Late-Night Headlines
Bloomberg:
- FedEx Corp.(FDX) said it will report earnings of $1.10 a share for the fiscal second quarter on growth in international and ground shipments, beating expectations in another sign of an improving economy. The company had forecast profit of 65 cents to 95 cents for the period ended Nov. 30. The preliminary results announced in a statement today also beat the 86-cent average of 17 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. FedEx shares rose $2.69, or 3.1 percent, to $90.21 at 5:59 p.m. after the close of regular New York Stock Exchange trading.
- The Bank of Korea, diversifying foreign-exchange reserves away from a falling dollar, said that additional gold holdings aren’t attractive as most other central banks aren’t buying and the metal offers no cash returns. “There’s an illusion in gold,” Lee Eung Baek, head of the bank’s reserve-management department, said in an interview. “We follow the big trend. Gold isn’t the trend. Out of more than 200 nations, how many countries have bought bullion?” “Like other central banks, we have been increasing the types of currencies consisting of the reserves outside the dollar,” Lee said yesterday by phone, without identifying the currencies. Gold “offers little value,” with “no cash returns,” he said. “Since India and Russia with large reserves bought gold, there’s speculation that Korea might buy it too,” Lee said. “But we are not classified in the same category. There’s a slim chance that we will buy gold” from the IMF, he said.
- Copenhagen Fools the Young Into Hoping for Jobs.
- Citigroup Inc.(C) Chief Executive Officer Vikram Pandit is pressing the U.S. Treasury Department and regulators to agree as soon as this week on a plan to pay back $20 billion remaining from a government bailout, people familiar with the matter said.
Wall Street Journal:
- Citigroup Inc.(C) and Wells Fargo & Co.(WFC) are wrestling with the U.S. government over how much capital the banks will be required to raise to exit from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, according to people familiar with the situation.
- Four years after the collapse of the U.S. housing bubble, flipping homes is back in fashion.
- GM, Ford Gird for Small-Car Showdown as Consumers Shun SUVs.
- For months, the U.N. climate change summit that began yesterday in Copenhagen has been billed as the world's last best hope to match the scientific consensus on global warming with a policy consensus. But now it turns out there is little of either, and Copenhagen looks like it will go down as one of the more remarkable cases of political hubris in recent memory. That's no bad outcome, given the ambitions of Copenhagen's organizers to impose heavy new carbon taxes on top of a struggling world economy. The Australian Senate last week defeated Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's cap-and-trade legislation, largely due to its job-killing potential in the coal-producing continent. Jairam Ramesh, India's environment minister, said Thursday "there is no question of India accepting a legally binding emission reduction cut." China has promised to cut the rate of growth in its carbon emissions, which would nevertheless double over the next decade even on the most optimistic scenario. As for the U.S., it has become clear even to liberals that it was not the Bush Administration alone that was standing in the way of a global climate deal. Last Thursday, nine Senators sent a letter outlining the terms of their support for cap-and-trade legislation, including that every other country enact and enforce carbon legislation of their own. And those were Democrats.
MarketWatch:
Business Week:
- The latest federal cancer numbers, released on Dec. 7, show a modest but steady decline in the U.S. over six years for both deaths from the disease and new diagnoses. The improvement is driven largely by declines in the big four cancer killers—lung, colon, prostate, and breast. Specialists attributed the declines to a reduction in the smoking rate, better and earlier detection, and improved treatments, particularly those that can be matched to a patient's specific tumor type. New diagnoses for all types of cancer decreased almost 1% per year on average from 1999 to 2006, while cancer deaths decreased 1.6% per year from 2001 to 2006.
CNNMoney.com:
- Wireless electricity. Invisible speakers. A mind-reading headset. See what's coming in 2010.
- When it comes to managing the country's purse strings, Washington gets a failing grade from several groups of citizens and experts across the country. Those groups, part of the Concord Coalition's Fiscal Stewardship Project, went to Capitol Hill on Monday to deliver a report to their lawmakers detailing their suggestions for how best to address the long-term fiscal storm facing the United States if lawmakers do nothing.
zerohedge:
LA Times:
VentureBeat:
- Two developments from Google(GOOG) this month are pointing the way to a much more visual and location-centric style of search. For starters, the company said today that it began sending out two-dimensional barcodes to more than 100,000 local businesses in the U.S. This will enable mobile phone users to snap a picture of the barcode (known as a QR code and pictured to the right) and trigger a search for the local business. Right now, the capabilities for the program are fairly basic — you can find reviews of the place, get a coupon if the business is offering one or mark the business for remembering later.
Politico:
- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) upped the rhetorical ante this morning by comparing opponents of health care reform to conservatives who tried to block emancipation and equal rights -- prompting the Republican national chairman to question his sanity. Speaking on the floor of the Senate, Reid blasted GOP leaders who have urged Democrats opt for a slower, incremental approach to reform instead of the mega-bill the majority hopes to push through the Senate by Christmas. Reid started by mimicking Republicans whom he claims have said: "'Slow down, stop everything, let's start over." "You think you've heard these same excuses before? You're right," he continued. "In this country...there were those who dug in their heels and said, 'Slow down, it's too early. Let's wait. Things aren't bad enough' " - about slavery. When women wanted to vote, he went on, opponents said, " 'Slow down, there will be a better day to do that -- the day isn't quite right.' "He finished with: "When this body was on the verge of guaranteeing equal civil rights to everyone, regardless of the color of their skin, some senators resorted to the same filibuster threats that we hear today." Reaction was swift. Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, who is black, questioned Reid's state of mind -- and demanded an apology. “Harry Reid is under immense pressure to pass this 2,000 page experiment on our nation’s health – an experiment that creates a new $1 trillion dollar federal entitlement program by cutting $500 billion from Medicare, all at a time when our country is in miserable debt and facing an extreme job crisis. The pressure has apparently led Senator Reid not only to make offensive and absurd statements, but also to lose his ability to reason... Having made this disgraceful statement on the floor of the United States Senate, Mr. Reid should immediately apologize on the Senate floor to his colleagues, to his constituents, and to the American people. If he is going to stand by these statements, the Democrats must immediately reconsider his fitness to lead them.”
