For quarter after quarter, period after period, and the problem is the underlying competitiveness of the u. S. These data. This slow recovery is really a symptom of a deeper, underlying problem, and we have to get onto that problem or were going to have these weak numbers for many years to come. Susie and well have more with Michael Porter on innovation on monday. U. S. Markets are closed for the Martin Luther king, jr. , holiday, so were looking at American Innovation and competitiveness. Join us for this n. B. R. Special edition u. S. Innovation. Tom a rebound in the Housing Market and a multitude of new models may help truck sales to their best year since the financial crisis. New trucks unveiled at the north American International auto show in detroit this week arent just more powerful, theyre also more fuel efficient and loaded with new technology. Ruben ramirez reports. Reporter if 2012 was the year of the fuel efficient green car, 2013 is shaping up to be the year of the truck. The big three gm, ford and chrysler all are out with new 2013 models or concept pickups that will start hitting showrooms over the next few years. The three are fierce competitors in the fullsize pickup segment where Profit Margins are larger compared to cars. Jeffries auto analyst Peter Nesvold says automakers make 12,000 to 15,000 in profit for each fullsize truck they sell. To put that into perspective, small cars might be anywhere from 2,000 to maybe 4,000. So when you get that shift towards trucks, thats quite powerful to earnings. Reporter g. M. Has two new models, the Chevy Silverado and g. M. C. Sierra. The truck margins are still certainly strong for us; they continue to be for the entire industry. And with this new truck, thatll be no different, but its still a great value for the customer. Reporter even with the higher margins, buyers may find some deals as truck makers work to move older inventory off their lots. Pickup trucks made up about 11 of the u. S. Market last year, well below the historical averages. The ford f150 has been the best selling truck in the category for decades. Ford is looking to maintain that dominate position with its new atlas concept, though it likely wont hit showrooms till late 2014. Were showing off this concept to show you the design direction that we are going in the future, and also the technological direction with a lot of new innovations on this truck. Reporter also likely to help truck sales a strengthening Housing Market as contractors and builders need to haul materials. But the big question remains, will the interest in new models keep consumers from opening their pocketbooks and buying older models . Ruben ramirez, n. B. R. , new york. Susie while pickup truck sales are expected to dominate the u. S. Vehicle market this year, theres another category getting a lot of attention in detroit this week luxury cars. And tomorrow, from a sleek new corvette to bentleys 300,000 convertible, we get the latest on the market for highend wheels. Tom as ruben mentioned, one of the reasons automakers are optimistic this year is the pickup in pickup truck sales. Thats just another indication the Housing Market continues to rebuild. Another sign came from the nations third biggest home builder. In the Fourth Quarter last year, lennar earned more than three times what it earned a year earlier, easily beating wall street estimates. According to the builder, it saw solid profitability in all our business segments. Richard dekaser is housing economist at wells fargo. He joins us from our washington, d. C. Bureau. Richard, very optmistic outlook when it comes to housing. Can it continue this pace through recovery this year . I think so. If you look at the availability of houses on the market today, were actually looking at record lean levels. New homes have never been as lean as they are now. Were going back decades. The demand side of the market is coming back quite nicely. There is a lot of people doubling up, staying with their parents, who are now moving out. There is growing household formation, complimenting this lean supply. That tells me this has legs. Were not talking about a brief movement, but something that is likely to be sustained for many years to come. Tom but where are the legs located . In other words, not all Housing Markets are created equal. Fitch Credit Ratings put out this note, quote,although home prices have stabilized and started to improve, we believe that home price appreciation will tend to be relatively narrow focused. Where . Well, there is different parts of this . If were talking about housing demand, actually increased sales, that is occurring across the board. But Building Activity is being limited to certain markets, where we have lean conditions that i just described, which are true for the nation. But we do have gluts in some parts, mostly in the south and in the west. Prices, however, are going up across the board. Even the socalled sand states, the west and the south, where we saw prices take especially huge hits are showing especially large rebounds at this point in time. The price rebound is across the board, and Construction Activity a little more mixed. Tom we learned a few weeks ago that the Federal Reserve has begun an internal debate about pulling the bond strategy, by the end of this year. That has helped push down those Mortgage Rates to record lows. What could be the impact . It will hurt. Affordability today is extraordinary. That is to say, the amount of a typical familys income required to buy the typical home is extraordinarily low. If you begin to move Interest Rates up a point, or even two, youre simply moving the Housing Market back towards more normal conditions, rather than overvalued or highly priced conditions. So it would hurt, but it is not sufficient to derail this recovery. Tom finally, what about that shadow inventory . You talk about that inventory being low, and still lots of builtup foreclosures and short sales out there . Absolutely. There is still excess supply in parts of the market, foreclosures and the like, and while new homes are scarce, there are still a bunch of existing Properties Come to market. That, however, has come down. We were talking 2. 