Stocks rose for the 3rd consecutive day after the European Central Bank offered new support to banks. Also retail sales gained as the 4th quarter is shaping up to be a rally on Wall Street.
The business world continues to mourn the passing of one of the greatest pioneers of our lifetime, Steve Jobs, who died of his long battle with pancreatic cancer last night.
First time unemployment claims increased 8,000 from last week but came in 9,000 under the 410,000 figure that was projected. Tomorrow the unemployment rate is realized for September and it is expected to stay at 9.1%.
Here are the top financial stories of the day:
1) Stocks rise on help for European banks; Dow up 183-From the AP
Stocks are closing sharply higher for a third straight day after U.S. retailers reported stronger September sales and the European Central Bank moved to support that region's lenders.
Target, Nordstrom, Macy's and other retailers reported sales that beat Wall Street's expectations. Analysts said the results suggested the U.S. was not in another recession.
In Europe, investors cheered a promise from the European Central Bank to provide loans to shield banks from big losses if Greece defaults on its debt.
The Dow jumped 183, or 1.7 percent, to 11,123. The S&P 500 gained 21, or 1.8 percent, to 1,165. The Nasdaq composite rose 46, or 1.9 percent, to 2,507.
Five stocks rose for every one that fell on the New York Stock Exchange. Volume was above average at 4.9 billion shares.
2) Steve Jobs: He Brought the Show to Business-From The New York Times
Much has been and will be written about Steve Jobs's outsize footprint in digital culture: the screens we stare at, the music files we listen to, the hardware in our pockets. I'd stipulate to all that, but I found myself thinking about his less obvious influence on business and the journalists who cover it.
Business has always been important, but until Mr. Jobs arrived, it was rarely accused of being cool. As a young reporter I made a lane change from writing about pop culture and politics to business, and I can remember the look of sympathy from my colleagues and the message that went with it: Good luck in The Land of The Suits. Business, while vital to the civic common, was not thought to be an important part of the stories that we tell each other.
It was not always thus. In the 1940's, Henry Luce, using both Time and Fortune, made business seem remarkable, with portraits of the lions of capitalism coursing up and down the broad avenues of New York in taxis on the way to doing remarkable things that made the hopelessness of the Great Depression seem a very distant thing. But as success became routine, it also became institutionalized, with faceless institutions like U.S. Steel and General Motors lording over the smooth running engines of commerce. With the tumult of Vietnam and the battle for civil rights grabbing the headlines, news about business seemed very much beside the point.
Business and business news regained luster when the masters of the universe began to lord over Wall Street in the 1980's, but it became obvious to the press, perhaps too slowly, that many of those masters were no more than common thieves with extra zeroes behind their crimes. If you think back to that time, that was just after Mr. Jobs and Steve Wozniak came storming out of their garage in the late 70's. They seemed remarkable in a business environment that seemed to belong to men with gray hair and fancy suits hiding their expansive guts, as well as their considerable earnings.
As America switched from a country that made things to one that bought them, so much of business began to exist in the abstract, with deeds exchanged and stocks sold. Mr. Jobs did not just move money around. He made things that he promised would change the world and they often did. The fact that Mr. Jobs and Apple made objects that consumers could touch, and often did, made him a person of interest, someone worth writing about and paying attention to no matter what he did. Steve Jobs was not a suit. He said that taking LSD was one of the formative experiences of his life and had very little interest in consumer research.
Beyond that, no one played the press like Mr. Jobs. It had less to do with his black turtleneck than the head for business that floated above it. From the very beginning, Mr. Jobs understood that any consumer enterprise had to have a strong element of show business, to create excitement and demand. An Apple launch had less to do with a traditional product roll outs than the magician's "reveal," a moment of wonder in which a mystery morphed into an actual product. Yes, sometimes the devices were magical, but all the more so because of how they arrived. In his presentations, his products sometimes literally introduced themselves.
In this context, the press was neither enemy nor ally to Mr. Jobs, but just one more tool in the kit. He well understood the media's appetite for what they did not know, and he tantalized them with scarcity and secrecy. Other chief executives would play footsie with reporters, feeding them a little kibble now and then to keep them interested. For the most part, Mr. Jobs didn't play that game. When he called a reporter - he called me a few times - it was to argue, compliment or admonish, probing and searching, but all the while giving away nothing fundamentally interesting about the company. Steve Jobs never showed any leg until he was good and ready.
Others have tried to duplicate the approach, but over the long haul, theatrics don't matter unless you deliver. Mr. Jobs was an impresario who came through, time and again, so his shows were always well attended.
His well-documented force field extended to other corners of business coverage. Failure was never much of a credential until Mr. Jobs got a hold of it. There was the flop of the Lisa computer during his first tour at Apple, the specter of him being forced to walk the plank at his own company, and then the face-planting when he was on his own with NeXT.
Those pratfalls would be enough to sink any business executive for good, but Mr. Jobs never bought into things like reputational damage or fatal mistakes. To his eye, all those events were just inflection points on his way to changing computing, music, telecommunications, and publishing. The future vindicated his past --first in his return to Apple and then as a creator and owner of Pixar.
