7 cents. And as oil futures stick around 100 per barrel, gas prices are above 3 in all major cities. Also, aig plans to cut 3 of its workforce. The insurnace giant mentioned the job reduction while reporting a 4th quarter profit. Ben lichtenstein of traders audio joins us on this friday morning. Ben, we are on an economic downer. This does not bode well im thinking for the gdp. What do you think and whats the markets response likely to be . Well if you take a look at yesterdays activity in reaction to to a weaker than expected retail sales number then i think you would have to assume the best and just assume that again the only way right now appears to be up. I mean we just clearly reject to trade below 1800 we got up above the key area around 1809 and look at yesterdays activity just a screamer to the upside. We started out opening lower, again numbers were not that bullish, if you will, but certainly again we continue to see activity throughout the day. So its my opinion and as ive said here before a couple times, i continue to feel that the only way is up in this market right now. Basically the trend is yet theyre continuing to seek value to the upside. Its clearly establish a trend to the upside and i was jokingly saying the only reason to short this market is if you dont like money. What do you think about gold . Money is going into gold right now. Clearly and we actually saw some money coming out of the bonds into the stocks, but yes weve seen some money going into the gold as well. Nice move yesterday and up above that 1300 level. I think a lot of shorts right now are stuck for the most part. I think myself included dont get me wrong, around that 1250 level, i was leaning and kind of leaning on the trend which has been on the downside off that 1800 level 1700 area but you know, this has been a move that just kind of surprised a lot of people. Silver as well is seeing a nice move back up above that 20 level, but i think at this point gold basically pointed north and really seeking value to the upside. So shorting this is just trying to just pick a top and outsmart the market if you will. I think that i prefer to look at the market and say which way is this market trying to go . Clearly if you look at yesterdays activity with gold above 1300 this markets trying to go higher right now. And that is the silver lining. Thank you, ben. Thank you. In yet another sign of winters biting effect on the economy. Consumers chilled on shopping in january. Retailers sold fewer cars, furniture and clothes. Retail sales unexpectedly declined by. 4 the largest plunge in 18 months. Economists are now calculating the effects of winter storms on retail sales this month. Diane moca steps in this morning for chuck coppola. Good morning and will snow and ice hamper business this valentines day . Angie. Businesses arent feeling much love for the nasty weather. In todays cover story. Florists say ontime deliveries are put at risk by the snow. And last months cold put a damper on jewelry and restaurant sales. But they are optimist about seeing green this valentines day because of demand for certain gifts. The merchandise total with tax and delivery comes to 902. 35. Some customers are spending big bucks this year at Ashland Addison florist in chicago. Requesting upgrades of traditional products and ordering more specialty items. Such as baskets for a daughter or even a pet. Men are also buying earlier in the week. With valentines day falling on a friday. People are looking for their wife or girlfriend or significant other to receive flowers and be the first one in the office to get them. The fourth generation retailer says sales are up three years running. Among all types of buyers. Thats one of the beautiful things about the floral industry is you can walk into your local floral shop and pick up two beautiful roses and not bust your wallet. But flowers ranked second after jewelry as a womans most desired Valentines Gift in a 2012 survey. At jeweler lester lampert. Upscale buyers are also driving their market. Luxury is hot right now. Even though gold has fallen from 1800 dollars an ounce in 2012 to its current level of 1300. David lampert says that doesnt have an impact on his prices. But he says the crazy demand for diamonds is squeezing out his margins. And though the stones consistenly increase in value. Lampert warns against buying for that reason. I never tell anyone to buy jewelry as an investment. You have to buy what you like; you have to buy what your wife or your girlfriend will love. But for men. Their holiday wish list is topped by gift cards to a restaurant. For valentines day for the most part, what people want is a meal out with their significant other. It reflects just how busy we are. Consumers will be watching their cable bills. A deal is on the table that would connect the two largest cable companies. Comcast plans to buy Time Warner Cable for 45 billion dollars. Comcasts ceo and chairman Brian Roberts says it creates a worldclass company and is a compelling financial and strategic transaction for shareholders. While customers will benefit from improved technology. However, the combined company is likely to come under scrutiny of lawmakers and