And continues to slide in 2013 due to good weather and an expected abundant crop. Kcup helped boost earnings as shares hate 52week high. Of course, the kcucut in price asked about whether they will match that. The tico times out of costa rica, which i read regularly says theres a rust fungus in Central America which could have a huge impact on the coffee crop. The news says costa rica has declared a state of emergency with 35 of the crop lost. Nicaragua has lost 40 and guatemala 60 . Guatemala, one of the top ten Coffee Producers in the world. Jane. Got to leave it there. Fascinating story. Thank you very much. Thanks for watching street signs, everybody. Closing bell is next. Hi, everybody. We head to the final stretch. Welcome to the closing bell. Im maria bartiromo. Stocks are higher again. S p 500 trying to open up the week with eight consecutive weekly gains, never happened since the s p was created in 1950. Happy 62nd birthday, i dont know, something with the s dont have many home runs in the market but just hitting singles and keep you go the score. Im bill grittive. The dow and s p are touching fiveyear highs fueled by reports of yet another merger. This one now involving office max and office depot. They are in merger talks, all on the heels of last weeks big merger news that included american airlines, u. S. Airways and h. J. Heinz. The wheels continue to turn. Really do. Well talk about deals. One of the big dealmakers on the show today. Dont look now, but 5 gas is becoming a reality in one part of the country. Well talk about whether spiking gasoline prices to be the big threat to the economy right now. I knew i should have filled up yesterday. This is going to keep going up. A pair of big earnings coming your way at the top of the hour. Dell and herbalife both set to report. Well have instant analysis of all those numbers right here on the closing bell. Before all that, lets check the markets here as we approach this final hour for the day. The Dow Jones Industrial average up 45 points. Just shy of the high of the day. About a third of the higher at 13,426. Nasdaq also strong and Technology One of the winners. Certainly the nasdaq up a half a percent and the s p 500 looks like this. Take a look. Similar chart pattern, just shy of the high of the gain with a gain on the Standard Poors of nine points. The s p coming off an historic week after ending a seventh weekly win, gain. The last time the index opened the year was seven consecutive weekly gains. Was in 1967. Plus, the dow right now is closing in on its alltime high. Roughly were a little less than 150 points away right now and holding above 14,000 so far. In todays Closing Bell Exchange our guests. Good to see everybody. Welcome, everybody. Thanks for joining us. Jonathan, let me kick it off with you. What do you make of this market . Do you want to put money to work or no . The trend is your friend here. Everybody is watching this market go higher and higher and little by little everybody is on the sidelines and getting back in. I thought the threeday weekend would quiet down our market, so to speak. Not a lot of Economic Data last week. A holiday week this week. A really great opportunity for investors to do their homework and see where they wants to go. It seems like this marketil coin tmogh. Ehiha think might get us o track here is the unemployment numbers. Alwaysook at that at the end of the month and more and more whispers are leading that this number is not moving in the right direction. M a news, sparks a lot of news in our market, and when you start to see that the money does come back in. We wonder what the next catalyst will be to move the market one way or another with some vigor and, carol, you still dont like the risk reward ratio for the market but as long as its going high youre going to hang in there, yes in. The issue is the risk reward balance is out of whack for me. The catalyst that can move this market higher versus the one bad news that could bring it lower. To me that is just out of whack so i feel like as long as theres no news, that is good news for the market. Youve got the fed. Youve got nowhere else to put the money, but i would be smart and selective, and i think the m a deals looking at candidates and potential strategic candidates are the way to go versus playing the broader market. You have to believe that the deal flow continues, josh lipton, given the fact that funding rates are still at rock bottom levels. A lot of cash on balance sheets. What are you seeing out there in terms of deals . Yeah, thats true, maria. A low Interest Rate world. Slow growth. Companies sitting on a lot of cash so its not unreasonable to think Investment Bankers will be pretty business the next couple of months. Carol has a background in there and thinks well see a pickup in m a activity. Theres a couple of sectors you would expect tha activity in, food and beverage, retail. What are the profiles of candidates that you think would best fit that . You have to look at a candidate, first of all, trading at a discount in terms of its ebitda multiple at least to the comp group or to its historical average. On top of that, especially if youre looking for something thats going to be bought out, you want something that has low net debt. Maybe one and a half times, two times top, because the catalyst for doing these deals is leveraging up. Weve got a cheap credit rate environment, as we said, so you want to be able to put cash to work and to be affect the buyouts. What i will say is be cautious though. Some of the ones that look good on paper may have a really high concentration of inside ownership, and unless those people are on board with the deal, that could be an impediment. Rick santelli, whats on your radar today . A lot of Economic Data coming up. Not much in the way of supply though from the government. No, but tomorrow is a big day. We have inflation, ppi. We have Housing Starts and permits. The minutes to the 29th and 30th fed meeting. If you look at intraday charts of 10s and 30s, pretty much taking a hammock kind ofs. Reporter until kind of s and you can clearly say we moved up a bit. Were hovering in the 10s and 30s with new high closes going back to april. Still not there yet. I know you said it was the best start since 1967. In 1967, bill, the dow went from about 780 to 900, and they did all that when Interest Rates started out the year around 4. 