And the nasdaq. The dow is up about 100 points. The nasdaq 100 hitting a new record high. Your midcap names, jan bradys of the investing world, big standouts. Energy stocks a big part of that, led higher by names like denver, resources, sm energy and energen. Im michelle carusocabrera. Cleanup efforts from North Carolina to florida following hurricane matthew. 19 deaths have been reported here in the United States due to that storm. Samsung suspending production of its galaxy note 7 phones following reports that they catch fire. Oil prices are moving higher after Vladimir Putin said russia is ready to join opecs efforts to cap oil output. Begin with politics and new polls showing that donald trump is in deepening trouble. John harwood live in washington with the numbers. This one is, what, nbc news and wall street journal, john . Yes, this is a wall street journal nbc News National live interview telephone poll that was it is important for me to point this out, this is not reflecting anything from the debate. This was taken saturday and sunday before the debate, but after the release of that access Hollywood Tape which consumed the news of the weekend and caused so Many Republican elected officials to repudiate donald trump, asked him to leave the president ial race. So look at what happened in these numbers. First of all, in a fourway race, before this tape came out, our last poll in september had Hillary Clinton with a sixpoint lead, 4337 in the twoway race. Now, it is an 11point lead, 4635. That is a very large lead in president ial politics. In the twoway race, without gary johnson and jill stein, the lead is even bigger. It goes from seven points, 4841 in september, to 14 points, 5238 this weekend. Now, we also saw that the democratic advantage in who voters want to control the congress more than doubled from 3 points in september to 7 points now. Thats where republicans panicked over the weekend, theyre still highly concerned and just have to wait and see whether more of them, because of either something that happened in the debate, or because of this fresh evidence of deepening trouble for them, that youre going to have more defection and more turmoil within the republican base. One additional note of caution, however, it is true that when you poll in the middle of a news event like this breaking access Hollywood Tape, you have the potential to exaggerate the impact of the effect. So it is possible that this is a temporary blip and the numbers could come back down, but certainly in this moment, it is creating a lot of fire among republicans. Was this poll planned to go out this weekend, or was it reactive to the news of friday . I believe that we put the poll in the field saturday and sunday because of what happened friday night to try to measure the impact. But an important point there is that obviously there was a real magnification effect, i would think, over the weekend because of the nature of the news cycle. Does the poll go into thats what i was saying. On to a state by state basis. There is the National Race and there is but really youre looking at 50 different separate races. Do we get that level of grand lair ty in this poll or not . Absolutely not. It is smaller than our usual sample, 500 sample, slightly higher error margin than our usual polls. But there are a lot of state polls out there and everybody is going to be watching them. But, again, we have got a report this morning from the Conference Call that Republican Leaders had and you had the republican chairman of the House RepublicanCampaign Committee telling members on his call, on the basis of his polling, that things are getting worse for republicans and we picked that up on a national basis. All right, thank you very much, john harwood. Reporting from st. Louis today. Lets talk the election and your money. With us is ross, the head of global Asset Allocation for black rock. It is interesting because we definitely see sharp reactions in certain markets such as currency markets where the moves in the peso and the Canadian Dollar that were measurable. In terms of the broader stock market. Not so much reaction, im wondering if you think it is because i dont want to say it doesnt mat, but doesnt matter as much on the day to day basis for the equity markets or if the 1. 7ish percent rise we have seen does reflect the elections . Well, i think that the improvement we see is more a function of better economic indicators. The thing about the election is it is not that it doesnt matter, not clear it is going to matter for the broader market. There are segments of the market, health care companies, energy companies, they think they will be impacted by the results of the election. But if you go back, you look at history, the occupant of the white house is not reliably driven the market and in addition, if we get the most likely outcome, which is probably somewhat of a continuation of the status quo, and youre still looking at a divided government, it may not have as much of an impact on the market, the broad level, as some suggested. You say impact on health care as well as energy, it is interesting because health care, it seems like both sides of the aisle are in favor of price controls to a certain extent, perhaps more regulation when it comes to energy. May be a trump win that may benefit the energy sector. How do you parse out the impact of either candidate on these lar sectors since you flagged them as the most impacted . Health care is a really interesting example because even within health care, there are nuances. If you think about the pharma sector and biotech, they have both come under some pressure depending upon comments out of the candidates about drug pricing. The same time, if you believe that the election will result in the continuation of the Affordable Care act, that stands to benefit some service providers, some hospitals, so it is worth focusing on sectors, but within the