Evening Review
BNO Breaking Global News of Note
Yahoo Most Popular Biz Stories
Bloomberg:
- Mortgage rates for fixed 30-year loans in the U.S. dropped to a record low amid signs that the housing market is beginning to emerge from the worst slump since the 1930s. The rate fell to 4.71 percent for the week ended today, the lowest since mortgage buyer Freddie Mac began compiling the data in 1971. The average 15-year rate was 4.27 percent, the McLean, Virginia-based company said today in a statement.
- Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner should explain what taxpayers gained by accepting units from American International Group Inc. in exchange for reducing the insurer’s debt by $25 billion, Senator Chuck Grassley said. “Exchanging debt for equity still leaves taxpayer dollars at substantial risk,” the Iowa Republican said in a letter to Geithner released yesterday. Republican lawmakers are stepping up a campaign to put a spotlight on Geithner’s role in AIG’s bailout. The rescue, which began last year when he was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, swelled to $182.3 billion. Before the Fed stepped in late last year, AIG tried to persuade banks to accept so-called haircuts of as much as 40 cents on the dollar, according to people familiar with the matter. The Fed’s decision to pay the banks in full may have cost taxpayers $13 billion, or 40 percent of the $32.5 billion AIG paid to retire the swaps, the people said. “Thirteen billion in wasted taxpayer dollars at a time of economic crisis cries out for explanation, as you and the president seek to regain the trust of the American people on the economy,” Blunt said in a letter to Geithner.
- Credit-default swaps on Bank of America dropped 18 basis points to 110 basis points as of 8:51 am in NY, according to broker Phoenix Partners Group.
- Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair said she may give banks including Citigroup Inc.(C) and JPMorgan Chase & Co.(JPM) a reprieve from raising capital to support billions of dollars of securities that firms will have to bring onto their balance sheets. “Giving some breathing room in terms of when they can transition in is acceptable to us,” Bair said in an interview at Bloomberg News’s Washington bureau today.
- Senate Democrats threatened to bypass Republican amendments to hasten debate over U.S. health-care legislation as delays jeopardized the goal of passage this year. Democratic leaders voiced frustration as the deliberations stretched into a third day without a vote on any amendment. Blaming Republicans for stalling, Democrats may act to remove the opposition party’s amendments from floor consideration by tabling them, said Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois. “We’re not going to sit here and watch this bill go down,” Durbin, the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, told reporters yesterday. He warned that work may continue through the Christmas holidays if necessary. Republican leaders vowed to remain in Washington as long as needed to fight legislation that they say would cost too much and damage the health-care system. “Republicans will stay until Valentine’s Day,” said Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, chairman of the Senate Republican Conference. “We know of no more important issue in this country than defeating this legislation.”
- Senate Democratic leaders, battling Republicans who want to block Medicare spending cuts, face an even bigger headache: overcoming concern among members of their own party about the program’s future funding. President Barack Obama wants to cut spending on the federal plan for the elderly to fund his health-care overhaul. That includes more than $100 billion from Medicare Advantage, through which the government hires private insurers such as Humana Inc. to deliver enhanced Medicare benefits to 11 million seniors, like reduced co-payments and even gym memberships. Should Congress scale back the program, “We’re not going to be able to say ‘if you like what you have, you can keep it,’” said Senator Bob Casey, a Pennsylvania Democrat. “And that basic commitment that a lot of us around here have made will be called into question.” Obama is seeking hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicare savings to help finance the overhaul of the health-care system, estimated in the Senate to cost $848 billion. The resistance he’s getting underscores the difficulty of paying for the plan without increasing the budget deficit, a condition Obama set. It also threatens to stoke opposition from the elderly, many of whom are already skeptical about Obama’s plans, and to reduce earnings for some of the 200 private insurers participating in Medicare Advantage.
- The number of Americans filing first- time claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly fell last week to the lowest level in more than a year, a sign companies are holding on to workers as the economic recovery unfolds. Initial jobless claims declined by 5,000 to 457,000 in the week ended Nov. 28, the fewest since September 2008, a Labor Department report showed today in Washington. Today’s report showed the four-week moving average of initial claims, a less volatile measure, fell to 481,250 last week from 495,500 the prior week. The unemployment rate among people eligible for jobless benefits held at 4.1 percent in the week ended Nov. 21.
- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates highlighted links between al- Qaeda and militants in Afghanistan and beyond to drive home the need for a surge of U.S. troops amid congressional skepticism. In a second day of testimony on Capitol Hill, Gates, Clinton and Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, defended President Barack Obama’s plan to increase U.S. forces fighting the war in Afghanistan by 30,000 to 98,000.