5, ending up very close to 6 . Boy, hey, carol, where do you think the stock market rally would go if we had those Interest Rates today . Oh, boy. That would be something, wouldnt it . Well, i mean, you would think we will eventually. The fed is going to have tighten the reins at some point, right . Jonathan . What do you think . I dont know if they are tightening reins. Not at any time soon. It will take a long time for that to happen. Go back two years ago and we were having theame conversation. Everybody was talking about Interest Rates . When would Interest Rates go higher . Fomc comment coming out this week. No way they will tip their hand as to any kind of outlook or date or scope as to when Interest Rates will change. To get back to what josh was saying earlier before about balance sheets, too. A lot of cash on hands in these companies, if we dont see m a activity well see more company buybacks. Let me ask my good friend john. Theres unease out there, a blistering run to start this year and every day my in box, a strategist comes up with some metric hes looking at to tell him or her when the finance is coming. Theres sentiment indicators. Is there something youre looking at, john, even a pullback or correction could be here . Is there a metric or gauge youre watching . No real metric or no real gauge. What ive got is the great ability to have is a Great Network of customers and clients that i talked to and there are small hedge funds, large hedge funds. Talk a lot about my clients and customers to get a gauge what have they are hearing, and what they are hearing and saying now is you cannot fooilt fight this at this point. Tread lightly. Still stay in it, but youve got to make sure youre not going to be left behind. What about being left behind when rates start moving higher . If the fed starts backpedaling out of qe3 the end of this year or sometime next year, when do you think the markets get a hint of this and start responding to it . I think it will take more time for that. Another two, three quarters of that until we might see a glimpse in terms of what the fed is thinking. Meanwhile, are you buying anything, carol, here, or are you just hanging on . I am. Im doing a lot of research into these potential lbo types of candidates, so i do own long auto zoned a bed, bath beyond as potential candidates that could be appealing for a strategist or financial buyer. I also want to mention something as we were talking about high yield. I would be very careful with high yields here, too, because as more debt keeps getting piled on, those rates that are now at 6 , i dont think the risk reward balance there makes a whole lot of sense either. All right. Got to be selective. Thank you, folks. Thank you. Talk to you all later. Thanks for joining us. Meantime, if you havent heard. Apple has become the latest hacking victim. Jon fortt has details on this still developing story. John jon. Whats so unusual about this story is how officials are saying how hackers got to our front gate. Apple is saying the same job vulnerability that hackers use to snoop around facebook employee computers, allowed hackers to infect some Apple Employee machines. Apple says it was able to quarantine the affected computers from the network and has no information that the hackers actually got any doubta out. Apple has released a patching saying they will keep them from use the same trick to snoop around your computer and the Company Points out its got the ability to shut down your mac any time it hears a new vulnerability has popped up. This isnt the end of the story. There will be continuing java vulnerabilities and whats happening here is these are very sophisticated digital burglars going after the highest end digital addresses on earth. Half an hour left in the trading session. The dow up about 50 points, holding above 14,000. Thats a number to keep an eye on. Coming up, a legacy in the music business. Discovered and recorded everyone from Whitney Houston to ae aerosmith and bruce springsteen. Clive davis is here and will ring the closing bell, but before that well talk to him about the soundtrack of his life. Looking forward to talk to him. Whats the worst investment call of 2013 so far . Less than two months into the year, but there are already some major misfires in this market. Tweet us your thoughts on that cnbcclosingbell. Sherry and bourbon drinkers alike are happy about this news today, especially bill. The consumer does have a say after all. I like that. [ male announcer ] when we built the cadillac ats from the ground up to be the worlds best sport sedan. People noticed. The allnew cadillac ats 2013 north american car of the year. For a limited time, take advantage of this exceptional offer on the allnew cadillac ats. Executor of efficiency. You can spot an amateur from a mile away. While going shoeless and metalfree in seconds. And you. Rent from national. Because only national lets you choose any car in the aisle. And go. You can even take a fullsize or above, and still pay the midsize price. Now this. Will work. [ male announcer ] just like you, business pro. Just like you. Go national. Go like a pro. Clamp. Glitter. [ male announcer ] staples makes it easier to get everything your business needs. Even custom banners. And now get 50 off banners and posters. Staples. That was easy. Okay. [ male announcer ] with citibanks popmoney, dan can easily send money by email right from his citibank account. Nice job ben. [ male announcer ] next up, the gutters. Citibank popmoney. Easier banking. Standard at citibank. To deposit checks from anywhere. [ wind howling ] easier than actually going to the bank. Mobile check deposit. Easier banking. Standard at citibank. Welcome back. We are here with clive davis. He