an the business brains behind "duck dynasty." wait until you hear some of the businesses that willie robertson is getting his family into using the "duck dynasty" brand.

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help wanted. ahead of tomorrow's jobs number let's take a look at what companies are desperately perhaps in need of new leadership. we're going to call this the ceo swap, mandy. >> this is how it works, everybody. we've picked a few marquee companies that in our opinion need to give their current ceo the boot, and who we think would make the perfect replacement, brian. >> so we are joined by herb greenburg and cnbc contributor jeffrey sonenfeld, yale school of management. let us get things started. because i'm talking right now i will start things off. here's my pick. don thompson. great guy at mcdonald's but probably time to go. i would love to see -- there's no plans -- i would like to see howard schultz of starbucks come in and see if he could work some of his magic on mickey d's. >> we were talk about this a moment ago. mcdonald's needs to grow and might need to grow through acquisition of chipotle or something else. at least to make it cool. mine is mike jeffries of

abercrombie and fitch out. terry lundgren of macy's in to see if he can maybe give the teen retailer more of a makeover than just removing the iconic logo. did you see that news, brian? i mean, they've been trying do all kinds of things. the share is up about 25% this year. nonetheless after 22 years, some people feel that maybe mike jeffries needs to go and we need a bit of the makeover magic of terry lundgren. he did it with macy's. and they're going aggressively after teens and millennials. maybe he can do the same for abercrombie and fitch. >> i half agree. my other pick was going to be lundgren but going to target. >> he's going to be a busy man. maybe he could do target and abercrombie and fitch. her bi, what is on your radar, sir? >> well, jeff smizek of ual i think does have to go. >> you hate united. you hate them. >> know what? i like the people at united. i think that the company is challenged from bringing everybody together. they're still sort of like they're just merging even though they merged years ago.

so i don't think he's done a good job with the employees in creating a good culture. and i think the person who could do that is allan mullaly of ford who i believe has a reputation for being able to do that. working with the labor unions bringing them together. united the best thing they've done is changed their safety videos recently. they're rely creative. but when you sit on a 737 cross-country, dark, no wi-fi? you say to yourself come on, man. these are new planes. you know how to do it bore. people are complaining. i know they're working on it. but do i think smizek has had a chance. the stock's done okay but it's even lagged delta or american over the past six months to year to date. >> all right. jeff sonenfeld, you have a pick of your own in a different space. >> you absolutely read my mind, brian. i was just thinking each one of the ones you suggested starting of course with herb who's done more transcontinental travel

than any of us knows how to size up the airlines. but the food has been getting a little better at united. so maybe that will make a difference. but speaking of the food, i think on mcdonald's, that is a tough call. he's following a classic legend. jim skinner was magnificent at mcdonald's. without a doubt the performance is not off to a good start. but he needs a little bit more time. iss and some of the proxy firms wouldn't judge him harshly in such a short term. usually looking for more than two or three years to see how well a ceo has taken charge. but this is a little bit fast. and boy, mandy, when you get to the world of retail it's like being the proverbial mosquito in a nudist colony. you hardly know where to bite first. looking what's happened of course american aapparel makes mcdonald's look good. but he would know how to transform that really well. turning to my own pick, i figure

fair game toys bring my own sector into this academia which is not going to enhance my career any looking at a college president who serves on many private corporate boards with strategic involvement. when you take a look at somebody who's on 15 boards, is that possible in this day and age? yes, there is somebody. 6, 7 of them are corporate boards. others are major universities like mit and her own rensalaar where she is the ceo. if you take the time companies like marathon oil, ibm, fed-ex, these are big businesses that should require a good deal of her attention. and instead, if you add up the time most governistas will say should be about 50 hours per week per board. she has a 55-hour a week job right now as a board director. putting in her job as ceo she's basically leaving about four hours a day to sleep, to change

