Posted by bclund

February 28, 2012

 

There is really no such thing as an “easy” market to make money in, however some types of markets are more conducive to success than others, and right now we are in the middle of one those types of markets.

If you are not making money in the market right now, you need to seriously re-evaluate your trading (and conversely, if you are making money hand over fist right now, you need to make sure it is because of your trading, not because everything is just going up).

So if your trading P/L is currently bleeding red, here are ten tips that might help put it back in the black.

Read the rest here.

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TV series now account for more than half of all Netflix viewing. That helps to explain why this Wednesday — the long-awaited moment when motion picture classics like “Scarface” and newer hits like “Toy Story 3” will vanish from the streaming service — is not the doomsday that it was once expected to be.

Full Article

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Despite a fugly quarterly report an analyst just reported that $FSLR has a core problem with their modules and that banks are refraining from loaning money to them. This was dubbed a game changer for the company and $0 is the price target…developing

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The stock was down $5 on this miss and now is off by just $1.

First Solar reaffirms FY12 $3.75-4.25 vs $4.18 Capital IQ Consensus Estimate; lowers revs to $3.5-3.8 bln from $3.7-4.0 bln vs $3.79 bln Capital IQ Consensus Estimate

First Solar prelim $1.26 vs $1.59 Capital IQ Consensus Estimate; revs $660 mln vs $784.06 mln Capital IQ Consensus Estimate

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DOW up 25 @ 13,005

NASDAQ up 20 @ 2896

S&P up 4.5 @ 1372

[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GwjfUFyY6M&ob=av3e 450 300]

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“NEW YORK (Reuters) – It’s time for defense, says Bill Gross, manager of the world’s largest bond fund.

Gross, manager of PIMCO’s $250 billion Total Return bond fund , used American football as a metaphor for his investment model in his March newsletter. He wrote that he has turned defensive as he watches out for potential downside risks and warns about the government’s increased demand on available capital in the economy.

“Over the past 30 years, an offensively minded Federal Reserveand their global counterparts,” or other central banks, “were printing money, lowering yields and bringing forward a false sense of monetary wealth,” Gross wrote.

“Successful investing in a deleveraging, low interest rate environment will require defensive in addition to offensive skills,” he added.

He pointed out that “low yields, instead of fostering capital gains for investors via the magic of present value discounting and lower credit spreads, begin to reduce household incomes, lower corporate profit margins and wreak havoc on historical business models connected to banking, money market funds and the pension industry.

“The offensively oriented investment world that we have grown so used to over the past three decades is being stonewalled by a zero bound goal line stand,” Gross said. “Investment defense is coming of age.”

For example, these have been hard times for retirees who depend on interest income from their fixed-income investments to pay their bills.

“It is Main Street that has failed to keep up with Wall Street and corporate America in the race to see who can benefit more from lower yields,” Gross wrote. “As the interest component of personal income gradually weakens, the ability of the consumer to keep up its frenetic spending is reduced.”

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“UNITED STATES prosecutors have drawn up secret charges against the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, according to a confidential email obtained from the private US intelligence company Stratfor.

In an internal email to Stratfor analysts on January 26 last year, the vice-president of intelligence, Fred Burton, responded to a media report concerning US investigations targeting WikiLeaks with the comment: ”We have a sealed indictment on Assange.”

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Dirt cheap to wallow in the mire…

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$3.72 

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“The European Central Bank’s second and final 3-year, long-term refinancing operation is coming tomorrow and while analysts are finalizing their bets on the take-up, they generally agree on one thing: The optimism is over.

The ECB’s massive liquidity operation has effectively removed the possibility of a banking crisis in the short term by averting a liquidity crisis and giving banks tons of cheap cash. Consequently, Spanish and Italian banks in particular purchased vast amounts of Italian and Spanish debt, as those bonds can be used as collateral against borrowing from the central bank.

That’s all been positive in the short run. In fact some optimists even suggested that this could bring an end to the crisis by relieving so much pressure off the banks.

But by now, everyone’s recognized that there are major flaws in this argument.

