lincoln center today. this is the site of ron baron's 18th annual investment conference. this is a big event that draws huge names from wall street, from corporate america and from the entertainment, as well. last year, there were about 4,000 investors who showed up for this conference. it was headlined by jerry seinfeld. in the past, several others have cochaired. rob baron himself will join us as guest host. among other guests who are going to be joining us, choice hotels international chairman stewart bainum. we've got casino kingpin steve wynn will be talking to us about what he sees in vegas and what he thinks needs to be happening in this country in terms of job creation. and mickey drexler will be joining us, as well. j. crew came out and raised guidance to about double what the street was expecting. they'll be reporting later, but some very strong news from a retailer. >> and that does not do television very often. >> he doesn't. he doesn't like doing television, so i'm very excited about this, too. even when i was a retail reporter from the journal, it was difficult to get ahold of him. >> that's the first lady play, j. crew. >> and what i want to do is how did he get michelle obama to wear his clothes? and joe, did you say bernanke at the top? >> i did. >> are you caving? >> no. if you can't beat them. i said that and my favorite thing i said is we want viewers. this has nothing to do with baron, the magazine, so this show will be interesting and it will be something you want to tune into. >> and fun and lively and not like historic. this is not entertainment. >> it's not affiliated whatsoever with that historomew that you're assigned every weekend. >> no. this is ron baron, with one r. >> let's keep making that clear. >> i agree with you. >> bye-bye. >> thanks, beck. we'll be among our top stories this morning. investors are waiting speak by fed chairman ben bernanke in chatham, ma chatham, massachusetts. he'll speak on financial regulation in the aftermath of the financial crisis. we'll bring you those remarks at 8:30 a.m. there's two ns in bernanke. >> we have to show that in chicago. >> in the meantime, microsoft will be reporting results in a rare moment before the opening bell. analysts say it's not going to be enough to keep sales of windows and office from dropping compared to a year ago. we talked about windows 7 going live yesterday. they normally post on thursday nights, but this quarter, they decided friday morning was it. so we'll be all over that this morning. >> we will. preview and post view of it. >> brendan barn kal. >> and star of swung bob square pants. >> there is where you lost me. >> barnacle. amazon.com, getting an immediate response. >> cue it! >> and looked at the 14% gain. and he -- >> it never, never gets old. >> so he was laughing all the way to the bank. >> he hates that. you know we're never going to get him on. >> we only needed him once. >> stocks are goc to be close to an all-time high now. >> 106. >> yep. >> speaking of baron, they hated amazon the entire way. >> remember, it was a big liability for bill miller and no one believed it was going to be close to anything -- >> i would never have believed that you could order from anywhere in the world and have a place to ship it. >> for free. >> exactly. we love his laugh, but the guy is an operator. and it's not just about the money any more at this point. it's just great running -- it's an american icon. >> amazing. >> it was books mostly, right? >> it used to be all books. >> and now you don't buy books any more. you guy kindles. electrics, dvds, amazon says its kindle e-book reader is its top selling product at this point. >> it's a good product. i haven't seen the sony one. >> now, can i read good night moon on -- >> that's a good question. you can get pictures. they're not in color, but you can get graphics. >> i hope you can get pictures. >> that's true, i forgot the kind of books you like to read come with pictures. >> many do. >> magazines, too. >> what does that mean? >> take a look at the bid/ask, pretty good results from axp last night. that was a stronger than a lot ooh people expected. bob napaley joins us with his reaction on that this morning. bob, good morning to you. >> good morning, carl. >> the line is overall billings have stabilized, we saw indications that spending by corporate card members is beginning to pick up. given what we've heard from the likes of wells fargo and on the flip side, from pnc yesterday, is this a tiebreaker in terms of where the consumer is going? >> a lot of that will depend on where the jobless claims are going, carl. clearly for american express, credit is improving. they gave more granular data last night on their conference call. while charge-offs came down in the third quarter, look for another sharp loss in consumer prices in the fourth quarter. >> total spending, down 17%. how disciplined have they become on that front. >> spending was better than expected. the we think spending may be up year over year, very close in the fourth quarter. on the expense front, their nonmarketing operating expenses are down about 20%, but they did heavily invest in marketing in the third quarter. marketing was way up in the third quarter over the second quarter about 40%. >> i see. dan henry, the cfo, says -- he characterizes it as stabilization. he says where we go from here depends on the psyche of the consumer over the next 2 1/2 months bringing us into the end of the year. which way do you think that is going to tilt? >> well, initial indications are that october retail sales are pretty good. the corporate spending has improved, clearly, it was down 17% in the second quarter