report" with tyler mathisen and susie gharib. funded in part by -- thestreet.com and action alerts plus where jim cramer and fellow portfolio manager stephanie link share their investment strategies, stock picks and market insights. you can learn more at thestreet.com/nbr. >> in the fast lane, falling discounts got people into the auto showroom driving off with new cars as a handful of automakers post their best monthly sales figures in years. >> breakthrough drug, the promising new treatment that could potentially help millions of americans with alzheimer's. stocking stuffers, why you might be surprised by the companies outperformed the holiday season the past ten years. all that and more for "nightly

business report" tuesday december 2nd. good evening, everybody, i'm sue herrera. susie gharib has the night off. >> with the dow reaching an all time closing high on cyber monday, strong auto sales in november. learned about them today and an increase in construction spending in the month of october. spending on both public and private construction projects rose more than 1% that month. that was the largest gain since may helped by a boost in the building of new single family homes. now, here's how the major averages ended this turnaround tuesday. the dow up a big 102 points. the largest one-day gain in about a month. nasdaq a gain and s&p ended just shy of its own record high close. black friday promotions and a steep decline in gas prices

putting the industry on pace for best year since 2003. detroit's big three did pretty well. chrysler sales shot up 20%, its best november in 13 years. general motor sales up 6.5%, much more than expected. sales at ford were a bit weaker likely because it stopped making the top selling f 150 pick-up to switch to an all aluminum body. investors like what they saw. phillip o. takes a look behind the numbers. >> reporter: strong november auto sales driven by three things: healthy economy, low interest rates for auto loans, and a big black friday. suvs and krozovers, they were the big sellers with chrysler leading the way. to 20%, much better than many were expecting. the jeep brand had a huge november powered by cherokee with 67%. strong sales of chevy silverado.

ford was one of the few automakers that did not gross sales last month. but clearly, gas prices impacted the type of vehicles that either sold or sat on. crossovers like nissan rogue were on demand in november. by comparison, the sales of the hybrid toyota prius down 3% and the chevy volt, dropped 30% last month. overall, the auto industry is on pace to have its best year since 2006. and this month? watch the luxury brands. they will be agressively pushing deals this holiday season. >> what phil just told us about could translate to some performances for autorelated stocks. mike saw which consumer focused

auto shares are traditionally the big winners during the holiday season. >> reporter: consumer spending is a huge part of the story this time of year. and that story is translating into the stock market. market data ken show looked at the holiday shopping season. many best performers are related to the automotive industry and for good reason. >> holiday sales are really important for the auto makers. it's the end of the year. it's time to get their old models out and for a lot of them, it's time to advertise, to talk to the consumer and let them know there's deals out there, cars out there to be sold and get people into showrooms. >> reporter: for instance, large publicly traded car dealerships like auto nation fared well. shares have risen an average of nearly 4% between thanksgiving and christmas and have been positive eight out of the last 10 times.

autozone an outperform risen 6% and been positive nine of the last ten holiday seasons. as for what you can expect to see on the autosales front, it may not be those smaller fuel efficient models anymore. >> as it gets colder in the winter months, people tend to buy larger vehicles, suvs and trucks. they do really well this time of year and with gas prices being so low, they're probably going to be even better than what we've seen in the past. so those will definitely be big sellers and as we close out the year, luxury sales tend to do really well. >> reporter: as investors get ready for the final weeks of the year, investing in retail won't just be about department stores and consumer electronics. some are watching autoindustry stocks a closely as a way to strengthen the consumer. for "nightly business report," i'm dominic chu. oil prices continued their skid today.

some say a deal between iraq and kurdish government out because more on the market. domestic crude closed at 6.88 a barrel and 70.15 a barrel. the steady decline of oil prices is a big relief and companies that use a lot of crude. which ones are benefitting? jackie de angeles has more. >> reporter: the dollar strengthens. not good for oil producers and servicers but great news for other companies that use oil as a raw material or for shipping or that relying on consumers hitting the roads fueled by cheap gas prices. intermediate under 70 a barrel and a gallon of gas, 2.76. >> certainly a benefit across a wide range of the company.