her clothes, to maybe slurp down a meal and get from board to board. four hours. so this is not humanly possible. something's got to give. and you can see that the boards, her people are pretty upset as a constituent she's had a pretty tough reign there, autocratic for 15 years. in -- >> just to make it clear, you're talking about carol bartz, right? >> she would be the ultimate replacement. shirley ann jackson is the ceo of rensselaer. it on these 15 boards. i would say carol bartz would be a great person to step in. obviously she had a tough time at yahoo!. had a very good 14, 15 years at auto desk and she's learned a lot from her yahoo! experience. eric schmidt, now chairman of google, somebody else. a ph.d in computer science from berkeley, a great engineer's engineer. somebody like that could come into a place like this and really bring some intellectual

growth. >> thank you all very much for joining us. this was just -- fantasy, theory. you know. >> exactly. an exercise. so, we are teeing you up for tomorrow's big jobs report. we'll let you know what the magic number is that you should watch for ahead. plus, the one commodity that's been doing anything but popping. "street signs" will be right back. when change is in the air you see things in a whole new way. it's in this spirit that ing u.s. is becoming a new kind of company. one that helps you think differently about what's ahead, and what's possible when you get things organized. ing u.s. is now voya. changing the way you think of retirement. my motheit's delicious. toffee in the world. so now we've turned her toffee into a business.

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comcast business. built for business. we talked about lower gas prices. well corn is also down. in fact, corn quietly trading at a four-year low following a pair of reports basically pointing to a massive corn crop. generally when you have more of something and demand stays constant, prices go down. for the week and month, corn is down more than 6% but it was $3 -- or they aggregated ten bushels up so 300 back in 2009. let's see if any of the products that we buy that have

corn in them, which is pretty much of everything, see if those prices come down. last week's jobless claims number rose by 4,000, yet stayed near 2014 lows. to what degree is the job market improving and what should we expect from tomorrow's employment report? let's bring in bankrate.com's washington bureau chief, and michael farr. thank you, gentlemen. michael farr, what do we expect tomorrow and what is it going to tell us about our economy? >> i think the numbers we've seen from non-farm headline, around 230,000 jobs from 213,000 from the private sector, that seems reasonable to me. those are decent numbers, that's a good trend, it is positive. it is not fabulous but it's good and it is showing that the economy is continuing to improve. >> yeah. how much do you think it is going to improve? because it appears that much of the improvement is already priced into stocks. if we grow faster than expected, then maybe stocks should take a

leg up. i'm just concerned that all the good stuff we've talked about is already bought. >> i think, brian, you rex actually right. i think a lot of it is. but so let's look. we've got 146.4 million people employed in the u.s. now. that's great. but that's exactly the high from 2007. so it's taken us all this time in the recovery to get back to where we were. so good news. we are there. bad news, there are an additional 16 million people who are now eligible to work who have joined the workforce who are still looking for jobs. so we are moving in the right direction. i think the markets are reacting and expecting these numbers and i don't think the markets, to your point, brian, will be happy at all if they miss. >> but mark, what are we going to be seeing with regards to labor force participation? the lit th the bit that you look at beneath the surface? >> that tells us the numb beof people who are either working or want to work and that's been in

a long-term decline. we aren't expecting a big change in labor force participation over the next year or so. that was the finding of our recent bank rate quarterly economic survey. i think the real question involves three words -- wages, wages, wages. >> indeed it does. what implications will we have for the fed, do you think, from what we're going to hear tomorrow. mark? >> i don't think this is going to reset the table at all. this has been kind of a boring, steady, as she goes recovery, as my good friend mr. farr just referenced. don't think we'll get anything that will knock our socks off in the near term but we definitely need to see household incomes, household wealth rof to the leve recover to the levels we saw in 2008. we are still 8% below that level. >> we got to guy. thank you very much. we promised our viewers a great airline story. we have it tomorrow. but sad news just crossing is that joan rivers has indeed passed away. our sympathies for her family. >> thank you very much for watching "street signs." closing bell is now.

we welcome you to "closing bell." i'm bill griffeth here at post nine at the new york stock exchange. >> i'm kayla tausche in for kelly evans for it off this week