1) Phil's Financial Tip of the Day:
Avoid buying these items until the weather warms up because they tend to get more expensive now.
Good article on what not to buy right now in cold weather climates.
8 Things You Shouldn't Buy in the Winter-From Financially Fit
Seasoned deal hunters know that it's not just about where you buy, but when you buy. As retailers put out new product lines and attempt to clear out old stock during the course of the year, prices on various items rise and fall.
Last November we took a look at which items tend to dip in price during the winter, but there are also several items that get more expensive during the colder months.
If you don't want to spend a lot of money this winter, here are eight items you should do your best to avoid buying until the weather warms up.
Corn and Other Summer Vegetables
Exactly what constitutes a seasonal vegetable will differ a bit depending on what part of the country you're from, but as a general rule you'll want to steer clear of vegetables typically grown in the warmer months, as they tend to be worse-tasting and more expensive come wintertime.
"Corn, in the middle of the summer, is going to be 15 cents an ear and taste great," says Jodi Furman, who writes the personal finance blog LiveFabuLESS. "If you buy now, it's going to be 40 to 50 cents an ear and won't be nearly as sweet."
Furman points us toward this helpful site, which allows you to select your area and discover which foods are in season during a given time of year. If you like fresh, local produce, it's a good place to start.
[See also: Save Money in 15 Minutes or Less ]
Warm Weather Items
Back in November we advised you to go out and buy outdoor furniture and grills, which at the time were deeply discounted as retailers looked to unload summer stock.
Well, hopefully you listened, because by this point in the season, such items are generally back to full price.
"Anything seasonal for summer, it's not a good time to buy now," says Furman. "You can find swimwear [discounted], but shorts, T-shirts and outdoor stuff are more expensive, because spring lines are just coming out now."
Camping Gear
Speaking of the great outdoors, you might be tempted to think that camping gear would be heavily discounted, as stores look to get people to buy during a slow time of year for outdoorsy activities.
But that's apparently not the case, says Lindsay Sakraida of DealNews.com, which tracks deals and discounts on a daily basis.
"You would think that no one's really wanting to go outdoors [in the winter], but we don't actually see as good deals as you do when things are warmer," she says. "They're trying to encourage sales when it is relevant to people."
Suitcases
By that same token, Sakraida says people are surprised to learn that travel gear such as suitcases aren't all that discounted during the winter.
"There aren't very notable deals," she says. "The best prices we see in the year typically start around March, and they hit their strongest point in August."
So if you've just booked your tickets for spring break, you may want to wait until shortly before your trip to buy your luggage.
[See also: Are You Tipping Correctly? ]
Computers
"The best sales on computers are not in winter, they're in August," says Mark Di Vincenzo, author of Buy Ketchup in May and Fly at Noon: A Guide to the Best Time to Buy This, Do That and Go There. "Back-to-school sales are the best time to buy."
He says that you'll also see good deals on electronics a few months down the road, for an interesting reason: The Japanese fiscal year begins in April, which brings new consumer electronics products, which in turn brings discounts on last year's models.
Snowblowers
This may go without saying, but at this point in the winter, it's too late to find a good discount on a snowblower.
"There's a high demand for snowblowers in much of the country in the winter," says Di Vincenzo.
"You'll see them start to go on sale in March, but never January and February."
So if you're anticipating heavy snowfall in your area this winter, you can either pay full sticker price for a snowblower or stick with a shovel and wait until the weather warms up to get a discounted machine for next year. (Our suggestion: Pay a neighborhood kid a few bucks to shovel your driveway while you stay warm inside.)
Cars
If you'd asked us a couple weeks ago, we would've told you to run out and buy a new car. But now that 2011 is behind us, the discounts won't be as deep.
"The best time to buy a car is the fall, and the further you get in the season, the lower the price," says Di Vincenzo. "But sales aren't nearly as good in the winter."
The turning of the calendar has more to do with this than you might think. While many people advise buying a car at the end of the month to take advantage of salesmen looking to fill monthly quotas, Di
Vincenzo says that annual quota is even more important.
"The big quota is the end of the year, so they're more willing to sweeten the pot in the fourth quarter," he says. After New Year's, not so much.
Linens
You might have heard that January is the perfect time to buy sheets and other linens, as that's when the big retailers have their so-called white sales. But Sakraida says that her site, DealNews.com, has examined such sales and found that they're more hype than reality, price-wise.
"[White sales] aren't really that much better than other sales we've seen, especially in June," she says. "A special name for a sale elicits excitement for an event, but it's not always all that special."
2) In the Markets today:
Stocks rose Monday as hopes for the coming U.S. earnings season overpowered a batch of unsettling headlines from Europe.
Stocks rose Monday as hopes for the coming U.S. earnings season overpowered a batch of unsettling headlines from Europe.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 32.77 points, or 0.3%, to 12392.69, building on its 1.2% rise in the first week of the new year. The Standard & Poor's 500-stock index finished up 2.89, or 0.2%, at 1280.70, and the Nasdaq Composite gained 2.34 points, or 0.1%, to 2676.56.
Alcoa was the strongest blue-chip stock, rising 2.9% in the regular session and adding another 2.2% after hours. The company's fourth-quarter results included a prediction for a deficit in the global aluminum supply in 2012. Alcoa's unofficial earnings-season kickoff follows efforts by several bellwether companies to ratchet down Wall Street's earnings expectations.
