Upgrades and Downgrades This Morning

Source

American International Group Inc. (NYSE: AIG) Raised to Outperform at William Blair.

Bankrate, Inc. (NYSE: RATE) Started as Buy at SunTrust Robinson Humphrey.

Comerica Inc. (NYSE: CMA) Cut to Market Perform at BMO.

CNOOC Ltd. (NYSE: CEO) Raised to Hold at Jefferies.

Cree Inc. (NASDAQ: CREE) Cut to Hold at ThinkEquity.

Deckers Outdoor Corporation (NASDAQ: DECK) Raised to Neutral at Stern Agee.

First Solar, Inc. (NASDAQ: FSLR) Raised to Hold at Cantor Fitzgerald; Cut to Sell at Wunderlich; Maintained as Buy but cut target $40 from $50 at Argus.

Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC) Maintained Outperform with $35 target and raised 2013 estimates at Credit Suisse.

International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE: IBM) Cut to Neutral at Macquarie; Raised estimates but maintained as Neutral at Credit Suisse.

SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) Reiterated Buy with $84 target at Argus.

T. Rowe Price Group (NASDAQ: TROW) named as Bull of the Day at Zacks.

Tata Motors Ltd. (NYSE: TTM) maintained as the most undervalued stock on the price-to-book versus return on equity valuation model at Credit Suisse.

United Continental Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: UAL) named as Bear of the Day at Zacks.”

In Play

On the Wires

Debt, taxes, and death……

Source

“European markets continue to tumble, with Spain down well over 3 percent.

Italy is also down more than 2.6 percent. Italian banks continue to take a beating. UniCredit and Intesa Sanpaolo are both down about 5 percent, Banca MPS has fallen around 4.4 percent, and UBI Banca is off 2.3 percent.

The core has also been affected, with the CAC 40 falling 1.6 percent and the DAX off 1 percent.

Notably, government bonds appear to be unaffected by the rout in equities, with Spanish and Italian 10-year yields both falling slightly today.

Check out the Spanish IBEX 35 today:

“BlackRock Inc. (BLK), the world’s biggest asset manager, said first-quarter profit rose 0.7 percent as rising markets boosted assets.

Net income increased to $572 million, or $3.14 a share, from $568 million, or $2.89, a year earlier, the New York-based company said today in a statement. BlackRock’s net income compared with the $2.95 average estimate of 6 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg….”

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“Bank of New York Mellon Corp., the world’s largest custody bank, said first-quarter earnings fell 1 percent as interest rates near record lows eroded income from lending and investing.

Net income fell to $619 million, or 52 cents a share, from $625 million or 50 cents, a year earlier, BNY Mellon said today in a statement. Analysts (BK) had expected the New York-based company to report a profit of 51 cents a share, according to the average of 15 estimates in a Bloomberg survey.

“It is a challenging environment for all the custody banks because low interest rates limit what they can make on their short term assets,” Gerard Cassidy, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets in Portland, Maine, said in a telephone interview before earnings were announced.

BNY Mellon follows Boston’s State Street Corp., the third- largest custody bank, in reporting lower earnings as the Federal Reserve’s decision to keep interest rates near zero since 2008 hurt custody banks. BNY Mellon, which earns fees on assets it manages and oversees for clients, was helped by a 12 percent gain in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index in the first quarter and cost-cutting measures.

“We are seeing the early results of our operational excellence initiatives as we generated significant positive operating leverage relative to the fourth quarter,” Chief Executive OfficerGerald Hassell said in the statement. Hassell in November outlined expense cuts designed to save as much $700 million before taxes by 2015. The bank said at that time it expected fee revenue to grow 3 percent to 5 percent a year from 2012 to 2014….”

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Full report

“Japan is poised to exit more than a decade of deflation as a strengthening yuan bolsters China’s buying power, fueling Japanese production and buoying prices, according to Nomura Holdings Inc. (8604)

Demand from China will propel continuous gains in Japanese consumer prices next year as companies ramp up production with factories now running at about three quarters of capacity,Takahide Kiuchi, Nomura’s chief economist, said in an interview on April 13. The yuan has gained 5.2 percent against the yen this year, making Japanese products more affordable in China, which became Japan’s biggest overseas market in 2009.

Premier Wen Jiabao last month said China will adopt policies to encourage domestic consumption and wean the country from its dependence on exports. The shift may help Japan absorb a glut of unused factory capacity and unwind a cycle of declining prices that has weighed on economic growth. Deflation has driven wages down 16 percent since a 1997 peak and caused tax revenues to fall by about 20 percent in the same period, according to government data compiled by Bloomberg.

“Even mild deflation is a bad thing,” Kiuchi said. “When people expect deflation, wages tend to decline more rapidly. That means real wages decline and that undermines consumption.”

