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Bloomberg:
- Expectations for Stocks Plunge at 23-Year High, Survey Says. The following are results from Investors Intelligence’s analysis of investment newsletters for Jan. 20 through yesterday. % Bulls 40.0 this week versus 52.2% last week. % Bears 23.3 this week versus 18.9% last week. Those expecting 10% decline 36.7% versus 28.9% last week. The percentage expecting a correction is the highest since November 1986.
- The Federal Reserve kept interest rates near zero and restated its intention to cease buying mortgage-backed securities in March, while losing unanimity on how long to keep borrowing costs low. At the same time, “the Committee will continue to evaluate its purchases of securities in light of the evolving economic outlook and conditions in financial markets,” the Federal Open Market Committee said in a statement today in Washington. Policy makers are keeping interest rates “exceptionally low” for an “extended period” as they wind down the record amounts of credit they have provided since the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in 2008. Kansas City Fed President Thomas Hoenig dissented, saying “financial conditions had changed sufficiently that the expectation of exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate for an extended period was no longer warranted.”
- Apple Inc.(AAPL), seeking to revolutionize the publishing business in the same way the iPod transformed the music industry, introduced a tablet computer starting at $499 with a touch-screen, Web browsing and e-mail functions. The iPad can display full Web pages and has a touch-screen keyboard that’s almost full size, Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs said today at a company event in San Francisco. The iPad supports Wi-Fi communications and runs the more than 140,000 applications already available for the
- As many as 40 percent of the world’s hedge funds won’t have access to European Union investors if EU plans to oversee funds and private equity are passed in their current form, an official at Britain’s regulator said. Investors from the 27 member-state bloc won’t be able to access 40 percent of hedge funds and 35 percent of private equity firms under EU proposals because of so-called equivalence requirements, a Financial Services Authority official said, citing a report. The requirements test whether countries where funds are based have similar tax and legislation to the EU.
- Credit-default swaps on Greek sovereign debt surged to a record on concern the government won’t be able to plug the largest deficit in the European Union, a day after it priced 8 billion euros ($11 billion) of bonds. Contracts on Greece soared 48 basis points to 373, according to CMA DataVision. Swaps on Spain rose 17 basis points to 127, Portugal climbed 18.5 to 149 and Italy was up 10 basis points at 114, CMA prices show. The European Commission said today that Greece hasn’t done enough to rein in its deficit that reached 12.7 percent of gross domestic product in 2009. Greece denied a Financial Times report it’s wooing China to buy as much as 25 billion euros of bonds.
- The International Energy Agency will meet OPEC, banks and U.S. and U.K. regulators in Tokyo next month to discuss limiting energy-price speculation. IEA Executive Director Nobuo Tanaka said today he has asked U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Gary Gensler, officials of the U.K. Financial Services Authority, and bank executives including Lawrence Eagles, head of commodities research at JPMorgan Chase & Co., to take part. The two-day meeting will start Feb. 25. The CFTC has proposed curtailing investments by large banks and swaps dealers in oil, natural gas, heating oil and gasoline amid concern speculators drove crude prices to a record $147.27 a barrel in 2008. Speculative net-long positions in oil futures, or bets prices will rise, were the highest in at least 27 years in the week ended Jan. 12. “OPEC and regulators must have come to the conclusion that a flow of big money from bloated global banks into the commodities market is responsible for big swings in prices for oil and metals,” said Tetsu Emori, a chief fund manager at Astmax Co. Ltd. in Tokyo.
- New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he wants the U.S. government to move the trial of five suspects in the September 2001 terror attacks away from its intended site in lower Manhattan. Bloomberg said it would cost as much as $1 billion to provide security for the trial, should it proceed over several years, and suggested the U.S. Justice Department consider an alternate venue such as a military base outside the city. “It would be great if the federal government could find a site that didn’t cost $1 billion, which is what using downtown will and it will also impact traffic and commerce and people’s lifestyles downtown,” the mayor said during a news conference today in the city borough of Brooklyn. “If they were to move it elsewhere I’d be very happy with that.”