Italy and Spain

Italian and Spanish banks have borrowed from the ECB in record quantities and appear to have made sizable investments in domestic sovereign debt because they can make a profit off the difference between the interest rate on that debt and the one percent interest charged by the ECB.

This makes a lot of sense; if one of the countries were allowed to default, domestic banks would be dealing with complete economic collapse. Default on sovereign bonds would prove just a trivial piece of a much greater catastrophe.

In a closed economy, increasing domestic bank exposure to sovereign debt in order to pull an economy out of a trouble spot makes sense. So long as banks are there to buy up government debt, the government can issue as much debt as it wants and always find buyers. It can even give money to fund people and businesses and that excess money will eventually find its way back through the system as it’s pumped through the financial system via saving and lending.

Even in an economy with a single currency, currency risk will discourage (though not completely deter) investors (people, businesses, and banks) from putting money abroad.

The structure of the eurozone, however, completely eliminates this currency risk, and in fact encourages investors in one country to keep their money in another if its economic prospects are better. And despite currency risk, the prognosis for the euro area—and thus the euro—is so uncertain in the long term that many investors are willing to overlook the currency risk of holding American or Japanese assets because of the assurance that those investments will be worth something someday.

This chart illustrates what’s going on.

 

 

 

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“General Electric Co. (GE), Boeing Co. (BA) and 3M Co. (MMM) will join big U.S. employers in making a record $100 billion in 2012 pension contributions, 67 percent more than two years ago, as low interest rates boost companies’ liabilities.

Payments may total $400 billion from 2011 through 2015 to ease underfunding at the 100 largest defined-benefit programs, according to consultant Milliman Inc., which estimated that assets in January were enough to cover less than three-fourths of projected payouts.

“It’s been called the wall of contributions,” said Alan Glickstein, a senior retirement consultant at Towers Watson & Co. (TW) in New York. “All of a sudden this thing jumps up and stays there for a few years. That’s what it looks like — a wall.”

Companies from defense contractor Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT) to aviation-electronics maker Honeywell International Inc. are caught in a vise: the Federal Reserve Board’s vow to keep rates at current levels until 2014 means pension plans’ fixed-income investments are stagnating just as new rules shorten the time available to shore up funding.

“They’re going to have to kick money in,” said John Ehrhardt, a consulting actuary at Seattle-based Milliman. “We’re basically seeing historically low interest rates driving historically high employer contribution requirements.”

That’s money that won’t go back to shareholders through dividends or buybacks, or toward expansion, said Kevin McLaughlin, a pension risk management specialist with consultant Mercer in New York….”

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“Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA) asked the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that the company can’t be sued by Nigerians seeking damages for torture and murders committed by their government in the early 1990s.

The high court in Washington is considering whether companies are exempt from two statutes imposing liability for human-rights violations. Shell, Europe’s biggest oil company, argued today that the Alien Tort Statute, which dates to 1789, can’t be used to sue corporations. The Nigerian plaintiffs claim there’s nothing in the law that limits liability to individuals.

“We do not urge a rule of corporate impunity here,” said Kathleen Sullivan, a lawyer for Shell. “Corporate officers are liable for human-rights violations and for those they direct among their employees. There can also be suits under state law or the domestic laws of nations. But there may not be ATS federal common-law causes of action against corporations.”

The case, Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., was filed in 2002 by 12 Nigerians claiming they were harmed by “widespread and systematic human rights violations” committed by the regime of the former military dictator Sani Abacha, including torture, executions, illegal detentions and indiscriminate killings in the Ogoni region of the Niger Delta.

‘No Claim’

Paul Hoffman, who represents the Nigerian plaintiffs, criticized Shell’s position, arguing that “even if these corporations had jointly operated torture centers with the military dictatorship inNigeria to detain, torture, and kill all opponents of Shell’s operations in Ogoni, the victims would have no claim.”

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Despite all the flip flopping around 13k the tech sector is looking red hot today!

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The year 2012 will see a stream of new books in the patented Thomas Friedman “Oh My God the Chinese Are Eating Our Lunch with Environmentally Friendly Chopsticks” mold. Some will be more worthwhile than others. One book in particular, however, is sure to stand out, if only for the title: “Becoming China’s Bitch: And Nine More Catastrophes We Must Avoid Right Now.” 

