Weekend Headlines
Bloomberg:
- Black Friday sales advanced 0.5 percent from a year earlier as discounts on televisions, toys and computers drew budget-conscious crowds across the U.S., according to ShopperTrak RCT Corp. Sales for the day after the Thanksgiving holiday rose to $10.7 billion, the Chicago-based research firm said yesterday in a statement. That compared with a 3 percent gain to $10.6 billion on Black Friday last year, a “surprisingly strong” result before economic turmoil dragged down sales for the rest of the holiday season, ShopperTrak said.
- Iran announced expansion of its nuclear program in defiance of United Nations demands, a move the Obama administration said will further isolate the Islamic Republic from the international community. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Cabinet ordered the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran to begin building 10 uranium enrichment sites within two months, the Islamic Republic News Agency reported. All would be at the same scale as
- The estimated box office gross for the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday weekend was $278 million for the five days beginning Nov. 25 through today, which was a record, Hollywood.com Box-Office said. The previous record was set during the Thanksgiving holiday in 2000 with sales of $244.4 million, the box-office tracker said in an e-mailed statement.
- Australian opposition head Malcolm Turnbull faces the second challenge to his Liberal Party leadership in seven days in a stand-off that threatens to derail the nation’s plan to control emissions blamed for global warming. Party lawmakers will consider the leadership on Dec. 1, one day after the Senate reconvenes in a bid to pass climate-change legislation that missed a deadline yesterday. Liberal rebels opposing Turnbull’s support for the bill risk triggering an early election that they would lose badly if they block the law, the Australian reported today. “This is as much about the policy of supporting action on climate change as it is on Malcolm Turnbull,” Liberal Senator Gary Humphries said on Sky News. “Let’s be clear. If we knock off emission trading next week, we’ll be in an election by March at the latest.”
- The
- The euro region doesn’t face a default problem connected with the situation in Dubai, said Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, who heads a group of euro-area finance ministers.
- Commodities slumped the most this month after Dubai sought to defer some debt payments, rattling investors and spurring a dollar rally. Investors are “chasing commodities,” risking the emergence of bubbles, Nouriel Roubini, the
- Terrorism probably caused the deadly derailment of the Moscow to St. Petersburg express train late yesterday, killing at least 25 people and injuring dozens, Russian officials said. “Our main lead is an explosion of an unknown device, in other words terrorism,” Vladimir Yakunin, the head of OAO Russian Railways, the country’s railroad monopoly, told the government’s Vesti television station.
Wall Street Journal:
- There's plenty of coal for stockings this year. Despite deep cuts to production, U.S. stockpiles are climbing as supplies outpace demand from utilities and factories. The glut means miners will have to slash output, compounding the industry downdraft and pointing toward depressed prices and possibly layoffs as miners continue to grapple with uncertainty over climate legislation.
- The Obama administration and U.S. business leaders will meet at the White House this week to ponder ways to boost employment. Their ideas, though, don't overlap much. Businesses of all sizes are brimming with proposals they say would spur economic growth. The most commonly voiced are tax cuts and boosting access to credit. The White House, for its part, wants to discuss job growth in the clean-tech sector and shifting some stimulus spending to infrastructure projects. Obama aides are also eyeing a limited range of incentives for small businesses to create jobs. A 10.2% jobless rate, the worst since 1982, is emerging as the administration's biggest domestic challenge, a threat to the weak economic recovery and Democrats' hold on Congress.
- State insurance regulators are moving closer to adopting a proposal that would add at least $11 billion in capital for insurers. Passage would mark another win for insurers in what is shaping up to be a string of regulatory successes for the year. The proposal, tied to income-tax accounting, was blessed Tuesday by a key committee of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners and comes up for a final vote next month.
- The Abu Dhabi-based Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates is expected to announce before U.A.E. stock markets open Monday that it will guarantee Dubai World debt to help protect local lenders from potential losses amid rising anxiety among investors, people briefed on the matter said.