Wall Street Journal:
- U.S. lawmakers blasted decisions that allowed American International Group Inc.'s(AIG) major trading partners to make out with billions, as the architects of the government's 2008 response to the financial crisis defended their actions. "In effect, the taxpayers were propping up the hollow shell of AIG by stuffing it with money, and the rest of Wall Street came by and looted the corpse," Rep. Edolphus Towns (D, N.Y.) said in opening remarks before a standing-room only crowd in a Capitol Hill hearing room on Wednesday. Rep. Darrell Issa (R, Calif.) said before the hearing began that he has "lost confidence" in Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who was head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York when the government made the controversial decision to rescue AIG, in part by paying the insurer's counterparties a total of $62 billion to tear up troubled insurance contracts, at the height of the financial crisis.
CNBC:
Istockanalyst.com:
- Since the Match 2009 bottom many correlations have held extremely well. We covered one in a previous post titled "US Dollar Correlation Breaking Down" and other ones here. We can now add one more broken correlation to the mix. TIPS and GOLD have been trading very much inline with each other over the last nine months or so. The primary reason for the correlation is that since they are both seen as inflation hedges they should trade together. As you can see in the chart below gold and TIPS have trade very much in line for most of the last nine months. Over the past two weeks however the two instruments have diverged with TIPS going higher and gold going lower.
Politico:
- Top Senate Republicans want answers from the man they believe decided the FBI should read the suspected Christmas Day bomber his Miranda rights: Attorney General Eric Holder. “It appears that the decision not to thoroughly interrogate Abdulmutallab was made by you or other senior officials in the Department of Justice,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) wrote in a letter to Holder Wednesday. “We remain deeply troubled that this paramount requirement of national security was ignored —or worse yet, not recognized — due to the administration’s preoccupation with reading the Christmas Day bomber his Miranda rights.”
- President Barack Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will be all smiles as the president arrives at the Capitol for his State of the Union speech Wednesday night, but the happy faces can’t hide relationships that are fraying and fraught. The anger is most palpable in the House, where Pelosi and her allies believe Obama’s reluctance to stake his political capital on health care reform in mid-2009 contributed to the near collapse of negotiations now. But sources say there are also signs of strain between Reid and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, and relations between Democrats in the House and Democrats in the Senate are hovering between thinly veiled disdain and outright hostility. In a display of contempt unfathomable in the feel-good days after Obama’s Inauguration, freshman Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.) stood up at a meeting with Pelosi last week to declare: “Reid is done; he’s going to lose” in November, according to three people who were in the room.
Naked capitalism:
- How Many Quants Does It Take to Screw in a Lightbulb?
Institutional Investor:
- January 26, 2010 - Recent articles in both the New York Times “Hedge Fund Strategies, at Smaller Prices” and The Economist “The Feeling Is Mutual,” about the convergence of the hedge fund and mutual fund industries is both scary and thought provoking. The articles detail how mutual fund and hedge fund managers both are hot for each other’s products.
Reuters:
TimesOnline:
- UK Science Chief John Beddington Calls For Honesty On Climate Change. The impact of global warming has been exaggerated by some scientists and there is an urgent need for more honest disclosure of the uncertainty of predictions about the rate of climate change, according to the Government’s chief scientific adviser. John Beddington was speaking to The Times in the wake of an admission by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that it grossly overstated the rate at which Himalayan glaciers were receding. Professor Beddington said that climate scientists should be less hostile to sceptics who questioned man-made global warming. He condemned scientists who refused to publish the data underpinning their reports. He said that public confidence in climate science would be improved if there were more openness about its uncertainties, even if that meant admitting that sceptics had been right on some hotly-disputed issues. He said: “I don’t think it’s healthy to dismiss proper scepticism. Science grows and improves in the light of criticism. There is a fundamental uncertainty about climate change prediction that can’t be changed.” He said that the false claim in the IPCC’s 2007 report that the glaciers would disappear by 2035 had exposed a wider problem with the way that some evidence was presented. He said that it was wrong for scientists to refuse to disclose their data to their critics: “I think, wherever possible, we should try to ensure there is openness and that source material is available for the whole scientific community.” Phil Jones, the director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit and a contributor to the IPCC’s reports, has been forced to stand down while an investigation takes place into leaked e-mails allegedly showing that he attempted to conceal data. In response to one request for data Professor Jones wrote: “We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?”
