Market slips after rally as housing sputters (Reuters)
NEW YORK (Reuters) ? Wall Street dipped on Thursday as housing and financial stocks declined after weaker-than-expected housing data gave investors reason to pause after a recent rally.
Housing-related stocks declined after data showed sales of new single-family homes fell for the first time in four months in December and were shy of Wall Street expectations. The data followed Wednesday’s soft pending home sales report and dented optimism that the housing market may have reached a bottom.
Traders said the market’s surprising advance at the start of 2012 meant investors are paying close attention to economic reports that differed from the trend of an improving recovery.
“They are paying attention to everything, with the market up where it is right now. For the fire to continue burning, you need more fuel,” said Uri Landesman, president at Platinum Partners in New York
Stocks began higher, helped in part by the Federal Reserve’s vow on Wednesday to keep interest rates near zero at least until the end of 2014. Investors bet more money would be driven into risky assets, contributing to a rise in the benchmark S&P index of more than 5 percent for the year.
Toll Brothers Inc (TOL.N) lost 3.2 percent to $22.47. The PHLX housing sector index (.HGX) declined 1.1 percent. Banks, which stand to benefit from a recovery in housing, also fell. The KBW Bank index (.BKX) dropped 1.8 percent. SunTrust Banks Inc (STI.N) shed 5.2 percent to $20.50 after Deutsche Bank lowered its rating on the stock.
Stocks rose at the start of the session after data showed orders for durable manufactured goods rose more than expected in December, while unemployment benefit claims last week rose only moderately.
Caterpillar Inc (CAT.N) kept the Dow in positive territory as its shares gained 2.7 percent to $112. The manufacturer posted a jump in quarterly earnings that far exceeded Wall Street expectations on increased global demand for construction machinery and mining equipment.
The Dow Jones industrial average (.DJI) gained 11.27 points, or 0.09 percent, to 12,768.23. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (.SPX) dropped 4.26 points, or 0.32 percent, to 1,321.79. The Nasdaq Composite Index (.IXIC) lost 8.45 points, or 0.30 percent, to 2,809.86.
3M Co (MMM.N), a conglomerate with operations throughout the economy also supported the Dow after it reported higher-than-expected quarterly earnings as demand from industrial and transport markets offset weak sales to makers of consumer electronics. The shares rose 1.4 percent to $87.71.
This is one of the busiest weeks of earnings season, with 117 S&P companies expected to report. According to Thomson Reuters data, 59 percent of the 152 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings beat analysts’ forecasts, down from the 70 percent beat rate in recent quarters at this stage.
AT&T Inc (T.N) posted a $6.7 billion quarterly loss on a break-up fee for its failed T-Mobile USA merger and a pension-related charge on top of costly subsidies for smartphones. The shares fell 2.2 percent to $29.54.
Amgen Inc’s (AMGN.O) shares fell 1.3 percent to $68.30 and weighed on the Nasdaq after the world’s largest biotechnology company said it would pay more than $1 billion to buy Micromet Inc (MITI.O), a deal that would give it access to the company’s novel cancer treatment technology.
Micromet’s shares jumped 31.9 percent to $10.92 and were the most heavily traded on Nasdaq.
(Reporting By Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Kenneth Barry)
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Nokia loss tempered by Windows phone launch
HELSINKI (AP) ? Mobile phone maker Nokia Corp. on Thursday posted a fourth-quarter net loss of ?1.07 billion ($1.38 billion) as sales slumped 21 percent even as the company’s first Windows smartphones hit markets in Europe and Asia.
The loss, widened by a ?1 billion loss booked on Nokia’s navigation systems unit, compares with a profit of ?745 million in the same period a year earlier.
Nokia said net revenue ? including both its mobile phones and its network divisions ? fell from ?12.6 billion in the fourth quarter of 2010 to ?10 billion, with smartphone sales plunging 23 percent.
Nokia has lost its once-dominant position in the global cell phone market, with Android phones and iPhones overtaking it in the growing smartphone segment.
The Finnish company is attempting a comeback with smartphones using Microsoft’s Windows software, a struggle that Nokia CEO Stephen Elop characterized as a “war of ecosystems.”
He said Nokia has sold “well over” 1 million such devices since the launch of the Lumia line in the fourth quarter, in line with company expectations.