regulators according to a morningstar. If this deal goes through, its roughly about 70 of networks in the united states. If you look at the markets that comcast serves today, there are two big holes, really on the coasts in los angeles and new york, and time warner would help comcast fill those holes certainly in la where time warner has been very aggressive. Shares of comcast fell 3 while time warners rose 7. Kentucky residents are recovering from a pipeline explosion that rattled a small town. Regulators are investigating what caused a natural gas pipeline to burst into flames in niff lee kentucky thursday. The explosion injured two people, and destroyed two homes. The pipeline operator says it is working with authorities. In western pennsylvania, cleanup crews are dealing with the aftermath of an oil spill. A Canadian Railroad car. Hauling the crude. Derailed thursday, spilling an estimated 4 thousand gallons of oil. It was the second crudeoil train incident in less than a month in pennslyvania. General motors is recalling older model cars linked to deadly crashes. The models include Chevrolet Cobalt manufactured from 2005 to 2007, and 2007 pontiac g5. A gm Spokesman Says the ignition can be bumped out of place causing the engine and electrcal power to suddenly shut off. The Car Company Says 6 people died in 22 crashes. Alcohol was a factor in 3 cases and in others people were not wearing seatbelts. Apple says its cracking down on factory conditions overseas. In an audit apple notes suppliers are limiting work weeks. However, employee pay and benefit issues are still apparant in some facilities. In 2011, apple was blamed for harsh working conditions at its foxconn factory in china. Apple also clarified in the audit that its factories are not using conflict metals that finance violent groups. In its mobile devices. Struggling retailer jc penney is making a cfo switch. Ken hannah, is stepping down as cfo in march with no explanation. Hell be replaced by edward record who has 25 years of experience in finance at various retailers including kohls. Jcp plans to close 33 stores and eliminate 2 thousand jobs this year in a turnaround effort. Avon is close to settling an overseas bribery probe. The Cosmetics Company is under suspicion of paying bribes to expand into china and other countries as u. S. Sales slowed. Settlement fees could cost up to 132 million. Thursday, avon earnings beat estimates, but revenue fell in the fourth quarter. The stock closed down 3 percent to 14. 61. Tapping into other earnings. Pepsi reported 20. 1 billion in revenue up 1 from a year go. But just shy of analsyts estimates. The ceo is confident about the year ahead. Good year tire reported a strong 4th quarter. As car sales increased sales of tires. And profits are up a burger king with growth coming from asia and north america. The chain says its new menu items such as the big king burger and satisfries are hits with consumers. This years ipo surge is bringing back memories of the dotcom era. Already this year 31 Companies Began selling shares to the public. A 72 percent increase from 2013 and the best start to a new year since 2000, according to renaissance capital. The frim says new Companies Want to take advantage of the strong stock market and investors willingness to take a risk. Those stock market gains are creating a breakout for 401k investors. Americans stashed away a record amount of retirement money in 2013. Fidelity says the average 401k account balance is nearly 90 thousand dollars. Stock market gains have doubled since 2009. A former Food Network Star is attempting to rebuild her empire. Paula deen is reportedly teaming with a private Investment Firm in a 75 Million Dollar deal to form a new Media Company paula deen ventures. Deen was involved in a Racial Discrimination lawsuit last summer, after which the food network. Walmart. Target and others cut ties with the star. Twitter is testing tweaks. The social media site reportedly is revamping pages that resemble facebook. The new look might include more information on profile pages. Experiments typically go out to a small, random pool of users. Twitter has no commented a sweet and sour ending for chobani yogurt. As an olympic sponsor the yogurt maker was attempting to deliver 5,000 cups of chobani to atheltes in sochi. However, the delivery was held up at an airport by russian customs for failing to have the proper paper work. Now, chobani reports the yogurt will instead be delivered to food banks in new york and new jeresey. Word that baseball superstar shortstop derek jeter will bow out of baseball after 2014 has fans making a big play for tickets. Within two hours of the announcement ticket prices jumped 160 to 800 dollars. Prices are now going for more than 11,000 on the secondary market. For the final new yankees game in september against the baltimore orioles. As side note. Pitchers and catchers are reporting. A sure sign spring is coming still to come should you listen to your heart or go with your gut this valentines day . Some words of wisdom in traders unplugged. Plus why early investors in one car stock are smiling today. And our next guest urges to do your homework before sinking your money