easyBOURSE:
AFP:
- Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is confident Islamic nations will one day watch the destruction of arch-foe Israel, his website Wednesday quoted him as saying. Khamenei made the remark during a meeting with Mauritanian President Mohammed Ould Abdel Aziz in Tehran, the website said. The all-powerful Iranian leader also said that Israel's continued "pressure to erase Palestine from the world of Islamic nations" will fail. Surely, the day will come when the nations of the region will witness the destruction of the Zionist regime... when the destruction happens will depend on how the Islamic nations approach the issue," Khamenei told Aziz, who arrived in Tehran on Monday. Relations between the two nations have deteriorated particularly under Ahmadinejad who has often said that Israel is "doomed to be wiped off the map" and has termed the Holocaust a "myth".
Les Echos:
- Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, who heads the group of euro-area finance ministers, told French daily Les Echos that divergences in the euro zone, which increased during the financial crisis, could threaten the cohesion of the area. He also said that the Chinese yuan and the US dollar are undervalued and that the euro is overvalued.
Style Outperformer:
Large-Cap Value (-.11%)
Sector Outperformers:
Education (+3.43%), HMOs (+1.12%) and Banks (+.93%)
Stocks Rising on Unusual Volume:
GILD, ISIS, BA, UNH, HUM, BTI, ME, PXP, SKM, KEP, F, SANM, SCOR, SMCI, ALTR, MRTN, PMTC, GILD, WTFC, MRCY, CLMS, AAON, ANSS, COCO, BBOX, IPAR, COLM, AMZN, AMGN, UMBF, SPTN, ROK, DV, CPO and PLT
Stocks With Unusual Call Option Activity:
1) KLAC 2) HUM 3) SAP 4) MTG 5) ALTR
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Late-Night Headlines
Bloomberg:
- House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said he expects President Barack Obama to push for a broad health-care overhaul in his nationally televised address to the nation tomorrow, and he cast doubt on the idea of passing smaller measures instead. “It is difficult to take small pieces and attain the objectives you want to accomplish,” Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 Democrat in the House, said today at the National Press Club in Washington.
- The Hang Seng China Enterprises Index may fall another 12%, doubling its two-week retreat, after the measure slid below its average close of the past 200 days, according to Oscar Gruss & Son Inc. The index may now plunge to as low as 10,000, a 12% drop, according to Michael Shaoul, the chief executive officer at the New York-based brokerage. The market's drop "has now developed into straightforward liquidation that looks set to continue," Shaoul wrote. "Many participants will want to lighten holdings in advance of the multi-day closure of local markets" for the Chinese New Year on Feb. 14, he wrote.
- The U.S. ramped up its presence in Haiti to more than 15,400 soldiers, sailors and airmen as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton assailed criticism of the military’s role in the relief efforts. The U.S. has over 4,700 “boots on the ground,” including 3,000 soldiers from the Army’s 82nd Airborne division, and another 10,700 service people on ships off Haiti, Lt. Gen. P.K. Keen, commander of the U.S. military’s operations in Haiti, said today. The military is helping build a 5,000-bed post-surgical hospital for Haitians recovering from injuries, he said.
- JPMorgan Chase & Co.(JPM) is turning “less bullish” on emerging-market stocks in the first half of 2010 amid concern central banks will tighten monetary policy to combat accelerating inflation. Investors should be “underweight” in shares that benefit from rising asset prices and domestic consumption, JPMorgan analysts led by Adrian Mowat wrote in a report dated yesterday. They advised investors with “unprotected portfolios” to consider buying put options, or bets that prices will fall below a certain level. The MSCI Emerging Market Index has dropped 8 percent since Jan. 12, when the People’s Bank of China raised the proportion of deposits that banks must set aside as reserves. Benchmark stock indexes tracking Chinese and Hong Kong shares are among the 10 worst performers globally this year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. “China led the recovery and is now leading the tightening cycle,” the analysts wrote. “We are now less bullish on the first-half performance as investors price in policy uncertainty.”