Including other models, Nokia sold 19.6 million smartphones in the quarter. By comparison, Apple sold 37 million iPhones in the same period.
The Lumia 710 and Lumia 800 hit stores in Europe and Asia in November while T-Mobile started offering the 710 in the U.S. in January. Nokia hopes to boost its poor presence in the U.S. with the higher-end Lumia 900, which AT&T will offer later this year.
“From this beachhead of more than 1 million Lumia devices, you will see us push forward with the sales, marketing and successive product introductions necessary to be successful,” Elop said in a statement. “We also plan to bring the Lumia series to additional markets including China and Latin America in the first half of 2012.”
In a conference call, he said Nokia would launch the Lumia 710 and 800 in Canada in February.
Nokia shares rose more than 2 percent to ?4.15 ($5.37) in afternoon trading in Helsinki.
Michael Schroeder, analyst at FIM bank in Helsinki, said markets had welcomed Elop’s comments on sales of Lumia.
“It definitely alleviated concerns about a horror scenario, expected by some. Although a million is not a lot in the market, it was better than expected,” Schroeder said.
The company said it would not provide annual targets for 2012 as it was in a “year of transition” but added that it expects operating margins in the first quarter of this year to be “about break-even, ranging either above or below by approximately 2 percentage points.”
It repeated the target of cutting costs by more than ?1 billion by 2013.
Neil Mawston from Strategy Analytics in London said Nokia “was not out of the woods yet,” but its quarterly result was in line with expectations.
“Nokia is not necessarily dead in the water. Profit margins were a bit higher than expected and Nokia has not lost its third position in smartphones although it is suffering in North America and western Europe,” Mawston said.
Nokia proposed a dividend of ?0.20 per share for 2011 and said that chairman and former CEO Jorma Ollila will step down at the annual meeting in May. A nomination committee proposed board member Risto Siilasmaa as the new chairman.
The average selling price of a Nokia handset rose by ?2 from the previous quarter to ?53 but was down by ?16 from a year earlier, reflecting a higher proportion of cheaper mobile phones in Nokia’s product mix.
The company also reported a 4 percent drop in sales for Nokia Siemens Networks, its joint network equipment unit with Siemens AG of Germany.
After selling four in 10 cell phones worldwide in 2010, Nokia has steadily lost market share to competitors including Apple and Samsung. It didn’t give any market share estimates in the report Thursday, but said its net revenue fell 9 percent to ?38.6 billion in the full year 2011, with smartphone sales plunging 27 percent and sales of lower-end mobile phones down 18 percent.
___
Ritter reported from Stockholm.
Associated Press
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Lady Gaga?s Guy Says: “Be Normal!”
Lady Gaga?s boyfriend of six months, Taylor Kinney, has told her to check her alter ego at the door when she?s with him. ?Gaga started living and breathing her character 24/7 because she felt her fans wanted that,? dishes a source to In Touch. Too bad Tyler, 30, didn?t.
While he held his tongue at first, he?s now comfortable enough with Gaga, 25, to make it clear he has no desire to live with a stage act. ?Taylor has convinced her that he loves the real Stefani,? says an insider to In Touch. Luckily for him, the singer promised to be ?more human? ? after all, she wasn?t born that way!
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/InTouchWeekly/~3/16_dZtQvQkA/lady_gagas_guy_says_be_normal.php
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Ivory Coast chief to sign defense pact with Paris (AP)
PARIS ? The presidents of France and Ivory Coast met Thursday after the African leader arrived here for a three-day visit that is due to include the signing of a defense pact in the wake of post-election violence in his country.
Alassane Ouattara also may get some pressure from France to punish militias who engaged in violence while backing him during the standoff that followed the 2010 vote, an episode that left more than 3,000 people dead and kept him out of the presidency for seven months
More than 2,000 French soldiers were in Ivory Coast at the height of the crisis, backing U.N. forces. Under a new accord, up to 300 are expected to remain at a base outside Abidjan, the west African country’s economic capital. The new accord replaces a 1961 agreement.
Ouattara took the oath of office in May 2011 with French President Nicolas Sarkozy present. Now, Ouattara’s predecessor, Laurent Gbagbo, awaits trial before the International Criminal Court in The Hague for the alleged crimes against humanity committed by his army in the standoff.
