Safety Drives Treasury Sales Higher

“Treasuries rose, pushing 10-year note yields toward a four-month low, as a decline in stocks and commodities fueled demand for the safest assets.

Benchmark 10-year notes climbed for the fourth time in five days. Treasuries are outperforming U.S. stocks for the first time in five months on bets the Federal Reserve will maintain asset purchases and concern the global economy is slowing. New York Fed President William C. Dudley and his Chicago counterpart Charles Evans stressed the need for the central bank to maintain record stimulus yesterday. The U.S. will sell $18 billion of inflation-linked debt tomorrow….”

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“Bank of America Corp. reported a jump in first-quarter profit that missed analysts’ estimates as lower mortgage banking income slowed the firm’s turnaround. The shares dropped 3.3 percent in early New York trading.

Net income advanced to $2.62 billion, or 20 cents a share, from $653 million, or 3 cents, a year earlier, according to a statement today from the Charlotte, North Carolina-based company. The consensus of 25 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg had predicted 23 cents a share. Last year’s first-quarter profit was reduced by $4.8 billion in pretax-accounting charges.

Chief Executive Officer Brian T. Moynihan, 53, has sold more than $60 billion in assets, settled more than $40 billion in mortgage claims and repaired the bank’s balance sheet since taking over in 2010. He’s now focused on trimming $8 billion in annual expenses and adding revenue, which climbed 5.5 percent to $23.5 billion.

“Lower mortgage banking income and lower net gains on the sales of debt securities” weighed on results, the bank said in the statement. Excluding the impact of accounting charges, adjusted total revenue fell 8.4 percent from a year earlier to $23.9 billion.

The net loss at consumer real estate services widened to $1.31 billion from $1.14 billion a year earlier. Adjusted revenue slipped at the unit while noninterest expenses climbed 4.5 percent to $4.06 billion and margins narrowed, the bank said.

Biggest Banks…”

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“(Reuters) – No. 1 toymaker Mattel Inc reported stronger-than-expected first-quarter results, helped by tight cost controls and increased demand for American Girl and Monster High dolls.

The company, which is also known for its Barbie dolls and Hot Wheels cars, has raised prices globally and started making products for local consumption in countries such as Brazil and India to hold the line on costs.

Local production helps Mattel get products to stores faster and cut down on import duties and shipping costs, it told Reuters earlier this year.

During the quarter, net income rose to $38.5 million, or 11 cents a share, from $7.8 million, or 2 cents a share, a year earlier. Analysts on average were expecting a profit of 9 cents a share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Smaller rival Hasbro Inc is due to report its quarterly results next week.

The first quarter is typically the least significant of the year in terms of sales for toy companies. They make more than a third of their annual revenue in the fourth quarter, which includes the all-important holiday selling season….”

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“(Reuters) – BNY Mellon Corp said on Wednesday that first-quarter revenue fell 1 percent as the world’s largest custody bank reported a loss due to a high-stakes tax battle with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service.

BNY Mellon’s net loss of $266 million, or 23 cents a share, reflected a U.S. Tax Court decision announced in February that triggered a previously announced $854 million charge against profits.

In the year-earlier quarter, BNY Mellon reported net income of $619 million, or 52 cents a share.

Excluding the tax-related charge, the bank earned 50 cents a share, missing the average analyst estimate by 2 cents, according to I/B/E/S Thomson Reuters.

Revenue totaled $3.61 billion, down 1 percent from a year ago. Bright spots included 10 percent gains in both investment management and performance fees, and foreign exchange trading.

Net interest revenue at the bank, however, fell 6 percent to $719 million, reflecting lower yields on reinvested securities and the elimination of interest on European Central Bank deposits.”

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“NEW YORK (Reuters) – Stock index futures fell on Wednesday, indicating the S&P 500 will retreat from its second-best daily performance of the year as commodities fell and after earnings reports from Yahoo and Intel.

Brent crude slid towards $99 per barrel and copper dropped 1.8 percent to $7,167 a ton as softer-than-expected data in the U.S. and China has heightened worry over demand. U.S. listed shares of BHP Billiton lost 2.7 percent to $64.84 in premarket.

Yahoo Inc shed 1.2 percent to $23.50 in premarket trade after the Internet company’s first quarter revenue fell shy of expectations as declining traffic to its Web properties and falling display advertising sales continue to weigh on the company.

Intel Corp slipped 0.5 percent to $21.81 before the opening bell after the chipmaker said its current-quarter revenue would decline as much as 8 percent and trimmed its 2013 capital spending plans.

Bank of America Corp declined 3.3 percent to $11.87 after reporting first-quarter results.

S&P 500 futures fell 11.9 points and were below fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures lost 96 points, and Nasdaq 100 futures dropped 23.5 points.

