The Dow Jones industrial average () gained 157 points, or 1.2%, the S&P 500 () added 19 points, or 1.5%, and the Nasdaq composite () increased 46 points, or 1.6%.

The rally pushed pushed the Dow, up more than 5% in 2012, to its highest level since May 2008. The Nasdaq, up more than 11% for the year, climbed to its highest level since December 2000. The S&P 500 has gained almost 7% this year, and finished at a six-month high.

The rally was sparked by the Labor Department’s monthly jobs report, which showed that the U.S. economy added 243,000 jobs in January, far exceeding expectations. The unemployment rate dropped to 8.3%, the lowest since February 2009.

Economists surveyed by CNNMoney had expected the government to report an increase of just 130,000 jobs in January. The unemployment rate was expected to rise to 8.6%.

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Economists had expected a slowdown in post-holiday hiring, considering that about 40,000 temporary couriers were hired for the holidays alone..

"The jobs data blew away market expectations," noted Marc Chandler, global head of currency strategy at Brown Brothers Harriman, calling it a "monster" jobs report. "This coupled with other recent reports for January, show the year has begun off on a firm note," he added.

Meanwhile, investors were also on the lookout for an official agreement on a debt-reduction plan and a second bailout for Greece. The deal is expected to be near, but negotiations are likely to continue thorough the weekend.

U.S. stocks ended mixed Thursday as investors digested a cautious economic outlook from the chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Economy: Factory orders for December rose 1.1%, slightly below expectations. The January installment of the ISM Services Index hit 56.8, surpassing economists’ expectations for 53.1, and up sharply from the prior month.

Companies: Financial stocks were big gainers in Friday’s rally, with Bank of America’s (, Fortune 500) 5% spike leading the Dow’s gains. Morgan Stanley (, Fortune 500), Citigroup (, Fortune 500) and Goldman Sachs (, Fortune 500) were all up between 3% and 5%.

Shares of Genworth Financial (, Fortune 500) soared 14% after the mortgage insurer swung to a fourth-quarter profit.

Tyson Foods (, Fortune 500) shares rose after the company reported better-than-expected earnings and issued slightly upbeat guidance.

Estee Lauder (, Fortune 500) reported a 15% profit increase for its fiscal second quarter to $597 million, but its stock tumbled as the company’s guidance for the current quarter came in short of analyst expectations.

Shares of Gilead Sciences (, Fortune 500) spiked after the company posted fourth-quarter earnings that rose almost 6% from a year ago.

Edwards Lifesciences’ () stock dropped as earnings fell and the company gave a lackluster forecast for the current quarter.

Zynga () shares continue to rise, after Facebook’s IPO revealed the gamemaker accounted for 12% of its revenue in 2011.

Facebook IPO shrinks private trading market

Research in Motion () shares dipped after the BlackBerry-maker said it will give its tablet, the BlackBerry PlayBook, out to Android developers in exchange for their apps.

Trading in shares of Micron Technology (, Fortune 500) was halted after the company announced that its CEO and chairman Steve Appleton died Friday morning in a small-plane crash in Boise.

Currencies and commodities: The dollar slipped against the euro and the British pound, but rose versus the Japanese yen.

Oil for March delivery rose $1.48 to settle at $97.84 a barrel.

Gold futures for April delivery fell $19 to settle at $1,736.80 an ounce.

Bonds: The price on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury fell, pushing the yield up to 1.95% from 1.82% late Thursday.

World markets: European stocks ended sharply higher. Britain’s FTSE 100 () rose 1.8%, while the DAX () in Germany jumped 1.7% and France’s CAC 40 () rose 1.5%.

Asian markets ended mixed. The Shanghai Composite () rose 0.8%, while the Hang Seng () in Hong Kong was flat and Japan’s Nikkei () slipped 0.5%. 

