There was more bad news on the future of the economy as Moody's Analytics lowered its short term forecast for growth.
Dave Ramsey would be proud as household debt continues to tick down.
Here are the top financial stories of the day:
1) Stocks rise for third day after acquisition flurry-From the AP
Stocks are having their longest rally since early July. A $19 billion corporate buying spree and encouraging economic news form Japan sent the Dow Jones industrial average up 213 points and erased its losses from last week.
The return of what's called "Merger Monday" on Wall Street made investors more optimistic about the future. So did a report that Japan's economy shrank less than feared following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. That helped temporarily ease worries that the U.S. economy may slide into another recession.
The Dow rose 213.88 points, or 1.9 percent to 11,482.90. It has gained 762.96 points since Thursday. That's the best three-day point gain since it rose 927.18 in November 2008, during the depths of the financial crisis. The Dow is also up 7.1 percent over the three days, the biggest percentage gain since it rose 9.5 percent the first three days of the bull market in March 2009.
The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 25.68, or 2.2 percent, to 1,204.49. The Nasdaq composite index rose 47.22, or 1.9 percent, to 2,555.20.
Markets may have stabilized the last three days, but financial analysts warned investors not to assume that stocks have fully settled down after last week's swings. The Dow rose or fell by at least 400 points in four straight days for the first time ever. The first-ever downgrade of the U.S. credit rating triggered the volatility.
It was worsened by concerns that Europe's debt problems are worsening and that the U.S. economy is weakening.
"You might have these moments of quiet, but the debt crisis in Europe did not go away," said John Hailer, chief executive for the U.S. and Asia of Natixis Global Asset Management. "Our issues with the debt, with what our tax policy is going to be going forward, our unemployment did not go away."
"We are probably going to have to look at some very different levels of volatility than what a lot of investors grew up with over the last 25 to 30 years," he said.
A period of relative stability has been common in past volatile markets. In 2008, stocks plunged between mid-September and mid-November. From mid-November until the beginning of January 2009, the Dow was in a lull of sorts. It ratcheted up and down, mostly in the high 8,000 range. But in early January 2009, it began to plunge before finally hitting a bottom of 6,547 on March 9.
More swings could come this week. Leaders of France and Germany meet Tuesday to discuss Europe's debt problems. Spain and other countries have borrowed so much that they may need help to repay their bills. Investors on Tuesday will get an update on how Spain's economy did during the second quarter.
Corporate deals dominated the news, as companies followed a years-long practice of announcing acquisitions on a Monday. The biggest was Google Inc.'s $12.5 billion cash purchase of wireless phone maker Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. It is also the biggest acquisition in Google's history. No. 2 was its $3.2 billion purchase of DoubleClick in 2008. Motorola Mobility's stock jumped percent 55.8 percent. Google fell 1.2 percent.
Among other deals: Time Warner Cable Inc. said it will pay $3 billion in cash for Insight Communications Co., which has more than 750,000 cable customers in the Midwest. Agribusiness conglomerate Cargill said it will buy animal nutrition company Provimi of the Netherlands for $2.16 billion. And in the energy industry, offshore driller Transocean Ltd. said it will buy Aker Drilling of Norway for $1.43 billion in cash.
Companies across the United States have accumulated a record amount of cash since the recession ended. They have increased their cash reserves every quarter for more than two years, and businesses in the S&P 500 index had a total of $963.3 billion at the end of March, according to the most recent data from Standard & Poor's.
Investors have waited for companies to use some of that cash on acquisitions, dividend increases and stock buybacks. Many financial analysts believe that companies are more confident about the future if they're willing to buy other businesses. So a series of acquisition announcements tends to send stocks higher.
The growing cash hoard has been the result of stronger profits. Companies have kept costs low by being slow to hire. Revenue, meanwhile, is growing, particularly from overseas customers. For the 460 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported second-quarter results, total earnings are up 12 percent from a year ago.
It was the busiest day for acquisitions since July 11, when Express Scripts said it would buy Medco Health Solutions for $29.1 billion in a combination of the country's largest pharmacy benefits managers. The total value of deals targeting U.S. companies has climbed to $771 billion this year, according to Dealogic. That's up 55 percent from $498 billion at the same point of last year.
