thank you, bob pisani. we'll cover apple in-depth later in the hour. >>> it is worth taking another look at citi. trading up almost 6.5% at $36.49. the banking giant slashing 11,000 jobs, taking up to $1 billion in charges. the chief financial officer is speaking right now and kayla tausche is listening in to that conference call. >> city's cfo is just ending his prepared remarks right now at the goldman sachs financial services conference but he mentioned those layoffs right out of the gate. addressing the morning's announcement which he said is straight to the heart of citi's mission which is getting back to the basics of individual banking. among those 11,000 job cuts though, more than half will take place in the consumer banking business abroad. the bank will exit regions like pakistan and paraguay that haven't been profitable. 1,900 jobs will come from its institutional client's group. they'll start to reassess coverage of certain sectors and geographies in that group. it will close offices underutiliz

sue. >> bob pisani showed us the home builder stocks. one of the reason they are moving, there was good news for the economy. home builder sentiment moving to strongest level since april '06. national association of home builders rose to 47 from a revised 45 in november. keep in mind despite eight months of gains, the confidence index still remains below that key reading of 50. but it has been a very strong year for the home builders. here is how they are trading. it's worth another look. toll brothers up, d.r. horton up 2%, better than 3% for pulte, better than 4 for beazer home and lennar up 2% as well. >> mounting pressure from investors cerberus says it will. can they be more effective in influencing gun policy. that and more when we return. i always wait until the last minute. can i still ship a gift in time for christmas? yeah, sure you can. great. where's your gift? uh... whew. [ male announcer ] break from the holiday stress. ship fedex express by december 22nd for christmas delivery. >>> following pressure from one of its major

bob pisani, thanks so much. back to you. >> we've gotten the word electric washington, now the street. chief global strategist and senior portfolio manager at huntington asset managers. i came down here fairly optimistic, seemed to believe something would get done. we've spoken to three or four congressmen, especially in the house, they are far apart. lee terry from nebraska said, guess what, my constituents have no interest in giving in to a tax hike. >> clearly what you're hearing is sort of where we've been for some time now, a portion of the house elected in uncompetitive districts see really no reason to compromise with the other side and leave aside the philosophical differences for the two. how these two come together in the next couple of weeks is really something that remains to be seen. we know taxes are going up. the question is by how much the spending side of things. you're simply not going to get republicans to vote in favor of a tax increase unless they are given something. >> i don't understand w

bob pisani is joining me on the floor of the nyse. the big discussion is about retail and what the figures from mastercard tell us. >> i just want to point out that the dow industrials dropped in the middle of the day. there had been some concern the house leadership which is all coming back now did not send out a 48-hour notice to their membership requiring all the members to show up and vote, even though there's no fiscal cliff deal, there was hope they would bring everybody back and try to get something going on friday afternoon. that hasn't happened. if you look at the dow, we were positive earlier in the day and now been negative for awhile. simon mentioned mastercard's spending pulse data, only up 0.7%. this was a surprise to a lot of people and the analysts didn't have these numbers. you can see the effect it's had on some of the luxury stocks. i do want to point out that i think there is some misinterpretation of this data. i'll explain a little bit more at the top of the hour. but these mastercard survey excludes certain cate

joining me now to discuss this, bob pisani and john carney of cnbc. gentlemen, welcome. bob, i get how this is not helpful to workers. you lose the benefits of any dollar cost averaging. you may be ending up getting a lump sum at the end of the year. and if you leave the company before the end of the year, you don't get anything. but what's the real ben fet efi ibm? >> they save on administrative and accounting and they may have even constudies that indicate they'll actually save by make being the lump sum payment because you don't have to put it in certain times of the year and there may be overall cost savings for them. i don't think this is good news for employees at all. it's not just the loss of dollar cost averaging. i think that people may end up putting in less to their account and that's the overall issue. >> i guess savings might accrue from a fact if a worker leaves in july, ibm will have put nothing in for their worker or september or october or whenever. you got to be there into late december to get something so there are some savings there, but beyond that i

john carney and bob pisani.lier, apple's tim cook telling nbc's brian williams the tech giant plans to spend $100 million on american manufacturing next year. we asked the question, is this tim cook trying to keep america great or more pr? >> i think it is great news. look, any kind of attempt to increase manufacturing is fine here but don't get too excited. remember when president obama met with steve jobs a couple years ago and said to him, what's it going to take to have the iphone made in the u.s.? he said those jobs are not coming back in that may and little more realistic. >> even if it is a pr stunt, it is great that apple feels the need to try to improve its image and thinks it can do it by having more jobs in america. if more companies follow this we may be able to restore some of our manufacturing base in the u.s. i hope so. >> let's talk about apple's real rifle and some would say enemy, samsung. is it the one to watch? droids gaining a lot of popularity. rumor circulating is that samsung's next gener