His ability to rise from the dead made him scary. No one commanded the respect of the press like Mr. Jobs. I can remember a visit he made to The New York Times when the first iPad came out. The Times is a notoriously blase place, where heads of state have been known to come and go without raising an eyebrow.
But when Mr. Jobs came, the effect was electric. For three days, his advance team swept through our place, attending to every detail and making sure his time with a crew of reporters and editors would be seamless and glitch-free.
We were all seated when he came in, in part because there were medical reasons for him to avoid grip and grins, but the whole rock star thing was in high effect. And then it was on. No one asks a casual question of Steve Jobs.
That's partly because Steve Jobs loved to argue. One of his great gifts was his ability to deal with geeks, business wonks and media savants on their own terms and often come up on top. Sometimes he did it based on facts, other times, just plain stubbornness. Just as he made the mouse and the disc drive disappear just by saying it should be so, he prevailed in long-running debates over software and the media business through steady assertion -- using all the leverage that his products and online retail presence conveyed.
Which brings us back to how he changed business journalism -- its image and its attractiveness. Because he was a showman, because he made interesting things that consumers cared about, readers began to follow his company and his products as they might a band or their favorite team. Being an Apple user became a marker of cultural identity and conveyed cool. Some of that splashed onto those of us who covered business.
Now, young reporters with good prospects often start in business coverage, becoming conversant in unit sales, earnings per share, and EBIDTA. The best and brightest of them can be found chasing the latest rumor out of Silicon Valley or peering under the hood of the just-hatched start-up. There are a lot of forces in play that make that so, but you'd have to credit Steve Jobs with making business something that did not belong to the suits.
Business reporters hated Apple's secrecy and found Mr. Jobs's arrogance wearying, but we all knew that our craft picked up some glitz and esteem because of Mr. Jobs's involvement. Our readers, his consumers, cared about the guy and everything he did. He made business cool by using it to make cool stuff. It was fun to be along for the ride.
3) Jobless Claims Climb a Bit-From The Wall Street Journal
New claims for unemployment benefits ticked up last week after the previous week's steep drop hinted at hope for the U.S. jobs market.
Initial jobless claims rose by 6,000 to a seasonally adjusted 401,000 for the week ended Oct. 1, the Labor Department said Thursday. Claims filed in the previous week had dropped by 33,000, the sharpest decline in more than four months.
The four-week moving average of new claims, a more reliable indicator of the labor market's performance because it smooths out volatile weekly figures, fell by 4,000 to 414,000.
The figures suggest the labor market is stabilizing after the bad claim numbers between mid-August and mid-September. They indicate that at summer's end, the U.S. economy hit a soft patch but didn't return to recession. Most companies seem to be in wait-and-see mode, reluctant to ramp up hiring, but loath to make big layoffs.
"The unemployment rate may be stubbornly high at 9.1%, but it could be worse, it could be rising which would mean we really were in a recession," Chris Rupkey, economist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ in New York, wrote in a note.
Still, the level of claims remains too high to signal a real improvement in the labor market. Economists generally think the economy is adding more jobs than it is shedding once the claims figure falls below 400,000. It has been below that mark nine weeks this year—but bounced back up above it.
A Labor Department official said there were no special factors influencing the latest data. For the previous report, the official had attributed the big drop mainly to seasonal-adjustment volatility, rather than economic factors.
Recent indicators of the labor market have generally pointed to continued weakness. Private-sector jobs in the U.S. posted a small 91,000 gain last month, according to a national employment report released Wednesday. Two other reports showed that layoffs surged in September to the highest level in more than two years, while services businesses aren't hiring more workers despite relatively strong growth in the sector.
The broadest indicator of the U.S. jobs market will be released by the Labor Department on Friday. Few economists expect it to show significant job growth or a drop in the unemployment rate, which has been above 9.0% for most of the year.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, in separate appearances this week, pressed Congress to take steps to help the recovery, now in its third year. Mr. Bernanke has called the high unemployment rate a "national crisis" and warned lawmakers Tuesday that the recovery is "close to faltering."
Thursday's report showed the number of continuing unemployment benefit claims—those drawn by workers for more than a week—totaled 3,700,000 in the week ended Sept. 24. Continuing claims are reported with a one-week lag.
The number of continuing claims was down 52,000 from the earlier week, but there is no way to know if the decline was due to people finding a job or because they have run out of benefit coverage.
Meanwhile, a separate report showed that sales at U.S. retailers came in generally upbeat last month, with promotions helping move back-to-school merchandise as preparations begin for the holiday season.
The 23 retailers tracked by Thomson Reuters reported a 5.1% rise in stores open more than a year, or same-store sales. The figure beat expectations for 4.6% and compares with 2.7% growth last year.
The National Retail Federation Thursday estimated that retailers will add almost half a million seasonal employees this holiday season.
Quote of the Day from Dave Ramsey.com:
Galatians 5:13 — You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love.
No comments:
Post a Comment