Rasmussen:
Gallup:
The Business Insider:
- Arnold Schwarzenegger has nothing to fear from Philippe Dauman. But the diminutive Viacom CEO was talking like a Hollywood tough guy at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference on Monday when former Disney CEO Michael Eisner asked about the high salaries paid to A-list actors and directors of blockbuster movies. “That has to change,” says Dauman, whose company owns Paramount Pictures. With the steep decline in DVD sales, “it’s no longer possible for a studio to make a big budget picture, and pay (actors and directors) a huge percentage of gross (revenues from ticket sales) before you recover your costs. They have to share the risk.”
Financial Times:
- Facebook has formed a new safety advisory board to make the site more secure for minors, following a growing number of threats from sex offenders on what is now the world’s largest social network. As it has ballooned to more than 350m users, Facebook has attracted a growing number of registered sex offenders. Earlier this year several thousand likely matches were identified on Facebook, prompting the company to suspend or remove the accounts. “Social networking websites have become the private hunting grounds for sexual predators and they often use the safety and anonymity of the internet to groom their next victims,” said John Walsh, co-founder of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and host of “America’s Most Wanted”, in a statement last week.
- The proportion of US borrowers who have slipped behind on mortgage payments will fall in 2010 for the first time since the financial turmoil began in a sign that the nation's housing crisis is abating, the credit bureau TransUnion forecasts today. The proportion of US borrowers who have slipped behind on mortgage payments will fall in 2010 for the first time since the financial turmoil began in a sign that the nation's housing crisis is abating, the credit bureau TransUnion forecasts today. Ezra Becker, TransUnion's director of consulting, said the expected fall was small but represented a significant reversal of the huge rises over the past three years. "This is a dramatic shift," he said. "Consumers still have some tough months, but we believe that the turning point is in sight."
- Morgan Stanley’s(MS) James Gorman, who will succeed John Mack next month as the bank’s chief executive, is close to unveiling a series of management changes that include shifting the bank’s finance chief to co-head its flagship securities business. People close to the situation told the FT that some of the roles within Mr Gorman’s new team of top executives were still uncertain. The new line-up may be announced as early as Tuesday.
TimesOnline:
- Google(GOOG) has given users the ability to find out what the world is talking about with the universal launch of real-time search. The search giant announced deals with Facebook and MySpace to include public updates from the social networking sites in their "latest results" feed on the usual Google results pages. The updates will appear alongside tweets from Twitter, blog posts, news information as soon as they are published in a scrolling list of near-instantaneous links. The service is the first time a search engine has integrated the vast stream of new information pouring onto the web within seconds in its home results page. In effect, they will give users an insight into the conversations that billions of people are having as they happen.
Late Buy/Sell Recommendations
Citigroup:
- Reiterated Buy on (AKAM), raised estimates, target $31.
- Upgraded (SYY) to Buy, target $34.
Caylon Securities:
- Rated (AAPL) Buy, target $260.
BNP Paribas:
- Raised Samsung Electronics to Buy.
Night Trading
Asian Indices are -1.0% to +.25% on average.
Asia Ex-Japan Inv Grade CDS Index 100.50 +1.0 basis point.
S&P 500 futures +.15%.
NASDAQ 100 futures +.13%.
Morning Preview
BNO Breaking Global News of Note
Yahoo Most Popular Biz Stories
MarketWatch Pre-market Commentary
US AM Market Call
NASDAQ 100 Pre-Market Indicator/Heat Map
Pre-market Stock Quote/Chart
WSJ Intl Markets Performance
Commodity Futures
IBD New America
Economic Preview/Calendar
Earnings Calendar
Who’s Speaking?
Upgrades/Downgrades
Politico Headlines
Rasmussen Reports Polling
Earnings of Note
Company/EPS Estimate
- (AZO)/2.66
- (HRB)/-.40
- (BF/B)/.84
- (TTC)/-.11
- (AVAV)/.05
- (MW)/.34
- (COO)/.66
- (SAFM)/.92
- (KFY)/.01
- (KR)/.36
Economic Releases
- None of note
Upcoming Splits
- None of note
Other Potential Market Movers
- The Fed's Fisher speaking, NFIB Small Business Optimism Index, BoC rate decision, IBD/TIPP Economic Optimism Index, Treasury's 3-year Note Auction, API energy inventory data, (MCD) Nov. SSS, (TXN) Mid-Quarter Update, (CSCO) Investor Day, BofA Global Industries Conference, Barclays Tech Conference, Goldman Financial Services Conference, UBS Media/Communications Conference, weekly retail same store sales reports, ABC Consumer Confidence reading, (AGCO) analyst meeting and the (POZN) analyst meeting could also impact trading today.
BOTTOM LINE: Asian indices are mostly lower, weighed down by commodity and financial shares in the region. I expect US equities to open modestly lower and to rally into the afternoon, finishing mixed. The Portfolio is 75% net long heading into the day.
No comments:
Post a Comment