Current consensus, but retail will be the theme of the day, whether the consumer is back in a big way, whether it is a game changer and what that means for the market and the economy and Everything Else. I know well be talking about it it at noon. Were going to get our last word. They can talk about it for just one second and not that long because weve only got a minute and well talk to Henry Blodget and curtis artledge. You asked a question about jc penn penney. Maybe they can raise more cash, but theyre running out of cash at this point. They dont have that much left. You have a final thought on either jc penney or more importantly, the markets . I think todays entire discussion has been about the early stages of confidence building and we get past these two gigantic minefields of fiscal cliff and sequester. We start to see m a pickup and retail sales and theyre willing to spend money because theyre more scared about their job. We see Capital Expenditures and people starting to plan for them and sentiment, actually, when we talk about it i dont think theres that much complacency. People are still nervous. Scott, it was great having you here. Join us tomorrow, right now its time for sksquawk on the street. People all across america are cringing right now because that is probably the most annoying song on the planet, but you have to go back to 1996 and that was the year macarena hit number one on the charts for the last time the dow had a ninesession winning streak and the question is can the blue chips pull that off today . Good morning. Well will come to squawk on the street. Im melissa lee along with carl quintanilla, jim cramer and david faber on the new york stock exchange. We are looking at green arrows across the board and the action happening after the betterthanexpected retail Sales Numbers came out. A 1. 1 increase and that was the largest gain in five months. Take a look at the picture in europe. Whats notable here is italy had the first auction since the fitch upgrade and we did see yields there creep higher and we do have italy down 1. 5 . Overnight in asia, the big loser, but the road map starts off with the rally. The dow inches higher, but enough to score eight straight sessions of gains. All eyes are on the s p 500 which is flirting with the record closing high, just 13 points away. Sales seeing the biggest rise since september and rising core sales indicating maybe the consumer is not feeling the pinch of higher taxes. Meantime, coach popping premarket on an upgrade from city. As a new report shows that it has been outspending apple in advertising to clench the market share gains it has seen. One step closer to getting the 787 back in the skies. The nefaa, a step to ending the twomonth long grounding. We begin with the markets, by the skin of its teeth, the dow extending the winning streak and posting a record high close for the sixth consecutive day and the s p closed higher despite hitting fresh fiveyear highs during yesterdays session. The bright spots here is what we saw managed to close higher yesterday were cyclical areas, semiconductors, energy and we had health care participating in that rally and bristolmyers. 11year highs on that one. They screwed up badly and they bought a drug, not unlike glaxo they had, and it was red wine derivative drug and they fell. I will point out that the macarena is central to the thinking. Really . Because i went back and looked at this period november 1996 and was astonished at how everything was going right. Everything. That was a time when your pc was powerful enough to be able to get it it so you started getting dial up aol. We had no crises whatsoever. The bob rubin managing the economy, bill clinton getting Interest Rates down and what we have now is a compliant fed and weve got some good earnings, but i just dont think that we can put on the kind of numbers that yes, im worried about the nine Straight Days. So you say keep your bat on your shoulder. You say the guys are swinging wildly and thats not our style. Youre willing to miss a couple of points. Well look back at whats happened since the millennium began and there have been only a few instances where weve been able to go eight. Weve never been able to go nine since it started. Were 50 up, 50 down within a week. Almost always down within a month. So all im saying is find stocks that arent up if youre going to take a shot because these 52week high stocks, the stocks at a 52week high, they dont appeal to me as much as down and outers. Its interesting because they came out with another Technical Analysis there and came out with a note today, the correlation on the s p 500 are at year to date lows and it is a stock pickers market and its not all boats are rising with the tide. No. I did a piece about the casino stocks. Im not crazy about the casino stocks. China is not that great, vegas is dunn big. Las vegas sands, not that expensive. Those are good ideas. Stocks that are not up. The bulk shippers, yes, im scraping the bottom of the ship barrel, but those are are historicallied . A. This is where im looking. I am no longer looking at horizon which is about to break out because when that breaks out i feel im late, not early. Its already broken out. Its up 6 in a very short amount of time. Verizon is not google. No. It does have a 140 billion market value now. Its not a vodafone at this point. I dont want to there are so many that are still not stretched. General mills raised its dividends very big yesterday. Thats a Terrific Company and ken is doing a terrific job. If theyre paying 18, 19 times earnings and ill look at tech. Techs are at 10, 11 times earnings and i think that that is better. Banks because we have the stress test tomorrow. They could be better although they acted toppy yesterday and i was concerned. Interesting. That oracle upgrade says it is trading 11 times 2013. And that was oracle and thats an example of how can mark herd and Larry Ellison be trading at 11 times earnings and the hardware sales have bottomed and thats the sun micro. Thats intriguing to me. Intriguing, they say 20 upside intriguing on a onepoint multiple expansion. I never mind paying up 11 times earnings for a con sftent grower run by terrific people. I know there are people at hewlettpackard that will say he left the company in a shambles. Hes an aggressive guy and just like ellison, a very good company. Im a salesforce. Com guy. Mark benny and theyre at laggerheads, and sap at laggerheads, but this business is strong. Oracle has a very strong european business. I find that somewhere to look. Im looking for places where they havent hit them out yet. Right. Right. Speaking of retail sales, at least, better than expected jump by 1. 