The author, Peter D. Kiernan, a former partner at Goldman Sachs, explains in the introduction that “it’s not a book about China exactly. It’s about how America got diverted and lost momentum, and a dragon leapt into the breach. It’s also about getting our mojo back.”

I spoke with him over the phone:

FP: When did you first realize we were in danger of becoming China’s bitch?

PK: When it first occurred to me was in 2008, as a card-carrying member of a discredited class, everyone in Wall Street had to re-think everything. We had gone through a 30 plus year bull market. We now had to wrestle with the idea of who was going to fund the 42 percent of our government that has to be borrowed. Whenever you depend on one major source of finance, if it’s too heavy in one area, it deserves a re-thinking.

We haven’t really thought clearly about this as a nation. It was a part of this re-thinking everything. We have a much greater co-dependency on China than we’d like to acknowledge. The book is not solely about China, but Becoming China’s Bitch is about the cost to our dithering. 

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“President Barack Obama signed an executive order creating a U.S. panel to investigate unfair trade practices by nations including China.

The Interagency Trade Enforcement Center will bring together lawyers, researchers, analysts and government agents to monitor and enforce trade agreements and laws. The panel, established within U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk’s office, will have its director chosen by Kirk, with a deputy selected by Commerce Secretary John Bryson.

The center will be ready to open within 90 days, funded by the trade representative’s office and Commerce, Michelle O’Neill, deputy undersecretary of Commerce for international trade, told reporters today during a conference call. The panel will have employees from the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Homeland Security, Justice, State and Treasury, as well as U.S. intelligence agencies, according to the order.

“We are doubling down on the administration’s commitment to strong trade enforcement,” Kirk said during the briefing. “We’ll continue to press our trading partners” to comply with World Trade Organization rules “and abide by obligations.”

The effort may aid Obama’s attempt to boost economic growth and cut unemployment by doubling exports to $3.14 trillion by 2015, from $1.57 trillion in 2009. Though the panel will be empowered to investigate all foreign trade, Obama cited China (TBBLCHNA) as a source of concern in his January State of the Union speech to Congress.

WTO Complaints

Obama filed five World Trade Organization complaints against China since taking office three years ago, compared with seven George W. Bush filed from 2001, when China joined the Geneva-based trade arbiter. Obama imposed duties on Chinese-made tires, which he said has helped to create more than 1,000 U.S. jobs….”

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via Gothamist 

 

 

This morning the City Council grilled representatives from the NYPD on why so few drivers face criminal charges after killing or maiming pedestrians and cyclists. The hearing room was so packed that it overflowed into a second room, which also swelled over capacity—the heavy turnout on a weekday morning suggests the NYPD’s handling of crash investigations is an increasingly hot topic. The department has been widely criticizedfor failing to issue criminal charges to drivers after serious accidents, as well as withholding the most basic details about their investigations. Today Councilmembers tried to understand why so many drivers get away with murder.

 

More New Yorkers are killed every year by motor vehicles than are murdered by guns, said Councilmember James Vacca, who kicked off the hearing by declaring, “We don’t accept gun violence as a way to die, and we shouldn’t accept traffic deaths either.” Vacca’s first question to Deputy Chief John Cassidy, the NYPD Chief of Transportation, was about speeding, and how often drivers caught speeding are charged with reckless endangerment. The answer came not from Cassidy, but from Susan Petito, an NYPD attorney, who politely explained that they simply don’t know, because reckless endangerment charges “are not segregated in the database” and can’t be easily found.

 

The NYPD reps frequently cited their inability to search for data during the hearing. At the same time, the department touted its TrafficStat data, which Chief Cassidy argued has enabled the department to reduce traffic fatalities by 39% over the past decade, through targeted enforcement of accident-prone areas. But when Councilmember Pete Vallone wanted to know how many drivers got criminal charges after non-fatal accidents, he was greeted with a long pause. “Not sure we can provide those numbers,” said the NYPD reps. “That would require a hand search. Because reckless endangerment charges involve a narrative.”