secretary, expect some differentiation depending upon the nature of the business, and how washington affects their revenue and bottom line. Ross, oil back above 51 a barrel. How important is energys run . Just sort of talked about the industry in general, but how important is oils move to the overall market, if one of our viewers just owns the s p etf, is this good news . I think it is neutral. It is probably helping to support the continuation of the ral rally and high yield. In january, the collapse in energy was one of the things that scared people about credit. Certainly it is good for the oil companies, and very good for the u. S. Based companies. Where it might hurt is on the consumer side. One of the arguments for Retail Companies is you had this win fall from lower oil. We start to see it back up in gasoline, particularly at a time when wages are not ripping to the upside, that might put a little more downward pressure on Retail Stocks and perhaps some restaurants as well. Ross, do you think either candidate has a particular impact on Interest Rates . Well, certainly if you have Hillary Clinton winning, it is fair to assume there will be continuity at the fed. What is continuity at the fed . Looks like more of the same, the fed is likely to go in december. But as we have been reminded again and again, this will be a very gradual and probably somewhat of a short tightening cycle which means that the terminal level you get to, when the fed stops raising rates, is going to be dramatically lower than the spin in previous cycles. All right, ross, well leave it there. Thank you for your time. Lets turn back to the political implications now, and with us is don peebles, chairman and ceo of the peebles corporation. Always good to see you. Im sure well get to who you thought won and lost the debate in a minute. But i thought that one of the interesting areas of conversation last night, an area with which of the tax code with which im sure youre familiar is a Real Estate Developer has to do with mr. Trumps use, maybe some would say aggressive use of net operating loss carry forwards. I dont want to bog down in the weeds here, but im curious what you think about his use of that tax provision, whether you draw any moral judgment about it, whether youve had to use it in your career, and how you feel about it. Okay, well, look, first of all, there is no moral judgment here. Thats the law. Thats the tax code that we have today. That was the tax code in place back then when he took the losses. That tax code is designed to spur investment in businesses. So my businesses will lose money in certain types of entities of ours will lose money. If we couldnt offset that against the gains, we would be much less likely to take the risk. Of course it is an appropriate deduction. I think that this narrative on that issue in particular is trying to take advantage of the lack of detail knowledge of the general public as a whole. But as a business person, i dont see anything wrong with it. I know most Business People will and who wouldnt take advantage of being able to deduct an expense . The average american takes full advantage of any deduction they have as well. John, it is michelle here. Youre a clinton supporter, right . No. I am an independent person right now. I would lean towards Hillary Clinton. But i have not made a decision to endorse either candidate. I was a barack obama supporter for both of his elections and continue to be one for him. But no, i am not i have not endorsed either candidate. To underline, you dont see anything then na taannefarious contacting procedure. He lost a huge amount of money. We got to rewind and think about what was happening to the country at that time. Look, in the early 1990s, we had a banking crisis that brought down the banking industry, the savings and loan industry ended. And closed up from what we knew then to what it is today. We had a real estate crisis where values were plummeting and we had the federal government taking control of banks on an everyday basis. So there were huge losses. Anyone in real estate suffered huge losses. Did you have close to a billion dollar loss, don . I didnt. Did you know anybody who has had one . Well, look, donald trump apparently had one as well. I dont i think were again focusing on the size. Size is relative. If youre running a 20 billion business, and you lose a billion dollars, thats a 5 loss. If you run a Million Dollar business, and you lose 50,000, thats a 5 loss. So it has got to be relative here. I think thats the other thing. Again, it is more focusing on the narrative, on the optics as opposed to the substance of it. The law of the land is he could deduct it and we should if people dont like it, change the tax code. Please dont mistake me when i ask the question, was really because i was legitimately curious because you, as a Real Estate Developer, have to be familiar with these tax provisions. I wasnt fishing for any particular answer. You gave met honest answer the way you feel. Let me turn it a little bit differently there, does it in any way trouble you that an individual like mr. Trump or someone else might go for many years and not pay any personal federal income tax as a result of the way the tax code is structured, that allows those business oriented net operating losses to flow through to their personal tax return . Does it trouble you at all . No. Im asking, not because i have a judgment of my own on it. The goal is to spur Economic Activity. And frankly the only Economic Activity we stimulate should not be taxes, it is job generation. It is Income Growth for individuals. It is spurring small businesses. It is building businesses and the like. So, no, we have to incentivize the private sector to take the risk. If you take risk and lose money and cant write it off against profitable enterprises, it just discourages people from making smart investments. Thats common sense. I hate to use the