this is "nightly business report." with tyler mathisen and su herera. nasdaq 5000 almost 15 years to the day. the index closes above that key level. but this time around it's different. life after buffett on the 50th anniversary of the helm of birkshire hathaway. who may be next in line to succeed him. "nightly business report" for monday march 2nd. good evening, everyone. welcome to march. it was a long road back but the nasdaq once synonymous with the dotcom bubble climbed above the 5,000 level for the first time in almost 15 years, march of 2000 to be exact. only the third time by the way, that the nasdaq composite index has closed above that symbolically significant number 5,000. it was a record day, by the way,

for the dow jones industrial average, up nearly 156 points. it finished at 18,288. the nasdaq closed 44 points higher. it was 5,008. the s&p 500 also at a new all-time closing high up 12 points to finish the day at 2,117. berttha coombs joins us with what drove the index to this level. hi, bertha. >> it's been an amazing ride tyler. 15 years ago, you had stocks that traded on the nasdaq with valuations that were sometimes 100 times or more what their earnings were, if they had profits at all. very different index right now. if you take a look at a number of these stocks some of the high flyers they now have valuations that are much closer to the closing market. the nasdaq 100, even if you have stocks like amazon and tesla, you still have other stocks that

brought the nasdaq 100 pe down to 19. that compares to the s&p at 17. and really the biggest indicator is apple. apple, despite being the largest company emp by market valuation, trades at just 14 times its record-breaking earnings. pr. >> bertha thank you very much. bertha coombs at nasdaq. bertha mentioned apple and it was a big part of the nasdaq's march back to 5,000. but other companies played a role as well. and dominic has that part of 89 story. >> a lot of investors didn't think we would get there. but here we are. nasdaq 5,000 a level we haven't seen since the peak of the internet stock bubble back in 2000. in addition to the run to the milestone, both the nasdaq composite and nasdaq have been much better performers in the indices. one company has accounted for the bulk of the gain so far in

2015. none other than apple. despite its massive size the run toward record territory couldn't have happened without help from stocks like amazon.com. they got a huge pop at the end of january after a better than expected earnings report after last quarter that included the all-important holiday shopping season. there are other tech/media companies, like netflix. the movie provider is the single best performing stock in the nasdaq 100. companies like apple, amazon and netflix have an influence because of their sheer size. we hit the 5,000 mark on the composite despite companies like microsoft and intel. perhaps a big reason why we haven't hit these levels sooner. for "nightly business report,".

>> liz saunders joins us to tell us what's different about nasdaq 5,000 this time around. she's chief investment strategist with charles schwab. great, as always to see you. >> hi tyler. >> how do you characterize today's nasdaq and compare it with the one of 2000? >> i would not use the term bubble by any stretch to define where we are, when you just simply focus on valuations which was really at the heart of why we classified it as a bubble back in 2000. the nasdaq was trading at close to 200 times in that era. 10% of that right now. i think also what's interesting, and dom talked about the health care companies, nasdaq is much more diversified now than it was back in 2000. it was about 77% tech and telecom combined and only about 44% now. those are two notable differentce differences between then and now. >> solid profits, very solid

bottom lines, different from 2000. >> and the ipos, too. you have half the track record of ipos that were coming out at that point versus the ipos coming to market today. >> we're not anywhere near a bubble kind of territory, but what is your view of how richly or fairly valued nasdaq is right now? >> again, at 20 times earnings i really don't think that that's a very stretched market. it's a little bit richer than the s&p 500 on a forward basis. frankly, it almost trades at a premium to the s&p 500. so i certainly wouldn't use that as a gauge. i think there are reasons we could have more bouts of volatility in the market. we're approaching an initial rate hike ostensibly this year and that could cause a little bit of a pullback. and i don't think the nasdaq would be immune to a situation like that. but i don't think it's an impediment right now. >> if interest rate risk is out

there, what are the other risks that you're watching? i mean i would assume that it includes perhaps elevated sentiment levels things like that where there's too much enthusiasm? >> i wouldn't say sentiment is anywhere the euphoric levels that you tend to see in bull mark peaks. certainly not what you saw back in 2000. that said whether you're looking at american association of individual investors or investors intelligence which measures newsletter writers, or the pro call ratio, any number of measures shows that optimism has picked up. i suppose you could argue nasdaq getting back above 5,000 might add a little bit of fuel to that. but i think the notion of the kind of extreme euphoria that the bull mark tops i think we're far from that. >> liz ann, so good to see you. hewlett-packard says it speech was going on. my questn for you is what role does congress have to play in this? the president in his rejoinder after the speech made it very clear, hey, look.