Here’s what we do know, and it helps explain why so many drivers get away with murder:

• The NYPD issued more summonses to cyclists than truck drivers last year: truckers got 14,962 moving violation summonses and 10,415 Criminal Court summonses, while cyclists got 13,743 moving violation summonses and a whopping 34,813 Criminal Court summonses. Priorities!
• The NYPD Accident Investigation Squad [AIS] only has 19 detectives, three sergeants, and one lieutenant, but is responsible for investigating fatal accidents for the entire city. But don’t worry, there’s always at least one detective on duty at all times.
• The AIS will only investigate accidents in which the victim dies or seems likely to die. If you get hit by a driver and end up in a wheelchair for the rest of your life, there’s no AIS investigation. The patrol officers will fill out an accident report, and traffic tickets might be issued, but there will never be an in-depth investigation or follow-up.
• 241 pedestrians or cyclists were killed by drivers last year. Only 17 of the drivers responsible faced criminal charges.
• Asked how many criminal charges were filed against drivers in non-fatal accidents, the NYPD reps saidthey were not aware of any.
• Hayley and Diego’s Laws were created to empower the NYPD to issue “careless driving” charges, but the NYPD says judges have repeatedly thrown out these charges on the grounds that an officer has to personally witness the accident in order to file the charge.

And because traffic court judges have been throwing out “careless driving” tickets, the NYPD says they’ve instructed patrolmen not to issue them. Only the AIS is currently authorized to file charges under Hayley and Diego’s law, and since AIS only investigates fatal accidents, the law hasn’t done much good. Councilmember Brad Lander was particularly galled by this, asking the NYPD reps, “More than 3,000 crashes last year led to serious injury, and yet patrolmen can’t write a ticket [under Hayley and Diego’s law]?”

Councilmember Vacca recommended new legislation authorizing the NYPD to seize vehicles operated by speeding and reckless drivers. And Transportation Alternatives Executive Director Paul Steely White called for a task force “to propose new rules that the Police Department can implement to bring justice to crash victims and their families and reap cost savings for the City of New York. As long as the default response to a motor vehicle crash is ‘accidents happen,’ the behaviors that are killing and injuring people will continue.”

 

Also in attendance were the relatives of killed or injured cyclists, including Erika Lefevre, the mother of Mathieu Lefevre, an artist who was killed by a truck driver who left the scene of the accident in Williamsburg and did not face any criminal charges. (The Brooklyn DA is now conducting an independent investigation to determine if serious charges are warranted.) Lefevre, who had to sue the NYPD to release information about the AIS’s sloppy investigation, told the City Council, “The only person the NYPD showed courtesy, professionalism, and respect towards was the driver who ran over Mathieu.”

 

And Michelle Matson, a cyclist who barely survived a hit-and-run accident in Greenpoint that broke her spine and shattered her leg, served as a living example of the NYPD’s poor investigation procedures. Because Matson and her boyfriend, who was also struck, were deemed not likely to die, AIS was not called to investigate, and no charges were ever filed. Today Matson said:

The car that struck us was found quickly. It was abandoned a couple of blocks from the site of the crash. I thought this was good news. I was later told by the detective assigned to our case that the owner of the car claimed to have an alibi: the owner of the car says that he drove to a bar, and drank at that establishment for several hours. At some point, the car owner claims to have lost his keys and says that he then walked home. Coincidentally, the crash site was several blocks from this mans house. The owner of the car was never penalized in any way.Every time I called the detective I became more depressed. He was reluctant to answer any of my questions, and when he did the news was always bad. I asked if they had searched for clues in the car- they hadn’t and wouldn’t. I asked if they questioned the witnesses- they said it was pointless. I asked if they had canvassed for video in any of the two dozen surveillance cameras along the road near the crash site- they had not. The detective never even visited the crash site though it was two blocks from his precinct’s station. When I asked these questions the detective would get defensive, he would say- “Are you trying to tell me how to do my job?” Eventually I gave up. I stopped calling after the detective answered my inquiries by saying- “Listen, you should be lucky you’re alive.”

