michelle, it's such a critical time for investors weigh thought we would bring back in the two davids, david darst, chief investment strategist with morgan stanley, david furle. we left off the conversation a few minutes ago saying we thought the market was going to go down. retail sales coming out this week. it's going to be a key thing for investors to digest. david if your lick to get a pretty good read on the consumer. >> the consume ser is going to still be pretty weak. one of the interesting issues has been the cash for clunkers. consumers are buying a durable if they can get one of those cars which is going to take away from more discretionary purchases, apparel, other retail. it's going to be a very anomalous period. the consumer is probably weak earn will probably stay that way for a number of months. >> looking for the number this thursday to come out on retail sales, up 1.3%. a lot of that is auto. the auto you take out, up only 0.1%. a big chunk of it automobile sales. a week from friday, which will be the 21st of august, you want to watch the lead economic indicators. and it's expecte

joining me here, david darst, chief investment strategist with morgan stanley. and directly to my right, jordan kimmel, market strategist with national securities, author of "the method of invest." so gentlemen, let's talk a little bit about the dollar. a lot of people scratching their heads. dollar strong, stocks strong as well. commodities kind of moving sideways. that hasn't happened recently. is this a sign that something -- there's a change in the air? >> global recovery is the theme. you've got germany, you've got japan recovering. the united states looks like -- you see the jobs number, robert, 240 this morning, 247. that means the fed's going to be able maybe with people starting to of month into mid next year rather than end next year raising rates. as you know, we learned in college, currencies were driven by trade. today they're driven by capital flows. thus interest rates. so if the economy's stronger here, looks like we're coming out faster than people thought, that's going to raise the interest rate, going to raise the currency. thus today unlike e

let's bring in david darst and talk more about this. he's chief investment strategist at morgan stanley smith barney. welcome, david. good to see you. >> so good to see you. and happy week leading up to labor day. >> exactly. those can be very bullish times or dangerous times, depending on how thinly traded the market is. are you as bullish on equities as some of the other analysts we talked to? >> we say buy risk assets. there's abundant liquidity. there's up earnings, up gdp growth. okay? and the valuations are not bad. so maybe 14 times 2010 earnings for the s&p 500. risk assets, commodities, high yield bonds, small cap equities, emerging market equities, and real estate investment trusts. in addition, if you want to take on some risk in advance of -- you'll have sunday's election in japan. so you might want to start to add to your japanese position. and there's reasoning behind that if you want to go into it further. >> wellish let's get some opinions back from tom. tom, where would you be allocating cash right now if indeed the proj