hi, ben willis.things just feel more springy and happy, but are we getting sucked into something that could more dangerous or are you okay with this rally? >> i'm okay with it. maybe some of the other indices have not followed. last time i was on, i was talking about the russell 2000, the s&p 600, those are the small cap indices that have been giving you the signals very early, and again this morning they gave us that indication. but hi think more -- i think more importantly for the psychology of the marketplace as we were down early at 9:30 because of the overseas selling pressure we're seeing, we had a comment from the head of mastercard saying that they're seeing a pick up in purchases that will outpace the first quarter. that, i think, was probably the biggest psychological boost to this market that allowed the market to continue to its upside. once again our partners from overseas got done selling what they had to. liz: well, yeah, i'm glad you're agreeing with me on this, and i was looking at t

diana garnett and jeff taylor and ben willis trades on the floor here of the new york stage for princeton securities group and our own rick santelli. diana, i'm going to start with you. a very quiet day though there's a mini rally going on. after all the volatility, why the quiet day today? >> expiration, triple witch or quad expiration and most of the plain vanilla firms tend to back away, believe it on the, so you see a burst of volume which is skewing some of the technical numbers so a burst of volume on the opening because of the settlement of options and you can see the same thing on the close, but for the rest of the kay you tend to see most of the big players stay away and be on the perimeter, buying or selling if it reached a certain mark but not actively trading during the day. >> you see the charts that reflect that as we've had sideways move through much of the trading session. >> equities this week have been up. they have been down. rob morgan, if you're to summarize for us what we've learned thus far, especially -- >> rob is not here. jeff taylor, i'll put this to you. what h

ben willis, you know, certainly we had a lot of volatility.now volume is on the light side, but are we just now kind of digesting all the big data news we had last week? >> i think what we're seeing is we are seeing lighter volume, about 10% below monday for the last quarter, but we are seeing the push and the pull of a marketplace trying to decide how to price a slowing down of the world leader of the chinese economy. we're seeing that continue to decelerate. it's still growing but not as quickly as we'd like. the european union gave us ay tn lore, suggesting that their growth is nowhere near what we had hoped we needed it to be. then we came into the united states, we were down 135 points op the dow jones industrial average, and we saw the markets turn and head higher because we need to price in the fact the united states is, in fact, having an improving economy as judged by our ism and pmi numbers. so that was the whip saw you saw. the fact of the matter is at this point the world investors have to decide where they need to put their money,

you were just hearing ben willis say the leaders of last week like the utilities not quite doing it todayt's right. and we've been watching social media, the banks, drugs, today is a sea of green. maybe your dress did do it. i want to take a look at allergan and valiant pharma. both are down about 1% at the moment, liz, and we're watching these two because allergan rejected valiant's bid, and it's an unsolicited bid. and they say it clearly undervalues their company. in addition to the fact that they say there's a large stock component which then brings uncertainty and long-term growth prospects become riskier with that. and so with that we'll see whether or not you have them step up. because right now the allergan board is not pleased with valiant moving forward with this. don't forget bill ackman is involved in this. you're talking about 46, $47 billion worth of a potential merger. you're talking about botox, something that continues to be very popular and is growing. so this'll be a story that we continue to cover. both stocks down about 1%. liz? liz: well, you've got to give mr. ackma

joining us is colin barr from the "wall street journal" who wrote the article on that and ben willis from princeton securities who made a market in penny stocks on the pink sheets here on the floor. >> i was working with another firm at the time. i actually wrote the rule for the markets on the floor of the stock exchange so i have a little bit of experience in actually trading them so we'll see where we can go with this. >> colin, what do you make of the resurgence of interest in pink sheets or penny stocks right now? what's that about? >> well, i think people want to find ways to get return on their money. you're not making a whole lot in savings accounts or a lot of the blue chip stocks that don't seem to move a lot sometimes so i think a lot of people were attracted to these thinking it's a way for me to double my money. >> i couldn't help but notice as well. that stuff matters, colin, and is investing in penny stocks a terrible idea or just a really bad one? >> that's a good question. there's a lot of risk in these. the old saying is these are sold rather than bought and that's

ben willis joins us at post 9, princeton securities. you think it's nervous time?lked to the professional traders that i respect quite a bit, and they are all nervous, which is we have not seen that. >> before or after tepper said the words last -- >> actually, it was coming in this morning, prior to this morning, it was -- they were comfortable with the whole idea this is still a very gentile sector rotation if you will coming out of the high beta, names very, very familiar, the twitter, facebook, and the like. the fact you have major market players like tepper, you have the mutual fund numbers that saw a huge drawdown in the month, $3.8 billion leaving the mutual fund equity side and almost entirely going into bond funds is a great explanation of why we're seeing what we're seeing. >> whether tepper was literal or figurative, he seemed to ignite a sentiment that was already existing in the markets. do you think it's the taper? do you think it's global growth? do you think it's housing? pick any one of them. >> i think it's global growth. the whole idea of the pri

. >>> move over, bruce willis and ben affleck.group of astronauts now signing up to train for a nasa mission much like the popular movie "armageddon." don't worry, though, the earth is not facing a doomsday threat, at least not at this moment. nasa plans to send astronauts like the ones seen here to land on ans a steroid. this time, they'll be collecting material to study, hoping to learn more about how old the solar system is and how it was formed. >>> a utah company is turning disguarded plastic into fuel. alicia has the story? >> 8%, according to the epa, of plastic produced in the u.s. is recycled. that's because some plastic is hard and too expensive to recycle. so it ends up in landfills. this company converts that waste into oil. >> you put the plastic in and the oil comes out. >> the founders say even though americans have gotten better about recycling over the years, a majority of plastic products can't be reclaimed and turned into something else. >> again, it's a different polymer that doesn't naturally fall into the spe

as willie brown said he did it for himself as well. ,,,,,,,, w-h-c-d--the white house correspondents dinner was yesterday. the president benby taking stabst cnn and fox news. also trend >>> the white house correspondents dinner was yesterday. the president began his address by taking stabs at cnn and fox news. also trending, rutgers former secretary of state condoleezza rice backed down from a commencement speech at the university after students protested her appearance. and it's national "star wars" day for fans of the movies. and cinco de mayo is tomorrow. and kent derby, favorite california chrome pulled away on the home stretch to win the horse race in -- you can follow us on twitter. >>> final look at the weather forecast. skies pretty cloudiy and the clouds will stick around for much of the day. 60s along the coast to the low 70s inland. a look at the 7-day forecast. no rain in sight. it bottoms out temperaturewise tomorrow and warming up towards the end of the week. thank you for joining us. "face the nation" next. >> and we are going to the cw channel 44 cable 12. ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, from cbs news in washington, "face

willie. >>> up next, a tragic circus accident leaves a group of performers in critical condition. also benffleck caught counting cards in las vegas? we'll explain it on morning papers. and jim gaffigan joins us on set. >> i don't know if you can tell by my beard, but i'm fat. i don't know what happened. all i did was eat constantly and then boom i'm fat. seems unfair. >> but first if it was only that simple, here's bill kairns with a check on the forecast. >> good stuff, you guys. we got done with a pretty nice weekend on the eastern seaboard. rain showers in new england yesterday. the heat was the real story, though. everywhere in the red on this map shows you where it was 80 degrees yesterday from d.c. all through the deep south. but the one highlight was the central plains. it was 102 in wichita, kansas. they were off to the driest start to the year ever since the dust bowl in the mid-'30s. with the windy conditions -- this was in oklahoma yesterday. they had me vacuations. a couple structures burned down. you could see one of them there. the way the wind was blowing those flames. anoth