1 in february and thats the largest gain in five months. Take out autos, sales rose 1 . Results dampening fears that those higher payroll, will put a dent in consumer spenting. The firm saying the stock is trancinged to make growth play to a value play and any caution is appropriately priced into the shares. They do, however, list a bunch of concerns. Management changes, the yen, handbag intensification at the high end, 30 comps at coors and tory burch and they still upgraded to a buy. I think we get stocks down where they say be careful with the numbers. I think this best buy phenomena with goldman upgrading yesterday. The stock was down forever and now maybe someone will cirque willel and we obviously had rumors the other day that some of the European Luxury Companies would look at coach. Its very easy to craft a story to buy coach. Im trying to work with nicole erkin who is one of my associates. She happens to be here because people always want their name on. Their moms and dads like that. We always like coors, which is a better buy. Once a growth stock where they had a gigantic insider sale. I have to tell you, you have to step up to the plate. Really . Even citi says comps down 2 . They actually brought their comps in despite the upgrade. I know, but remember, best buy started good when everyone decided that the comps were absolutely hideous. Do i like coach . Im not excited the recent best buy does nothing for the stock. It stopped moving. Is coach 12, 13 best buy . I dont know. I understand. I like coors. Ever since they did that offering coors has been horrible, but the numbers have been good. I just find look, again, people want stocks that havent done anything because they want this is the new name phenomena. If a hedge fund, he had a couple of good years there i would i want new names. I dont want old names because im a coach. Whats the story of coach . Its going to go higher. 50,000. 50,000. Theres just a lot of momentum here. Why wouldnt you just stick with the names that are working . Because i feel like the the momentum could be played out, up to eight Straight Days. It makes me nervous. 9 in the s p . Joe dimaggio, 6 game, why not eight games . Yes, i do because you were in here, pfizer was the king of the market. 40 years annualized and 9 is 56 for the year. Have we had a year like that ever . How about another way to look at it. All of those worries about the payroll test versus the 60 plus who own houses. You listen frank blake, what a great get by the 2 00 show and Martha Stewart always looking good at 71 or 61. The woman at the stock. Frank is just now saying people are are beginning to spend more for the gdp on their home than they have before. The home is where the money is. So is the job. The job, home in other words, job beats payroll tax coming back. Yeah. Job is job is paper. House is scissors. And what is rock . What is rock . I dont know. What do you think . Should rock be stock portfolio . Thats a good one. Do you remember that game . Yes, i do. Or did you play threecard monty. Dice in the alley. Go back to 96. I mean, 96 was the period that we had the peace dividend. We had the incredible explosion in tech and now here we are saying, Morgan Stanley trips numbers intel . Those were the good times. You used to criticize me regularly in 96. I used to call you up and criticize you. Now i can just do it right here. Melissa and i were high schoolers. It was a great time. Everything was great then. They were watching, though. Sunrise senior living. I used to watch you in high school. I was watching deborah yesterday for ventas and im people are saying what a great performer and im checking it out as a place to live. The Business Roundtable is out with the latest ceo survey and our Steve Liesman has the results. Good morning, steve. Hang on a second because ill show you exactly whats wrong with this economy at the end of this report. The Business Roundtable index rising from 81 to 55. 6. Expectations increasing for the first time in a year so ceos getting more optomistic. They only nudged up their growth forecast from 2. 1 so basically looking for lackluster growth. They expect higher sales to boost the economy. Take a look at this chart and tell me whats wrong. They see sales on net, the percent saying sales will increase up 14 percentage points. Those who will do more capex is up 8 percentage points. And a hiring . A goose egg, nothing. Theyre no increase in hiring there and thats really what has bedevilled economists, policymakers and everybody about this economy, carl. Any echoes there, steve, out of fnib in the week . . No. I think there is a tale of two different economies here. These are more Large Businesses in this Business Roundtable and the Small Businesses have really, according to the nfib numbers, really taking it on the chin and its been tough sledding for them than it has been for the Large Businesses and Large Businesses remain optimistic and a little bit of a pickup in capex, and they remain very low off the lows of the recession, but not much. Fascinating numbers, steve. Jim, that might be the way it will be for a wheel. For term 2013. I think housing is the year for the turn. I understand these numbers. A lot of topdown numbers and a lot of business numbers. I find suspect. Theyve been a really bad tell for how the stock markets done. Housing has been crucial, okay . Housing has been the job generator and then