Jett Winter submits: Amazon (AMZN) is scheduled to release Q3 earnings this Thursday October 22nd, after the market close. Average analyst estimates for the online retailer are $.33/share in EPS and $5.03 billion in Revenue. Thirty analysts track the stock with four upward EPS revisions in the last 30 days and one downward EPS revisions in the last 30 days.Complete Story »
Zacks.com submits: Chemical giant EI DuPont de Nemours & Company (DD) reported third quarter 2009 earnings of 45 cents, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 33 cents, helped by significant cost cuts and lower raw material, energy and freight expenses.Cost cuts have boosted Du Pont’s third-quarter pretax earnings by about $300 million, bringing cost reductions year to date to $900 million. The company's full-year goal is $1 billion. Raw material, energy and freight costs were 12% lower than the previous year levels, and Du Pont expects these costs for full year 2009 to be about 5 to 6 % lower than 2008.Complete Story »
The Baseline Scenario submits: By James KwakMike Konczal has a post featuring the Grayson/Clay/Miller amendment to the current Consumer Financial Protection Agency proposal. The basic idea is that the agency would be required to do a periodic, statistical analysis to identify those financial products that were most implicated in causing bankruptcies and foreclosures in each state. The CFPA would then have to announce what these products are and who sold them, and could then take corrective action to restrict those products.Complete Story »
Christopher Holt submits: The release of a study of hedge fund due diligence reports last week was met with predictable headlines such as “Hedge funds misrepresent facts, says research“, “Is Your Hedge Fund Manager Lying To You?,” and “Some Hedge Fund Managers Don’t Tell the Truth.”The paper, “Trust & Delegation,” was penned by an all-star cast including Stephen Brown of NYU, William Goetzman of Yale, Bing Liang of UMass and Christopher Shwarz of UC Irvine. The quartet found that 21% of fund DD reports studied contained “misrepresentations” about past legal or regulatory problems and over a quarter contained “incorrect or unverifiable representations about other topics.”Complete Story »
Jim Delaney submits: Round numbers can be a tricky thing for markets. On its previous run up, gold hit $1,000/oz. on 2/20 of this year and then retreated, making another near attempt in early June before shying away again. If you include the one day close at 999.50 the day after its latest break though, the yellow metal has now spent 16 days above the 4 figure mark. Like gold the Dow’s initial attempts to get through 10,000 back in 1999 were an advance then retreat sort of movement as investors got used to a DJIA with 5 figures. This latest move through that level has seen the index move back and forth across the line as if it didn’t exist. So with the S&P nearing the 1100 mark, the Euro touching $1.50/ yesterday in Europe and oil doing the same with the $80/bbl number, three became the charm and the markets took a breather; leaving until today or later to decide if the Fed is going to risk stepping on the paint which it has used to liquify itself into a corner.Complete Story »
John Jansen submits: Prices of Treasury coupon securities are posting very small changes or no changes at all in overseas trading. Shorter maturities have seen yields drift higher whilst longer maturities are dramatically unchanged. The yield on the 2 year note has climbed a basis point to 0.93 percent. The yield on the 3 year note has climbed 2 basis points to 1.46 percent. The yield on the 5 year note has edged higher by a basis point to 2.31 percent. The yield on the 7 year note edged higher by a solitary basis point to 2.94 percent. The yield on the 10 year note is stationary at 3.34 percent and the same can be said of the yield on the Long Bond which is stuck at 4.17 percent.Complete Story »
Zacks.com submits: Broadcom Corp. (BRCM) is expected to report its third quarter results on Oct 22. The company expects revenues to grow by 7% – 14% sequentially in the third quarter fueled by growth within the mobile and wireless targeted end market, which in turn is driven by new product ramps and the upcoming holiday season. This implies revenue guidance between $1.11 billion and $1.18 billion. Revenues from the Broadband Communications market is expected to grow across all targeted markets. Enterprise Networking business is also expected to stabilize driven by improving customer order patterns particularly in the Ethernet switching area. The revenue guidance includes $55 million of license revenues.Complete Story »
Mark O'Byrne submits:Gold Gold is trading at $1.056/oz this morning and traded in a very tight range overnight. In EUR and GBP terms, gold is trading at €707/oz and £638/oz respectively. With oil and the dollar trading near their respective recent highs and recent lows, gold continues to be well supported. It appears to be consolidating after its recent break out above previous resistance around $1,030/oz. Gold was up yesterday despite weakness seen in equity markets in the US and this equity weakness has continued in Asia and Europe. Should we have another sell off in stock markets (which looks likely) gold may also fall and be correlated in the short term. However, as seen in recent years gold will likely fall by less and recover quicker meaning that the correlation will be only in the short term. In the medium and long term, gold is inversely correlated to equities (and currencies) and this is why it remains an important diversification for prudent investors.Complete Story »
Zacks.com submits: In September, the Producer Price Index (PPI) fell 0.6% on a headline basis, while excluding food and energy it was down 0.1% for the month. This is in fairly distinct contrast to August, where the PPI rose 1.7% on a headline basis and 0.2% for the core. Year over year, producer prices for Finished goods are down 4.8%. In August, they were down 4.3% year over year. These numbers, along with the low readings from the CPI last week (up 0.2% on both headline and core for the month, headline down 1.3% year over year with core up 1.5%) make it clear that the inflation dragon is sleeping.Complete Story »
Tom Lydon (ETF Trends) submits: U.S. consumers have retreated, and many are not buying anything but what’s necessary leaving retailers to rethink their selling approach as the holidays near. Can the sector's ETFs prevail in this tight-fisted climate?The picture of the U.S. consumer has shifted from one of spendthrift to bargain hound, and this new mindset has retailers up in arms as the holiday season approaches. Even if the economy picks up, some retail veterans think it could be 10 to 15 years before pre-bubble consumption returns, reports Jena McGregor for BusinessWeek.Complete Story »
Tom Lydon (ETF Trends) submits: The third-quarter earnings season has, overall, been going better than many analysts have expected. As luck would have it, there are a multitude of ways to get exposure to this season’s winners via ETFs.Although several sectors have demonstrated strong third-quarter performance, the ones listed below are among the standouts.Complete Story »
Thomas MacLeod submits:Yesterday PPI came in lower than expected giving an excuse to the deflationists to sell down anything commodity related and plunge blindly into US Treasuries! We found this behaviour somewhat amusing given the recent behaviour of the CRB (as in the old CRB – now referred to as the CCI).Complete Story »
