Earnings reports (confirmed releases, sorted by mkt cap) BBY-Best Buy (BEST earnings consensus $0.44), KR-Kroger (0.36), PLL-Pall Corp. (0.64), CBRL-Cracker Barrel Old Country Store (1.11).

Stocks tumbled Thursday after two disappointing economic reports renewed investors’ concerns about the pace of a recovery. The Dow Jones industrial average fell about 165 points in afternoon trading. Broader indexes also fell by more than 1.5 percent. Interest rates also fell sharply as investors flocked to the safety of Treasury bonds.

The Labor Department said claims for unemployment benefits rose unexpectedly last week and the Federal Reserve of Philadelphia said manufacturing activity in the mid-Atlantic region has dropped during August.“The Philly Fed number was just awful,” said Randy Frederick, director of trading and derivatives at Charles Schwab. “The jobs number was bad, but not as far off the mark as the Philly number.”The pair of economic reports followed news that Intel Corp. was acquiring McAfee Inc. The deal, valued at $7.68 billion, was not enough to offset the weaker economic readings.

The reports are the latest in a months-long string of conflicting readings on the economy. The reports have shown the pace of a rebound is slowing and that companies are skittish about adding new workers. That has hurt stocks on some days in recent weeks. It has also stoked fears about the economy falling back into recession.At the same time, corporate announcements, including earnings reports for the past six weeks, have largely showed companies are doing well. Mergers and acquisitions activity is often considered a positive sign because it means companies are willing to spend money to expand their businesses and are confident that prospects are improving.

In afternoon trading, the Dow fell 165.90, or 1.6 percent, to 10,249.64. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 20.12, or 1.8 percent, to 1,074.04, while the Nasdaq composite index fell 38.84, or 1.8 percent, to 2,176.86.About six stocks fell for every one that rose on the New York Stock Exchange, where volume came to 484.6 million shares.

Volume has been particularly light in recent weeks, even by summer standards, meaning many investors are still uncertain about the direction of the economy.Joe Benanti, managing director at Rosenblatt Securities, said low volume is probably adding to the sell-off.It’s “probably taking trading a little to an extreme, more than it should,” Benanti said about the light trading volume.If economic reports over the coming months continues to show the economy is growing, even slowly, it could alleviate fears of a second recession. That, in turn, could bring many investors back into the stock market.

For more information visit  http://www.worldmarketmedia.com/779/section.aspx/2263/post/market-slides-in-mid-august-swoon

- About the Author: WorldMarketMedia.com (The Global Online Investment Community) is a high traffic stock market, news data website providing cutting edge new media products and services to publicly traded companies worldwide. Our Editor’s Desk authors insightful real-time coverage on the economy, the capital markets and their listed companies. Article Source

Overnight Developments

• European stocks are weaker with the European Stoxx down -0.45% and Sep S&Ps down -2.20 points. The euro weakened and German bunds rallied after the yield premium investors demand to hold Greek 10-year bonds instead of benchmark German bunds of similar maturity widened to over 800 bp for the first time since Jun 28. European stocks weakened and failed to hold an early rally amid renewed concern that the region’s sovereign debt crisis will curb economic growth in the second half of 2010. Bank stocks led the downturn with HSBC, Europe’s largest bank, down 1.6%, and Santander, the biggest Spanish bank, down 1.9%. Retail stocks also moved lower led by a 8% slump in Delhaize Group after the owner of Food Lion supermarkets cut its full-year profit forecast after a decline in US same-store sales accelerated. European stocks had rallied earlier after strong GDP reports within the region. Q2 German GDP expanded by a more-than-expected +2.2% q/q, the fastest pace sinc e the country’s reunification two decades ago. Combined with a larger-than-expected +0.6% q/q gain in Q2 French GDP helped Q2 Euro-Zone GDP to increase +1.0% q/q, its fastest pace of expansion in 4 years.
• The Asian markets today closed mostly higher with Japan up +0.44%, Hong Kong -0.16%, China +1.39%, Taiwan +0.79%, Australia +1.33%, Singapore +0.44%, South Korea +1.36%, India +0.52%. Strong earnings reports throughout Asia helped most Asian stock markets to close higher today. Wintek surged 6.9% after the maker of parts for Apple’s iPad reported Q2 net income of $9.81 million, its first profit after 9 quarters of losses, while Genting Singapore soared 14% after the casino operator reported Q2 profit of $291 million compared with a loss a year earlier, which prompted Credit Suisse Group AG, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley to raise their recommendations on the stock. Korean Air jumped 2.8% after the country’s largest carrier reported record operating profit as cargo sales climbed 86% to 1 trillion won. Minutes of the BOJ policy meeting from Jul 14-15 released today showed that some policy makers indicated they were worried about the yen’s advance, a sign they see the cur rency’s threat to exporters as a bigger economic risk than fallout from Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis. Concern about the rising yen may indicate the BOJ is prepared to curb currency gains, either through additional easing measures or currency intervention, to protect Japan’s recovery.

