1) Phil's Financial Tip of the Day:
Stressing over who to tip and how much to spend? Here are some guidelines to simplify the process.
With only 4 days to go until Christmas, I hope you set aside some money for tips. Here is a guide of who and how much to tip:
Holiday Tipping Guide-From Financially Fit
http://financiallyfit.yahoo.com/finance/video-holiday-tipping-guide-27641258
2) In the Markets today:
The euro fell on Wednesday as doubts set in over whether fresh lending by the European Central Bank would be used to buy struggling euro zone debt, while weak earnings from Oracle weighed on technology stocks and dragged Wall Street lower.
Oracle drags tech lower; euro off after ECB boost-From Reuters
The euro fell on Wednesday as doubts set in over whether fresh lending by the European Central Bank would be used to buy struggling euro zone debt, while weak earnings from Oracle weighed on technology stocks and dragged Wall Street lower.
Global shares drifted towards break-even for the day, holding on to strong gains from the previous session, though volumes were thin as the year-end holidays approach.
Italian and Spanish government bond yields rose, snapping an eight-session down trend, while prices of German Bunds edged up.
Initial optimism about ECB lending to euro zone banks gave way to concerns that the flood of liquidity only highlighted the scale of the pressure European banks are under.
The ECB lent 489 billion euros ($641.08 billion) to banks to ease the inter-bank credit crunch and tempt banks to buy higher-yielding Italian and Spanish debt, but optimism that the funding would ease Europe's two-year-old debt crisis quickly faded.
An Italian industry group said banks would not increase their exposure to sovereign debt even after the ECB offering because European Bank Authority rules discourage it.
"The key question remains what the banks will do with the newly acquired funds," said Marc Chandler, global head of currency strategy at Brown Brothers Harriman.
"We suspect that to the extent banks buy sovereign bonds, they will purchase their own sovereign's bonds rather than their neighbor's."
Shares of Oracle Corp (ORCL.O), the world's No. 3 software maker, fell 13.1 percent after it missed Wall Street's forecasts for the first time in a decade.
Stock in its German peer SAP (SAPG.DE) fell 6.1 percent making it the worst performing blue chip in Europe.
"It is certainly a concern, Oracle is a bellwether in the sector but some of the other stocks in the group may be overreacting," said Brian Lazorishak, portfolio manager at Chase Investment Counsel in Charlottesville, Virginia.
In afternoon trading in New York, the Dow Jones industrial average .DJI fell 26.56 points, or 0.22 percent, to 12,077.02. The S&P 500 Index .INX dipped 1.53 points, or 0.12 percent, to 1,239.77. The Nasdaq Composite .IXIC lost 38.89 points, or 1.49 percent, to 2,564.84.
Global stocks as measured by MSCI were flat a day after posting their largest gains since November 30, while the European benchmark FTSEurofirst 300 .FTEU3 closed 0.47 percent lower. U.S. dollar-denominated Nikkei futures fell 0.4 percent.
Global equity markets and the euro have traded off European headlines for months as Europe's escalating sovereign debt crisis threatens to take down the region's economy.
EURO GIVES UP RALLY
The euro fell against the U.S. dollar after the larger-than-expected bank demand for ECB loans failed to convince investors the move would ease Europe's deep-seated debt problems.
The euro initially rose nearly 1 percent on the day to a one-week high near $1.32 before giving up gains to trade around $1.3040, down 0.3 percent.
"While the ECB had hoped that banks borrowing at low rates would buy sovereign debt, it appears they are using the perceived bullish opportunity to jettison risk," said Christopher Vecchio, currency analyst at DailyFX.com.
The benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note was down 4/32, yielding 1.9389 percent, up from 1.927 percent Tuesday.
Italian bond yields were 18 basis points higher at 6.817 percent, with Spanish yields 19 basis points higher at 5.313 percent, after both had fallen almost 100 basis points in the last week and a half.
