its biggest gain in seven months. on top of that the university of michigan's final march reading for consumer sentiment rose to 76.2. the index is now at it's highest level in more than a year. economist drew matus explains why americans are feeling so chipper. >> it is being driven by higher job growth better income prospects, something that gets the consumer feeling better and over a long period of time they'll begging to act in a way that is more consistent with people that are less worried about the future. >> susie: the upbeat consumer data triggered some nice buying in consumer oriented shares today. as a result, consumer staples were among the top three sectors in the s&p 500 joined by energy and health care shares. within consumer staples: philip morris, coca cola enterprises and campbell soup were tasty for shareholders. shares of liz claiborne also moved higher today, but on takeover buzz, not consumer spending. the apparel maker and retailer reportedly held talks with private equity firms and are looking f

with a gain of 22.8%. we could see more gains on the horizon for the markets? soz there. snp /* /-. >> so there, you defensive people. >>> we come off of gains of 144 point. >> and explaining why investors could see profit taking. during the rest of the week. we are back with that. >> after the bell, don't blame speculators for sky high pricees. we will hear from one technical analyst who says investors and consumers should blame the fed. >> as we take a look, look at the commodity and how they are closing now. you're watching the "closing bell." we're back in two minutes time. >> first, before we go break, the dividend. which nasdaq 100 stock is the outperformer this year? garmin, mattel or teva pharmaceutical? the dividend that pays off, after the break. carfirmation. only hertz gives you a carfirmation. hey, this is challenger. i'll be waiting for you in stall 5. it confirms your reservation and the location your car is in, the moment you land. it's just another way you'll be traveling at the speed of hertz. bayer aspirin... ohh, no no no. i'm not having a heart attack

how is congress able to help preserve the gains which have been made. if we are seen as walking away from those gains, we are done not just the afghan women, but ourselves a great disservice. so, i ask dr. miller. >> thank you. ma'am, let me answer in three parts, if i can. the first is to acknowledge that the government of afghanistan will not always do exactly what we prefer and what we wish. at the same time, we have and we continue to make clear our view that this is an important issue. just as you said, we have that has been a consistent message from this administration. it is often, in our view, more effective to do that lesssibili. sometimes it has been more visibly. second, asver the course of this campaign and, in fact, over the course of this surge as we are seen improved gains that occurred for women including education. when i was in command south a couple weeks ago, just one relatively, in a sense small, but incredibly important fact. that is 40,000 women are education that we were not just a few years ago in that, in kandahar. and -- and t

you may save yourself from gaining weight.rchers admit this is small study in a hospital setting. they recommend a larger study allowing participants to sleep at their own homes. >> we will be righ

i'll look at where the big gains are likely to come for your portfolio. >> susie: and with home prices still falling, what makes more sense, renting or owning? we'll see what two twenty- somethings are thinking. it's "nightly business report" for tuesday, march 27. this is "nightly business report" with susie gharib and tom hudson. "nightly business report is made possible by: captioning sponsored by wpbt >> tom: good evening and thanks for joining us. susie, a closely divided supreme court today dove into the question of whether e government can force millions of americans to buy health insurance. >> susie: tom, the individual mandate is at the heart of the massive health care reform law that takes full effect in two years. but the justices today debated whether that requirement is a congressional overreach or a reasonable exercise of government power. >> tom: much of the debate centered on whether or not health care is a different kind of market, one where the decision to not buy insurance raises prices for everyone else. darren gsh pks uthe story. >> reporter: the justices struggled

while that's modest additional gain from here. for the year that would be a 15% gain which by historical standard size quite good. susie, what you and i talked about the last time on the show, stands, i encourage investors to focus on income as the primary means to generate growth, and high yield bonlds are a great place to be. >> susie: talk about the bond yields in a moment. i want to ask you about treas reaps. what's your view on treas reaps? is it still an investment to have in the portfolio or move out? >> i don't think investors should avoid the fixed income sector. there are great opportunities in high yield bonlds and emerging market bonds and investment grade bonds on the financials that still pay attractive yields. >> susie: let's go down the list. begin with your first recommendations. s&p bank, etf. tell us why you like this? >> this is a diversified index of both regional and large national banks. government regulators are burning banking industry really into something representing a utility industry, but they're stil

it was the best performing dow industrial stock with its 2.6% gain. it sits just below its most recent multi month high, hit earlier this week. two companies recently selling stock to the public for the first time are selling more. both fashion company michael kors and online gaming firm zynga. both went public in december. kors shares fell 3.5% with more supply coming to market, but the stock has more than doubled from its initial price. zynga also fell, down about 2.5% as more shares will be sold. this stock came out at $10 per share and is about $13 tonight. another mobile gaming company, glu mobile was on the receiving end of a strong analyst endorsement. investment firm needham called the stock a strong buy and investors were buying sending shares up more than 21% on a surge of volume. the analyst points to games for smartphones as fueling glu's growth. no doubt the job market is slowing improving according to the official government statistics. online job service monster worldwide may be selling itself into that environment. shares jumped almost