- Toyota Motor Corp., struggling to stem widening quality concerns, will suspend production and U.S. sales of eight models that use a component that triggered a recall of 2.3 million vehicles. Dealers will temporarily stop selling RAV4, Highlander and Sequoia sport-utility vehicles, Corolla, Camry, Avalon and Matrix cars and Tundra pickups, Toyota, the world’s largest carmaker, said in a statement yesterday. Assembly lines at five North American plants will be idled the week starting Feb. 1. Mike Goss, a company spokesman, said he couldn’t immediately say how many units of production would be lost. “Toyota had a bulletproof reputation for quality, and now it’s been tarnished,” said Jim Hossack, an industry analyst at AutoPacific Inc. in Fountain Valley, California. “It’s a dramatic move, and an expensive move.”
Wall Street Journal:
- Chief executives advising President Barack Obama expressed frustration with his economic policies and called on him in his State of the Union speech to offer stronger measures to spur growth, business expansion and trade. Mr. Obama is expected to mention in his speech Wednesday a package of small-business tax breaks and incentives that he has touted since his campaign. But these measures have been neglected or languished in Congress so long that the measures may never come to pass, the business leaders said. Some of Mr. Obama's business allies criticized a list of middle-class aid programs expected in Wednesday's speech as costly half-measures, and said his effort to freeze much government spending was the wrong prescription for the economy now. Others worried that intensifying antibank rhetoric from the White House could dampen relations with the broader business community. "We need programs and policies to create sustainable economic growth, not just spending programs that transition people from A to B," said International Paper Co.(IP) Chief Executive John V. Faraci, who advises the president's Middle Class Task Force. Instead of announcing a modest package of middle-class child-care, retirement and education measures, Mr. Faraci and other executives who have had contact with the White House said the president should focus on helping businesses get access to capital and on expanding trade.
- There's still time to rejuvenate our market economy and avoid a European-style welfare state.
- Transcript: ECB President Trichet. European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet recently spoke to The Wall Street Journal's Brian Blackstone and Matthew Karnitschnig at his Frankfurt office about the economy and the World Economic Forum meeting Davos, which starts Wednesday. Below is an edited transcript.
- Public pension funds needing to boost their returns but frustrated with hedge funds and private-equity investments are turning to one of the oldest investment strategies—using borrowed money to boost performance. The strategy calls for leveraging pension funds' safest asset—government or other high-grade bonds—while reducing exposure to stocks. The State of Wisconsin Investment Board, which manages $78 billion, became among the first to adopt the strategy when it approved the plan Tuesday. The fund will borrow an amount equivalent to 4% of assets this year, and as much as 20% of its assets over the next three years.
- Book publishers were locked in secret 11th-hour negotiations with Apple Inc.(AAPL) that could rewrite the industry's revenue model after the technology giant unveils its highly anticipated tablet device Wednesday. Apple's new multimedia tablet device, with a 10-inch touch screen that is expected to deliver video, text, navigation and social-networking applications, could change the way much of traditional media is delivered.
- This year, the 27-nation European Union was supposed to come of age as an actor on the world stage, bolstered by the Lisbon Treaty, which streamlines the EU's cumbersome institutions. Instead, Europe is starting to look like the loser in a new geopolitical order dominated by the U.S. and emerging powers led by China. When the world's policy and economic elite gather Wednesday in Davos, Switzerland, for the annual World Economic Forum, much of the talk will be about the rise of a "G-2" world where the U.S. and China are the most important players. A growing number of European policymakers and analysts say the EU's international influence may have peaked thanks to a combination of political divisions and poor long-term prospects for its economy.
MarketWatch.com:
- The world's chief executives are less downbeat than a year ago about prospects for growth, but fears of a drawn-out global recession haven't been fully dispelled, according to a survey released as top CEOs, politicians and others gathered in the Swiss Alps for the World Economic Forum's annual meeting. The survey of 1,198 CEOs from 52 countries by PricewaterhouseCoopers in the fourth quarter of last year found 81% of top executives were confident of their prospects in the next 12 months, while 18% said they were pessimistic. Last year, 64% were confident, while 35% were pessimistic.