According to Thomson Reuters data through Tuesday morning, of the 42 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings to date for the first quarter of 2013, 66.7 percent have reported earnings above analyst expectations. Over the past four quarters, 67 percent of companies beat estimates while the average since 1994 is a 63 percent beat rate….”

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“ASML Holding NV (ASML), Europe’s largest semiconductor-equipment supplier, named finance director Peter Wennink chief executive officer as it announced a 1 billion-euro buyback and first-quarter profit that beat estimates.

Eric Meurice, 56, whose contract as CEO was set to end next year, will give up that job July 1 and become chairman, the Veldhoven, Netherlands-based company said today….”

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“Germany allotted 3.35 billion euros of 10-year bunds at an average yield of 1.28 percent, thelowest on record, data from the Bundesbank showed.

Investors bid for 5.23 billion euros of the securities, compared with a maximum sales target of 4 billion euros, according to the data.”

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“European stocks declined for a fourth day, the longest losing streak in three months, with a gauge of commodity producers sinking to an 18-month low. U.S. index futures dropped, while Asian shares climbed.

BHP Billiton Ltd. (BHP) retreated to a seven-month low after the world’s largest mining company said third-quarter iron ore production rose less than expected. Tesco Plc (TSCO) sank 3.3 percent after reporting the first annual profit drop in almost 20 years and saying it will exit the U.S. ASML Holding NV rose the most since July after posting first-quarter sales that topped analysts’ estimates and announcing a share buyback program.

The Stoxx Europe 600 Index (SXXP) fell 0.9 percent to 285.63 at 11:26 a.m. in London. The gauge earlier slid as much as 1.4 percent amid speculation Germany’s credit rating could be downgraded, before recovering some of the losses within 15 minutes. Some 14,000 DAX Index futures contracts expiring in June changed hands in a five-minute period about 9:50 a.m. inFrankfurt today, more than 15 times the 20-day average volume for that time of day, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

“Investors are worried that Germany’s economy isn’t holding up so strongly anymore, and German downgrade rumors are spreading more fear in the markets today,” said John Plassard, who helps oversee $28 billion as vice president at Mirabaud Securities LLP in Geneva. “Coupled with the disappointing Chinese GDP numbers from earlier this week and the plunging gold prices, we’re in the middle of a phase of uncertainty and possibly a correction — the last thing market participants want to hear in such a period are downgrade rumors.”

The Stoxx 600 has still gained 2.1 percent this year as U.S. lawmakers agreed on a compromise budget and central banks maintained stimulus measures. Futures contracts on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index lost 0.5 percent today, while the MSCI Asia Pacific Index rose 0.7 percent.

China, Commodities

“In the shorter term, we have seen a bit of nervousness linked to the poor figures out of China and the selloff in commodities — and we’re seeing mining stocks also weighing today,” said Jean-Paul Jeckelmann, chief investment officer at Banque Bonhote & Cie. in Neuchatel, Switzerland, who helps manage $1.4 billion in equities…..”

 

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“Emerging-market stocks erased earlier gains as lower commodity prices dragged down Russian and Polish equities.

KGHM (KGH) Polska Miedz SA tumbled 6 percent in Warsaw after copper retreated, helping send Poland’s WIG20 Index (WIG20) to a seven- month low. OAO Gazprom, Russia’s biggest natural-gas producer and the parent of crude producer OAO Gazprom Neft, slid to the lowest level since March 2009 in Moscow, dragging the Micex Index (INDEXCF) toward its lowest close since June 25. Chinese banks led a 1.2 percent drop in the Hang Seng China Enterprises Index of mainland companies listed in Hong Kong.

The MSCI Emerging Markets Index (MXEF) fell 0.3 percent to 1,006.41 as of 12:39 p.m. in London. The gauge earlier gained as much as 0.4 percent. Copper led declines in industrial metals after the International Monetary Fund cut its forecast to China’s economic growth yesterday, while oil traded near the lowest level in four months. The rand weakened 0.5 percent versus the dollar and South African bonds gained, as March inflation was slower than predicted by analysts.

“Russia is down on commodity prices, central and eastern Europe on weak Europe,” Martial Godet, head of emerging-markets strategy at BNP Paribas SA in London, said by e-mail. “Only the markets with low commodity exposure and strong domestic stories like India, ASEAN,Turkey, are somewhat immune.”…”

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“Standard & Poor’s, found liable in November for misleading Australian towns with investment ratings, faces more lawsuits from councils and charities seeking to recoup their losses.

The city of Swan and Moree Plains Shire Council today sued S&P and its parent companyMcGraw-Hill Cos. (MHP) in Sydney federal court claiming the AAA, AA+, AA and AA- ratings given to synthetic collateralized debt obligations were misleading. The two municipalites are representative plaintiffs for about 90 councils, religous organizations and funds who aren’t named in the statement of claim.

