a buy signal and things are still awful out there and not going to get better anytime soon here. elsewhere, how about the mortgage situation, the commercial real estate situation i should say more accurately. what's going on there? well, the commercial it's bulls' argument is it is going to bottom in the first quarter or the second quarter. the bears are very -- they say we're seeing rising vacancies and lower rents. how is that good news? demand is no sign of coming back. and finally, how about retail, with 30%. most people feel and that cycle is still yet to play out here. let taiks a look at some of the big banks. right now, as i say, the bulls are prevailing. by in large, these stocks are holding up very well and had been and even though we've got their earnings reports out there. wells fargo, take example, tom mitchell noted this morning, nonperforming assets grew 18% in the fourth quarter. well, that's pretty awful but it's still better than the prior quarter when nonperforming assets, these are right off of essentially that are out there, that are doing really bad. grew by 45%. so less bad but still pretty awful. talk about china, you heard maria mentioning pulling back here. primeeer hu jintao. we're talking 10.5%, 10% is the number. he has to show signs that he's reinning in the economy. watch the gdp tonight. big conversation all afternoon. down 3% overnight. so no surprise there. because of what's going on in china, we're seeing a big pullback in the big material. in fact all of the big global industrial and material names had been weak here today. we saw bhp billiton. iron/ore production is down. the big industrial names the big multinational machinery names. caterpillar, deere are to the weak side. hmo stock, which had a great run in the last several days, are sitting at the bottom here today, and although beneficiaries of any gridlock in health care reform. back to you, maria. >> bob, thanks very much. technology getting hard. nasdaq down better 1%. our man at the nasdaq, our scott wapner is there. >> good to see you, maria, as well. second big earnings report out from the technology in the last week or so and it's failed to deliver a big day for tech following. intel, remember a big sell on the news, and then ibm had pretty good earnings as well, and yet another sell on the news, as these stocks have had great run-ups into those earnings reports and reflected on the wall. nasdaq's down 1.5%. widely held tech across the board. apple's down just about 2% even with reports talking to microsoft about making -- being the default search engine on the iphone replacing google. microsoft is lower. some of the other search players as well. google is lower and yahoo! on your screen there, because it is down as well. other names, cisco, pretty good news out today. maintained an outperformed rating over at oppenheimer after channel techs. 29 bucks. oracle's weaker. mentioned with what is happening with yahoo!. dell and intel, which again is one of those companies, with the first big cap technology stock to kick off earnings season and it has been rather disappointing in the stock performance since that day. take a look at rambus. big winner today up 16.5%. settling all pallent claims with samsung. qualcomm is down 2% and even though i think equity raised price target from $55 to $50. take a look at cree today. triple it's profits. stock off to the races as a result. pharmaceuticals hitting a high today. the stock is up better than 6%. as i said, another new high there. maria, otherwise, though, the nasdaq is suffering pretty well today. it's down 1.5%. >> yeah, and you know, scott another not just equities. we're seeing money coming out of another group, which of course has seen enormous inflows over the last year, and that's commodities. given what's going on with china, with china curbing lending. let's get to sharon epperson looking at commodities at the nymex. >> reporter: traders are looking at two factors. looking at currencies and they're looking at what is happening in china, in terms of tightening lending standards, and as bob mentioned, looking ahead to what will come out with china's gdp. keep in mind looking at dollar strength. a major factor that's caused the commodity's sell-off across the board today. not only oil pricings, which finished below $70 a barrel and off 2%, and also copper getting hard hit. industrial metals very hard hit by the dollar strengthening. and cotton, cotton, keep in mind, china is the largest grower and importer of global cotton supplies. the impact of the euro slide on the dollar in the fact that it helped the dollar strengthen is a continuing situation, as we look at the greek debt situation, and see how much the euro has slid over the last three months or so. about 5%. and seeing the dollar rise, a lot of analysts are saying that dollar strength will continue and that could be very bad for commodities. as we look at what is happening to oil prices, we have to pay attention also to what is going to happen in terms of gold prices as well. we're looking at gold prices here. gold off nearly $30 today. the lowest settle in gold that we've seen in quite some time. in fact the biggest one-day decline in dollar percentage terms since mid-december for gold prices. in terms of oil prices focusing on the fundamentals. this afternoon we'll get the api dat and then