has rocked and rallied with some of the biggest stars in the music business. You name a singer, and clive brought them in, springsteen, aerosmith, of course, Whitney Houston was big. Janis joplin, you go back that far to that time. And youve seen an enormous change in the music business over this time. Talk to us about that. I know its all in the book. Not only the technological changes, but basically the basic principles are the same. Youve got to discover the stars of tomorrow that could be headliners. That could have longlasting careers, and then youve got to get word out to the public so that, yes, youre using the web. Youre using more media. But the distribution has changed which it has. The technology has changed so much. How has that changed your business in terms of finding these stars and selling the public . Im telling you from where i sit the business is the same, that you get it from more sources, but what you look for and how you appraise it is the same. But the way a singer will be paid has changed greatly. I mean, they have had to fight for their pay through some of these pay services online, right . Actually going on tours in many ways is more lucrative than selling records. Thats only because of piracy and the number of album sales has diminished so except for adele and mumford sons, you find that the public, you know, unfortunately, were dealing with piracy, so album sales are being affected. But theres no question the royalty rates are the same. Its different now. It remains to be seen on the subscription services. Do you agree that the Music Industry is to blame to some degree for being behind the curve on technology . When it came to some of these Music Services that came online and were giving away music for free. We were only to blame for bringing they ingation. The truth is its illegal, and the music is not for free, and the foundation of our capitalistic wonderful system is that you pay the creators for their services, so piracy is wrong. Illegality is clearly wrong, and thats affected us. How due well it . How do you were all trying to fight piracy. Were now bringing all the resources. Were trying to get washington. Were trying to get laws passed and make the enforcement much more vigilant and, you know, what seems tough is not tough. Its getting paid for what the creators are doing. Especially when you have generations out there who think that music is free. That is terrible. Just terrible. This have to be reeducated in that regard. When i watched the grammys, love watching the grammys, and i saw you sitting there in the audience at the staples center. It seems like country and urban are so hot these days, are the hot trends. Is there anything in the middle these days . Adele is in the middle and mumford sons are in the middle and the lumineers are in the middle. So the last year theres definitely been a return, hopefully, to broaden not just your observation is right. Urban and country are very, very strong, but clearly the biggest selling artist of the last five or ten years is adele. And how do you know when something is going to be a commercial hit . Youve got the golden gut. The phones light up at radio and the Digital Sales often explode. But before that. I mean, how do you know to get behind someone, when you just know that this person may or may not have it . To me its at the signing level. Youve got to work at the youve got to prove it level, to work from you take nothing for granted. Whether it was whitney or alicia or any the atists that ive signed. Youve got to work and earn it, and then hopefully it explodes. The name of the book is the soundtrack of my life. Its been the buzz all day today. What was it like putting that together . I mean, going back and mining all of those great memories that you have in this industry . It, first of all, was hard to believe that all of that took place. I mean, from joplin and springsteen and then we go to santana and earth, wind fire and then arista with Barry Manilow and the grateful dead and whitney and aretha. Yes, its been wonderful in recounting the stories, the anecdotes. This is not a trade book. You can learn business, but you can learn if you love music, if you want to be any part of music, youll want to hear those anecdotes that the queen of soul is a real person and that whitney her passion for music was so great, and thats not been written about. I think i tell the full story that goes to American Idol, i was there for the first seven years and validated the recording contracts that led, you know, to Carrie Underwood and kelly clarkson. Make a great point actually. How important are things like that, the new singing shows, the reality shows of choosing these stars . How important are the grammys today to encourage even more sales beyond the first hit . I think first its the grammys. The grammys in the last two years have been the largest really almost in history. Last year because of whitneys tragic death, you know, it was 28 million. 39 million. This year still at 28 million. It was heads and shoulders, right up there right with the oscars as the best watched awards show. The reality, i believed in it from the beginning. Ive got two chapters in my book on it, and i believe, you know, that i would use the same principle that i found on every Barry Manilow album, every song that whitney used and ever recorded. I went to those writers, and i took very seriously the responsibility of finding material for the winners, and we had huge multiplatinum albums, and it made the prize for American Idol such a valuable one. Terrific. Congratulations, clive. Great to have you on the program. The book, the soundtrack of my life. Probably never anybody like clive davis or never will be out there, right . It touches me, as of today. Because ive never rung this bell before. Very exciting. Thank you, clive. Lets get to bob pisani watching these markets today. Hanging in there, bob. What fun talking to clive davis. He autographed my cope out today right down the street. Were talking about the positive feedback loop, folks. Thats because st