Bluster out of washington. Yep, thats what investors should expect short term. Maybe until january 1st. Should they also expect a rally any time soon . According to ryan dieterich, rally could most definitely be headed our way. He joins us now to explain along with Peter Anderson from Congress Asset management company. Bill mcvail from turner Investment Partners and our very own rick santelli. Peter, i have to begin with you. With a name like Congress Asset management, is Congress Going to come through for your assets . Well, i wish i had an inside scoop on that, but unfortunately, were also left to speculate at this point. But i will say this. Whats incredible about this market is the way the market moved up today, its an instant Polling Network that the government can use, actually, to kind of float trial balloons to us and get a sense of what we think of their proposed actions. Peter, that is so charming. You assume this government cares what you think. Well, i like to think that. I do think that they are paying attention to the markets, even though they say they dont. It is a great Feedback Mechanism for them. I think that by january 1st well have so much more clarity that even the thought of having that kind of clarity will definitely push the markets in a positive direction. Rick santelli, does this white house care about what the markets think, do you think . No, i dont think so. If the market had 800 or 900point moves, maybe theyd care more. Just to give you an example, this isnt really related, but the volcker rule was supposed to be done by the end of this year. Theyre going to delay it now until the end of the next quarter. In two weeks, were going to celebrate the second anniversary of the passing of dodd frank. They cant even get one aspect of a bill passed two years ago and we think were going to delve into any type of serious reform on the tax or entitlement side or even a framework by christmas. Oh, yeah. I guess im the tooth fairy. Bill, so what do you do here with no fiscal cliff deal yet, with whispers of possibly the fed stimulating the economy even further, and with Economic Data pouring in almost daily that suggests were still sputtering along . Well, i tend to think 2013s going to be a great year. Im not just looking at housing and employment. Im looking at the architectural building index. Theres stuff in the draw room. Theyre ready to bid out this winter and break ground in the spring. The republicans know that. The democrats know that. I would agree with rick. Right now its hard to imagine they can come up with something. We know they can. We know the democrats can say, okay, well give you something on means testing entitlements and well move the Social Security age up. Republicans will say, well get rid of second mortgage deductions. They can do it. I dont think they really want to do it yet. So we just sit here sort of up 100, down 100. You know, just stand on the sidelines and wait until they figure it out. Ryan, how are you allocating capital as we watch these gyrations on a daily basis because of comments out of capitol hill . The bottom line, were still bullish. We think we can have a good year and rally. There are two reasons. Overall sentiment. We follow options closely. We recently had huge put on individual equities. Also, look at the individual sentiment polls. The aai, tenweek moving average is the highest since last october. A lot of fear. Look at seasonality. We all know december is strong, about 2 . Eight of the last nine years, the s p from black friday to the end of the year is higher every single time, eight out of nine, and the average is up, you know, around 5 . Last year we were up about 8. 5 from that time frame. You know, mark twain says history doesnt repeat. Got it. Got it. Okay. Rick, let me ask you before we go, if you get any sort of semblance of a framework that something is going to happen between now and the end of the year, say by christmas, as the president said he wanted to have happen today, what happens to the Interest Rates . Oh, theres no doubt in my mind that any kind of a solution is going to give us a strong rally in stocks. It depresses me a bit, actually, scott. I dont even think it needs to be a good deal. Just any deal, and then that leaves us with the notion of how to tackle Economic Growth beyond the fiscal cliff. Thats where it really starts to get interesting. I agree. I dweguess the market would ral so much before it even got to the details. Thats the irony. It really would. Its all about sentiment. Its about two sides acting like adults saying, lets do this together. Its what the people want. Im in. Lets leave it there, guys. All right, gentlemen. Thank you so much for weighing in. All right. Lets get a quick round up of todays winners and losers now. Kayla has been busy over the last hour. She joins us to wrap up the action. Scott, im wearing my sneakers today, running between desks. You saw the markets as they ended on the highs of the day after that positive wall stre j. Of course, following the bullish comments from president obama. Not all stocks ended the day in the green. Lets look at the laggards on the s p. You have a lot of names that arent really a surprise to be there. Avon, r. R. Donnelly. Those are your top five losers on the s p. It you look at the flip side, you have a lot of consumer names. The costcos, jcpenneys and coaches as well. Finally, i want to take a look at the banking index. That ended on the highs of the day along with the overall market. We should watch for paul volcker tomorrow on some news potentially about how that regulation is actually going to shape up today. Thank you, kayla. All right. Groupon a big winner today, up 11 . The report says the board is looking to replace the ceo, andrew mason. Today, mason spoke out about that report. It was interesting to say the least. Julia boorstin has the details. Thats right. Interesting to say the least. Ahead of a Board Meeting tomorrow, groupon ceo andrew mason took the stage at the Business Insider ignition conference to give a frank assessment of his job performance. Heres what he had to say. Heres a news flash. Our stock is down about 80 since we ipoed a year ago. It would be weird if the board wasnt discussing whether im the right guy to do the job. Were experiencing that volatility now as we predicted when we did the ipo a year ago. If i ever thought that i wasnt the right guy for the job, id be the first person to fire myself. And mason would have to fire himself, as long as he maintains the support of follow board members, the three of them together control 55 of groupons voting shares. His comments did help lift the stock 7. 