tomorrow morning the data from the energy department. expecting to see big bills across the board. if they're bigger than expected and don't get the kind of drop in the finalization that's expected we could see another downdraft in oil prices. rick, some are saying to $75 a barrel or so. over to you in chicago. >> reporter: well, thank you very much, sharon. we're going to continue some of those themes today. the yield curve, well, it flattened just a little bit. and it didn't flatten in an aggressive way. as a matter of fact, short maturities rose fles price, bringing their yields down not quite as much as the longer end, but all maturities were rather tame. looking at the intraday of 30-day bond yields, you could see they were down about five basis points, same as the ten. most of that buying occurred earlier in the session after some of the data was out, and of course the dollar strength was evident to all. if you look atext chart, of course the dollar index. you have to realize, intraday, it took out a very important intraday high from the 21st of december. and it's going to have an aggressive close. many are lookingament the euro, which has been flirting with the levels under 141. the last chart, sharon talked rather in-depth about, commodities from a technical perspective, the gold chart is interesting. that's a one-day chart, down a little more than $27. it was down over $30 when it was at its lows. and considering its hovering just $12 above the $1,100 mark, many traders, indeed, are looking at the 1,100 mark as a significant test considering how many longs came in as much loftier levels. maria, back to you. >> rick, thanks very much. interesting to note that this is the worst day for 2010 for equities. one day after the dow jones industrial actually hit a 15-month high. >> yes. that is the context. >> break it down now see how to invest in this environment and what today's sell-off means. a chief investment strategist with morgan smith barney. david, what do you think the worry is on wall street today? is it china? is it inflation? what is the main issue here? >> maria, think that people are wondering about the outlooks that these corporate ceos -- this is earnings season, this week and next week -- and they basically have not been guiding higher but they've been guiding flat to lower, that's number one. number two, at the same time the economy -- lead economic indicators are out tomorrow, maria. supposed to be up 7.7%. so that would be continued worry about the fed, the bank of england tightening earlier than expected. that, to me, is the worry. this is a very healthy sell-off here. it's healthy. take a breergt. we ran up so far, so fast. this is a time to pause and reconfigure. i think yesterday's -- we love gridlock. wall street loves washington gridlock -- >> rallying then -- >> vote on gridlock. well, sell on the news. sell on the news. this is a 65 -- >> well, just on that point, last night 24 hours ago, everybody was saying now that obama lost the majority in the senate we would get a big powerful rally today and it hasn't happened, and on that point, people always slip into their interviews about regulatoryrific at the end. i wonder the degree to which we're overplaying that compared to all of the other problems that we have, partly because of the ideological standpoints of those who are making it or their clients. >> i think you're hitting on a very important point, simon. and that is, it's not always 100% that gridlock means higher markets. to me, very worrisome is credit contraction. yesterday some numbers came out. the banking industry's contracted. consumer credit has contracted. and you need that credit to continue to expand for the economy to continue growing. our belief is we're moving from recovery to actual expansion and this is just a little choppiness that everybody's been expecting this year. >> well, talking about two issues here. talking about higher interest rates on the one hand, we're talking about bank lending pulling in, and we saw that concern weeks ago with china, and it continues today. brian, how worried are you about rates going higher, about china pulling in lending? are you hearing this on the trading desk as far as concerned investors? >> we certainly are, maria. this morning we saw sell tickets coming in because of the comments out of china. clearly, they're thor on this global expaction economy, however you want to label it and if they're going to be paring things down you'll see that here in the states. i think we'll see more choppy days like this. big days up, big days down. i think that's normal. i think that's healthy. nothing to be worried about. we saw a lot of buying on the trader's desk coming into this earnings season. idle profit taking now that we get the news coming out and the news actually reported. >> what's your assessment? are we seeing strong numbers or do you think we should be flat and still no revenue growth. >> no, for the most part the numbers have been stronger, top and bottom line. i think that a lot of investors are covering these portfolio managers want to see improvements on the top lines on the sales. we're seeing that but the guidance hasn't been that rosy. not that positive of a guidance and seeing pullback days like this. >> i think that earnings season is almost irrelevance. i think it's getting washed around. what ceos