And he is right. I am lucky to be alive. It’s miraculous that my brain is unharmed and that my body could be repaired. I have metal plates, screws, and a long rod running through my leg- I might not be able to run, but I can walk. I have numbness in my fingers, and experience periods of intense dizziness but I am able to live my life and tell my story. However I will never have justice. If I had died, there would have been an investigation. The police would have thoroughly questioned the witnesses, they would have canvassed for video, they would have photographed the crime scene and carefully examined the car. There would have been justice.

 

Last week, in an attempt to empower patrol officers in investigations such as these, Senator Daniel Squadron and Assemblymember Brian Kavanagh announced new legislation to strengthen ‘Hayley and Diego’s Law’ (Vehicle and Traffic Law 1146). Their legislation would give police unambiguous authority to issue a VTL 1146 summons, even if the officer was not present at the time of the crash, as long as the officer has reasonable cause to believe the violation was committed by the driver.

“The NYPD is among the most sophisticated law enforcement operations in the country,” concluded White, the director of Transportation Alternatives. “It’s the sixth largest standing army in the world, it has officers stationed in scores of foreign nations and it can shoot down small aircraft. The question for us today is if its officers can do more to keep New Yorkers safe on our own streets and deter drivers from killing hundreds and injuring thousands of innocent people every year?”

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ISSUE GAINERS                 SYMBOL   EXCH   LAST PRICE   MONEY FLOW    RATIO 
                                                          (in millions) 
Apple                          AAPL    NASD      532.46       +72.8       1.05 
Vanguard MSCI EAFE             VEA     ARCA       34.29       +31.1      12.82 
Vanguard Total Stock Mkt       VTI     ARCA       70.88       +27.2       5.20 
Bank Of America                BAC     NYSE        8.13       +22.1       1.20 
Waste Connections              WCN     NYSE       31.01       +20.4       3.00 
Procter & Gamble               PG      NYSE       67.16       +20.1       1.42 
Pfizer                         PFE     NYSE       21.18       +19.1       1.67 
JPMorgan Chase                 JPM     NYSE       39.54       +18.3       1.23 
Vanguard Small-Cap             VB      ARCA       78.26       +16.6       5.80 
pricelinecom                   PCLN    NASD      632.26       +15.1       1.04 
Vanguard FTSE All World        VSS     ARCA       90.55       +14.3      29.63 
Microsoft                      MSFT    NASD       31.77       +13.4       1.26 
RBS Cap Fdg Tr VII 6.08%       RBSpG   NYSE       13.18       +12.7     190.23 
iShrs MSCI Germany             EWG     ARCA       23.25       +12.1       4.49 
ExxonMobil                     XOM     NYSE       87.22       +11.4       1.20 
Select Sector SPDR-Ind         XLI     ARCA       37.42       +10.8       1.78 
EMC Corp                       EMC     NYSE       28.00       +10.7       1.56 
SL Green Realty                SLG     NYSE       75.76       +10.5       2.50 
CME Group Inc.                 CME     NASD      293.82       +10.0       1.63 
Amazoncom                      AMZN    NASD      182.31        +9.6       1.09 

ISSUE DECLINERS               SYMBOL   EXCH   LAST PRICE   MONEY FLOW    RATIO 
                                                          (in millions) 
Vanguard Total Bond Mkt        BND     ARCA       84.02       -42.7       0.10 
Ctripcom Intl                  CTRP    NASD       27.55       -35.5       0.27 
ONEOK Partners                 OKS     NYSE       59.00       -31.2       0.43 
American Express               AXP     NYSE       53.80       -25.5       0.54 
iShs MSCI All Cty As x Jp      AAXJ    NASD       57.72       -20.9       0.11 
Vanguard REIT                  VNQ     ARCA       61.42       -20.4       0.31 
SPDR Brclys Cp Intl Treas      BWX     ARCA       60.72       -18.1       0.10 
Check Point Sftwre Techs       CHKP    NASD       58.59       -17.0       0.20 
Vanguard Value                 VTV     ARCA       56.76       -16.8       0.08 
Vodafone Grp                   VOD     NASD       27.46       -12.4       0.36 
Motorola Mobility Hldgs        MMI     NYSE       39.68       -11.9       0.28 
Vanguard MSCI Emerg Mkts       VWO     ARCA       44.65       -10.9       0.82 
Bed Bath & Beyond              BBBY    NASD       59.81       -10.5       0.53 
Carnival                       CCL     NYSE       29.86       -10.5       0.66 
Vanguard Short-Term Bond       BSV     ARCA       81.18       -10.0       0.25 
Select Sector SPDR-Energy      XLE     ARCA       76.14        -9.9       0.81 
Mosaic                         MOS     NYSE       59.57        -9.9       0.72 
Myriad Genetics                MYGN    NASD       24.12        -9.7       0.17 
Cisco Systems                  CSCO    NASD       20.19        -9.6       0.75 
iShr FTSE China 25             FXI     ARCA       40.34        -9.5       0.65