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“The economic news and economic data, including today’s data, has been surprising to the upside,” Bullard said in a Bloomberg News interview. “I need to see significant deterioration in the economy and some threat of deflation or inflation moving significantly below our inflation target before I would consider more” central bank stimulus, or quantitative easing, he said.

The government earlier in the day said employers added 243,000 jobs in January and that the jobless rate dipped to 8.3 percent, a three-year low.

Bullard, who does not have a vote on the Fed’s policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee this year, is seen as a policy centrist.

The Fed last month said it would likely hold interest rates at rock bottom levels until late 2014. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke was cautious about recent improvement in the U.S. economy and left the door open to new bond purchases to boost growth.

The Fed cut rates to near zero more than three years ago and has bought $2.3 trillion worth of bonds to spur economic activity.

Bullard said economic conditions are different now than when the Fed launched its last bond buying initiative in late 2010. At that time, inflation was so low policymakers were concerned the economy was at risk of tipping into a dangerous deflationary spiral, but that is not now the case, Bullard said.

“Inflation is coming down but at least for now it is above our inflation target” of 2 percent, he said. “We will see how things develop. But I am also more bullish on the economy as a whole. I do think we have momentum coming out of 2011.”

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An index measuring the weighted average of prices for established houses in eight major cities slid 4.8 percent from a year earlier, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the biggest calendar-year drop since the data began in March 2002. They fell 1 percent in the three months to December from the previous quarter, when they retreated a revised 1.9 percent. The median estimate of 15 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News was a 0.6 percent quarterly fall.

Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Glenn Stevens lowered the benchmark rate by a quarter percentage point on Nov. 1 and again on Dec. 6 as inflation pressures eased and global growth risks increased. Australia recorded its worst annual job growth in 19 years in 2011, as consumers boosted savings, and traders are pricing in a 60 percent chance of another cut next week.

]]> http://allcashdom.com/australia-house-prices-fall-more-than-forecast-on-weaker-melbourne-values-bloomberg/feed/ http://allcashdom.com/gannett-4q-earnings-revenue-decline/ http://allcashdom.com/gannett-4q-earnings-revenue-decline/#comments Tue, 31 Jan 2012 04:00:07 +0000 Superman http://allcashdom.com/gannett-4q-earnings-revenue-decline/ Gannett Co. reported a 33 percent drop in its fourth-quarter net income Monday. The media company, which publishes USA Today and owns a network of broadcast, digital and other publishing properties, said profits were weighed down by restructuring costs and other charges, as well as a revenue decline.

The company earned $116.9 million, or 49 cents per share, in the three months that ended Dec. 25. That’s down from earnings of $174.1 million, or 72 cents per share, in the same period a year earlier.

Gannett’s stock fell 7 percent, or $1.07 to $14.15 in midday trading on Monday. It has traded in between $8.28 and $18.93 in the past 52 weeks.

Excluding special items such as restructuring charges, Gannett earned 72 cents per share in the latest quarter. Analysts, on average, were expecting earnings of 68 cents per share, according to a poll by FactSet.

The company said its results reflected $63.6 million in charges related to workforce restructuring and facility consolidations at properties in the U.S. and the U.K. The largest charge was associated with the transfer of production of The Cincinnati Enquirer to a newspaper printer in Columbus, Ohio.

Revenue fell 5 percent to $1.39 billion from $1.46 billion in the same period a year earlier.

Analysts were expecting revenue of $1.39 billion, according to a poll by FactSet.

“We are positioning for growth in print and digital media through new subscription models delivered across platforms, capturing opportunities in adjacent businesses, and continuing to focus on operational efficiencies,” said Gracia Martore, president and CEO, in a statement business cards design.

Revenue at Gannett’s publishing division fell 5 percent to $1.01 billion, a decline the company attributed to lower advertising amid the economic softness in the U.S. and the U.K.

Broadcasting revenue fell 14 percent to $199.8 million, due mainly to sharply lower political advertising than a year earlier.