5 today after a start to move higher on the reports that the board is talking about ousting him, which first came out yesterday after the bell. Mason did acknowledge groupons challenges like a slowdown in europe. He defended how well groupon works for small businesses, saying the press focuses too much on the handful of crashes rather than groupons many regular smooth landings. Michelle. All right. Thank you very much, julia. Want to tell you about disney, right . Big hike in the dividend, by 15 cents to 75 cents, up 25 . You have so Many Companies racing to pay special dividends or raise their dividends before the end of the year because the potential change in tax policy due to the fiscal cliff. And this one is payable on december 28th. What isnt clear to me is was it already payable on december 28th and they moved up the, or was it always paid on that date . It is a big move. Take a look at shares of walt disney right now. 75 cents per share, higher by 15 cents, up from 60 cents per share. Comes on the same day we heard of a Dividend Increase from costco. Yep. Youve had walmart, Las Vegas Sands in the last 24 to 48 hours. So this tide of special Dividend Payments comes as the fiscal cliff woes. Theyre doing something with the money. John fortt has more breaking news on that ncr speculation we were talking about earlier that halted that stock and another. What do we know now . No longer speculation, scott. This company is doing mna with its cash and taking on some debt. Ncr looking to buy retalix, its an israeli company, for a total value of around 600 million, about 30 per share. Included in that is just over 130 million that retalix has on the books. Ncr says its looking to do this with a combination of cash and debt. Thats interesting because ncrs market cap is 1 billion. Theyre looking to add a little debt, use a little cash, and get this company, which has been doing quite well in software, for a point of sale, retail, other areas. It had been acquiring, expanding. Ncr hoping to pick this up and fuel its growth into next year. All right, john. Thank you so much. Stick around. Were going to do more on todays big comeback market after the break. And as the clock ticks on the fiscal cliff, president obama is meeting behind those closed doors at the white house with a whos who list of ceos. A lot. Our cameras are right outside the white house. Well certainly keep you posted on the very latest developments there. Up next, its not just the mitt romneys of the world who will take a hit for higher tax rates on dividends next year. Wait. You hear how widespread the pain will be felt among ordinary americans. Later, save my 401 k . Americans pour millions into these nest eggs because of tax benefits. Someone here says those breaks could be chopped to cut the deficit. Are those worries overblown . A heated debated is coming up. Music is a universal language. But when i was in an accident. I was worried the Health Care System spoke a language all its own with unitedhealthcare, i got help that fit my life. Information on my phone. Connection to doctors who get where im from. And tools to estimate what my care may cost. So i never missed a beat. Were more than 78,000 people looking out for more than 70 million americans. Thats health in numbers. Unitedhealthcare. Lets get to Mary Thompson who has more on some of market action. More actually on all these Companies Paying out these dividends, michelle. Consider this. Last year only 44 members of the russell 3 o 3 000 had paid out a special dividend. Why the rush . Investors want to push out cash before the tax rates jump. Take a look at these Company Names behind us. Theyre the one december clalar special dividends. On december 18th, a retail warehouse costcos payout, one of the ten largest out so far this quarter. In total, those ten firms distributing 9. 4 billion to investors before the start of the new year. Now, in addition to special onetime payouts, some firms are accelerating regular dividends so shareholders wont be hit with a higher tax bill next year. Among those firms, walmart, ethan allen. In a note, citi says its expecting more firms to pay a special dividend before year end. Among the possible they named, best buy and walgreens. All right, mary. Thanks so much. Speaking of dividends, if these tacks go up because of any possible tax changes next year, Warren Buffett may not be the only one getting hurt. Cnbc. Coms Senior Writer jeff cox says ordinary americans would be impacted as well. Jeff, whats at stake here . How can higher dividend rates hurd ordinary investors . How about if you own a blue chip stock . How about if you have a 401 k . In any of these cases, you could face direct or indirect hits from potential, as mary just pointed out, dividend tax rates. As i point out here, dividends arent just for rich people. Its not just mitt romney and Warren Buffett. The damage is spread around. The Downside Risk to this is very steep, hearing a lot of talk about folks wanting to do some other things. Diversification getting out of these dividend paying stocks and into things like Corporate Bonds and munis. Forget about the fiscal cliff for now. The income cliff, if youre an investor whos living off of dividend income, senior citizen, whatever, you are a tremendous risk here. David, all