stock stunner. the rally that has long term investors smiling from ear to ear... in today's cover story... meat merger. behind the latest mega deal in the food industry. plus... why more banks are popping up-where the crowds are... and... know your worth-- how many americans are making millions-- for the company... you're watching first business: financial news, analysis, and today's investment ideas. good morning! i'm angela miles. it's wednesday, may 28th. in today's first look: s&p's broken record. for the 2nd consecutive session the index rallied to uncharted territory closing at 1912. the dow gained 70 points, the nasdaq 51. gold had a washout losing $26 and oil tops $104. shares of cloud computing company workday are in the clouds. the stock rallied 5% on earnings that beat wall street estimates. s&p assigns tesla an unsolicited junk rating while also telling investors the electric car company has a stable outlook. and, data

rleased on malyasia flight 370 reveals the jet ran out of fuel. trader larry shover of sfg alternatives joins us on this wednesday morning. happy wednesday to you, larry. > > good morning. > > it's a good morning for investors-- another record run in the stock market. how long can this go? > > well as long as we continue to have good economic data like we've had last week and even yesterday and stable housing data which we saw last week and yesterday and continued good central bank commentary around the world, we can continue to ratchet higher-- it won't be linear, but we can continue to grind higher because we are

healing. > > what is putting the fear into the oil market? russia came out and said that those gas deliveries likely to continue through europe at least into june, but here we are at $104 per barrel. > > a lot of that was the ukraine. people were worried about what was going on there so we've had easing in geopolitical tensions yesterday's at least perceived, and also we realize that we have a little more stockpiled that we thought last week. it's amazing what can happen in seven days of trading. > > well apple's getting ready for its 7-for-1 stock split coming up next monday. the stock closed at the highest level in two years yesterday. would you be a buyer here or would you wait until later? > > i think i would be a buyer because a lot of times if you see these big stock splits, they don't do very well. i do like the company, just a great

amount of cash and there's continued rotation into big names out of small names, and i do believe in 2014 that's going to continue. so yes, i would buy the stock. > > thank you, larry. > > you're welcome. traders and investors are jumping on the apple bandwagon... the stock soared to $625 yesterday. shares are surging in front of the stock split and ahead of apple's worldwide developers conference monday. the financial times reports-- the tech giant will show off an iphone that controls home appliances, lights and security systems. back in january, google picked up smart thermostat and smoke detector company nest labs for $2.8 billion. nest was founded by former apple executives. chuck coppola is with me this morning with more of today's top stories... good morning chuck.. angie, it's round two for bank of america. the bank has re- submitted its capital plan to

the federal reserve. last month, b of a revealed it had miscalculated its capital ratios, forcing it to halt plans to raise its quarterly dividend and stock buyback. the federal reserve now has 75 days to evaluate the bank's balance sheet. shares of bank of america shot up 3% yesterday, closing above $15. bank of america reportedly will assist in the sale of the of l.a. clippers. the nba banned donald sterling for life from the league after he was caught on tape making racist comments. abc news reports: sterling signed the clippers franchise over to his wife shelly. and that bank of america has been hired to to help in the sale of the team. espn reports donald sterling has been charged with damaging the league with his comments and a hearing is set for june 3rd. the federal trade commission calls for more transparency from data brokers. the brokers gather massive amounts of

information about individual consumers -- everything from where they live to their health conditions and salary. ftc commissioners say the industry, operates largely in the dark. the ftc says most consumers are unawre that data brokers even exist, and is calling on congress to enact legislation to give consumers more control over personal data. big banks are increasingly losing top trading talent to hedge funds. a bloomberg study points to new wall street regulations that curb traders from making the kind of highly risky bets that hedge funds are still allowed. those risky bets can also be highly lucrative. citigroup and morgan stanely have both had high-profile traders leave for hedge funds. in today's cover story--- hillshire brands is involved in another acquisition just two weeks after it announced plans to buy pinnacle foods. but this time, hillshire is the one being taken over, by pilgrim's pride, a unit of brazilian comglomerate, jbs, the world's largest meat producer. its the latest in a flurry of m and a activity that many believe is far from over. hillshire brands is in the middle of a food fight. just two weeks after it announced plans to buy pinnacle foods for more than four

billion dollars in cash and stock, pilgrim's corp. made an unsolicitied all-cash bid to buy hillshire for more than six billion. "it's happening because..." pilgrims is owned mostly by brazilian meat processor jbs, which has been on a tear of acquisitions to overtake u.s. industry leader. tyson foods. jbs bought smithfield's beef- packing business in 2008 and a year later, pilgrims pride, a colorado-based chicken company. now, hillshire's "pork-folio" would complete an industry trifecta and buy its way further into the u.s. market.

