Jumping today bigtime, up about 10 . [closing bell ringing] david we didnt have a chance to talk about netflix, but thats up again, triple digits today as we can hear the bells are ringing on wall street. Look at the indexes, looks kind of flat, but individual stocks, that was the name of the game, whether were talking about dell, whether were talking about apple, we have both of those covered by the way with expert analysis on dell and apple. The Dow Jones Industrial managing to squeak out a gain today. Nasdaq though if you look at nasdaq, of course s p was down just a tick, but you look at nasdaq, now it is down. Its down about a quarter of a percentage point, but it was down a lot more than that when it was just apple that was moving that index down. As soon as news came about dell, that was about 1 00 or 2 00 p. M. Today. Thats when we saw nasdaq come back up again, not enough to bring it into the green but enough to change it around quite a bit from where it was. Sandra looking at the markets you would think it was a flat day but some big movers involving apples big drop today. Lets take a look at some apples suppliers. So on apples big decline, you have to think about all those suppliers, david, that are affected by that. David thats really what moves the apple markets so much. Lets talk about commodities for a second. Platinum was a big mover in the pits today. Rallying 27 hitting three month highs. Silver also seeing a nice pop up 2. 3 . It did settle above 31 an ounce. Fed chief ben bernanke hes at the university of michigan taking questions this hour. We are keeping a close eye on an event. This is an event that really could move markets tomorrow. Set the whole futures up. And were going to update you throughout the hour on anything he says that could affect your investments. Sandra plus big news in the tech world. We have got reports that dell is in talks to go private, and thats sending shares way up today, up more than 12 bucks. The iphone keeps losing market share and iphone part manufacturers they are losing orders. Is it time for tim cook to lose his job . Weve got an analyst who covers both of those companies, david coming up. David also toyota driving past gm taking the title for the worlds top selling automaker. We will go live to the Detroit Auto Show to hear from toyota u. S. President about what new cars are hitting the road. Wait till you see the new mercedes by the way. But first we will tell you what drove the markets today with todays data down load. Stocks struggling for direction today. The dow crossing the unchanged line 36 different times before Holding Firmly in the green. The dow posting gains for the fourth trading in a row while the nasdaq and the s p ended lower. Industrials and consumers staples were todays Top Performing s p sectors while telecom and technology did lag. Corn and soybeans soaring on demand and supply worries today. Soybeans hit the highest level in more than four months while corn climbed to a one month high on signs that u. S. Supplies are tightening amid higher demand from buyers overseas. So look for price hikes at the grocery store. Also the euro hitting an 11 month high against the dollar, a possibility of an Interest Rate cut in europe fades. Euro hit an intraday high of 1. 34, jumping 2. 5 against the greenback. Sandy . Sandra were also watching dell shares. This is the big story. Especially after trading were still going to continue to watch this stock. The stock soaring today, reports surfacing that it is in talks with private equity firms over a potential buyout. David joining us now is Williams FinancialGroup Director and research in Equity Capital markets is joining us by phone. First of all, is it going private and if so, how much you know, david i cant say if its going to go private or not. We definitely get some specifics at least in some private equity being named, but whoever leaked Something Like this, if it is true, just cost somebody a little over 2 billion dollars today, so if it was going to go private, it could have done so much cheaper. Sandra i want to focus on the fact that the stock has taken a major hit over the past year, the past six months, its up 28 , it has rebounded quite a bit from its lows last year. Over the past year, however, its lost about a quarter of its value. I guess my question at this point, by the way, the company is saying that it wont comment on rumors or speculation at this point. Would this be a good move . Michael dell owns about 15 15 of the outstanding shares of the company. What does it look like overall for the company right now . It might make sense because you have had a frustrating year with dell. This was an 18 stock just earlier about february of last year. Its been something that once you get this kind of a pullback, you start to look at options like this. And does it make sense if i eve if i have got 15 or 16 percent of the stock, maybe i could do more with that equity position if i were private and didnt have to have the hassles and the shortterm focus of daily trading . David cody, lets talk about the cash that dell has. I was looking a 2010 piece, back then they had about 12 billion dollars in cash. Right now thats been cut half. They have about 5 billion in cash. How much of that cash is overseas . We all know that when you have money parked overseas, as apple does, 100 billion dollars or so, you wonder whether or not its had a tax hit yet, if its overseas, it hasnt. How much of the 5 billion that dell has is overseas . You know, thats a good question. I dont have that number off the top of my head but with these Tech Companies selling so much globally you do end up getting a large stockpile overseas. David let me stop you there so our viewers know. That means there could be a potential big tax hit if most of that money is overseas . Yeah, thats exactly right. If you have to repatriate for use in Something Like this, then you have to pay the differential in the different tax jurisdictions. So while you have 5 on the books, it could be significantly less that you could actually utilize. Sandra i want to bring a report from Goldman Sachs. They