over and i think she will. i think she's just trying to apply pressure to mcconnell to help schumer try to squeeze some agreements out, but send the articles over, let the senate go forward. maria: senator, good to have you. thanks very much. >> thank you, maria. maria: very busy day. thank you so much. that does it for us. let me hand it over to stuart varney and "varney & company" as you pick up the ball here on an incredible news day. stuart: extraordinary. good morning, maria. good morning, everyone. iran retaliates. around 5:30 eastern time last night, 15 missiles launched from iran at two u.s. bases in iraq. no u.s. casualties reported. the president met with top defense and military officials at the white house, he issued a single tweet saying in part, all is well. kind of measured response, calm response. that was his only communication, but he will make a statement from the white house this morning. we don't yet know the timing of

that statement. iranian leaders, they have made statements. they have largely avoided the bellicose language we have seen in the past. overnight, leader ali khamenei says it was a slap in the face to america. they say they do not seek escalation or war. obvious question this morning, was the attack deliberately proportionate, a one-off that makes a point but doesn't risk a devastating american response? can the iranians risk taking action that results in all-out war? their economy is collapsing. they are out of cash. what will the president say this morning and how will he say it? escalation? a threatening tone? we will find out soon. now look at this. yet again, the market is largely shrugging off an attack in the middle east, in the middle of the oil patch, no less. when the news broke, futures showed a near 400-point drop but look at it now. down maybe 20 for the dow and all of that loss accounted for by just two dow stocks which we will mention momentarily.

the s&p is going to go up five points at the open and the nasdaq is up 16. how about that. let's get to oil. yet again, investors shrugging off a major development in the middle east. the price right now, all the way down to $61 a barrel. and we have virtually no change in the price of gas, holding right around $2.59 a gallon. that is the national average. now, i'm going to show you boeing's stock. this is premarket, it is down four bucks. a ukrainian boeing 737-800 jet liner crashed on takeoff at tehran's airport last night. it appears the crash occurred two to three hours after iran's missile attack. some call that suspicious timing. the cause of the crash is not known and the iranians say they will not release the plane's black box to america. it was a new plane, built in 2016. what a day. iran retaliates, the market shrugs and the president is about to speak. "varney & company" is about to

begin. big day, big show for you. all-star senators on the list of guests on the program today. joni ernst, jon thune, risk scott coming up throughout today's program. let's go to whalid phares, fox news foreign affairs analyst. we've got their general, they shot missiles at our bases. is that it? is this a one-off? are we now in for some de-escalation? >> it's not it, of course not. it is -- it is a plateau right now. the u.s. position is very calm, as you just said, stable. the president is absorbing what the government agencies and defense are reporting to him and that was very good that he did not make a statement last night, but today, why, because we

didn't know at the time how many waves of missiles are going to come from iran and the assessment will have to take a few hours, at least a day to be ready for the president, but i think the iranians have the problem, and this is why, very quickly. tehran has been under two pressures over the past few days since the elimination of suleimani. one coming from the militants, hezbollah, everybody, they wanted retaliation. why, stuart, because if they don't do anything, their enemies in the region will not take their intimidation seriously and in the game of balance of power, it's not good so they have to do something. the more seasoned people in the leadership knows that with this president, this administration, with the united states deployment in the region, it's going to cost them very very high. they may have made a mistake earlier in attacking our position and now they are recalibrating. to answer your question, yes, they have done something proportionate in their view and they bank on the possibility of

going on that plateau as long as possible. stuart: what do you want to hear from the president this morning? what do you want to hear him say and what tone do you think he should use? >> look, first of all, i'm sure he needs to inform the american public of exactly what happened yesterday in terms of casualties, et cetera, and he will do that, i imagine. number two, it's very important that he continue messaging the iranians, do not cross our red line. it worked. in the past, it did not work with previous many many years. now it is working and explain to them what would happen. actually, the iranians know very well now what are the three things that they can do and they should not do, which are attacking on our u.s. national soil, that would be a major mistake which would be also attacking our navy in the gulf or our allies, and attacking directly our forces on the ground in iraq or in syria. they know that so they have chosen the least costly for them which is attacking with those missiles our bases. so the president needs to inform the nation. that's my point.

stuart: real fast, i've got 30 seconds, what chance that there were some messages passed between iran and the united states overnight, perhaps by a third party intermediary, to calm things down? what chance of that? >> in all conflicts, there is always messages by third party, fourth party. i'm not going to talk about details but yes, of course there is chance this has happened. stuart: great to have you on the show today. very important day. thank you, sir. let's get to the markets. as we said earlier, the market essentially is shrugging off this latest incident. the dow is going to be down 20 but that's all accounted for by boeing and walgreens. david dietze, market watcher, joining us now. isn't it astonishing that the dow industrials right now are only 285 points below their all-time record high, despite all of this? >> i would submit if we didn't have the boeing problem, they would be right past the all-time highs. this morning the markets are

taking a big sigh of relief because we knew there was going to be some retaliation but it seemed it was just designed to satisfy state propaganda and it was done at night, no casualty and so forth, and of course, there is conciliatory tweets from iran saying we are not going to seek further escalation. i think the markets are taking a big sigh of relief. stuart: why is the price of oil down? on this of all days, why is it down? >> because something that could have been much worse, you know, really provoking america by knocking out a lot of civilians, attacking us during the day when our soldiers could be shot, that has not happened. i think the markets have priced in a little more and now they are pulling back as they see things look better and there's a conciliatory response from mr. trump talking about all is fine. stuart: you are an economist primarily. that's what you do. you are an economist but i'm going to ask you a stock market question. you think people should be buying today? >> well, certainly i would not be getting out of the stock market based on what we have seen with iran and the middle

east. remember, there has been conflicts in the middle east for decades now. this is nothing really new. so far, i think the leadership in our country has taken a proper response here. we are going to learn more a little later on during the press conference but let's not be hasty. let's take the longer term view. stuart: we don't yet know the timing of the president's -- there is some speculation it will be in the 11:00 hour but he will move the market, i suspect. >> what we are looking for is talking, if he takes a future approach, warning, he has to tell the other participants there, especially of course iran, we will not tolerate aggression, we will not tolerate disruption in the economy. what i don't want to hear him talking about is emotional revenge response and i don't think we will hear that. stuart: got it. david dietze, thank you, sir. now, the other major development out of iran today is this. 176 dead after a ukrainian boeing 737-800 jet liner crashed near the airport in tehran. the crash occurred hours after the iranian missile attack.

ashley, i don't want to get ahead of this. we don't know the cause of the crash but the timing and the location raise suspicions. ashley: certainly does. 737-800 is one of the most commonly used planes around the world by airlines. it took off and just within minutes, disappeared, data started to disappear completely when it reached about 8,000 feet. very very unusual. there has been speculation the iranians said one of the engines caught fire. flight experts say even if it did, these planes are designed to help the plane turn off that engine and would not just go into a steep dive and crash. so very strange. it had been built back in 2016, relatively young plane. it had maintenance just the day before, regularly scheduled maintenance, and look, this airline, ukrainian -- ukraine international airways, has an amazingly graeat track record. it never had a fatal crash since it began in 1992. they are not handing over the

black boxes. stuart: the iranians are not. ashley: will not give it to boeing or the united states. stuart: the ukraines have banned flights in and out of tehran. they have not banned boeing planes. ashley: very interesting. stuart: thanks, ash. good stuff. we have a couple stocks moving, individual stocks, which are affecting the overall market. start with walgreens. their profits down 25%, the stock's off 5%. it is a dow stock. without that and boeing, the dow industrials will be opening much higher. the price of oil, check it again, $61 -- it just crept up to $62 a barrel. how about that. where's gold this morning? you would expect a big takeoff. didn't get it. we are up $1.80 at $1576. totally different subject. here we go. big day, i'm telling you. fugitive carlos ghosn held a press conference after fleeing japan. held that press conference just an hour ago. i think it's maybe still going on. what did he tell us? susan: first time we heard from him since his arrest in japan and his subsequent escape to

lebanon and his wife calls it the speech of his life. what he talked about was the conditions he was kept under, house arrest. he said he was only allowed a shower twice a week, eight hours of daily interrogation, no contact with his wife for nine months and restricted access to prescription drugs. he did name names. he said he was a victim of a systemic plot to indict him from nissan executives, tokyo prosecutors and law firms and even a toyota board member that was involved as well. however, we didn't hear about how he got out of japan. everybody wants to know how exactly did he escape house arrest, and get to beirut. stuart: it was an indictment of the japanese legal system. susan: it absolutely was. also, he mentioned that in 2017, they thought about bringing fiat chrysler into the group so that was a corporate development, and it's unlikely they will go back to japan to face any of these charges because it's a 99% conviction rate. i think the black mark on the japanese corporate culture. stuart: thank you, susan. check futures again, please.

if you look just at the dow, you would think we are going down a bit. maybe we are, for the dow industrials. the s&p is up. the nasdaq is up despite it all. we are of course waiting for the president and his address to the nation. ashley: 11:00 a.m. from the white house. stuart: we got that confirmed from the white house. it will be 11:00 this morning. i'm sorry. we don't have it confirmed. we are getting various reports. put it like that. various reports that the president will address the nation at 11:00 eastern time this morning. yes. it's a big day. keep it right here, please. big day. senator warren on the attack slamming the president's handling of iran. we are on it. i keep saying it. big show ahead. just getting started. keep it here. classic geico heroes, starring in six new commercials, with jaw-dropping savings. vote for your favorites at: geico.com/sequels

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stuart: hard to believe this. after last night's -- by the way, that shot of the white house, president trump will address the nation at 11:00 this morning. now, look at this.

this is how the market's going to open. i'm still surprised, after all that's been going on, we are going up for the s&p, up for the nasdaq and we would be up for the dow, were it not for walgreens and boeing. look at this. individual stocks in the news. the maker of corona beer which is also the largest liquor company in the world, bar none virtually, constellation brands, great profits, rosy outlook. the stock is up five bucks, 2.8%. nice gain. mcdonald's, two african-american executives are suing the company over alleged racial discrimination. no impact on the stock. then there's this. elizabeth warren addressing the iran missile strike during a campaign rally last night. watch this. >> this is a reminder why we need to de-escalate tension in the middle east. the american people do not want a war with iran.

stuart: okay. joining us, mike huckabee, governor, your reaction to what senator warren just said. >> i would say this reminds us that we don't want to escalate elizabeth warren into the white house for any reason. she's incapable of understanding that the president issued a very measured and appropriate response in getting rid of suleimani. she also seems to think that donald trump wants a war which he does not. he's done everything he can to keep us from one but he's not going to let americans get murdered and just sit there and turn the other way or send pallets of cash to the killer. that's not how he operates. let's hope the one lesson we get from all this is that we don't want elizabeth warren or any of these other democrats getting near the white house except if they would like to take a tour sometime of the east wing and look at the china and the furniture. stuart: you are terrible, governor. you really are. just hold on for a second, will you. i've got reaction from the media. we heard from senator warren and some politicians.

now the media's reaction. susan: take a look at this and hopefully you will react. we had lawrence o'donnell of msnbc tweeting last night in the midst of reports of these missiles coming from iran, saying that trump wagged the dog, now the dog is wagging trump. also we heard from joy reid as well saying good, patient diplomacy and strong alliances got us to the brink of peace and in just a few years, trump's impulses have brought us to the edge of war. michael moore also tweeting as well, trump will use any form of attack to escalate the war he has started. the war is meant as an episode of his unreality show, a distraction from impeachment. now, i would agree with nikki haley when she says the only people that mourn the death of suleimani are the democrats. stuart: that's a good one. governor huckabee, you heard all of that. it seems pretty much similar to what senator warren was saying, that trump wants war. that's what they seem to be saying. >> well, let's face it, stu, the media and the democrats are kind of like saying the same thing.

they are on the same team. unfortunately, it's not a team that's cheering for america to win. and when they talk about what wonderful peace that obama brought, i'm wondering, did they ever understand all those people who came back without arms and legs from iranian-built ieds? was that their version of peace? was the 700 americans who were directly murdered because of suleimani, is that their version of peace? i guess i fail to understand when their parliament says death to america and they call for the annihilation of israel, is that their form of peace? these people are sick. they hate trump so much that they are unable to see the reality in front of their own faces. it's tragic and there is no news going on on some of these networks. one of them, msnbc last night, foolishly, recklessly reported that 30 people had been killed in the raid when in fact, no one had been killed. now, that's dangerous to say something like that. stuart: yes, it is. governor huckabee, thanks for being with us. always appreciate it. thank you. the faa, federal aviation

administration, banning u.s. flights over iran, iraq, the persian gulf and the gulf of oman. that's a pretty blanket no-fly zone for american airlines. ashley: it is. look, they are already banned from flying below 26,000 feet. that went into effect in 2018. so there are no major u.s. airlines, by the way, that fly over iran at present anyway but there are other carriers, singapore airlines said its flights are now going to be diverted away from iranian air space. stuart: was that prohibition announced after the boeing crashed after takeoff at tehran airport? ashley: no. this has been in effect since 2018, that they cannot go below 26,000 feet over iranian air space. stuart: but these other airlines which are now banning flights -- ashley: just going around it all together, as a result of what happened to that boeing flight. stuart: the crash in tehran. ashley: it ramped up concern about the air space. stuart: i'm trying to get the timeline straight. the boeing goes down at tehran

airport, airlines say don't go there. ashley: correct. stuart: interesting. futures coming back a little. we are still down about 20 for the dow, up 5 for the s&p, up 12 for the nasdaq. the president will address the nation at 11:00 eastern time this morning. we've got that for you. you will watch it right here. bring it to you live as soon as he speaks. in the next hour, we will have reaction from iowa senator joni ernst. she sits on the armed services committee. this is "varney & company," hour number one. we're carvana, the company who invented

