Is that a signal that better days are ahead . What counters that is the fact that financials were last months weakest sector and that begins now. The transports recovering or the banks breaking . I would say that its more toward the banks and the reason i say that scott is when you look at the performance of the market so far they have been tracking far more closely with the banks and i think kevin oleary yesterday hit it right on the head when he was discussing with us the banks are intertwined with about Everything Possible that we can imagine within the market itself i think its going to have to have the financials participate. If this is a bull bear debate whether you think the transports that have lead the market down are now coming back and helping to lead the rally or the banks which have done nothing . I feel like petes point has a lot of merritt but im on the other side and the reason why is i think that banks are not really a risk thing that was spooking the markets. 16 off their lows. This week will make it six if what were seeing now continues. So ill give a little bit more to the transports. The transports telling us that the markets going up here or are the banks telling us that the market is going to go back down. They still have Pricing Power and margin upside. If you get a little bit of the lift in the u. S. Economy these stocks can take off because theyre down 30 in the last 18 months. Now that said, financials are very, very important for sentiment indicator in my opinion and a bigger representation of the s p waiting. So this group really does need to at least catch a bid and to stabilize and not go down but to stabilize. This is unbelievable. City down 24 and morgan down 20. Financials close to 3 today and the market is up almost 300 points. Thats the answer to the question. Its all about financials. Gives you the whole story. Financials have told you year to date. So far theres two concerns. The uncertainty surrounding the political election. None of the above being the best candidate. Candidates beating up on Financial Institutions and the fattening of the curve. Its financials. You have stress test coming up. Lets hope the banks get through that. A lot of people expected the fed to move in 2016. That may change though. We got a little bit better data on manufacturing today. Lets get a better jobs number on friday and the conversation could totally change and youre starting to see it to the upside and its been positive. So 1967 for the s p were going to go higher from here. Im not so sure that i said that the worst is over but i will say this. Two things, one of them is ive been diagramming the volatility index. A lot of people dont think that the volatility index means anything but i completely disagree with that. I think it does. When you go back to august, how long did we say . Went august 19th through the early part of october. Here we are again scott. Where are we on the volatility index . Its pushing on the 200 day moving average. When you go back to last year financials lagged in the first couple of months and then we started to see a little bit of a drift so if the financials do participate were in the 2000 range. I still see people coming on the network saying were going down to 1600 on the s p. Are they way off base . Why couldnt that happen . Anything can happen. Why should it happen . A break in oil. When are we going to finally decouple from this trade . Today were seeing a little bit of a decouple because oil is not making a hold up. The bigger issue is the dollar. Draghi comes out with his plan and does it live up to expectation and does it weaken the euro. You do need for the industrials to participate you need the dollar to stabilize. What are you more inclined to be a buyer of today in the stock market if anything . Well, the momentum names have worked the last couple of weeks year to date. Value is outperforming those momentum names but right now momentum is working. Youre going to have to navigate a shift back to the defensive consumer staple. Household products. Value type of names but i think overall, look, where we are the last couple of weeks is excellent. Were certainly farther away on a technical basis from 1810 than a week ago when i was highly concerned about that and i think what is powering the market higher right now is the understanding that global its almost like goldilocks is back again. The economies are in the sweet spot. Its like goldilocks is back into the market again. The ism rose today but still above 50. Construction spend with a nice rebound but the jury is still out as to where this economy is. I think people are looking at the fed. This gives us more time and we can buy ourselves a little bit of time. I would side with one part about this whole transports discussion that were having scott, where have we seen nothing but activity recently . We have seen it across every airline that there is but to continue to move up to the upside. If we see another month of the continuation of that wage growth and the fed doesnt raise rates theyre not data dependent and theyre just making it up as we go along. The nasdaq is up more than 100 points is technology. One of those areas, etfs and trades that you guys like in the area of tech that we havent talked about yet. Nasdaq has been lagging the others in terms of the rebound. What leads the nasdaq to continue these gains . Its money flow and its money flow searching out Technology Companies that are going to be able to do things in term of buy backs and in term of dividend. They have the most cash on their Balance Sheet and ultimately theyll reward the investors. Youll see a little bit of return there but back to the markets for one second, the market is trading as technically pristine as it has any time over the last 12 months and you can follow along with the technical. We talked about 1875 having to hold. That did hold. Now you raise that level to 1900 to 1905 although, you can chime in on this. You have people saying that you have bearish signals in the technicals that you need to look out for. Longer term. Pristine or worry. Shortterm. The