CNBC:
NY Times:
- Finding the winners on Wall Street is usually as simple as looking at pay. Rarely are bankers who lose money paid as generously as those who make it. But this year is unusual. A handful of big banks that are struggling in the postbailout world are, by some measures, the industry’s most magnanimous employers. Roughly 90 cents out of every dollar that these banks earned in 2009 — and sometimes more — is going toward employee salaries, bonuses and benefits, according to company filings. Amid all the commotion over the large bonuses that many bankers are collecting, what stands out is not only how much the stars are making. It is also how much of the profits lesser lights are taking home.
- Weeks after rescuing the American International Group(AIG) with an $85 billion taxpayer loan in late 2008, Federal Reserve Board officials rejected a proposal that would have forced the insurer’s trading partners to return $30 billion in cash that they had received from A.I.G. in the preceding months. The Fed chose instead to let the banks keep the cash and to receive additional billions from taxpayers. This decision was made, internal documents show, after two Fed governors expressed concern that such a plan might be “a gift” to the company’s trading partners, including Goldman Sachs(GS) and Société Générale, a major French bank. The documents were provided to Congressional investigators by the Federal Reserve and were obtained by The New York Times.
Business Insider:
- CHART OF THE DAY: Here's Why The Discretionary Spending Freeze Is A Joke.
Business Week:
- All the buzz about losers if Google Inc.(GOOG) leaves China ignores a potential winner: India.
- Berkshire Hathaway Inc.(BRK/A), Warren Buffett’s insurance and investment company, will join the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index after a 50-for-1 stock split increased trading volume. Berkshire Hathaway will replace Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. after buying the railroad, S&P said in a statement on its Web site.
Politico:
- Fox is the most trusted television news network in the country, according to a new poll out Tuesday. A Public Policy Polling nationwide survey of 1,151 registered voters Jan. 18-19 found that 49 percent of Americans trusted Fox News, 10 percentage points more than any other network. Thirty-seven percent said they didn’t trust Fox, also the lowest level of distrust that any of the networks recorded. CNN was the second-most-trusted network, getting the trust of 39 percent of those polled. Forty-one percent said they didn’t trust CNN. Each of the three major networks was trusted by less than 40 percent of those surveyed, with NBC ranking highest at 35 percent. Forty-four percent said they did not trust NBC, which was combined with its sister cable station MSNBC. Thirty-two percent of respondents said they trusted CBS, while 31 percent trusted ABC. Both CBS and ABC were not trusted by 46 percent of those polled.
- Big Labor’s top legislative priority, a bill creating an easier way to organize workers, is essentially dead – and its own members were instrumental in killing it. The victory of Republican Scott Brown’s in last week’s Massachusetts Senate special election that deprived Democrats of a filibuster-proof majority is not only bad news for health care. It also means that Republicans will be able to block the Employee Free Choice Act from coming to the Senate floor for a vote. Whether their rank-and-file lost patience or simply didn’t realize the stakes, the decision of most union members in Massachusetts to back Brown rather than Coakley helped put the last nail in a legislative effort that was already on life support.
Rasmussen Reports:
Theflyonthewall:
- Barrons.com believes that Apple (AAPL) remains a worthwhile investment, despite all the hype about the company's soon-to-be-unveiled tablet computer. The company reported stellar Q1 results. It has no debt and $40B in cash and securities on the balance sheet makes Apple a solid investment. At 19x expected FY11 EPS, the stock doesn't appear cheap, but analysts expect long-term growth of 18% per year. Moreover, that figure could prove conservative given the 40% annual EPS growth Apple has generated since the iPhone launched three years ago. The stock could see "sell-on-the news" action Wednesday on a tablet unveiling, but any weakness would make the investment that much more compelling, says Barrons.com.
Nola.com:
- Alleging a plot to wiretap Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu's office in the Hale Boggs Federal Building in downtown New Orleans, the FBI arrested four people Monday, including James O'Keefe, a conservative filmmaker whose undercover videos at ACORN field offices severely damaged the advocacy group's credibility. Also arrested were Joseph Basel, Stan Dai and Robert Flanagan, all 24. Flanagan is the son of William Flanagan, who is the acting U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Louisiana, the office confirmed. All four were charged with entering federal property under false pretenses with the intent of committing a felony.
