Week Feb 3 2012 – Weekly Recap & The Week Ahead
“The market is better at predicting the news than the news in predicting the market” — Gerald Loeb.
1. Mitt Romney Wins Florida’s Republican presidential primary — Romney rolled to an impressive triumph in Florida, winning 46 percent of the vote to Gingrich’s 32 percent in a key battleground state. The next contest in the state-by-state battle for the Republican nomination to face Obama, a Democrat, in the November 6 U.S. election is in Nevada. That is followed on Tuesday by caucuses in Colorado and Minnesota and a primary in Missouri.
2. California Faces Cash Shortfall by March on Low Receipts, Controller Says — according to Bloomberg news, California (STOCA1)’s cash may be exhausted by March as tax collections trail budgeted amounts, Controller John Chiang said in a letter to lawmakers.
3. Obama seeks to revive housing market with refinancing plan — President Obama is expected to lay out today a fresh attempt to revive the housing market by letting millions of homeowners refinance their mortgages with lower-interest federally insured loans.
4. Spain sees good demand in $6 billion bond sale — Spain raised euro4.56 billion ($6 billion) Thursday in a bond auction that showed strong investor demand and a drop in the country’s borrowing rates; It sold euro2.5 billion in three-year bonds at an average yield of 2.9 percent, down from 3.4 percent in the last such auction on Jan. 17. Demand was 1.6 times the amount on offer, less than the 1.8 oversubscription rate seen last month.
5. U.S. adds 243,000 jobs in January ‘big surprise’ — Jobless rate falls to 8.3%; November, December — gains revised higher; U.S. companies hired the most workers in nine months and the nation’s unemployment rate fell to the lowest level in nearly three years, according to the government’s employment report for January.
6. U.S. factory orders up 1.1% in December — Factory orders rose 1.1% in December, the Commerce Department reported Friday. Economists polled by MarketWatch had expected a 1.4% rise. But the report was bolstered by an upward revision to November, where orders were revised to a 2.2% increase from an initially reported 1.8% rise.
7. Senate votes to ban insider trading in Congress — the Senate voted 96-3 to pass the Stop Trading On Congressional Knowledge Act, or Stock Act, which will ban legislators from trading shares based on insider information they pick up on Capitol Hill.
The week ahead — Economic data from Econoday.com:
