Today's Headlines

- Commodities may be at the start of a “protracted bear market” because speculation by investors has pushed prices too high, Merrill Lynch said. Record speculation has pushed prices 60% higher than they should be, given supply and demand levels, said Richard Bernstein, Merrill’s chief investment strategist in NY in an Oct. 3 report.
- US and British universities dominate in the 2006 list of the world’s top higher-education establishments compiled by the Times Higher Education Supplement.
- OPEC will hold an emergency meeting Oct. 18 and 19 at its headquarters in Vienna to discuss an oil production cut of 1 million barrels a day.
- Treasuries are declining today, pushing two-year yields up from the lowest since February, after the Fed’s Kohn said he was worried bout inflation and jobless claims were below estimates.
- EnCana Corp.(ECA), the largest holder of properties in Canada’s oil sands, will form a joint venture with ConocoPhillips(COP) that will spend more than $10 billion to expand output from the deposits eightfold.
- Starbucks Corp.(SBUX) said it plans to more than triple its number of stores to 40,000, with half located in the US and half overseas.
- US retailers’ September sales rose 3.4%, more than analysts anticipated as lower gas prices gave shoppers extra money to spend. Excluding Wal-Mart(WMT), retail sales soared 6.0%.

Wall Street Journal:
- NYSE Group’s(NYX) expanded electronic trading will increase the speed of trades and endanger the jobs of floor traders.
- PepsiCo(PEP) has started a program to reduce obesity by encouraging inner-city African-Americans and Latinos in Chicago to eat healthier snacks.
- Microsoft(MSFT) is about to put its remodeled Office 2007 software on the market.
- Morgan Stanley(MS) is accelerating acquisition talks with hedge-fund operator FrontPoint Partners LLC which may lead to the bank paying $300 million or more.
- RealNetworks’(RNWK) Sansa Rhapsody portable music player is inferior to Apple Computer’s(AAPL) iPod Nano because much of it is loaded with music that users might not want, Walter Mossberg wrote.
- The collapse last month of Amaranth Advisors LLC, a US hedge-fund firm, after bad bets on natural gas prices, illustrates global markets’ capacity to survive massive failures.
- Allergan(AGN), which makes the Botox anti-wrinkle treatment, will step up the advertising for its aesthetic medical products, saying the field could grow 25% per year.

NY Times:
- The US Army and Marines may change strategy in Iraq to emphasize protection of civilians and basic services instead of aggressive raids.
- Returns for investments in hedge funds have trailed the stock market this year as volatile bond and energy markets have hurt some of the more successful firms.
- New York City officials are considering a plan to hire private group to help run the city’s schools.

CNBC:
- Pequot Capital Management, a $7 billion hedge fund, won’t face charges from the SEC in an insider-trading probe.

Financial Times:
- Sara Lee Corp.(SLE) may be a good candidate for a private-equity buyout because of its steady cash flow.
- The moves by US and European banks such as UBS AG, Bank of America(BAC) and Royal Bank of Scotland to buy into Chinese banks has paid off so far as an investment.

Focus-Money:
- Nike(NKE) may try to buy Puma AG to better compete with rival Adidas AG.

Moskovsky Komsomolets:
- The number of Russians that sued their government in the European Court of Human Rights surged by a third in the nine months through September compared with a year earlier.