Overnight U.S. Stock News

• Sep S&Ps this morning are down -2.20 points. The stock market yesterday opened on its low and recovered most of its losses into late morning but then faded the rest of the day and finished moderately lower (Dow -0.57%, S&P 500 -0.54%, Nasdaq Composite -0.83%). All of the indexes fell to 3-week lows. Bearish factors included (1) carry-over weakness from a drop in European stocks on signs that the European economy is weakening after Jun Euro-Zone industrial production unexpectedly declined, (2) the unexpected increase in weekly initial unemployment claims which rose to a 5-1/2 month high and adds to evidence that the US economic recovery may falter (+2,000 to 484,000 versus expectations of -14,000 to 465,000), and (3) weakness in technology stocks after Cisco Systems plunged when it forecast weaker-than-expected Q3 sales and after BMO Capital Markets reduced its ratings on semiconductor companies to "underperform" from "market perform," c iting rising inventory and weakening demand.
• Bullish factors included (1) a rally in fertilizer companies after the USDA estimated that global wheat production will fall to a 3-year low, and (2) the prediction from PIMCO that the Fed’s recent decision to reinvest principal payments on mortgage holdings into Treasuries should eventually boost demand for riskier assets, including stocks.
• Intel (INTC) slipped 1.2% in European trading after a report surfaced that Nvidia has a team of engineers developing chips that could be used by computer makers instead of Intel, according to people who declined to be identified because the project hasn’t been made public.

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One of the most difficult sectors of the stock market to pick in 2010 are Media Companies, most Portfolio Managers missed the move in the past fiscal year because Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) is an active disruptive technology which has upset the apple cart.  Madison Avenue and others used to make most of the money now Google pulls out 5 billion a Quarter and this created chaos, and missed opportunity, this caused the Media Company valuations to be difficult and PM’s to take a pass..and everyone missed the move.  Now the question becomes what do you do now other than own Google, which most PM’s do anyway!! 

(Reuters) – U.S. media companies are set to report revenue increases of 5 to 15 percent as they issue earnings reports over the next two weeks — the best the industry has looked in at least two years. So how can share prices of Walt Disney Co, News Corp, Viacom Inc and other television and film powerhouses already be falling out of fashion?

One big reason is concern that the rebound in advertising spending that is lifting results this year cannot be sustained in 2011, according to analysts, who list unemployment and a stagnant housing market among the main threats.

Consider the Standard and Poor’s media index, which rose by nearly a third over the past 12 months and far outperformed the broader market.

In recent weeks the index has stalled, as have shares of all the major media companies. Time Warner Inc, CBS Corp and entertainment companies that were once red-hot buys are now treading water.

Company executives will likely have to ease worries about 2011 on conference calls to get the shares jumpstarted.

“One of the difficulties right now is that they seem fairly valued,” said Cowen and Co analyst Doug Creutz. “A lot of that has to do with the uncertainty about what the economy and the ad environment is going to look like when we go into 2011.”

Another Wall Street analyst, Anthony DiClemente of Barclays Capital, notes that spending by certain categories, such as retail, remain at risk because of weak employment.

“Here is the big question people want to talk about: Are advertisers seeing any signs of that slowdown?” he asks.

GOOD FOR NOW

So far, DiClemente said Madison Avenue is still spending.

Take Google Inc’s results, which came out earlier this month and showed the rebound in ad spending helped drive a 24 percent rise in second-quarter revenue

Several newspaper companies, including The New York Times, have also shown improvement in ad sales. That should bode well for Time Warner, Viacom, CBS, News Corp and Disney when they report quarterly earnings over the next two weeks. The third and fourth quarters could also show solid advertising growth from depressed levels of 2009.

“We are seeing a very strong advertising environment continue well into third quarter and into the fourth quarter,” said Michael Kupinski, a media analyst at Noble Financial.

