$MRO Reports a Surprise in Revenue Growth

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From the report:

“Business impediments continued to have a more negative tone. Working capital shortages remained elevated after last month’s three-year high. Skilled labor shortages fell to a four-month low.”

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After a nice run of 6 months of upside, September saw a drop in home prices by 0.3% according to CoreLogic.

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“(Reuters) – Freddie Mac reported a third-quarter profit on Tuesday, driven by a U.S. housing marketon the mend, and said it was not requesting additional funds from the U.S. Treasury to stay solvent.

The government’s second-largest mortgage funding entity, which said its portfolio of late-paying loans was the lowest in two years, had sufficient income to make a $1.8 billion dividend payment to the Treasury.

Freddie Mac had net earnings of $2.9 billion in the quarter that ended September 30, contrasting a $4.4 billion loss a year earlier.

This is the first time Freddie Mac reported earnings since the U.S. Treasury said it would force Freddie, as well as larger government funding firm Fannie Mae , to more quickly shrink their mortgage investments and turn over profits to taxpayers.”

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“(Reuters) – Wells Fargo & Co on Tuesday said it was expanding lending, treasury management and other services for corporate customers in Canada as the No. 4 U.S. bank by assets adds to its international reach.

The San Francisco-based bank said it received regulatory approval for the expansion in September. The bank previously had select businesses in the country, but under its new license will now have commercial banking, global banking, commercial real estate and energy banking businesses in Canada.”

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U.S. stocks get giddy at the open, but stop right at resistance. Currently resistance is around 1423 on the S&P.

Market update

Gapping up

ENOC +15.6%, WTW +9.5%, CTRP +9.2%, JIVE +7.1%, THO +7.1%, MM +6.8%,

MYGN +6.1%, MED +5.5%, LF +4.3%, CLNE +3.4%, PVSW +3.2%, MT +1.9%,

AKS +1.5%,  CMG +1.3%,  LRCX +1.2%,

Gapping down

Z -22.8%, SREV -18.3%, ESRX -14.4%, BSFT -10.3%, SNHY -8.9%, ENS -7.7%,

TRLA -4.2%, WMGI -4.1%, TS -1.3%,  ERIC -2.5%, AWC -6.5%,

NLY, AIV, AVT, BEAM, CMG, CS, FANG, ESRX, HUM, KRG, ERIC, RJET, MKTG, ROST, SMRT, TJX, UBS, USM,

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In Play ,

On the Wires

“A judge in a U.S court has dismissed a case brought by Apple against Google-owned Motorola Mobility. Apple had complained Motorola was seeking excessive royalties for standards-essential patents. It’s another small blow for Apple in its legal war against Android. The patents in question are among the 17,000 acquired by Google when it bought Motorola Mobility last year – to bolster Android against legal attacks.

According to the BBC, Motorola sought 2.25 percent of the price of Apple products that use some of its patents — but Apple was only prepared to pay $1 per device.”

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Smartphone plays have been a theme all over The PPT and 12631 for quite some time. There is still time to catch a ride on this tsunami.

LVLT, TKLC, STM, ONNN, ALU, TSYS, ARMH, CIEN, BRCD and AMD.

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“If you live in Ohio, your vote for president matters a whole lot, at least to judge from the attention being lavished on that state by the candidates. There is 1 chance in 5,800 that you will personally decide the election.

If you live almost anywhere else the probability that your vote matters is lower. In New York, way lower. Rational New Yorkers won’t drive to the polls, at least in areas where gasoline is short.

My rough calculation of the chance that a single vote cast in New York will decide the presidency is 1 in 10 raised to the power 61,000, or thereabouts. That would be a number with 61,000 zeroes in it. You’d have a better shot at winning the state lottery 6,000 times in a row.”

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In a move by China to satisfy its voracious energy appetite Sinopec has applied to build a coal to gasoline carbon capture plant in a tiny town in Wyoming…

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Greece is on strike and EU leaders, central banks, and pundits alike continue to disagree on how to help Greece. Never mind Spain and Italy for the moment.

A cluster fuck indeud….

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“NYSE Euronext reported higher-than-expected third-quarter earnings on Tuesday but revenue missed as global trading activity remained weak.

After the earnings announcement, shares of the exchange operator [NYX  25.61    0.32 (+1.27%)   ] gained 1.2 percent in trading before the opening bell. (Click here to get real-time quotes for NYSE Euronext.)

The company reported third-quarter earnings excluding items of 44 cents a share, higher than a forecast of 41 cents per share and below last year’s 71 cents per share.

But revenue dropped 21 percent to $559 million from $704 million a year ago.

Analysts had expected NYSE Euronext to post revenue of $569 million, according to a Thomson Reuters estimate.

The company cited lower average daily trading volumes for the decline in revenue.”

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” CVS Caremark posted higher quarterly earnings on Tuesday and raised its guidance for the full year, citing higher drugstore chain sales and an increase in pharmacy benefit clients.”

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“Even a compromise by Congress to avert a ‘fiscal cliff’ won’t change the troubled credit outlook of the U.S. economy, which continues to face a huge debt burden, says Sean Egan, managing director of Egan-Jones, the ratings firm that has cut America’s sovereign debt rating twice this year.

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“The key measure on sovereign credit quality is debt-to-GDP, in the case of the U.S., it’s risen rather dramatically, from four years ago at 75 percent debt-to-GDP, to currently over 104 percent,” Egan told CNBC on Tuesday.

“The problem in the U.S. is that the debt has grown whereas the GDP has not grown. (While) the U.S. has had the benefit of being the major reserve currency, that only takes it so far,” he added.

Egan-Jones first cut U.S. credit rating to AA from AA+ in April, citing concerns over a lack of progress in cutting federal debt; and again in September, to AA-, triggered by concerns the quantitative easing from the Federal Reserve would hurt the country’s credit quality.”

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“A little programming note from Goldman’s Alec Phillips:

There are two foreseeable risks: a recount in a key state, or a delayed result due to absentee ballots or other voting issues. Colorado, Florida, and Pennsylvania conduct automatic recounts if the results are within 0.5 percentage points; Ohio’s threshold is 0.25%. The average of recent polls in Colorado shows the President with a 0.6pp lead, just outside this threshold….”

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“Earlier this year, Professor Robert Prechter, founder of Elliot Wave International, published a study titled Social Mood, Stock Market Performance and U.S. Presidential Elections: A Socionomic Perspective on Voting Results.

Here’s a quick summary of Prechter’s findings:

The results are consistent with socionomic voting theory, which includes the hypotheses that (1) social mood as reflected by the stock market is a more powerful regulator of re-election outcomes than economic variables such as GDP, inflation and unemployment and (2) voters unconsciously credit or blame the leader for their mood.

It’s all pretty intuitive.

However, Prechter’s study did include one interesting nugget of information.  Specifically, he found that big moves in the stock market are correlated with “landslide” wins during presidential elections.

“Socionomic theory proposes that more extreme changes in social mood tend to motivate more extreme voting preferences for or against the leader,” wrote Prechter.

From Prechter’s study:”

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“Apple is exploring how to drop Intel chips in favor of its home grown chips, Adam Stariano, Peter Burrows, and Ian King at Bloomberg report.

According to their report, Apple’s engineers are confident they can make their own chips that are powerful enough to power laptops and Macs.”

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