upgraded based on quote the possibility of a leveraged buyout offer providing floor for the shares. If you own dell shares, if you want to own dell shares, what does one do right now based on the news that we have at this moment . Well, i think outside of a takeout, the 2013 still looks better for dell than 2012. Theyre doing a lot of things to get them out of just the commodity pc market, into services, into servers into the upper enterprise where margins are better to look more like an ibm than maybe just a pc seller. That will be better for the company as we push through the next few quarters. I think we have a little bit better pc backdrop to boot. David cody you know this company extremely well, better than most people. It is run by michael dell, the owner or the previous owner, the entrepreneur, he has his entrepreneurial mindset, it is embedded in his dna, do you think that he felt hamstrung by the Capital Markets and really wants to go private . I think you have to especially when you are talking about a company that really needed to turn itself around and it is so hard to turn yourself around and think longterm when youre doing this treadmill of Quarterly Earnings and worried about that, rather than the strategy, the structure of the firm, so much easier to maneuver if youre a private company. David cody from Williams Financial, a guy who has been following the story, the stock for a long time. Very privileged to have him here today. Cody, thanks a lot. Appreciate it. Thanks guys. Sandra lets get to todays markets. We have ira epstein in the pits in chicago. We also have chris middleman of middleman brothers. Also hank smith chief Investment Officer at a trust company. Lets start first with ira epstein. I want to go down to you because we did have the president speaking today making a case for the debt ceiling, but didnt really mention anything that it had to do with up coming spending in 2013. I imagine that was a bit of a point of contention for traders down there today. You know, what it really is is we see the story before weve seen the story before, now act one of a brand new debt ceiling game. The president didnt wait for the inauguration. He came out and of course what hes going to say is his past bills released the money, thats what should be done. He didnt answer a question in the press conference as to whether or not he has authority to just order that money released which was interesting. But the republicans, they told you on the revenue part of this bill what they were going to do is use the debt ceiling along with the sequester funds to try to reach a compromise where theres more spending. Where theres more cuts in spending is what im trying to say. So what i thought today was a shot across the bow, i was very surprised the republicans didnt hold another conference to immediately repudiate it, but this is what were going to see for the next 7 or 8 weeks, and you can only fool the public some of the time. I think were all agreeing theres going to be spending cuts. The debt ceiling is going to be made. America is not at the end of the day going to. On the other hand, they are not going to solve this quickly. They will make us go through the same thing they did at the end of 2012. David were always hearing that the president is not going to make a deal until he does make a deal and the same is true with congress but something is going to get done. Lets focus on stocks for a second. We had this two very interesting bits of news from the tech market. Apple waking up to news today that they are not selling as many iphone 5s as they thought they would therefore they are cutting back on supply orders. Also the news from dell that they may be going private. Is there a retrenchment retrenchment going on in the tech sector being a commodity person all my life, a commodity is a commodity and over time it loses value. Dell has discovered that. That is one of the problems they are in. They have to get into a different business. Apple came out with its iphone 5 which didnt shake the world. I have an iphone 4s. Why do i need an iphone 5 . Give me a reason to go to the new phone. On top of that, you have the android which has more manufacturers releasing numbers. Its no surprise that they are going to have the bigger market share, but what apple needs to do and they havent done it is strike with a hot iron and give us a new product, something that makes you buy that iphone 5. Sandra ira epstein on the floor in chicago. Thank you. David lets bring in the market panel, chris middleman and hank smith. Chris, lets go first to you. Lets start with apple, because the question whether its lost its luster as sort of a a lot of people six months ago were talking about it as a commodity, as a stock that just couldnt lose. Has it lost that sort of image . I think apple is a great company, generates a lot of free cash flow, amazing balance sheet. We dont own the stock. We actually have never owned the stock, unfortunately. But its a great business. If someone wanted to buy apple here, i wouldnt have a problem with it. David would you recommend it . The only reason i wouldnt recommend it is because we have other alternatives we like better. You know, i do remember sony in the 80s being looked at as the dominant provider of this type of thing and that didnt last forever. Im a little bit concerned about their ability to continue to dominate in the way they have with samsung and these other companies at their heels now. Sandra hank you are pretty much positive on equities across the board which means i can assume that you probably like technology. With all this news on apples decline and dells big pop today on all the speculation, where do you fall in the tech sector . Well, look, first of all, we prefer companies that pay a dividend, so apple falls right into that. Dell does not. We do own apple. We purchased apple shortly after they initiated their first dividend. And we like apple both for the intermediate and longterm and believe the story is intact. This is a secular growth area, talking about smart phones and tablets and apple is going to be a major part of