And it doesnt look like well see nasdaq 5,000 today. Before all of this point talk the nasdaq 5,000 was the level we were really watching. Of course, we dont know what can happen in the final minutes but we are off 22 points on the session which puts us what do you say, about 35 points away from that key level. Again, the record closing high is about 5049. Not going to get there at the end of the february. That gives us a target for march. The same day, possibly, bob that we hit that level previously in 2000. Meanwhile, the biotechs have been a leaving driver of the march to nasdaq 5k. Up nearly 300 over the last five years. Some see a bubble in the sector. We will have a debate. And word came just a short while oak aboutago about the death of Robert Benmosche. We have about an hour to go. Lets get more on what has been a huge month for stocks. Joining our Closing Bell Exchange we have. Beth ann from s p and mike mcqueen of high tower. Of course, Rick Santelli always joining us. Mike, let me start with you. We will have Stanley Fischer with us in a few minutes. But we already know steve has told us that mr. Fisher feels theres going to be a rate hike this year. Should the stock market worry about the fed tightening this year . No, its not. Unlike all the other times theyve done this theyre not fighting an imminent threat. The market is absorb this. Beth ann, respond to that but also this performance weve seen in the markets this month. Quietly its been a pretty historical one. Talk about what the nasdaq is doing, wow, yeah. It did take them 15 years, i believe, to reach this level. I dont just mean the nasdaq though. In point terms were talking about the dow, maybe even the s p having one of their best months in all time. One of the best februarys ever as well. I would say particularly looking at the Growth Stocks in the indices, theyre doing rather well. If you take into account Growth Stocks are forward looking, theyre kind of betting on a Strong Economy which we and the fed seem to agree on. The important thing is weve seen some weakness in the gap Fourth Quarter gdp numbers. Do we have any reason to be concerned . I dont think so, bob. I think a lot of it is strong dollar stuff. Beth ann and i were talking about that during the break. I think the economy will continue to prove stocks arent expensive here. The last time we were here with the nasdaq at 5,000, the pe multiples were higher. The january volatility shook out a lot of retail investors. Gave that you say wall of worry. Were at lows for the year on the vix. Absolutely. D. R. Barton do you think investors are betting right, or the market that theyre betting on growth picking up . Well i think that is the right place to go and today we saw the chicago pmi number that came disappointed monstrously and the market just shook that off and sprung back up to session highs. You willed back a little bit at the end of the day as weve already said about crude, but i think all of these things and wrapped in with your point about yellen looking to raise rates this year weve got to remember that the last three times weve gone from easing to tightening that that first rate hike has given us a quick pullback but then we had four five six months of up market following that. So thats not really a worry for the markets either. And, rick going to your point there, the markets did shrug off a very disappointing regional number. Weve had several disappointing regional numbers. Why do you think the market seems to be ignoring this . I have been a little concerned about some of the weaker economic numbers and the earnings coming down. What do you think is going on . Why is the market ignoring that . I think the market is trying to account for the longshoremans strike on the west coast and i think even the National Number will probably show those effects in the week upon us thats coming. With regard to gdp today, i thought that was a big deal. I personally, you know, i look at minus 2. 1 4. 6 5 and now 2. 2 , so the average of 2014 is 2. 425. Now, i know one gentleman there said, i wouldnt worry about any of that its the stronger dollar. Well, i would worry about that. Because it isnt the stronger dollar in my opinion. Its the weaker other currencies, and i think as they embark on qe in europe that its something thats going to be a whole lot more worrisome. I dont see japan taking their foot off the gas. I think its going to be worrisome from that score. And when i look at whats going on with the yawnuan, thats at a 28month low. I think the issues of comparing things back into periods of easing and tightening cycles in the past didnt include Central Banks gone wild, big Balance Sheets or an extra 6 trillion of debt around the globe. I think all these issues will continue to give the markets a lot of questionable outcomes as normalization may be some day in my life actually beginnings to occur. Rick you got to look at the long haul. If you look over the last 40 years, the dollar bull market has been twice as good for the stock market as the dollar bear market. So i dont think its necessarily something that we got to worry about, that we got a strong dollar. We came out of a period i dont think the last 40 years youve had countries with the need to try to play global currency wars like you do today outside of the 30s. Well i think weve had a few bouts of that in recent times. Beth ann . Well i think if were talking about the strong dollar certainly thats going to weigh on exports, and we did see that already in the gdp numbers. However, the strong