into startups. Thats next with bill moller real issues theyre dealing with can be awkward and uncomfortable. But when their behavior changes, its time to act. Because if we dont, our families and relationships will suffer. Listen to the veterans in your life and show you care. It matters. When you recognize a veteran is in crisis, call the Veterans Crisis line at 18002738255 and press 1. You have heard of crowdfunding. Its really become a craze. It seems anything and everything is being funded these days by people like you me. We make small investments, through all those online sites. Youve heard of kickstarter. Well, youve got an idea for a business, maybe you have a need maybe you want somebody to pay for your College Education . You can get strangers to do that, and you might be able to raise thousands, 10s of thousands of dollars or more this way. It doesnt seem like you need a bank loan anymore. Lets talk with jeanette pavini, she writes the buyer beware column for marketwatch. Com. One of your headline columns was, dont let crowdfunding become crowd scamming. What do you mean by scamming . Well i think that when you are investing your hardearned cash into someones idea or someones business or project, you have to be careful because any time the internet is involved and you really dont know the person or the source, you have the potential to be scammed. Do you have examples . Well there was several that i came across when i was doing my research. One was where a lot of people were investing in a kobe beef type of business, and they almost raised their goal amount before it was caught that it was a scam and of course everyone got their money back. I think its just really important that people are aware that if youre turning your money over. You want to make sure you were turning it into the right hands. And that said the crowd funding sites that i spoke with, they do have a lot of things in place to try to prevent scamming and most of them will give back the money if someone is scammed. Ok but it is still our responsibility to be cautious, so give us maybe three steps that we should be taking as part of due diligence. Well if you dont if you arent familiar with the person who is hosting this crowd funding project, its really important that you check them out on their web sites, on their bio page, on their linkedin. Use social media avenues to find out how legit people are. The second thing is the Better Business bureau is an excellent source of finding out if there has been any complaints in particular for the business that you are looking into investing. The last thing is to actually, you can check with your Attorney Generals Office in your local states to see if there has been any complaints for this particular project. You should also not only look into your state complaints, but also the state where the crowd funding project is deriving from. As i mentioned a lot of the crowd funding sites will protect you, but they will also have some times where there might be conflicts so you dont want to get to that point were you actually are getting scammed. Alright jeanette pavini, thanks so much. Thank you. Bill, early investors in tesla are enjoying the ride. The stock raced to a new all time this week. Closing thursday just a hair below 200 at 199. 63. The stock has been trending higer after disclosing its model s sales were coming in 20 above expectations. The electric car Company Reports earnings next wednesday. Coming up in chart talk. A trader powers into a play in gnc stock. And, in traders unplugged the dynamic duo is filled with hearts and flowers . Stick around. niocznz iocznzioczniocznz ioczt call it a love hate relationship. Joining us from the floor of cme group. Alan knuckman and scott shellady. They love this segment, but hate to be wrong. Good to have you on the show this morning guys. Lets get you going with topic number one guru gains warren buffet made a 1 Million Dollar bet against hedge funds. Is it better to follow buffett, hedge fund money, or just jump into the s p 500 and hope for the best . Alan well his bet was that the hedge fund couldnt continue to over perform the s p and he was just gonna go into the spiders etf. It depends on your time frame. If you have Unlimited Money and an unlimited time frame you can do what Warren Buffett does and just be in the position for the long term and wait for the market to eventually climb higher. Otherwise theres a timing factor involved for the rest of us mortals. Scott its called a modern portfolio theory and money management. Generally its a 20 year time horizon this is a little bit different because its 10. But given 20 years its been mathematically proven that you just cant pick them its better to be in the s p if you have that time. If you only. Alan but are we going to live 20 years . Thats the question. Scott if you keep this up you wont. Angie topic number two bringing home the bacon. Sales of the bacon bowl are sizzling. So how do you make a profit on this . Scott well you know wearing a cow jacket which is not bacon obviously, and having a family farm and a father that works for cargill. Alan youre an expert. Scott you can look for some of the publicly traded companies, but