Mind about where stocks are going for the long term, and thats higher. A lot higher as a matter of fact. Well hear more from Warren Buffett coming up here. General motors doing more damage control today after a report shows there was a simple fix to the ignition problem that costs as little as 1 a car. The company made a socalled business decision not to spend that money. Today we investigate how a decision like that ever gets made in a company like gm. The answer is illuminating and alarming. It continues to be the story gripping the entire world. More fast moving developments in the malaysia aramis tri including evidence thats prompting investigators to become more convinced this was not an accident and the flight may have been deliberately diverted. Or something worse maybe. Were going to try and have the very latest for you coming up a little later. Certainly not helping to soothe markets right now. The dow popping up a little bit since we just mentioned it was off 50. Its now off only about 38. 16,070 is the level. The nasdaq up 12 points today and the s p 500 off 4, 1842 is the level there. The fact is sliced so quickly through 1850 where there had been some sense of support is certainly what traders are watching. Something one of our next guests is watching in our the closing bell exchange. Diane from clear alternatives, kenny polcari. Bill smith, jason pride and our own rick santelli. And, kenny, does anybody want to be long this market going in . The big referendum on crimea possibly joining russia is on sunday, and washington says they will stand ready, whatever that means, should this referendum pass. What does that mean for the stock market . Here is what i think. I think thats whats baked into the stock market. I think people expect crimea is going to go. I think they expect the u. S. And eu will stand up and impose sanctions. As long as russia doesnt move into ukraine, i actually think that the market is expecting that. You might see the market attempt to rally on monday as a result. Jason, what do you think and how does it play into the decisions people are making . Sure. This year weve been saying that investors need to be constructively positioned. That means hague a littving a l of overweight to equities. Economics are relatively decent. You might be pushing higher generally. What we havent been recommending is weve been telling investors be careful not to get too far over your skis. Dont be in a position where youre so overweight equities that when these things like ukraine come around or like the emerging market complex having some issues or china having some issues or even europe with their asset quality or later this year probably having some issues, theres going to be risk. Some investors will bail out of the market. Thats going to be providing opportunities for investors to buy and you need to be in a position where you will be comfortable buying in that environment and that means being only modestly overweight equities not all the way over your skis so you are freaking out if the markets take a little bit of a dive. Lets talk about the Economic Data that has suggested an economic slowdown in china, and i sense a possible conflict among a couple of our guests here. Diane, you call this more important than ukraine. Bill smith, you say china is merely noise. Have at it. Diane, you first. Absolutely. I think one of the things thats really key, of course, the ukraine is an issue, and we all are concerned about the people of the ukraine. But one of the things thats key is we have this dramatic slow go down happening in china. Its a longterm phenomena. And the other thing thats really important, Many Chinese Companies use copper as their collateral. Weve had these dramatic prices with copper and we see a very strong dollar. That means individual companies throughout china could also be in trouble when their banks call them and ask them to recollateralize these loans. I think china can pose a much larger problem than the market is already giving it credit for. Bill, why do you think this is noise . China is not a consumption country, so i dont think it really affects america or the rest of the world that much. I think the events in the ukraine, i think thats why the markets sold off going into today and into monday, but i think as long as we get out of the ukraine without any conflict, i think the markets rally next week. Juneau, bill, theres a line out of china picked up by the news wire. Government source saying dont panic if First Quarter gdp target is below. What opportunities does that create . As clear a message as they can come out of china. If anybody believes anything china says, i guess you can put something into that, but i dont. So i really think china is not material here. Rick santelli, let me move on here because, again, this is another day, rick, where equity traders are watching the bond market very carefully and the message from the tenyear treasury. What is it telling you today . Well, the fact that once again we traded down to a yield level close to 2. 60 , did not go through it. The reason its important, the february 3rd low closing yield for the tens was 2. 