Dow's 2nd best day ever

The Dow rallied as much as 906 points during Tuesday's session, as investors dove back into stocks

A lot of Americans are a lot richer today as Shawn Shore admits at a late afternoon rally on Wall Street. Let’s head over to New York and CNN senior business correspondent Ali Velshi

Ali you and I’ve talked about this in the past week. We are really doubt obsess these days but today it was a good thing to be obsessed.

Well, yeah, I mean, the thing is it’s not a particular underlining reason to this. If I would take all the economy news we had today, Nicole, I’m trying to make sense of it, I wouldn’t have a the second biggest point gain we’ve ever seen in the Dow and one of the biggest percentage gains we’ve seen too. That’s just not where the evidence lies. What this tells you is that this market is in a trading range. There are people, professional investors who maybe manage your, you know the mutual funds as you’re holding your 41K who think the stocks are good buy right now. They are just to bargain. Despite everything else is going on, there are other people who just want to get out of this market and there are the ones who are selling the stocks. If you look at how a market recovers after a major downturn like we’ve seen. If we are in a recovery mode, it is long and it is rocky. And that’s what you’re seeing. You’re seeing one of these big gains today. You’re just like you see sellout what remind you the fact cut rate tomorrow; there are meeting right now, we are likely to see a reading of GDP which’s just the broadest measure of our economy on Thursday; there comes a negative for the first time this year, so it’s not a great news story. It just happens we people seeing an opportunity to buy stocks because they’re on sale.

But there are other indicators as well. Some of the smaller indexes all show up, the dollar’s up as well. How do you feel about all that? Put it all together.

Oil prices are down. That always helps some. We’ve got oil prices as close as to 60 dollars and now in $65. When these things are all part and partial of what we see as a slowing economy. Oil prices are down because we see a weak economy. So here’s how it usually works. The market starts to recover, sort of earlier on in a recessionary cycle, but we still could see home prices going down. We’re still unlikely to see jobs are being lost. It’s one little piece of good news around and that is home prices. We’ve seed new and existing home prices obviously dropping. Existing homes are down about 9 per cent compared to last year. But you know what, because mortgage prices are still low we’ve actually seen people starting to get into that market. People are starting to buy because they can still get a mortgage at a low rate, Nicole so that’s …you that’s where we are..

Those figures don’t account for the bailout; those housing figures are kind of earlier on. This was before the bailout

Uh, there are, yeah, there are figures for last month. That’s right. But you see the average person who’s looking to buy a home because they have a price in mind as to what they can afford. Maybe they’ve got good credit and access to a mortgage. The bailout doesn’t really, you know, maybe didn’t motivate them one way or the other. This is people actually doing things that matter to them and that is buying out because they think it’s affordable and they can get a mortgage. In the end, our economy is not about sciences; it’s about how people feel about it. If somebody thinks it’s a good time to get involve in buying a house and then get a loan. That’s what you need

Consumer confidence’s down though

Worst we’ve ever seen (so that’s not..)…reeling for consumer confidence is the worst since they started reporting it in 1997 which is exactly right back-forth circle to the beginning of this conversation. If I were just reading the data, we wouldn’t have thought we would’ve had a two- point gain on the Dow. Never like you know, a 800-point gain. So that’s part of the issue. Consumers confidence tells you how people are gonna spend their money over the course of the next several months. But remember home prices became unaffordable for people in America and one the thing is happening is home prices are coming down and people are thinking they can afford a home. (So) So that’s a solver lighting on a very dragon cloud.

Take a lot of sole with all of these. Don’t look at today as being the only indicator (correct, tha’t exactly right) Do we have to step back and look at we have a lot of indicators the month, today we have the year today we have 52 weeks today. (right) Those are all down and then down and the more down if you look at it

Right right. That’s exactly right. Here what we are looking at is the fact that if our week at a point in this economy where things are low enough that people start to gain confidence. It’s take, it’s like a neighborhood. Our price is low enough that companies and businesses are coming in and build it up and then all of a sudden, you get stadiums and it becomes a nice place to live. That are we there in the economy? Some people say it’s too early to tell; others are just saying I wanna get in early because I see there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. But this is all of our behavior together. Fundamentally we are still negative about where the things are going and we are heading to the most important season of the year for retailers and for shopping. .Not very hopeful So by no means are we out of the worst and / a big gain like this in the Dow lead you to believe that we are.

Yeah the Dow in quite convenient as big ball a big number there (right) but look at a lot of other staff. As we diversify our money we should also diversify indicators as you look at it

Absolutely right

Thanks so much Ali

All right, Nicole.