- The Sunday London Times newspaper was removed by authorities from shelves in the United Arab Emirates on Sunday amid intensive reporting of Dubai's debt problems, an executive at the paper said. The National Media Council ordered the paper blocked by distributors without providing a reason, an executive at the paper in
- Redbox Automated Retail, the company behind the $1-a-night video-rental kiosks springing up in groceries and convenience stores around the country, is on a tear. Last quarter, it took in $198.1 million, almost double its year-earlier revenue. Its rental kiosks have mushroomed to almost 21,000, up from about 12,000 a year ago.
- Conspicuous consumption is making a comeback on Wall Street. But no one wants to admit they're doing it. As traders and investment bankers near the finish line of what looks like a boom year for pay, some are spending money like the financial crisis never happened. From $15,000-a-week
- 'He talks too much," a Saudi academic in Jeddah, who had once been smitten with Barack Obama, recently observed to me of America's 44th president. He has wearied of Mr. Obama and now does not bother with the Obama oratory. He is hardly alone, this academic. In the endless chatter of this region, and in the commentaries offered by the press, the theme is one of disappointment. In the Arab-Islamic world, Barack Obama has come down to earth. He has not made the world anew, history did not bend to his will, the Indians and Pakistanis have been told that the matter of Kashmir is theirs to resolve, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the same intractable clash of two irreconcilable nationalisms, and the theocrats in
MarketWatch.com:
CNBC.com:
- Banks With The Biggest Exposure to The UAE.
IBD:
- Copper wires aren't going away anytime soon. But fiber-optic lines are increasingly the plumbing that connects consumers with information. Fremont, Calif.-based Oplink Communications (OPLK) helps make sure those phone calls don't get dropped, or that movie-on-demand plays without glitches. The company has more than 350 products that convert, magnify, direct or protect fiber-optic signals. Its customers, cable television and telecommunications companies around the globe, incorporate Oplink's components into systems that reduce network congestion and transmission costs.
NY Times:
- The Obama administration on Monday plans to announce a campaign to pressure mortgage companies to reduce payments for many more troubled homeowners, as evidence mounts that a $75 billion taxpayer-financed effort aimed at stemming foreclosures is foundering. “The banks are not doing a good enough job,” Michael S. Barr, Treasury’s assistant secretary for financial institutions, said in an interview Friday. “Some of the firms ought to be embarrassed, and they will be.” Even as lenders have in recent months accelerated the pace at which they are reducing mortgage payments for borrowers, a vast majority of loans modified through the program remain in a trial stage lasting up to five months, and only a tiny fraction have been made permanent. Mr. Barr said the government would try to use shame as a corrective, publicly naming those institutions that move too slowly to permanently lower mortgage payments. The Treasury Department also will wait until reductions are permanent before paying cash incentives that it promised to mortgage companies that lower loan payments.
- Diplomacy 101. We were thrilled when President Obama decided to plunge fully into the Middle East peace effort. He appointed a skilled special envoy, George Mitchell, and demanded that Israel freeze settlements, Palestinians crack down on anti-Israel violence and Arab leaders demonstrate their readiness to reach out to Israel. Nine months later, the president’s promising peace initiative has unraveled. The Israelis have refused to stop all building. The Palestinians say that they won’t talk to the Israelis until they do, and President Mahmoud Abbas is so despondent he has threatened to quit. Arab states are refusing to do anything. Mr. Obama’s own credibility is so diminished (his approval rating in
- Dangers of an Overheated China. PRESIDENT OBAMA’S recent trip to China reflects a symbiotic relationship at the heart of the global economy: China uses American spending power to enlarge its private sector, while America uses Chinese lending power to expand its public sector. Yet this arrangement may unravel in a dangerous way, and if it does, the most likely culprit will be Chinese economic overcapacity. The Chinese government has subsidized its exporters by pegging the renminbi at an unnaturally low rate to the dollar. This has supported relatively high-paying export jobs; additional subsidies have included direct credit allocation and preferential treatment for coastal enterprises. These aren’t the recommended policies you would find in a basic economics text, but it’s hard to argue with success. Most important, it has given many more Chinese a stake in the future of their society. Those same subsidies, however, have spurred excess capacity and created a dangerous political dynamic in which these investments have to be propped up at all cost.China has been building factories and production capacity in virtually every sector of its economy, but it’s not clear that the latest round of investments will be profitable anytime soon. Automobiles, steel, semiconductors, cement, aluminum and real estate all show signs of too much capacity. In
- Why I Am An Optimist by John Mauldin.