57 . Thats hugely important. I couldnt tell today, bill, if we were following stocks or they were following us. Yesterday i thought it was more clear that we were leading the way on the treasury side. That makes me a little nervous, to see its a tough call, to see were not at the low yields even though theres some time left leads me to believe that whats going on in crcrimea, what may happen on sunday, obviously its all important. Countries have that nuclear weapons, fat tails, anything could happen. But most likely as i look at the eurocurrency, still very close to 139, i dont see that this thing is going to move in ugly ways. Natural gas, whether its the money that putin needs, look at what his stock market and his currency have done or that europe and merkel need, i think thats going to take care of things outside of who is bossing the country around. As for china, our guest is right, theyre not a consumption economy, but, gee, what happens when you have all those people that youre trying to feed, you have moved from rural areas and urban areas, you tried to improve the middle class, they will knock the price of exports down. That will affect europe. All that, of course, affects the u. S. And not the least of which to mention is what happens to the German Economy already dealing with a highpriced currency if they have to compete on an export level. Thats where it starts to unravel. Jason, if investors wanted a port in the storm, its interesting gold and silver have behaved as they have. Theyre up 13 , 8 respectively but they havent been that correlated to whats happening with stocks. Are you telling people to start looking at these Precious Metals again . We are not actually. Theyve come down a good degree, but when it turns to Precious Metals, they provide insurance, they provide some sort of protection or noncorrelation or diversification versus other things in the portfolio. They occupy a little bit of a spot on that basis but at some Point Insurance is too expensive. I think those valuations even on gold at these points, even down from the 1,800 announced level is still too expensive of insurance to be buying in portfolios. Its not the best way do it. If youre going to get insurance, do it in other ways. You can do it with municipal securities which are a better run for taxable investors. Theres some Institutional Investors that are even buying that as an offset to the risk in their equity port portfolios. There are cheaper options you can provide insurance to your portfolio with. Kenny, kelly mentioned the support levels on the s p that weve blown through this week. Walk us through this last hour and what youre going to watch here, especially since we are below the 1850 level right now. So were testing 1840 and i think 1830 is really the number on the s p. Thats the 50day moving average. Thats where its going to want to test to see if theres really support. I wouldnt be surprised if we see it in the last hour, the market get weaker as we move into the closing bell just because its the weekend thats coming and its going to create that kind of nervousness. That being said, i think its going to find support at 1830. On the other hand, just another note on the gold issue, keep your eyes on that chart. Youre about to have a golden cross where the 50 day crosses up to the 200 day. As a technical bullish buy signal or gold and gold probably has a little more on the upside. The august highs of 1415, 1418. Diane, what do you think about the Precious Metals . People prekly go to Precious Metals as a hedge but one of the things thats important to think about is after this weekend when we start trading on monday again, that also ends up being expiration week. I think with the higher volatility, when people are looking for incremental yield, higher volatility means that selling options will be a much better way to generate that marginal yield relative than just going out and buying commodities. I think its going to take us another two weeks before we really get a clean look at this market. So a lot of open interest in the market right now in the Options Market that needs to work its way through next week. Bill smith, what are you doing to navigate our market . I think you stay with companies have that event driven situations going on, spinoffs, share buybacks, mergers, acquisitions. Theres a catalyst that are going to create value for you. How many decimal points of pi can you name . How many decimal points of what . Pi. Its pi day. I think i only can go to 3. 14. I dont know the rest. If youd asked me about 30 years ago, maybe. Listen, one more point we have to bring up, yesterday when we saw the Federal Reserve information come out and their Balance Sheet is now 4. 18 trillion, there was also a category called Foreign Central Bank holdings. Yes. Im so glad you mentioned this. 4 billion and speculation is certainly that maybe something it was one of the biggest moves weve seen with Foreign Central Banks dumping u. S. Treasuries and yet the yield was rallying. This was three times the size because i dont think it was a sell. And you brought up the salient feature, everybody is debating this via email. It probably wasnt sold. It was probably just transferred off the fed Balance Sheet. Ahha. Thank you. Happy pi day. Happy st. Paddys day almost. Beware the ides of march. Apparently were getting snow again come monday. Could be a lot, too. Dont blame the messenger. 30 minut 50 minutes left in the trading session. The dow trying to avoid five consecutive down days but down 41 points. Russias stock market hitting a 4 1 2year low ahead of the referendum to secede from ukraine. Will those kind of ugly losses only be confined to russia . Later, we get a report on that malaysian airliner mystery. Suspicions are growing foul play may have been involved. If you could only own one of these two stocks, which one would it be . Visa or mastercard . Well try to get the answer from dom chu and seema mody. Stay with us. Stay with us. No two people have the same financial goals. Pnc investments works with you to understand yours and helps plan for your retirement. Talk to a pnc investments Financial Advisor today. Just take a closer look. It works how you want to work. With a Fidelity Investment professional. Or managing your investments on your own. Helping you find new ways to plan for retirement. And save on taxes where you can. So you can invest in the life that you want today. Tap into the full power of your fidelity greenline. Call or come in today for a free oneonone review. announcer scottrade knows our and invest their own way. With scottrades smart text, i can quickly understand my charts, and spend more time trading. Their quick trade bar lets my account follow me online so i can react in realtime. Plus, my local scottrade office is there to help. Because