for american express, do know down only 10% in the third quarter. so things can happen. the economy can be fragile. right now, the trends are for continued gradual improvement. the comps get better each month from here. >> i was going to say, when does spending go positive, the next quarter? >> it will be close in the fourth quarter. we have it modelled down 1% in the fourth quarter. clearly, it will be post in the nifrt quarter. i think for visa and mastercard, clearly, it will be positive in the fourth quarter. >> and finally, it is the best performing dow component this year. it's almost doubled. is that going to continue or is it fairly -- >> we raised our estimates significant significantly last night off the quarter. that's 15 times what we think they can earn in 2011. >> bob, appreciate that. it's going to help today a little bit. >> you remember the price where i was asking, you know, people. you've got one of the greatest american companies tsh. >> nine. >> eight. eight and nine. i remember that day. you were trying to get -- >> a couple of times. vogel, anyone, if the world doesn't end, if you can get american -- i've got a gefl winding box. >> yeah. >> good but for am ex, really. you go ahead to buy one of the greatest companies if the woorld doesn't the end. and you see where it is right now. if you're boeingel, you don't need to make a lot of other correct calls, right? >> that's investing, right, not speculatin speculating. >> i don't know what it was. it's better to buy things when they're single digits. >> if the world doesn't end, right? and that was the question at the time. >> i guess. i don't know. those who can, do. those who can't are on tv, i guess. >> we got some interesting news out of the uk this morning. we expected them to come out of recession. it was negative, so the uk remains in session. the ftse didn't really react and neither did the markets here. we saw good numbers off the numbers we got out yesterday from mcdonald's, gm -- >> that's what we do. >> yes. it is 81.27. the ten-year note is yielding about the 3454. the dollar is rezuming its own ways, back almost to 50. >> yeah opinion can you explain that to me? it kwas 88, wasn't it? >> yeah. we had a bit of a bounce here. we had rosengren tell us that rate policy is going to remain acome dafb. a lot of people think the downward trend will continue in the next few weeks. >> against the euro, 150. >> and with a mixed dollar, gold is up to 10.64. >> horrible. some of these crews are looking for a continued piece. let's let oversaws where geoff cutmore is in london. that's three grters now that your smaller truck has been in the doldrums. that is pretty bad news. the uk market, the ftse, as we call it, he joe, over here is higher by 1.2% at this stage. we had a number out of germany, as well, the ifo index which shows -- actually, germany is doing okay and the pmi number out of germany was up. that's the first jump in 15 months or the biggest expansion. unfortunately, the german market is not getting much of a pop on that. so i think the market looking at the easy money stove story in performance to the economic refer. the nope confirmed targets. and we also have some money from sen enno 2009. so nothing to the in order earnings to phi the children. now to christine in singapore. >> hey, yef. upbeat earnings from the u.s. dove investors book into the equity market. the nikkei rose 0.2%. japanese ininvestors holding back with earnings season coming to a focus this weeks. kia motors reported a strong set of quarterly results. the kospi rose 0.6%. and in shanghai xien that surged 1.2%. trading for the first 28 stocks we're told will not begin until october 30th. in hong kong, the rebound of financial shares helped the markets rally. obviously markets here didn't get a chance to reaction to the poor gdp data. we should see some reaction on monday. >> ira harris is here, we're back above 10,000. we keep trying to give the correction seekers some ground. you know, we give them 100 points here, 1 hin points there. as far as a pullback hour. when is that going to start? >> well, joe, when they start to do a serious amount of repos and raising rafts on the reserves that the fed can pay and start bringing in some liquidity. ourselves, as you heard from rosengren and others, it's full speed ahead because as long as money remains loose, people are going to have to take that money as you and carl and i have talked about for quite a while because the equity markets are the are theants of the global carry trade. end of story auto that. >> equity, oil, gold, modties, they're all moving in tandem. so i guess if we see that inflation points, in fact signal it. it doesn't neply -- >> 1 purs is not enough, carl lib. >> i happen to -- i think tear ta sees some part. so if the economy as as strong region 2% can make no difference. in fact, it would probably be healthy. but nobody is willing to take that step because they're on, some people say, the 1937 model and they don't want to move too fast. then you take larry summers comments xwred which is that the discontest twekt plain trooem treat and -- >> we're told it's lagging. the jobless number, you know that gets back to the white house. that's all they're hearing about. i just heard the wrestler, the wrestling lady slamming krils dodd. everybody is talking jobless. thanks, ira. >> pleasure. let's get back to becky at the baron investment conference for a preview of what's coming up. hey, beck. >> hey, joe. you know, ron is here. we told him already that you've been emphasizing this is ron barron not barrens. and he press tae at the beak. did you guys hear me say this is barack obama and