"it wants access to the us for stability" reportedly, jbs is willing to pay 163-million dollars to interrupt hillshire's plans to diversify and take over pinnacle foods' more-than-two- dozen brands, including vlasic pickles and duncan hines cake mix. it is the latest in a wave of merger-mania is sweeping corporate board rooms. "it's a hot market right now and nothing's really undervalued now so that's why these mergers are happening." "pinnacle will have others waiting in the wings." hillshire's stock surged 22% on the news. as compared with falling more than three-percent may 12th-- when the deal for pinnacle was announced. pfizer is dropping is its bitter bid for astrazeneca. pfizer made a $117 billion dollar play for astrazenca.... or roughly $92.50 per share. azstrazenca wanted something closer to $125 million or $99 per share. the deal could have provided pzfizer a break on u.s. taxes since astrazeneca is located in the uk. analysts believe the bidding may not be over. sony's animated films are coming soon to netflix. the two companies have inked a deal that will give netflix the rights to sony titles including cloudy with a chance of meatballs 2 and the smurfs 2. currently starz and sony are locked in a deal, however because children's programming is less popular on starz, it gave sony permisson to find a new home for animated flicks.

music streaming service spotify is taking precautions following a hack attack. the service is automatically signing out all customers this week-- who will be asked to re-enter their information to login. android users are encouraged to upgrade to a new version of the app. and from the e-book beat... amazon has removed the pre- order button for j-k rowlings new detective story, "the silkworm" due out next month. reportedly, amazon is at odds with hatchette book authors and others over e-book prices. amazon-- which has cornered 50% of the market-- is said to be slowing deliveries on some books published by hatchet. retailer "books-a-million" is seeking to capitalize on the situation by assuring readers.."it" has plenty of hachette books ready to ship! most ceo's are making more

money than ever before.. a new study finds the average ceo is making a record 10 and a half million dollars, an increase of 8.8% from just two years ago. it is the first time median pay packages hit eight figures.. the news comes as employee protests make headlines as they fight for higher wages. one economist says the big pay package trend trend started during the economic recovery. "there is kind of a chicken and egg problem where to attract the top ceos they need to offer competitive pay packages and if a ceo at a company gets paid more... than another ceo has to get paid more and it just keeps going back and forth and building upon itself." kevin paul scott, of management consultant firm-- addo worldwide believes most ceos are actually underpaid. "as long as individuals see that these executives are worth the money, they're being paid, as long as they're generating more value than what they're being paid, i think we are going

to continue to see this disparity. it's going to take something drastic to change that." the study by the associated press-- attributes momentum in the stock market is one of the biggest factors pumping up ceo paychecks. the record rally yesterday-- was sparked in part by a modest jump in durable goods orders to .8% in april. much of the strength came from military orders for aircraft. although, consumer spending is showing signs of picking up and analysts predict growth in the spring quarter could rise as high as 4%. home prices continue to the build, but a slower pace. the s&p - case shiller price index reading shows.. home prices rose .2% in the first quarter from the 4th quarter. economists believe falling mortgage rates could stimulate the sector. the 30 year rate recently dipped to 4.14% and the 15 year to 3.25%. the lowest levels since october. a highly anticipted report says it will take two-billion dollars to rid detroit of blight. the city's task force reported more than 84-thousand blighted structures--about half of them in need of demolition. the report notes that help is coming from many sources, and that detroit could be in better shape within five years. the honda accord is still number one in the eyes of car theives! lojack is out with its annual list of the 10 most stolen vehicles... for the fifth year in row-- the accord takes the top honor-- followed by: honda civic, toyota camry, toyota corolla, chevrolet silverado, acura integra,

cadillac escalade, ford f-350, nissan altima and chevy tahoe. auto parts seller autozone is spinning out double digit earnings growth -- again! for 31-consecutive quarters now, autozone has reported an uptick in profits. net sales for the quarter were 2.3 billion dollars--up 6.2%. this is one of the rare cases where the nasty winter weather was beneficial to a retailer as cars required more maintenance. however, the stock slid $20 in trading. the hot-button topics of air pollution and car emissions are merging in china.. chinese officials are attempting to curb pollution by pulling more than 5 million ageing vehicles off the roads this year, a global account of the greenest cars was just released. hyundai- kia just unseated honda . and ford had the cleanest cars coming from america..

calling it the most effective way to reduce smoking, the world health organization wants a tax hike on tobacco. the group says a 50% increase would lead to 49-million fewer smokers and 11-million fewer deaths in the next three years. coming up... is this the rally that's too good for even the most bearish traders to resist? pop up playbook... why banks are having a hard time committing to one location... and....work worth...shocking statistics about the real value of every employee to corporate america... that's after the break!

you may be suprised to learn that the amount of money employees generate for best buy is $300,000- that's per

employee-- at apple revenue per employee is $2.19 milllion. they're making a lot of money for that company! joining us now is matt krantz a markets reporter with usa today-- he's skyping with us. good morning to you, and can you give us an idea based on your report how many companies are out there with employees that are turning up revenue that tops $1 million? > > did you generate a million dollars for your employer this pass quarter? if not you better get working because there's a number of companies in fact 1..2..3..4..5..6..7..8..9... that have done just that. these companies have generated $1 million in revenue during the first quarter and that's an average across their workforce. > > are there many that bring in more than $1 million per employee? > > there's a number of them, the number one generator is valero energy-- it's a refinery-- an oil refinery. this company each employee generated $3.4 million in revenue. that is an astounding number and it's the tops among any company in the s&p 500.