One indication is the strong market broadcasters experienced in the recently completed upfront negotiations, the annual period when advertisers book commercial time for the fall season.

ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC fetched 8-9 percent price increases during the upfront, according to Barclays Capital Research. And pricing for the scatter market — commercial time bought on a short-term rather than long-term basis — remains robust.

Kupinski noted that the fall U.S. elections for congressional seats and U.S. gubernatorial races could provide an extra lift to revenue. “The companies I’ve been speaking with indicated to me that whatever number you throw out, we’ll probably exceed it,” he said, referring to projected ad spending by political candidates as Republicans try to wrest control of Congress.

For the just-completed quarter, CBS revenue is expected to rise around 7 percent, News Corp by 15 percent and Disney by 9 percent, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.  As for earnings, all the media companies should also post increases from a year ago, with top analysts predicting that Walt Disney and News Corp are most likely to beat Wall Street estimates, according to Thomson Reuters StarMine. 

But stronger earnings are not likely to make stars of media company stock prices, given the worries about 2011. Nor will media companies likely return to the type of valuations they used to experience on Wall Street.

“Even though stocks have rallied recently if you look at their trading multiples they are still way, way below historical norms,” said SNL Kagan analyst Derek Baine. “It shows even though the market is coming back, it is not clear if we will ever have the rah-rah days again.”

For more info visit http://www.worldmarketmedia.com/779/section.aspx/2108/post/media-earnings-ahead-ad-dollars-still-in-dysfunction-mode

- About the Author: WorldMarketMedia.com (The Global Online Investment Community) is a high traffic stock market, news data website providing cutting edge new media products and services to publicly traded companies worldwide. Our Editor’s Desk authors insightful real-time coverage on the economy, the capital markets and their listed companies. Article Source

Overnight Developments

• European stocks are higher with the European Stoxx 50 up 0.55% after hitting a 3-month high. Sep S&Ps are up 5.70 points (+0.52%). European stocks received support from positive earnings reports from AstraZeneca and Volkswagen and from positive confidence and employment reports. The European Commission’s business and consumer confidence index rose to a 2-1/3 year high of 101.3 from 99 in June. Meanwhile, Germany unemployment fell by 20,000 to 3.21 million, which was the lowest level in 1-1/2 years and was the 13th consecutive monthly decline. The Germany unemployment rate fell to 7.6% from 7.7%. French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde today said she expects a "serious pickup" in global growth in 2011, "if only because global trade has significantly improved." UBS upgraded European stocks to "neutral" from "underweight," cut U.S. stocks to "neutral," and cut Japanese stocks to "underweight."
• The Asian markets today closed mixed: Japan -0.59%, Hong Kong +0.01%, China +0.50%, Taiwan +0.18%, Australia -0.13%, Singapore +0.41%, South Korea -0.17%, Bombay +0.19%. Asian stocks were undercut by Wednesday’s U.S. Beige Book report, which suggested lackluster U.S. demand for Asian exports. Panasonic fell 7.7% today after news that the company would offer stock to help it purchase full control of its Sanyo Electric and Panasonic Electric Works units.

Day Trader: Click Here for the complete Morning Call.

News plays an important role in stock market as we all know.So for trading stocks/options, you should always be aware of the latest news regarding the stock that you are going to buy or sell.

Here i put forward a very helpful site which enables you to take the most winning decision about which stock or option is truly sound and fruitful to buy or sell.This site gathers each and every information available for a stock having earnings release,from across Twitter and Google.

A short explanation of the site:-

It shows Tweets from Twitter and News from Google separately along with chart, for each stocks.

In the Earnings Release section on the right hand side,you can see:

All the stocks which have earnings anouncements for today. Stocks whose earnings reports were already released yesterday. Stocks which have scheduled their earnings release tomorrow.

You also have the option to see the stocks having earnings BEFORE, DURING and AFTER market hours.

By clicking on a particular stock in the Earnings Release section, you will get all the information about that stock. For example, if you click AAPL, you can see:

Apple Tweets – which gathers all the latest news concerning the stock AAPL, from Twitter which is on the left hand side. Chart – which shows the quotes for that stock on top right side. AAPL news – which filters all news updates concerning AAPL from Google.

So altogether this is an excellent perfect site for those who are keenly interested in stocks.

I would recommend this site which is designed for enthusiastic traders.

Why dont u have a look on www.earningsbuzz.com?

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