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we created bionic and put the word out with godaddy. what will you change? make the world you want. stuart: five minutes to go before we open the market, and surprise, surprise, we will be up for the s&p, up for the nasdaq and down just a fraction for the dow industrials. how about that. price of oil going into the opening of the stock market, $62 a barrel. what is with that? check the price of gold, please. up three bucks. that's it. $1578. joining us now, market watcher david dietze is on the set already, shah gilani joins us. to you, shah, if i may. the dow industrials are only 285 points away from their all-time record high. explain that to our viewers, will you, with all this going on in the background? >> well, i think it's automatic

in terms of the market wanting to move higher because the economy is doing well, the consumer is in a good position, wages are rising, unemployment is low. so the fundamentals are sound in terms of the united states. globally, the imf is calling for stronger growth in 2020, around 3% globally. the world bank is calling for 2.4%. so there is rosy forecasts ahead globally as well as for the united states. the market is looking at this dust-up with iran and as long as it remains a surgical strike on both sides, i think that's what we have seen so far, the market will dust that off and keep doing what it's going to do which is go higher. stuart: okay. hold on a second. i want to ask the same question about the price of oil. what's going on? it's $62 a barrel this morning. jeff flock is in the oil trading pits in chicago. $62.19. how do the traders explain that with all that's going on in the background? >> they say we're done. that's very simple.

they say we're done. this is not going any farther than here. that's what the market thinks. we got as high overnight, as high as $65.65. so we were up $3 at one point. we came down fairly rapidly, particularly after the president's tweet. we are now down about 50 cents. we were down $1.50 earlier in this session. so you know, i think the market clearly thinks we are done. is that true? i don't know. stuart: i think that's exactly what the market is telling us. reporter: can i make a point? mid-september of '19 when the iranians struck saudi arabia's largest oil production field and its tanks, wti crude u.s. was around $51 a barrel. it went up to a little above $55, then fell back down a little bit. again, this is a muted reaction. that was a direct strike, 19 missiles including cruise

missiles were fired at saudi facilities. all but two of those were direct hits and the market recognizes saudis are in trouble if the iranians want to hit them directly. we also know the iranians have cruise missiles, can hit surgically. the fact they didn't strike and cause any loss of life yesterday is a positive sign in terms of this not escalating to what people are afraid of. stuart: i want to bring in oil analyst carl lowrie to join us. you said a week or ten days ago we were heading for $80 a barrel oil. are you going to retreat from that? >> no. no. i think we saw last night, if there's escalation, retaliation, escalation, continuation, we saw the retaliation last night. and we spiked. we ran up almost three, four dollars. if we see this again, we have to see the escalation. we have retaliation, now escalation and how far it goes from there. but we are on the verge of this. stuart: all right. all right. hold up. okay. we don't know whether there's going to be tit for tat escalation.

we don't know that. but in the absence of that, if there is no tit for tat retaliation, does the price of oil go back into the 50s, $50 a range? >> it goes lower. i don't know if it can go that low. people are still going to be on pins and needles until something gets resolved but it's not going to be that easy. whether it's stock market or oil, right now volatility is the key. stuart: there's a glut of oil on the world market, isn't there? >> there's a lot out there. there is definitely a lot out there but we are seeing demand increasing. we are seeing a lot of economies picking up their pace right now. if we can get this deal with china done and through phase one, we can see supplies get taken away very quickly. stuart: okay, thanks for being with us again, appreciate it. we've got 30 seconds to go before this market opens. we are expecting the dow to be down maybe 20. we are expecting the s&p and the nasdaq both to be a little higher. but there's no major move on the market expected at the opening bell this morning. it seems to be another shrug despite those 15 missiles

launched from iran at our bases in iraq. no casualties, want to say that right up front. again, the president will speak to the nation at 11:00 eastern time this morning. you of course will see it right here. there you have it. they are ringing the bell, they are clapping and cheering. it's a wednesday morning right after the missile attack on american bases in iraq and we have opened lower. it ain't a huge sell-off, sports fans. we are down 36 points as we speak. i'm looking on the left-hand side of the screen, this is for our radio listeners, we've got about half the dow red, that's down, and half of the dow up, that's green. not much of a reaction to a missile strike last night. the s&p 500, that's opened higher. we are down a fraction on the dow. we are up a tiny fraction on the s&p. in fact, there's virtually no change at all. how about the nasdaq, home of the big tech companies. that is down a tiny, tiny fraction, .04%. i'm going to show you oil, $62 a barrel. more on that in a second.

the dow would be positive but for walgreens and boeing. there's news on walgreens. their profits down 25%. it's a dow stock, down 3%. there's news on boeing. boeing 737-800 crashed in tehran last night. don't know the cause. boeing's stock down nearly six bucks. it's a dow stock. hurts the dow average. let me reintroduce everybody. now we are off and running. shah gilani, david dietze, susan li, ashley webster all together now. so ashley and susan, the market is shrugging yet again. susan: if you saw the reaction last night when dow futures dropped 400 points, you had oil spiking 5%, gold pushing above $16 an ounce because of the algorithms. 50% of this market is now computer driven and we have missiles crossing the headlines, that's the instant reaction. if you take a look at reality today, much different story. ashley: i'm also amazed at oil. even in the overnight hours, it

bumped up to $65, $65.65, i think jeff flock said it was at the high, that's really nothing when you consider if there were a number of years ago, these numbers would have been off the charts. it's a different world. the markets, as you say, meh. susan: know what's being ignored, the fact we had stellar, stellar job creation in the u.s. in december. the adp reports came in at 202,000 jobs in december in the u.s. that's the highest in eight months as we end the year in 2019 heading to 2020. stuart: i missed that. i absolutely missed that. 202,000 private sector jobs, adp announced this morning. david, that tells you the president is playing a strong hand. he's got a strong economy behind him. >> absolutely. we've got the lowest unemployment in like 50 years. very low interest rates. right now, remember, markets always look forward. so relative to last friday, the chance for that escalation that others have been talking about is reduced and i think markets are taking heart of that. at the end of the day i tell my clients are you less likely to go online shopping at amazon

today, are you less likely to go to a car showroom and look at an suv or pickup, are you less likely to go out for dinner tonight. the answer is we are not changing anything. therefore, investors should stay the course. stuart: you think, shah gilani, this market goes higher when we resolve whatever is going on today and tomorrow with iran, the market goes higher? you there? >> it wants to go higher already, stuart. you have been saying this for months now. the market just looks like it wants to go higher. you are 100% right. it does want to go higher. again, everything that david said and i agree with in terms of the economy, in terms of the fundamentals, in terms of job growth, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, yeah, we are looking pretty good out there. stuart: look at it, we just turned positive. we have now turned positive on the dow, positive on the s&p, positive on the nasdaq. i'm going to show you boeing. that is still dra drag on the d. a ukrainian 737-800 went down in tehran. all 176 people on board were killed. do you have anything to add to this, gerri willis at the

exchange? gerri: yeah, this is yet another surprise from the markets here. boeing not even the worst performing of the dow stocks. that accolade goes to walgreens for poor earnings, as you discussed before. but let me tell you, price target cut from ubs to $360 from $370. cowan coming in saying we are cutting our rating on the stock to market perform from outperform and the price target to $371 from $419. so frankly, given what boeing has been through, what has happened with this company, the fact that it is even at this level is astonishing and clearly, there is a lot of support in the market for this stock but today, we are starting to see some pullback from major analysts on boeing shares. back to you. stuart: thanks very much, gerri. let's check the big board again because we have had a turn-around. well, a fractional loss now for the dow.

it's teetering around the break-even point. here's an indicator. the ten-year treasury yield. i believe we are around 1.80 this morning. we are at 1.81. i call that a positive sign for the economy. is it? is it, david? >> absolutely. that reflects that there's not the flight to safety by the bond market into that ten-year treasury. people are seeing a reduction in the potential for an escalation and that's why people are not flying into that bond. stuart: i want to keep checking the price of oil. i believe we are still at $62 a barrel. that in itself is extraordinary, given all that's going on in the oil patch. we are actually down 35 cents at $62.36. can you show me, please, the big tech stocks? wonder if we have that board ready to go. that's where all the money has been flowing recently. i want to know if it's flowing in there today. the answer is yes, it is. we have the price of apple's stock, $298. a little shy of the $300 mark. google is up, amazon is down a buck, two bucks, that's it. facebook reaching $214 this morning.

microsoft on the upside, $158.12 for the big techs right there. shah gilani, you have been on the show for yoers aears and yed years and you always push big tech. that's been your vehicle for making a ton of money. what are you doing now with big tech? >> stay the course, stuart. big tech has led since 2009. it continues to lead. look at last year, 2019. the nasdaq composite was up i think 35%, well ahead of the other major benchmarks, and i think it's going to continue to lead because of obviously technology. these companies are producing massive profits, have massive cash flows and very -- manage their debt beautifully and so there's no reason for them not to expand their reach, their products in terms of their services and everything that they do. so yes, they are going to continue to lead the market higher. stuart: overall, we don't have that much movement for the averages so far on wall street. okay, we are six minutes into the trading session. but there isn't that much

movement. i suspect the market is on pause, if you want to put it like that, waiting for the president to speak at 11:00 this morning. 11:00 eastern time. i'm going to ask david and shah, what do you want to hear from the president that would help the market? david first. >> i want the president to say you know, we cannot tolerate any type of aggression in the middle east, we need to keep those economies going. i also want to hear some allusion to what's going on with boeing. there's more questions than answers. what happened to that plane? was it shot down by iran? [ speaking simultaneously ] stuart: total speculation. >> absolutely. if it was a problem from the boeing engine itself, of course, boeing is our largest employer, our largest exporter so we need to know more about the boeing situation. stuart: i don't think the president will address that. i can't believe the president will open up and say something about that, unless he knows something that's been going on and i'm not going to suggest that at all. shah gilani, what do you want to hear from the president this

morning? >> i want to hear some conservative rhetoric in terms of the united states will only react to what iran does and it doesn't intend any further strikes unless any u.s. facilities are hit or any loss of life. that's what i would like to hear from the president. i think the market would digest that very quickly. i think we would end up the day quite a bit higher. stuart: i do want to add two news items to our coverage of what's been going on in iran. late, late last night, iran time, there were a series of earthquakes in iran, including one near a nuclear facility. 6.5 magnitude, i believe. no, i take that back. i'm sorry. it was 5.9 magnitude that they hit across iran late last night. second news item, the funeral procession for qassem suleimani was actually suspended after 50 people had died, more than 50,

actually, in a stampede during his funeral procession. he was eventually buried in the town of kerman, his birthplace. but 50 people killed in a stampede. that is what's going on in iran and the middle east and look at the price of oil. $62 a barrel. susan: just to comment on oil, the reason why we have seen it go up, up to eight-month highs, yes, some uncertainty in the middle east but you see that's been dialed back but also, it's a positive sign when global growth is picking up which drags on the u.s. last year. i think, you know, i think it's a good sign that the rest of the world is finally growing once again and that can only be positive for the u.s. as well. stuart: i heard you come into that, shah. you agree with that? global economy is doing better? >> yes, i agree with susan. as i pointed to earlier, both the imf and world bank have raised their estimates for global growth and i think that's a positive. oil obviously reflects that in terms of greater demand. as you asked carl, i don't know

that oil can get into the 50s again because of hopefully increased demand because of better global growth, i think oil will stay around low 60s, maybe break 60. i think it's probably going to base out around there. that's a positive, i think, for the global growth situation and for the united states and for the market. stuart: left-hand side of your screen, again, this is for benefit of radio listeners, we have the defense stocks. lockheed, northrop, general dynamics, raytheon, all down. they were up earlier on news of the missile attack from iran on the american bases in iraq. they were up. but now they are all down. not a lot but they're down. could this be that the market and investors are saying it's a one-off? we got their general, they missiled our bases, call it quits? that's a little going too far, i would probably say, but maybe that's in the market right now. >> i think so. people are looking back to what happened in september, when the drones hit the saudi oil facilities, there was initial spike up and everything resolved down. we had a great q4. i think the market's saying this

is the more likely scenario given how everything is playing out here. stuart: okay. you were about to -- susan: i was going to talk about iranian oil shipments because exports have dwindled and crippled because of the sanctions. iran is only shipping about a quarter million barrels in the last month of last year. they usually ship two to three million to china and other countries but compare that to saudi arabia which ships six million andranian is not a factor anymore so it doesn't have a big impact on oil pricing. stuart: shah, what do you make of my statement. i think the islamic revolution in iran has been an absolute tragedy for the american people. two generations have squandered opportunity, vast oil wealth ruined, spent overseas, the economy is collapsing. it is a tragedy for the iranian people. what do you say? >> i agree 100%. it has been awful for the iranian people and most of my iranian friends, i would say probably 99% of them, think that this regime has to go. it should have been gone a long

time ago. no one can figure out how they are going to leave. they are never going to leave and it's a problem for the iranian people. both in iran and around the world. maybe 1% that are probably inclined to side with the government are the more radical shiite friends of mine who think that yes, this is what the government is doing because iran tried to go western, didn't work out so well for the religious fanatics so they hold on to that. but i think for the rest of the country, this has been an utter disgrace, a tragedy and the worst thing that could have happened. stuart: so the future of the market today depends heavily on what president trump will say at 11:00 this morning when he addresses the nation. i suspect that he will keep his tone very measured and calm. bear in mind, please, that we have not heard anything from the president since last night, right after the missile attack on the bases in iraq, he tweeted