5 million potential units a year ago, that is down to 2 million. I would emphasize that offsetting that is latent demand, all of these people doubling up are beginning to move back into the market. And it is giving them the wherewithal to buy homes of their own. Tom Richard Dekaser with us in washington with wells fargo. Thanks, rich. My pleasure. Susie after weeks of speculation, facebook is adding a new search feature to its social media service. Its called graph search, and its designed to help users sort through content on the site. But is this a gamechanger for the company . Erika miller reports. Reporter it was facebooks first major press event since its initial Public Offering flopped in may. Before the announcement, there was speculation facebook could unveil a smartphone or a web search engine, so a social search feature came as something of a letdown. The tool will help users search their social network for information that has already been shared with them. For example, a Facebook User taking a trip to london might ask for restaurants in london my friends have been to. One feature touted by facebook is that the request can be in plain english. I like the idea of being able to quickly parse my friends via groups. Thats pretty cool. So, if i have a common interest whether its a tv show, food, an area that im interested in visiting thats very nice to be able to very quickly parse that out. Reporter as part of this strategy, facebook is partnering with Microsofts Bing internet search engine, and if facebook cant find results in your network, it will switch to bing to search the entire web. The news helped push up shares of microsoft up more than a percent today. Google shares also rose on relief that facebook is not challenging it headon. As for facebook, its stock is still below its 38 i. P. O. Price, but investors have big hopes for the companys Fourth Quarter earnings, which comes out in two weeks. So the big question is whether this new tool will significantly boost revenues. This is something people have talked about as one of its big potentials for a long, long time now. This immediate product we saw today wasnt the game changer, but, over multiple years, this could turn into real game changer for facebook. Reporter if you are on facebook and you want to check out the new feature, you cant. The tool is still in its testing phase, and the Company Plans to roll it out slowly. Erika miller, n. B. R. , new york. Susie joining us now with more on todays facebook announcement scott kessler, head of Technology Research at s p capital i. Q. Susie so, scott, what is your take on all of this . Facebook stock down 3 . You know, is this not a game changer for the company . Well, susie, we dont look it as a gamechanger, at least right now. Facebook made it pretty clear that, look, were in the early innings of their search initiative. And today, obviously, they announced graph search. Just in a soft, kind of beta launch, in a very limited fashion in terms of geography and in terms of categories. Over the longer term, this could have some material Financial Impact for facebook and its investors. Susie all right, so does it concern you that there is not a real hardcore product here, that it is a test, and there was no announcement of a mobile platform, given that so many facebook members use facebook on their cell phones . Yeah, i think those are fair points. Look, i think what most people probably took away from todays announcement is that it didnt live up to the expectations of a lot of folks. And thats not necessarily facebooks doing. They essentially put out an invitation, referred to something they were building, and left the rest to peoples imagination. Unfortunately, we think that folks might have gotten carried away in terms of what they anticipated from the company and when their expectations werent met, the stock fell today. Susie another stock that fell today was yelp. It was down sharply. Do you think that this facebook announcement is a threat to yelp, or was there overreaction. We heard from ericas package, that microsoft was up on the news and so was google. If we dont cover yelp with a recommendation with our research, but if you think about the implications of what facebook is talking about, which is essentially tapping into not just collective wisdom, but the collective wisdom of your friends on facebook, there is the potential that instead of potentially going to yelp for information about restaurants, for example, maybe you just conduct searches based on restaurants thatyear that your friends may have visited or liked. There is a potential benefit of that. One of the things that we wonder about is whether or not those searches and those results will have the kind of scale benefits that will provide really authentic and valuable information to users. At least over the near term. Susie scott, i want to ask you about another company you following, switching gears, apple. As you saw, it closed below 500, 485, and a lot of investors are wondering what do they do with it. What is your view, buy, sell, or hold . We have a strong