- Traders anxiously await an indication of whether Japan will intervene to halt the surging Yen, and the decline of the greenback.
CNNMoney.com:
Politico:
- After months of buildup, the historic debate on health care reform opens on the Senate floor Monday — but the C-SPAN cameras won’t see the real action. The next phase in the Democrats’ health care push will be waged in the privacy of the Senate leadership office, where Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will attempt to do something that has eluded him all year: negotiate a compromise on the public insurance option that can garner 60 votes and win over a public still leery of reform. “There is the inside fight and the outside fight,” said Jim Kessler, a former top aide to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and vice president for policy at Third Way. “The inside fight is getting to 60, and the outside fight is winning the battle of public opinion.” The debate starts at 3 p.m. Monday with each side offering one amendment — a sign of how difficult the debate will be, since the two sides couldn’t agree to terms of the debate beyond the first two amendments. Republicans want six weeks of debate — which would be enough to push the final vote past Christmas — and have an arsenal of stalling tactics. But Democrats can short-circuit the debate all at once, simply by reaching a deal on the public option and filing cloture on the bill, which would set up the final crucial test vote before final passage.
Rasmussen Reports:
Reuters:
- The United Arab Emirates offered banks emergency support on Sunday, the first steps to ease fears that a looming debt default by two of Dubai's flagship firms could derail the global economic recovery. But the move to inject liquidity into Dubai's banks by the central bank of the Gulf Arab state, together with promises by neighboring city-state Abu Dhabi to provide selective support to Dubai companies was seen as by analysts as the bare minimum. Dubai markets, which are set to open on Monday morning after a four-day holiday, are expected to fall by the maximum daily limit of 10 percent as banks, property and construction firms face investor ire over moves to restructure the Dubai economy. The action of the UAE central bank to allay concerns by setting up an emergency liquidity facility was viewed as a necessary, but minimal policy response. "This is the absolute minimum they could have done and suggests they won't be making another announcement before tomorrow morning, which is a little disappointing," said Raj Madha, banking analyst at EFG-Hermes.
- Regulators list systemic risk institutions. Thirty global financial institutions have been selected for cross-border supervision exercises by regulators, the Financial Times reported on Monday. Compiled under the guidance of the Financial Stability Board (FSB), an international body of regulators and central bankers, the list is part of an effort to pre-empt the spread of systemic risks in the event of a future financial crisis. Those featuring in the list will also be asked to write so-called "living wills" that outline plans to wind up banks in the aftermath of a crisis. The FSB was established in the summer of 2009 to address the dangers posed by systemically-important, cross-border financial institutions through better supervision and co-ordination. The list in full, as cited by the FT:
-
- Samsung Electronics (005930.KS), the world's second-biggest mobile phone maker, said on Monday the company was on track to exceed its 2009 mobile phone sales target, with touchscreen models enjoying sharp growth.
- Sands China's (1928.HK) weak stock market debut in Hong Kong on Monday signals a lack of investor appetite for a casino gaming company with a high valuation and an uncertain outlook, with mixed interest in the sector's long-term prospects.
Financial Times:
- Hinde Gold, a gold-focused hedge fund, reduced its gold positions on Thursday night in anticipation of a sell-off in the price of bullion, the fund’s director Ben Davies told FT Alphaville. Gold had at one stage dropped as much as 5 per cent as it responded to safe haven flows into the dollar. The precious metal has since recovered to trade about 3 per cent lower at $1,155.80. Commenting on the sell-off, Davies — who had moved his fund to its maximum 50 per cent under weight gold position — said: “It happened so quickly, I’ve never seen a quicker paper liquidation in gold ever.” According to Davies, it was clear gold had become massively overbought by Thursday afternoon. However, he noted the fund – which also invests in gold-related equity stocks — was still bullish on the yellow metal further down the line. As he told FT Alphaville: In the short-term this is potentially a significant top. Our whole game plan for the season was that we were going to see a liquidity surge that would take us to new highs come mid January. But we needed an end of November correction to get us there. That sentiment, meanwhile, was echoed by Danske Bank analysts on Friday, who wrote: Gold has retreated following the rebound of the dollar, thus leaving USD1,200 untouched this time around. Momentum in bullion remains strong however with increasing speculation that central banks could get into a ‘bidding war’. The gold risk reversal, i.e. the market view of the most likely direction of the spot movement over the next maturity data, has increased a little during the autumn but not massively so, suggesting that market pricing has not quite anticipated the surge witnessed of late.