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NYSE

New Highs 13 

COMPANY                       SYMBOL      HIGH                VOLUME 
-------                       ------      ----                ------ 
BlackRock NJ Muni             BLJ         17.07                1,419 
British Amer Tobacco          BTI         101.31             232,519 
Dreyfus Muni Income           DMF         10.61               12,109 
Earthstone Energy             ESTE        26.70               26,520 
Eaton Vnce  NY                ENX         15.09               31,575 
Eaton PA Trust                EVP         14.46                1,500 
Greenhunter Energy            GRH         3.66               669,695 
NuvAZ3                        NXE         14.30                6,454 
NuveenCA 3                    NZH         14.30               19,636 
Nuveen CA Mun Value Fd 2      NCB         16.29                1,804 
Nuveen CA Premium Fund        NCU         15.02                8,280 
NuvCT3                        NGO         14.13                6,215 
Tucows Inc                    TCX         0.94               111,763 

New Lows 0 

COMPANY                       SYMBOL      LOW                 VOLUME 
-------                       ------      ----                ------

NASDAQ

New Highs 69 

COMPANY                       SYMBOL      HIGH                VOLUME 
-------                       ------      ----                ------ 
ASML Hldg NV                  ASML        47.72            2,230,894 
Access National               ANCX        10.50                9,627 
Advisory Board                ABCO        81.99               49,406 
Air Methods                   AIRM        92.58               25,619 
Ameris Bancorp                ABCB        11.71               10,907 
Apple                         AAPL        533.20           9,918,918 
Arctic Cat                    ACAT        37.24              106,213 
Atlantic American             AAME        3.03                79,632 
Aware                         AWRE        4.59                41,930 
Cerner                        CERN        75.50              451,728 
Charles & Colvard             CTHR        4.20               220,295 
Charming Shoppes              CHRS        6.08             1,165,948 
Chart Industries              GTLS        69.36              959,317 
ChipMOS Techs Bermuda         IMOS        13.68              458,765 
Clean Energy Fuels            CLNE        20.98            1,711,218 
Coinstar                      CSTR        62.72            1,023,784 
Cynosure  (Cl A)              CYNO        18.00               71,489 
Datawatch Corp                DWCH        13.91               59,311 
Delta Natural Gas Co          DGAS        38.00                1,218 
Deltek                        PROJ        11.62              100,863 
Discovery Laboratories        DSCO        3.80             1,722,702 
Equinix                       EQIX        140.69             357,701 
EZchip                        EZCH        41.67              179,401 
First Tr ISE Cloud Comp       SKYY        20.73               11,592 
First Tr NASDAQ100EqWt        QQEW        26.52                7,696 
HSN Inc                       HSNI        38.68              110,976 
HomeStreet                    HMST        52.25               32,600 
Hot Topic                     HOTT        9.38               466,624 
IntegraMed America            INMD        11.29               12,428 
Jazz Pharm Inc                JAZZ        52.10            1,124,764 
Jive Software                 JIVE        22.48              428,336 
Key Tronic                    KTCC        11.05              121,131 
LCA-Vision                    LCAV        9.24               114,436 
lululemon athletica           LULU        67.84              704,815 
MTR Gaming Group              MNTG        3.69                53,724 
Microsoft                     MSFT        31.77           16,280,168 
MidWestOne Fincl Group        MOFG        17.38               44,312 
Monolithic Power Systems      MPWR        19.84              150,164 
NASDAQ Prem Inc & Growth      QQQX        15.34               36,729 
North Central Bancshares      FFFD        23.02                1,894 
O'Reilly Automotive           ORLY        87.10              647,209 
OSI Systems                   OSIS        60.33               98,533 