Japanese companies are using about 73 percent of their factory capacity, according to trade ministry data released yesterday. An increase in capacity utilization to about 85 percent in August 2007 preceded Japan’s last period of inflation, a 15-month stretch of price gainsbetween October 2007 and December 2008….”

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“Spanish, Italian and Portuguese banks are loading up on bonds issued by their own governments, a move that shifts more of the risk of sovereign default to European taxpayers from private creditors.

Holdings of Spanish government debt by lenders based in the country jumped 26 percent in two months, to 220 billion euros ($289 billion) at the end of January, data from Spain’s treasuryshow. Italian banks increased ownership of their nation’s sovereign bonds by 31 percent to 267 billion euros in the three months ended in February, according to Bank of Italy data.

German and French banks, meanwhile, have cut holdings of those countries’ bonds, as well as Irish and Greek debt, by as much as 50 percent since 2010 in some cases. That leaves domestic firms on the hook for a restructuring such asGreece’s last month and their main financier, the European Central Bank, facing losses. Like Greece, governments would have to rescue their lenders with funds borrowed from the European Union.

“The more banks stop cross-border lending, the more the ECB steps in to do the financing,” said Guntram Wolff, deputy director of Bruegel, a Brussels-based research institute. “So the exposure of the core countries to the periphery is shifting from the private to the public sector.”

ECB Lending…”

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“China’s home prices fell in a record 37 of 70 cities tracked by the government in March as officials pledged to keep restrictions on property purchases that have sapped buyer demand.

The eastern city of Wenzhou led declines with a 9 percent slump in values from a year earlier, while Beijing and Shanghai recorded drops of 0.8 percent, according to data released by the statistics bureau today.

Today’s release underscores forecasts for China’s economic growth to slow further this quarter after the rate reached the lowest level in almost three years in the three months through March. Momentum in the real-estate industry is “too strong to reverse” for now, according to Li Daokui, a former adviser to the nation’s central bank.

“Alternative drivers of GDP growth will have to take some time to come in, to fill in the vacuum,” Li said today in an interview with Bloomberg Television from Sydney, citing water, rail and public-housing projects as future contributors to the expansion. Policy makers are aiming to balance reining in property speculation without hobbling growth, he said….”

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“Spain’s surging bad loans are spurring doubt on whether the government can persuade investors that it can clean up the country’s banks without further damaging public finances.

Non-performing loans as a proportion of total lending jumped to 8.16 percent in February, the highest level since 1994, from less than 1 percent in 2007, according to Bank of Spain data published today. The ratio rose from 7.91 percent in January as 3.8 billion euros of loans soured in February, a 110 percent increase from the same month a year ago. That takes the total credit in the economy that the regulator lists as “doubtful” to 143.8 billion euros.

Defaults are rising and credit is shrinking at a record pace as 24 percent unemployment corrodes the quality of loans built up in the country’s credit boom and saps the appetite of banks to make new ones. Doubts about the extent of Spain’s non- performing loans problem is hurting bank stocks and driving up the government’s borrowing costs on investor concern that the expense of propping up ailing lenders may add to the debt burden.

“One of our concerns in Spain is to what extent contingent liabilities could pass to the central government,” said Andrew Bosomworth, Pacific Investment Management Co.’s Munich-based head of portfolio management. Non-performing loans “will have to rise when you take into account the unemployment rate and what’s happening with the economy,” he said….”

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“The Australian dollar remained higher against most of its major peers as Asian stocks extended a global rally after the International Monetary Fund raised its economic growth outlook.

The New Zealand dollar rose for a second day versus the yen as a drop in currency-market volatility supported demand for higher-yielding assets. Gains in the so-called kiwi were limited after Auckland-based Fonterra Cooperative Group Ltd. said whole- milk powder prices fell to the lowest since August 2009, and before data forecast to show inflation stayed within the Reserve Bank of New Zealand’s target of 1 percent to 3 percent.

“It’s a pretty fair bet we’d run with the positive sentiment for now,” said Sean Callow, a senior currency strategist in Sydney at Westpac Banking Corp. “We’ve seen a pretty big move on the likes of Aussie and kiwi. I think they can test a little bit higher on the day.”

Australia’s currency traded at $1.0398 at 4:14 p.m. in Sydney from $1.0390 yesterday. It gained 0.7 percent to 84.59 yen from yesterday, when it rallied 0.9 percent to 84.

New Zealand’s currency fetched 82.15 U.S. cents from 82.10. The kiwi strengthened 0.7 percent to 66.83 yen from yesterday, when it rose 0.6 percent to 66.38.