Some companies are looking to pare back. Bank of America Corp. said it will sell its $8.6 billion Canadian credit-card business to TD Bank Group. The bank will also get out of the credit card business in Britain and Ireland. The deals follow others that Bank of America made to move out of foreign credit cards, and they should help Bank of America improve its balance sheet
Bank of America rose 7.9 percent, part of a rally for the overall industry. Financial stocks in the S&P 500 rose 3.2 percent as a group.
Energy stocks in the index rose 3.4 percent after crude oil climbed $2.50 per barrel to settle at $87.88.
Asian and European markets rose earlier after Japan said its economy shrank at just a 1.3 percent annual rate between April and June. That's less than half the drop that economists expected following the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis that struck the country in March.
Still, investors have more reason to worry about the weak U.S. economy.
Manufacturers in New York told the Federal Reserve they're more pessimistic about future growth. Manufacturing has been one of the country's strongest industries since the recession ended in 2009, but growth began to slow in March. Manufacturing nationwide barely grew in July.
Cosmetics company Estee Lauder Cos. fell 6.5 percent after it forecast earnings for the upcoming year that were below Wall Street's expectations. It also said its net income rose 72 percent last quarter on strong sales growth to China, Russia and the Middle East.
Lowe's Cos., the second-largest home improvement retailer, rose 0.9 percent after it said its net income was roughly flat last quarter on a 1 percent rise in revenue.
More than 10 stocks rose for every one that fell on the New York Stock Exchange. Trading volume at 4.5 billion shares was below last week's record levels, when it climbed above 9 billion. Volume was close to its average over the last year of 4.3 billion shares.
2) Moody’s Lowers Economic Growth Outlook-From The Wall Street Journal
Moody’s Analytics said its near-term outlook for the U.S. economy has fallen significantly in the past month wake of the debate over the U.S. debt ceiling and the downgrade of the nation’s credit ratings by Standard & Poor’s .
Moody’s Analytics, a sister company to credit-ratings company Moody’s Investors Service, now expects real gross domestic product to increase at an annualized rate of about 2% in the second half of this year and just over 3% next year, compared with its estimate a month ago for growth of 3.5% for the second half of this year and through 2012.
The firm attributes most of the expected decline to a loss of business, investor and consumer confidence, noting the economy’s improving fundamentals such as the strengthening of business’s balance sheets and consumers’ strides in cutting household debt.
The credit-rating company also said it thinks the odds of a renewed recession over the next 12 months — now at 1 in 3 — will increase if stock prices continue to fall. Moody’s maintains that the odds of a renewed recession rise with each 100-point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. While Moody’s expects the economic recovery will continue, prospects for economic growth and job creation have “diminished substantially.”
Though the U.S. economic recovery looked healthy at the beginning of the year, a series of events have hurt business, consumer and investor confidence, Moody’s said. These include surging prices for food and gasoline, natural disasters in Japan, Europe’s debt crisis and, most recently, the U.S. debt woes.
The economy needs to grow 2.5% to 3% a year to create jobs fast enough to keep the unemployment rate stable, Moody’s said. However, Moody’s said it doesn’t think this will happen soon.
3) Household debt falls slightly to $11.4 trillion in Q2 2011-From CNN Money
Consumer borrowing fell slightly in the second quarter, as Americans shed more of their debt. A new report released Monday by the New York Federal Reserve -- which looks at mortgages, home equity lines, credit cards, auto loans and student debt held by consumers nationwide -- found that total consumer debt fell to $11.4 trillion in the second quarter of this year.
That marked a $50 billion drop in total consumer debt from the prior quarter, a decrease so slight that the New York Fed called consumer borrowing "essentially flat."
"This is more evidence that the pace of consumer deleveraging that began in late 2008 has slowed," Andrew Haughwout, vice president of the Research and Statistics Group at the New York Fed said in a statement.
Consumer debt remains 8.6% below its $12.5 trillion peak at the end of September 2008, just after the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the seizing of financial markets.
Reeling from the shock of the recession, American households have been paying down their debt slowly for nine of the last 10 quarters. That trend is typically viewed as a healthy rebalancing step for the economy, but at the same time it also limits the recovery.
Quote of the Day from Dave Ramsey.com:
Undertake something that is difficult; it will do you good. Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow. — Ronald E. Osborn
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