“This filing in Australia will pave the way for further filings in Europe,” John Walker, executive director of IMF (Australia) Ltd., the litigation funder, said in a statement. “Rating agencies played a pivotal role in the misallocation of billions of dollars worldwide from 2005 to 2008 and it is important they be held accountable.”….”

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“Hundreds of port workers at Li Ka- shing’s Hong Kong terminals surrounded his Cheung Kong Center headquarters in the city’s business district after rejecting pay rise aimed at ending a three-week strike.

Contract workers of Li’s Hongkong International Terminals Ltd. were offered a 7 percent raise in pay by their employers, the company said in an e-mail, compared with the workers’ demand for a 23 percent increase. Hong Kong government’s mediators have helped narrow the differences between employers and workers, Labour Secretary Matthew Cheung told reporters today….”

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“Asian stocks advanced for the first time in three days as new-home construction in the U.S. jumped more than forecast, the International Monetary Fund raised its forecast for Japanese growth and the yen weakened

Toyota Motor Corp., the world’s largest carmaker, advanced 1.8 percent as a weakening yen boosted the earnings outlook for exporters. Advantest Corp. paced increases in Tokyo among makers of semiconductor equipment after Intel Corp. (INTC) forecast second- quarter sales that would exceed some analysts’ estimates. Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd., Asia’s biggest international carrier by passenger revenue, climbed 2.9 percent in Hong Kong after Deutsche Bank AG raised its rating to buy.

The MSCI Asia Pacific Index gained 0.6 percent to 137.21 as of 6:08 p.m. in Tokyo. Three shares advanced for every two that fell, with eight of the 10 industry groups on the gauge climbing. The benchmark rose 5.5 percent this year through yesterday amid signs the U.S. economy is recovering and as Japanese stocks rallied on speculation the Bank of Japan will boost stimulus.

“U.S. housing starts showed a bright spot and confirmed the view that the economy is on the mend,” said Hiroichi Nishi, an equities manager in Tokyo at SMBC Nikko Securities Inc. “The yen will stay in a downtrend given the bold monetary easing by the Bank of Japan, and that leads to optimism exporters’ earnings will outperform.”

Plans for fiscal stimulus and record monetary-policy easing by the Bank of Japan were reflected in the IMF’s increased growth estimates for the world’s third-biggest economy, which were raised to 1.6 percent this year from 1.2 percent and to 1.4 percent in 2014 from 0.7 percent. IMF Chief Economist Olivier Blanchard said the BOJ’s action was “appropriate” and its impact on the yen “a logical consequence.”

Exporters Rise

Japanese exporters rallied. Toyota Motor gained 1.8 percent to 5,550 yen, Nissan Motor Co. advanced 3.3 percent to 1,024 yen and Ricoh Co., an imaging equipment maker that gets more than half of sales outside Japan, added 3.8 percent to 1,197 yen. The yen fell to 98.34 per dollar….”

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World Markets

Currencies

Commodities

USD Libor

Euribor

Yields for Italy, Spain, France,  and Germany …

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“The latest jobs report showed that unemployment ticked lower because of a decline in the labor force participation rate.

But many people leaving the workforce are actually quitting their jobs.

David Rosenberg believes this trend puts pressure on companies to raise pay to keep their workforce. This is bad news for profit margins and ultimately stock prices.

Here’s Rosenberg:

“At a time when firings are at record lows and job openings are rising at a double-digit annual rate, the number of people quitting their current job for greener pastures elsewhere is on a discernible uptrend. All this points to higher wage growth ahead, and frankly, this is a good thing for society.

“But the flip side is that as the labor share of the national income pie mean reverts off its all-time lows, we are likely to see profit margins pinched.

“This is the big risk – margin compression affects the ‘E’, while inflation, insofar as the tight historical relationship with final prices holds, even if to a smaller degree this time around, affects the P/E.”…”

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“NEW YORK (AP) — Intel Corp., the world’s largest maker of chips for PCs, is remaining steadfast amid a drastic slowdown in computer sales.

Intel on Tuesday said it’s keeping its sales and margin forecasts for this year, even as first-quarter PC sales plunged 14 percent from a year ago, as measured by research firm IDC. The company is helped by rising shipments of chips for servers.

The Santa Clara, Calif., chipmaker also met analyst forecasts for the just-ended quarter. It earned $2 billion, or 40 cents per share, in the January to March period. That was down 27 percent from $2.74 billion, or 53 cents per share, a year ago.

Revenue was $12.6 billion, slightly below the midpoint of Intel’s own forecast range. The figure was down 2.3 percent from $12.9 billion a year ago….”

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“SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Yahoo is making more money under CEO Marissa Mayer, even as the Internet company struggles to sell more of the ads that bring in most of its revenue.