- U.S. prosecutors said they may add new criminal charges to the case of Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan suspected of planning the explosion of a bomb in New York around the anniversary of the 2001 terror attacks. Zazi, 24, a former airport shuttle-van driver, was engaged in what federal authorities called “a chilling and disturbing sequence of events” which “suggests the defendant was intent on making a bomb and being in New York on 9/11 for purposes of perhaps using such item.”
- Venezuela’s bolivar sank to a two- month low and bonds tumbled as President Hugo Chavez’s threat to seize more banks prompted investors to pull their money from the financial system and move it overseas. The bolivar plunged 9 percent to 6.30 per dollar in the unregulated parallel market, traders said.
- Bank of America Corp.’s(BAC) plan to repay $45 billion of government bailout funds may boost investor confidence in the lender’s health and its chances of finding a new chief executive officer. Shares of the biggest U.S. bank advanced a day after the company said it will buy back stakes sold to the Troubled Asset Relief Program. The exit is earlier than expected, Wells Fargo Advisors analyst Matthew Burnell wrote today, and Paul Miller of FBR Capital Markets -- who said in February the bank might need to be nationalized -- raised his rating to “outperform.”
- Internet-based poker games can be subject to manipulation, a top Federal Bureau of Investigation official said. “There are several ways to cheat at online poker, none of which are legal,” FBI Assistant Director Shawn Henry wrote in a letter to Representative Spencer Bachus of Alabama.
Wall Street Journal:
- The British university at the heart of a scandal over climate-change research announced a wide-ranging probe into allegations that its scientists manipulated data about global warming. The independent review is part of efforts by the University of East Anglia to dampen the furor over thousands of hacked private emails involving its researchers, which suggested efforts to squelch the views of climate change skeptics. The scandal blew up just days before world leaders meet in Copenhagen for a United Nations-sponsored climate summit that could boost international efforts to curb greenhouse-gas emissions and slow global warming.
- New York State of Revolt. Enough with the taxes, say voters in Westchester and Long Island.
- With Comcast closing its deal to buy a controlling stake of NBC Universal, Jeff Zucker, who will remain CEO of the entertainment and news company, sent a memo to employees expressing his gratitude to General Electric and saying he expects the deal to meet regulatory approval within nine to 12 months. The memo:
- Bank of America(BAC) TARP Payback: Five Analyst Takeaways.
CNBC:
NY Times:
- BlueCrest Spends Big on Fast-Trading ‘Arms Race’ secretive hedge fund firm BlueCrest Capital Management is running some of the “black boxes” it uses for automated trading in screen-filled trading offices once used by Enron, overlooking Buckingham Palace gardens in London. It also has another data centre south of the River Thames. With roughly $15 billion in assets under management, with around 60 percent of that in its black box systematic trading strategies, BlueCrest relies on powerful computers that run programs designed by a small army of PhDs from among its 300-plus U.K.-based employees. BlueCrest, Europe’s third-biggest hedge fund firm and one of the biggest names in the area of high-frequency trading, has been one of the winners during the credit crisis with strong fund performance, helped by trading technology it built itself and infrastructure it compares to that of an investment bank.
- Debt Crisis Test Dubai’s Ruler.
The Business Insider:
- The Marcellus Shale is an untapped resource for natural gas sitting under New York, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. In Broome County, N.Y. alone, consultants say, shale gas development could create $15 billion in economic activity. Finally, energy companies are ready to drill baby, drill.
TheStreet.com:
- Intel(INTC) will have no choice but to buy ARM Holdings(ARMH). The first reason is that ARM controls the market for smartphone processors, and Intel won't be able to knock it off that perch.
Lloyd’s List:
- A RECORD number of tankers are storing crude and oil products, driving up charter rates to their highest since the first quarter of this year for some sectors.
The number of tankers deployed for temporary storage jumped by 20 in a month to 149 by the end of November.
- THE US government is retreating on the implementation of a law passed two years ago that requires 100% scanning of incoming containers at all foreign ports from July 2012, by pushing the deadline back two years. The US Department of Homeland Security is planning to grant a blanket extension until 2014 to all the world’s ports.
Rassmussen:
- Most Americans (52%) believe that there continues to be significant disagreement within the scientific community over global warming. While many advocates of aggressive policy responses to global warming say a consensus exists, the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 25% of adults think most scientists agree on the topic. Twenty-three percent (23%) are not sure. But just in the last few days, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs seemed to reject any such disagreement in a response to a question about global warming, “I don't think … [global warming] is quite, frankly, among most people, in dispute anymore.” Fifty-nine percent (59%) of Americans say it’s at least somewhat likely that some scientists have falsified research data to support their own theories and beliefs about global warming. Thirty-five percent (35%) say it’s Very Likely. Just 26% say it’s not very or not at all likely that some scientists falsified data.