if you happen to know a cargill, i think that would be something that i would rather invest in than the other ones that weve talked about earlier. Alan smithfield got taken off. Weve got hormel, oscar meyer is part of kraft. I think that has more potential looking at it from a trading standpoint. From a technical standpoint, you can see a 50 . If you lean on 50 you can see a nice healthy move in kraft. Theyve got a lot of brands, but bacon they dont even trad it in the pits anymore. So you cant just singularly target bacon and i was looking at one company that makes smart bacon which is not even really bacon. So it is hard to figure this one out. Angie topic number three im lovin it. Mcdonalds is going romantic this year by offering a valentines experience that includes waiters and candles on the table maybe even some flowers. Would you buy the stock . Scott i would number one because i think the economy is not doing very well and mcdonalds will outperform in a down economy. Number two is that if this mcdonalds does have the playland, i think alan would be very interested. Alan mcdonalds went from lowest last year at 84, the highs last year of 104. So 94 is the midpoint were at 95 right now. You can really lean on this level. Look for mcdonalds to recover. Its still negative on 2014 and its not like mcdonalds is going out of business any time soon. Angie lets take a look at your bonus round question that has to do with valentines day. Were looking at tickers to love. Which one is the fake ticker . R ose, rose; tif, tif; hsy; flws; ftd; and wine. Alan theyre all real. Theyre all real this time. Yeah. Scott just because im standing next to alan, ill pick wine. Alan that would be w h i n e scott but its too much for the ticker so. Angie exactly the answer is wine we made it up and i knew you were going to whine about this so thank you, scott. Scott alrighty alan thank you angie love you guys. Happy valentines day. First business continues right after this. See these hands . They gripped the wheel of a humvee in afghanistan. These hands . Six years treating soldiers. Twelve years, flying choppers. My hands . Theyre here for the person who fought in afghanistan. I made the call and got support for my sister. My hands are here for the person who treated those soldiers. I helped connect my son with the care hes earned. Mine take care of the person who flew those helicopters. And if life gets overwhelming theyre ready to dial the Veterans Crisis line. The Veterans Crisis line is here for all veterans and their loved ones. Call 18002738255 and press 1. Or chat online at veteranscrisisline. Net James Ramelli of keenonthemarket. Com is all pumped up about gncs stock. Good morning to you on this friday. Good morning. What do you see in the charts . What are you hearing in the Options Market . Well this is a really interesting one. They were supposed to report their earnings on thursday morning. They came out thursday morning and said theyre going to move to after the close. When this happens traders usually get worried and they start to think that theyre going to report a very bad quarter the stock is going to sell off and what we saw during the day on thursday was very interesting because we actually saw traders coming in and getting long gnc relatively aggressively. They were buying a lot of the 52 half 55 and 52 half 57 half one by two call spreads for next weeks expiration. This is all very bullish trading. Gnc reports earnings, the stock gets crushed initially and i think that move looks very overdone. I could look for longs in the stock to try to play a bounce here. Im going to have to make sure the risk verse reward ratio lines up because it would be a very aggressive trade after it sold off this much. Ultimately where do you need that stock to land . Where does it need to be next week, james . Well next week for paper to make the maximum amount of money on their trade, they need the stock to come back all the way to 57 half which is a huge huge move. I dont think that there is any chance the stock gets that high. But i think we can roll in some of our positions here. Im already long, some call spreads up around that line. I could roll them in a little bit here and adjust them get a little less aggressive to try to get back some of that money. What would be your play on this friday as we head into the long weekend with the president ial holiday taking place on monday . So a holidays actually a very important point for options traders, especially when were thinking about time decay. When we have a shortened week, time decay accelerates even faster than it normally would, and theres a whole day of trading that we dont have to manage our positions. So going premium short into a short week generally does play out relatively well and has time on a trader side. These are all steps that ill start to look at on the open and before or around 12 00 which is when we really start to see a lot of premium rollout of these options. Thank you james. Thank you. We are out time for this week. Coming up on monday, trader tips on how its possible to make money on president ial terms and elections. Dont miss it. 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