the executive branch is paramount with respect to st dea and foreign policy. what role does congress have to play here? >> the role to me tyler, a couple of things. first, sanctions legislation that congress has enacted and to the extent that a deal would lift sanctions, that could involve a role for congress. i got different answers from aids on the hill. different answers from members of the same party. so there doesn't seem to be a clear consensus and mitch mcconnell indicated after the speech today that he's going to attempt to push legislation to the senate floor to have congress weigh in on this deal. so this is a bit of a moving target. democratic senator bob menendez who was the chairman of the foreign relations committee, now is the ranking member has been pushing sanctions legislation last year. they held off on pushing that through the senate. mitch mcconnell is going to try to do something as soon as he can arrange it that might impact

the negotiations in switzerland. >> let's move to the department of homeland security legislation. the house did pass it. so what's next john? >> reporter: what's next is john boehner, the house speaker, breathes a very major sigh of relief because he and mitch mcconnell vowed were not going to have shutdowns, were not going to have crisis management and john boehner was undercut by more than 50 members of his own caucus last friday who took the interim deal that he had made with democrats and the members of the senate and they submarined that deal. now that john boehner went to them this morning that said we've got no choice we got to pass funding. we'll see if members of congress learn from that misfire and give john boehner more maneuvering room going forward. >> john thank you so much. in washington. ty? the congressional department say the treasury will run out by

october or november. rely on accounting maneuve to keep the government afloat until then. does this sound familiar? without congressional, it would go back on obligations. nine justices hear a major challenge tomorrow to keep aa key provision of the affordable care act. subsidies. some say it has the potential to derail the president's signature achievement and hinges on a few words. hampton pearson has mo. >> reporter: tomorrow the supreme court justices will hear the biggest challenge for the affordable care act since a landmark 2012 decision upholding the individual mandate. this time opponents of the mandate are challenging the government subsidies offered to those who get their coverage through the health insurance marketplaces run by the federal government. the challengers and leading conservative legal scholars say

the lies are crystal clear. should only go to exchange established by the state. >> the challengers in this case who are some low-income americans who don't want to purchase insurance and who but for the subsidy would not be required to purchase insurance because subsidy compensates zero income and makes eligible for the individual mandate under the statute. >> reporter: it's limited over 7 million americans signed up through the government exchange and receive a subsidy to cover all or part of their coverage. the obama administration will argue it was not the intent of congress to pass a law that leaves out so much of the country. and supporters say there are numerous references to subsidies 900 plus pages that make up the affordable care act. >> if you want to talk about providing health care to more americans or controlling health care costs, let's have that

conversation but don't have a bait and switch and really have a conservative assault on a fairly modest effort to establish health reform in the united states. >> reporter: while there's no constitutional showdown this time the stakes are nearly as high as three years ago. a ruling in favor of the challenges could gut how the affordable care act functions. for "nightly business report," i'm hampton pearson in wa. >> craig garthwait joining us now to discuss what's at stake for businesses and millions of people now covered under the affordable care act. he's at the kellogg school of management where he specializes in health care. professor, welcome back. let's just cut to the chase here. would an adverse ruling out of the supreme court effectively end the affordable care act as we know it? >> well certainly in the 30 plus states that chose to use the federal exchange rather than their own exchange the citizens

there would lose access to subsidies. many of those people would be unable to afford insurance and the exchange in those states would effectively cease to run. premiums would be uninsured. in those states you'd see the beginning of the end of the aca. >> what about the subsidies indeed mixed? what businesses would be most affected? >> busines you look at are hospitals. if you think about how our health care system works, hospitals are the de facto insurers of last resort. if you don't have insurance and go there, you get care. if you're unable to pay, hospitals often eat the costs and the biggest effect on their bottom line. they see changes by insuring tens of millions of americans. we're going to see hospital bottom lines do better. it's no surprise that those hospitals have been strong supporters of the aca and in particular have opposed any attempts to limit the subsidies through the supreme court. >> i would think also that insurance companies would be

massively affected here because they have counted on a non-adverse risk to use the term here around which they have based all of their pricing. if the risk pool changes dramatically whose stock pool has gone up a lot as a result of the customers they've gotten i think it would suffer. >> absolutely. we sort of gave a deal to the insurance companies that said we're going to make sure people buy insurance. we're going to give them suns di subsidies. we want to offer exchange througho the state. now they're changing the rules on those companies and you point out very well that you're going to get a selective pool of probably the sickest people who remain in and many of the products ultimately go away because they can't survive in a world in which we don't have a subsidized pool that's buying insurance. >> those we losers but who would be some of the winners? >> winners are sort of tough to find. people who oppose the affordable care act will obviously like a

ruling that limits the subsidies because it would be the beginning of the end of the law. you could imagine a world in which we have sort of a well functioning legislative and executive body that would take a ruling against the aca, come together and develop a better more well crafted law. that's not really the world that we live in though and so what you see is the aca is going to go away or large portions of it and those would be the winners, per se. >> i understand also that the so-called employer mandate might be affected here because it hinges in part on companies that have more than 50 employees, but for whom at least one or more employee receives some sort of subsidy. if there's no subsidy, there's no employer mandate, craig. >> definitely going to weaken the employer mandate in those states because those will pay a penalty if your employee shows up on the exchange or receives a subsidy. your lowest income employees don't qualify for subsidies anymore and in those places you'll see the mandate weaken