let's see who is up on "squawk box"? >> microsoft is set to report results from the opening bell. we have a money mob tones the stock. stim around and we'll be right back if you're taking 8 extra-strength tylenol... a day on the days that you have arthritis pain, you could end up taking 4 times the number... of pills compared to aleve. choose aleve and you could start taking fewer pills. just 2 aleve have the strength... good friday morning. we got good earnings last night from american express. bernanke speaks at about 8:30 a.m. eastern time. apple is declining comment on the lawsuit from mobile hand setmaker nokia. apple is charged with infringing nokia patents. nokia says a total of 10 patents are involved and all versions of the iphone have violated those patents since its release. back to becky and the barons conference in new york. beck. >> thanks very much, carl. the $154 million baron i-opportunity fund is now up 55% year-to-date. it investors heavily on technology. joining us right now is michael lipford. michael, thanks for joining us. >> good morning. you're welcome. >> this is a perfect day to have you here because you focus a lot on technology. we have a couple of big earnings reports that at least last night we heard from am zone. today we'll be hearing from microsoft. those are both sakes that you own in this fund. what dupg of amazon's numbers? >> we invest in innovation. we invest in companies benefiting from innovations and technology. we're long-term investors. we're looking for stocks that can double in a four or five-year time period. amazon is a greater example of that. incredible numbers last night. grew revenues almost 30%. they grew operating income 30%. they're taking a lot of market share because they're continuing to innovate. so we think the road map for amazon is still a really long one. >> but you don't generally focus on things like earnings, right? you're in this for the longer haul. >> yeah. we're focused on how big and how profitable can a company be in four or five years from today. do they have a mode around their business? and do they have a management team that has a focus on the future. >> you don't worry when you see things like walmart.com? they're selling books for less than $9 right now. >> amazon is really focused right now. that's part and parcel of their business. right now, this is a relatively small part of their business. they're innovating in everything else. electronic goods and other forms of media and certainly what they're doing on kindle is different, it can be matched by the likes of walmart and the other ones you mentioned right now. >> the other thing is that microsoft, we've got this new release coming out with windows seven. what do you think of the stock there? some people have complained that it hasn't moved, but you can probably say that about a lot of the big names in stocks. >> it always depends on where you buy it. we are very opportunistic in establishing our position in microsoft. what excited us was not any one expectation on earnings. so that is really going to hit this quarter, not the quarter they're reporting this morning. about y but what has excited us is windows is ip innovating. it's what they're doing with unified communications and virtualization. it's a long road map they have that has gotten us interested in the ip know vacations. >> so that means you were buying on dips? >> yeah. >> and that's what you always do? >> last year when the market was scared and everything was selling off, we were trying to put together the best fort followo of great companies, a lot of which were traeding at great values. microsoft was a great example, also, where we were able to buy that under $20. >> it's not just opportunities that you look at. you're focused on energy and health care. are those energy and health care with the negligent bent or -- >> no, it is. we're looking at any sector of the economy where technology and valuation is playing a role. both our health care systems and energy systems are dumb in this country. we haven't adopted a lot of technology. we have a lot of talk about trying to take the whole payment system that is still mostly paper based in health care and moving that electronics and similar things in the electricity system with the distribution and the smart grid. so we're interested in smart grid technologies. >> that allows businesses to reduce energy consumption on demand utilizing technology. so in the middle of the summer when the grids are running hot and there's a risk of a blackout or you might have to turn on another power plant, you can ask businesses to reduce energy consumption. they do that using their technology. and they pay their customers so they share more than 50% of the revenue with their customers. so it reduces energy without having to turn on another carpet emitting power plant. >> and what is the stock symbol for that? 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you're live from -- i guess she's a sa ploprano? >> there's great acoustics in here. >> singing with you and that whistling. we're going to play the animal orchestra and yoko. but in the opera house, things are probably shattering, glass and stuff. you're at the annual baron, one r, deal down at the new york metropolitan house at lincoln center and i think you're joined by the oponomys, right? >> big word. >> i had that ready to go. is he there? >> he is. he's sitting right here. he's been listening to you. he's waving at you. you just can't see him yet. ron baron is joining us right now. we are live at the ron baron conference. this is the 18th annual conference. ron, we want to thank you for inviting us in today and h