France, former colonial ruler in Ivory Coast, is maintaining aid to the country after so far injecting euro400 million ($525.8 million). About euro1 billion in debt is expected to be canceled.
As part of a program for so-called Very Indebted Countries, a debt relief and development contract worth euro2 billion is expected to be concluded this year. It is aimed at fighting poverty, promoting educational and professional training and strengthening the rule of law.
Despite his international backing, Ouattara’s failure so far to punish militias backing him who killed Gbagbo’s supporters has cast a shadow over his rule.
France is encouraging the new president to take action so that peace and security are anchored in the country, an official close to Sarkozy said. The person requested anonymity because of a lack of authorization to speak publicly.
“Those who killed, whatever side they were on, will be judged,” Ouattara said in an interview with the daily Le Monde’s Thursday edition, a response he has offered in the past.
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Courtroom battle splits star’s Oklahoma hometown (AP)
YUKON, Okla. ? A water tower proudly proclaims that this is the hometown of country music star Garth Brooks. The main road through town? Garth Brooks Boulevard. So when the singer was awarded $1 million this week after suing the local hospital ? whose logo is on a slightly larger water tower across town ? residents felt torn.
A jury in the Oklahoma county where Brooks now lives agreed that the hospital, which sits along Brooks’ namesake street, reneged on a pledge to use his $500,000 donation to build a women’s health center in honor of his late mother. Jurors chipped in another $500,000 in punitive damages.
Now, residents in Yukon are stuck in the middle of a spat between their native son and one of the city’s largest employers that sponsors dozens of programs, from local school events to the Yukon Senior Olympics. The hospital had argued that Brooks put no restrictions on the 2005 anonymous donation.
“My oldest kids grew up in this town with no medical facility,” said Jeannie Benson, a local real estate agent and longtime resident. “If they got hurt, it was a 30-minute drive to the nearest place to get help. The hospital, to me, is a very, very big deal.
“I don’t know Garth. I’ve never met the man. I do know the hospital and the people that work there,” Benson said.
Brooks left Yukon as a teenager for Oklahoma State University and eventually a country music career in the 1980s, well before Integris Canadian Valley Hospital opened in 2001. Since then, Integris has become a vital part of this Oklahoma City suburb, which was among the state’s fastest growing communities over the last decade.
The hospital employs 350 people and donates to dozens of local events and youth groups, including the high school choir, band and basketball teams and the annual Christmas in the Park. Integris also is Oklahoma’s largest health care company and employs about 9,000 people at its 16 hospitals and nearly 100 affiliated clinics across the state.
Yukon and its roughly 24,000 residents are about 140 miles from where the two-week trial was held in Claremore. Brooks and his country music star wife, Trisha Yearwood, live in nearby Owasso, and locals there described the couple as generous philanthropists.
“He’s a silent but engaged Owassoan,” said Chelsea Harkins, the city’s economic development director. “He oftentimes likes to remain anonymous, and we respect that. They’re great community citizens and great community partners.”
Brooks also has performed concerts to help victims of flooding in Nashville, Tenn., and for people who lost their homes from wildfires in California. In 1999, he founded the Teammates for Kids Foundation that raises money for children’s charities by partnering with celebrity athletes.
After the jury announced its verdict Tuesday night, Brooks indicated he wouldn’t abandon the idea of honoring his mother in his hometown but made clear he was done with Integris.
“This is how I feel: One day, mom’s name is going to go on the women’s center right there where the hospital is, but that hospital won’t be owned by Integris when it happens, I can tell you that. That’s my dream,” he said after jurors ? many of whom said they were fans of his music but could be impartial ? awarded him double his original donation.
Hospital officials are looking forward to putting the matter behind them and hope it won’t affect future donations, Integris spokesman Hardy Watkins said. During the trial, hospital attorneys noted that Brooks, while questioned during a deposition about conversations he had with the hospital’s president, said he couldn’t remember what promises had been made.
“I hope that people will come away with an understanding that this is one isolated, granted a high-profile, donor encounter,” Watkins said. “There are numerous other examples of successful donations being received and those projects being completed and now serving the public.
“While it is uncomfortable to consider right now, I think and hope people will certainly look at the entire spectrum of our donor history and commitment to the communities we serve.”
For now, though, the courtroom drama has been the topic around town, said Tamara Gray, a 19-year-old waitress at a diner near the hospital.
