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The CEOs of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler met with President Bush today, and brought to him concerns ranging from health care cost and the alternative fuel to unfair trade. Overall, the executives said they were pleased by the talks.
"I would say it was a very dialogue, very open back and forth. I think it's fair to say in a number of areas, we sense the, I mean there was agreement and things we can continue to work on, we talked about the energy, we talked about some health care areas. But some areas where, frankly, we might see it differently. Exchange rate policy in particular, and our strong conviction that the Japanese yen is systematically undervalued which helps them to maintain significant trade balance surpluses in our industry."

But still the President didn't make any promises, although the executives took comfort in the fact that the president said we would work with Democrats, soon to be in control of Congress, on issues important to the auto industry. Richard?

En...Okay, so that story continues to develop. Also retail industry news today, what are you hearing?

Well shoppers were reluctant buyers last month. A government report shows retail sales fell 0.2 percent in October, largely due to a big drop in gas sales. Without that, sales rose 0.4 percent, but economists were expecting cheaper gas, if the consumers are in even more of a buying mood. Separately, Wal-Mart is trying to get people to spend too, promising shoppers (quote) "relentless holiday discounts". But that can spell trouble for other retailers who in many cases are forced to match Wal-Mart's prices to stay competitive. Target says Wal-Mart's spell is nothing out of the ordinary in plans to respond with price cuts of its own. By the way, Wal-Mart and Target posted better-than-expected quarterly earnings today. Richard, I don't mind when they discount their prices, it doesn't bother me.

I love the language "to relentless". How can that be pockets .. It's like "Oh you can't have enough." All right, you know and it looks like this is a sort of translate it into the market. Wow, what a day!

Yeah, indeed, with Wal-Mart, Target und Home Depot leading the way, the Dow Industrials is to another record high. Stocks staged a late-day rally after spending much of the session around the break even point. Those profit reports may have boosted up to most of us holiday spending, plus, ahead of the open, a report came out showing core whole sale inflation in October, took the sharpest tumble in more than 13 years. And that reinforce a feeling that the FED will keep interest rates steady at its next meeting. Checking the final numbers, the Dow industrials jumped 85 points to 20217, that's a new old time high. The NASDAQ composite added 1 percent.