Revenue at the company’s digital division, which includes the website CareerBuilder, rose 9 percent to $181.5 million.

Company-wide digital revenue, which consists of the digital division and revenue generated by newspaper websites, rose nearly 7 percent to $290.3 million.

For the full year, Gannett earned $458.7 million, or $1.89 per share, down 22 percent from $588.2 million, or $2.43 per share, in the previous year.

Adjusted earnings were $2.13 per share.

Revenue slid 4 percent to $5.24 billion from $5.44 billion.

Analysts were expecting full-year adjusted earnings of $2.10 per share on revenue of $5.25 billion.

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Cyprus’ Finance Ministry said in a statement that the economy has “strong foundations” and added that it will soon unveil a growth-oriented package of measures that it’s preparing in partnership with the private sector.

The ministry made its remarks a day after international ratings agency Fitch downgraded the eurozone member by a notch to BBB-, a step above junk status.

Fitch said the downgrade was mainly due to the large Cypriot banking system’s heavy exposure to Greek debt and its greater capital needs in light of the higher likelihood that banks will take a hit on Greek government bonds that exceeds 50 percent.

Fitch said Cypriot banks would need to almost double the euro900 million ($1.18 billion) _ or 9.9 percent of gross domestic product _ to build an adequate buffer against losses on their Greek exposure if the “haircut” on Greek government bonds reaches 70 percent.

Standard & Poor’s became the first ratings agency to push Cyprus into junk territory with a two-notch downgrade earlier this month. Moody’s also rates the island just above junk.

Cyprus government spokesman Stefanos Stefanou on Saturday called the downgrades unfair.

“We consider that the downgrades don’t reflect the real state of the Cyprus economy, which is in better shape than many other economies, either in the eurozone or in the European Union in general,” he told reporters.

According to the European Commission, the island’s deficit is projected to shrink from 6.7 percent of gross domestic product in 2011 to 2.7 percent this year following a string of fiscal consolidation measures including a 2 percent sales tax hike and a two-year public sector wage freeze.

The island’s debt is projected to reach 68.4 percent of GDP this year, well below the eurozone average of nearly 87 percent.

But high borrowing costs have effectively locked Cyprus out of the international markets. The island is relying on a euro2.5 billion ($3.29 billion) low-interest loan to meet its financing needs for this year.

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The finance chiefs said the picture in Europe has changed over the past two months as the European Central Bank has loaned billions of euros to fragile banks, indebted countries have pushed through convincing reforms and EU leaders have come near to building a closer fiscal union that would make their common currency stronger.

Several also signaled Friday that Greece is close to clinching a crucial debt-reduction deal with private bondholders _ a key element in Europe’s efforts to stem a two-year debt crisis that is causing ripples around the globe. The crisis is a central topic at the World Economic Forum, a gathering of government and business leaders at the Swiss ski resort of Davos.

“They’re making progress on reforms, they’re changing the institutions of Europe to put better discipline on fiscal policy,” said U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. “You have three new governments doing some very tough things. You have an ECB doing what central banks have to do. You see them move to try to strengthen the financial sector.”

Mario Draghi, head of the European Central Bank, said a combination of actions _ including super-cheap, long-term loans to shaky banks on the continent and a couple of interest rate cuts _ have helped Europe avoid deeper financial trouble.

“We have avoided a major credit crunch, a major lending crisis,” he said.

Draghi said borrowing rates would remain high “for quite a while” because bond markets are overestimating the risk involved in holding European government debt after years of underestimating it. But he called market pressure “the most potent engine for reform in different governments.”

Geithner said the fate of the U.S. economy _ and by extension of the rest of the world _ hinges on Europe’s debt crisis, along with potential tensions with Iran. He said the main piece of unfinished business for Europe is building a bigger fund to help troubled economies survive.

But while French Finance Minister Francois Baroin said that fund needs to be increased to calm markets, his German counterpart, Wolfgang Schaeuble, indicated that his government is not prepared to do so. Germany, as Europe’s biggest economy, would face the biggest bill.