“My thought is, if you donate money, it should go where you expect it to go,” Gray said Wednesday.
“I think they both have an important impact on the community,” 31-year-old J.T. Chronister said as he sat in a coffee shop across from the hospital. “It seems like there was just a communication failure in there somewhere. That’s my guess.”
Catrina Steury, who works in a hair shop along Garth Brooks Boulevard, said “it’s cool to have a big star from the community” but that the singer isn’t usually a topic of conversation.
But most said there were clearly no winners in the case and wished the entire situation could have been avoided.
“It’s given everybody a black eye: the city, Garth, the hospital, everybody,” said Benson, the local relator. “I think it’s very unfortunate.”
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Rate on 30-year fixed mortgage rises to 3.98 pct. (AP)
WASHINGTON ? The average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage rose this week for the first time in a month, though it remained below 4 percent for the eighth straight week.
The low rates have had few takers because most who can afford to buy or refinance have already done so.
Freddie Mac says the average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage rose to 3.98 percent this week. That’s up from 3.88 percent the previous week, which was the lowest level on record.
The average on the 15-year fixed mortgage also rose to 3.24 percent, from 3.17 percent the previous week.
Mortgage rates are low because they tend to track the yield on the 10-year Treasury note, which fell below 2 percent this week.
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Video: Quad-core gaming coming to your phone
How to live with the Facebook Timeline
You can pout and you can shout, but there’s no avoiding it: You’ll soon be forced to use a new profile page design ? better known as the Timeline ? on Facebook. It’ll be alright though, because we’re here to (virtually) hold your hand through this big life change.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42218772/vp/46122913#46122913
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2011 was another bumper crop for CEO pay and golden parachutes (Americablog)
Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/191369365?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Man lodges a nail in his brain and doesn?t realize it for 36 hours (Yahoo! News)
Miraculously, no permanent brain damage was suffered
A Chicago-area man accidentally drove a nail into his?brain last week, and didn’t realize it for a full 36 hours.?Dante Autullo was working with a nailgun when the accident occured last Tuesday. Losing his grip while using the gun on top of a wall, it swung around and hit the back of his head. The collision fired a 3 1/2″ nail into his skull so cleanly that the wound appeared to be minor.
The incident hardly fazed Autullo, who treated himself by taking a few Advil before finishing his nailing work. Afterward, he?put in an eight-hour shift of work at his job as a plow driver. It wasn’t until Thursday that a strong headache sent him to his doctor, who discovered the nail via?X-ray.
Doctors removed the part of Autullo’s skull which held the nail in a procedure that took about two hours.?Amazingly, Autullo does not appear to have lost any?brain function as a result of his injury. Doctors believe that complications are unlikely to develop.
[Image credit:?Rosser321]
(Source)
This article wash written by Fox Van Allen and originally appeared on Tecca
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Big Brother? Google?s new privacy policy creates one massive database of your most private info (Yahoo! News)
Don’t bother trying to opt out ? you can’t
Ever since George Orwell wrote his novel?1984 over sixty years ago, people have been on the look out for the all-knowing Big Brother. But few would have expected the role of Big Brother to be assumed by search giant?Google, but a?new?privacy policy has people wondering if they’ve gone a step too far.
The new policy, which goes into effect on March 1, 2012, effectively combines the privacy policies of all the sites under the Google umbrella into one. Affected properties include Google search,?Gmail,?Google Maps,?Google+,?YouTube,?Picasa, and?Android mobile, along with more than 60 others.?Any information or data you give one of those sites will be shared amongst them all.
How do you opt out of the new Google privacy policy? Well, that’s the biggest point of contention: you can’t. Information about your YouTube choices might affect the Google search results you get, and your Google Maps usage might affect what ads you see the next time you search. Google will soon have a?massive, all-inclusive database of your most?private information, from your political leanings to your searches for prescription drugs. And there’s nothing you can do about it, short of giving up your Google habit.
Despite the obvious privacy concerns, Google insists the change is in the best interest of users ? allowing the company to better tailor content your specific interests. Still, for a company already?under federal anti-trust investigation for manipulating search results to favor its own properties, such a wide-sweeping change to its privacy policy could bring even more unwelcome regulatory light.
[Image credit:?Robert Scoble]
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This article was written by Fox Van Allen and originally appeared on Tecca
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