bob pisani, it makes me crazy. >> things have gone downhill.rst message was merry christmas. at least that was pleasant. do you know what the second, third and fourth ones were? i have them! number two is buy the number one diet pill. the next one -- the best stock to buy now. the fourth message -- what's up. the free message was free testosterone supplements. there's the list. >> oh, stop. >> in defense of the texting masses, i think it is brilliant. we're able to talk to each other a lot more than we used to be able to. we can tell people when we're going to be late, when we're going to be early. >> i agree with that! >> it's better than talking! it's communicating. >> it's better than talking? >> i agree with that. but people don't even look up anymore. they're always down like this. >> the average 15-year-old sends 195 texts a week. >> just look up every once in a while if you text or you're going to hurt yourself. >>> disney's new fantasyland, the largest expansion in the magic kingdom's 41-year history opens this week with new interactive

emerging market reits. >> bob pisani, where was the leadership today? >> defense stocks, defense index hit an historic high and with all the talk of skwegsration and certainly on defense spending you would think they would be down. another sign that the markets are optimistic things will work out. airlines were up today. very positive comments on capacity and business coming back after sandy, so there's two groups that held up and, of course, apple up as well. >> interesting to see the defense stocks act that way, bob, even though we're expecting layoffs in the sector. >> yeah. this is what's remarkable to me. overall you would think orders, like future orders, which is what defense spending -- defense stocks trade on would be noticeable to the downside and there's ate lot of worry. not underperforming the market. since the beginning of the deekz december, they have been outperforming. >> go ahead, debra. >> been at the tax rates before and it wasn't like nobody jumped out of market. stocks did outperform at market. >> but that was a very different time

let us get some with bob pisani. bob, let's step away from our markets for just a second. okay? what is this we hear about the possibility that the italian government could go away? >> it was a problem this morning. mario monty's government has survived the no confidence vote. looks like the italian government is going to survive. you see italian stocks were down throughout the day. the problem about this, the structure of italian politics makes the country ungovernable. brian, there's 12 political parties in the chamber of deputies. that's the lower house. you get coalitions together and they routinely topple the governments. this has been a problem since world war ii. they've got to gig ofigure out better way to govern the country. >>> we've got huge volume today on apple. it will do 40 million shares, probably twice normal. it went positive earlier in the day on that very good news about doing some production of the mac in the u.s. >> they've got too many and maybe we have too few. somewhere in the middle is the answer. bob pisani, thank you. >>> your top stock story today is

bob pisani is down here at the new york stock exchange. we have rick santelli in chicago. bob, you have been trying all day to figure out a retail dilemma. have you figured it out yet? >> i think i have. it's been bugging me all day. we have mastercard saying retail sales up 0.7% for the holiday season. the national retail federation comes out and says their survey indicates it will be up 4.1%. i know it's different surveys but that's a big, big difference. it didn't make sense to me. i asked mastercard how exactly they're computing this survey and what they include and what they exclude. i think you ought to know these facts the company provided to me. number one, their mastercard survey includes the week of hurricane sandy which was the last week of october. some of these companies don't. secondly, the survey excludes nonholiday related categories, excludes food, excludes gas, excludes building materials. well, that's a very important piece of information. that may make up for the difference. mastercard's spokesman also told me, here's a quote, put the quote up, it is pos

bob pisani. see you a little bit later. you mentioned the oppenheimer, and they'll be on the floor later. rick santelli at the cme group in chicago. >> good morning, rick. >> good morning. happy christmas eve, carl. if we look at interest rates today on an interday chart, it doesn't look all that exciting. but you never know, i've seen wild activity on christmas eves, i remember 20-something years ago, the dollar/yen had an up and down when they had futures of 125 points. so you never know. if you look at the year-to-date chart of the ten-year note yields, we gave it a good go last week and the week before, for a run at unchanged on the year. which would have been around 187. but we never made it. the only maturity that has crossed and is higher yield on the year, the 30-year bond. some day, remember, look at the clinton years, almost an 8%. that's when you could talk about clinton era tax rates. but boy, look at those clinton era savings rates that the savers were getting. if you look at dollar/yen, it's having another gre

make sure that was the correct number there. >> well, you know, a lot of volatility in rate. >> bob pisaniat do you think today? a pretty good real under way? all about the fiscal cliff? >> well, the markets, is bullish because the markets are acting like 2013 will resolve a lot of problems so we've multi-month highs in the stock market. we have the safe haven, gold and bonds just getting hit badly again. i mean, bond yields are moving up. gold is moving down on a day when the dollar is -- is weak today, so the markets are sort of acting like things are actually going to resolve themself. even now, maria, you might notice, the headlines out this afternoon aren't bullish. markets believe a deal is coming quickly. >> so do you guys. you don't have any necessarily different guidance or expectation or reports than we do, and you both are very much in step that a deal gets done what. if it doesn't? >> i kind of think what's going on right now is a little dance. everybody has to appeal to their constituency so what they can do is come out with plan a, b, c, d, e, f and g and if a little bit of e

