Welcome to Seeking Alpha's Wall Street Lunch, our afternoon update on today's market action, news and analysis.

Good afternoon. Today is Tuesday, March 19th I'm your host Kim Khan. Our top story so far.

I'm Luke Skywalker and I'm here to rescue Bob Eager.

It looks like the Disney CEO can count on help from the Rebel Alliance. Star Wars creator George Lucas

is backing Iger in the proxy battle between the company and activist investor, Trion Fund Management.

Lucas, who is Disney's largest individual shareholder with 37.1 million shares after selling Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012, told

C NBC that he has full faith and confidence in Disney and Iger's track record of driving long-term value.

Lucas said he voted all of his shares in favor of Disney's slate of directors and urges

other shareholders to do the same.

The Battle of the Death Star, or rather the

shareholders meeting, will take place on April 3rd. Disney and Trion did not

immediately respond to a request for comment from seeking Alpha. A a little trivia for fellow Star Wars nerds,

in the 2008 video game The Force Unleashed,

there was a droid named proxy.

In today's trading, the major averages are mixed with the Dow higher

but the NASDAQ lower.

Global rates are lower as traders assess the implications of the Bank of Japan

raising interest rates for the first time in 17 years.

Looking to the economy, February housing starts jumped 10.7% month on month to an annual

rate of 1.521 million, well ahead of the 1.449 million expected and the upwardly revised 1.374 million in January.

Single-family housing starts came at at a rate of 1.129 million up 11.6% from the

revised January figure of 1.02 million.

...