dollar is also kind of a vote for strong u. S. Economy as well and if you look at the gdp report if you look at that strength the underlying strength in domestic spending both of consumers and investors, thats a vote for the u. S. Moving along. Yesterday on the show Alan Greenspan, i asked him is the economy strong or not strong and he said not strong. And here is why. We havent been investing a lot, our productivity isnt great, and the economy over time will be a smaller economy. Do you share the longterm concerns . Certainly the longterm issues are there. We have basically a labor Market Participation rate thats very low. However, if youre looking at the certainly businesses are hiring people. We saw 2014 was 250,000 job gains per month. That was pretty nice. I think it was the strongest in 15 years. January wasnt too bad as well. We are expecting wages to pick up already with a side of basically a quit rate that chairwoman yellen mentioned and we have been talking about on this show shows that basically Bargaining Power going into the workers possibilities. Are we overweighting the negative factors . Are there more reasons we should be looking at the positive news and can you highlight that for us if there is . I think those factors that are the tailwinds are really of a magnitude greater than a lot of the negatives. We know the man on the street is happy hes less likely to lose his job. He knows Energy Prices are lower and low inflation are going to be around for a while. Those make Consumer Discretionary stocks attractive. We saw cap ex was advised upward. Just to go through some of the industries in particular this month that have done quite well, were talking about Construction Materials up 23 , personal products, communications, Auto Components automobiles. Media was having a pretty good month. Do you stick with whats working or do you look for value elsewhere . Were looking for value. We think its going to take a while for the consumer to internally the low Energy Prices are around. We any they start paying off debt and then they start to buy dining out and buy alcohol, those are the first two things they do and then start to internalize it into spending habits. We think consumer durable goods will start to take off in the second half. We want to start positioning for that now. We think thats the story for the rest of the year in the consumer space. D. R. And let me ask you about oil. We have seem to have stabilized in this band between roughly 45, roughly 55. Were right in the middle there. When the markets are stable when oil is stable, the markets are generally more stable. What do you see happening in the next couple months . Well i think a lot has been made about the lower rig count. Weve heard that a couple times, the Baker Hughes Rig count has been going down down down. Down 39 since the peaks in october, but the thing people are pushing under the rug is the fact that supply production here in the u. S. Continues to go up. Week over week we have only had one or two weeks out of the past five months that have gone down. We had another up week this week. So i think thats going to come together to Keep Oil Prices depressed. We also have a very technically strong level around 55 where we have overhead resistance on the chart. It will Keep Oil Prices depressed for the next few months. And well see if beyond that. Well leave it there for now. 50 minutes to go into the session. Very much appreciate it. Bill bill i called you bill. Thats so sweet. Bob, i mean. Thank you. Bob pi sansanipisani. Dow the s p the sapp is off 5. And coming up Federal Reserve vice chairman Stanley Fischer in a cnbc exclusive. Plus, whats worrying him the most about this economy. Also ahead, the biotech he can change traded fund clocking some impressive gains but the pros will debate if the ibb is overheading or if its best times are still to come. Stay tuned. If youre running a business legalzoom has your back. Over the last 10 years weve helped one million Business Owners get started. Visit legalzoom today for the legal help you need to start and run your business. Legalzoom. Legal help is here. Welcome back. Lets take a quick data check. The s p has been moving in a narrow trading range. Now its about an eightpoint trading range, not far from the lows for the day. Fairly quiet week. Not a lot of big moves but were up about 5 on the s p. Nasdaq we were trying to get to 5,000. We got to 4,988 as i recall yesterday. Well hit it eventually but it doesnt look like today and the dow just off the lows for the day. Weve had a big month for stocks. Which industries have helped drive its run to the 5,000 neighborhood . Dominic chu has been combing through the data for us. Kelly, bob, we already know nasdaq has been driven a lot by apple and some of the other big Cap Companies but we wanted to highlight some of the individual Industry Groups that have been a focal point for many traders and investors throughout the course of this past year. So first of all how about the chip stocks . The semiconductors. Very much a mixed picture here. You got Texas Instruments up 10 so far in 2015. Now, micron though and intel have been some of the biggest drags on the overall nasdaq index as well. You can see there micron and intel both down pretty big just yeartodate. Overall the smh has gained 5. 