Today's Headlines

Bloomberg:

- European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet said the euro wasn’t created to replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency or to contest the U.S. currency’s position, France’s Le Monde newspaper reported, citing an interview. “The euro wasn’t created to compete with the dollar or to be a substitute to the dollar as a reserve currency,” Le Monde quoted Trichet as saying. “The ECB isn’t campaigning for the international use of the euro.”

- Mead Johnson Nutrition Co.(MJN), the maker of Enfamil baby formula, may draw takeover bids from Groupe Danone SA, Nestle SA or H.J. Heinz Co. after its spinoff from Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., analysts said.

- Russia is unlikely to change the structure of its reserves from dollars and euros even as currencies including the yuan gain more importance in regional trade, VTB Group Chief Executive Officer Andrei Kostin said. “Inevitably with the growth and importance of other economies like China or other BRIC countries’ economies, the role of their currencies should be more important,” said Kostin, who heads Russia’s second-biggest bank, in an interview yesterday in Singapore. “We think that the yuan and the ruble can be currencies in which we conduct bilateral trade. But as a reserve currency, I think the central bank is still dividing mainly between the dollar and the euro.”

Wall Street Journal:

- If an investor had just $1 to give to a private-equity firm to invest, he probably would be better off looking outside many of the industry's brand names, according to the results of a long-running academic study into the industry's performance.

- Most of the nation's recreational-vehicle makers, whose factories are clustered in this corner of Indiana, crashed in the recession. But not Thor Industries Inc., owner of Four Winds, Airstream, Dutchmen and seven other units that sell nearly 50 RV brands in all. After months of slashing jobs and closing factories, Thor is hiring again, and it expects to open two new factories here before the end of the year. "The nadir in this industry is definitely behind us," says Richard Riegel, chief operating officer of Thor, the nation's biggest RV maker by sales.

- German Chancellor Angela Merkel Tuesday defended her new center-right government's planned tax cuts, saying they are needed to get the country out of the worst economic crisis in sixty years. Speaking at a conference organized by German magazines, Merkel said there is no alternative to the government's growth promotion plans, which include tax reliefs in 2010 and tax cuts from 2011 and amount to a total of EUR24 billion in relief.

- China National Petroleum Corp. will supply the bulk of equipment for the $15 billion redevelopment of the Rumaila field in Iraq, an executive at its partner, BP PLC (BP), said Tuesday. "CNPC will deliver pipes, rigs, valves and other equipment for the Rumaila redevelopment at highly competitive rates, Jean-Baptists Renard, BP's head of the Europe and Southern Africa regions, said at the World NOC Downstream conference in London. The BP-CNPC consortium promised to pump $15 billion in investment to raise production at Rumaila from its current 1 million barrels a day to 2.85 million. BP will hold a 38% stake in the venture, while CNPC will own 37%. Iraq's Southern Oil Company will hold the remaining 25%.

CNBC:

- The US economy and stock market are set to grow at a comparatively robust clip in the coming years—contrary to the gloomy forecasts from most economists, according to the global investment arm of ING Group.

MarketWatch.com

- Here is today's investment pop quiz: Which stock market timing indicator is more bullish today than at any other time since the early 1990s? You might think that no such indicator could possibly exist, since the stock market's rally over the last eight months has far overshot almost everyone's expectations -- including another 136 points in Monday's trading alone for the Dow Jones Industrial Average (INDU). But there is at least one apparent answer to this pop quiz question: U.S. equity funds' cash levels.

- Asset prices in U.S. financial markets aren't obviously out of line with fundamentals, and there's no reason for the Federal Reserve to raise rates in an attempt to prick a bubble that some say is building in equity and commodity markets, a top Fed official said Monday.

IBTimes:

- US chain store sales in the week ending 14 November were 0.1% down on the previous week but 2.4% higher than at the corresponding stage last year. The latest index from the International Council of Shopping Centers and Goldman Sachs stands at 590.2 compared with 490.9 in the week ending 7 November. ICSC Research says same store sales in November could be up by 5-8%.

The Business Insider:

- How The Government Punishes You For Being Financially Responsible.

- America’s Growing Fuel Glut Could Torpedo Oil Prices.