market is up in a Straight Line the last two weeks so this is a bull market but thats a very short time frame. When you elongate and look at monthly cross over averages, the picture is not negative but its flat and its indicative of the possibility that the cycle is change over. But again things can change. And i think that its important to remember when you see people come on the network and say 1600, remember, we had a 12 sell off because of ebola. Things can come out of nowhere. Rattle the markets confidence temporarily, including election related stuff. It doesnt necessarily change the fundamentals of the businesses that were all here to talk about so when youre not fully invested you have the ability to take advantage. When you are you lose that advantage. Interesting to see the discretionary stocks do well and we didnt talk about the auto sales. Everybody has been nervous about has auto peaked. These are the two themes that people are very much focused on and it was really very encouraging today that the numbers were much stronger than expected but also to see macys rally and nordstrom rally and theyre off of very low bases but lets see if the discretionary group can take foot thats a big part of our economy as you know. Certain sli today. Heres whats coming up on the Halftime Report. Still ahead, he blew the whistle on the nyse and now hes getting paid three quarters of a Million Dollars for his effort. That whistleblower joins us with what he found and what it means for the average investor. Plus. Its a bird. Its a plane. Super tuesday. Who is likely to win . And how you should trade it. And epic wipe out. Gopro investors have gotten slammed in the stock. Is it time to give the Company Another shot or are you cruising for a bruising . Well debate it. Thats all coming up on the Halftime Report. At ally bank, no branches equals great rates. Its a fact. Kind of like social media equals antisocial. Hey guys, i want you to meet my fiancee, denise. Hey. Good to meet you dennis. Man 1 he just got fired. Man 2 why . Man 1 network breach. Man 2 since when do they fire ceos for computer problems . Man 1 they got in through a vendor. Man 1 do you know how many vendors have access to our systems . Man 2 no. Man 1 hundreds, if you dont count the freelancers. Man 2 should i be worried . Man 1 you are the ceo. Its not just security. Its defense. Bae systems. Billions are spent to confuse and, dare i say it, flummox the american public. Save 16 on Car Insurance. Switch now. Well at compare. Com, we say enoughs enough. So weve created this mind boggling facility. Where were constantly scrutinizing millions of rates. Answering the question who has the lowest. Go to compare. Com, plug in some simple info and get up to 50 free quotes. Choose the lowest, and hit purchase. Its fast and easy. Compare. Com saving humanity from high insurance rates. Up by 2. 5 to 3 for the financial side of things. The only sector in the red is utilities overall. Also some of the big auto trades because we have the auto Sales Numbers coming out. Check out whats happening with shares of General Motors up 1. 5 . Ford up by nearly 5 today. Chrysler up by 6 and toyota up by 2. Some of the major auto makers out there so autos are a big focus on robust bullish sign for the economic terms out there. Back to you. The stocks have not done anything. I would focus on the auto parts. I like having exposure to a variety of different oes. Im not crazy about gm or ford. Why not . I think theres a lot of competition. I think that theres a lot of i think a lot of people are in these names for value. Theyre not thinking theyre going to grow and theres a lot of exposure and gives and takes here and the auto parts have a lot of growth and the valuations are cheaper. So you get the participation from the group rally and its just a little bit less of a risk profile. These things cant catch a cold. They come out with good numbers and the stocks go up and no one likes them. Its good numbers versus what . Headline number 20 sales increase year over year. Lets look back at february 2015. It was a negative 2 month. We had one of the biggest snowstorms of the decade and nobody bought a car. It has to be tempered by that. The other negative which i think theres truth to, think about the sub prime auto leasing and auto sales thats happening right now and think about whether were toward the end of that or whether or not theres still legs. I think its probably toward the end and i think that absolutely could weigh on ales Going Forward. They dont they mind you of the housing stocks . You go across the whole world and look at every one of these. Theyll put up number after number and quarter after quarter and the stocks dont seem to move and it feels that same way. Im happy to see ford up the way it is today and running the way it is. Will it sustain . Is it going to get past 1310 or maybe to 13. 5 . Lets see where this stock has been and where it is now. Voters in 12 states head to the polls today as super tuesday gets underway with much at stake for candidates on both sides. We have team coverage. John harwood live at headquaters. Hampton pierce is on is in ted cruzs home state of texas. They call it super tuesday because the race Goes National tonight. From this map, 12 states on the board. Largely in the south but they include minnesota, massachusetts and vermont. Polls suggest Hillary Clinton is poised for a big night against bernie sanders. So big the ad doesnt mention him. Instead she impose after big pharma. It costs 180 for 10 shots. The latest refill was 14,700 for the same 10 viles and the company is called valeant pharmaceuticals. Im going after them. This is predatory pricing and were going to make sure that it is stopped. Im Hillary Clinton and a prove this message. On the republican side, donald trump appears in position to add to his delegate lead but facing more push back from Republican Leaders for failing to condemn the kkk over the weekend including this today from House Speaker paul ryan. If a person wants to be the nominee of the republican party, there can be no evasion and