Happens. Nasdaqs down 30 points. S p down 5. 5. An ugly month for stocks as the threat of military action in syria hangs over the nation and this market, bob pisani. What was interesting, i think we should put up president obamas key statement here today because the president and secretary of state john kerry also spoke today. President obama came out and said, we have not made a final decision on actions that will be taken. Thats the key point here. He also made it clear that it will not involve any action taken will not involve any boots on the ground. I think thats the major headline youll see in the newspaper tomorrow. When secretary kerry started speaking around 1 00, a speech very aggressive and very restrained at the same time, markets fluttered around, drooped going to the close and then rally just in the last few seconds. Take a look at the markets intraday here. I would say concern but no panic that was going on today. Importantly, we generally had very low volume once again. Light volume. Volatility, the vix is up, twomonth high. Not dramatically elevated. The worry, protracted conflict, that we cannot get a short, Surgical Strike in at this point. Overall, this is the last drading day of the summer. Actually, its not been a very bad summer. Its funny to look at the summer from memorial day into labor day. If you look at it that way, the s p 500 is basically flat. Slightly negative. Heres the key point. January 1st to memorial day, the s p was up 15 . Ever since then its been basically flat. Thats not bad considering what weve had to deal with all summer. Look at the fed taper warning that was the major issue we had to deal with. Abenomics in japan. Emerging market outflows, some problems with the currencies, particularly in india. Theres other ones out there. The turmoil in middle east. Even grow in china, and slow growth continuing here in the second half of the year. Bottom line, considering all of these issues, flat is not bad. Most traders i talked to feel maybe a little more upside, perhaps 5 . But given this slow growth environment were in, a lot of people are tempering their expectations for stocks through the end of the year. Back to you. Is flat the new aplus, bob . Flat is a victory in light of whats going on. Thanks. The nasdaq faring a bit better overall. Houses a dozen or so defense stocks which are in focus as military action on syria appears to inch closer and closer. Lets go over to the nasdaq, seema. Tet ra, tech among others had a volatile trading session as traders try to understand if or when u. S. Will strike syria. In terms of the big movers this month, staples, cisco are the biggest losers. Cisco moved to disappointing earnings and restructuring announcement. Winners, dell, facebook, netflix up a whopping 16 . Apple gaining about 7 , thanks to better than expected earnings and rising anticipation of possibly a new iphone being unveiled on september 10th. Back over to you. Thank you. With the worst month of the year in the rearview mirror, where do we go from here . Joining us is stephanie, ralph joining us from altara, joe bell. Stephanie, once again, you first. Next week, what do we see . Well, next week everyones going to be waiting for the nonfarm payroll numbers. As we talked about, some of the trends in the initial claims over the last several weeks have been pretty encouraging. We get the adp number before that, too. Well get some jobs information. Were also going to get some manufacturing data in the pmis as well. Not only here but globally. I think thats going to be very important. Because one of the parts of the economy that started to heel and started to see better results has been manufacturing. We have to see if thats going to continue. We get a lot of data points from china, europe data points have gotten better. Those are the areas weve been putting money to work. Again, we have some cash on hand to be buying some of the cyclicals and some defense that have gotten out of favor. Thats our strategy. Bill, are you there . Ralph, last timing you were with us last week, you said you wouldnt be surprised to see the dow pull back into the 12,000 range later this year. A lot of gasps went out on that one. I just want to say something, bill, that my concern didnt start yesterday. It didnt start last week. My concern started about three or four months ago. Tell my good friend peter to step back and look at weekly bar charts. Not minute by minute or daily. Look at weekly. You see a lot of blue chip stocks are very, very heavy, bill. The implications are that Multinational Companies are saying something to us. When i combine that observation with the emerging markets, it is not a very pretty picture. So, i would take advantage of any rally to lighten up. Again, that move would be a correction, a Pretty Healthy one, by the way, in the midst of what you still see as a longer term bull market . Oh, yes. I am a secular bull, which means im looking out four, five, ten years or more. But even secular bulls, bill, have bear markets. This could be a pretty difficult period. Lance, do you think we can buck history, throw history to the wind and we can actually have a decent month for stocks in september . Well, i dont know about that. One thing is, i do agree with ralph about one point. Have you to look at weekly charts. We have a weekly sell signal in the short term which suggests history suggests this could lead to lower prices over the next month to month and a half. How much lower . I think it is important you could probably see this market on the s p 500 test closer to 1500. So, you know, i think its reasonable to take profits on rallies. Youre below resistance right now, which is going to be important coming you know, coming up over the next few weeks. Plus