- Carmakers are warning that the ending of government scrappage incentives in 2010, which helped keep European manufacturers afloat this year, will depress demand and slow the recovery of one of the world’s largest industries. Car companies and their shareholders are braced for falling revenues in Europe next year, even as US car sales recover from their lowest levels in decades. “The overhang is quite frightening,” says John Lawson, European autos analyst with Citibank. “It probably ensures that
Telegraph:
- Climate change: this is the worst scientific scandal of our generation. Our hopelessly compromised scientific establishment cannot be allowed to get away with the Climategate whitewash, says Christopher Booker. The reason why even the Guardian's George Monbiot has expressed total shock and dismay at the picture revealed by the documents is that their authors are not just any old bunch of academics. Their importance cannot be overestimated, What we are looking at here is the small group of scientists who have for years been more influential in driving the worldwide alarm over global warming than any others, not least through the role they play at the heart of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Professor Philip Jones, the CRU's director, is in charge of the two key sets of data used by the IPCC to draw up its reports. Through its link to the Hadley Centre, part of the UK Met Office, which selects most of the IPCC's key scientific contributors, his global temperature record is the most important of the four sets of temperature data on which the IPCC and governments rely – not least for their predictions that the world will warm to catastrophic levels unless trillions of dollars are spent to avert it. Dr Jones is also a key part of the closely knit group of American and British scientists responsible for promoting that picture of world temperatures conveyed by Michael Mann's "hockey stick" graph which 10 years ago turned climate history on its head by showing that, after 1,000 years of decline, global temperatures have recently shot up to their highest level in recorded history. Given star billing by the IPCC, not least for the way it appeared to eliminate the long-accepted Mediaeval Warm Period when temperatures were higher they are today, the graph became the central icon of the entire man-made global warming movement. Since 2003, however, when the statistical methods used to create the "hockey stick" were first exposed as fundamentally flawed by an expert Canadian statistician Steve McIntyre, an increasingly heated battle has been raging between Mann's supporters, calling themselves "the Hockey Team", and McIntyre and his own allies, as they have ever more devastatingly called into question the entire statistical basis on which the IPCC and CRU construct their case. The senders and recipients of the leaked CRU emails constitute a cast list of the IPCC's scientific elite, including not just the "Hockey Team", such as Dr Mann himself, Dr Jones and his CRU colleague Keith Briffa, but Ben Santer, responsible for a highly controversial rewriting of key passages in the IPCC's 1995 report; Kevin Trenberth, who similarly controversially pushed the IPCC into scaremongering over hurricane activity; and Gavin Schmidt, right-hand man to Al Gore's ally Dr James Hansen, whose own GISS record of surface temperature data is second in importance only to that of the CRU itself. There are three threads in particular in the leaked documents which have sent a shock wave through informed observers across the world. Perhaps the most obvious, as lucidly put together by Willis Eschenbach (see McIntyre's blog Climate Audit and Anthony Watt's blog Watts Up With That), is the highly disturbing series of emails which show how Dr Jones and his colleagues have for years been discussing the devious tactics whereby they could avoid releasing their data to outsiders under freedom of information laws. They have come up with every possible excuse for concealing the background data on which their findings and temperature records were based. This in itself has become a major scandal, not least Dr Jones's refusal to release the basic data from which the CRU derives its hugely influential temperature record, which culminated last summer in his startling claim that much of the data from all over the world had simply got "lost". Most incriminating of all are the emails in which scientists are advised to delete large chunks of data, which, when this is done after receipt of a freedom of information request, is a criminal offence. But the question which inevitably arises from this systematic refusal to release their data is – what is it that these scientists seem so anxious to hide? The second and most shocking revelation of the leaked documents is how