it was a very calm, not a bellicose tweet at all, it was basically saying everything's okay. ashley: everything is okay. yep. waiting for more developments and waiting for more reports but it was not probably one of the more tepid tweets from the president. stuart: it was nothing from then all the way through to now. i have not seen a presidential tweet so far this morning. not at all. it simply isn't there. we won't hear from him, i don't think, until 11:00 this morning. maybe i shouldn't get ahead of this, but you know, it does suggest that the president is going to take a measured tone. ashley: oh, yes. stuart: i'm not expecting a bellicose -- ashley: i think we don't want war will be the overarching message from the president. stuart: i think the market will like that. as of right now, we have all turned higher, dow, s&p, nasdaq, all on the upside. can you show me, please, macy's, the department store stock? macy's? they reportedly are set to close 28 stores and one

bloomingdale's. the stock is actually up 3% on that. i guess they are victims of the retail ice age. susan: we also came out with same store sales in the fourth quarter, that includes the all-important holiday period, dropping less than expected. only falling .6%, whereas people thought it would drop off closer to 1.5%. so it was a better holiday sales trend for macy's but still sufferi suffering. tough era for the traditional retailers. stuart: years since i went in a department store. years and years and years. i can't remember last time i did. shopping mall, same thing. >> they are picking up their game, adding digital offerings that are very strong. that's putting pressure on amazon. they are trying to make going out to shop a real experience. particularly nordstrom's doing a great job with that. i confess i got a couple gifts that were bought at macy's. i loved it because i'm a stockholder at macy's. the death of macy's has been greatly exaggerated. stuart: okay. what have you got on this, shah

gilani? >> i agree with david. the death of macy's has been greatly exaggerated. management has done a very good job of holding up the company. i think they are going to continue to do that. their online presence, they are increasing as best they can. you go into any macy's, there are tremendous bargains to be had. it's a great store to shop in, it's beautifully merchandised. in terms of their location, they needed to cut back on some of the locations and they have been downsizing. management again is doing the right thing. there are goonly going to be probably a handful of these department stores left in the next five, ten years and i think macy's will be one of them. stuart: i will wrap this up, the immediate market coverage. want to thank shah gilani and david dietze, both of you appearing on a very important day. much appreciated. then there's this. defense secretary esper said that iran top general suleimani was preparing attacks on u.s. targets just days away before he was killed. what more do we have? ashley: more days than weeks, he said. he says look, they were planning

attacks against u.s. targets. he said suleimani himself was conducted, preparing, planning military operations. he was a legitimate target, says mr. esper, and his time was due. they go on to say, the administration, we may hear this again from the president in a little while, but he said we are not looking to start a war with iran but we are prepared to finish one. stuart: so he's commenting really on the democrats' pledge that it's a march to war and there was this intelligence and rush to judgment. ashley: a critical strike that was needed because attacks were imminent and suleimani was the man that was planning them all. he was coordinating it. stuart: we also have the "wall street journal" reporting today that allies of america want to sit out this confrontation with iran. more on that. susan: they didn't want to be caught up in the collateral damage. saudi arabia, uae, qatar, bahrain, all have military installations in their country and they have been silent over the last 24 hours. i think saudi arabia, back in

september, they had a drone and missile strike from iran hurting their largest oil refiner, so mbs this morning calling for calm, saying efforts to calm the situation in a phone call with the iraqi prime minister. also we have been hearing from the uae who has been calling for wisdom and a rational approach. more hard line stance coming from israel's benjamin netanyahu. as we know, israel and iran have a pretty tense, cold standoff and he commended mr. trump for the strike against general suleimani. stuart: i do hear a lot of calming voices there outside of israel. i hear calming voices around the gulf. that's what it seems to me at this point. senator ted cruz sounding off on what's happening in the mideast right now. i will roll some tape for you. go ahead, please. >> when you see democrats and the media lighting their hair on fire and saying we are heading to world war iii, this is hysteria driven by the fact that they hate donald trump. stuart: all right. joining us, harlan hill, with the trump campaign advisory

board. you heard what senator cruz had to say there. your comment, please? >> absolutely agree with him. 100%. i want to just say i think the president is going to declare victory here today. this is the art of the deal. he called the bluff with the iranians. he's killed one of the most dangerous men on the planet and i think last night's strike on american bases, they didn't take any american lives, was by design. it is their way of saving face. but the real loss here is how quickly the democrats and the media sought to side with the iranians, a brutal islamist regime. it's telling. stuart: so you don't expect the president to be bellicose today, you don't expect him to issue any threats. he's not going to sing kumbaya but he might say hold on, folks, we got their general, they missiled our bases, i'm not going to say let's call it quits but i think the president is probably going to be fairly calming here. what do you think? >> i think so, too. i think that's what people are looking for.

you know, we had this little tit for tat. for months, the iranians got away with basically murder, in some cases literally murder, you know, seizing tankers in the gulf and you know, it had to stop. they were clearly escalating. they killed an american, they stormed our embassy. we had to send a message and put a stop to this before it escalated. and the president is not -- he's not interested in appeasement. so he made a very clear statement with killing suleimani and i think the president will come out today and look to calm tensions a little bit, but to indicate that if they try this again, there's going to be even more repercussions. stuart: the attack on the president is -- from the democrats and from a lot of people on the left, he's taking us into war. he's a warmonger. he's taking us down that nasty road to war. he has provoked the iranians. i would expect him today to say i don't want war, no war, we don't want that. you agree? >> absolutely. i think if anything, the president is looking to avoid war. i mean, it's peace through

strength. for years, especially in the previous administration, i mean, look, the previous administration basically was funding terrorism and hezbollah by sending pallets full of cash to iran. this is a new day. tpt is not goi-- the president going to fund terrorism in the mideast, he's not going to fund a terrorist regime that is killing americans. this is a new day. the president is turning the page. this is a new foreign policy that i think we can apply beyond just iran. stuart: is this now a factor, an issue in the 2020 election? >> well, i think democrats are trying to, but we'll see what the public polling looks like. i think it was very telling that joe biden has tried to sort of stay back and not say too much yet after last night's strikes. i think that's because democrats realize the president won on this issue and there's not much they can actually criticize him on. now, some of the fringe democrats are. i saw democrats re-tweeting the iranian flag last night. this is ridiculous. it's ridiculous. stuart: i can't believe that.

i find that very hard to believe. >> it's true. look on twitter. lot of democrats are. stuart: you are with the trump 2020 campaign advisory board. do you have solid republican support for the president at this time? >> oh, my gosh. the president has probably the highest intra-party approval rating of any non-war time president in history. i feel extremely confident about the president's prospects going into 2020. we talk about fund-raising last week, it's gangbusters. this president is on fire. i feel really confident about our prospects going into 2020. stuart: what about impeachment? i haven't even used that word once so far this morning but it's still hanging out there, isn't it? >> it's such a joke. nancy pelosi is continuing to play games. the american people are ultimately going to decide this. the senate is not going to vote to remove the president. i think voters will overwhelmingly vote to send him back to washington in 2020. stuart: harlan, thanks very much

for joining us. appreciate it big-time. thanks very much. i want to check the markets. this is very important today after the 15 missiles launched from iran towards american bases. two were hit in iraq. no casualties. we are now up across the board. the dow is up, s&p is up, the nasdaq is up but there's not that much price movement. i suspect the market is on what you might call pause, waiting for the president to speak at 11:00 this morning. he addresses the nation from the white house. 11:00 eastern. you will see it, obviously. speaker pelosi at a restaurant opening in washington while monitoring events in iraq. what? ashley: yeah, okay, speaker pelosi put out a tweet saying she is monitoring the situation following the bombings targeting u.s. troops in iraq and then not long after that, she was seen at the opening of a d.c. restaurant and she attended, representative liz cheney, republican from

wyoming, then put out this tweet saying speaker pelosi is an embarrassment and unfit for office while showing a picture of speaker pelosi at that restaurant opening. those that were there say she attended for just ten minutes but liz cheney calling her out saying yeah, i can see that you are monitoring the situation in iraq while enjoying your time at the opening of a restaurant. stuart: sarcasm right there. okay. congressman buddy carter joins us, he's a republican from the state of georgia. congressman, speaker pelosi wants to restrain the war powers that our president has and she's going to try to get a vote on it this week. you are shaking your head, you don't want to see this, but what chance that it will pass? >> well, first of all, they are in the majority and i suspect that she will have the votes to get something like that passed. as ludicrous as it is. the president was within his bounds to do what he did. it was decisive, it was justifiable, it was calculated and what he did has saved

american lives. i mean, look, for years, we did nothing and i have always said when you do nothing, you are doing something. what we were doing was allowing this to go on. five, six americans killed at a time and when you calculate all that and add it all up, you get over 600 or so americans who were killed by this evil person. the president took him out. what the president did saved lives. it's not to start a war, it's to stop a war. instead of the democrats filing all these petitions and what they are trying to do, all this shows is that they hate donald j. trump more than they love america. and that is shameful. stuart: what's your assessment of that missile attack? i will go through it real fast. 15 missiles fired, they hit two american bases in iraq. four missiles failed. there are people this morning saying that that was a rather restrained attack.

they could have gone after a base that was much closer to iran with more precision-guided weapons. what do you say to that idea that the attack from iran last night was, in fact, restrained? what do you say? >> i don't think there's any question about it. i think it was symbolic at best. from what i understand, it was nothing more than a mediocre fireworks show. i get it, i know iran is trying to save face here, and what they did again was symbolic but when you look at it as a whole, who wins here? first of all, the president wins. secondly and most importantly, most importantly, all americans and all of the free world wins because we have taken out an evil person. the world is much safer today, much better off today, without suleimani in it. stuart: congressman carter, thanks very much for joining us on an important day. appreciate it, sir. let me draw your attention to the market. we have just seen a new all-time high for the nasdaq. bottom left-hand corner of the screen, 9,100 on this, the day

after an iranian missile attack on two american bases in iraq. all-time high for the nasdaq. the dow is beginning to move up. now we are gaining 38 points at 28,600. the s&p is moving up, ten points right now, 3,247. and the president will address the nation on iran's decision to target our troops, he will make that address at 11:00 eastern this morning. we will obviously carry it for you. this is a very important speech by the president and we will get reaction to it from iowa senator joni ernst, who sits on the armed services committee and united states senate. that's coming up in our next hour. our retirement plan with voya gives us confidence. they help us with achievable steps along the way... so we can spend a bit today, knowing we're prepared for tomorrow. wow dad, do you think you overdid it maybe? i don't think so... what do you think, peanut? nope! honey, do you think we overdid it? overdid what?

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first off, iran fired 15 missiles at two bases, at bases in iraq. two bases were hit but thankfully no u.s. casualties. iran's foreign minister said it was proportionate attack. we are defending ourselves, he said. that is relatively calm statement, rather different from the bellicose statements from iran. iran attacks american bases. is it done? de-escalate from here? wait until we hear from president trump at 11 eastern. here is another serious development, ukrainian boeing 787 crashed on take off. iranian officials claim it was mechanical problems or engine trouble.

they said they will not release to the black box to america to prove what the cause was. was it connection, or is there connection to the missile attack? suffice it to say, great deal of speculation. boeing's stock is it down $7. back to 329, but rest of the market, as we come to expect these days, it is reacting with a shrug to iranian news. investors seem to believe not the start of a war. the dow industrials up 28 points. nasdaq composite, new record all-time high, up 34 points. 9100. and the s&p, bottom of your screen there, left-hand side, up 10 points. 3247. as for the price of oil, look at that, down 60 cents. barely above $62 per barrel. extraordinary market reaction to a major event in the middle east. i want to bring in market watcher george seay who has something to say on this. are you buying today, george?