say, your comments notwithstanding, david. these are big moves compared to the individual stock, right? >> good example. intel, right? big sell-off after the earnings and then two days later most of the tech had come up to where it was before. >> leave it there, unfortunately. david, brian, thank you very much for joining us. 4 minutes, whatever it is my math fails me. the volume so far 772 million, which isn't bad. >> not bad. >> compared to where we've been recently so it is actually a down move on relatively decent volume. >> drilling down on earnings, wells faro for one, beat wall street expectations. we've got a "first on cnbc interview" coming your way. howard atkins the ceo of wells fargo with us. and plus we'll get insight into the state of the consumer with the ceo of coach. he'll tell us if the company's lower-priced handbag are helping drive sales? that's an exclusive interview with maria later in the show. >> and what will that do tomorrow if that is the case. we've got ebay and starbucks on deck. we will have those numbers for you at 4:00 p.m. but first the most active stocks on the new york stock exchange, led, as usual, by citigroup, because it trades on each share at $3.48. please help me welcome a long-time friend of glencoe baseball. a man who played second base here some 45 years ago. actually, 47. ladies and gentlemen, mr. larry mccarthy. amidst today's financial turmoil, our sophisticated wealth transfer strategies... and philanthropic expertise ensure your legacy... is passed on to family or your favorite pastime. ♪ northern trust. wealth management. asset management. asset servicing. it has the agility and the power to take on any mission, and the space to accommodate precious cargo, because every great action hero needs a vehicle. see your lexus dealer. ♪ welcome back. wells fargo kicked off a day with fourth quarter earnings today. it beat expectations on the overall numbers. the company earned eight cents a share versus an expectation of a loss of a penny a share. take a look at what's happening for the stock today despite report a record year for profits. $12.3 billion in profit. the stock has been lower for the day. down about 1% right now. in a "first on cnbc interview" right now we're joined by the chief financial officer of wells fargo howard atkins. howard, always a pleasure to see you. thanks for spending the time. >> good to be here. >> better than expected on the profitability side of things, certainly. what were the drivers of the quarter? >> well, the main thing maria, as has been the case is revenue, top-line revenue. as you know from prior discussions we're very good at selling and cross-selling to our customers. we had very good growth in volume across a wide variety of businesses -- insurance, brokerage, asset management, wealth management, investment banking, automobile lending, mortgage -- we're all quite strong if the quarter on the top line. and that's what's really generate enough top-line revenue to more than cover the credit losses that we've had you know for the last period of time. >> talk to me about the mortgage business. the company made fewer home loans during the quarter as compared to the third quarter but still managed to report higher fee income out of mortgage origination. how's credit quality? what can you tell us about the mortgage business. >> the mortgage business has been pretty strong for the past year for us. we've become now the nation's largest mortgage originator with almost a 25% market share. so we've really been doing everything we can to keep credit flowing into the mortgage market and we've been quite successful for our customers doing that. we had about $94 billion of mortgages that we originated in the fourth quarter. roughly the same as the third quarter. so the trend continued. and you know, business has been good there. those are mortgages, by the way, that we like to have. it's good business. some of it is refi. some of is new home purchases. so good, solid business. good thing for our customers. we also have been very active modifying loans to keep customers, homeowners in their homes. between the government's programs and our mortgage modifications programs we modify more loans, i think, more than any other big bank in the country. we're going to continue to do that. we think that's the right thing do. and overall, we're earning a fair return on that business. >> and yet, howard, loan losses are rising? up about $300 million to $5.14 million. what can you tell us about that? do you think that this will continue to increase in the quarters ahead? do you have any visibility there. >> well the $300 million increases in the loss in the quarter, yes it's up, but it rose at less than half of the rate that we saw charge-offs going up in the second or third quarter. so what we're seeing actually is a tapering off of loan losses. some of that is related to what's going on in the housing market. you know, california seems to have stabilized, maybe even improving a little bit in home prices and housing activity, generally. but bulk of the tapering off in losses really has to do with things that we've done over the last two years to reduce loss in our consumer and commercial portfolios. you know we've been modifying loans. we've got an early start in resolving two years ago, when we saw credit beginning to worsen. we got a quick