“We must not give the wrong incentives,” Schaeuble said. “You can make any figure. It will not work if the real problems will not be solved.”

Both, together with Spanish Economy Minister Luis de Guindos Jurado and European Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn, agreed that the idea of issuing “eurobonds” backed jointly by all eurozone governments is a nonstarter for now. They didn’t rule out the possibility that such bonds could be introduced once confidence in Europe’s public finances is restored, with Guindos calling that a “final target.”

Schaeuble said eurobonds would provide bad incentives by allowing debt-ridden countries to “spend money you don’t have on the bill of others.”

Many economists have said eurobonds are needed to solve the crisis as they could reduce the borrowing costs of heavily indebted countries by pooling them with bonds of stronger economies like Germany’s.

Professor Nouriel Roubini, the renowned economist who predicted the financial crash of 2008, is one who thinks that eurobonds have to form part of a eurozone strategy to fend off the possibility of a breakup.

The eurozone “could be a slow-motion train wreck,” Roubini said.

Europe has been grappling with the crisis ever since Greece conceded at the end of 2009 that its public finances were in far worse shape than previously thought. Greece remains at the epicenter of the crisis over two years later. Its borrowing costs remain too high for it to borrow in the markets so a second European-led bailout is in the offing.

The finance chiefs signaled Friday that a deal is at hand that could help ease some of the near-term tensions.

Greece has been negotiating with the a group representing banks and other lenders in the hopes that they will forgive half of Greece’s debt in exchange for Greek assurances that it will pay back the other half without defaulting on its loans. The deal would also let Greece repay over a longer period at a lower interest rate _ negotiators have been trying to agree on what that rate will be.

Schaeuble said he is “quite optimistic” about a deal, while Rehn said he hopes a deal can be reached “if not today, maybe by the weekend.”

Agreement between Greece and its creditors is needed before Europe and the International Monetary Fund agree to a second multibillion-euro bailout package.

At the heart of the problem is that the 17 countries that use the euro use a single currency but have different fiscal policies. That changes the nature of their debt, said Adair Turner, chairman of Britain’s banking regulator the Financial Services Authority.

“That debt is more equivalent to the State of California debt than the U.S. federal debt,” he said.

That’s why all but one of the 27 EU countries _ the United Kingdom has refused to participate _ are discussing a closer fiscal union. On Monday, leaders meet in Brussels to work out the details of that new compact.

Schaeuble and Baroin noted that even the agreement in principle to forge closer ties has calmed markets since a December summit, as borrowing rates have dropped and stock markets have risen.

“It’s amazing,” Draghi said. “If you compare today with even five months ago, the euro area is another world.”

The crisis threatens more than Europe: the U.N.’s refugee chief warned Friday that it is fueling conflicts around the world. Antonio Guterres told The Associated Press that rising food prices and growing unemployment are hitting those already at the bottom hardest, sparking conflict in places like South Sudan and exacerbating hotspots including Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia.

_____

Frank Jordans and Edith Lederer in Davos and David McHugh in Frankfurt, Germany contributed to this story.

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Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index jumped 1.1 percent to 20,322.51 on its first trading day since the Chinese New Year holiday. South Korea’s Kospi rose 0.2 percent to 1,956.14. Benchmarks in Singapore and New Zealand also rose.

Japan’s Nikkei was 0.4 percent lower at 8,846.96, following strong gains a day earlier. Markets in Taiwan and mainland Chinese remained closed for the Chinese New Year. The Australian market was closed for a public holiday.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Federal Open Market Committee said it was unlikely to raise interest rates before late 2014. It had previously said it expected to keep rates low into the middle of 2013.

The Fed cut rates to near zero in December 2008, during the financial crisis, and has held them there ever since. The announcement was a sign that the Fed expects the economy, which is improving, to need significant help for three more years.