San Francisco Examiner:
- Last year's $787 billion economic stimulus bill is going to be even more expensive — $75 billion more. That's the finding in Tuesday's Congressional Budget Office estimate of the costs of the economic stimulus bill, which mixed tax cuts and lots of spending in an effort to jump-start the economy. The reason for the higher estimate of the recovery bill's price tag is chiefly that unemployment benefits are costing more. Plus, stimulus-subsidized bonds to pay for infrastructure projects are more popular than expected with state and local governments. Republicans criticize the stimulus for being long on spending and short on creating jobs as promised. Democrats say it has helped keep the economy going and has produced up to 2 million jobs. Almost half of the higher estimate, $34 billion, is because the food stamp program won't be able to take advantage of lower-than-expected inflation rates and will instead have benefits set by the stimulus bill. The nonpartisan CBO said five programs were responsible for most of the $112 billion in stimulus spending between last February and October: Medicaid; a $250 payment to almost 53 million Social Security recipients; Pell Grants; and fiscal relief for state governments. Tax cuts added $88 billion. The stimulus is expected to add about $400 billion to the deficit in this budget year. Democrats are pressing for another stimulus measure and top Senate Democrats have drafted an $82.5 billion jobs plan that would help small businesses, boost spending on road construction and mass transit, and give local governments money to retain teachers. A draft document obtained by The Associated Press proposes $20 billion for a job creation tax credit and $12.5 billion to retrofit homes and businesses to make them more energy efficient. The House passed a so-called jobs bill last month, costing about $174 billion. That plan was heavy with safety net spending such as a six-month extension of unemployment benefits and subsidies to help the jobless buy health insurance. Democrats claim their proposals are partly paid for by repealing $150 billion worth of Treasury Department bailout authority to claim $75 billion in budget savings. But CBO director Douglas Elmendorf said those claims are based on outdated estimates. Since the remaining bailout money won't be used, it can't be claimed as savings, he said. "There really isn't money there to be saved," Elmendorf said.
Forbes:
- The Hole In The EPA's Ozone Claims. To the EPA, "safe" is a constantly moving target--and that's the way it likes it. Always something new to regulate, always a new hobgoblin from which to save us. Take the agency's proposal to yet again lower allowable ozone levels. It's another one of those win-win regulations for which the EPA is famous, supposedly saving both lives and money. But its assertions collapse when you examine the science on which they're allegedly based.
CBS News:
- Thanks to recently filed Congressional expense reports there's new light shed on the Copenhagen Climate Summit in Denmark and how much it cost taxpayers. CBS News Investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports official filings and our own investigation show at least 106 people from the House and Senate attended - spouses, a doctor, a protocol expert and even a photographer. For 15 Democratic and 6 Republican Congressmen, food and rooms for two nights cost $4,406 tax dollars each. That's $2,200 a day - more than most Americans spend on their monthly mortgage payment. CBS News asked members of Congress and staff about whether they're mindful that it's public tax dollars they're spending. Many said they had never even seen the bills or the expense reports. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., is a key climate change player. He went to Copenhagen last year. Last week, we asked him about the $2,200-a-day bill for room and food. "I can't believe that," Rep. Waxman said. "I can't believe it, but I don't know." But his name is in black and white in the expense reports. The group expense report was filed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. She wouldn't talk about it when our producer tried to ask. Pelosi's office did offer an explanation for the high room charges. Those who stayed just two nights were charged a six-night minimum at the five-star Marriott. One staffer said, they strongly objected to no avail. You may ask how they'll negotiate a climate treaty, if they can't get a better deal on hotel rooms. Total hotel, meeting rooms and "a couple" of $1,000-a-night hospitality suites topped $400,000. Flights weren't cheap, either. Fifty-nine House and Senate staff flew commercial during the Copenhagen rush. They paid government rates -- $5-10,000 each -- totaling $408,064. Add three military jets -- $168,351 just for flight time -- and the bill tops $1.1 million dollars -- not including all the Obama administration officials who attended: well over 60.
In fairness, many attendees told us they did a lot of hard work, and the laid groundwork for a future global treaty. "It was cold… I was there because I thought it was important for me to be there," Rep. Waxman said. "I didn't look at it as a pleasure trip." But considering the size of the deficit, and the fact that that no global deal would be reached -- critics question the super-sized U.S. delegation -- more than 165 -- leaving the impression there's dollars to burn. In this case, more than a million.
zerohedge:
- Comments On SIGTARP's Testimony Ahead Of Tomorrow Congressional Hearing.