economically speaking we have the debt ceiling debate coming up. Rising Interest Rates which slows main stream the main stream economy. And then, of course, looking fundamentally, earnings are deteriorating and getting weaker here. Theres a lot of the drivers youve had earlier this year are kind of dissipating at the moment. Stocks are overvalued and extended. A deeper correction would provide a much better buying opportunity than trying to buy here. You think with the 5 move weve seen in the dow so far to the down side, thats it. Youre looking to renew highs by the end of the year, is that it . We definitely do. Large caps have definitely deteriorated. The thing we also need to Pay Attention to is small cap sector. That has held up quite well. When you look at outperformance versus dow of the past two months, we look at magnitude. We did a study recently looking back to 2000. This kind of outperformance has only happened about 14 times. One of the notable times is back in april 2009 right after the march 2009 bottom. The most interesting part when we looked out going three months, dow actually outperforms. So it hammers home small caps perhaps leading now. Maybe well see a little large cap catching up in september. So many people calling for poor performance in september. Remind me back in may when so many people were saying sell in may, go away and we had that surprise may rally, i think we could be in store for Something Like that in september as well. What about that, ralph . No, sorry. I totally disagree. You cannot turn your back on large cap stocks. Ultimately they dictate. And, yes, you do have a period of time here where small caps and midcaps are doing well. Honestly, if ibm and mcdonalds and google all start breaking down, they will follow through on the downside. Where i do agree is that in any kind of a pullback, that were all talking about, its the sector in groups that get down the least. I would suspect small and midcap will not get as badly damaged as large cap. Therefore, you want to be in small to midcap later on. But near term, dont fight papa. Let me ask you, stephanie, as well, something lance brought up that technically speaking we could test to the downside, 1500 on the s p and looking over extended and overvalue. What do you think about that comment . As i said earlier, i think down 5 from the peak. Were starting to discount some of this stuff. Certainly not syria because we dont know how thats going to play out. But the fed tapering is probably starting to be baked in the cake in terms of them doing something. You dont think a nervous market on the back of potential strike on syria would make the fed rethink a september taper . They might. I think theyre looking at inflation and jobs. If jobs come in better than expected next week, i think theyre going to do something. But theyll do something small. It doesnt necessarily mean theyre taking it all away at once. Its still going to be accommodative. To me, the tell is going to be how financials trade. Those have been the leaders. For the last month they have been one of the lagging sectors. Can they regain leadership . If thats the case, i think the market can regain leadership. Thats not one of the keys im keeping an eye out for. Keep an eye on the financials. Stephanie and the rest of the crew, thank you for joining us today. August was ugly for stocks but what will september bring . Well talk to a guest who says september could turn out to be the month to remember but for the wrong reasons. 4 sure git gets more complicated with syria looming. Plus president obama giving more hints on what he may do about syria. That was a short time ago. We go to the pentagon for the latest. Plus a congressman who has been in the white house briefings. Hell join us with his thoughts as well. With a familiar keyboa. To update our status without opening an app. To have all our messages in one place. To browse. And share. Faster than ever. Its time to do everything better than before. The new blackberry q10. Its time. The new blackberry q10. 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 scottrade. Voted best Investment Services company. The president and his secretary of state john kerry vowing to hold syria accountable for using chemical weapons. John harwood with what may happen next. Reporter weve seen me men item building all day for a u. S. Response not just by statements from john kerry but also president obama himself a short time ago. He said reacting to syrias use of chemical weapons was not just in the use of the 1400 syrians killed and others threatened by these weapons, not just in the interest of the United States, but in the interest of the entire world. The world has an obligation to make sure we maintain the norm use the against of chemical weapons. Now, i have not made a final decision about various actions that might be taken to help enforce that norm. But as ive already said, i have had my military and our team look at a wide range of options. Reporter the president was clearing addressing reservations in Public Opinion when he talked about an intervention would not be. Said no boots on ground, narrow and limited in impact. We saw from our nbc news poll this morning, only 4 2 of the American People said they supported a strike against syria in response to chemical weapons use. Although when you say its missiles coming from navy ships, the number goes up to 50 . On the other hand, president s facing the kind of criticism that we just got from john mccain and lindsey graham, two leading republican voices on foreign policy, they said from what they can tell, the response by the administration that theyre contemplating would be too weak, mandy. John harwood, thank you very much for that. So what happens