dramatically. the bad part about that is there's states where if people don't get insurance from their employers, they can't go to the exchange to get insurance because we're going to effectively end the well functioning exchange market in those states. >> thank you, craig. a thorny issue. craig garthwait, northwestern university kellogg school of management. >> thank you. still ahead, are flag ship funds starting to slow? as performance rebounds. investors pooled more than $8 billion out of total return fund last year. the 22nd straight month of withdrawals, but it's less than the $11 billion of outflows in january. over the past five months, total

return funds formally run by pimco intermediate as well. we begin market focus with a restructuring announcement from target. retailer plans to cut thousands of positions as part of an effort to reduce costs by $2 billion over the next couple of years. it also gave full year earnings guidance. it was better than estimates and said it plans to buy back $2 billion worth of shares this year and one of those shares were us today. a fraction of $78 even. best buy reported better than expected quarterliliesy lyies on a better than expected holiday season. 51 cents a share, boosted quarterly dividend to 23 cents a share and the company will buy back a billion dollars worth of shares. first repurchase since 2012. stock higher than expected finishing at $39.18. >> lumber liquidators reversed,

stock sold off after 60 minutes on cbs. reported that the company sold flooring with higher levels of formaldehyde but upgraded rating on the stock to buy from neutral saying fears generated by the program are overblown. shares popped 5% to finish $48.78. activists sold some $20 billion in bonds today. the ten year bond was priced to yield about 3.8% which was at the lower end of the guidance showing strong investor demand for one of the largest corporate on record. fell a fraction to $96.23. shares of restaurant company bob evans fell sharply after the bell after the company misses earnings and revenue estimates for the quarter and issued light guidance for the year. the company also said it will not spend off its food unit and hired j.p. morgan to hire on strategic for regions. fell more than 15% after the close but rose a fraction during the regular session to $59.64.

>> people are changing the way they shop. not just what they buy, but how and where they buy it. and that is creating big challenges for some of the country's biggest consumer companies. sara eisen >> it's fast. it's easy. it's fast. it's convenient for me. >> reporter: when it comes to buying the basics more and more people are turning to their computer. like christie spears who rarely steps foot in a store these days. >> now i can pretty much shop for anything online. still shop for clothes but definitely use it for household items, cleaning products things we just regularly use in the house. >> reporter: the latest data from consumer edge research showed so-called consumer products are now tied with media. think online books and movies as the second most popular category bought online. number one is apparel. and while most of the population still buys their consumer products at grocery stores or drugstores and only 9% on the

internet, the fastest growth is online. >> there are definitely some web sites that are kind of a conglomerate of a couple different stores all in one web site. i love when i can buy dog food and cleaning products and snacks for the kids all on one web site. >> reporter: no site has been as influential as amazon.com with the rise of services like amazon prime that promises free two-day shipping on almost everything. e idea of buying 6 pack of paper towel rolls online makes more sense than ever explaining why they use amazon than any other category except for breadits bread and butter media. >> i kept my sam's club membership and use both to see which i save most on. i think amazon prime is going to come out on top. >> reporter: these are essential for consumer companies trying to understand not just what their customers want but where they want to buy.

for instance proctor and gambill appointed first ever in charge of ecommerce sales. so focused on building relationships with brick and mortar retailers like walmart but now need to pivot from the decade old fight on the shelf to the ever changing battle for space on your screen. that transition is proving challenge for heavy weights like g&g, kolgate and others. it's an opportunity for upstarts like jessica alba's the honest company among others. companies themselves recuring subscription based and household items like diapers and razors online to only add to pressure on the consumer giants in the years ahead. for "nightly business report," i'm sara eisen. coming up, tropical diseases pose a growing threat to some areas of the united states and now one company is looking into ways to fight them.

400 million people around the world are affected by a tropical disease that's not widely discussed. it's called dengue fever and no treatments or vaccines available. the u.s. is starting to see outbreaks. meg tirrell has more from key west florida, and how one company is doing something never done before to try and keep that disease at bay. >> this is one of the areas i need to crawl under. >> reporter: patty spraug is on the front lines of a fight experts hope to keep off u.s. shores. >> these are my people. i don't want my people to have be bitten or mosqui

hide and seek every day. >> caller: m carry diseases like dengue fever and which i can chikungunya. the disease usually isn't falgt but can be incredibly fatal. it's nicknamed break bone fever.

oxy tech releases male. the offspring produced quickly die off. there's been local pushback to the plan over concerns with genetic modification. but key's experts in oxy tech said it's safe and targeted specifically to the mosquito a non-native species and the genetically modified bugs won't bite people. only people do. both merck and santa fooe have developments and important as dengue cases risen 30 fold in the last 50 years. santa fe reported. florida keys looks to test the bugs in the u.s. the experts look ahead to next year when the olympics land in rio daijhee rio de

janeiro, brazil. oxy tech received initial approval to receive genetically modified bugs there, among many efforts to control the mosquito population as the olympics bloom. i'm meg tirrell in the florida keys. >> that's "nightly business report" for tonight. this is the time of year your public television station seeks your support. >> and on behalf of your public tv station, thank you. we'll see you to

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