the question now, bob pisani, what happens with the other exchanges, hong kong, nasdaq? what are we seeing next in terms of the next target in the exchange space? >> well, at the very least, it's helped improve the overall metrix and the valuations of these companies, because now, once again, we're seeing some of the companies come into play, who are potential buyers and acquirers? london stock exchange is out still looking, deutsche boerse potentially and there are compete i competing exchanges here in the united states. hard to imagine them getting enough money to make deals, but they are still also out there. there's a whole group of companies out there. i'll tell you what's very interesting. we don't know what the title. new company, name of the new company. they told us everything except that. we don't know if it will have the name new york stock exchange in that. i'd like to know that and charles schumer from new york said i'm pleased they are going to keep the new york stock exchange name and protect the brand, but we don't know if that's the title. there's a subs

key private bank in cleveland and michael pento of pento portfolios, no idea where you are, and bob pisani on the floor of the new york stock exchange. what did you make, stephanie, of today's market action? you're the trader and follow the short-term swings. what was the message of the market do you think today? >> the message is the market is nothing is really going to change. interest rates will be low for an extended period of time. the fact that they tied the rates to unemployment, a little bit of a twist to the story, but it means that rates stay low. i think that the housing theme continues. i think that financials continue to work because even though you have a flat yield curve they are a beneficiary of the housing cycle, and away from all of this you focus on what happens internationally and china continues to recover. europe looks like it's stabilizing and we didn't change our strategy based on the news, just a little bit more of what you're doing. >> randy, anything change for you? >> no, not really. what we're watching is the parallels that occur now, where we stood with the fi

. >> let's get to bob pisani who's on the floor watch what's moving. >> moffett wants the cash flow fromeport who helped finance the drilling for mcmoran drilling. why did they have to spend 70% premium to buy these things? if i wanted to buy them, i could have bought them a lot cheaper, i wanted a copper company. i think that's why people were unhappy today. the global stock market raleigh are doing great. and the bond market is doing pretty good. hong kong 52-week high. german 52-week high. france 52-week high. bombay, india, 552-week high. not a lot of rosy news out there, i know it sounds word to see all these stock markets with 52-week highs. there's not a lot of good news, and yet, still, we get record yields. we had a french bond auction, i don't normally talk about the french bond auctions, but i have to note, 1% on a six-year? record low yields, 1.27 low on a 7 year. the 15-year they had was record lows. we have this poor outlook, we still got the bond market flying, prices are way up here, the ecb's got everybody's back. a remarkable move in europe, a lot of people have been wr

. >> while we use the word trousers, bob pisani is here watching what's good morning, bob. >> happy mondayou notice the market. nice rally here. again, the market is demonstrated that it believes a deal on the fiscal cliff is coming. i know. i didn't hear it over the weekend. headline risk was all anybody wanted to talk about on friday. if anybody says that a deal is not happening or it's going nowhere, we could wake up down 15 points on the s&p on monday. guess what? boehner said the deal is going nowhere. now, when i call the bulls on this, they say, bob, they didn't say a deal was off. they just said so far the negotiations are going nowhere. the market still believes that a deal is coming and it's going to be a substantive deal. instead and by the way, geithner insisted on tax rates issues. looks like there may be something happening eventually. we didn't fall apart on the whole thing. even futures weren't down overnight. instead we rally on a little bit overnight on the greek deal and for those that don't know and this is arcane depending on what kind of bonds you're talking about, th

bob pisani.as the market flash. >> carl, we've been back and forth about whether the reception of the iphone 5 in china is going to be good or bad. some checks on friday said it was muted. that led suppliers down. we're seeing them see some relief from that pressure. today may be a correction from that downtrade on friday. qualcomm one of the best trades today, also skyworks solutions. also favorable moves for avago and cirrus logic. >> the likes of fedex, oracle and rim reporting results. what do you need to know before the results come out? let's bring in christine short, senior managing of s&p capital iq. >> great to see you, thank you. >> what's amazing is the -- how the expectations for income or earnings have come down just since october 1st, right? >> right. and you're right. they've completely cratered. if you recall back during the third quarter earnings season, when we entered the season, we were seeing third quarter estimates were negative. we were looking at fourth quarter estimates i

