Weekly Wrap Up
In corporate news, tech giant Intel (INTC: Charts, News, Offers) reported a surge in earnings, causing shares to spike during the week. Verizon (VZ: Charts, News, Offers) has finally added the Apple (AAPL: Charts, News, Offers) iPhone to their wireless network after the exclusive contract with AT&T (T: Charts, News, Offers) expired in December. And despite encouraging signs in the retail sector over the holidays, Best Buy (BBY: Charts, News, Offers) reported dissapointing sales for the month of December, as shares suffered accordingly. More Market News
Economic News
The U.S. economy strengthened as the year drew to a close, according to a report from the Federal Reserve on Wednesday that cited rising employment levels across the country.
The Fed’s Beige Book report, based on anecdotal reports collected from the business contacts of the central bank’s regional branches, painted an increasingly bright, if cautious, picture.
While real estate markets, at the heart of the deepest recession in generations, remained predictably weak, manufacturing contacts sounded more upbeat. (Source: InvestorGuide) Click here to read the full article
The U.S. economy may finally be hitting its stride even if growth remains too weak to put a real dent in the nation’s jobless rate, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Friday.
Offering no real clues on the future direction of monetary policy, Bernanke sounded cautiously more upbeat than he had in his most recent public remarks. He cited improvements in consumer spending and a drop in jobless benefit claims as hopeful signs a languid recovery was perking up. (Source: Reuters) Click here to read the full article
Jobless claims jumped to their highest level since October last week while food and energy costs lifted producer prices in December, pointing to headwinds for an economy that has shown fresh vigor.
However, a surge in exports to their highest level in two years, which included record sales to China, helped narrow the U.S. trade deficit in November, an encouraging sign for fourth-quarter economic growth.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said he was hopeful about the recent improvement in the outlook, saying he now expects the economy to expand between 3 percent and 4 percent this year. (Source: InvestorGuide) Click here to read the full article
Business News
Intel (INTC: Charts, News, Offers)revenue and margin forecasts beat expectations on healthy technology spending, defying worries about the chipmaker’s minor role in the booming smartphone and tablet market.
Shares in the world’s largest chipmaker gained 2.7 percent after its forecast for first-quarter revenue and gross margin surpassed expectations, driven by hopes for strong sales of its cutting-edge Sandy Bridge microprocessors. (Source: InvestorGuide) Click here to read the full article
Ending months of speculation, Verizon (VZ: Charts, News, Offers) announced on Tuesday that it would begin selling Apple’s (AAPL: Charts, News, Offers) iPhone 4 early next month.
But for those who have been clamoring to use the phone on Verizon’s popular network, there were a few caveats.
For starters, the Verizon model will not be the same iPhone 4 that is sold by AT&T (T: Charts, News, Offers), which until now has had the exclusive right to sell the iPhone in the United States. (Source: New York Times) Click here to read the full article
Electronics retailer Best Buy (BBY: Charts, News, Offers) posted holiday sales figures that declined compared to last year, but were better than analysts expected. Same-store sales for the fiscal month of December fell 4% to $8.4 billion, driving total sales 1.6% lower compared to last December.
Best Buy said strength in its mobile phones segment partially offset declines in television sales. Domestic same-store sales fell 5%. (Source: Forbes) Click here to read the full article
Technology Focus
Choked roadways, taxi shortages and convention floors so mobbed that tempers were tested: These are welcome signs at the Consumer Electronics Show.
“The last couple of years, CES has been morose,” said Richard Barnes, who was visiting from France, where he publishes a magazine that tracks technology trade shows. But this year, he said, “it’s much more positive, much more hopeful.”
Attendance is up, convention organizers said, and may surpass last year’s crowd of 126,000 by as much as 10%. The number of exhibitors also rose to 2,700, from 2,500 last year. (Source: LA Times) Click here to read the full article
Demand Media Inc. said Wednesday that its planned initial public offering of 4.5 million shares will be priced between $14 and $16 a share, potentially raising nearly $140 million.
Demand Media relies on a stable of roughly 13,000 “freelance content creators” to churn out how-to articles, lists and other online material. The company, which has been widely seen as an acquisition target, originally filed for its IPO in August.
In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said its sites such as eHow.com represented the “17th-largest Web property in the United States” as of late last year. Click here to read the full article
Approximately 26 percent of Apple (AAPL: Charts, News, Offers) iPhone users currently on AT&T (T: Charts, News, Offers)plan to switch to a Verizon (VZ: Charts, News, Offers) iPhone, according to Thursday data from ChangeWave.
Of the 4,050 people polled by ChangeWave days before the Tuesday announcement, 10 percent said they would switch providers in the next 90 days. About 16 percent of all AT&T subscribers said they will purchase a Verizon iPhone. Among those AT&T users who already have an iPhone, 26 percent will ditch the AT&T version for one from Verizon.
About 41 percent of all AT&T users will make the switch in the next three months, while another 31 percent will do so in the next year.(Source: PC Mag) Click here to read the full article
Your Money
Intelligence is your capacity for learning, reasoning, understanding and mastery. It’s your aptitude in grasping truths, relationships, facts and meanings.
This article will offer you five ways to increase your intelligence by showing you how to enhance your capacity for learning, reasoning, understanding and mastery. (Source: Business Insider) Click here to read the full article
My wife Eleanor and I were alone on a three-week kayak expedition in Prince William Sound in Alaska. Eleanor was in college; I had just graduated. We had spent plenty of time in the wilderness but never just the two of us, and never this kind of wilderness. When we landed in Anchorage, I looked around for a currency exchange desk before Eleanor reminded me we were still in the U.S.
Prior to arriving, we prepared meticulously, studying the nautical charts, plotting our route, and practicing our kayaking skills. We paddled into the nastiest surf we could find and then rolled ourselves upside down to see how quickly we could either roll back over or get back in the kayak if we came out. In Prince William Sound, there’s no margin for error. You can survive in the freezing water only four to five minutes. (Source: Harvard Business Review Blog) Click here to read the full article
f you have five minutes to think about something, you actually have a lot. You don’t have to spend a lot of time thinking to make a lot of progress. You can spend five minutes on a problem and actually cover a lot of ground more effectively. That is, if you have a framework.
At Microsoft (MSFT: Charts, News, Offers), I end up with a lot of short blocks of time, whether it’s in between meetings or in between tasks. It’s easy to fall in the trap of, “I don’t have enough time to think about that.” Well, the reality is, it’s actually very effective to use short time blocks to both train your thinking while solving your problems, rather than let them pile up. (Source: Sources of Insight) Click here to read the full article
