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starwood. we ll talk to marriott s ceo, arnie sorensen. the president in cuba raises questions about economic opportunity there. and we re hours away from apple s highly anticipated event. we ll look at what to expect. valeant has been halted for the past half hour or so. as becky pointed out, mike pearson leaving the company. ackman to the board. predictable or not, jim? no. but there hasn t been much that is predictable. there s a mea culpa note from lehman brothers taking the price target from 135 to 134. taking numbers from 10 the reason i point this out is because the numbers are all of the map. no one knows the cash flow, what the company is really do. ackman joining the board is a sign he can t dump the stock. they couldn t dump the stock. this is a great mystery, carl. when you have a company where you have to idea what it will earn, where it s dermatological business is being carved up aggressively by allergan. ophthalmological being carved up by j & j. all ....
the nikkei was down by almost 600 points. that s a decline of 3.5%. among some of the things that were cited was a weak business sentiment result from a survey from the bank of japan. traders also citing weak earnings expectations in the united states. again, 3.5% decline. it s not our fault. it s japan. i think that s a little separate from what we see here. call someone, what do you think? they just come up with that. they didn t hear it from a single trader, i m sure. oh, how about this? well, you saw what s happening in europe. there s a selloff under way there too. some of the indices down by over 1.5%. again, what s happening here in the united states pales in comparison to all this. we only saw things down by 40 points here this morning so far. let s give you a little wrap-up on what s happening in the first quarter. it is now officially in the books. it actually was a pretty stunning turnaround for stocks. the last time the dow had a gain like this in ....
this is the best daily performance since january 28th when it was up 15%. i will tell you what, we asked yesterday whether or not it is the outlier and it is. truly is, and these results are staggering for a company this size without advertising is growing extrooaordinary within e united states and how well they are soaking up money, and taking advertising from digital, and print and other companies, and am amazing importance. anything else in the share class ta makes you scratch your head? no, mark zuckerberg has had control of the company. and you read the prospectus, and he said, i have a long term view, and if you don t like it, sell it. great quarter to announce it. people are more forgiving. exactly. i will stay in control and the investors seem to like that idea. it is really staggering, but the rate of the growth and the moat they have around the assets and the amount of data they have and not just about the intent expre expressed through search, but ....
place before you go to work. we will take you to a 7:00 a.m. rave. good morning, everybody, this is market makers. rave?0 a.m. i m excited. we should do that one day. for the moment, we are looking at sun economic news, isn nonmanufacturing index is just out, a gauge of the economy s marissa are. michael mckee has the headline. quite a good start to the trading day. pmi comes ining 1058.7, the best since 2005. this is a broad measure and includes most of the service industry. it tells us that the service industry is doing well in this country. take a look at the new orders index, 64.9 from 61.2. business at 70, 60 2.4. we have not seen numbers like this in about eight years. 62 activity, 62.4. capital goods, nondefense x 3.8% after falling 1.4% in the prior month. we are making some real progress here, looks like some good economic news to trade him today. thank you. now it is time for the top is the stories from around the world. get that is publishing in two. ae ....
is not bad. we were expecting that much. existing home sales have been a problem for the past year or so. we have not gotten what we want to see. we are seeing a much better than we expected number for the month. single-family homes posted a fairly strong gain. the supply of the market dropped significantly, of course this is wintertime, 24.1 months to 5.1. prices will continue to rise. we ll over the $5 million mark. that is good news as well. this will set the stage for reasonable 2015 if we continue. pending home sales have suggested we will. we start off with good news. michael mckee in new york city with the latest on u.s. economic data. more coming to you from switzerland. plus, a special guest. we ll be looking for that legacy of the late saudi king abdullah. and his nephew. we will talk about the legacy of his uncle, and stephanie, answering questions about the future of saudi oil policy. let s get your first to guests. he is the managing director and co-own ....