certainly for more companies it's going to benefit than hurt at this point. if you look anywhere from manufacturing to airlines or shippers, they'll all benefit from this. >> reporter: average gas prices more than a month now and 42 seeing those under the three dollar level. this is a significant shift that's going to impact a lot of bottom lines. the companies that will benefit across a broad range of sectors. think of airlines and shippers. the bulk of their business relies on cheap fuel. deltas, american airlines, jet blues of the world. fedex and ups have to see a lift from this as well. autos, gm and chrysler, seeing overall sale records this year. good year, the tire maker. more people upgrade tires when they anticipate they'll be driving more. it doesn't end there. the retailers like target, walmart, t.j. max to name a few. may see more shoppers in the door as consumers relish these

low gas prices. even food producers could see a boost going to cost less to ship food to the store. for "nightly business report," i'm jackie deangeles. >> that plunge with tough economic sanctions in ukraine has russia now heading towards a recession. economy minister forecast that country's gross domestic product will contract now by nearly 1% next year. that is a sharp reversal from an earlier forecast of 1.2% growth. it's a different story in the u.s. a top fed official said lifting interest rates may come sooner than expected. stanley fisher said if unemployment continues to decline, the centralback needs to see inflation edge higher and start raising interest rates. some ceos less optimistic

about growth next year. the business round table chief executives found fewer ceos increase their economic spending an forecast growth for 2015 are the same as this year overall. 2.4%. but more of them do expect to increase hiring next year. to politics now, and efforts to keep the government up and running past december 11th when a current funding bill expires. house speaker john boehner urges fellow republicans to a bill that sends the federal government through next september and a showdown over president obama's executive order on immigration. still ahead tonight, drug makers have tried and tried and failed many times over to develop an alzheimer's treatment. today, b may have the treatment.

details up next. cyber monday proved to be successful but how successful? depends who you ask. ibm sales rose 8.5% yesterday and tracker at adobe systems up 16%. walmart said monday was its best day ever for online orders. sprint is ramping up the wireless wars. the nation's number three carrier is taking its fight against the industry giants to a new level starting on friday. sprint will let new subscribers page up half of what they were

paying to at&t or verizon for the same amount of talk, text or data if they switch to sprint. sprint, verizon and at&t all lower shares today. nc good news in alzheimer's. experimental drug to treat alzheimer's showed promise in an early trial by slowing down memory loss. shares of the company shot up about 20 dollars on today's news. where does the pharmaceutical company stand on the alzheimer's medication? meg tarel has more. >> reporter: stocks soared today as experimental drug showed unexpectedly positive results in an earlier study. >> this is the first trial to show the benefit in cognitive function. it's a remarkable result that nobody was anticipating anything like this degree of success. that's why the stocks moved so much today. >> reporter: the drug called bib 37 was in the first stage of testing for safety.

the study showed early signs of efficacy as well to reduce plaque build-ups in the brain with alzheimer's known as beta-amyloid. it benefitted on-cognition, in thinking clearly, hallmarks of alzheimer's. it's a development because of the failures. most recently from eli lilly, phi sor, and johnson and johnson. >> no shape or form, no approved disease modifying therapies for these patients. >> reporter: the need is great. more than 5 million americans have alzheimer's disease according to the alzheimer's association. worldwide, more than 35 million people have dementia, of which alzheimer's is the most common cause. the potential opportunity for biogen's alzheimer's drugs? 5 billion annually. might have been successful for a

few reasons. the company screened patients to make sure they actually have the disease, characterized by the build-ups of a.m. loid track in the brain. it's treated with a milder form of alzheimer's whereas other studies included more advanced patients. lastly, the drug may have a better way of targeting the plaque. >> they may have a better a hammer or a game plan to design studies. >> reporter: both analysts and biogen, it will likely be years before the results are known. they're likely manageable. >> i think because of the biogen news there should be a greater degree of optimism. >> reporter: based on this data, it plans to move into the last phase of clinical trial. for "nightly business report," i'm meg tarel.

advanir is bought by asuka. they treat nervous disorders. shares spiked up to 16 dollars. lilly entered an exclusive agreement for zozana for the osteopro sis patch treatment. that deal could be more than 44 million dollars and up to 7.38 today. bp on rumors of a takeover bid from rival dutch shell. neither company is commenting on the report but investors snapped up shares anyway. royal, also 3% higher and closed at 69.35.

mastercard hiking the quarterly dividend to 16 cents a share and authorizing a nearly 4 billion dollars. mastercard finishing at 87.69. the showdown between cbs and dish is heating up again. two except cbs through the holiday but now set a new deadline. unless they reach a deal, their programming including the nfl and college football will go dark this thursday at 7 p.m. shares of dish fell 2.5% to 75.27 and cbs down but just a fraction at 54.30. s&p 500 swap to tell you about. royal caribbean will replace b man in the s&p and that will be

implemented on thursday. lacks the guidelines for an s&p 500 stock. royal caribbean popped up to 56.75 and bmas up to 15.49. bank of new york melen is giving to the activist hedge fund triund. the firm hasn't made public demands for changes at the bank, some reports say trian has privately urged the bank to cut costs. rose to 14.28. shares of taser rose after president obama to make police cameras. it's come to rest after michael brown police shooting. opening statements today in an oakland california courtroom

where apple is sued in a decade old class action antitrust suit. they say they ran a monopoly by not purchasing any on itunes store from played on certain ipod devices. the case is expected to include vap testimony from apple cofounder steve jobs who died in 2011. after that massive hack attack on sony pictures, the hackers posted five unreleased movies on piracy web sites, the same malware used against sony could be unleashed on other businesses. more on that fbi warning, ayman. >> they put out a five-page memo late yesterday and most of the pages of that memo i'm told are just ones and zeros.