Transparency International:

- Country Corruption Perceptions Index 2009. (Table)

Rassmussen:

- The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 27% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-nine percent (39%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -12 (see trends).

- Fifty-one percent (51%) of U.S. voters oppose the Obama administration’s decision to try the confessed chief planner of the 9/11 attacks and other suspected terrorists in a civilian court in New York City. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 29% of voters favor the president’s decision not to try the suspects by military tribunal at the Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba where they are now imprisoned.

Advisor Perspectives:

- Ned Davis: The Cyclical Bull Rally is Not Over.

CommodityOnline:

- Some analysts insist: gold is clearly overbought. For almost ten years - from 1995 to 2005 - gold has been trading between $250 and $420 per troy ounce. The rally began only in 2005. Moreover, the subsequent oil rally ended as the financial crisis reached its apogee in September 2008. The gold bubble lived through that period, falling to is local minimum of $680 in October, 08. Even Kitco analyst Jon Nadler has repeatedly said gold is setting record prices amid “some of the poorest fundamentals I’ve seen in the market for a long time.” Nadler has been top-calling gold for years. He prefers to view gold as a momentum-driven commodity like any other, as opposed to a global currency substitute that is not consumed like a commodity. He suspects the recent rise has been driven by large hedge funds and institutional investors making momentum-driven trades. As for fears of financial collapse, “The sky did actually fall last year — and it was good for $1,035 gold,” says Nadler. “But that’s about where the worst ends.” So the short-term outlook is not promising.

Reuters:

- Applied Materials Inc (AMAT) said on Tuesday it would buy Semitool Inc (SMTL), which makes silicon wafer processing equipment for the microchip industry, for about $364 million. Semitool shares soared more than 30 percent after the world's largest producer of chip-making gear said it would pay $11 a share for all outstanding Semitool stock, a 31 percent premium over the company's Nasdaq closing price of $8.40 on Monday. Applied Materials said the deal will add to its earnings within two years, and would make it the leader in the market for advanced packaging of chips for mobile devices.

- Intel Corp's (INTC) chief financial officer said the chipmaker is on track to meet its fourth-quarter outlook and said a recovery in corporate spending on PCs could happen in the next 18 months. "I think the ingredients are being put in place that will lead to a PC refresh cycle in large enterprises," Stacy Smith told Reuters on Friday, adding that when the buying starts, it tends to include a lot of demand. Smith said Windows 7 has had only a "slight net positive" impact so far in the fourth quarter, which is seasonally strong due to the end-year holiday shopping season. "For the PC market, or for the segment of the market we play in, we would typically see a fourth quarter that's up about 7 percent in terms of revenue," he said. "That's the mid-point of our guidance and everything we've seen so far is consistent with that guidance." The company blew past Wall Street forecasts when it announced third-quarter earnings in October, setting the stage for a PC sector recovery. Smith said spending on server hardware has remained relatively strong, with much of the rest of coming from consumers. "A year ago, I would have been much more vague, or much less convinced in my conviction that the gross margin profile would have been the same," he said, speaking of the company's Atom chip. "As we've ramped and as we've seen the market tick up, I have a much higher level of confidence." "When I look out across the next five years in my crystal ball, I don't see a gross margin profile that's different from the profile we've seen in the past five years," Smith said in the interview.

- Last year's market meltdown loosened Wall Street's decades-old grip on the prime brokerage business, and ferocious competition over supporting hedge funds means the old ranks may be shaken up for good. The collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers sparked a run on Morgan Stanley (MS.N) and to a lesser extent Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.), prompting hedge funds to move cash and securities to more stable appearing banks like Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM). Goldman and Morgan Stanley quickly righted this year as markets snapped back, yet the second-tier players have no intention of giving up their newly won premier status, according to a series of interviews with Wall Street's top prime brokerage executives.

United Evening News:

- Taiwan’s central bank bought “large amounts” of US dollars today to keep the local currency above NT$32, citing bankers.

Yonhap News:

- KT Corp. plans to release Apple Inc.’s(AAPL) iPhone in South Korea on Nov. 28. KT will sell the phones at a price similar to that of the rest of the world.