5 . As for the social media stocks, they fared mixed as well here. On the nasdaq you got the biggest one, facebook. Its up just 1 yeartodate so it has contributed although not much. A real standout has been twitter. Its not even listed on the nasdaq, its up 35 . Just wanted to point that out. It is listed on the new york stock exchange. But then theres the biotech stocks. Stocks like cellgen, gilead. Theyre pretty big in terms of market cap. The ibb continues its upside momentum up 11 yeartodate. Those biotech stocks continue that strong momentum kelly. Back over to you. Yes, they do dom. Thats exactly where we want to pick up. Thank you. Biotech etfs leading the charge. Ticker ibb, lots of chatter on the street because its been up 300 in the last five years. Those biotech names were the top nasdaq performers in 2000. Remember that . But is it the right bet today as we approach 5,000 . Joining us with the bullish case, eric schmidt and jeff porgis is taking the bearish case. Eric, its up to you to make a bullish case. 300 in 5 years, 50 in the last year. What makes you confident well continue to move up in the biotech space . Its real simple. This is a great business. If you have an approved drug this is a legal monopoly, perhaps one of the last legal monopolies on the face of the planet. You have got a waiting and ready population thats growing as the baby boomers get older. Drug pricing has been under assault but is still xraerdly good. Obamacare, huge tailwind expanding insurance to a much broader swath of americans. Theres a reason the ibb has outperformed for five years, its a great business it will continue to be a great business. Jeff do you disagree about the fundamentals or are you concerned about the valuation . Look we definitely like the biotech industry and there are many stocks werp recommending. Were just taking a more selective approach. We think the way to play is play the best rowers in the highest Quality Companies instead of the index. The index is waited to ma weighted to mature Large Company companies and they will struggle to grow. Smaller companies that have the potential to still double or triple things like lexion and regeneron are a better way to participate. We think its time to move toward the faster growing names with more upside rather than just participating through the ibb . Youre not really bearish on biotech. Youre bullish on select aspects, in particular companies, but you dont really like the index. The problem with the ibb is its a market cap weighted index as you noted but you can play this a number of different ways. This has 50 companies in it. I know our viewers are interested in etfs so thats an issue. Im just wondering what your response is. Are you uniformly opposed to using etfs . Not particularly, but we would point out that this is a highly uncorrelated industry where the best stocks do vastly better pan the underperformers unlick commodities driven industries or other sectors of the market where everyone tends to rise with a rising tide. You can have biotech down 85 and others going up by 100 or 200 . We think theres a lot of value in picking the highest quality names and sticking with them. You tend to as you pointed out in the intro, hit some speed bumps if youre just investing in the index. But moving away from the cap weighted index would be a good strategy. There are some concerns reflected for example in the heard on the street column in the journal and the ways those are contributed to overvaluation. Are you concerned that thats inflating valuations across the board and ultimately there would be some sort of correction . Theres always a little froth in biotech and things can get overheated from month to month here and there, but i do want to address geoffs point about the large cap names. Thats still a group were very much behind. And i think if you go back and look at the reason for that whats very apparent to me is folks who do the same job geoff and i do have dramatically underestimated the earnings power of these larger companies. Back 12 months ago, we thought amgen, cell gene might certain only its that Earnings Growth thats driven the entire sector. From there i think you will see it trickle down. As large caps go those mid small caps go and were very optimistic for all segments of this geoff, i need a quick answer here. Weve got to go but whats the difference between biotech now and 1998 . We had a big drop then 2001. Is it a different industry now . Theres a lot more substance to the industry. We have a group of Profitable Companies with cash flow support for the valuations so we dont have the same downside that we had in 2002, 2001. Thanks very much. Thank you, both. Eric schmidt and geoff porges. We have 40 minutes to go. Dow just off the lows but a very narrow trading range. S p 500 about a 6, 7 point trading range. And again just off the lows there. I think we got to get that dow up if we want some of the biggest headlines on the month. If we want the dow to have the best month ever in point gain terms. It would have to lose more than about 8 points today and were off about 67. So not clear well get there but a strong february nonetheless in whats traditionally a weaker month. Up next Federal Reserve vice chair Stanley Fischer is sitting down exclusively with Steve Liesman. Find out how primed the fed is to raise Interest Rates plus the biggest risk factors facing the u. S. Economy. Were back in two. Introducing aleve pm. The pm pain reliever. That dares to work all the way until. [birds chirping] the am. New aleve pm. Its the first to combine a safe sleep aid plus the 12 hour strength of aleve. For pain relief that can last all the way until morning. New aleve pm, for a better am. 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