they show the scientists trying to manipulate data through their tortuous computer programmes, always to point in only the one desired direction – to lower past temperatures and to "adjust" recent temperatures upwards, in order to convey the impression of an accelerated warming. This comes up so often (not least in the documents relating to computer data in the Harry Read Me file) that it becomes the most disturbing single element of the entire story. This is what Mr McIntyre caught Dr Hansen doing with his GISS temperature record last year (after which Hansen was forced to revise his record), and two further shocking examples have now come to light from Australia and New Zealand. In each of these countries it has been possible for local scientists to compare the official temperature record with the original data on which it was supposedly based. In each case it is clear that the same trick has been played – to turn an essentially flat temperature chart into a graph which shows temperatures steadily rising. And in each case this manipulation was carried out under the influence of the CRU. What is tragically evident from the Harry Read Me file is the picture it gives of the CRU scientists hopelessly at sea with the complex computer programs they had devised to contort their data in the approved direction, more than once expressing their own desperation at how difficult it was to get the desired results. The third shocking revelation of these documents is the ruthless way in which these academics have been determined to silence any expert questioning of the findings they have arrived at by such dubious methods – not just by refusing to disclose their basic data but by discrediting and freezing out any scientific journal which dares to publish their critics' work. It seems they are prepared to stop at nothing to stifle scientific debate in this way, not least by ensuring that no dissenting research should find its way into the pages of IPCC reports. Back in 2006, when the eminent US statistician Professor Edward Wegman produced an expert report for the US Congress vindicating Steve McIntyre's demolition of the "hockey stick", he excoriated the way in which this same "tightly knit group" of academics seemed only too keen to collaborate with each other and to "peer review" each other's papers in order to dominate the findings of those IPCC reports on which much of the future of the US and world economy may hang. In light of the latest revelations, it now seems even more evident that these men have been failing to uphold those principles which lie at the heart of genuine scientific enquiry and debate. Already one respected
Globe and Mail:
- A world awash in debt. The financial crisis provoked a global front to stimulate economies through massive spending. But this was fuelled by a staggering amount of borrowing. Now governments are realizing that a new calamity looms - higher taxes and slashed social programs. For 220 years, through civil upheaval, global conflict and a depression, the
Daily Telegraph:
- MALCOLM Turnbull's hopes of fighting off a Liberal rebellion over climate change to hold on to the Opposition leadership have been shattered by a poll showing a whopping 60 per cent of Australians are against Kevin Rudd rushing the Emissions Trading Scheme through parliament. Despite Mr Turnbull insisting the ETS must be passed now - ahead of the UN's
Nikkei:
- Nissan Motor Co. is developing a lithium ion battery for electric vehicles that can store electricity at double the current capacity. Nissan aims to equip electric cars with the battery by 2015. The new battery will be able to power an electric vehicle for 186 miles on a single charge, about twice the distance currently possible.
Shanghai Securities News:
-
Weekend Recommendations
Barron's:
- Made positive comments on (MON), (SYY) and (PEP).
Citigroup:
- Upgraded (WPI) to Buy, target raised to $48.
Night Trading
Asian indices are +.50% to +2.50% on avg.
S&P 500 futures +.63%.
NASDAQ 100 futures +.77%.
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/Estimate
- (GES)/.51
- (OVTI)/.16
Upcoming Splits
- None of note
Economic Releases
9:45 am EST
- The Chicago Purchasing Manager for November is estimated to fall to 53.3. versus 54.2 in October.
- The Dallas Fed Manufacturing Activity for November is estimated unch. versus a -3.3% decline in October.
Other Potential Market Movers
- The Citi Global Chemicals Conference, (LSTR) mid-quarter update, NAPM Milwaukee, Bloomberg FCI Monthly and the TAF auction could also impact trading today.
BOTTOM LINE: Asian indices are higher, boosted by financial and automaker stocks in the region. I expect US stocks to open higher and to maintain gains into the afternoon. The Portfolio is 75% net long heading into the week.
No comments:
Post a Comment