the technology sector post gains. a nice recovery after yesterday's sell-off with microsoft and yahoo!. pandora, missing q-4 estimates, issuing weak guidance. that being a huge red flag for investors. two downgrades today. raymond james downgrading that stock. we also have citigroup lowering their rating to neutral from buy. maria, the stock down 22%. >> thank you so much, seema. just 20 minutes before the closing bell sounds. nasdaq on course to snap a three-day losing streak today. renewed optimism that greece's debt restructuring will go through. that certainly put a floor and strength into the market this morning. the nasdaq near the highs of the afternoon, with a gain on the session of about 26 points. nearly 1%. the cbo volatility index sliding back below 20 today. the vix was pretty active yesterday. and it was closing above 20. but volatility has slowed down. that is the first time since february 15th we saw the vix move above 20. but we're pulling back today. ty, back over to you. >> maria, thanks. market vol

here in europe we're seeing another day of gains. this is the sixth day of gaines. yesterday was the 2012 high. we're pushing higher still today. we're up by over 0.4%. 6,000 there. in the dax in germany, we're over 7,000, up by almost 1%. the cac is higher as well by 0.6%. and across italy it's trading higher by three quarters of 1%. a quick check on what's going on in the bond bund. in germany the bund is yield 1g.9%. so for your the ten-year in the uk, we're looking at 2.2%. we have unemployment data coming out too. watch out for the impact that will have. in spain we are looking at levels of 1.-- sorry 5.17% on the yield under spain. we had seen yields push gragt deal lower in that country but moving in the other direction today. and similarly in it will i where rates have been elevated in recent months, a level of 4.89% on the italian ten-year. >> they certainly did a complete u-turn into the afternoon session. we saw decent gains coming through. the nikkei closing above 10,000 after testing that level only to intraday highs. seven-month highs for the japanese

s who voted yes to opening up health care to competition and stand to gain from the results there may be more the research isn't finished yet and now that the bill has passed its detractors are powerless to stop private companies stepping in and making health care about profits not healing investigation show a number of westminster m.p.'s who of britain's house of lords have links with private health care provider. through investments patronage board membership and parties in power conservatives and liberal democrats have received substantial funding from various private health care interests following the legislation those companies already starting to see a number of private health interest starting to look very seriously at cherry picking some of the best most profitable parts of the national health service they were just waiting for this legislation to go through parliament and of course now ready to pounce the changes have been highly controversial and these people think they'll damage the quality of care many feel while m.p.'s did declare their interests and should have been ban

trade goods, gain plunder for more, gain scalps, gain prisoners or captives that they could sell for goods and add to their power and strengthen their own position. so they joined the war for their own reasons to be sure. one of the natives who was a catholic, who had been converted to catholicism, you see, some of the natives who joined the french effort were those living in the st. lawrence valley in their own villages and had been converted to christianity or catholicism. others who came from the great lakes and especially the far western region were not christian at all. and this man who was a catholic said to the western indians, my brothers, we domesticated indians, this is translated from french, from a journal, we thank you for having to come to help us to defend our lands against the english who wish to exploit them. our cause is good, and the master of life favors it. we admire the fine deed you have just accomplished on the lake, lake george. the french called it lac st. sacrament, the lake, the holy sacrament. it is stained red with the blood of englishmen, and the englis

yet so the euro is gaining as the u.s. dollar just we're also seeing gains from the u.s. dollar and the. brutal so that's all the business we have for this hour there's more interest to this time. culture is the so much the been maybe you should visit israel are you trying to hide from the market because the mean arab middle east and beyond what is the condition of the arab spring are humanitarian interventions effective what about the lack.

and we can't lose that as soon as we gain it. we have to keep our eye on that. finally, our homework assignment. chronic absenteeism. this is the year to breakthrough on the issue. any district or state or community that has the dropout crisis usually as an unacknowledged absenteeism problem beginning as early as kindergarten. until we recognize it, we don't act against it. we don't see it. the truth is, we don't see it because we don't measure it. we don't measure it because no one's asking for it. the school's measure is a average daily attendance of the school. turns out this is one case where 90% is not an "a." we're hard wired almost genetically to hear 90% equals good. right? a school can have a 90%, 91%, 92%, 93% average daily attendance and a 40% literacy rate. the truth is, you could have 90% avrmg daily attendance and have one fifth of your kids missing a month or more of school. different kids on different days equallying that 90%. if you dig beneath that 40% literacy rate you're probably finding half those kids aren't coming to school regularly. unti