. >> bob pisani is here this morning more on what's moving. hey, bob?t you know about an ipo pricing down here, pbf energy here operation 20.5 million shares at 26. this looks ready to open at 28. the book is frozen right now so that means that the -- the specialist you can the dmm here has indicated the final price is in, it looks like pbf is going to open right now at $28, one of two ipos down that are priced today, solarcity pricing over on the nasdaq that is not yet open. get to more on that shortly. guys, mentioning when will the bond bubble burr president? big topic overnight that i was getting, at least. the feds actually yesterday, yields spiking up, reignited this debate. remember, this was the big call at this time last year, 2012, the year the bond bubble burst. by the way, it hasn't abated. it has continued into the fourth quarter of this year, despite other people's predictions. seen continue outflows in stock mutual funds, the call for 2012 the wrong call, reignited, you mentioned ray dal yo, dave rubenstein talked about how the next fortu

bob pisani here with the winners and losers on wall street today. over to you, bob. >> take a look at dow, folks, and we did advance despite of an impasse on the fiscal life. ended not far from the highs of the day. in fact, we've been moving up for a while. take a look at the last month. despite the concerns here that we may not get a deal, the market is still saying the outlines of a deal is see very much in effect. gdp revision, existing home sales, best since november 2009. a couple sectors stand out. banks were market leaders again. they have been on fire for weeks now. new highs today, bank of america and citigroup. transports are near a 52-week high. railroads strong, kansas city southern and delta on fire. that stock is up 20% in the last few weeks and jetblue also doing well on top of that. deal of the week, of course, you know the new york stock exchange. maybe it's the deal of the month. 33.12 and ended a little bit before for that the nyc/i.c.e. deal and of course what we don't know is the name of the new company. let's hope it has nyse i

let's ask the strategist who joins us along with our own bob pisani. >> you're looking to the market based on the next 12 months. at about $109. we should be trading at around 1740. if we were at the median p.e. of 16 -- >> 1740 on the s&p? >> 1740 would be a 16-forward multiple which is the median since as far back as capital iq has had forward estimatinged earnings. >> right now you're on 1426 on the standard & poor's. let me get your take on this. i recognize there are a lot of ways to look at things. but there's also a technical way to look at something. and that is if a stock is undervalued, maybe it's cheap for a reason. and maybe it will get cheaper. so why do you think that we're supposed to go back to the way history has shown us, when in fact sometimes the stock is cheap for a reason and only gets worse. >> that's what's causing a lot of investors to sit on their hands saying i'm not buying into is the. our forecast is for a 10% advance which is basically what history says we should be experiencing based on where we are now in this low inflationary environment combined with

bob pisani joins me. that's despite gridlock in washington. >> maybe because of it.a look at dow jones industrial average. we were up, speaker boehner gave us an update and basically said where is the president on the spending cut issue. we lost ground on that particular news. a couple of sectors doing well. tech outperforming, ambassadors trying to find a trading range between 5 and $6hup, a little more stable. texas instruments raised outlook, chip marks, alter, a, jds among gains. what sequestration worries, they continue to defy gravity. second group strong, airline stocks. good news, delta taking a 49% steak in virgin air, maybe more consolidation. booking trends good recently. a minimal impact from business travel on sandy overall, jet fuel prices continue to drop. let's talk about exchange traded funds. you know them. i'm a big backer. matt hogan here moderating a conference master of all things etfs. we're continuing to see money going in. what's going on? why is etf so high? >> a couple of reasons. all the things we talk about, lower cost more cost efficient

let's go back to bob pisani on the new york stock exchange. >> the fed gave the markets the two thingsnted. steve, hit it right on the head. they wanted additional purchases. theyn't waed that $45 billion to replace operation twist. they got that. and the traders also wanted some kind of economic threshold in the form of a clear targets for unemployment and inflation, and they got that as well. with that said, we didn't see much of a reaction. the dow went up -- it was up about 15 points as we went into the announcement, when his high is 35 or 40 points, and now it's basically come back as you can see. still not far from its highs. most of the rest of the markets moved up a little bit. bank stocks moved up incrementally. the bank index moved up to just about 50 points there, right at its high. and then just moved back down again. the dollar, by the way, put up the dollar, it was at session lows as we went into the announcement on the theory, of course, that any additional quantitative easing might be effective on the dollar, cheapen the dollar. you can see the dollar index has been dow

bob pisani told us on "street signs" how home builders are 2012 strongest index.stion, does that signal a housing rebound? let's bring in president and ceo of team investments. great to have you here. >> thank you so much. >> what do you think? we've had a pretty good rebound and stocks going gang busters, how much more can we eke out. >> nobody will see a boom. we'll see a lot of short sales. banks are realizing they make more money short selling than for clothesing so we'll see a lot of short sales. a lot of traditional sales. as the market rises, those people that couldn't sell are going to be able to sell. those are two really good signs. we're going to see interest rates stay low for the first half. >> they will stay low but can we take advantage of it. i applied for refi, i pay bills on time, i still haven't closed, so long to get documentation done. >> i think that's why we'll see them stay low through the first half. what they really need to do is raise those rates a hair and lower criteria for lending. we need to see that happen. >> if you needed to advis