Italian data showed the economy contracted by 0.2 percent in the third quarter compared with the previous three months while British consumer morale hit an almost three-year low in December.
U.S. crude futures rose 1.6 percent to $98.80 per barrel after government data showed inventories fell to their lowest level since the late 2008.
3) Top financial story of the day:
U.S. home sales grew in November, and the year's sales are on pace to be above last year's. But the real-estate group that provides the data significantly revised down sales for the past four years.
Home Resales Rise 4%, as Revisions Make Bust Look Worse-From The Wall Street Journal
The housing slump was deeper than initially estimated but new data indicate that the worst of the downturn may have passed.
The National Association of Realtors said Wednesday it over-estimated home sales by 14.3% between 2007 and 2010, meaning that 2.9 million fewer homes sold during those years than thought earlier.
The trade group, which tracks previously owned homes, said the over-counting was due to shifts in the housing market that weren't detected until this year.
But the report also provided fresh signs that housing is improving. Home sales in November rose 4% from October's levels to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.42 million, the second-highest level of the year.
"We are not expecting to see a housing market that could be described as strong. But despite the downward revisions to sales, a modest recovery may be under way," said Paul Dales, an economist at Capital Economics. Prices could stop falling next year, he said, but it will take until 2014 for markets to show sustained gains.
The Realtors' report showed that housing inventory declined to 2.58 million in November, down 18.1% from one year ago to the lowest level since the spring of 2005.
Low inventory is normally a sign of health for housing markets because reduced competition can result in higher prices. But real-estate agents say markets are stalled now because sellers aren't willing to reduce prices further and are keeping their homes off the market rather than settling with buyers seeking deep discounts.
Buyers, meanwhile, remain frustrated by inventory that they say is unattractive or overpriced. A shortage of inventory has "caused buyers to go away," said Ron Leis, a real-estate agent in Sacramento, Calif. "It's our biggest issue right now. They lose interest because there just isn't anything to buy" that meets their requirements.
Andrena Crawford, a 68-year-old retired civil servant, has long wanted to sell her Kissimmee, Fla., property but won't accept the $100,000 or so she thinks it would fetch right now.
She and her husband bought the home, where they live during the winter, in 1994 for $106,000.
During the boom, the property's value rose as high as $200,000, Ms. Crawford says. She hopes to get $160,000 for it and recently met with a real-estate agent to gauge the market. "He's advised us that if we're not in a hurry to hang on a bit," said Ms. Crawford, who spends part of the year in her native Scotland. "As long as I can cover myself (with renters), I'm happy to let it run."
The drop in inventory could be temporary because millions of homes are expected to go into foreclosure. Analysts at Barclays Capital estimate that 3.4 million mortgages are in some stage of foreclosure or have gone more than three months without a payment. Banks have been slow to repossess these homes after foreclosure-processing abuses surfaced last year, but the inventory ultimately could rise as banks begin to take back and list more of those properties.
The Realtors group typically revises home-sales data every 10 years because its estimates are benchmarked to sales figures from the decennial census survey. But earlier this year the NAR began contemplating a significant downward revision after real-estate groups pointed out potential flaws in the group's tally.
The Realtors' group doesn't count the number of sales registered every month. Instead, it produces estimates based on a broad sample of data reported by local multiple-listing services to calculate monthly changes in sales. It then makes estimates about other sales that aren't included by those groups, such as "for sale by owner" transactions, and pegs the monthly changes to the total sales reported in the census survey. Economists, investors and the real-estate industry use the NAR estimates to gauge the health of the nation's housing market.
The trade group's model unintentionally began over-counting sales as the housing downturn accelerated in 2007. Consolidation among the multiple-listing services meant they were counting a greater share of sales than was accounted for in the NAR's methodology. Also, the share of "for sale by owner" sales declined from a 16% market share in 2000 to 9% in 2010.
4) Inspirational Quotes@Inspire_Us from Twitter
Adversity causes some men to break, and others to break records. -Unknown
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