jump on it. when we bought wachovia, we already marked down their consumer and commercial loans, very, very heavily. so we've taken the lumps already there. so when you do those kinds of things, maria, you get to a point where losses naturally begin to taper off. and that's what we're beginning to see. and that's what really differentiates us positively to the pact. >> tell us about your feeling on capital here? do you expect to be coming to the market anymore to be raising capital. >> we have no plans to come to the market. we now have a capital position that is back to where it was at legacy wells fargo. you know legacy wells fargo, always maintained very strong capital relative to the industry. when we bought wachovia, capital dipped a little bit, because we doubled the size of the company. now we're back to capital ratios that are actually higher than they were prior to buying wachovia. we're generating capital every day by earning it through profits. so we've got good capital momentum going in the company just organically, and therefore, we don't have any plans to raise more capital. >> howard other let me get your take on the president's proposal to tax the big banks including wells, to recoup taxpayer dollars, used to bailout the financial system. given that wells, like some the other major big banks, pay back the t.a.r.p. already with interest and actually the government made money on this. do you think the white house is just using the industry as a scapegoat? what's your thought on this tax? >> you know, i don't know how the white house is viewing this, but i would say you know i'm not sure how imposing a $90 billion cost on the banking industry is going to encourage the banking industry to extend more credit, hire more people and offer better products and services to customers who need it so you know, but at this point, who knows what happens with that proposal. >> and the new credit card rules going into effect, going to have an impact on profitability in your view? >> well, it could. we do have a credit card business. we're in the credit card business largely to brand wells fargo with our credit card to our customers. >> right? we're not a big national -- or international credit card company. it's actually relatively small business relative to some of the other big players but it is a profitable business, again unlike some of the other banks that are experiencing much big losses in that business right now. and we'll number that business and continue to manage it profitability. >> howard, good to have you on the program, thank you. >> great to be here. >> see you soon. howard atkins, ceo of wells fargo. get on breaking news, matt nesto. >> reporter: maria, thanks very much. dow jones just crossed headlines on merck, as saying that the company won't seek fda approval for an hiv drug at this time. two phase three trials for the kriverrock. have missed their primary points and will not go go forward with the hiv approval at this time. they say they will continue studies for this drug and other settings. you could see the stock we weakening up and just in the past few seconds. up about 1/4 of a percent. now the high of the day, 41.15 was a 52-week high and that happened in the first few moments of trading, thmaria. so that's the headlines from merck. back to you. >> thanks so much, matt. we have a lot of red across the screen here with the market down about 130 points on the dow jones industrial average. 20 minutes before the close, i'm not sure if you see any green, simon. we've got a handful of the banks, actually, higher. >> yeah the banks done relatively well and a recently good day for the health care sector. we'll focus on that in particular as the debate continues as to what reform can get bank through the house, without reference to the senate, in the wake of that result in massachusetts last night. we'll take a trader's perspective after the break on "closing bell." host: does charlie daniels play a mean fiddle? ♪ fiddle music charlie:hat's how you do it son. vo: geico. 15 minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance. let's take a look at the widely held stocks here and as you can see a mixed market with the dow down 130. other dow componence and those that are widely held in addition to the banks look like this, and there you see pfizer, along with the other drug stocks, one of the few gainers. >> perfect leading, thank you. time for "fast money" final call. health stocks have done recently well on the market today. let's get anlis from joe terranova. he joins me with a view. chief strategist. talk us through the trader's perspective the price action on these stocks, say over the last four 8 hours. >> simon, how are you there, mate? the price action has been phenomenal. what it is money flowing back into the health care sector. it's a sector that in 2009 was kind of ignored by portfolio managers, as everyone was worrying about the cyclical recovery. so now you have dollars flowing in here again. they've become trading vehicles. you want to buy them. you want to sell them. you look at managed health care, we talked on the show last night, as that being a selling opportunity, and that proves to be correct today. >> why is it a selling opportunity? >> i think anytime you want to sell that news. you want to sell the reality of the news, and that's what it was. everyone