let's get out to bob pisani. so much for december being a good month for stocks. >> well, we're just starting out but the big story i think is that no progress on the fiscal cliff. it is not bothering stocks yet. it will soon but as of today it is not. instead it was the rather poor i scht m number that came out, lowest since july 2009. just off the lows for the day. i think the important thing is if you look at sectors here, transports, materials, all the risk-on trades, industrials, all to the downside. getting a modest up side from technology stocks as dell got an upgrade today. >>> finally i just want to point out, another day gold is up, gold stocks are to the downside. this has been going on for a long time. take a look here. there's gold for the year. there's gold stocks. look at this underperformance for gold stocks. this has been happening because people more and more are putting money when they want to be in gold and inflation into the gold directly rather than the gold stocks. again this has been a tre

>> morgan stanley wealth management, everybody, the best thing to watch this month, and bob pisani pointed this out. the transportation stocks have been very strong. china has been strong. mandy, you know, japan has been strong, and the banks have been strong. to me there's an underlying strength to the market when some of the bodyguards have been doing well so i think the market wants to do better. that having been said the fiscal cliff will turn out to be not a maxi deal but a mini deal and will clip the economy not by 1% but a 2% and a 60% chance something will get done but that's where we come out on it right now. a little bit harder hit to the economy. >> don't adjust your sets, everybody. this is what bob sounds like today. >> this is a different exchange here. >> not doing your imitation of david? >> what do you think that the seasonal factors are a major reason why the markets are holding up so well? if you look at the havens, gold, treasuries, for example, the dollar, there's no sign of panic in the haven. >> silver is down. you've seen a little bit of a lift in the vix, closer to

bob pisani is here on the floor of the nyse, steady as she goes, caught in the narrow range today. >> either side of positive or negative, a few individual groups are meeting, i want to highlight, a lot of questions about the retailers. historic high yesterday a number very weak. a lot of questions on gap. the reason gap is down is made some very cautious comments on gap, citing competition concerns, specifically talked about kohl's high inventory level that might cause them to be aggressive with promotions. weather unseasonably warm, not good for apparel. consumers hesitant. dashed.came out cutting guidance, own red lobster, cited consumers out there. playing in with the slight consumer slow down trend, see the notable restaurants down three 3, 4 or 5%. finally, sue, the bank index dropped here today and i can telling you the reason for that one today. elizabeth warren named the senate banking committee. ms. warren is a leading supporter of being very aggressive on banking regulation. the minute we sort of got confirmation of that, see the bank stocks moving to the down side >> go ba

have a business alliance to share and co-produce editorial content and gordon along with bob pisani. gordon will be along momentarily. michael, let me start with you. you say this market's preoccupation with the fiscal cliff is overdone. do you think we go back to the trend and that is that december is a good month on the upside for stocks? >> definitely one of the tail winds. all else being equal, probably definitely a strong point for the market. i think this market is laboring to look through the interim noise. you had decent pmi numbers, with the ism disappointing and i think the market is trying to assimilate all this. one thing i take encouragement from, things like junk bonds, small caps have not been phased, treasury yield has not collapsed. that means the economic outlook is not being downgraded with asset markets the way you might expect if they really feared the fiscal cliff was going to hit. >> we certainly don't think consumers are fearing the fiscal cliff because they keep buying and buying ahead of the holidays. >> bob, let me get your take on this. before you go into

. >> reporter: as bob pisani just mentioned the discussion today is about that plan "b" that speaker boehner is offering to only raise taxes on million dollar incomes and do nothing on spending cuts until next year. the president came out into the white house briefing room said, and after talking about gun control made the argument in response to questions that they have narrowed their differences too much to walk away from negotiations now. >> i've said i'm willing to make some cuts what. separates is probably a few hundred billion dollars. the idea that we would put our economy at risk because you can't bridge that gap doesn't make a lot of sense. >> that wasn't persuasive at least publicly to house speaker boehner who faces a lot of resistance to his caucus on million dollar incomes or 400,000 or 250,000 income. he could pass plan "b" and put the ball right back in the president's lap. >> tomorrow the house will pass legislation to make permanent tax relief for nearly every american, 99.81% of the american people. then the president will have a decision to make. he can call on sen