no games. They must reject any group or cause that is built on bigotry. This party does not prey on peoples prejudices. We appeal to their highest ideals. Now the single most important state tonight is texas with 155 delegates at stake. To preserve his chances ted cruz needs to win his home state. Thats where we find hampton. Ted cruz just left or is in the process of leaving. He came here to vote. There was about a 10 minute or so scrum going on behind me with all kinds of reporters and photographers questioning him here. This was a must win on a lot of different levels. The 1555 delegates. They are a portion. To get all the delegates hed have to get 50 or more of the vote and thats not likely to happen. So his other challengers will get a share of the delegates even if as expected cruise wins. But cruise last night in a rally to his supporters said i want to go oneonone with donald trump but i cant do that unless i get out of here, out of my home state with a win to launch me on my way. Were a few hours away from finding out if, in fact, that piece of, at least the cruz scenario will happen Going Forward but as we said, this by the way is a very busy polling place even before the senator arrived and right now the turn out around town and around the state of texas is heavy. Theyre looking for a record turn out on the gop side. Theres already been more than a million early votes cast. That period ended last friday. And the precinct turn out as we said, especially on the republican side they expect to break a record for a gop primary in texas. Back to you. All right hampton pearson. John harang gewood, thanks to y this super tuesday. Lets talk about this Hillary Clinton attack ad on valeant. I do not remember a political candidate a front runner on either side launching such a specific attack on a publicly traded Company Maybe ever. Correct me if im wrong. Teddy roosevelt did this in all three of the elections he ran to great effect. He even defected from his party to continue to do it. So 100 years ago or whatever but still can you buy valeant . Can you buy a drug Company Stock today . You cant. Youre either underweight the group or short these things because shes going after a lot of different companies. They attacked the pbm industry as well if you recall but i also dont think if trump wins or is nominated if hes in, hes not that friendly to health care as well so i think after five years of this sector out performing i think they take a pause and can revisit them. I think hilary will say whatever she has to to get elected and win the battle and this is just one more example and i think once were in the general election and she is done fighting shell probably lighten up her tone a little bit and this wont be as important. Thats when you lighten the growth. Im going after them is what she says specifically about valeant. Sure she is. We talked about this yesterday. Once she has the nomination the rhetoric will stop. That will be the time whether its financials or health care youll remove the cloud of the negativity surrounding the democratic nomination. This is what do i need to say to out flank bernie. Its an easy headline. If youre an investor the risk reward scenario here. Youre making a leap of faith saying this is all rhetoric. If youre an investor to real money on the line do you put it to work hoping that youre right . I think you probably got to pause for sure. I think to stephs point pause because you have to see how the whole thing plays out. Theres no doubt. Everybody at this table would agree and say theres companies out there that are absolutely taking advantage of people and under terrible situations. However, that being said, i think what hilary is doing right now going after this, especially for political reasons but heres the real problem. Innovation stops. These medical companies and Bio Tech Companies are not going to have the rnd out there to put it out there. Look how familiar failures. Theres a complete lack of understanding of how the whole process works to get drugs to markets. How long that take. How much investment that takes. Theyre totally misguided. I think youre way off base thinking these ads are going to disappear once she gets the nomination for the Democratic Party which seems more likely by the day. These are going to run up until november and if she does become president you dont think these types things are going to be said all the time. Whether they happen or not is not the story. A mere tweet sank the sector. Its too early to buy. The Balance Sheets are attractive. The dividend yield and valuations are cheaper so its tempting but to your point youre going to have this cloud. Who do you think is going to be the better candidate. You think strutrump is better f the market and investors. Which market . Stock thinks Hillary Clinton. The arms market. Did we just have growth under obama . Shes going to be status quo. Exactly what he is. Status quo under bill was not so bad. No thank you. Raise taxes. I want to finish the valeant thing real quick because this is todays news on valeant but there has been news every day and in some cases multiple instances of news. The latest being that valeant is now facing an fcc investigation which theres a lot of big shareholders and wellknown ones like bill ackman that are in this name and that news is not causing them at least not yet to lose support. Bill last night told me the following. We have spoken to mike pearson and valeant management and were delighted that his health has recovered and he has returned as ceo so he can work on behalf of the company and shareholders. Much of the uncertainty will be resolved in the relative shortterm hopefully over the next few weeks when we expect the company to issue results and update guidance and file its 10k. Valeants core franchises remain strong but we continue to believe valeant could do a better job with its public and investor relations. Who know what is will happen in the next couple of hours with that name but that stock remains under pressure. Hillary clinton rolling out an attack add and more news on the regulatory s