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Monthly Archives: February 2010

Jobless Claims Heading in the Right Direction

Posted: February 11, 2010 at 8:35 am

The Labor Department has just released its data on weekly jobless claims and there was a drop of 43,000 to 440,000.  Bloomberg consensus estimates from economists was listed as 467,000 ...
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Top Analyst Upgrades & Downgrades (ANF, BIDU, BSX, DF, ENER, GBL, NVDA, PALM, MMM, RHT)

Posted: February 11, 2010 at 8:23 am

These are the top ten analyst upgrades, downgrades, and initiations we have seen from Wall Street research calls: Abercrombie & Fitch (NYSE: ANF) Raised to Outperform Oppenheimer. Baidu Inc. (NASDAQ: ...
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Deficit Hawks Ignore Greater Spending Peril

Posted: February 11, 2010 at 8:12 am

By John Tamny of Forbes Last week Congress approved an increase of the U.S. debt ceiling to $14.3 trillion. Once the figure was announced, a lot of understandable hand-wringing ensued, ...
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USA to France: You Keep Alcatel-Lucent, We’ll Keep Cisco (ALU, CSCO)

Posted: February 11, 2010 at 6:45 am

In the land of telecom and communications equipment and services, perhaps Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) is only the second worst company of the last decade of the old one-stop leaders.  At ...
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When Freddie & Fannie Spend $200 Billion on Delinquent Mortgages… (FNM, FRE)

Posted: February 11, 2010 at 6:31 am

The government is slowly winding down its added liquidity additions via mortgage and securities purchases from banks and lenders.  Sort of.  Ben Bernanke's outline of how to exit the end ...
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January Foreclosures Up 15% From Same Month Last Year

Posted: February 11, 2010 at 6:14 am

Foreclosures in the US reached 315,716 in January. The number was down 10% from December but up 15% from January 2009. The figures were released by RealtyTrac. The research firm expects another ...
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Global Bank Tax Gains Ground, But Not In The US

Posted: February 11, 2010 at 5:58 am

UK prime minister  Gordon Brown expects the G20 to approve a global bank tax at its June meeting, according to the FT. "Mr. Brown believes that opinion has shifted decisively in favour ...
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Wal-Mart And P&G To Make “Family Friendly” TV

Posted: February 11, 2010 at 5:33 am

Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) and P&G (NYSE:PG) are fed up with the violence and sexual content in television programs. The Wall Street Journal reports that they have joined forces to create a two-hour ...
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Three Thousand Banks Face Commercial Real Estate Risk

Posted: February 11, 2010 at 5:17 am

A new report from the Congressional Oversight Panel which tracks the progress of the TARP program projects that commercial real estate losses threaten nearly 3,000 mid-sized and small banks and ...
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Apple iPad Costs As Little As $229 To Build

Posted: February 11, 2010 at 4:49 am

Apple (AAPL) can build its low-end iPad for as little as $239 ,according to industry research operation iSuppli. The most expensive version of the tablet, the 64GB product with 3G, costs $346 ...
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Let Google Run Wild

Posted: February 11, 2010 at 4:04 am

"Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting progress in the arts and the sciences and a flourishing socialist culture in ...
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Media Digest 2/11/2010 Reuters, WSJ, NYTimes, FT, Bloomberg

Posted: February 11, 2010 at 3:59 am

Reuters:   The EU summit will address the Greek bailout. Reuters:   Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) will test an ultra-high speed broadband system. Reuters:   Sweden took that top spot from the US for use ...
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Asia Market And Europe Open (2/11/2010)

Posted: February 11, 2010 at 3:26 am

Markets in Asia rose modestly. The Hang Seng rose 1.9% to 20,291. The Shanghai Composite was up .1% to 2,986. At the open in Europe, the FTSE was up .6% ...
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A Motorola Restructuring Plan Won’t Matter

Posted: February 10, 2010 at 7:10 pm

Motorola (MOT) has not had a real strategy or good explanation of what it is for years. The company got into the handset market very early in the history of the ...
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Short Interest In Banks Surges, Falls In Tech

Posted: February 10, 2010 at 6:25 pm

Short interest in major banks rose sharply for the period that ended on January 31. Share short in Citigroup (NYSE:C) were up 11% to 439 million. The short interest in ...
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