this growing pie. Sure, they have competition. But the best part about apple is compared to tech, lets say, in the late 90s is theres no valuation headwind. Valuation at 10 times earnings, there abouts, even maybe a little bit less, is not a headwind to this stock. So we think you can comfortably use dips to add to positions and thats what were going to be looking to do. David today is certainly one of those dips. We will be talking a lot more with an analyst about apple coming up later in the show. Chris lets go to specific picks. I rented an avis car this weekend. I rented a zip car last week and now they are both in the same company. It had a big pop today. You think its an Exciting Company . Yes, we have been involved in Avis Budget Group for a number of years now. The stock is doing very well of late. I think the stock is just every 21 now. We think it is worth around 30 a share. That would be about 10 times free cash flow. It is not aggressive target price. The Company Generates about 360 million of free cash flow. Ten times that gets to 30. Sandra hank, theres one area and we only have time for one more question theres one area you dont like and thats utilities. Yes, they do have yields but not as attractive as they were a year ago. The big thing there is valuation. The electric utilities are selling 18 to 20 times earnings for a 4, 4 1 2 percent yield. That is not a good combination for investors. David by the way hank thinks the market is going to do as well this year as it did in 2012. That means another 15 jump. Im looking forward to that. Hope you guys are right. Chris middleton, hank smith, thanks gentlemen. Thank you. Sandra fed chief bernanke is about to answer questions at the university of michigan. We will let you know what hes saying about our economy and the future fed action. As we know that can be market moving. This event could move the markets tomorrow. David thats a live picture coming out of michigan. We will be going right back there. Also the news of apple cutting down orders for iphone parts is driving the stock way down again today. We have an apple analyst who cut his price target by 150 bucks back in december. Does he think its also time for the company to cut their ceo tim cook . Sandra shares of dell soaring on talk of a buyout. More on both tech stories coming up. Keep it right here. [ male announcer ] this is karen anjeremiah. They dont know it yet, but they gonna fall in love, get married, have a couple of kids, [ children laughing ] move to the country, and live a long, happy life together where they almost never fight about money. [ dog barks ] because right after they get married, theyll find some retirement people who are paid on salary, not commission. Theyll get straightforrd guidance and be able to focus on other things, like each other, which isnt rocket science. Its just common sense. From td ameritrade. [ male announcer ] how do you make 70,000 trades a second. Reach one customer at a time . Or help doctors turn billions of bytes of shared information. Into a fifth anniversary of remission . Whatever your business challenge, dell has the technology and services to help you solve it. David shares of premium channel stars soaring. To nicole. Nicole it was under the umbrella with liberty. They did have their nasdaq debut for stars. Shares jumped almost 10 today. And it was spun off from Liberty Media and Liberty Media in the meantime wants cash to maybe take over other things such as sirius xm . We will see. When you think of starz, you think the premium channel, encore, they boast about 55 million subscribers and some analysts say it is a target for a takeover itself, but in the meantime it is debuting on its own, starz, it had a great day on wall street. Back to you. David thank you nicole. Sandra you know that when Federal Reserve chairman bernanke speaks, the markets listen. Well he is speaking right now. The markets happen to be closed. Hes speaking at the university of michigan. And it could be a big mover tomorrow. David it could indeed. This could affect the futures markets. We will kind of watch the futures as he talks. Fox businesss peter barnes is listening in. Peter, you are going to tell us if he says anything that could move the markets. Peter thats right david and sandra. The remarks just getting underway here. They got started a little bit late. And the first question out of the box here from the dean of the ford school of Public Policy at the university, susan collins, her first question on the fiscal cliff. So now big headlines there yet from the fed chairman. But we are awaiting for potential comments on monetary policy, specifically professor collins told the Washington Post that she does plan to ask chairman bernanke about the news that came out of the fed minutes a couple of weeks ago that theres this internal debate among fomc members on whether or not to start pulling back quantitative easing, to start cutting back on all those trillions of dollars in bond purchases we have seen over the last few years. Sometime this year, which was a little bit unexpected, to the financial markets. And there are now it appears a majority of members who might want to do that either earlier this year or by the end of the year. So that will be the those will be the headlines we will be looking for. David and sandra . Sandra thank you peter barnes. When you have anything, just jump in, we will take you live. We will break that for our viewers. David thanks peter. Reports are out apple is cancelling many orders for iphone parts as it loses market share and stock as a result taking a big hit. What is being done to energize the consumer . Is it time for tim cook to go . A lot of questions about apple. Were going to be asking the analysts. Sandra toyota overtaking gm as the worlds top selling automaker. So what new cars are hitting the road to keep it in that position up next . Toyota u. S. President will be joining us. He will be joining us with jeff flock live from the big auto show in detroit. What are you doing . Nothing. Are you stealing our Daughters School supplies and taking them to work . No, i was just