Trade Radar Operator submits: Thursday we had some BUY signals on a number of tech stocks. Among them was Open Text (OTEX). Looking at daily data, the stock has been surging, bouncing off its 200-day moving average and moving above its 50-day moving average. Bursting above a short-term down-trend earned the stock a place on the Trend Busters list. Let's pull back a bit and take a longer-term perspective. The following is the weekly chart and a nice, steady up-trend appears to be solidly in place. Complete Story »
Tom Lindmark submits:The WSJ has a pretty good article on the failure of AmTrust. Frankly, it reads like a reprise of the S&L days, replete with indecision on the part of the regulators, asset valuations that make no sense and political interference. Once upon a time politicians were punished for interfering in this manner.Complete Story »
The bullish news from the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI) has changed very little this week. Of note is the increasing rate of future inflation. Reuters reports: A weekly measure of future U.S. economic growth rose slightly in the latest week, and though its yearly growth rate slipped further to an 11-week low the rise in the index points to increased economic activity in the near term, a research group said on Friday.Complete Story »
Felix Salmon submits: TED’s Reformist Manifesto is, for all his bluster, a pretty standard wishlist in terms of what kind of regulatory structure you’d set up if you were starting from scratch. It can really be boiled down to one principle: minimize the amount of unregulated financial activity, while also minimizing the amount of regulatory bureaucracy. The problem, of course, is how we get there from here. Last night I moderated a panel on the future of Wall Street, and there was definitely a consensus that we’ve wasted our crisis and that both Wall Street and Washington have started drifting into complacency. I don’t believe that Barney Frank and Chris Dodd have given up on implementing regulatory reform, but I do believe that the longer it takes, the weaker it’ll be. And I also see almost nothing in the way of constructive help on such matters from the Republicans, when this is an issue which should really unite the parties, rather than divide them.Complete Story »
Zacks.com submits: Allion Healthcare (ALLI) reported third quarter earnings of 13 cents per share excluding expenses related to the merger with an affiliate of H.I.G. Capital, LLC, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate by a penny. The company reported identical earnings in the year-ago quarter.Revenues for the quarter came in at $103.4 million, against $92.1 million in the year-ago period, up 12.2%. Segment-wise, the specialty HIV division, through which Allion provides specialty pharmacy and disease management services focused on HIV/AIDS patients, recorded revenues of $78.4 million opposed to $70.3 million in the third quarter of 2008, up 11.5%. The increase in revenues in this segment is primarily attributable to an 8.2% increase in prescription volume and, to a lesser extent, an increase in the price of the anti-retroviral drugs sold by the company, partially offset by the decrease in revenues recognized for the California Pilot Program for the quarter.Complete Story »
Hickey and Walters (Bespoke) submit: Here at Bespoke, we track every upgrade and downgrade that comes across the wire, and over at Bespoke Premium, we put out a morning Upgrades/Downgrades report for investors that like to track the daily recommendation changes before the market opens. Since 2002, there have been about 32,000 downgrades and 29,000 upgrades. Below we provide a table of the stocks that have been upgraded and downgraded the most since 2002. When it comes to analyst recommendations, Technology is definitely where it's at. As shown, nearly all stocks on the two lists are from the Technology sector, and most names on the "most upgraded" list are also on the "most downgraded" list. AMD (AMD), Motorola (MOT), and Symantec (SYMC) have been upgraded the most since 2002, followed by Intel (INTC), Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF), Cisco (CSCO), Juniper (JNPR), and Yahoo (YHOO). Abercrombie & Fitch has been downgraded the most at 60. Complete Story »
Brooks McFeely submits:4:28 PM, Dec 4, 2009 -- NYSE up 25.6 (0.4%) to 7,182.71.DJIA up 22 (0.2%) to 10,389.S&P 500 up 6 (0.6%) to 1,106.Nasdaq up 21 (1%) to 2,194.GLOBAL SENTIMENT Complete Story »
Jason Kincaid submits: Bloomberg is reporting that Apple (AAPL) is “in talks to acquire online music service Lala, according to two people familiar with the matter.” The shoe fits. Back when Lala launched I described it as an iTunes in the cloud — something that we believe Apple will inevitably launch. Apple is certainly building a lot of data center capacity for something. Lala is already one of two companies powering full-song streaming for Google's (GOOG) new music search (the other one is MySpace Music via its iLike acquisition). Lala already has all the streaming licenses in place with the major music companies and a team which can help Apple create a killer streaming version of iTunes.Complete Story »