buy recommendation on apple. Clearly that 500 price has been a line of demarcation and the fact it was broken today is somewhat discouraging. But the reality is, look at s p capital i. Q. , we fundamental equity analysts. We see apple as a very good company, and a compelling buying opportunity right here. Especially ahead of their q1 earnings for december quarter. We think the company did very well over the Holiday Shopping season, and well prove that out when they report results. And not just the fundamentals being solid and not just the evaluation being very attractive, but 122 billion in cash and investments. We expect more dividends, and more buybacks from apple, helping the shareholder. Susie very interesting points. Scott, do you have any disclosures about apple or any other, facebook, that we discussed . Suffice it to say that were not allowed at s p capital to own any of the stocks that we cover, nor can anyone in our households. Susie fair enough. Scott kessler at s p capital and i. Q. Tom, some interesting news from the walmart c. E. O. Today. He said that walmart will hire every veteran who wants a job, who has come off the active duty over the last 12 months. He said walmart will hire more than 100,000 vets over the next five years, as long as they have an honorable discharge. And the effort officially begins on memorial day, may 27th. Tom it is a heck of a promise and pledge, and comes at an interesting time for americans vets, as were drawing down the troops in afghanistan, due to complete that by the end of next year. And also walmart not only talking about hiring veterans, but talking about buying 50 billion more products made in the u. S. , a big bet on american inginuity there. Lots of focus today in our market focus. Here is susie. The major stock indices finished mixed for the second session in a row, with apple again weighing on the technology sector. The stronger december retail sales figures and low inflation didnt lead to any early stock buying. After spending much of the session in the red, the s p 500 was able to climb into positive territory in the final hour of trading, finishing up a fraction but enough to be a fiveyear high. Volume picked up with 602 million shares on the big board. Over 1. 8 billion traded on the nasdaq. With a decent retail sales in december, the Consumer Discretionary sector led the gains, up 0. 7 . Telecommunications saw the heaviest selling, falling 0. 9 . Apple stock saw a second day of selling on heavier volume. Several wall street analysts were out with encouraging comments after yesterdays worries over the Company Reportedly cutting orders for some iphone 5 components. The stock closed below 500 per share for the First Time Since last february. At least two analysts said concerns about Cutting Supply orders are misplaced, and the reduction may have more to do with better Manufacturing Processes or the timing of supply orders. The three big National Wireless carriers who sell iphones also saw a second day of selling. Verizons 1. 5 drop today takes shares down to twomonth lows. Sprint was off 1. 2 . A. T. T. Fell 0. 8 . One bright spot in technology was dell. The computer maker is talking with two private equity firms about going private. The stock built on yesterdays gains, adding another 7. 2 , climbing to its highest price since midmay. Volume was huge, with more than 150 million shares trading. Talk of a possible buyout comes as the stock is down 17 in the past year even with the rally of the past two days. Concerns have been building about dells traditional computer business under pressure by competition from smartphones and tablets. As a group, Retail Stocks were stronger thanks to the encouraging retail sales data from last month. The S P Retail Exchange traded fund rallied 2. 1 , closing over 64 per share for the First Time Since september. Among the leaders, Dollar Generals 3. 8 rally, big lots 3. 6 increase, and j. C. Penney up 3. 4 . These three are among the worst performing Retail Stocks over the past six months. Two other specialty retailers in focus today. Young adult Apparel Store express jumped 23. 8 after the Company Raised its Financial Guidance thanks to a stronger thanexpected holiday season. And then lululemon, best known for its yoga clothing, fell 3. 9 on heavy volume. It raised its financial outlook, but only brought it up to what wall street was already expecting. In other words, the new prediction is not better than expected. A noteworthy moment in Precious Metals today with platinum regaining its traditional lead over gold. For the first time in ten months, platinum trades at a higher price than gold. Both rallied today. Platinum settled at a three month high after the largest producer said it would cut production at mines in south africa. Three of the five most actively traded Exchange Traded products were higher. The emerging markets and nasdaq 100 tracking funds were the losers of the group. And thats tonights market focus. Susie Fitch Ratings warned it could downgrade the Credit Rating of the United States if lawmakers fail to raise the debt ceiling in a timely manner. The Ratings Agency said any delay in action could trigger a prompt review and potential downgrade of the u. S. aaa Credit Rating. The treasury believes the u. S. Will hit the socalled debt ceiling late next month. Tom 2012 was one for the weather record books. It was the ninth hottest year on earth, based on records going back to 1880, according to nasa. The trend of rising temperatures always brings up a debate over Climate Change, but its been four years since congress tried to tackle the issue. Darren gersh reports from washington. Rep