you have to look at it the news we just brought you some 15 minutes ago. That disney is now raising the dividend payable december 28th. Why . Because its a few days before the fiscal cliff. Today, costco, walmart, Las Vegas Sands, dil lards. The list goes on and on. Its been a tidal wave. Its important to everybody. Thats why theyre doing it. Let me just correct a couple things jeff said. First of all, what president obama is proposing is to just raise those dividend taxes on people making over it 200,000 or 250,000. The ordinary retiree is not going to be hit by this at all. Thats one mistake. Second, you have to keep in mind the last time we saw dividend tax rates go up in the tax reform after june, the stock market did nine. It did quite well during both those periods. One other thing to note is that if you have a 40 1 k your dividends are not being taxed. Youd be exempt from this as well. Jeff, weigh in. As far as a 401 k goes, youre right in the sense youre not going to get a direct hit. Im talking about an indirect hit. Same thing if youre in an i. R. A. If you start to see an exodus from these dividend paying stocks and this goes back to the point before about why are they doing these dividend raises, its because theyre concerned about losing investors who are in these stocks specifically for the dividend. David, isnt that the point of the whole discussion . If this wasnt a serious issue and it didnt affect such a wide swath of people, why would these companies be racing to beat the deadline by issuing special dividends . Its nice for shareholders. I think all those early payouts are a massive gift to very wealthy shareholders. Thats the popular thing to do. Why not do it if they can legal do it . I reject that premise completely. Hold on. These are corporate profits. When you own a share in a company, youre an owner of the company. The company pays taxes on their profits. Then they distribute them. So when you tax a dividend, youre double taxing it. Its already been taxed once. Right. So by that logic, lets get rid of all taxes on dividends so wealthy heirs basically pay no taxes. Pension funds would be better off. Everybody would be better off. Look, one of the problems with these, you got to keep in mind, dividend tax rates right now are at a historically low level. They were much higher in the 1990s during that bull market. They were higher in the 1980s. Not relevant to my point i was making. Youre talking about completely different Economic Conditions as well. Youre talking about a country thats scraping the bottom, coming from a recession, where any level of contraction is going to be damaging. Jeff, we have to cut you off. Bob is waiting. You know how he gets. Guys, good discussion. Thank you. All right. We started 100 points down. We finished 100 points up. Bob, its a fiscal cliff soap opeon on the opera on the street. We dropped about 10 00. We had disappointing october new home sales. That was one little disappointing piece of data. We rallied about 100 points after 10 00 p. M. John boehner, speaker of the house, said hes optimistic a deal could be done. We rallied another 70 or 80 points at noon as president obama said he was trying to make a deal on the fiscal cliff by christmas. Thats what the market wants to hear, they want a date. Then we had a little bit of move towards the close as we heard qe4 may be coming at the next fed meeting. That would be no surprise. Weve been talking about that for a while. Take a look at housing stocks. They did not participate in the rally. Unusually down beat news here from the october new home sales. September revised to the downside as well. I think the problem here is the inventory of new homes is very limited right now in a lot of parts of the country. That limited the up side. Retail stocks had a good day. Express had positive comments as well as american eagle. Thank you, bob. Labor making its voice heard on the fiscal cliff. Were going to speak with the head of the Service Employees international union, seiu. Theyre hot on protecting Social Security, medicare and medicaid from any cuts in the friscal cliff negotiations. Ceos meeting with president obama at the white house. That pow wow kicking off within the hour. Also ahead, this important story i plan to go to law school of a i graduated. Looks like my folks wont have enough money to put me through college. Well, the world needs Ditch Diggers too. Student loan debt nears the 1 trillion mark. Thats right. 1 trillion. New evidence college may not be worth it after all. Try running four. Ning a restaurant is hard, fortunately weve got ink. It gives us 5x the rewards on our internet, phone charges and cable, plus at Office Supply stores. Rewards we put right back into our business. This is the only thing weve ever wanted to do and ink helps us do it. Make your mark with ink from chase. Another retailer declaring a special dividend. Lets send it over to kayla for a quick market flash. That retailer is guess. That dividend came amid a lackluster quarter for the company. It beat on the top line but missed on the bottom line. It lowered guidance for next year and said store sales were down. Look at the stock. Up 3 after hours on 1. 20 per share special dividend announced this quarter. Investors like it. Companies are doing it. Weve seen a lot of these. Just on that note, and, you know, i dont know if kayla is going to stay there or not, but a lot of companies are paying for the special dividends with debt. Borrowing money. By borrowing money. We just mentioned how costco was one of these companies, another retailer, to kaylas point, thats issuing a special dividend. Theyre now announcing a Debt Offering as a result. Money is so cheap. You borrow it and give it to your shareholders in an effort to boost your stock. Not the last that were going see. A perfect example of how we insent vi insent vise debt in america. Ceos will be meeting with president obama. Mary kay henry is president of the Service Em