Reuters:
- Electronics manufacturing services provider Sanmina-SCI Corp (SANM) posted a quarterly profit that beat Wall Street estimates helped by lower expenses and improved margins, and forecast a stronger-than-expected second quarter. The company's shares, which have more than tripled their value in last six months, were up $1.49 to $13.79 in trading after the bell. They closed at $12.30 Tuesday on Nasdaq.
Financial Times:
- A private equity group co-founded by the son of Wen Jiabao, China’s premier, is close to raising $1bn from foreign investors for a fund that will invest in mainland groups. New Horizon Capital has raised about $750m for the fund from existing investors and expects to raise the total to $1bn in the coming weeks, according to people close to the fund. Wen Yunsong, also known as Winston Wen, is the only son of the Chinese premier and has been an active participant in Chinese investment since earning an MBA at Kellogg management school at Northwestern University in the US.
- Why trade war is very likely to break out his year.
- Volcker's axe is not enough to cut banks to size.
Financial Post:
- It's hard to imagine now, after a year in which 50,000 workers lost their jobs in Alberta's manufacturing and energy sectors. At 6.7 per cent, the province's current unemployment rate -- while down from the 2009 peak of 7.4 per cent -- is still nearly double the pre-recession level. Nonetheless, last week's sudden flurry of oilsands project announcements is already sparking concern about possible labor shortages returning by 2011. Mike Percy, dean of the University of Alberta's School of Business, says he can foresee worker bottlenecks looming within 12 to 18 months, depending on how many oilsands projects ramp up simultaneously.
Evening Recommendations
Citigroup:
- Reiterated Buy on (BAC), target $23.
RBC Capital:
- Rated (HGSI) Outperform, target $38.
- Rated (JAH) Outperform, target $41.
- Rated (TWX) Outperform, target $35.
Night Trading
Asian indices are -1.25% to +.25% on avg.
S&P 500 futures +.18%.
NASDAQ 100 futures +.14%.
Morning Preview
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US AM Market Call
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Pre-market Stock Quote/Chart
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Commodity Futures
IBD New America
Economic Preview/Calendar
Earnings Calendar
Who’s Speaking?
Upgrades/Downgrades
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Rasmussen Reports Polling
Earnings of Note
Company/Estimate
- (CAH)/.46
- (RCL)/-.05
- (LLL)/1.85
- (BDX)/1.20
- (QSII)/.46
- (LMT)/1.99
- (RTN)/1.24
- (F)/.26
- (EK)/-.18
- (PG)/1.36
- (MOT)/.08
- (ZMH)/1.08
- (MO)/.39
- (T)/.51
- (MMM)/1.21
- (CA)/.42
- (RHI)/.05
- (MXIM)/.15
- (KLAC)/.28
- (MSFT)/.60
- (SNDK)/.69
- (JNPR)/.25
- (CB)/1.46
- (AMZN)/.72
- (CELG)/.62
- (OXY)/1.26
- (BAX)/1.03
- (EL)/1.17
- (OSK)/1.02
- (JBHT)/.32
- (LLY)/.91
- (BMY)/.42
- (CL)/1.18
Economic Releases
10:00 am EST
- New Home Sales for December are estimated to rise to 366K versus 355K in November.
10:30 am EST
- Bloomberg consensus estimates call for a weekly crude oil inventory build of +1,580,000 barrels versus a -471,000 barrel decline the prior week. Gasoline supplies are estimated to rise by +950,000 barrels versus a +3,950,000 barrel build the prior week. Distillate inventories are expected to fall by -1,900,000 barrels versus a -3,263,000 barrel decline the prior week. Finally, Refinery Utilization is expected to fall by -.1% versus a -2.92% decline the prior week.
2:15 pm EST
- The FOMC is expected to leave the benchmark fed funds rate at .25%.
Upcoming Splits
- None of note
Other Potential Market Movers
- The Fed's Greenlee speaking, Geithner's Testimony Before House, weekly MBA mortgage applications report, Treasury's 5-Year Note Auction, (KED) analyst day and the Jefferies Healthcare Services Conference could also impact trading today.