was buying ahead of a brown victory. he won. look where it is today. >> yeah you see, i'm not sure that we really now know where we stand. you mean the whole thing could be back on some form. might go back to the house or alternative may go back to the drawing board. a great opportunity, great for you guys, i guess. >> yeah, simon, also that level of uncertainty that you just mentioned is another reason why you want to, i think, sell out of those names. take a step back and re-evaluate. a name like humana, which has heavy exposure to medicare. i don't know what will develop here over the last couple of months. >> explain to me, joe. why is the health care sector down just two -- down 2/3 of 1% tonight. not everyone is settle rumors, buying the fact. that should be surely ramping up, surely exploding today. >> i think simon, you have to look at where it was yesterday. i think that is important to understand that yesterday you had a significant flow of capital into the space. today, you just said, you have some uncertainty surrounding the space. that remains going forward. you don't know what's going to evolve here. most people think this thing is dead. however still is out there is the potential that it's not. prudence tell you you take money off the table in that type of environment, you have to. it doesn't mean longer term that it does not belong in your portfolio. i agree with you on that. but in the near term, the level of its outperformance yesterday, relative to the s&p, listen you come in this morning, you have to take some off of the table. >> i think, joe, what i'm saying is, when i really think about it properly, is your trades on this use, has been swept away in the broad moves that we're having in the market, and actually probably health care should had been higher toy. you might had been ahead of the game by selling the fact, but actually it should have broadly rallied and it hasn't because we're back to that big correlation trade on the dollar, gold and risk and all of the things that we spoke about so long. >> simon, too, looking at the trade, is too of a microevent. the real trade on health care was back in november/december, when nobody was paying attention to it. we were talking on the show on health care about being underowned, underinvested by portfolio managers. that was the moment to get into those names for a good two-to three-month rally which you got. >> joe, thank you very much for that. watch with interest tonight. and on tonight's "fast money" the traders will reveal what they're buying on the dip in the midst of today's sell-off. plus, the man who called today's technology collapse, it says here, gary kaminsky, returns with his next move. that's all coming up at 5:00 eastern. for the moment we have now 29 points to trade on this session overall, and we're still marginally cut our losses. >> retail globally, next up we've got an exclusive interview next with the chairman and ceo of coach. lew frankfort with us to give us a sense of what is going on with consumer spending. find out what is going with 11% increase in profitability at coach. a handheldmaker who is planning on driving sales. ♪ [ male announcer ] introducing the all-new lexus gx. ♪ it has the agility to avoid the unexpected... ♪ ...the power to take on any mission, and the space to accommodate precious cargo, because every great action hero needs a vehicle. ♪ 25 minutes left to trade now until the end of the session, and we're still cutting our losses. down 72 points further from here. so, although we're having a bad day for the bus, it's still not as bad as it was on the s&p 500, currently trading at 11,000 -- i beg your pardon. do the nasdaq. and on the s&p, forgive me, 1135. maria? >> simon, thanks very much. and we're looking at big profits out of coach today. the handbagmaker. but stock is under some selling pressure. take a look at the numbers here for the quarter. the company reported, and this is a luxury handbagmaker, reporting an 11% increase net income for the second quarter. holiday demand behind that move. the stock, however, is under some selling pressure after north america sales trailed. i'm joined exclusivee by the chairman and ceo with lew frankfort. the company reports that three cents better than analyst's expectations, actually, revenue up nearly 11% for the sales part of the business. what went right last quarter? can you characterize the last three months for us. >> i think everything went right. we actually put into place a whole series of initiatives. new collections, such as poppy. a rebalance assortment but more compelling price points. acceleration of openings in china and on our supply chain was able to deliver with a lower cost. so overall we had a very strong quarter. >> so why do you think the stock is under such pressure today? people are talking about north america sales in the second quarter trailing some expectations. was north america weaker in some parts of the world in your view. >> around the country grew 11%. and overall growth in our coach stores grew 16%. so we feel really terrific about the reinvigoration of our north america sales and we actually achieved about 3% comps, which was the first time in five quarters that we were positive. >> is it fair to say, then, maybe some analyst his overshot in terms of what they were expecting? >> it's very hard -- >> hard to