Stocks Climb to 14- Month High
ROBERTS: Straight ahead on the Most News in the Morning. Senator John McCain has been urging President Obama to take the advice of his generals and increase deployment. So what does he think of the president's new strategy? We'll find out when he joins us live in about 10 minutes.</s>CHETRY: Meanwhile, Stephanie Elam joins us right now. She's "Minding Your Business" this morning, and we're talking about the rally that keeps on rallying.</s>STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Yes, the rally that just keeps on going. And for all those people who didn't get into the markets all year because they're afraid, this may hurt a little bit. I know that, but I'm going to tell you anyway. The Dow is at a 14-month high. Look at that. Since March 9th when we hit our market lows for the cycle of 6,547, which sounds really creepy now. Right? Remember --</s>CHETRY: Look at the glass half full. If you stayed in, you stayed put. And you didn't do any...</s>ELAM: OK, yes. If you stayed in, you're feeling a lot better about things since we did see this rise of about 60 percent and getting us back to 10,471 that we hit yesterday. Yesterday, it just gets you wondering the Dow was up about one percent. So you take a look at these numbers and you could see that we've been on a tear since things turned around. The NASDAQ up 72 percent. S&P; 500 up 64 percent since that March 9th date. Things looking a lot better for people stuck around the house. Still, the high that we hit ever for the Dow was 14,000. A little bit over that. So we're getting closer. We're still not quite back there.</s>CHETRY: So you can still jump in.</s>ELAM: You can still jump on. Get some of that money back. But yes, it just shows, though, why it's hard to stay -- you know, stay on the sidelines for too long. And take a look at what happened. The reason why we saw these sort of number jump, Dubai. Remember last week we talked about all the things that were going on there. This credit issue. Whether or not this was going to have any exposure to the U.S. markets? Well, it looks like, no. Looks like this is a very Dubai eccentric (ph) event. And so because of that, the markets here are calming down. The way they're handling it has also changed. Also pending home sales, rising for nine months in a row. That's helping out. But let me show you gold. We're just joking around here about all the things that would have happened, and our producer Brian is saying, why the heck didn't you tell me a while ago so I could jump into the gold back then? Well, yes, if only I had a crystal ball. But look at this. Gold hitting a new high. Some places never been before. $1,199 an ounce. And trading above that today. That was yesterday. So we're looking at some pretty stellar moves here, but overall, today we're looking not for a big move but that's typical after we see a day like yesterday. So keep your eyes peeled but overall the year coming back. The worst behind us. Looking much better since March 9th of this year, when it was just a very low number.</s>CHETRY: It is amazing that we're still dealing with unemployment on one end, the bad news.</s>ROBERTS: Yes.</s>CHETRY: And home foreclosures but we're seeing a rally.</s>ELAM: And that...</s>ROBERTS: A couple of bad quarters still ahead on that front, too.</s>ELAM: And that is a concern. A lot of people worry that if -- you know, the market's doing one thing and it is a leading indicator. One of the first things we look to. But if the jobs numbers don't get better, then people worry about a double-dip recession, or we slip back into it. So there'll be a lot of eyes on that to see what happens with the jobs numbers.</s>ROBERTS: That put so much nervousness last week about Dubai, too.</s>ELAM: Exactly. And it just shows you just how skittish the market still it.</s>ROBERTS: Exactly. Stephanie Elam "Minding Your Business" this morning. Stephanie, thanks so much. A lot of people watched the president's speech last night. What did they think about it? We put the speech to dial test. Our Jim Acosta with that coming up next. Twenty-six minutes after the hour.