Analysts said stock buyers rejoiced that the Fed was leaning toward promoting economic growth.

“With the FOMC sending out a strong signal that monetary policy is likely to remain accommodative for even longer than previously expected, risk assets are in a very good position,” said Stan Shamu of IG Markets in Melbourne guaranteed personal loan approval.

Wall Street welcomed the news, with the Dow Jones industrial average closing up 0.6 percent at 12,756.96 _ the highest close since May 10. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose 0.9 percent to 1,326.06. The Nasdaq composite index gained 1.1 percent to close at 2,818.31.

Benchmark crude for March delivery was up 39 cents to $99.79 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract rose by 45 cents to finish at $99.40 per barrel in New York on Wednesday. At one point it was as high as $100.40.

The prospect of low interest rates weighed on the dollar, since it reduces the returns that investors get from holding assets denominated in that currency. The euro rose to $1.3103 from $1.3084 late Wednesday in New York. The dollar fell to 77.75 yen from 77.81 yen.

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Negotiations for a settlement over improper foreclosures have been dragging on for months between state and federal authorities and some of the nation’s biggest banks.

At stake could be a $20 billion to $25 billion pot of money from the banks and mortgage servicers that could help troubled homeowners modify loans and provide them with counseling, according to two people familiar with the talks.

Under the latest deal, about 1 million U.S. homeowners who are underwater on their mortgages could be eligible for as much as $20,000 in relief of principal owed, U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan has said. In return, mortgage servicers in states that agree to the deal would get immunity from lawsuits, the sources said.

Several Democratic state attorneys general were briefed of more details of the deal on Monday in a meeting in Chicago, CNNMoney confirmed. Republican state attorneys general were also to be briefed on a conference call.

News of the briefings spurred a protest on Monday outside the State of Illinois Building in Chicago by members of left-leaning groups, including Move On and the New Bottom Line, urging states to hold out for a bigger criminal investigation and a $300 billion settlement award.

Left-leaning activists and two Democratic lawmakers said they’re fighting against blanket immunity for banks, which North Carolina Democrat Rep. Brad Miller called a "very bad deal for the American people and a sweet-heart deal for banks," in a conference call with reporters on Monday.

The negotiations are between federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, as well as state attorneys general and the five largest mortgage servicers:Bank of America (, Fortune 500), Wells Fargo (, Fortune 500), JPMorgan Chase (, Fortune 500), Citigroup (, Fortune 500) and Ally Financial ().

The Obama Administration had been pushing for a resolution in time for the president to tout the deal during his delivery of the State of the Union on Tuesday.

But no final agreement is expected this week, said Geoff Greenwood, spokesman for the Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, who has been leading the talks.

Foreclosures: 100 hardest hit zip codes

The final monetary award depends on the participation of larger states. But several states, including New York, Delaware and California, are reportedly cool to the latest draft, a source said. Those attorneys general have said they want the freedom to pursue their own housing investigations.

Calls to those attorneys general were not returned on Monday.

Washington analysts say they expect some tidbits from the latest proposed settlement to make Obama’s State of the Union speech.

"The President is likely to tout how the agreement will provide for principal reduction and help for more than a million borrowers," said Jaret Seiberg, senior policy analyst with Washington Research Group in a Monday research report.

"He will emphasize how this is about helping today to correct the mistakes of yesterday," Seiberg said in the report. 

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That’s according to the Lundberg Survey of fuel prices, released Sunday, which puts the price of a gallon of regular at $3.39.

Midgrade costs an average of $3.54 a gallon, and premium is at $3.66.

Diesel was up about two cents, at $3.91 a gallon.

Of the cities surveyed, Salt Lake City, Utah, has the nation’s lowest average price for gas at $2.94. Los Angeles has the highest at $3.71.

In California, the lowest average price was $3.59 in Fresno. The average statewide for a gallon of regular was $3.67, up about three cents.

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