say -- >> -- hard to say. we try to stay focused singularly on the business and it's prospects and we know that the stock will find its rightful parties? >> look around the world for us, what's the most important geographical area for you right now in terms of where the business comes from in the coming six months? >> north america continues to be the most important geography. not only did we achieve overall 16% within our own retail stores and an 11% across north america, but the momentum that we enjoyed during the holiday quarter is continuing today. secondly, china's very important, where we achieved significant double-digit comps. so between china and north america and other underdeveloped markets, we see great potential. >> i know you focus a lot on china, because it's such an important part of your business obviously. what's your thoughts with what's going on in china in first of all some people say, we can't believe those numbers. we don't know that china is necessarily growing 8%. do you believe in those numbers? what's happening on the ground in terms of vibrancy and then ask you about the chinese pulling in on their lending. >> sure. on the ground there's an emerging middle class, she's spending more, she's emancipated. she sees herself as an international citizen. there's 125 cities in china, over 1 million people, wherein, ten of those cities today. >> wow, ten of those cities. >> and it's a very rapidly growing middle class. where today only 37% of the gdp is spent by consumers. the rest is exports. so the opportunity to migrate like the united states you at 50%, 60%, 70% is consumer spending in the u.s. >> but do you see an impact, if we were to see the chinese government pulling further in terms of bank lending? is that going to put something of a damper on the consumer in terms of her spending? >> naturally, it could. however, it's the chinese government's been very strategic. it's, as you know, it's a command-led economy. and we do believe the market's going to continue to flourish and brands like coach will flourish along with it. >> what's the weaker area right now? is it still europe? >> it's japan actually. >> japan. >> for luxury goods. the market actually fell in calendar 2009 by 15% to 20%. we actually enjoyed increased market share but it was a struggle because we have to take shares from other people. our sales were basically even. >> you just mentioned the poppy brand. tell me why that's important. >> it's a light-spirited collection that appeals to a younger consumer. where we've been underrepresented. and it has legs. it's going to be a multiyear plat form. we'll be opening up some poppy stores. it's a sub brand for us. >> during the quarter i know that you bought back stock. we were expecting it. you announced the buyback well before hand. you purchased and retired nearly 8.6 million shares. you have about $410 million remaining to buy more stock. will that happen this quarter, this year, what's the timing? >> we look to buy opportunistically. we do have over a $1 billion in cash on our balance sheet. so investors should not be surprised if they see us back in the market. >> you're going to use that billion to buy back stock. what else is that money going to be used for the cash on the balance sheet? >> for investment in new markets, for potentially buying back distributors, by accelerating growth. we do have a dividend today as well. potentially we might very well increase it. >> in 2010. >> in 2010. >> real quick on geographies. you've got a great vantage point to tell us around the world, where do you want to expand? where are the holes that you see opportunity in terms of expanding even further around the world. >> okay, first and foremost is china. that has the potential within five years to be bigger than japan for us. beyond china and east asia, countries such as korea and taiwan, europe is a wideopen playing field for us. we do no business in western europe. we are developing, entry strategies now, and we'll actually be making some announcements soon. >> lew, good to have you on the program. >> nice to be with you. >> thank you for joining us. lew frankfort chairman and ceo of coach. we thank you for coming down nyse with us. simon back to you. >> 20 minutes to trade. stormed at levs that we're trading at and broader volume. obviously greater detail on that in a moment. but we return after the break to china, taking aggressive steps, as you've heard, to curb bank lending. and that has really weighed on the markets today. up next we'll tell you how you should think about protecting your portfolio from china's move to cool off what is a red-hot economy. and after the bell, cnbc is your home for earnings central. we'll have instant analysis on earnings tonight from ebay and starbucks ahead at 4:00. what's going on? we ordered a gift online and we really need to do something with it... i'm just not sure what... what is it? oh just return it. returning gifts is easier than ever with priority mail flat rate boxes from the postal service. if it fits, it ships anywhere in the country for a low flat rate. plus i can pick it up for free. perfect because we have to get that outta this house. c'mon, it's not that... gahh, oh yeah that's gotta go... priority mail flat rate shipping starts at $4.95 only from the postal service. a simpler way to ship and return. right now 1.2 million people are on sprint mobile broadband. 