> > what's the correlation between employee productivity-- making all this money for companies and the stock prices? > > that's a good question. it depends on the industry. so this group of companies are mainly energy companies valero, phillips and eog resources. these companies rely on equipment and machinery to pull very pricey materials out of the ground. so when energy companies do well, these companies do well so that's the correlation of the industry which also has productivity correspondence to it. > > were you able to detect from the reporting whether these companies could pay higher wages? > > you know wages and productivity are two very different things. these are companies that are normally

investing heavily in technology. these are companies that are using investment to replace workers as a result of workers generate more revenue. so in a way, there may be a negative correlation. i haven't really looked at that. it's a good question, but these are companies that are trying to use technology to replace what's called the human capital. so maybe there is an inverse relationship there, but that would be a study for another day. > > thanks, matt. we'll have you back. > > thank you very much. still to come: a former bear is coming out of hibernation as the stock market wakes up --that's in chart talk! and... why a 20 by eight foot steel box is becoming a hot piece of real estate ... that's next with bill moller.

brick & mortar. the symbols of permanence, stability, strength - what every business wants to be known for. but now we're living in this online age and businesses now want to be seen as nimble and creative. and so we have created sort of the

temporary pop up store. even banks now are looking at this. banks-- the epitome of brick & mortar has created a pop up branch. becky yerak is a business reporter for the chicago tribune. explain this strategy, becky. > > hi bill. well more and more people-- roughly a third of people are doing most of their transactions digitally. online or on their phone but still the vast majority of people still like to go to a bank branch. something that's permanent and this kind of combines the best of both worlds. > > now this is a pnc bank which is a pretty large player in the banking world. > > pnc is one of the biggest banks in the country and they tried this in atlanta, they said we got just as many accounts out of this pop-up, temporary branch as we did one of our brick and mortar branches-- so we're going to try that here in chicago as well, and i've talked to the manufacturer of these

temporary branches and they said that they're talking to other banks too. > > so the advantage is you still have a face-to-face experience for the banking customer, but it's a much lower cost way of developing that. > > yes they still have people on-site to open accounts for you, to tell you about the latest technology-- how you can sign up for global banking, but they're temporary-- so they're very cheap, they're about the size of a room. after a few months they're going to pick it up and take it somewhere else. > > that's not a permanent relationship that you're building with your teller at a bank branch that isn't going to be there that long. > > but the pnc has a lot of branches for example in chicago, they have about 100-- they're a big national banks so they have branches in a lot of cities particularly in the midwest, and again they're going to get these people and a lot of them are going to do online or mobile banking.

> > mobile banking but they're also mobile banks being explored too. > > yes that's another venue that these banks are looking at, you don't want to invest in a full-blown site-- there's these pop up branches but there's also mobile branches which are basically food trucks for banks. > > changing world... becky yerak from the chicago tribune, thanks so much. > > thanks bill. thanks bill-- still to come: should investors hoping to bank some money on this latest rally stay in or get out now? a trader checks the charts-- next.

it's hard not to be a believer in this rally. dan deming of stutland volatility group joins us now. dan, you have been one of my more bearish traders on the show. how are you feeling about the market now? > > well you know it's pretty tough to fight, angie. like you said, there's been some significant-- from a technical standpoint some significant trends here now developing where you saw both the nasdaq and the russell go back over the 200 day moving averages basically gapping up above that 200 day moving average so pretty significant short-term momentum there. so short-term it looks like the market is looking to push higher.

> > but my sense is here, dan, we've had a big washout of these big momentum players like apple and facebook, twitter they all tumbled, the russell came into bear territory... now we're moving back up, this has been a beautiful trade-- maybe not so great for investors to watch, but i'm thinking this is good money that could happen here. > > you've got a nice reversal, you had the s&p kind of hang in there pretty well and also if you look at the dow transportation another area of significant strength... so you had some of those major averages hanging in or close to their all-time highs even though you saw the secondary market come under some pretty significant selling pressure and rotation basically, but i guess you know you had some second- guessing going on or maybe you've got some bottom picking if you look at a couple of those charts it does look like there was a double bottom put in as

well-- so now back above the 200 day moving average, i think you've got some momentum players jumping back in the market. > > what about the volatility index? what's that telling traders? > > well its low and it's really low based on the fact that these one off events haven't materialized. again we made it through another weekend where a lot of people, myself included, were looking at what was going on in ukraine and thought that would have a little more of an impact-- basically very little impact at all and according to the market, everything went according to plan and that's why i think you saw the market up significantly to start the day. so the vol is under pressure right now, but if you look at realized volatility, again what the market actually does on a day-to-day basis, it's even lower. so i think that's another reason why you're seeing the vix under pressure and the market continues to perform well here. > > thanks dan. it was a pleasure. > > thanks angie. that's a wrap for today... coming up tomorrow-- will angelina jolie's new big budget film maleficent play a role in leading disney to a $1 billion win? our film critic will be here to track the numbers... we hope you will join us. from all of us at first business. thank you for watching!

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