PDF Solutions                 PDFS        8.25                68,917 
PETsMART                      PETM        56.39              405,699 
PwrShrs QQQ Tr Series 1       QQQ         64.60           22,183,651 
pricelinecom                  PCLN        637.88           1,977,841 
ProShares UltraPro QQQ        TQQQ        104.52             458,105 
Provident Fincl Hldgs         PROV        10.54                1,700 
Rand Logistics                RLOG        8.73                   800 
Rockville Fincl               RCKB        11.90               51,734 
SBA Comm                      SBAC        47.43              433,214 
Salix Pharmaceuticals         SLXP        50.54            1,491,773 
Shuffle Master                SHFL        15.31              112,686 
Sunshine Heart                SSH         17.00                1,651 
Susser Hldgs                  SUSS        27.99               61,251 
SVB Cap II 7.00% pfd.         SIVBO       25.99                2,550 
Synaptics                     SYNA        39.89              158,986 
Synopsys                      SNPS        30.84              276,816 
Taleo  (Cl A)                 TLEO        45.86            1,228,965 
Tetra Tech                    TTEK        26.07              297,879 
Texas Capital Bancshares      TCBI        34.18              272,707 
Tractor Supply Co             TSCO        88.65              313,777 
Ubiquiti Networks             UBNT        28.97              113,605 
ValueClick                    VCLK        21.50              262,528 
Vangrd Intermed-Trm Cp Bd     VCIT        85.00               69,137 
Vanguard Long-Trm Crp Bd      VCLT        89.64               34,621 
vitacost com Inc              VITC        8.29                56,493 
Xilinx                        XLNX        37.74            1,076,169 
Zoll Medical                  ZOLL        76.22               42,097 

New Lows 9 

COMPANY                       SYMBOL      LOW                 VOLUME 
-------                       ------      ----                ------ 
ATA Inc ADS                   ATAI        5.52                32,437 
Capital City Bank Group       CCBG        8.11                 3,100 
D Medical Industries          DMED        0.59                16,811 
NII Hldgs                     NIHD        18.74            2,317,844 
Orckit Comm                   ORCT        0.45                63,100 
Partner Comm Co               PTNR        7.25               135,328 
ProShr Ul Sh QQQ              SQQQ        12.53              992,783 
Swisher Hygiene               SWSH        3.06               267,062 
Uroplasty                     UPI         2.75                44,410

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Hopefully the former…..

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One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do. Seven and a half, on the other hand, is a far friendlier number, and it’s the number of things you need to know each day. Here’s today’s supply:

Thing One: Corporations Are People, My Friend: We all know by now that corporations are people just like you and me. The Supreme Court and Mitt Romney have said as much, so it’s pretty much settled. And we all know that, just like you and me, corporations should be allowed to spend their billions on political campaigns without any limit. And they should definitely be allowed to take part in atrocities overseas without having to worry about being dragged into court over it. Who didn’t indulge in a little casual genocide when they were backpacking through Europe? We were young! Well, somebody apparently thought this was such a bad idea they made a federal case out of it, literally. It’s called Kiobel vs. Royal Dutch Petroleum (great guy, that RDP). The Supreme Court hears arguments on the case today, writes Mike Sacks of The Huffington Post. If the justices vote along party lines, as judges have throughout the course of the case, then they will probably vote to exempt companies from being held responsible for atrocities overseas — which, as it turns out, is completely the opposite of how individual people are treated. Fortunately, the justices can rely on international law, which they usually despise, to exempt corporations from personhood just this once, writes Mike, creating a Cognitive Dissonance Vortex that will open up and swallow the Earth whole. Problem solved.