The MSCI Asia Pacific Index (CRY) of stocks rose 1.2 percent, following a 1.6 percent rally in the MSCI World Index yesterday. The Thomson Reuters/Jefferies CRB Index of raw materials climbed 0.4 percent yesterday…”

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“The yen weakened for a second day against the euro and dollar before U.S. data tomorrow forecast to show employment and housing markets are improving, reducing demand for the safety of Japan’s currency.

The yen fell versus all 16 of its major counterparts after Bank of Japan (8301) Deputy GovernorKiyohiko Nishimura said the central bank is ready to implement additional easing, and the International Monetary Fund yesterday raised its global growth forecasts. The pound strengthened after Bank of England minutes showed policy maker Adam Posen ended his push for further stimulus. Sweden’s krona appreciated as the central bank kept its benchmark interest rate unchanged.

The weaker yen reflects “both improving risk sentiment, and intensified speculation over the potential for further monetary easing from the BOJ,” said Lee Hardman, a foreign- exchange strategist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd. in London. “The IMF also released its latest World Economic Outlook forecasts, which revealed a modest upgrade to its global growth projection.”

The yen declined 0.4 percent to 106.55 per euro at 6:44 a.m. New York time after falling 0.4 percent yesterday. Japan’s currency weakened 0.8 percent to 81.49 per dollar after appreciating to 80.30 on April 16, the strongest since Feb. 29. The euro dropped 0.4 percent to $1.3071…”

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“Adam Posen ended his push for further Bank of England stimulus this month and David Milesdescribed his view on the need for more as “finely balanced” as officials said inflation may turn out faster than forecast.

The pound rose after minutes of the central bank’s April 4- 5 meeting showed that Posen joined the majority of the nine- member Monetary Policy Committee in seeking no change to the 325 billion-pound ($517 billion) asset-purchase target. U.K. jobless claims rose less than economists forecast and the official unemployment rate fell, a separate report showed.

While Bank of England officials noted that the U.K. may face a recession in the first half of this year, they said inflation may turn out faster than forecast. They endorsed a final month of bond purchases to aid growth while setting the stage for a possible pause in May, when they will consider new quarterly forecasts and debate whether to halt the so-called quantitative-easing program.

“The probability of QE in May — which already looked relatively low — has diminished significantly,” said Ross Walker, an economist at Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc in London. “It is too soon to rule out further QE in the second half of 2012, but the probability of this is diminishing in response to short-term inflation ‘stickiness’ and firmer underlying activity data.”

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Asia

Europe

Futures

Currencies

Commodities

LIBOR, EURIBOR, 10 year yields for Italy, Spain, France, and Germany

(Reuters) – About 150 Afghan schoolgirls were poisoned on Tuesday after drinking contaminated water at a high school in the country’s north, officials said, blaming it on conservative radicals opposed to female education.

Since the 2001 toppling of the Taliban, which banned education for women and girls, females have returned to schools, especially in Kabul.

But periodic attacks still occur against girls, teachers and their school buildings, usually in the more conservative south and east of the country, from where the Taliban insurgency draws most support.

“We are 100 percent sure that the water they drunk inside their classes was poisoned. This is either the work of those who are against girls’ education or irresponsible armed individuals,” said Jan Mohammad Nabizada, a spokesman for education department in northern Takhar province.

Read the rest here.

Reprinted entirely from the Daily Caller, because it is so damn funny.

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Jim Treacher

Hey, if we’re going to talk about how presidential candidates treated dogs decades ago, let’s talk about how presidential candidates treated dogs decades ago.

Can you name the author of this quote?

“With Lolo, I learned how to eat small green chill peppers raw with dinner (plenty of rice), and, away from the dinner table, I was introduced to dog meat (tough), snake meat (tougher), and roasted grasshopper (crunchy). Like many Indonesians, Lolo followed a brand of Islam that could make room for the remnants of more ancient animist and Hindu faiths. He explained that a man took on the powers of whatever he ate: One day soon, he promised, he would bring home a piece of tiger meat for us to share.”

Yep, that’s Barack Obama, writing about his childhood with his stepfather Lolo Soetoro in Indonesia, from Chapter Two of his bestseller Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance.

“So what? It was a long time ago,” you say. “He was a lot younger. Customs are different there. He was just doing what his stepfather told him. And hey, you can’t even prove that the dogs were ever left on top of a car, you racist.”

Hey, whatever you have to tell yourself, libs. Say what you want about Romney, but at least he only put a dog on the roof of his car, not the roof of his mouth. And whenever you bring up the one, we’re going to bring up the other.

It’s no fun when we push back, is it? That’s why it’s so much fun.

Update: I know the Secret Service has a lot to deal with right now, but are they protecting Bo? From Obama, I mean.

Berkshire shares a and b are down a bit. 

Buffett says he feels a 100%

Software revs up by 7% & services up 1%