. >>> now we found bob pisani.on the floor of the new york stock exchange. >> we've been talking about what's going on in the day and why this rally in the middle of the day. take a look. this is what everybody's talking about here. there have been vague rumors that the republicans may be breaking ranks a little bit and some may be willing to accept tax hikes. that would be a break-through if we can. of course the question is what to do on the spending side but one step at a time. it is still very vague as you heard from eamon. apple has been a big question. there's a lot of complicated things going on. right now we're going to do 35 million shares in apple today. that's twice the normal volume. we aren't far from the lows of the day. let me give you a short laundry list about what's been going on, various things we've been hearing today. there is an at&t investor conference going on that at&t's been participating in. they're talking about smartphone sales about flat for the quarter compared to last year. is overal

it looks as if the street is expecting some kind of deal, but as bob pisani's been saying, i'm wonder if it's a bite rumor and sell the fact situation. >> more negative now than when i came down here. >> that's not very encouraging. where's the hope "closing bell" is next. >> a government fractured, a market paralyze. a call to action our markets careen towards the sharp edge of the fiscal cliff. we've is asked our politicians to seem compromise and find a solution. the clock is ticking down. the stakes are getting higher. now we're turning up the pressure. this is a cnbc special report, "mission critical, rise above d.c." >> and we do welcome you to "closing bell." i'm bill griffith here at the new york stock exchange. hey, maria. >> hey there, bill. big rally where you are. i'm bartiromo coming today from the white house for our special coverage. stocks rallying on the on the missile that perhaps we are nearing a fiscal cliff deal. coming up we'll, find out from key lawmakers in the fiscal cliff negotiations how we can actually get a deal done before the deadline. representative chr

bob pisani. so is high frequency trading ruining the markets? my next guest says absolutely, especially for the millions of individuals out there. a senate panel checking for computer-driven irregularities. take a look at what needs to happen to have the market a fair game for everybody. also ahead, dirty details revealed. walmart reportedly in another bribery scandal in mexico. are they the only company in your portfolio that should be looked at for bribery or not? let's hear what ken langone has to say about that having done business all over the world. back in a minute. [ male announcer ] this is steve. he loves risk. but whether he's climbing everest, scuba diving the great barrier reef with sharks, or jumping into the market, he goes with people he trusts, which is why he trades with a company that doesn't nickel and dime him with hidden fees. so he can worry about other things, like what the market is doing and being ready, no matter what happens, which isn't rocket science. it's just common sense, from td ameritrade. if you're a man with

>> market down 74 and right over to bob pisani we go. ? >> maria, take a look at the dow industrials. the fiscal cliff smacks around the stock market today. did rise out. word got out that we have a meeting at 5:00 p.m. between representative boehner and president obama, but bear in mind here we sold off yesterday on the news announcement of additional treasury purchases, and a large part of the decline on the day is the sell on the news from the fed announcement. two issue, fed and, of course, fiscal cliff moving stocks here. take a look at the major sector, dollars reversed the declines of yesterday. energy, tech, materials, all down. volatility, everybody is waiting for it, but the vix does not move at all. just a modest move again today. the fiscal cliff looks like it's going to be resolved. that's what the vix is saying, and the fed's actions are not going to create volatility, even additional futures contracts in the vix are not higher in the last several weeks here. we did have a spike in bond yields yesterday. some good very excite

. >> let's check with bob pisani on the floor with more. good morning, bob. >> hello, guys. happy tuesday. of course, we saw a little bit of the drop in futures when corker came out and said we're not close to a deal. by and large, we're still positive here today. that's because everybody knows that a deal of some kind is coming. the president's offer is getting closer to the gop offer. the republicans are meeting this morning, no doubt they'll squawk and scream. ultimately the street believes some kind of deal is coming here. the big issue is the post-fiscal cliff trade. that's what everybody's trying to figure out. that's where there's a lot of differences of opinion. by and large it's been a strong argument to buy going into the fiscal cliff and sell after that, the theory being fear of american austerity is beginning, that we are having higher taxes on the wealthy, enlistment of entitlements of some kind. a head wind for stocks in 2013. where the arguments begin is when do you get more cautious. some people are arguing selling immediately after a fiscal cliff deal is rea

. >> let's check in with bob pisani here on the floor this morning. bob, have you met snoopy yet?> hey, no haven't met snoopy. everybody here distracted, i think a little news everyone is talking b try to answer issues, people want to know what is going on here. the deal reflectsed diminishing value of the stock trading business and the higher value of the derivatives business. when i say diminishing value, remember the nasdaq ice bid that happened in april 2011? 4253. today's deal, 3312. that's not lost with anybody. a higher p, market cap here. what is going to happen to the stock trading busy in know what they are saying what is really going to happen? a lot of the betting, they will spin off the european part of the cash equities business, retaint u.s. part. however, that does not mean that in the future, you couldn't having? happen. you couldn't spin it off, ipo it in the future, even having current management retain control of that, a completely separate entity. some of the things talked about. what would be the possible buyer of the cash equities business? you think about i