>> i'm not. i'm watching, stuart. i don't want to be overly flippant after two bases of our country were attacked in iraq by an enemy but at the same time, it is almost like they explode ad bag of hot air over our bases. seems like we'll incur some damage, but no casualties. it goes directly against the shrill, panicky tone of voice among the neo isolationists i saw on news channel. this seems to be a big bunch of nothing. the market is responding accurately to this iran gave sheepish, ineffective response. we all should be heart inned by that. if you can explain to our viewers what is going on here? because the dow industrials, at this moment, are only, what, 280 points away from their all-time record high. nasdaq composite has just made an all-time record high. that, all of this, despite what has been going on in iran over

the past five or six days. can you explain to our viewers what really is going on the market right now? >> i can. the market reflecting reality and substance which is the u.s. economy is powerhouse t continues to roll on in 2020. and market for now at least believes the iran situation will not develop into something that will completely derail the market. the mullahs revealed very clearly with the missile strike last night they are afraid of the american juggernaut. they don't want us to take out some of their more substantive air defense systems or missile systems or oil infrastructure. it is like a little cat basically trying to scratch a lion get away with it out the lion killing the cat. i think it is very encouraging for us today that secretary pompeo and the president, basically took a really strong move and iranians recoiled in front of it. that was a big bunch of nothing with no casualties. stuart: would you conclude what has been going on over the past

five or six days is temporary blip, that temporarily interrupts this long running bull market? >> stuart, that is what it appears to be. as a long time investor i'm reluctant to make strong conclusions after a few days of data. we have to see how it plays out. they make a mistake. they're trying to strategically stand down with our country stair stepped. i think that was the first stair step down last night. stuart: george seay. appreciate it. thank you. >> thank you. stuart: left-hand side of the screen green arrows all over the place. green arrows for facebook. they're up a buck at 214. company officials testifying a house hearing on "deepfakes" this morning. the stock is up. beyond meat, rival, impossible foods has reportedly given up trying to win over mcdonald's. beyond meat is up a buck 40 at

85 bucks a share. walgreens which is a dow stock. this is a drag on the dow. the profit dropped 25%. not a good outlook for sales. the stock is down 6%. i don't know how many point taking out on the dow. it is a drag on the dow which is still up 45 points. macy's reports closing 28 more stores, one bloomingdale's. the stock is up 38 cents at $18 a share. the look at defense stocks they spiked up with news of the missile attack from iran on our bases in iraq. some are actually moving down. lockheed is down. northrop grumman is down. general dynamicses up 70 cents. house speaker nancy pelosi, there is the graphic for you. i don't want to interrupt that. that is a nice graphic. she tweeted response to iran strikes last night. i will read it for you. closely monitoring the situation following bombings, targeting

u.s. troops in rack. we must insure the safety of our servicemembers including ending needless provocations from the administration. demanding that iran cease its violence. america and world cannot afford war. ohio republican congressman warren davidson. wait a minute who is provoking who? the speaker suggests we were provoking iran. do you see it that way? >> no, stuart, i definitely don't see it that way. speaker pelosi, who needs "baghdad bob" when you have speaker pelosi and the mainstream media giving iran's propaganda for iran. instead of really supporting the united states. usually the country rallies around the president. rallies around the nation, international interests. we've seen very divisive approach that has been the whole administration so far by speaker pelosi. stuart: what do you want to see and hear from the president today? i know that you're a former army

ranger i believe. do you want him to de-escalate the situation when he speaks at 11:00 this morning? >> i'm confident what the president will say is the same thing he said all along. we need to get out of endless wars. we're always absolutely going to defend the united states of america. we're going to support and defend our constitution. we're going to stand behind our allies. and so, we're going to see the president do that in word, shortly. we seen him do it indeed. his deeds show when you attack our embassy, it will not go unnoticed and without response. so i'm confident that the president's going to do those things. what i hope is, speaker pelosi will do what is long overdue in congress, talk about real authorizations instead of knew knee-jerk reactions. stuart: more on what speaker pelosi said. hold on a second. listen to what new york republican lee zeldin said about

speaker pelosi. roll tape. >> speaker pelosi putting out the statement. instead of thinking about our troops, hoping there is no casualties, sticking together as americans first, to take that political partisan shot at the president was wrong. stuart: a politically partisan shot. do you agree with that? >> absolutely. that is what you see the sentiment behind the authorization that she want to debate today. it is not real debate fitting of congress about what kinds of wars should congress authorize and posture foreign policy. a resolution condemning donald trump at precisely the wrong moment. we should talk about why we're in iraq in the first place. instead we'll have essentially anti-trump message that originally was sponsored by i will hahn omar. thankfully they backed down from that. stuart: warren davidson. former army ranger. we respect that thanks for joining us this morning.

>> got it. stuart: we have news what president trump is planning to say at 11:00. ashley: comes from john roberts, fox newss toiled by senior administration official. president trump will not seek escalation, when he addresses the nation an hour from now. maximum pressure campaign against iran will continue. no escalation. but pressure campaign on iran will continue. stuart: bare bones outlook. we'll find out for sure at 11. the other huge story coming out of iran overnight is this. you ukrainian boeing airplane, 176 passengers and crew crashed shortly after taking off from tehran's airport that was very early this morning. give me the latest. ashley: very strange. stuart: jump in for a second, please. that crash on takeoff occurred within hours of the missile attack from iran on our base in iraq. the timing is suspicious. ashley: it is suspicious. many questions being asked.

very few details known at this point. it took off, climbed to 8,000 feet. suddenly everything disappears, including the data. very unusual. there are suggestions, oh, it was engine failure. pilots and aviation experts quick to point out, look the 737-800 which this was is designed to continue fly even with an engine failure. it wouldn't explain why data suddenly disappeared immediately, which suggests some sort of catastrophic event. iranians have the black bookses. they will not share it with boeing or the united states but with ukrainian officials. at this point we have no idea. someone pointed out also, that it is so fragmented, debris something happened midair, could have been impact of the crash. there are very speculative questions being asked. what happened to that flight. as you point out so close to the missile attack on u.s. troops in iraq. stuart: begs the question, doesn't it? ash, thank you. check the markets please.

green arrows all across the board. dow, s&p, nasdaq all on upside. follows 15 missiles fired at american troop bases in iraq. no casualties. president trump speaks this morning from the white house, 11:00 eastern about those attacks last night. you will see that address right here. we'll be back.

stuart: look at that. now we're up 50 points on the dow industrials. 28,600. that he is war we are. you have green air ross across the board, s&p, nasdaq, dow. individual stocks moving, united airlines. the airline will take a 90 million-dollar hit because of disruptions to its flights to hong kong because protests there, the stock's up 50 cents. $87 a share. alibaba, often called china's amazon, lowering their fees. lower fees than amazon in europe.

alibaba reaching 218 right now. morgan stanley, raising its price target on microsoft. i sold too early. they think it will go to $189 a share. it is 158 as we speak. the faa banning u.s. airliners, airlines, i should say flying over iran, iraq and the whole region actually. did they make the ban right after the boeing crash in tehran? ashley: yes they did. yes they did. banning, operating airspace over iraq, iran, gulf of oman and waters between iran and saudi arabia. that is quite a large area. that is take as large coordination. there center national aviation team act activated. it is pretty crowded. they have to take routes that skirt around.

stuart: put up the market boards. we've seen a turnaround to the upside. we're now green arrows all across the board. now i should say that just a few minutes ago, we heard from john roberts, fox news, who is reporting what president trump will be saying at 11:00 this morning. we don't know the detail but we have a broad outline. the broad outline is, the president will call for de-escalation but he wants to keep maximum pressure fence iran. when we heard that, market went up some more. then we have general jack keane, frequent guest on this program, responding to concerns that the tension with iran will escalate to a full-blown war. roll that tape please. >> is there going to be some retaliation? yes, i do believe it will be measured. we're not going to war with iran. there is not going to be a world war iii as people are claiming. stuart: not going to world war iii. former cia station chief,

middle east expert, fox news contribute, daniel hoffman joins us now. do you agree with that, we're not going to war? >> i do. i mean it's a matter of semantics i suppose. you might argue we've been at war with iran since 1979 and heightened state of aggression since we invaded iraq in 2003. iran has been using proxy militant groups in iraq to target our people and our installations. one of those militant groups, kataeb hezbollah, was targeted in the strike last week. as far as, we're headed towards a major war i agree 100% with general keane. that is not going to happen. we demonstrated that we have escalation dominance. we enjoy the proper level of deterrence. we saw that last night with iran launching a halfhearted attack against our installations in

iraq. stuart: now most unusually we only heard from the president once last night, a brief tweet, right after the news of the attack broke. we haven't heard anything from him since. we won't hear anything from him until 11:00 this morning. is it possible, you're a former cia station chief. is it possible there were messages being exchanged between washington and tehran by maybe third party intermediary? possible they were organizing not a truce, a stand-down, de-escalation of removal of tension. is it possible those messages were being exchanged? >> i always felt like even before last night it was possible we were back channeling iran with messages. there are a lot of ways we can do it, and the idea would be to emphasize to iran that we're serious about the red line f you target our people, and we suffer casualties we will devastate your regime. we made it very clear that it is

not just about the foot soldiers. we'll deal with them, but it is leaders who make the decisions to target us like soleimani. and, if there are follow-on attacks those leaders would be in our cross-hairs. i think it is certainly possible. we have some reporting that iran was messaging us through iraq. that iran delivered some messages to the iraqi government about where they were going to target these ballistic missiles last night so that the iraqi military was aware, and could prepare. stuart: that would be real restraint then, if you give them a warning, here we come. that is a restrained counterattack. >> right. i think what iran wanted to do is thread the needle. retaliate a little bit for their own public consumption but not so much that they would risk punitive, counterattack from the united states. stuart: daniel hoffman, you have expertise in details we don't

know about. thank you for being here. >> my pleasure. stuart: former nissan chief carlos ghosn still talking. is that live? ashley: no. stuart: no, no. he's done. that's live? still talking. okay. all right. what he is doing here, he is blasting the japanese legal system and the conditions under which he was held. we'll have details on that in just a moment. top of the hour, president trump addresses the nation about the situation in iran. we know that he is going to, john roberts is reporting about de-escalating the crisis, but keep maximum pressure against iran. we'll be back with more after this. so you can quickly check the markets? yeah, actually i'm taking one last look at my dashboard before we board. excellent. and you have thinkorswim mobile- -so i can finish analyzing the risk on this position.

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stuart: carlos ghosn still talking at his news conference in beirut. susan: he says he is victim of systemic blot involving prosecutors, law firms and toyota executives. take a listen. >> i'm not here to victimize myself. i'm here to shed light on a system that violates the most basic principles of humanity. i'm here to clear my name and to pronounce clearly and emphatically something was interpreted as heresy in the japanese judicial system. these allegations are untrue and i should have never been arrested in the first place. this is important for me to emphasize i'm not above the law. i welcome the opportunity for the truth to come out and to have my name vindicated and my

reputation restored. i did not escape justice. i fled injustice and persecution, political persecution. susan: how he escaped japan i will not talk about that. because it will pose several people that helped me in the process but he did talk about the conditions he was under house arrest. he was allowed to shower only twice a week. eight hours of daily interrogation without his lawyers. no contact with his wife for nine months. restricted access to prescription drugs. he said if i didn't escape japan i would have died there. stuart: i just finished with 2 1/2 hours up there in beirut. 30 minutes from now the president gives remarks on iran after launching of missiles at u.s. bases in iraq last night. of course you will see his speech right here. still on the middle east. russia's president vladmir putin made a surprise visit to syria. he met assad. he will meet with turkey's erdogan today i believe.

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stuart: stocks moving up this morning. the dow is up 20 points. nasdaq composite hit yet another all-time record high. bottom left-hand side of the screen. earlier at 9,100. it backed off a little from that record high. one item of strong economic news, we don't want to ignore it, 202,000 new private sector jobs reported for last month. that's strong. now moments from now, i mean how long we got? about 17 seconds to go.

we're going to get the latest reading how much oil we've got in storage, and how much oil we took out and used. that could affect the price. the price by the way, at this moment, despite what is happening in the middle east, is down to $61 per barrel. 10:30, jeff flock at cme. number please. >> all eyes up there, stuart, my gosh, huge surprise. an addition to crude inventories, wow, in addition. it was expected to be down 3.5, a draw of 3.5 million barrels it is actually up 1.1 million barrels. there is more distillates in inventory than we thought, 5.3 million. more gas in storage than we thought, 9.1 million. that all you would think would drive down prices if it weren't for the whole middle east situation but maybe we're back to supply and demand driving prices. wouldn't that be cool? look what oil is doing right

now, by the way. look at that? we're depressed as we suspected. down over $1.25. how about that? stuart: that means we got a lot of supply. in the absence of very sharply higher demand, the price -- ashley: i would like to know who makes these predictions. you love estimates and expectations but they're so wrong. down almost 3 1/2 million. it was a build to jeff's point. look at price of oil continue to drop. 61.26, thereabouts. down more than 2 1/3%. given everything going on around the world, remarkable. >> cheap gas for varney. cheap gas for varney. connell: which hear you flock. we like what you're saying. go ahead, susan. susan: concerns going through the straight of hormuz. saudi arabia suspended any travel or shipping through the area. that is still in place until

1600 saudi arabian time. that strait, accounts for about a third of the world oil shipments, we concentrate what is going on in the middle east, iran, et cetera. there is glut of oil on the world market. we got a lot of stuff in storage in america. >> we're responsible for it. stuart: it istookers, jeff flock. we love them. -- frackers. >> price goes down, the frackers don't make as much money. that is okay. they're still pumping. stuart: that is what we want. keep pumping, frackers. jeff flock, thanks a lot. rephrase that one day. get series. russia president vladmir putin is in the middle east. he met with syria's bashar al-assad yesterday. he is meeting turkey's erdogan today. mark sim noski, former defense department official, russia expert with us now. can you tell us what vladmir

putin is up to? >> on a victory lap sincein the middle east. first visit since 2016 when he visited russian forces. he will showcase safed assad and saved his regime. he is traveling to turkey as part of victory lap. he rescued russia, turkish relations. he will be there for opening of a gas pipeline. even though the visit planned well in advance, putin there is to showcase russia is source of stability in the middle east. it will be there to stick by its partners, when the u.s., there is questions, about whether it will stick by its partners in iraq. stuart: there are some reports that iran deliberately tried to avoid u.s. military casualties in the missile strikes on bases in iraq. any comment on that? >> there was a slew of targets

the iranians could have chosen. i do think they limited their response to an airbase with less than lethal ballistic missiles that avoided mass casualties. i think they wanted to showcase to the domestic audience they responded without engendering inviting wider u.s. escalation. stuart: earlier this week, maybe last week, i'm not sure of the exact timing, but the saudi vice minister of defense held a meeting with president trump. the american side of things. the administration didn't say anything about it. no publicity whatsoever. we found out about it, because the saudis tweeted out that picture which shows the meeting. what is the significance of the no publicity from the administration about a meeting with the saudi vice minister of defense? significance please, mark? >> i think there is a difference of views between the two sides and two allies. i think saudis are expressing

caution, that they do not want to see the situation escalate. they likely are not interested in putting significant pressure on iran because they feel they will be the ones that will feel brunt of iranian attacks. in many ways lack of a common statement there is indication of difference of views how the u.s. should respond to the soleimani killing with our saudi allies. stuart: reading between the lines, mark, real fast, do you think we're marching towards war with iran? >> i think the ball is in the president's court. i think iranians have created a response that we essentially could do nothing in response. so i think the president could choose to escalate. but if he does not, i think there is off-ramp that the irransian have provided. stuart: i tell you our white house reporter is suggesting at 11:00 this morning the president will seek to de-escalate, but keep maximum pressure against iran. that sounds like de-escalation to me. last word to you? >> i hope it is de-escalation

for now. i hope cooler side can prevail. we can find a way to mediate away from a conflict. stuart: mark, thank you for joining us. >> thank you. stuart: i want to update you on the story, the other huge story coming out of iran which is the ukraine airlines plane, a boeing 737-800 crash happened near tehran airport just hours after missile attack on american bases in iraq. what else do we know? ashley: getting to the bottom will be difficult, boeing an united states have been told by iran they will not get their hands on the black boxes which have been retrieved. iran will work with ukrainian sources, it crashed minutes after takeoff and hours after attack on iraq bases from iran. that is when the plane disappeared t climbed to 8,000 feet and then disappeared. the data stopped producing. they're just now, comments we

saw from iran, and some ukrainians there, engine problems. well people say that wouldn't account for the data suddenly stopping abruptly. 63 canadians on the plane as well, we should mention. there are nationals living in tore round toe and canada on the flight. justin trudeau will work closely winter national partners to insure the plane crash is thoroughly investigated. canadians in touch with the ukrainian government. stuart: that plane was built in 2016. ashley: well-maintained. stuart: that is a new plane. susan: 787-800. not a max. ashley: single aisle twin-engine plane used thousands of times around the world. popular plane. stuart: it was serviced the day before the crash.

