that was blamed on sprint shutting down its old nextel network. sprint's prepaid competitor metro pcs shot up almost 37%, thanks to its own stronger than expected quarter. it has been signing up new subscribers as it gets ready to launch its new 4-g wireless service by the end of september. with all this focus on telecommunications, at&t shares added 2.8% to a four-year high. verizon gained 1.7%. homebuilding continues rebuilding-- a strong quarter from the nation's second biggest builder, pulte. the company earned more than twice what was expected, 11 cents a share. orders for new homes jumped, and the company was able to raise home prices thanks to stronger demand. shares shot up 18.4%. volume more than doubled with the stock at a new two-year high. home depot rallied on the optimism. the stock rallied 3.6%, making it the best percentage gainer of the dow jones industrial average. fellow dow stock exxon mobil gained 1.5% after reporting its biggest quarterly profit and the biggest quarterly profit ever by a u.s. company. per share, exxon earned

third piece of the puzzle, dan hessy is shutting down the nextel network which sprint acquired in theised deal in 2005. even as nextel subscribers abandoned, sprint had to maintain the network, a big aren't stock went to $2. now they are taking down nextel's antennas, providing subscreeners with faster data service. company should-furnished unwinding next year. sprint has 3 million nextel subscriptions and company working to switch them to sprint. nextel customers went to verizon. hessy has customer marketers, 60% leaving nextel signed one sprint. i heard this almost fell on the floor. thought it would be 25%. these people mostly expensive smartphone contracts. best thing about the move, converting a nextel customer costs $200 less than signing an ordinary customer. how do we know sprint can keep this up? why do i think this stock is an investment not just in fitp which stands for flash in the pan? for starters, we know the wireless business is fantastic. that's why at&t made a new high today, ver rise reason within striking distance of its highs. unlike the big boys, sprint a pure pl

reducing churn, customers leaving and he's shutting down the old nextel network.that he's shutting that down, that's spectrum free for services that people want. the ipads and everything else. he's going to use that for 3g and 4g data and important. >> good numbers of at&t this week. urging people to load up on that here? >> we are recommending at&t but we have sounded a caution. i mean, you know, both at&t and verizon are near the historical highs in terms of valuation so i think it's a fine place to hang out for the summer. collect the nice dividend. but frankly, as you look in to 2013, if the stock's at the peak multiple and it's going to grow, you know, say low double digits or high single digits, the upside's somewhat limited now. >> you have an overweight rating on the stock. >> yes, i do. i think it's great to own for the rest of the summer and at that point start thinking about what do we do with the shares? >> gotcha. final trades next. the first trade route to the west, the greatest empires. then, some said, we lost our edge. well today, there's a new ne

. >> as they decommission the old nextel network and there is a look at what we've seen in that stock. that's the one we're waiting for. of course we'll also get a sense there on iphone activations and everything else. but sprint is an interesting -- has made quite a move. we'll see whether there is more behind it. >> interesting elephant in the room. one of the smartest things at&t ever did was destroy t mobile with that issue. >> you think so. >> yeah. i think they destroyed -- ceo recently stepped down, young guy, terrific guy. t mobile's momentum ended. it's almost like j.c. penney being carved up by a lot of other companies. >> right. >> that t mobile was just a competitive company that got taken out. yes, they got a big check from at&t but att was the real winner in the end. >> many people anticipate at some point t mobile's parent deutsche telekom will sell the company to sprint. >> yes. >> and end up taking a very large stake in the overall company that being a combined sprint and t mobile. then you will have potentially a real third competitor so to speak which is probably so

. >> the recapture rate as they close down the old network at nextel is fairly high. 60% of those customersing pushed off that network are coming back to sprint. that's an important component. finally, we did have iphone activations for you to put that into perspective. at&t and verizon are still the giants. at least sprint has a fighting chance. >> i'm shocked they have that much recapture from nextel. those people tend to be set free. i also want to say that there is just a remarkable increase in the amount of money people are paying each month. the revenue increase when you have those smart cell phones. >> they have an unlimited data plan, sprint. that is different than verizon and at&t. >> right. >> that may be appealing to some customers out there. >> sure. >> you know, perhaps it's a differentiation that is proving to be quite positive for the company. >> the most asked about stock that made money. >> really? >> yes. the most called on and what's terrific is there are so few stories. they have almost all continued to go down. we have lucid, sirius satellite. a triumph for the investor

program right now called network vision, which will help us use our spectrum resources much more efficiently and actually reuse some of the spectrum that's currently being used on nextelhave a partnership with clear wire, which has a lot of spectrum, and we're able to offload a lot of capacity on to the clear wire network. so we believe that our own spectrum will last us through '14, and then with the additional resources with clear wire beyond that. >> all right. we'll leave it there. we so appreciate your time tonight. thanks for joining us. >> thank you, maria. >> see you soon. >>> we'll take a short break. when we come back, we'll find out why has facebook fallen out of bad after initially rising on the earnings news. stay with us. s my friend frank and his, uh, retirement plan. one golden crown. come on frank how long have we known each other? go to e-trade. they got killer tools man. they'll help you nail a retirement plan that's fierce. two golden crowns. you realize the odds of winning are the same as being mauled by a polar bear and a regular bear in the same day? frank! oh wow, you didn't win? i wanna show you something... it's my shocked face. [ gasps ] ♪ [

nextel was the hot -- they were the mack daddy of the industry about six years ago. now you're saying just kill it. >> they were. but, you know, they were operating multiple networksifferentiation of push to talk became less important than having a smartphone. smartphone's dominating the market now the problem or challenge for sprint is going to be getting the last items off. back in the old days with pagers, getting rid of the doctors and last number of pagers still using the product was difficult. sprint's down to the last 4 million or so customers. these are very sticky customers and in order to move forward and get some of these cost benefits, that's a challenge for them over the next year. >> all right. thank you very much. appreciate your time. >> thank you. >>> quick trade on sprint from john. john? >> i would buy some real cheap calls on this one and if he's right and get enough of a boost from the iphone 5, i think you got a home run. >> all right. john, thanks very much. >>> well, the euro getting a bounce today after initially falling to fresh two-year lows. what is your best way to play the currency moves? let's bring in willie williams with the "money