31 are streaming a sales conference from the road. 154 are tracking shipments on a train. 33 are iming on a ferry. and 1300 are secretly checking email on vacation. that's happening now. america's most dependable 3g network. bringing you the first and only wireless 4g network. right now get a free 3g/4g device for your laptop. sprint. the now network. deaf, hard-of-hearing and people with speech disabilities access www.sprintrelay.com. let's check the widely held stocks here. alcoa of course the first to report earnation week and a half ago. the stock is down today. weakness across the board on the widely helds. some big tech names, and that also under some pressure today that segment of the market with the nasdaq down about 30 points here. and as you could see the large tech names also weaker today. get to matt nesto. he has breaking news right now on ebay. matt? >> reporter: yeah, maria, thanks very much. i'm tracking about ten stocks that are going to be reporting earnings after the close today. none of them is weaker right now than ebay. you just mentioned it. but stock is pretty close to its low of the session, as you could see there in that intraday chart, down a full 4%, this ahead of their earnings coming out after the close. i bring to your attention. it's been on heavy volume today. about 175% of the average over the past ten days. so there you go, ebay -- ebay a large cap, almost a $30 billion market cap, down 4% ahead of their earnings. back to you. >> matt, thanks very much, matt nesto, as we look forward to who is reporting tonight. clearly, china today was a key focus. let's get straight to our next guest. head of global asset allocation. and greg olson partner at lennox lewis. i want to know, really, i think the starting point has got to be, how dangerous is china to people who are watching now? let's just fill in some the gaps. you know last week they raised reserve requirement. today, after loaning $160 billion from the banks over the last two weeks,a loan, now you've got global intervention from the regulators saying, hey, guys, just slow it down a bit. do you, haze miller, see this as a normal slowing of a very fast market, or do you see it as an attempt to prevent a bubble from bursting nonperforming loans at the banks given the bubbles that arguably have property in stocks? you. >> know, simon, a little bit of both in here. it's pretty clear that the government -- government has made a decision now instead of trying to inflate the economy out of its recession that it was actually going to now begin to restrain certain segment of the market. and of course, you know what's interesting about the chinese central bank is that it's able to -- it has a number of levers at its disposal. so we've seen the reserve requirement rise. i wouldn't be surprised to see that happen another couple times this year. i also would expect to start to see interest rate rises. but in the context of how loose their economy has been -- their policies have been given the fact that they're running at 8% plus real growth, all they're doing is taking out the slack. >> so are you suggesting this is not dangerous really beyond all of the other things we have to worry about? this should not be front and center now for american investors, in your view? >> that's definitely my view. i'm saying in the short term, people are going to react probably extremely to it. but ultimately until we see the inflation rates, cpi in china, rise above 5%, i wouldn't be too concerned that the central bank's policies are going to be so restrictive that we would be concerned about it. >> okay. greg, would you agree with that. >> i do, i do actually. we're looking at lending in 2009 being at $9.6 trillion won and double the amounts of the previous year and talk of that going down to $7.5 trillion yuan for 2010 so lending will be 15% in 2010. numbers that we should not be concerned about so when you see the shanghai composite drop by 2.9%, perhaps that's a buying opportunity, depending on how much exposure you have to china already. we also see opportunities to countries that sell to china because they're now a huge importer as well, what we call the ask it countries, australia, south korea, indonesia and taiwan, which actually each of those countries had better performance than china in 2009. >> just on the subject though and we want to know about the other emerging economies, but just on the subject of china. 190 banking institutions now under veteran examination. property sales rose 75% last year. house prices in december alone that rose 7.8%. is your basic assumption, greg, at end the day if the banks get into trouble that it's a totalitarian regime that the banks will come in with all the reserves that they have, prop it up, and the demand, importantly, for example for commodities, steel and copper will be fine for the rest of the world? >> simon, of course i do. everything is well controlled in china. and we have no worries that they're going to try to have that growth rate be around that 8%. if that is indeed the real number. and tomorrow numbers will probably be reported in the 10%, 10.5% range. we think that they'll curb the lending just to bring it back into that 8% range. and we still see that china is still a good place to put money. >> hayes miller, where would you -- just