brand new airplane, recently serviced falls out of the sky. ashley: this airline has excellent maintenance. never had a fatal crash before. stuart: i don't want to be provock tiff the timing is suspicious. susan: why did iran suspend flights coming into the country knowing they were sending missiles into iraq, just for the safety of passengers and travelers across the country. stuart: we'll not know quickly whether engine trouble or mechanical probable because we can't get the black boxes. at least we can't get them. staying on iran, those on the left continue to slam the president after he ordered a strike to kill qassem soleimani. elizabeth warren refuses to call the general a terrorist. iowa senator, former combat vet joni ernst joins us with the reaction to that. coming up at 11 the president will make remarks after iran launched missmissiles at bases in iraq last night. of course you will see it right

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that's why fidelity leads the industry in value while our competition continues to talk. ♪ talk, talk stuart: green arrows across the board this morning, despite the missile attack on u.s. bases in iraq last night. we're up 18 on the dow. s&p's up. nasdaq is up. senator elizabeth warren was on "the view" and was asked by meghan mccain, why it is so hard to call soleimani a terrorist. roll that type. >> issued a statement calling soleimani a murderer. later you issued a second statement statement, saying quote, assassination after senior foreign military official. this is a man who obviously is responsible for hundreds of american troops deaths, carnage, that we can't even imagine. the treasury department and state department have both designated islamic revolutionary guard corps as a terrorist organization. i don't understand the

flip-flop. >> this isn't a change. they're truth. the question is, what is the response that the president of the united states should make? >> is a terrorist? >> he is part of a group that -- >> isn't terrorist? >> he is part of a group that -- >> he is not a terrorist? >> of course he is. stuart: that was a good exchange i would say. iowa senator joni ernst joins us now. madam senator. you were listening to that. your reaction, please? >> it is easy for me to call general soleimani a terrorist. for heavens sakes this is a man who orchestrated terrorist proxies around the globe and supplied them with deadly devices. those ieds, killed and maimed hundreds and thousands of americans. he is a terrorist. there is no doubt about it. it's easy. stuart: you're a combat veteran. i think you're the first female combat veteran to be elected to the united states senate. >> that is absolutely correct. stuart: when you hear a

politician, you cannot describe a man like soleimani as a terrorist, you cannot do it, how does it make you feel? >> i get disheart inned about the state of political affairs and division with the parties. this should be simple. this is for the good of america. president trump did absolutely the right thing taking out this terrorist. not only was he just an everyday terrorist, but again, he is one that orchestrated attacks all around this globe. he has threatened not only americans, allied forces. for heavens sakes the world is safer place without him? the question what comes next? we'll hear from the president in about 15 minutes. we understand that he is going to say that de-escalate but keep maximum pressure against iran. that is what we believe he is going to say. would that meet with your approval? >> i believe that is what the president is going to say as well. it does meet with my approval. we don't want war iran.

iran stated they don't want war with us. but what we see out there is asymmetrical gray zone activity which goes short of war coming from iran and so we do have to keep maximum pressure through diplomatic channels, through economic channels and i think the president is doing the right thing. he has a great team of advisors walking him through every step possible. and i think the president has done a phenomenal job when it comes to iran. stuart: we're told by former cia people that maybe overnight, there was some exchange of messages between washington, d.c., and tehran, iran. maybe those messages, from our president were, we took out soleimani. you do anything again and we'll take out some of your leaders. would you approve of that? >> well, i can't verify that but certainly i think the president would have a very strong message

to iran. former administrations didn't deal with iran. they allowed them to walk all over us as a nation. finally we do have a president that has said enough is enough. you will stop killing americans. the take out of soleimani demonstrates this quite clearly and, thankfully now we have that red line that is drawn. iran knows that if they cross it, they will be dealt with. stuart: you're saying that the red line works? that you make a significant, you do that again, we'll really come after you? you're saying that works? that will keep them in the box? >> that works. and they know, if they cross it again. if they kill another american, we will target them as well. so the president has made that quite clear. he hasn't made random threats out there. he has actually stated something. he has followed through. iran knows what the boundaries are. if they cross them again, they will be dealt with.

stuart: forgive me for asking, madam senator, i didn't look it up, i should have, you're a combat veteran from iraq? >> that is correct. that is correct. stuart: may i ask what you did there? >> i was a transportation company commander. we ran convoys up and down the roads from kuwait into iraq delivering supplies for our warriors up north. god bless our troops in the region and our prayers are with them. stuart: you were in charge of convoys, some which may have been hit by ieds planted by the iranian people, general soleimani. >> absolutely. absolutely. stuart: you have no objection to taking him out at all, do you? >> no objection i do happen to know of many individuals that have been maimed. we seen them cross through walter reed. many will go to san antonio to bampse there. general soleimani has been

involved through many ied incidents through iraq. he supported proxy force there is as other countries as well. i have no qualms about that man being off the face of the planet. stuart: we should leave it right there. senator joni ernst, republican iowa, combat veteran. thanks for joining us man. appreciate it. >> thank you, stuart. stuart: president trump speaks at top of the hour. don't miss this. you won't miss it if you stay with us. we'll be back. ♪ ♪ everything your trip needs, for everyone you love. expedia.

stuart: look at that. the dow industrials now up 14, 15 points. 28,600 just about. the s&p's up. nasdaq's up and this is the day after, literally hours after iran fired off 15 missiles directed at u.s. bases in iraq. two bases hit. no casualties of any kind. but that was an aggressive act. the market straight up. can you show me rice of oil please? oil has gone straight down. we had a spike-up when the missile attack occurred, 64, $65 a barrel. now this morning we're all the way down to $61 a barrel, because we built a lot more oil in our storage facilities in america. we have got a glut of the stuff.

we have supply way up. demand not that strong. oil prices down. stock prices up. i want to make one other point here. earlier today, we got a very positive report on the employment situation. adp, reported 202,000 new private sector jobs in the economy last month. ashley: construction was strongest sector. with myriad service. but construction, which is another positive. susan: small business hiring. that hips with the average american with states not california or new york. stuart: we're consumed with missile attack what is going on with iran what we are going to do now, the president speaks at 11:00 this morning. we should not ignore positives on the economy in the background. ashley: it is coming along. stuart: i'm sorry i interrupted you. susan: nasdaq hit record highs despite the turmoil we keep hearing about. stuart: keith fitz, as in keith

fitz-gerald is on the phone right now. are you by any chance buying anything before we hear from the president? >> no, stuart, i'm not. i did a lot of my buying the last few days, actually. because fear is a great profit indicator. it is countier intuitive. i want to see what he has to say. i want to look to him to deliver a very measured response. i think this could be his finest hour. iraq knows we could wipe them from the face of the map if the united states military chose to do so and i think there is going to be some measure of support or control for dialogue from here. stuart: we are told by john roberts at fox news, that the president will seek to de-escalate. that will be primary message he delivers today. de-escalate. but keep maximum pressure against iran. i think exactly what you want to hair. what the market wants to hear, right, keith? >> that is correct, stuart. if you read trump's missives.

look how his style maturedded over the years. he is very much a forceful negotiator. i give you every chance to comply. if you don't, here is what happens. once you do, i looks for deescalation, this is classic trump in business and apparently now in politics. stuart: so i'm back to the same question i've been asking you and others for, well, best part of a week now. is this the event and iran, just a temporary blip in the on going bull market? in other words, if and when this thing settles down, are we off to the races again for the market? >> history suggests that is absolutely true. i believe that, data i have studied certainly indicates these things are nothing more than a speed bump into the road to profits. stuart: just a second, keith. susan: barclays research, how market reacts between tensions between iran and u.s., usually

s&p goes up. s&p goes up three months after a confrontation between the two countries. on average, it goes up 5 1/2% after six months of some sort of tense battle between the two. stuart: that is very good history. what do you say to that, keith. usually goes >> spot on. because all that capital wants to go to the sidelines but it can't because of fear of missing out. when in fact things calm down, you get the opposite effect. people push on the gas pedal and that's what happened. institutions lever up, individuals regain confidence and the companies, this is important, the companies never have their long-term business case interrupted so they continue on anyway. those are the ones you want to be buying when you know what potentially hits the fan. stuart: we got it. thanks for joining us this morning. appreciate it. >> you bet. stuart: all the major averages are now on the upside. this is just moments before we hear directly from president trump. i do want to say two quick things here. number one, it will be an open

press event, so to speak, in which case i think we can expect questions from the press corps to the president directly and he never misses an opportunity to answer very directly. that will be an entertaining press conference coming up. we also hear from john roberts that the president will de-escalate the situation with iran but keep maximum pressure against iran. james carafano on the phone, security expert. we hear that the president wants to de-escalate and keep maximum pressure against iran. does that meet with your approval, james? >> absolutely. ironically, the iranians have already de-escalated. i know it doesn't sound like it, shooting missiles, but basically they just wasted missiles. [ inaudible ] essentially the americans knew this was coming so you listen to the iranian speech, we're done here, we are

not going to attack back, but clearly iranians are sending a huge de-escalation signal. i think the president has picked up on that. stuart: could you say this is a trump win? >> this is like a trump home run. not only has he knocked it out of the park, he truly makes the iranians look stupid. this kind of face-saving fireworks display, nobody is fooled by it. not only does he make the iranians look stupid but his critics look like complete and utter idiots. i mean, they are desperately, you know, bringing out the same old tired way to criticize trump, he's irresponsible, a warmonger, an isolationist, he hasn't explained it and he's knocked them down like pins in a bowling alley. they just look like nuts. this is probably his best day ever. stuart: that's a very interesting perspective. probably his best day ever. let's wait to see exactly what the man has to say. coming up at 11:00. james carafano, thank you very much indeed.

much obliged to you. okay. now then, lauren simonetti joins us. i don't want you to pass opinion here, but what do you make of a market that rallies right after a missile attack on our bases in iraq? lauren: no u.s. casualties. that gives investors reason to say okay, also it seems like it was an intentional miss by iran. they could have struck different bases, they could have taken out american service members and perhaps they did not. they saved face by telling their country there were casualties. stuart: that's right. they did. they did. lauren: this is the off-ramp in my opinion for president trump. we'll see what he says any minute now. stuart: you are directly right. they did tell the iranian people a lie, that there were 30 dead u.s. soldiers. ashley: higher than that, actually. 80. stuart: 80. it was a total lie. that was domestic propaganda. that's what they were up to. saving face, as you said. lauren: the other thing unusual is that this is an unusual iran

attack on iraqi soil and iran is claiming responsibility for it. that's very un-iran like, if you look at their previous provocations which usually involve proxy forces. stuart: their language is much more restrained as well. it is now precisely 11:00 eastern time. another big news day. another hour of "varney" starting for you. we are waiting for the president. he's about to speak to the nation on iran. he will be appearing at that podium any moment now. want to bring in charles payne, host of "making money." he's a market guy. charles, i see the market going up across the board. new record highs for the nasdaq, that speaks to me of dare i say a trump win, an american win in iran? am i going too far? what do you say? charles: i think it's a win. everyone concedes it's a win. of all the tweets i saw this morning, the one that stood out

the most was from ian bremer who tweets i'm far from a trump supporter but impossible not to call iran outcome a win for u.s. president and a big opportunity going forward. stuart: going forward. charles: going forward. that right there is -- underscores everything we have seen from last night when the dow was off 445 points to where we are right now. you can sense that this market is ready to erupt to the upside if president trump says the right thing and has the right tone. stuart: we expect him to say, according to john roberts, as you know, white house guy on fox news, he says the president is going to de-escalate but, i keep using the same expression, but keep maximum pressure against iran. if he does that, that's what you are looking for. that's what the market wants. charles: absolutely. the parallels to what we are looking at right now and election night are absolutely amazing. i'm going to go into greater detail on my show but remember election night, as things started to go for trump, nen