the dow industrials holding on to gains here with about an 89-point gain. the nasdaq and s&p have erased the two-day declines. >> one of the biggest bears is saying investors need to be cautious right now. morgan stanley u.s. chief will be with us, telling us why holding on to cyclicals could actually be dangerous for your portfolio. >> a double take on the state of the consumer. lou frankfurt and mark hoplamazian tells us whether higher gas prices will lead to cutbacks and consumer spending. >> look at the sea of green in the s&p 500, with the dow industrials up 89 points. you're watching the "closing bell" on cnbc. first in business worldwide. >>> we have about 45 minutes to to in today's trading session. a "state check" on the dow. gaining ground for a second consecutive day as greece looks on track to complete its bond swap to stave off a default. the dow industrials are higher by almost 100 points. almost a triple-digit gain now. that would be session highs with, as i said, with about 45 minutes to go. the biggest gainers on the dow today, alcoa, cater

is gaining quite a bit and that's despite little bull prices russia's second largest bank p.t.d. is in the red this hour and retailers must meet is always to losing value and of course one of the main factors for the russian markets is loyal and oil is down on monday mainly on concerns about slowing economic growth in china the biggest energy consumer. and capital outflow continues to dog the russian market but before that let's take a quick look at the currencies the euro is gaining just a notch against the dollar and the ruble is gaining against the euro but losing against the dollar and as a promise now onto capital outflow it remains a big problem and of russia russian banks keep on boosting their foreign assets they jumped by twelve billion dollars in january that's the biggest one month gain in about three years and do you gain and ocean from if this is tamar in moscow says that capital outflow will remain a problem for most of this year right now we lose our position versus many many of our competitors in the merging markets in terms of for direction capital a lot of the r

small gains on the day. really small gains on the week. unchanged on the s&p 500. big day today, of course, nonfarm payrolls, the 8:30 jobs report, look at the dollar index spiking on the upside. normally you would see the euro go to the downside, and that's exactly what happened. these are interday charts. rest of the market held up very well. generally we had material stocks hold up very well. on days like today, typically that doesn't happen. the volatility index, there it is. here's the whole week. essentially we're largely unchanged, despite the big spikeup we saw on tuesday on concerns about some slowing global growth. markets didn't react very well to the gdp. cooler heads prevailed and realized that's going to be a soft landing for china. they'll likely have something close to an 8 or 9 handle. bottom line, it's been a fairly good week overall. china soft landing, europe, recession, yes, but contained. and u.s. economic improvement. those themes are still very much intact. david is here to talk about that. >> love your tie today. >> it looks like we're both

the shares gained a more modest 8% from the i.p.o. price of $19. and finally tonight, csx was the biggest mover in the s&p 500. shares of the railroad giant jumped more than 8% to close at $21.92 after the company's c.f.o. predicted record first- quarter earnings. csx is considered an economic bellwether, and executives credited the improving economy for their upbeat forecast. another economic bellwether got a fresh start today as an i.p.o. allison transmission, ticker symbol a-l-s-n, began trading here at the big board. it's a new chapter for the company that was once a division of general motors. it was bought five years ago by two private equity firms. the 100-year-old company makes automatic transmissions for heavy-duty trucks and buses. allison shares rose more than 1% from their opening price of $23 a share. it's the largest i.p.o. so far this year. when i met with c.e.o. lawrence dewey, he talked about what will drive allison's growth. i think certainly the improving economy in north america will give us a lift thenas we're working to gain n

the seventh straight day of gains now for the german market. the cac is coming up in the seven days, the ftse mib is managing to add about 58 points on a percentage basis. so many of these key european indexes are managing to trade a little bit higher. so that's what's happening in the equity markets but it's also the government bond markets where we're seeing lots of attention today partly because we have some key debt auctions coming up and also yesterday we did have an auction in italy. let me tell but that one first, yesterday we saw the yields on the three-year italian government debt coming down to 2.76%. a month ago when they had a similar auction looking at 3.41%. remember, italy is considered a peripheral european country, yields are very high and they have fallen quite some distance in the past few weeks and that auction yesterday underlying that trend we have seen. now in germany, very low levels, of course, on the yield on the ten-year debt, 1.98 is the current level. in the uk 2.4%. now i should add to that that we had fitch coming

and this is the path that i took when i went to meet shawn gaines. >> 29-year-old shawn gaines had spent most of the last six years in the special management unit, awaiting trial on a first-degree murder charge that could land him on death row. >> i've lived here longer than i ever lived in one spot in my entire life even growing up as a kid so it's just, you know -- i have yet to call it home, but it is what it is. >> gaines may not have wanted to call it home, but his security threat ranking dictated it. he was segregated because he was once a major player in a violent arizona skinhead movement. >> i was the notorious leader of that skinhead group. my lifestyle was full of hate and violence. >> so with all of that hype, i was expecting shawn gaines to be a very intimidating character, but when i first met him, he wasn't. he looked a little bit more like a benign, pudgy teddy bear, and he was nice. >> i've taken up drawing. i can't quite say i'm an artist but i like to draw a lot and three times a year i draw a large stack of cards, and i donate them to the children's hospital. >> but g