Market Blog submits: By Simon Avery Canada is doing much better than the United States today on many fronts. The latest indicator came today in the form of unemployment data. U.S. payrolls shrank, albeit by significantly less than expected, while Canadian employers added 79,000 positions.Complete Story »
Zacks.com submits: AstraZeneca (AZN) and Targacept (TRGT) have taken a significant step in the multi-billion dollar antidepressant market. The two companies entered into a collaboration and license agreement regarding the development of a drug targeted towards major depressive disorder (MDD). The drug, TC-5214, Targacept’s late-stage investigational product, recently completed a phase IIb clinical trial.As per terms of the agreement, AstraZeneca will make a $200 million upfront payment to Targacept. In addition, AstraZeneca will pay another $540 million on the achievement of certain regulatory as well as first commercial sale milestones. Terms of the deal are quite attractive for Targacept -- while the company has the potential to receive up to $500 million if some specified sales milestones are achieved, it also has the potential to receive double-digit royalties on net sales worldwide. Targacept has retained an option to co-promote the drug to a limited target physician audience in the U.S.Complete Story »
Jason Kincaid submits: That didn’t take long. Less than half an hour ago we broke the news that Google (GOOG) was in the process of acquiring AppJet, the startup behind the powerful real-time document editor EtherPad. The official EtherPad blog has just been updated confirming the news.Complete Story »
Bob English submits: A lot of people commented on the correlation between the USD with equities on Friday (including us), but, ultimately, the inverse correlation is still holding now that we have an equities reversal. The USD is heavily driven by interest rates, and earlier this week we wrote that we expected interest rates to be the next shock to this rally. It looks like that’s what happened today. Long term Treasuries have been sold all week…maybe by Japan…who knows. But the 30-year went from 4.194% to 4.439% since Monday (much of it Friday morning), which is a large move. This not only spooks existing USD shorts, but warns of eventual Fed tightening, which the Fed itself has been indirectly hinting at as well recently. It’s a bit ironic that the appearance of a stronger US economy (in the form of an improving employment situation) spikes interest rates higher, which in turn brings down equities. A healthy equities bull market can shrug off a Fed rate hike after a day or two, but now, market participants are speculating about the mere possibility of the eventual tightening. This is probably one reason why it takes a lot to start a new bull market–because the various forms of accomodation (including low rates and fiscal stimulus) have to be removed strategically and can easily cause pullbacks in the stock market, even if the overall economy is improving. The central planners have proven less than adept at inflection points before, so caution is warranted here. And, as we wrote this morning, liquidity and credit outside the banks (in the general economy) remains poor. Much as a large trader will dynamically sample supply and demand at support or resistance with large orders to see if other traders will bite, the Fed, in various ways (Thursday’s tri party repo and speeches by “dissenting” Fed personnel this week), is attempting to judge the markets’ reaction to removing accomodation. Better to do this at highs than lows. The signal so far is that it’s a bit soon, and hopefully (for the bulls anyway), the Fed will back off a bit.Bottom line: With the USD at strong resistance and long term Treasuries extremely oversold, there’s a decent possibility of an equities comeback early next week prior to the 10-Year auction on Wednesday. However, we’re not as opptomistic about material new highs as we were earlier in the week.Complete Story »
IPE at UNC submits: By Kindred WinecoffGreece is in big, big, trouble:Most blatantly, Greece misled the world about the acuteness of its fiscal plight. Back in March, the situation looked bad – but manageable. The European Commission forecast that the Greek public sector deficit this year would be above the 3% limit set under EU rules and “exceed 4% in 2010”. At the time, officials were concerned the actual numbers would be higher. Nobody, however, was prepared for the shock unveiled by the Socialist government elected in October. Statistical revisions showed the public finances so much worse that the Commission changed its projections to a deficit of 12.7% this year and 12.2% in 2010. ...On almost every measure, Greeks have been living beyond their means. The current account deficit reached almost 15 per cent of gross domestic product last year, making the US deficit of 5 per cent look modest. External public debt now exceeds GDP. ...Since joining the euro, Greece has regularly flouted the deficit and debt limits set in the zone’s “stability and growth pact” that is meant to correct for the lack of a single eurozone fiscal authority. Scant progress has been made in reforming the country’s public sector, which added 50,000 mostly low-skilled employees in 2004-09.Complete Story »