silled in for hillary clinton, the dow started to go down, off 100, off 200, off 300. trump's going to win. dow jones industrial average off 900 points and all over the media, person after person, expert after expert, this is it, the instability, the unpredictableness, the markets will never recover, the stock market will never recover. then president trump finally took to the mic, said thank you to hillary clinton and then said something like this. it is time i pledged -- it is time i pledge to every citizen of our land that i will be the president of all americans. that's so important to me. for those who have chosen not to support me in the past of which there are very few people, i'm reaching out to you for your guidance and for your help so that we can work together and unify the country. we turned around the next day, the dow closed up 257 points and we haven't looked back since. stuart: that's very true. you're right, there is a parallel here, because when we knocked off, took out, qassem

suleimani, everybody was thinking this market just plunges. at first, it did. it was down i think 230 points, 400 points at one point, but then we have come all the way back again. we've got a new record high for the nasdaq this morning. charles: there's a direct parallel to the president stepping up, this is his biggest moment. ultimately it could be his finest moment as president of the united states. today in a few minutes, president trump can secure re-election as the president of the united states. stuart: all right. you stay there, please. i want you to sit next to me while the president is speaking. now, there's another huge story developing in iran. a ukrainian boeing 737-800 jet crashed right after takeoff from tehran's airport. tell me more. ashley: just as you say, hours after the attack, the missile attack from iran into iraq, there's a lot of speculation but we know absolutely nothing for

sure. we do know that the iranians have recovered the black boxes for voice recorder and also the data and that's very important because the data suddenly disappeared when this plane shortly after takeoff got to 8,000 feet and then everything goes away. based on everything which is very unusual, there are those on the ground that said they saw the plane coming down on fire. there have been speculation that the iranians have said it appears to be an engine failure. they have nothing to base that on but someone pointed out these planes are very safe, they are used all around the world, 737-800s. even if there was an engine failure, that would not stop the data from being -- continue to be put out and also, the plane can land with an engine failure. it's designed to do that. so something catastrophic happened. the pilot apparently could not make any communication with the tower so all sorts of speculation based on the timing of all of this. now we know the faa is now banning in the wake of this, u.s. carriers from going over

iran or iraq and areas of the gulf. stuart: just think what's happened in iran in the last 24 hours. 50 people or more killed in a stampede during suleimani's funeral procession. it had to be suspended. he was eventually buried in kerman later but 50 dead in a stampede. then iran launches 15 missiles directed at u.s. bases in iraq, hits two of them, no casualties. hours later, a boeing, a brand new boeing plane recently serviced falls out of the sky after taking off from tehran's airport and then, this is not widely reported, but then there was a 4.9 magnitude quake, several of them, actually, across iran including one very close to a nuclear facility. lauren: the markets are at record highs. stuart: yes, the markets are at record highs. let me go back to charles payne here. we have ignored the good news on

the economy this morning. 202,000 brand new private sector jobs last month. that's pretty good. charles: that's pretty good. lenard also posted results that are absolutely phenomenal. absolutely phenomenal. they beat the street on deliveries, up 16%, their margins improved, new orders up 23% and guidance, they say 55,000 homes delivered this year. they did 51,400 last year. it really is remarkable. lauren: we are swimming in oil which gives us flexibility in our mideast policy and decisions there. stuart: it does. we are the energy kings at this point. we've got a lot of it and the price has gone down to $61.46 a barrel. charles: we learned yesterday when we got the trade data, through november, exports, oil exports at $58 billion, up $14 billion year over year. exports. stuart: we are exporting -- charles: that's one of the reasons our trade deficit has gotten to the best position it's been in three years. obviously it helps also when we export more to china and they import less to us. but that's one of the big reasons that's happened. stuart: i do like that parallel that you raised there with the

president's election in 2016. oh, the sky's going to fall, the sky's going to fall, the market plunged, then president takes office and up it goes, never looks back. there is a parallel to what's happening. charles: i'm telling you, it's fascinating. this whole week, you know, listen, this whole month with all the other things going on in d.c. but this is the moment of truth, i think, right now. stuart: it is right now. the president was due to speak and address the nation at 11:00 eastern time. it's now 11:07. you can see the press corps is assembled. ashley: ready to go. stuart: ready to go. i suspect they are ready to have a go at him. they often are. i'm sure the president will respond in kind. he will take to that podium and he will issue a statement to the nation about his position now after the missile attacks on our people yesterday in iraq. let's get back to that market. who would have thought -- you thought. ashley: oh, by the way. stuart: oh, by the way, the market. i know you were looking for this.

look what we've got. lauren: the past seven days the s&p 500 has been up and then down and then up and then down. you have boeing, a dow component, big drag on the dow today yet it's higher. investors are looking for any dip to jump back into the market. it's frantic, the desire to buy, supported by data. u.s. data. charles: these corporations, i heard you talk about the microsoft upgrade but almost every single day, apple has received three or four new targets this week alone. netflix, by the way, this morning, a major firm said hey, they are doing much better on international subscriptions. all the big -- four horsemen types that lead the market are leading this market big-time. stuart: we are waiting for the president. he's expected any moment. as we wait for him, let's bring in senator rick scott, republican from the great state of florida. mr. senator, thanks for being on the show. what would you want to hear from the president this morning? >> well, clearly none of us want to go to war. that's one thing.

we would love to hear that iran has come to their senses and decided not to continue to escalate this, will stop shooting at american troops. i want to thank president trump for standing up for american interests, american men and women in uniform. i'm glad no one got injured last night. i want to thank him for killing suleimani, because he said there's going to be accountability now. we're not going to continue to appease the mullahs in iran. we will stand up for american interests. you shoot at american troops, you attack our embassy, something's going to happen to you. stuart: it seems like de-escalation may already have started. we hear the iranians gave some warning to the iraqis that an attack was coming. you want to maximize your casualties, you don't give warning you are on your way, and they did not use precision-guided missiles. four of them didn't work. that sounds like de-escalation already, doesn't it? >> you sure hope so. don't you weish iran would come

to their senses and say we want to be part of the world community, build our economy, have our citizens do better financially, and we want to be a friend to the entire world. wouldn't that be nice? we are going to stop supporting hezbollah and hamas. it would just be a wonderful day. i hope that happens. they haven't, you know, they continue to be a bad actor but maybe the killing of suleimani is going to be the change. stuart: it's such an absolute tragedy for the people of iran. the islamic revolution 40 years ago ruined the country. they are in poverty, fighting each other, the crime rate is up, the economy is collapsing. the whole thing has been a tragedy. >> look at the entire middle east, what iran has done. they have hurt the economy, so many people have lost their lives, so much of it tied to suleimani. so much of it tied to iran. they don't want -- maybe they are going to change. they don't want peace and prosperity for people in the middle east.

stuart: your colleague, senator elizabeth warren, would not name suleimani as a terrorist yesterday. what do you make of that? >> he's a terrorist, he's a murderer. when osama bin laden was killed, rightfully so, republicans and democrats said good job to the president. why can't the democrats, when president trump killed suleimani, a terrorist, a murderer of american citizens, why can't we all come together and say president trump, good job, thank you for standing up for american interest and american men and women in uniform. stuart: where does this leave impeachment? we still haven't had the articles delivered to you in the senate. where does this leave it now? we have just been attacked by iran. >> well, i don't know what nancy pelosi's doing. think about it. it's so crazy. we don't want it in the senate. she doesn't want to give it to us. break my heart, don't ever give it to us. she rushed through this because she had to get it done, it was so important, couldn't go to the

court system to make sure, you know, that the president's interests are, you know, are taken care of, she had to get this done and now gosh, we have to wait. i don't know. i assume she will give it to us at some point, then we can't do anything else other than deal with impeachment thanks to nancy pelosi. stuart: i can't resist just edging this into the conversation, mr. senator, but florida is the primary recipient of all those dollars that are flowing out of new york, new jersey, connecticut, and i know you are smiling. i know you approve of this. want to take a victory lap on the tax exodus? >> well, when i became governor back in 2010, we were losing people actually in the state. people forget that. home prices had dropped in half in four years. we had lost 800,000 jobs. i cut 20% of regulations in the state, streamlined the permitting process, cut $10 billion in taxes, over $10 billion worth of debt and now everybody wants to come to florida. i hope they continue to do it and if these other states want to keep raising their taxes and

increasing the regulations, i will keep sending them thank you notes because we will get more people in florida. stuart: mr. senator, may i ask you to pause for a moment. i want to relate to our colleagues what's going on in the markets. very important day obviously, the day after a missile attack on american bases whand what ha we got? the dow is rising as we move toward the president's presentation supposedly at 11:00 this morning. he's obviously a little late. look at this. the dow is up 70 points. it started out on the downside. last night, by the way, when the missile attack was announced, it was down -- charles: 445. stuart: 445 down. now moments before the president addresses the situation, we are up 71. earlier, we had a new record high for the nasdaq composite. it's still close to 9,100. the s&p 500 -- ashley: it was very -- initially after these strikes, we knew they happened, there was a lot of confusion, as charles says, the market's down more than 400 in the futures market but once we got a sense of this was

pretty muted, pretty measured response from iran, that's when the markets came back. lauren: wasn't just stocks, commodities, too. oil was up about 5% at one point. now it's down, especially after that inventory report. gold pierced 1600 for the first time since april of 2013. now it's down from 1600. the ten-i year yield was down 1 basis points. the ripple effects were tremendous. now much of that, actually all of that has changed. ashley: computer-based reaction. the algorithms. stuart: as soon as the computers see the headlines missiles launched, down you go. that's what happens. look, you have been advising people throughout this iran situation. you don't sell. charles: absolutely not. i hope people have listened over the last couple years. the underlying fundamentals and the scuttlebutt, then just the outright craziness, we went through a year and a half of that with the trade stuff, on again, sources said this. even the day it was announced december 13th, the media couldn't get it right, market

had a muted response. beneath the surface, what really justifies where this market is? it's only going to get better. this year, we will have household formation, the housing economy is going to come back, businesses are going to invest. the only wild card is what happens in the oil patch because with oil subdued like this, there's not a lot of investments and building and stuff like that. in fact, down to the lowest level in over two years but everything else is phenomenal. stuart: i feel real bad talking to you. you know what i can, don't you? charles: i heard. what was that all about? stuart: it was a mistake. charles: i think you saw something you wanted to buy. you probably drove by a house. ashley: range rover. stuart: no, no, it wasn't that. for the benefit of our viewers who do not know, i have held a position in microsoft for years, literally two decades, and i had run it up very very nicely. well, about a week ago, i sold

75% of the microsoft stock. i made a very nice profit. it was in my i.r.a. rollover, by the way, so i paid no capital gains taxes. but i've got egg all over my face. charles: you made a lot of money. with that kind of gain, never have regret. never regret. never second-guess because you will have trouble in the future. listen, who knew that a week later, someone would upgrade it with a target of $one 189? who knew? who knew? i wish you would have called me first, the intervention line. charles, range rover. stuart: let's get serious for a minute. i want to relate what has happened after the jet, the boeing jet went down at tehran airport. right after that, the faa banned american airlines from flying there. lauren: let me correct that. i did speak to the faa moments ago. they said three hours before that boeing aircraft went down,

they issued an indefinite ban on all u.s. carriers flying over iran, iraq, the persian gulf and gulf of oman. translation, those are the waters between iran and saudi arabia. there was a concern about u.s. or any passenger being a target but also misidentification of a plane. could it be something else. so if you are flying to that part of the world today, your flight is going to be canceled or re-routed. if you re-route, that's more fuel, that's more expensive for the airplanes. this is the faa ban but international carriers are also canceling flights. stuart: i want to be clear here, i made a mistake in linking the faa flight ban. i thought that ban had come after the plane went down in tehran. ashley: there was also a ban in place, they weren't allowed to fly below 26,000 feet anyway. this just expands that to say you are going to have to fly around. stuart: there are all kinds of international airlines as well that are sort of walking away from that whole air space. lufthansa is out. lauren: qantas.

stuart: we are still waiting for the president to arrive at that podium. he will address the nation on iran momentarily. don't know how many times i said that. charles: know what's helped this market, too? we should bring up the tweet from the spokesperson, iranian spokesperson, zarif. he posted a tweet, iran took and concluded proportionate members and self-defense on article 51 of u.n. charter targeting base from which cowardly armed attack against our citizens and senior officials were launched but then he finished the tweet by saying we do not seek escalation or war but will defend ourselves against any aggression. stuart: i read that as conciliatory. charles: in other words, this is it. this is our response. we're not going to do anything else. can you let us get away with this response without any further provocation. stuart: fascinating. the dow is now up close to 80 points as we wait for the word from the president. i'm going to switch topics again. this is important. i've got an update on impeachment. mitch mcconnell has the votes to

start impeachment in the senate. he's got the votes to start. lauren: to start phase one. that would be arguments from the prosecution, the defense and then a period of witness questions. this is where it gets interesting. after that he would consider allowing a vote on whether to allow the witnesses to testify. that's where democrats are saying well, wait, we want the former nsa director john bolton to testify, he has something to say. but still, nancy pelosi has not handed over the articles of impeachment so who knows what happens now as this drags on. mcconnell is in charge. stuart: the man is in charge. that's probably good news for president trump, as we wait to hear. last word, i know you've got to go. don't rush off. charles: i'm here. i'm anxious. my greatest fear is to be stuck in the elevator as president trump starts to speak. lauren: i thought it was happening last night. i couldn't go to sleep. i usually go to sleep by 9:00. i kept waiting, waiting, because he was expected to address the nation perhaps last night. stuart: well, when are you on today?