modest gains in the markets today. why so modest considering we had nonfarm payrolls better than expected and the greek private sector debt deal concluding. but we had the rally. it's already there. up almost 9% for the year. a very simple answer, we've been moving up on those expectations. financials, a pretty good day overall. certainly no bis disappointments in that group. most of them were up fractionally. same situation with the home builders, which have had three big up days on the indications that the spring home buying season at least has been as good as expected. and in some cases might be a little better than some people anticipated. most of the major home builders hit 52-week highs. for all the worries in the middle of the week about a china slowdown, most of the major indices ended up fractionally. >> take a look at the business headlines right now that we're covering. the u.s. employment picture continuing to improve with employers adding 227,000 jobs in february. that's the third straight month of job gai

at the same time, bond funds gained nearly $28 billion. what that shows is that the market rally has been based on light trading volume, often a troubling sign. but analyst david levkowitz says volume is just one of many factors investors should consider: >> volume is one of them, but looking at trends in earnings, we're still going to have earnings growing this year. so that is a positive. dividends are going to grow this year-- faster than earnings. >> reporter: here at the new york stock exchange, many professional traders are feeling optimistic as the dow climbs to levels last seen in 2008. so why aren't ordinary investors flocking back into stocks? jonathan corpina warns there's no simple answer. he believes some investors are simply waiting for a better entry point. >> one of the reasons investors haven't gone into the markets so heavily thus far is that the market has been pretty much one direction since december. when that happens sometimes investors feel like they've missed the opportunity. >> reporter: other investors may be worr

peace plan a potential peace plan for their own aimed at knowing gains. this is the u.s. president and i both think that kofi annan is efforts are a good way to achieve at least the initial point of time in syria and pave the way for communication between various public groups in the country we should act in a way so as not to create more problems so that the threat of civil war is not realized and talks begin between the authorities and all groups existing in syria. has to be to medvedev said the u.s. president barack obama also on side with kofi annan peace mission to try. bring about that kid both sides to sit down and talk however the u.s. president has also continued to pledge his support for the the rebels and. the rebels. said that they will contribute they promised non lethal aid to the syrian rebels the united states of course was the seed pressure on this side step down as they back a back a regime change policy. peter oliver with the latest. from our perspectives on the peace process in the country i'm joined from damascus georgia job or the president of the un

a 9% gain, and much of that in the last few minutes here.llar because so far this had been the comeback day for the dollar against the euro following yesterday's slide, the bernanke slide and we're coming off it. but still the dollar has been lower against the euro -- excuse me, the euro has been lower against the dollar today as we've seen this turnaround tuesday occur here. that has weighed on stocks. in fact, the selling has intense filed here as we go into the close. not by a whole lot. you know, we did have that 160-point gain yesterday. we'rele pulling down. down by about 45 points. some of that has been weighed down by the energy sector and we've seen something of a cap on oil today. and for the last several days here with talk of releasing more oil from the spr, even the white house hinted again at it today and that caused a lot of volatility. here's where the white house came out again and hinted that maybe there would be more oil released from the spr. then they turned things around. we are heading lower again, and, in fact, when w

the gains there in the u.s. the markets our is still closed the figures that you seen are from friday and we saw a positive picture there and the gains were mainly from financial and a commodities thoughts represent a look at the exchange rates the euro is retreating both against the ruble and the u.s. dollar when it comes to the ruble it's gaining slightly to the u.s. dollar now moving on to crude it's still trading and negative territory and that's the spot expectations that will have every war that will show that the american economy is strengthening and other support factor though is that concerns about sanctions in iran will lead to military conflict and let's not forget that iran is a country which has a more than half of the world's oil reserves let's take a look at some other news when it comes to companies with interactive bank accounts one of knowing there's no taxes in russia and that's the latest finding of the central bank which tries to estimate the scale of money laundering in the economy in absol

and m i six gained one point two percent better than their european or u.s. peers secular was moving the myself today many stories there as i mentioned after about four point six percent at the close on rumors that its partner company. could take a controlling stake in russia as the largest car maker to cause a bit weaker than the market up just a point three percent of the close as announced on business plans and investment into certain assets and notably the west colonel field in iraq that is going to invest twenty five billion dollars over the next ten years their. preferred shares were the biggest gainers up more than five percent the highest level since summer two thousand and seven. in the us markets are struggling for direction the dow jones still trying to maintain in the positive territory after gaining a whopping one point seven percent it's a good sign that there's no correction right now there but the nasdaq is down by just a notch this is on the back of course of good stress test results that we've seen in the banking sector in the u.s. broadly p