bob pisani is on the floor with more. >> still talking about the fiscal cliff and how little reaction we'll get with the markets. up 60 points in the dow right now. there's no particular worry out there. they believe that a deal is going to happen. if you look at the vix, for example, not only are they not moving, they're not moving out of any range, but they're moving in an even tighter spread than they normally do. the relationship between vix and vix futures is squashed down. this is the deal, the republicans will agree to tax increases, and very quickly this week we'll turn to debate on what kind of spending cuts there's going to be, and dealing with entitlements. they believe a deal is coming, we'll see. i espoused this a couple of weeks ago, that the markets are going to sell off even with a deal on the fiscal cliff? why? because it represents the beginning of american austerity. higher taxes in the long run, spending cuts in the long run, that is a headwind for stocks. not a tailwind. i know everybody's excited about the deal being made. but a substantial minority believes that

bob pisani is here at post 9 watching the dow up 19. >> i'll tell you something. thank you, mr.oyd blankfein, head of goldman sachs on with andrew ross sorkin. he said what i've been saying for a few weeks. austerity will cause economic headwinds. higher taxes are a medicine we can't turn away. i'm not in favor of higher taxes, but there are a lot of people down here who are arguing this is going to be a serious headwind for the stock market. here we are, by the way, on intraday. don't be too impressed with this downturn. this is a very small amplitude. it's 40 points. it's not statistically significant. we're drifting around right now, trying to figure out what the fiscal cliff is going to do. let me show you, we're getting projections for 2013 coming in. it's bulls and bears here. here's the bearish argument. it's what blankfein essentially was alluding to. although blankfein is bearish. the bears have been arguing american austerity is beginning at this point. higher taxes and less spending is a headwind. it's not a tailwind for stocks in 2013. on top of that, we're going to

let's get to bob pisani with a look at what is moving here.ot moving, most of it to the downside. >> 4-1 decline to advancing stocks. very heavy volume. there will be s&p rebalancing at the close. it is not the volume we're concerned about but the fact we're hitting lows for the day. let's take a look. remember what's happened. a lot of people are trying to game the system a little bit, buying right after the open, and the hope here is you do this slowly throughout the day and sell as you go into the close. that is not happening. when you go in this direction you break the lows there, that creates a little panic amongst these people because they panic very easily. the inclination is to sit, cover your position fairly quickly as you drop below the earlier lows of the day. that is the safe thing to do. now you get a little brave and you start dropping much further than that and risk much bigger losses. so that is why it is a little disturbing to see it break below the earlier lows of the day. let's move on and i'll show you some of the big secto

bob pisani is here at post 9. to talk about market action as it relates to what the speaker said a few moments ago. >> did you watch john boehner the speaker of the house? normally coolool and collected. looking a littles by frustrated. two-sentence answers. a little unusual for the speaker of the house and sort of very brusque and basically walked off on the press conference very quickly. good reason to be frustrated. let me give you some of the highlights of what a lot of people are talking about here. forget everything. don't go over the fiscal cliff but pass a simple tax bill. what would it entail? expend the tax cuts to those making under $250,000. increase taxes on dividends and capital gains to 23.6%. number three, know estate tax, payroll tax cut, unemployment benefits extension. basically strip everything out. no delay in sequestration. does this look like it would satisfy wall street? i don't think so. remember two essential points. it's got to be done before the end of the year and be substantive. this

>> let's bring in our guests and our own bob pisani. good to see you guys. thanks for joining us. kevin, what is your take in terms of investing into year end and going into 2013? >> i just think you have to be realistic about the fiscal cliff issue. we don't know what the magnitude of the damage is going to be to gdp next year but what we do know is that the current track run in terms of fiscal sustainability just isn't right. we can't run trillion dollar deficits for a year and expect to get away with that long term. so i think there is a trade-off here in terms of some penalty to growth next year. longer term there are benefits though and going into the year i think you just have to have maybe a little cash in the portfolio but be looking to put money to work in companies that are going to survive, good balance sheets and consistent profitability. stocks are cheap relative to bonds so i don't want to get too defensive here. >> you were with us at the top of the hour and made clear you were on hold until you see something about a fiscal cliff resolution of some kind. is there no

bob pisani, with a look at what's moving.pple is weak, the volume is strong, i've got a lot of questions on it this morning, a lot of things floating around. there isn't just one thing associated with it, but i think there was an at&t investor today, the ceo of at&t mobility gave figure foss overall smartphone sales, and implied that overall smartphone, not just for apple phones, but the whole product line might be roughly in line with the same quarter of last year, in other words fourth quarter sales might be the same as last year. i think that's a bit of a disappointment to some people. they're extrapolating maybe iphone sales are not as strong. there also may be disappointment off special different. finally tablet sales have been strong, but maybe not as strong as some people are thinking. remember, apple overall, still nice gains from where we were at the beginning of this year, so people got longer-term investors who goat gains still in apple, so a lot of things floating around with apple. really on fairly wide divergenc

