opening higher this morning after a mixed day for investors, so let s head to the new york stock exchange and check in with alison kosik. looks good so far. good morning, carol, looks like the bears are taking a rest today, letting the bulls come out and play but the gains not too huge at this point. investors are stuck in summer doldrums but stocks were at record highs less than two weeks ago. the dow is only 1.5% from its record, but here is what s giving investors a reason to buy today, retail sales numbers rose in july. it s actually the fourth month in a row of gains, so what that means is people are out there shopping, spending their money. that helps to boost the economy, but the thing is, like a lot of the other economic reports lately, not so good, they are kind of good, but not so great. but still you re seeing investors focus on the positive this morning. carol? like that, alison kosik, many thanks. this morning, hannah anderson is waking up in
good morning. i m carol costello. thank you for joining us. stories we re watching in the newsroom. opening bell just rang on wall street. the dow poised to extend its winning streak. alison kosik at the new york stock exchange. give us the scoop. the winning streak, eight days in the making. dow eeked out another record setting day, carol. two points higher, all it took. but the dow barely ended in positive territory, it looks like investors may be ready to take a bit of a breather. starting mixed, slightly lower and what the winning streak is saying, longest winning streak since 2011. new retail sales numbers out. jumped more than 1% in february. consumers pent mo er rs spent m bought cars, but less at the mall. we ll see if that good news
our new york city newsroom. what is behind these gains. we saw some the traders on wall street as they were cheering as the new pope was announced. they called it the papal pop at the end of the day. you are absolutely right. we had our seventh consecutive record closing high for the dow jones industrials. for the 401(k) s and iras and all the folks out there hoping for so much more they are certainly getting it. 120%% up off the lows that we saw in 2009. some of the reasons, shep, that we are seeing the gains we are seeing, better housing market and labor market. improving slowly but they are improving china and europe and no longer big worries. and we can t leave out the fed head ben bernanke who continues to print money jobs better. now i know we are spending more online. that s the thing. we got in our latest retail sales numbers for the month of february. and you can see month over month a gain of 1.1% which exceeded the analyst estimate. what s interesting, shep is
going. they have to play off of that overall economy. they can t set their own prices. they can t set their own demand. they are demand takers and price takers from that regard. they are worried about what they are seeing out there. we saw the retail sales numbers. they were abysmal. they dropped off significantly, even since the beginning of the year. many of the companies are in retail. so when you see the retail sales numbers falling, this is the customers they see coming in the door every day. and they re not happy about it. bret: doctor, the chamber has had a rocky relationship with the obama administration. there are democrats out there who look at these numbers in the study and say hey, listen, the chamber is in the tank for republicans. take these numbers with a grain of salt. how do you respond to the politics of that? we support republicans and democrats who are pro-business. anybody that has 70% voting record with us and running again, we give them a blanket endorsement.
megyn: wow. you ve got the americans wearing the french berets that were made in china who are now heading off to london to compete in the olympic games. i think i got it. reporter: no ascots for me, please. megyn: last week somebody said they re quintessentially american. really? i don t think so. all right, thank you. reporter: sure. megyn: well, the juke retale june retail sales numbers came out today, add to that the millions who are unemployed or underemployed, and we obviously have an economic crisis on our hands. so why are we hearing more and more why are we not hearing more about this on the campaign trail? are these two men locked in a battle other minutiae? and why? don t we deserve better? also, new controversy as a mountain of puzzling new information is released in the george zimmerman case. there is a new set of questions about the possibility of hate crime charges in connection with the shooting death of trayvon