charles: 2:00 p.m. eastern time. ashley: going straight from here. charles: got a lot of great things to talk about. lot of great things are going on. stuart: keep pounding that parallel between election night '16 -- charles: i'm going into greater detail on it. going in-depth on it. stuart: charles, much obliged to you. great stuff. again, we are waiting for president trump. the dois now up w is up 83 poin. bear in mind, i'm trying to do the math here, 170 points roughly speaking from the all-time record high for the dow industrials. we've got this going on in the background. the elimination -- ashley: geopolitical issues. forget about it. stuart: we have a rip-roaring economy. the economy is picking up some steam. we may be looking at 2%, 2.5% growth in 2020 and also global growth. ashley: that's good news for the u.s. stuart: yeah. the price of oil is down to $61 a barrel. gas prices holding steady at

$2.59. is this paradise or what? the dow industrials now up 85 points as we speak. this is where you earn your money as a news presenter in america. you are waiting for the president, you have told your audience here he comes, here he comes, he's going to be on that podium very shortly -- ashley: called tap dancing. you are the fred astaire. you are masterful. stuart: i enjoy it. i sense we have a lot of viewers who really want to hear from the president. it's not like a few years ago when you really were worried about hearing from president obama because you were not direct -- ashley: you didn't hear from him very much in the first place. when you did, it was seven, eight minute answers. stuart: president trump is entertaining. very much so. i know for a fact, you can see them right there, the reporters are assembled. this is an open news event. they are waiting to have a go at him and he no doubt will have some vigorous responses to any question that they ask.

ashley: exactly. stuart: i see john lonski walking in. are you miked up? >> i believe i am. yes. stuart: i have run out of tap dancing moves. no, no. i want to talk to you about the strength of the economy. we are glossing over it. 202,000 new private sector jobs announced this morning from adp. that's real strength, isn't it? home builders are doing well. >> right. it just keeps on growing. a lot of jobs growth was in the construction industry. that's probably going to get better. we got some good news on home buyer mortgage applications, past four weeks. that metric is up by nearly 9% from a year ago. that's incredible. housing starts are picking up. housing may not be doing well in these high tax states but boy, the rest of the country, i think it's doing quite well. very well. stuart: so what did you say, producer? one more time. who? stay there, john. andrew left is with us. he's the guy, the founder of

citron research. wake up, you're on. okay. >> how are you? stuart: if you try to tell the viewers that i am putting you to sleep, think again, left, because i'm not having it. okay? wake up. take part. >> i just, i'm the appetizer for the potus, obviously discussing about the markets today, with the overall global situation feels minimal discussing specific stocks. stuart: okay. i want big picture. here's what i want. we are about to hear from the president. he's about two minutes away, we are told. how do you invest in this market at this time overall? >> very cautiously. understand last night the futures were down and then we saw a statement that there was prewarning which changed things. obviously this address [ inaudible ] but with kid gloves, understand a lot of buying is being done by machines, not people. so the geopolitical risks are there. the market is not factoring them

in. good companies are still good companies. but expect volatility. stuart: okay. we understand that. but you say cautious because we might go down some, really? >> going down -- i know, it sounds a unique concept, right? what about just a retracement of what we had? this great dividend we have built in the market, we have to accept there are geopolitical risks that might play into the market in 2020 that we didn't see in 2019. how the president handles these geopolitical risks will affect if he becomes re-elected or not which also has an issue with the market. obviously we will wait and see in the next few minutes. stuart: i will tell you why i sold some microsoft recently. it was precisely because of what -- >> oh, no. you sold your microsoft. stuart: i did. big news around in my household. i was expecting the kind of pullback you're talking about. not because of iran or some geopolitical risk but just the

market's gone up for 11 years, i was expecting a pullback. it's kind of natural, isn't it? >> i think you said the smartest thing. you said why i sold some of my microsoft. not all of it. some people think they must be all in a stock or not in a stock. if you own a certain amount of shares there's nothing wrong with selling 20% or 30% and locking in profits. it's not an all or nothing situation. stuart: okay. andrew, the president is almost about to approach the podium. thanks very much for joining us. we do appreciate it. i'm sorry it was so short. thanks very much indeed. >> of course. of course. stuart: john lonski, this is a temporary blip, not much of a blip in the bull market. you expect it to continue? >> i think it will. as long as profits show signs of growing, people are going to stay in the market. there's really not going to be any strong case to sell to get out of the market overall. it's a positive, still a positive outlook.

i think you're both right. you have to approach this market with greater caution. it's richly priced. but the overvaluation of the overall market hardly approaches what happened in 1999 and 2000. we are still well under those excesses. stuart: think we will get 2.5% growth in 2020 for the economy overall? >> it's very much within reach but i want to add that that is the highest forecast for u.s. economic growth from a survey of about 50, 55 economists that's taken by the blue chip economic forecasting group. so something to think about. it's on the high side but that's not the important thing. it's not the economy that's going to matter in 2020. it's going to be the labor market. that's going to prove decisive when the elections roll around. we are talking about that adp report. i think it's within reach to have the unemployment rate drop to about 3.25% by the end of this year. stuart: ladies and gentlemen, i'm looking at the podium from which the president will be speaking momentarily.

i see high officials walking to that podium. i'm trying -- i'm squinting here. that is vice president mike pence. i can see secretary of state mike pompeo is there. mr. esper, who is the defense secretary. they are awaiting the presence of the president of the united states, who will address the nation on the recent developments in iran, specifically the development last night where iran fired off 15 missiles at american bases in iraq, two bases were hit, but there were no casualties. thankfully, praise the lord, there were no casualties reported at this time. it's a solemn moment, as you can tell. this is a grave situation. the president is going to address it and we are waiting for him to appear. i will tell you again that there's going to be questions here. the press is assembled waiting for the president to speak. when the press is assembled like that, you get questions and you will certainly get answers from

this president. ashley: from all accounts, we are expecting him to call for de-escalation. he doesn't want this to escalate. here he comes. assist ladies and gentlem stuart: ladies and gentlemen, the president of the united states. we'll listen. >> as long as i'm president of the united states, iran will never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. good morning. i'm pleased to inform you the american people should be extremely grateful and happy. no americans were harmed in last night's attack by the iranian regime. we suffered no casualties. all of our soldiers are safe and only minimal damage was sustained at our military bases. our great american forces are

prepared for anything. iran appears to be standing down which is a good thing for all parties concerned and a very good thing for the world. no american or iraqi lives were lost because of the precautions taken, the dispersal of forces and an early warning system that worked very well. i salute the incredible skill and courage of america's men and women in uniform. for far too long, all the way back to 1979, to be exact, nations have tolerated iran's destructive and destabilizing behavior in the middle east and beyond. those days are over. iran has been the leading sponsor of terrorism and their pursuit of nuclear weapons threatens the civilized world. we will never let that happen.

last week, we took decisive action to stop a ruthless terrorist from threatening american lives. at my direction, the united states military eliminated the world's top terrorist, qassem suleima suleimani. as the head of the quds force, suleimani was personally responsible for some of the absolutely worst atrocities. he trained terrorist armies, including hezbollah, launching terrorist strikes against civilian targets. he fueled bloody civil wars all cross the region. he viciously wounded and murdered thousands of u.s. troops, including the planting of roadside bombs that maim and dismember their victims. suleimani directed the recent attacks on u.s. personnel in

iraq that badly wounded four service members, and killed one american, and he orchestrated the violent assault on the u.s. embassy in baghdad. in recent days he was planning new attacks on american targets but we stopped him. suleimani's hands were drenched in both american and iranian blood. he should have been terminated long ago. by removing suleimani, we have sent a powerful message to terrorists if you value your own life, you will not threaten the lives of our people. as we continue to evaluate options in response to iranian aggression, the united states will immediately impose additional punishing economic sanctions on the iranian regime. these powerful sanctions will remain until iran changes its

behavior. in recent months alone, iran has seized ships in international waters, fired an unprovoked strike on saudi arabia, and shot down two u.s. drones. iran's hostilities substantially increased after the foolish iran nuclear deal was signed in 2013, and they were given $150 billion not to mention $1.8 billion in cash. instead of saying thank you to the united states, they chanted death to america. in fact, they chanted death to america the day the agreement was signed. then iran went on a terror spree, funded by the money from the deal, and created hell in yemen, syria, lebanon, afghanistan and iraq. the missiles fired last night at us and our allies were paid for

with the funds made available by the last administration. the regime also greatly tightened the reins on their own country. even recently killing 1,500 people at the many protests that are taking place all throughout iran. the very defective jcpoa expires shortly anyway and gives iran a clear and quick path to nuclear breakout. iran must abandon its nuclear ambitions and end its support for terrorism. the time has come for the united kingdom, germany, france, russia and china to recognize this reality. they must now break away from the remnants of the iran deal or jcpoa, and we must all work together toward making a deal

with iran that makes the world a safer and more peaceful place. we must also make a deal that allows iran to thrive and prosper and take advantage of its enormous untapped potential. iran can be a great country. peace and stability cannot prevail in the middle east as long as iran continues to foment violence, unrest, hatred and war. the civilized world must send a clear and unified message to the iranian regime, your campaign of terror, murder, mayhem, will not be tolerated any longer. it will not be allowed to go forward. today, i am going to ask nato to become much more involved in the middle east process. over the last three years, under

my leadership, our economy is stronger than ever before and america has achieved energy independence. these historic accomplishments shade our strategic priorities. these are accomplishments nobody thought were possible and options in the middle east became available. we are now the number one producer of oil and natural gas anywhere in the world. we are independent and we do not need middle east oil. the american military has been completely rebuilt under my administration at a cost of $2.5 trillion. u.s. armed forces are stronger than ever before. our missiles are big, powerful, accurate, lethal and fast. under construction are many hypersonic missiles. the fact that we have this great military and equipment, however, does not mean we have to use it.

we do not want to use it. american strength, both military and economic, is the best deterrent. three months ago, after destroying 100% of isis and its territorial caliphate, we killed the savage leader of isis, al baghdadi, who was responsible for so much death, including the mass beheadings of christians, muslims and all who stood in his way. he was a monster. al baghdadi was trying again to rebuild the isis caliphate, and failed. tens of thousands of isis fighters have been killed or captured during my administrati administration. isis is a natural enemy of iran. the destruction of isis is good for iran and we should work

together on this and other shared priorities. finally, to the people and leaders of iran, we want you to have a future and a great future, one that you deserve, one of prosperity at home and harmony with the nations of the world. the united states is ready to embrace peace with all who seek it. i want to thank you and god bless america. thank you very much. thank you. thank you. stuart: we were expecting the president to take questions from the assembled press corps. he did not. he ended it and walked out, surrounded by military and diplomatic leaders, he left. the questions were shouted from the press, no answers given. here's what the president had to

say. he opened up by simply saying iran will never get a nuclear weapon. straight off the top, that was his statement. second, he said iran appears to be standing down. that was i think more like conciliatory to some degree, a de-escalation to some degree. i think you could say that. thirdly, he said there would be more punishing economic sanctions if iran does not change its behavior. he called upon europe, china and russia to break away from the nuclear deal and let iran fulfill its promise as a great nation. finally, he said a lot about american strength, reiterated several times we do not want to use it. i will characterize the presentation as firm, tough but conciliatory. iran could be a great nation. when the president started his remarks, the dow was up about 48 points. as of now, at the conclusion of

his remarks, we are up 142. the nasdaq is up 48. that's a new record high right there. the s&p 500 up 16 points. ashley: gold is down $13, $14. oil continues to fall, down $2.43, down almost 4% at 60 bucks. $60.35 on oil. stuart: down you go. stocks up, oil down, gold down. i would like to see the yield on the ten-year treasury. look at oil now. $60 a barrel. down $2.27. significant drop. lauren: the president said the u.s. is now the number one producer of oil and gas in the world. that gives us options in the middle east. he also spoke a lot about the iran deal and slammed the previous administration. quote, missiles paid for by the previous obama administration. those were strong words. stuart: that was a very strong having a go at president obama. so this is how i characterized it. firm, tough, but conciliatory.