But European markets finished lower after the leaders of Germany and France on Monday turned up the pressure on Greece and its international creditors, amid building worries that the euro zone's Greek bailout was unraveling. The Stoxx Europe 600 shed 0.4%, and Germany's DAX lost 0.7%. Weak German economic data contributed to the glum mood. Several European countries are due to hold closely watched bond auctions later in the week.
"I think people are starting to express some hope about the U.S. economy, but 2012 is still a year marked with a lot of uncertainty," said Gary Flam, portfolio manager at Bel Air Investment Advisors.
"You've got the U.S. economy right now decoupling not only from Europe but Asia and the emerging economies. The question is how long that can be sustained. Something's got to give."
Auto stocks started the session strong but finished mixed as the Detroit auto show kicked off. Ford Motor rose 0.8% after disclosing plans to begin selling a plug-in, hybrid gasoline-electric version of its redesigned Fusion midsize sedan later this year. General Motors lost 0.4% despite showcasing two youth-targeted Chevrolet concept cars it says look and feel like sports cars but cost around $20,000.
A handful of technology stocks also posted gains after Reuters reported that Brocade Communications, which makes switches and software to connect corporate servers and data-storage systems, has received first-round bids from potential buyers. Brocade added 6.5%. Peer Juniper Networks was one of the top stocks in the S&P 500, rising 5.4%.
Asian exchanges were mixed. China's Shanghai Composite surged 2.9% after Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao indicated over the weekend that the stock market should be supported, while South Korea's Kospi Composite lost 0.9%.
Crude-oil futures lost 25 cents lower to settle at $101.31 a barrel, the third straight loss. Gold also lost ground, finishing 0.5% lower at $1,607.50 a troy ounce. The dollar lost ground against the euro and the yen.
CareFusion was the weakest stock in the S&P 500, shedding 8.7% after saying its fiscal-second-quarter results were likely to disappoint analyst forecasts.
Several stocks in the pharmaceutical industry traded actively. Bristol-Myers Squibb agreed to buy hepatitis-C drug developer Inhibitex for about $2.5 billion, triggering a 140% surge in the takeover target's stock. Bristol-Myers lost 0.9%.
GlaxoSmithKline's American depository shares fell 3.9% after analysts described as mixed a set of Phase III studies on its closely watched lung drug Relovair.
Idenix Pharmaceuticals ran up 37% after the biopharmaceutical company announced positive interim results from a clinical trial of its hepatitis-C treatment.
Zynga, the recent closely watched social-media initial public offering, hit a fresh low and finished down 9.2%.
3) Top financial story of the day:
Alcoa Inc , the largest U.S. aluminum producer, posted a fourth-quarter loss on Monday as slumping metal prices forced it to take a charge for cutting back production and market weakness continued.
Alcoa posts Q4 loss-From Reuters
Alcoa Inc (NYSE:AA - News), the largest U.S. aluminum producer, posted a
fourth-quarter loss on Monday but gave a positive outlook for metal demand in the aerospace, construction and other industries, lifting its stock price in after-hours trading.
It forecast 7 percent growth in global aluminum demand this year and said production cutbacks will help put the industry into deficit of around 600,000 tonnes this year.
This would help push up pricing of the metal, which fell 18 percent last year, contributing to the company's first loss in nine quarters.
Alcoa expects global growth for aluminum in the aerospace industry of 10 percent to 11 percent, with automotive growing 3 percent to 8 percent, commercial transportation 2 percent to 5 percent, packaging 2 percent to 3 percent and building and construction growing by 4 percent to 5 percent.
It also maintained its forecast for a doubling of aluminum demand by 2020.
In after-hours trading, Alcoa's stock rose 6 cents to $9.48.
Analyst Bridget Freas of Morningstar Inc in Chicago said the results were quite good. "The loss is not the headline. The revenue is actually higher-than-expected. Shipments are still holding up very strong. Demand for aluminum is actually quite strong," she said.
In its earnings release - traditionally the first of the season by a Dow component - Alcoa reported a loss as slumping metal prices forced it to take a charge for cutting back costly production and it cited market weakness, particularly in construction and packaging.
The loss from continuing operations was $193 million, or 18 cents per share, compared with a profit of $172 million, or 15 cents per share in the same quarter of 2010.
Excluding restructuring and other charges, the loss was $34 million, or 3 cents per share, the company said.
Revenue rose 6 percent to $6 billion even as the price of aluminum fell 6 percent in the fourth quarter and 18 percent in the year.
The 3-cent loss was in line with lowered estimates but the revenue beat estimates of $5.7 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Last week, Alcoa said it will cut 12 percent of its global smelting capacity and take action to counter rising raw material costs. It is closing a smelter in Tennessee and curtailing capacity at plants in Texas, Italy and Spain.
Kuni Chen, of CRT Capital Group said: "It was an in-line quarter, obviously expectations came down pretty sharply coming in to the quarter.
"The commentary for the year ahead, in terms of the aluminum market expected to be in deficit, that's a positive, and certainly in line with our view that you will see more supply come out of the market if metal prices stay at these low levels."
4) Quote of the Day from Dave Ramsey.com:
The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible. — Arthur C. Clarke
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