Weekly Wrap Up
In corporate news, Nokia (NOK: Charts, News, Offers)announced plans to eliminate 3,500 jobs. Bank of America (BAC: Charts, News, Offers)says they plan to charge a $5 monthly fee to some debit card holders, a move that will likely anger customers. Competitors have already taken advantage of the move, advertising their checking accounts as free. More Market News
Economic News
U.S. stocks declined Friday, setting the market up to close the worst quarter in years on a down note, with glum overseas economic reports weighing on investor sentiment.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 156 points, or 1.4%, to 10999, in Friday afternoon trading. The Dow has lost 10% for the quarter as of Thursday’s close, the biggest percentage decline since the first quarter of 2009 and the worst point drop since the nadir of the financial crisis in late 2008.
The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index shed 18 points, or 1.5%, to 1143 recently, while the Nasdaq Composite slid 44 points, or 1.7%, to 2438. Those two indexes also are closing out their worst quarterly performance in years. (Source: Wall Street Journal) Click here to read the full article
The depressed housing market flashed a positive signal in July, with home prices in most major U.S. cities rising for the fourth straight month
The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller index released Tuesday showed that prices rose from June to July in 17 of the 20 cities the index tracks. Detroit, Chicago and Minneapolis posted the biggest percentage gains. Prices fell in two cities among those hit hardest by the housing crisis – Las Vegas and Phoenix. (Source: Forbes) Click here to read the full article
Business News
Nokia (NOK: Charts, News, Offers), the Finnish cellphone maker, said Thursday that it would eliminate 3,500 jobs, or 6 percent of its work force, by closing a factory in Romania and transferring production to more efficient plants in Asia.
The unexpected announcement, which sent Nokia’s shares up 2 percent in Helsinki, was the second wave of cuts this year from the company, a former global market leader, which began a 12 percent reduction in employee numbers in April. (Source: New York Times) Click here to read the full article
Bank of America Corp. (BAC: Charts, News, Offers), the biggest U.S. lender by assets, plans to announce a $5 monthly charge for some debit-card users to recoup revenue lost after new federal rules capped so-called swipe fees.
Customers with lower-tiered accounts, including the firm’s online-banking option, may start getting assessed the fee for debit-card purchases in January, said Anne Pace, a Bank of America spokeswoman. Users won’t be charged for cash-machine withdrawals, and clients with premium accounts including those linked to the Merrill Lynch (ML: Charts, News, Offers) brokerage aren’t affected, she said. (Source: Bloomberg) Click here to read the full article
Technology Focus
With a glossy 7-inch color touch screen and a dual-core processor, the Kindle Fire, a new mobile device introduced by Amazon (AMZN: Charts, News, Offers)on Wednesday, sure looks like a tablet, and one not so different from the Apple (AAPL: Charts, News, Offers) iPad.
But Jeffrey P. Bezos, Amazon’s founder and chief executive, has another word for it. (Source: New York Times) Click here to read the full article
Samsung and Apple apparently are in the process of settling some of their patent disputes in Australia, according to The Wall Street Journal. While the present negotiations would not completely settle the conflicts between the companies, they would allow Samsung to sell the Galaxy Tab in Australia in time for the upcoming holiday season.
The news came soon after Apple temporarily excluded two of the five patent claims against Samsung’s Galaxy 10.1 in Australia. Apple dropped claims involving the use of a slider icon that unlocks the tablet’s touchscreen and an icon that bounces when zooming. (Source: Mac News World) Click here to read the full article
Your Money
Wake up! If you’re reading this, then you’re already awake in the traditional sense. (Unless you’re dreaming right now and I’m just a character in your dream, in which case, please don’t wake up.) But are you conscious? Were you conscious a minute ago, before I asked the question? Were you aware that you existed? If not, when did you last remember that you exist?
I use the term “waking up” because when you ask these questions, you probably have a sense of awakening, as if you weren’t fully conscious a moment before, as if a switched was flipped and everything changed from black and white to vibrant color. (Our language lacks a word for this mental state, a reflection of how unimportant we consider it.) (Source: How to Live) Click here to read the full article
Virtually all leaders espouse the benefits of a strong management team. However, they use starkly different levers to build one. These differences in philosophy and approach frequently differentiate those who advance to and succeed at the executive level – and those who stay in the ranks of middle management. (Source: Harvard Business Review Blog) Click here to read the full article