words won or lost with the debate. There is so much nuance out there, right. It is win and lose is a statemestate of mind depending who you are. Do you believe donald trump stopped the bleeding . Do you think he held his ground enough last night to cease the decline in the polls that john harwood hit on about ten minutes ago . Let me put it to you this way. Had he had that performance in the first debate, this race would be a lot closer. I think he stopped the bleeding. I thought he finally overall, 90 of his presence on tv last night showed that he was at least remotely worthy of being on the stage to compete for the presidency of the United States. So i thought he did a far better job. If i were going to pick a winner of that, i would say he did do a better job in terms of getting his goals accomplished and talking to those voters who are still undecided. Did he do a good enough job of explaining his use of the net operating losses as you did here . No, but i thought that the moderators were a bit one sided, to be candid with you. And, again, im predisposed to Hillary Clinton. But hillary can win this race without any help from the moderators. This is the second time now where the moderators dont give the opportunity for one candidate to answer more substanti substantively. I thought it was a bill unbalanced. Setting wasnt good enough to do that. It is a more complicated question. Right now, im talking to a business audience, and they get it. But the average american doesnt get it unless theyre explained it, but the simple is thats the law of the land. Don, thank you very much for your candor. We appreciate it. Always good to hear from you. Appreciate it. Well, the nonverbal communication that has everybody talking today, were going to take a closer look at both candidates body language still ahead. First, one thing they did talk about was taxes. And a lot about where future revenues come from. Here we go. I got a tax trivia for you, a test if you will on a monday. Okay. What percent of households who report income of more than 200,000 a year also make less than 500,000 per year . Is it 55 . 80 . 42 . Or 65 . The answer on the other side of the break. We cant go back to the years of devastating cuts to public education. Exactly why i urge you to vote yes on prop 55. Prop 55 prevents 4 billion in new education cuts without raising taxes on anyone. And theres strict accountability in prop 55. With local control over School Funding decisions. And mandatory annual audits guaranteeing the money goes directly to our classrooms. Not to bureaucracy, not to administration. So vote yes on 55. Because it helps our children thrive. Here is the question we showed you before the break. Tyler is out. He knows the answer. According to 2014 irs data, approximately 6. 2 million homes reported income of more than 200,000 a year. So, what we asked you is this. What percent of those also reported income under 500 . In other words, they made between 200 and 499,999 per year. 80. 80 . 94 of households making more than 200,000 reported income of under a Million Dollars a year. Nobody is crying poverty here. 200 grand is a lot of money to make. We get that. The reason were showing you this is to better understand the demographics of the group that continues to come up in conversation. Hillary clinton last night referencing the 250. Which is fine. But there is it seems like there is a financial obligations being put on this group and you can see from the irs data that most of the filers, 80 of them, are probably just two income professional households there, certainly not bill gates. Well get more about that in a minute. First, let us bring in our friend Steve Liesman to separate fact from fiction from the tax talk. Well talk about the middle income part of this. And well get back to this wealthy and the working wealthy that you bring up. There is a debate over taxes. It found a sliver of air time among the politics of personal destruction that dominated last nights meeting of the two president ial candidates. Lets look at what was said and what it tells us about the candidates tax plans. Were cutting taxes for the middle class, and i will tell you we are cutting them big league for the middle class. And i will tell you, Hillary Clinton is raising your taxes, folks, look at me, shes raising your taxes, really high. And what thats going to do is a disaster for the country. So it is true. Trump is proposing tax cuts for the middle class. However, it appears to be false that all the low and middle class will benefit. Lilly batchhelder said 7. 8 million will not see tax increases. Some because trump would repeal personal tax exemptions, others because he would repeal head of household filing status. Others would move up from lower to higher tax bracket under the three bracket plan. The Trump Campaign has not disputed this but said those families will be allowed to file under the old system, that has tax experts, i guess, counting the change they would get from a twosystem tax filing status there. As for trumps claim that clinton proposes raising your taxes really high, this appears to mostly untrue if you consider the vast majority of americans. She will raise taxes on the wealthy and do so big time. In some cases quite substantially. She has said no one under 250,000 will see a tax increase. The tax policy standard did find that some people in the 90th percentile and below would see small increases but due to the changes in corporate taxes, not because of changes in income taxes. The middle income debate seems to right now favor clinton on this and partly because of the sort of complicated changes trump would make. The reason we brought up that data in part is not because we were trying to cry poverty for anybody like that. Thats a lot of money. When we hear this group that the 1 , right, over 250, whatever, is going to fund this and fund that, i just wonder if there is enough people that are m