mary thompson is in this morning for bob pisani. >> slight gains in the doubts, 6 pints.nd nasdaq under pressure. the drug stocks were a little higher. semis looking fairly strong. traders telling me, the focus for the next couple of weeks is going to be any headlines coming across for the fiscal cliff. that will drive the markets right now. that is what they're keeping an eye on. the week ahead, we have the fed meeting this week. they'll be watching abercrombie coming out of that. and treasuries up about seven sales in the next two weeks. and so given that a lot of people may have closed their books, they're concerned about what demand might be like for these treasury auctions and how that may not impact not only the bond market, but stock market as well. china, that data was broadly better than expected. that's giving a lift to commodities. we'll get more on that. and the euro banks, too, being hit by news from the italian prime minister's mario monti's resignation. that is causing some concern to the spanish banks as well, where the focus turns once you have the news o

bob pisani is here. move in either direction here today? >> it's about even on advance/decline.vidual investors, sharon is right, are investing. so why is gold down on the day the dollar is up and the trend is poor? i india is not doing particularly well on gold sales. china is okay. a lot of talk some institutional people might begin selling at this point because certainly retail investors in the u.s. are definitely buying the gold through the gld right now. the fiscal cliff very quickly here because the general consensus outlines of a deal out there. i know it doesn't sound that way. they're far apart. blah-blah. here is the idea. elements are emerging, folks, higher tax rates. nobody down here doesn't think there isn't going to be. if it's not 39% for the top 2%, it'll be 38%. some kind of compromise in the a area. the bad news and i've said this several times, the era of american austerity is beginning now and everybody is starting to realize that. the question is what's it going to look like? the good news is it's likely to be a gentle austerity, if i can say that, in 2013

check with mary thompson in for bob pisani this morning., mary. >> we note mixed market the dow up 7 1/2 points, continued weakness in the s & p as well as the nasdaq today, lower by semiconductors, strength in the energy sector around drug stocks in early trade. that is helping to support the dow. a number of traders say the market continues to hold up pretty well, given that there are, of course, fewer expectation wers going to reach, a grand bargain on avoiding the fiscal cliff. look at the s & p, we did have melissa mentioning this earlier, down three days in a role one strategist pointing out technically looks vulnerable, the 15-day moving average above the 200 day. if it breaks below that, we could see selling pressure heading to the end of the year. the vix which popped up earlier, this is a measure of fear on wall street. i bring this up, while we are at the highest levels in six months on the vix, well below half of where we were back in august of 2011, the debt crisis. that kind of suggests again a complacency in the market as we

. >>> let's check with mary thompson, on the floor in for bob pisani today. >> weakness across the boardakness in the nasdaq, down about 20 points. the dow lost in early trade. a little more modest in the s&p, down 4.25%. traders saying the fiscal cliff headlines will continue to dictate trading. and here there was a little reaction in the futures market ahead of today's opening bell on the data and the better than expected production numbers. overseas, last night we did have some more bad news out of japan with business sentiment there weakening. as melissa was mentioning earlier, positive news on the manufacturing front in china. that's giving a lift, as she pointed out, to a number of mining stocks. while it's also giving a lift to energy, or to oil prices this morning, i should point out, some of the big name oil companies were a little bit lower in early trading, again, those being exxon as well as chevron. the traders said the bid in the market remains strong despite concerns about the fiscal cliff in large part because the investors remain positive going into 2013. this is the mar

bob pisani is on the floor with what's moving today. >> we're up 24 points in the dow. of people think a grand bargain is impossible at this point. but president obama coming back from vacation in hawaii. that's an indication that some kind of deal -- however small -- is definitely coming. i want to point out, and i know you've been negative on this mastercard data on retail sales, and everybody thinks it's going to be a mess for the holiday season. i want to point out that the stocks are not acting that way. that this is a disaster for the season. the s&p retail index hit an historic high on december 3rd. historic high. since then, it has only been down about 3%. these stocks are not acting like there's a disaster. i can give you several reasons why they're not down so far. number one, we are going to see eps growth in the fourth quarter from some of them because of the extra week that there is. number two, we've had much lower cotton costs this year. their overall costs are lower. that's helping their earnings. number three, inventory levels are much lower. and that's

it's like what bob pisani said. this is just what the traders wanted.you go. >> let me quiz for you for a second. if they were so concerned about this imbalance, which ostensibly is about the inability of the u.s. government to pay its bills, why aren't they selling the very paper they appear to be buying with abandon? >> because they would like to continue to contribute tax revenues to the ever-growing deficit and money. >> need for employee -- >> but agreement to making money are two different things. >> talk to the guys behind you and find out if they so think the u.s. is -- >> -- exchange guys. these are foreign exchange guys. >> get into the other pit there. go take a walk and come back. i don't get it. if they so think we're out of whack why aren't they selling? >> come over here anthony. all right. hold on. i'll translate. give me the question. >> here's the question. >> steve liesman has a question. >> if the u.s. fiscal situation is so out of balance, if the country is so bankrupt, why isn't he selling paper? why is everybody out there buying b