oil and gas. Theres a fabulous article in the papers today about ohio booming. When we were in ohio to do the utica shale, we couldnt get a hotel room. These are real numbers coming in oil and gas. Well hear a bit from that yesterday, but this is a guy who is hiring furiously. Chart industries. What these guys have in common, oil and gas, that and housing, boeing gets 200 planes. Aerospace is a huge driver. A lot of coverage this week in ohio in utica, it is changing ways of life, no question about it. Yeah. When we come back, a wall street debut involving the second tech ipo of the year. Well talk about Silver Spring networks and bring you the opening trade. Trip adviser with a hot stock and a new milestone and well talk exclusively with the travel websites ceo. The retail sales number, the biggest beat above expectationses since december of 09. Squawk on the street live from post 9 when we return. [ male announcer ] ive seen incredible things. Otherworldly things. But there are some things ive never seen before. This ge jet engine can understand 5,000 data samples per second. Which is good for business. Because planes use less fuel, spend less time on the ground and more time in the air. Suddenly, faraway places dont seem so. Far away. As samsung as samsung is gearing up for tomorrows launch of the z10 smartphone. New figures show samsung spent 401 million in advertising for its mobile phones in the u. S. Last year topping rival apples 333 million and that is from cantor media apple outspent samsung in the prior year and that is where samsung gained the market share here. The expectations for the galaxy, or the galaxy are really high. Apples stock has done nothing lately. Nothing. Wouldnt it be nothing how many times have we seen the apple launch and what would happen if we got the big galaxy launch and then galaxy peaks and apple actually goes up kind of like a i never like to invest in irony. Irony is the stuff of short stories like when we used to read o, henry when we were younger and it would be fitting that apple is going down, down, down, and the worst is over. Now i want to buy apple. You take a look at samsungs chart in korea because thats the best, most traded, obviously, share to watch. Its been a double over the past year. Past 52 weeks, the thing is up more than 100 . As it should be. We all have known its a brand name in the u. S. And not necessarily for phones except over the last few years that has transformed itself to a certain extent relying now for the smartphone for the bulk of its profitability and a lot of tvs, refrigerators and chips and Everything Else and an Incredible Company that spends more on rnd and they have more products and theyre larger, but nonetheless, interesting to note its not Just Marketing where they ramped it up. I think its a fifth of korean gdp, is this one company . Its amazing and now theyre trying to sort of present themselves as cool and hip. They created whats called a flash mob in new york citys times square yesterday. Take a look i dont know if we have sound of this or not, but take a quick look. Thats not a flash mob, is it . Y mean, four guys dancing around . Apple and one guy. Thats true. Is it hip . I dont know. Is it cool . Does it matter . I think, their microwave apple is a toaster. This is how were looking at everything now. The old apple, on friday would come up with something that literally is mind blowing. The new apple fights shareholders to return capital. The old apple was the essence of they have a flash mob right there and it will be a genuine flash mob. The new apple is, i think, its just going to come and go, the samsung. Theres no response team. Theres no s. W. A. T. Team. Theres no apple look, we have mojo. They have nomo joe. Samsung is in the right place at the right time. They have tablets and smartphones with the bigger screens and apple doesnt offer that. Whether or not samsung will come out with something thats mindblowing and revolutionary in the future, thats still to be seen, but right now they have the right product for the time. Its not like they have a partner thats moronic and it gets a lot of information for the cyber securities which did more Cyber Security violation . No. China still. The 7 million fines, not much, but they did admit to it, google, that is. Im raising my price target. Every time i see that car in my neighborhood, im going to care. Privacy was dead long time ago. Thats just the old first amendment, and it was pretty narrow. Second amendment. Congress will make no wrong. When we come back, a double dose of kramer and well get a mad dash and the u. S. Will be Energy Independent by the end of this year. Were back in a minute. [ female announcer ] its time for the annual shareholders meeting. Therell be the usual presentations on research. And development. Some new members of the team will be introduced. The chairman emeritus will distribute his usual wisdom. And you . Well, youre the chief life officer. You just need the right professional to help you take charge. We dont let frequent heartburn come between us and what we love. So if youre one of them people who gets heartburn and then treats day after day. Block the acid with prilosec otc and dont get heartburn in the first place [ male announcer ] one pill each morning. 24 hours. Zero heartburn. And dont get heartburn in the first place all stations come over to mithis is for real this time. Step seven point two one two. Verify and lock. Command is locked. Five seconds. Three, two, one. Standing by for capture. The most Innovative Software on the planet. Dragon is captured. Is connecting todays leading companies to places beyond it. Siemens. Answers. Departure. Hertz gold plus rewards also offers ereturn our fastest way to return your car. Just note your mileage and zap youre outta there well email your receipt in a flash, too. Its just another way youll be traveling at the speed of hertz. We are on the verge of Energy Independence which is something every president s talked about since jimmy carter and nobodys been able to deliver. Ver