- Only 27% of voters nationwide favor a single-payer health care system where the federal government provides coverage for everyone. That’s down five points from August. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 62% are opposed to a single-payer system.
Politico:
hedgeweek:
- Gross exposures remain well below historical levels among funds of hedge funds, according to Standard & Poor’s latest update on the sector. “Many funds of hedge funds are still dealing with liquidity issues beyond the recovery in equity and credit markets,” says S&P Fund Services lead analyst Randal Goldsmith. “Underlying net market exposures within FOHFs are also below historical levels, but have increased during the third quarter. In general, net exposures have moved up only gradually because hedge fund managers held in FOHFs portfolios have not been convinced on the sustainability of the rally in markets and have preferred to concentrate on alpha generating opportunities.”
Reuters:
- Angola has 13.1 billion barrels of oil in reserves, enough to sustain a constant production of 1.9 million barrels per day for the next 15 years, state-owned Jornal de Angola reported on Thursday. Jornal de Angola quoted oil minister Botelho de Vasconcelos as saying Angola could pump 2.1 million barrels per day but its output capacity is currently limited because of the country's OPEC output quotas. He did not say how much Angola was currently producing. Traders say Angola has repeatedly pumped more oil than what it claims to be its 1.656 million barrel per day OPEC output target. Angola would in the next 12 to 18 months begin liberalizing its oil refining, storage, transportation and distribution businesses, all currently held by state-owned oil company Sonangol, Botelho de Vasconcelos said. Angola, which rivals Nigeria as Africa's biggest oil producer, expects to produce 1.9 million barrels of oil per day in 2010, up from an estimated 1.8 million barrels per day this year, according to the 2010 state budget plan.
- Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on Thursday defended his record at the helm of the U.S. central bank before a skeptical Senate that is considering stripping the institution of its regulatory powers. At a hearing on his nomination for a second term as Fed chief, Bernanke admitted to some lapses in oversight but said maintaining hands-on expertise on bank supervision was crucial to the Fed's role as a custodian of financial stability.
Budapest Business Journal:
- The Municipal Court of Budapest will announce a ruling in the case of Soros Fund Management v. PSzÁF next Friday, a lawyer representing one of the sides in the case told MTI on Thursday, the first day of the hearing. The Municipal Court ordered the hearing closed, at the request of the defendant. Soros Fund Management is appealing a HUF 489 million (€1.8 million) fine by financial market regulator PSzÁF levied on the investor for exercising unfair market influence. Soros Fund Management borrowed 325,000 OTP Bank shares and sold them in the last minutes of trade on the Budapest Stock Exchange on October 9, 2008, causing the price to fall more than 9%. PSzÁF estimated the fund profited $675,000 from the transaction, and it set the fine at four times that amount. The Soros fund had paid in the fine it appealed. George Soros, the Hungarian-born American investor who owns the fund, called the sale an unfortunate matter. “I particularly regret the incident due to my strong personal connection to Hungary, even if the company's broker did not violate current Hungarian regulations,” he said.
Handelsblatt:
- President Barack Obama’s administration won’t pressure Germany to send more combat troops to Afghanistan, US special envoy Richard Holbrooke said. Holbrooke, the special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said the US wants political commitments from NATO allies rather than “numbers.”
Digitimes:
Style Underperformer:
Mid-Cap Value (+.13%)
Sector Underperformers:
Education (-1.78%), HMOs (-1.75%) and Gold (-1.49%)
Stocks Falling on Unusual Volume:
SNPS, ELON, SI, RTP, TRGT, CAGC, ENDP, PLCE, SIGM, ASIA, CIEN, RINO, SEED, PFG, ARO, FDO, ANF and TJX
Stocks With Unusual Put Option Activity:
1) PSS 2) ACN 3) WY 4) CX 5) NDAQ
Style Outperformer:
Small-Cap Value (+.50%)
Sector Outperformers:
Hospitals (+1.84%), Semis (+1.48%) and REITs (+1.14%)
Stocks Rising on Unusual Volume:
CMCSK, RMBS, FSLR, TM, BAC, HMC, NVS, PHG, TIN, APWR, HGSI, RYAAY, UTIW, ZUMZ, GIII, CBST, AMZN, OTEX, LRCX, URBN, CSIQ, TSCO, JST, KLAC, SNDA, PCLN, PSS, DEG, FGP, DLM and APU
Stocks With Unusual Call Option Activity:
1) SLE 2) MU 3) CMCSK 4) FDO 5) PSS
BNO Breaking Global News of Note
Yahoo Most Popular Biz Stories
Briefing.com Stock Market Update
Stocks On The Move
Upgrades/Downgrades
StockCharts Market Performance Summary