break it down for me -- would you advise people to invest in light of the conversation that we've just had now about asia and emerging markets? >> okay, so emerging markets as a whole, for a long, long time was just buy the whole block of them. and you were going to be happy. right now we're in a much more selective environment. we have a very few overweights. china's one of them. china, russia, turkey, indonesia, those are our favorite markets. we've gone neutral on brazil. so looking at china, it would be especially good if people could get exposure to reflation stories, which would be bank story, property, companies. the consumer, clearly what the central government policies's aimed to stimnot have a okay unfortunately we have to leave it there. thank you. now we have just over nine minutes still to trade and we're still just cutting those losses from earlier marginally, maria. >> a preview next of what wall street is watching out of ebay and starbucks on the deck tonight in terms of earnings. in this unusually volatile time, you want a financial partner... who is unusually prepared to help. the meeting with northern trust went well, didn't it? 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the s&p 500, maria, and it's about a $5.5 billion market cap. back to you. >> matt, thanks very much. investors are paying close attention to the earnings report. after the bell we have ebay and starbucks. jane wells with a preview of starbucks' earnings but kick it off with jim goldman, who tells you what to expect from ebay. jim? >> reporter: hey, maria, good afternoon to you. ebay comes out with its report later today amid a very strange climate for tech investors. intel and ibm both beat and beat substarnlly, but their stocks were unable to hold onto those rallies. we'll see what happens with ebay. the company expected to report 40 cents a share $2.28 billion in revenue for its fourth quarter where we saw a nice surge in online commerce. ebay's dramatically underperformed the nasdaq, as well as underperformed its rival, amazon.com. its valuation, obviously, far higher, its p/e far higher. so people are wondering whether ebay is able to report an item today that will make the company more attractive to investor, strictly on valuation. outlook, only, very key. the numbers expected at around 4:15 eastern. now that's the story on ebay in what we're expecting. what about a cup of coffee with those earnings? jane wells is stand like with a look ahead to starbucks. >> reporter: hi, jim. the barista bar's been set pretty high. analysts expect to see the same store sales growth in a year and expect to raise guidance on the call. have to see that. eps expected to come in at 27 cents, up from 15 a year ago on revenues between $2.6 and $2.7 billion. analysts want to know how starbucks' via instant coffee is selling. it is an amazing comeback. last 52 weeks as the company has fought off a challenge by mcdonald's. downsized and then concerns that people would not pay so much for a coffee in a recession. we'll have to see how much people are willing to pay for their double-cap, double-fraf, no-whip coffee, back to you. >> after the bell, major indices seeing the biggest 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"closing bell" continues with maria bartiromo. [ closing bell ringing ] and it is 4:00 on wall street. do you know where your money is? hi, everybody. welcome back to the "closing bell." i'm maria bartiromo on the floor of the new york stock exchange, as we're following up the close of trading tonight. a sell-off on wall street today. stocks under pressure on concerns that china's step to curb bank lending could hurt a global economic recovery. we're well off of the lows of the afternoon at the close tonight at 4:00 p.m. on wall street. the douks industrials down about 120 points. the technology sector, though, one of the areas getting hit today. some cautious comments on revenue from ibm setting the tone for tech tonight. ebay and starbucks on deck, just moment away from reporting their quarterly earnings. the estimates on starbucks 28 cents a share on revenue of $2.6 billion. that stock up nearly 200% since the lows reached in march of '09. we'll have the numbers for you eminently. meanwhile, a look at how we finished the day on wall street, with the dow jones industrial average well off the lows of the afternoon 10603 on the close with the decline on the session of better than 1%, 122 points lower. s&p 500 tonight gave up 12 points. better than 1% there as well finishing da at 1138. and the nasdaq tonight down 30 points. financials and health care, month two bright spots on the upside. 2291, last trade for the nasdaq. we've got our team standing by with all of the action on wall street as well as our guest. first, we kick it off with today's sell-off with bob pisani at the nyse. bob, china, earnings among the factors, and don't forget massachusetts and the republican win there. >> reporter: you've got all three of them, maria, that's exactly right. very good summary. in fact, a lot of very interesting cross currents there. maria hit them all. what went on here, number one the bank earnings were extremely important here. the general trend, credit trends are improving here, but it's still pretty bad. that's the tough part of what's going on with the bank trends here. politic, maria had it right