lots to talk about -- not to talk, but the concept of de-escalation right from the top. you want to add anything to that? >> i would just point out what's going on with oil underscores how important fracking technology has been to geopolitics. let's never forget that technology has a tremendous impact on the course of history. you are seeing that unfold right now. stuart: look at the price of oil go down. 60 bucks a barrel, down 3.8% right after the president's remarks. tim hanson is with us, cybersecurity guy and army special forces veteran. i characterize the president's remarks as firm, tough but conciliatory. what do you say? >> i would agree with all of those. i think he also did a good job of walking us down the long history of malign activities by the iranian regime. we have heard a lot over the past couple days while the media wanted to lionize suleimani and act as if somehow, president trump was an aggressor or making

provocative actions. he's reacting to 40 years of iranian aggression that came to a head when they killed an american and attacked our embassy. he had to act to protect americans worldwide. i think he added that in and then he pointed out that he didn't want to do that and he does not want to do more. he wants the iranians to stop what they're doing. stuart: you think it will work? vis a vis the iranians? it was a clear warning, look, we are a very powerful military country but we don't want to use it, but we will impose economic sanctions on you, punishing economic sanctions, if you don't change your behavior. obviously tehran is listening to this. you think they will take it to heart and de-escalate from here on out? >> you know, they have a long history of doing the wrong thing so i wouldn't want to bet on it. however, one thing that really struck me was right as their raid finished out and these strikes hit in iraq, zarif sent

out a tweet saying this concludes our retaliation, please don't hit us anymore, we want this to stop. that's basically what he was trying to say. that was a clear message that they looked at what the united states had planned and what president trump had promised them and didn't like the prospect. they can't come up against the u.s. in any force on force contest. consequently, they don't want all of their assets and resources destroyed and they want their opportunity to continue to have some sort of influence in the region. there's an opportunity here that has not been there before. stuart: obviously there's a great deal of concern about cyberattacks. i'm just going to turn away from you for a second, go to my colleague lauren simonetti. what companies are most at risk? do we have any idea? lauren: banks, energy companies, even technology companies. the texas governor, governor abbott, said in the past 48 hours, the state's computer system was targeted 10,000 times

per minute. so it's frequent attacks like this, iranian-backed cyber forces trying to get in to disrupt the power grid or how companies do business. stuart: did the texas governor identify them as iranian cyberattacks? lauren: i believe so. stuart: he did? jim, you are a cybersecurity kind of guy. you are an expert in that field. what do you make of that? 10,000 is it called pings or challenges per minute or something? >> i think the issue here is of course they are probing. that's an almost constant thing. the russians and chinese do it. everybody is looking for ways in. if they go in, though, and actually do some damage, cause some actual damage or danger to any of our infrastructure or the banking systems, that would be almost a more significant escalation than a military one, because -- especially if we've got cyberforensics to back it up. i don't think that's a fight they want to start either, because we don't have to respond just with a cyberattack against

them. we can take out more significant pieces of their infrastructure. stuart: am i right in saying that if we wanted to respond to a cyberattack from iran, if we wanted to, we would shut them down? we can beat them easily? can we do that? >> we can. however, it's an asymmetric game as well because if they do this well, then you don't do the attacks in a way that can be directly traced to you. so the pings, we may identify as coming from them but if they were smart, they would do attacks that were not easily traceable. then you are in a situation where how do we retaliate in a way that seems fair to people who are looking at this from the outside. so it's a dangerous game for both of us. i don't think they are going to go there. i don't think that's something they want any more than they want, you know, their navy wiped out or their nuke facilities wiped out. stuart: hold on for us for a second. i want to update our viewers on the market. it really is up very strongly. as we were saying minutes ago when the president started his remarks, the dow was up 48, i think was the precise number.

now we are up 187 points. if you look at the s&p 500, bottom of the screen left-hand side, that's a new all-time record high. the nasdaq composite, that's either at or is at a record all-time high. ashley: been following oil, that just dipped below 60 bucks. it's down 4.25% now, which is amazing. gold, too. everyone is getting out of gold. down 19 bucks. this is in reaction to the president's comments. stuart: yeah. it's a profound relationship on all of the markets. this is profound. this is a selloff in the price of oil, selloff in gold and big rally in stocks. >> you can't beat prosperity and peace. that's what the market is telling us right now. it's a winning combination. stuart: did you read into the president's remarks de-escalation? >> that's what i read. yes. exactly. that's the sense that i received. stuart: jim hanson still with us. i want to keep reiterating this point. the president's tone was far

from bellicose. no boasting whatsoever. no pounding the table. was it, you know, sort of de-escalation speech? >> he got what he wanted. president trump didn't want war. that was the joke and the disgrace from the democrats attacking him as if he was trying to provoke world war iii. he was trying to get the iranians to back off. once we hit suleimani, they knew we were no longer going to have just a war of words. the question is were they going to be crazy enough to take us on in a meaningful way. they blinked. that means he won and now we are in a situation where the sanctions are crippling them. all their proxies have been decapitated. suleimani was the snake that ran all of that. he's no longer doing that in iraq, syria, lebanon and yemen. so the entire region now has much less iranian malign influence and we and they are not looking like we are going to have a major strike. of course that's going to make the markets happy. it makes everybody who wants peace happy.

i think this is a good day. stuart: jim, earlier today, i was talking with james carafano, a security expert, i'm sure you know him, i asked him if this was a trump win and he said, he laughed and said it's a home run. this is probably his best day ever. would you agree with that? >> he made the mullahs blink. obama sent them a plane full of cash and as president trump pointed out in his speech, they spent that money on their proxies, on the militias that attacked us in iraq, on the bad guys in syria, on the houthis in yemen. they spent it on the missiles that they shot at us last night. so that was a fair shot at obama because he did all those things. president trump, on the other hand, killed the terror kingpin and made the mullahs blink and back down. he gets this one. stuart: jim, again, hold on for a second, please. i just want to bring our viewers up to speed on the market which has really taken off. dow is up 180. record high on the nasdaq. record on the s&p.

i see big tech really taking off. microsoft is at $160 a share. amazon's up. it's up across the board except oil companies are down, rather big-time, because the price of oil, seconds ago, dipped below $60 a barrel. ashley: back a bit now but it's still down 4%. stuart: point of reference, late last night when the missiles were launched from iran towards our bases in iraq, it was at $65 a barrel. now the market's barely hanging on to $60 a barrel. scott martin on the phone. scott is a stock kind of guy. are we off to the races this morning after the president's speech, scott martin? >> at least for the next 15 minutes, stuart. that's kind of the world we're living in these days, it seems like, with the news flow. it's good to see the markets' reaction. certainly to what president trump just said, i believe the markets are confident that the right decisions are being made here. let's face it, although this is certainly terrifying as far as an environment goes, the reality

is as we talked about on this show over and over again, the markets will trade and go back to fundamentals and you talk about those stocks that we speak about all the time, whether it's microsoft, amazon, apple, google, those companies are fundamentally strong, they will continue to be fundamentally strong so even some noise out of iran does not deter this market from going higher. stuart: before we close out and leave you, scott, any dark clouds on the horizon that you can identify now? >> yes. the fact that we can't trust iran. yes, they may have been a little bit more say cautious in how they attacked us last night, but i don't trust iran. you look back at their behavior in the last several years and certainly the last several months, there are things going on in iran that we cannot trust. so while i do still like the stock market here, i am not hesitating to hedge myself or my client portfolios with good old gld which is gold. stuart: really. okay. i want to talk about that for a moment. gold has down, gold is down $17 an ounce as we speak, $1557.

you are saying just put a little bit into gold, just as a safe haven. is that what you're saying? >> correct. yeah. we have about 5% to 10%. i will tell you, while i'm happy that gold is down today, because stocks are rallying so there are things that we own that are going up, last night gold was up 25 bucks. it's just coming off an eight-year high. so there's reasons to have gold in your portfolio, especially as we work out some of these geopolitical tensions. stuart: hold on a second, scott. john lonski with me. why should i invest in gold now? because i don't see any threat of inflation. >> you are exactly right. i wouldn't put money in gold. i would only maybe add gold to the portfolio as sort of like an insurance policy. in the remote event that things just fall apart on the inflation front or the geopolitical front. i'm not so certain that's going to happen. insurance and beyond that, no value. >> guys, one quick thing. one quick thing on inflation. gold is coming off like i said an eight-year high. we haven't had inflation for ten years.

so gold trading on inflationary indicators these days, i think is moot. gold is going to trade on disinflation now because it has been the last several years. stuart: okay. okay. listen to that, it's a hedge essentially. that's what he's saying, not a hedge against inflation. >> well, that being said, the fact that gold has gone so high, amid low inflation, practically no inflation, means that its upside is perhaps quite limited. stuart: look at that. bottom right-hand corner of your screen, the dow industrials are now up 210 points. 28,796. hold on a second. 28,800 will put it very close to an all-time record high. ashley: down 440 points in the futures market overnight following the attack on those u.s. troops in iraqi bases. think about that. that's a 600 point plus turnaround. stuart: thanks very much, scott. appreciate you being with us. lauren: early this morning, todd horowitz, who you know is typically a bear, said on the 5:00 a.m. show, he said trump is

putting all of this mideast noise, this iran problem, behind him. by attacking the situation straight on. he said the market is primed to go up from here which is exactly what's happening now. the dow up 212 points. investors see trump dealing with this issue and putting it aside. stuart: good point. very good point. dow is up 214 points as we speak. nasdaq up 68. guess who is on the phone? yes, jeff sica. jeff, the perennially cautious jeff sica, what have you got to say now? >> well, i mean, i am cautious but one thing i will say is that this is a very, very positive event for the market. this shows strength, the market views this as president trump is standing up and iran is making i guess feeble attempts at

retaliation, but it shows that there's strength and it shows that no matter how unpredictable iran can be, and they will be unpredictable -- i think it's very justified to celebrate something like this. stuart: before we close, jeff, i know you were watching the president's performance there. i characterized it as firm, tough, but conciliatory. what do you say? >> i think it was -- i think it was all those things and i also think the level of strength and clarity he had in addressing this makes it very clear that we have the right commander in chief for whatever challenge we have ahead, and people feel good about that and i don't always

feel good about things, but i will say i feel good about this. stuart: well, well, well. jeff, seriously, thank you very much for your contribution. we do appreciate it. thank you very much. >> thank you. stuart: i want to go back to jim hanson because it occurs to me that i think the president has tried to put the iranians in a box. make them defensive, make them worried about doing anything else. is it successful? are they in their box? >> oh, they are in deep trouble. i mean, their economy is in a shambles. they have no revenue sources, all their proxies are a mess. all of the things they have been trying to do for the past ten years just got blown away. i think one of your guests there made a very good point that that doesn't mean we should trust them. okay? these are the mullahs, the world's premier backstabbing liars. let's be clear who we are dealing with. yes, they are backed in a box and yes, president trump will now try to negotiate a new deal with them, but we shouldn't trust that they are going to act in anyone's interests but their

own and we need to continue the kind of pressure that put them there to make sure that they don't have the resources to cause any more trouble. stuart: hold on a second, jim. john lonski is with me. i do want to talk about iran's economy. i know you're not an expert on that economy. it seems to me it's collapsing. it seems to me frankly that 40 years of the islamic revolution have been an absolute disaster for iran. >> it came at a high cost economically speaking. it would imagine there's a lot of unhappy iranians that would like to see some change in that country, where war resources are devoted towards developing the economy as opposed to developing weaponry or spreading terrorism. stuart: what a waste of all that oil money. in 40 years, they must have brought in tens if not a hundred billion, more than that, hundreds of billions of dollars in oil. that's gone, wasted. >> that's what the average iranian feels and of course, we have to take into consideration they're not exporting much oil, if any, nowadays because of

sanctions. those sanctions as they get stiffened will make matters worse for the iranian economy. stuart: jim hanson, i want to talk to you about the slam which the president delivered to president obama. he said look, those missiles which were launched at american bases in iraq last night were paid for by the money that president obama gave to iran. that was quite a slam. that was a political slam, wasn't it? >> it was well deserved and well earned, because obama determined that the mullahs were going to be his partners for peace, whether they were willing to actually be peaceful or not. so he overlooked all of their malign activities. he let them cut a deal that was so much to their advantage, it was an objescenity and he sent them all the money they used to spend on their bad stuff. so he earned it and president trump had every right to go ahead and point that out, and to let the mullahs know that's not the way the game is played anymore. i see you, i'm watching you, and i'm not going to let you get away with that. so either come to the table and deal straight, or we can go back

to turning some of your stuff into smoking rubble. stuart: i'm going to ask you about the boeing plane that went down shortly after taking off from tehran airport. i don't want to speculate about suspicious activity, but the plane took off, reached 8,000 feet, and disappeared. all the data disappeared and it fell from the sky. now, that took place just hours after the missile launch by iran into iraq. i mean, am i right to raise questions about suspicious goings-on both in location and timing? what do you think? >> i don't see how you can't. it is too close in proximity that you have to do that. and obviously, any aircraft accident like that brings tremendous scrutiny, and while we go ahead and feel for the passengers and the families who lost people there, we can wonder what caused it

immediately both iran and ukrainians put up statements saying they thought this was not an act of terrorism or not related to the ongoing military stuff. looks like ukrainians pulled their statement. i don't know if they have some concern about this, but we need to find out more about this. i hope all the experts are on ground finding what they can. neil: indeed, jim hanson, you've been great for us. >> good to be with you. neil: good stuff. back to the markets. we're up 199 points for the dow. 28,782. i'm waiting for some reaction from democrats. i've not seen it yet. >> we're on twitter looking. stuart: no reaction thus far. they have to be very careful. senator warren, presidential candidate would not call soleimani a terrorist. avoided using that word. and democrats have been united in saying that the president is

pushing us towards war. getting us involved in a war and yet the president today said, we don't want to go into a war. he was conciliatory. he was firm, he was tough, we want the power but we don't want to use it. >> newt gingrich said, what the president just said, gave most honest sweep about iran ever delivered by american president, called it measured, accurate firm, not war-like. stuart: how about that? lonski sitting for a long time. what have you got? >> the big takeaway for the president's speech the endgame for the united states is prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to see to it that iran does not get a nuclear weapon. how anybody could be against that, i don't know. >> very good point. that was the president's first point. >> perfect delivery. very measured. peace through strength. gave explanation why soleimani was taken out. offered an olive branch to the iranians. all in all, pretty well-written

speech. whoever did that. stuart: measured, calm, not bellicose. >> called for others to move away from the iranian deal, what was left of it. stuart: good stuff. stocks up. oil down. neil, it is yours. neil: look what is happening in the markets, folks. as stu pointed out the dow wants to chase a record like other two major averages have, particularly s&p 500. if you were to have for seen that, a little more than a few days ago, when we first took out this general, you would probably have a lot of people scratching their heads and probably kicking yours. but that is exactly what is going on here. oil is below $60 a barrel, after flirting with $70 a barrel. this might be the reason for the latest move. take a look. >> our great american forces are prepared for anything. iran appears to be