The latest signs of earnings progress came Tuesday with the release of Yahoo’s first-quarter earnings report.

The numbers also show further signs of decay in Yahoo’s sales of display ads. On the plus side, Yahoo’s ad revenue tied to search results rose.

Investors seemed more worried about the downturn in Yahoo’s display advertising than the surge in the company’s earnings. Yahoo’s stock sank more than 3 percent after the results came out.

The negative reaction suggests that some investors may be losing their faith in Mayer, a respected executive who defected from Google Inc. to join Yahoo nine months ago….”

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By posting this i am not making a statement about recent events in Boston.

The study of history has made me sick over the past few years and i hope this is just a random act of a crazy person or persons.

Let us be thankful that the event in Boston was not bigger than it could have been….let us send love and condolences to the families harmed by this tragedy.

[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOVICOudMVI 450 300]

 

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“Adhering to a western style diet lowers a person’s chances of achieving older age in good health and with higher functionality, according to a news release.

The latest study, published in The American Journal of Medicine, states that a western style diet, which includes fried and sweet food, processed and red meat, high fat dairy products and refined grains leads to a greater risk of premature death.

“The impact of diet on specific age-related diseases has been studied extensively, but few investigations have adopted a more holistic approach to determine the association of diet with overall health at older ages,” says lead investigator Tasnime Akbaraly, PhD, Inserm, Montpellier, France. “We examined whether diet, assessed in midlife, using dietary patterns and adherence to the Alternative Healthy Eating Index (AHEI), is associated with aging phenotypes, identified after a mean 16-year follow-up.”

For the study, researchers examined the findings from the British Whitehall II cohort study. The study states that AHEI increases the odds of reversing metabolic syndrome. This syndrome can trigger heart diseases, and in worst cases, even compromise a person’s mortality.  Hence the researchers looked for dietary factors that lower the risk of premature death and also improve ideal aging….”

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[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSUIQgEVDM4 450 300]

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“Businesses would rather hire somebody with no relevant experience than hire a person who has been unemployed for a long time, according to new research by Rand Ghayad at Northeastern University.

Ghayad, a Ph.D. candidate in applied economics, sent out thousands of fake resumes in response to hundreds of online job postings and tracked the responses from the employers. The dummy candidates with long gaps in their resumes received fewer callbacks than the candidates with shorter gaps — even if the fictional resume showed no experience relevant to the job.

“Once you are long-term unemployed, even if you come from the same industry, even if you have the right skills, it doesn’t matter to employers anymore,” Ghayad told The Huffington Post. “They prefer to hire someone who’s short-term unemployed.”

Previous research by Ghayad and others has yielded similar results: Companies just don’t want the long-term jobless.

Since late 2009, roughly 40 percent of the unemployed have been out of work six months or longer, which is the duration economists consider “long term.” It’s the highest rate of long-term joblessness the country has seen since at least the 1940s, according to the Labor Department. As of March, that’s 4.6 million people.

Ghayad’s working paper is the latest piece of evidence that long-term joblessness persists not because workers are defective, but because the surplus labor supply allows employers to be picky about the hiring process….”

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“A leaked study examining genetically-modified corn reveals that the lab-made alternative to organic crops contains a startling level of toxic chemicals.

An anti-GMO website has posted the results of an education-based consulting company’s comparison of corn types, and the results reveal that genetically modified foods may be more hazardous than once thought.

The study, the 2012 Corn Comparison Report by Profit Pro, was published recently on the website for Moms Across America March to Label GMOs, a group that says they wish to “raise awareness and support Moms with solutions to eat GMO Free as we demand GMO labeling locally and nationally simultaneously.” They are plotting nationwide protests scheduled for later this year.

The report, writes the website’s Zen Honeycutt, was provided by a representative for De Dell Seed Company, an Ontario-based farm that’s touted as being Canadian only non-GMO corn seed company.

“The claims that ‘There is no difference between GMO corn and NON Gmo corn’ are false,” says Honeycutt, who adds she was “floored” after reading the study.

According to the analysis, GMO corn tested by Profit Pro contains a number of elements absent from traditional cord, including chlorides, formaldehyde and glyphosate. While those elements don’t appear naturally in corn, they were present in GMO samples to the tune of 60 ppm, 200pm and 13 ppm, respectively.

Honecutt says that the United States Environmental Protection Agency (FDA) mandates that the level of glyphosate in American drinking water not exceed 0.7 ppm and adds that organ damage in some animals has been linked to glyphosate exposure exceeding 0.1 ppm.

“Glyphosate is a strong organic phosphate chelator that immobilizes positively charged minerals such as manganese, cobalt, iron, zinc [and] copper,” Dr. Don Huber attested during a separate GMO study recently released, adding that those elements “are essential for normal physiological functions in soils, plants and animals.”….”

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