next . Joining us is john busse, covering this area and ed hussein with council on foreign relations. Ed, what do you think is the most likely situation weve been told in the sales pitch, limited, no boots on the ground. These are things theyre just hoping for as opposed to knowing whether or not theres going toen an actual reality. What do you think is the most effective way to get this done without having anything protracted . From whats been said so far, some kind of missile strikes, cruise missiles, some aerial blitzing of some sort, im no military expert so i cant comment on the details of how an operation will play out. I think some criticism thats come out against secretary kerrys statements so far and the indecision from the president himself is that no military strategy has been played out. Allies in israel and turkey have a similar complaint that no clear military strategy has been placed out by the administration. But for understandable reasons, perhaps, leaks that have come out of the white house have arguably strengthened the enemy sense of preparedness, knowing that the kind of targets that are being identified. So, for the obvious reasons, perhaps, no military strategy has been put in in place other than the fact that the president is clear he wants to boots on the ground. The irony is you wont stop the civil war inside syria without boots on the ground. Whether its american boots or an international is that our objective, to stop the civil war rather than just make a statement that chemical weaponry is not tolerated by the World Community . Yes, well, as the president correctly identified f that was a norm expected by the World Community, whats stopping the socalled World Community from reacting . There is no World Community. Its a myth in our head. Its the United States and some allies to enforce what we consider to be the norm. What about the u. S. Comment, john, and the polls overnight that show theres 80 want to make sure the president goes to congress before he does anything, and half of them dont want to see any kind of military action at all. Do you think that changes some strategy the administration might have had in mind to begin with . No question about that. This is a public responding to a war at ten years now. It does not want to get anywhere close to another engagement of the sort we saw in iraq or that we still see in afghanistan. We still havent pulled out of afghanistan. I mean, theres a lot of questions here. The president is trying to send a signal, trying to send a signal to an increasingly fractured regime there. As bill Spindle Point out earlier today, the regime is acting like its own militia. Its moving around. Its not a seating parliament you could bomb. This will be a very difficult effort to send an effective enough signal to assad. Second thing is that the killing of civilians is not going to stop. It might stop possibly through the use of chemical weapons but conventional weapons will still be used. Youre still going to see horrible footage like you have seen over the last several days. It will just be kids killed by rockets. How do you think assad will take that socalled message, though . Do you think hes going to say, you know what, youre right, okay, sorry, should do it again, or do you think its going to get nasty . I dont think hes so concerned with a message from the United States but survival of himself and his family. If enough of his capability is eroded by the strike that he says to himself, its not worth it, doing this again because i was so badly damaged, then perhaps he listens. Otherwise, hes what if he does it again, though . Then what . Then the u. S. Is involved in a protracted strike, counterstrike, strike, counterstrike with a dictator in the middle east. The president heads to russia on tuesday for the g20 meeting. What do you think hell hear from other heads of stated regarding this situation . Well hear, to be completely blunt, some level off hypocrisy. I think from some governments in private. In public well hear encouragement. In public theyll say, no, no, no, the u. S. Should not be attacking another arab, islam country. Arab dictators have been using this. Saddam hussein used it against kurds. This dictator has used it. I understand the reason to strike but my concern is that we dont deliver Strong Enough message and then he continues to use those weapons and the u. S. Is involved in a protracted war, having set the precedent of attacking a dictator every time he uses these horrendous weapons. Much more ahead on the situation in syria and what the Economic Impact will be. When we come back, while many investors are saying good riddance to the month of august, others warn the pain has just begun. Two stock pros duke it out which way the stocks go next month. In todays markets, a lot can happen in a second. With fidelitys guaranteed onesecond trade execution, we route your order to up to 75 Market Centers to look for the best possible price maybe even better than you expected. Its all part of our goal to execute your trade in one second. Im derrick chan of fidelity investments. 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Round it up for us. Augusts best and worst sectors. Now that weve closed out the month, lets check the score card how we did for the month of august. The broader s p 500 finished down 3 for the month. All ten sectors finished lower. Utility stocks the worst performers, down by 5. 5 in that period. High dividend payers were not helped with a rise in Interest Rate which saps demand for these type of stocks. The better performers on a relative basis came in technology. Down about 1 for the month. The sector my have ekeed out a gain had it not been declines in first solar, hp and microdevice systems.