they know i dont trade like everybody. I trade like me. Im with scottrade. announcer ranked highest in Investor Satisfaction with selfdirected services by j. D. Power and associates. The russian stock market has been hitting a 4 1 2year low ahead of this weekends terroripivotal referendum. Hi, kelly. Well, this referendum is now only two days away. A meeting in london today between secretary of state john kerry and his russian counterpart didnt make any progress. Lavrov came out of that meeting saying there was no shared vision, which seems a bit of an understatement. It does now seem that russia is going to press ahead quickly with the formal annexation of this peninsula soon after the referendum results announced on monday or tuesday a referendum that will almost certainly endorse them joining russia. At the same time we can expect to see european and u. S. Sanctions click in as early as next week. So things now really coming to a head. The defense ministutistry in mo saying there are 8,500 Russian Troops on exercise close to the east ukraine border. Now, president putin has said he has no intention of invading east ukraine, but, of course, he did say he had no intention either of annexing crimea a short while ago. Now, here the situation is very tense. We have seen rival protests. Ukrainian activists have complained of intimidation. There have been disappearances. Two days to go, very tense. Back to you guys. Nbcs ian williams there. Ian, thanks very much. Thank you. So whats next for the markets amid this geopolitical and Economic Uncertainty . Lets bring in terry miller, former ambassador to the United Nations economic and social council. Ambassador, its great to have you with us. What do you expect will happen over the weekend . Well, i expect this referendum to go ahead and i expect the people will vote in favor of some sort of greater relationship with russia. The question then is what do we do about it . And theres been a lot of tough talk, but we have to wait and see what actions are actually taken. Well, the talk is about economic sanctions. A, should they, b, would they work . Well, i think almost certainly they should be. We in the west need to make some sort of response, but the initial sanctions were talking about are very modest. Theyre on individuals, things like travel restrictions and asset freezes on individuals. That, of course, can expand in the future to things like cutting off all relationships between russian banks and western banks. That would have a severe impact on russia. Mr. Ambassador yes. Im sorry, go ahead. Well, already in russia you see the stock market is in free fall, the ruble is in free fall, Interest Rates are up, capital is fleeing out of the country. The real question has to be does Vladimir Putin care about any of this . I think in the short run the answer is probably not. I was just going to ask what you think his end game is here . What is the strategy . What is Vladimir Putin thinking . I dont think he wants to push this too much farther. Hes made a huge gain in the short run in this move into crimea. At the same time the situation overall in ukraine is not necessarily favorable for him. Certainly whats going on in the western part of ukraine is that people there are being driven ever more closely towards europe and the European Union. So i think at some point putin is going to have to stop and sit back and take stock of where he is before he makes any further moves. We all know how dependent europe is on the russian natural gas. I mean, he uses that as a sort of a weapon economically against europe, but at the same time during this crisis we realize the possibility of exporting u. S. Natural gas, not in the near term, but eventually. I mean, does this alter a fundamental relationship do you think down the road between europe and russia if, in fact, the u. S. Can make up the difference for what they will not be getting in terms of natural gas from russia . And would that matter to Vladimir Putin . I think a crisis like this certainly ought to make russia european leaders realize the vulnerability that they have created because of their dependency on russian natural gas. At the same time Vladimir Putin is just as dependent on the europeans for the revenue that comes in from those sales of russian natural gas. So theres quite a bit of interdependence there, but you raise the question of u. S. Exports, and its absolutely criminal that we have these restrictions by our federal government on the export of our own natural gas. Thats a longterm solution, but its certainly one we ought to be undertaking. I wonder if we ought to be thinking about this, just strategically from russias point of view, wanting to secure access to ports on the black sea, potentially on the baltic sea, given the arctic sea is the only other real option. If thats the case sort of viewing ukraine as a Strategic Asset and understanding why he is stone ya might be so concerned and if all of this is true and russia is looking to assert its influence in the key regions and more broadly, what does nato do . Well, thats the key question. Nobody wants a military confrontation with russia, and im certain that russia doesnt want a military confrontation with the west. But at the same time weve been offering weve been in a posture of strategic weakness for the last five years or so, and weve withdrawn, we withdrew our Missile Defense forces from poland and chezechoslovakia jus in a sort of unilateral concession to russia, and we didnt respond strongly to russias move into georgia. I think from Vladimir Putins point of view, he sees a west, and particularly a United States thats in retreat, not massive retreat, but in a retreat at the margins, and hes trying to move in and take advantage of that. Okay. This weekend will be key in how all of that plays out. Mr. Ambassador, thank you so much for your time. My pleasure. About 40 minutes to go to the close. The dow is off 31 points. The s p 500 off 4, 1842 is the level ther