Thing Two: Paying Taxes Is For Suckers: One other way that corporations are just like people is that they have to pay taxes, too, just like you and me. The only difference is that, while you or I could very well be hauled off to the hoosegow for paying only 2 percent of our income in taxes, a company like General Electric can get away with paying about 2 percent of its income in taxes for an entire decade, writes Alexander Eichler of The Huffington Post. “If you’ll think back to your high school math classes, you’ll recall that 2.3 percent is less than 35 percent,” Alexander observes. “That means GE is paying well below the top marginal corporate tax rate of 35 percent — the same tax rate that business leaders, politicians and conservative commentators have repeatedly deplored as high enough to impede economic growth.”

Thing Three: In The Eurozone: Speaking of problems solved, European stocks are higher this morning after European confidence indexes came in higher than expected — even though Europe is sinking into a recession, Standard & Poor’s declared thatGreece was in “selective” default on its debts, the ECB suspended acceptance of Greek bonds as collateral and Spain may be just a wee bit shy of meeting its budget targets.Details, details. Stocks are higher partly because Angela Merkel somehow managed to get Germany’s parliament to vote for the next big sack of money to be delivered to Greece, and because the ECB is set this week to roll out another massive short-term lending program. The last such lending program was a whopping success, letting European banks make free money by buying once-toxic Spanish and Italian bonds, the FT writes. Who says money doesn’t solve everything, particularly when that money is bottomless and somebody else’s?

Thing Four: Econorama: Back in the States, we get our own bucket full of economic data to chew on this morning. At 8:30 a.m. ET we get orders for durable goods made in U.S. factories in January — think refrigerators and airplanes. These are expected to drop after a big gain in December, but it’s a jerky data series. At 9:00 a.m. we get the Case-Shiller home-price index for December. These are some fairly old numbers, but they are expected to show that house prices were still falling in December, showing no sign yet of the housing bottom other economists say they’re seeing in other numbers. Finally, at 10:00 a.m. we get a consumer confidence reading from the Conference Board, a private research firm. This is expected to tick up again, but is still historically low. The question, as always, is what consumers do, not how they feel. We are capable of spending money even when we feel pretty bad, as long as we actually have money to spend.

Thing Five: Dow’s Lucky 13,000: The Dow Jones Industrial Average, a stock index built back in the days when men were men and cars got 40 rods to the hogshead as Yahweh intended, is nearing 13,000. Again. And again and again. Why does anybody care about this? Jim Browning of the Wall Street Journal goes in search of that knowledge and finds that, while market mavens scoff at the media’s focus on such round numbers, milestones like this do seem to cause the market to pause and reflect on how far it has come, the people it has hurt along the way, and whether it should keep climbing or start falling, sending everybody into a panic. Do the right thing, Dow.

Thing Six: Yahoo Versus Facebook: Yahoo may be getting a little long in the tooth as tech companies go, but it may yet get its hands on some of that upstart Facebook’s bajillions in IPO money. That’s because Yahoo can still sling a patent lawsuit with the best of them, and it thinks it can get some patent cash out of Facebook. That was the warning it gave the upstart whippersnapper on Monday, Reuters writes.

Thing Seven: Black Hole Sun:Since the hacking scandal began that engulfed his News Corporation (former employer of this here blogger), Rupert Murdoch has tried contrition, and now he’s trying defiance. Neither are working yet. After hacking and bribery accusations were leveled at his flagship tabloid, the Sun, Murdoch parachuted into London, bucked up the troops and launched a Sunday edition. The cop leading the investigation of the Sun fired back yesterday, the Guardian writes, saying the Sun had “established a ‘network of corrupted officials’ and created a ‘culture of illegal payments.'”

Thing Seven And One Half: A Couch Potato Gathers No Muscles: If you thought putting a Wii in the hands of a slothful child was going to help whip him or her into shape, then you might need to think again, Reuters writes. “All that virtual boxing, bowling and dancing along with video game systems might not be helping kids meet their daily exercise requirements, a new study suggests.”

Watch: The History of the Corporate Person

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