they're the lines of the malware code the fbi said may have been involved in the hack. they want corporate ip departments to scour their system and find any of the malware in their own systems as well and report back to the fbi. they're trying to crowd source the investigation here to find out if any other companies were involved. one of the possible protagonists in all of this could be the north koreans. the theory here is that the north koreans maybe upset about the upcoming film looking at the satirical look at the assassination attempt on north korean leader and that's neither on or off the table. no evidence one way or the other whether or not that's true, sue. >> do we know whether any other companies are affected and if so, where are they looking for effects? other media companies? >> that's right. as of now, we don't know if any

other companies have been affected. that's what the fbi was trying to get out today by sending this memo last night. what's been taken here is compelling. it's not just the five movies stolen from sony and put on the internet for people to download, but also a lot of internal sony documents sensitive as pay scale and executives, other things. a lot here that is potentially damaging to sony in the long runl. >> what can companies do to protect themselves, ayman? >> it's tough. we see reports of highly socially engineered targeting. the e-mails don't look like that old nigerian e-mail spam. it's obviously a spam attack. now you get e-mails look like they are from someone you know about a subject you know in

perfectly fluent english. it's getting harder to warn people to not click those links. >> thank you, ayman jabbers. if you look to make a donation, zwriwe have some advin how to choose a charity. more trouble tonight for the struggling radio shack chain. the key financial backer notified the store they're in breach of the term loan that was finalized a couple of months ago. sellers is not impressed by how

some of the money has been spent it is so cold giving tuesday, the charitable answer to black friday and cyber monday, if ease of online donations to increase the giving on this day as it has in years past. how can you be certain the charity you're giving to is not a scam? your contribution, big or small, will have max impact? sharon eferson, how to choose a charity wisely. where do you look? >> a couple of places. do some research on your own, go to web sites like guidestar.org or charitynavigator.org or charitywatch.org. those will tell you about the financial health of the company. make sure the charity has a form 990 on file with the irs. check at irs.gov to make sure it's a tax exempt organization. if it's a way to find how your

will be used? charity navigator said to use 70% of the money going to programming. if that benchmark is not met, maybe don't want to be with that particular charity. you need to ask some questions and find out what's the impact of the money you're giving. is it going to a lot of people and is there a measurable effect? giveback.org is a great web site to find more information. >> if you want to give to a charity but not sure which one, you want some tax benefit for making a donation, i understand there's alternatives to explore. >> a lot of people don't know where to give. i'd love to give to all. you can give to a fund. van guard to swab. get the tax deduction now and decide where to send the money a later date. don't have to decide which

charity gets your money right now. >> that's great because maybe you don't know. you want to give. the stock market has been strong but don't know what to do. >> you could put investments in that as well. it's like a charitable savings account but could have a lot of different assets on there. >> if you've had a big gain in a stock, you might want to take the tax advantages. >> you're a giver. >> i'm a giver. >> thanks very much. all right, finally tonight, they say that college is supposed to be the best four years of your life but more of us take longer than that to graduate. a new report from a group called complete college america said only 19% of full-time college students earn their undergrad degrees in four years and those students or their parents are spending extra 23,000 dollars on average for each extra year until they finish. >> got three. >> got three. that's so scary.

it really is. all right, that's "nightly business report." i'm sue herrera in for susie. this is the time of year that your public television station speaks your support. >> i'm tyler mathisen and behalf of your public tv station, have a great evening everyone. we'll be taking attendance. see you. >> "nightly business report" has been funded by -- thestreet.com and action alerts plus where jim cramer and fellow portfolio manager stephanie link share their investment strategies, stock picks and market insights. you can learn more at thestreet.com/nbr.

explore new worlds and new ideas through programs like this, made available for everyone through contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. hello, folks. it's adam west, here to take you on a journey back to when we had pay phones instead of little cell phones, medicare was new, and "the sound of music" won the oscar. it was 1965, and it's time for my music. ♪ 1965-- a year when women's skirts got shorter and men's hair grew longer as music fashion and fads spread the west-coast vibe across america.