Update Daily Investment News

New Years Rally to Continue—for Now
Stocks swung higher into the new year and could continue an upward drift as the fourth-quarter earnings season gets going.The first major Dow component, Alcoa [AA 17.02 0.41 (+2.47%) ], reports earnings Monday and there are just several more major names—JPMorgan Chase [JPM 44.68 -0.11 (-0.25%) ] and Intel [INTC 20.83 0.23 (+1.12%) ]—reporting later in the week. Analysts expect corporate profits to mostly show improvement from last year's period, when the big deluge of earnings news starts after the middle of the month.Most of the action in the week ahead will come from a heavy dose of economic reports, including December retail sales and the Fed's beige book on the economy. The Treasury also auctions another $80 plus billion in notes and bonds in the coming week.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/34775046

Halftime Report: Is S&P Gunning For 1200?
By: Lee Brodie
Stocks [.SPX 1144.98 3.29 (+0.29%) ] traded sideways on Friday as investors swallowed a big gulp, after the latest jobs report caught many completely off guard.
The latest data show U.S. employers cut 85,000 jobs in December, far more than the expected loss of 8,000.The results cooled optimism on the labor market's recovery and kept stocks under pressure.How should you be positioned now?

http://www.cnbc.com/id/34767464

US Can 'Certainly' See Double-Dip This Year: Strategist
By: JeeYeon Park
The CBOE Volatility Index (VIX), also known as the “Investor Fear Gauge," hit a 19 month low on Friday. What does it all mean for stocks and investments going forward? Hank Smith, chief investment officer of Haverford Investments, and Mike Rubino, president of Rubino Financial, discussed their market analyses. (See their recommendations, below.“The real thing that’s driving the economy is the deleveraging of the debt in housing markets that continues,” Rubino told CNBC. “Defaults continue to rise in an improving economy…We expect another round of defaults in the middle of this year in the late summer.”As a result, Rubino said the U.S. could “certainly” see a double-dip in the economy.“Our strategy is to be awfully cautious at this point,” he advised.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/34767975

Buy Indonesia’s Bumi, Alam Sutera, Danareksa Says
(Bloomberg) -- Indonesia’s mining stocks such as PT Bumi Resources may rise as commodity prices advance, and investors should buy property developers for gains from low borrowing costs, PT Danareksa Sekuritas said. Coal, nickel and tin prices will probably rise as the global economy recovers from a recession, said Metty Fauziah Wardhani, a mining analyst at Danareksa Sekuritas, the best Indonesian brokerage in 2009, according to an Asiamoney magazine poll. Lower mortgage rates and infrastructure development may boost developers including PT Alam Sutera Realty, Danareksa’s Lydia Suwandi said yesterday.The Jakarta Composite index rose 87 percent last year, making it Asia’s second-best performer. Shares of Bumi more than doubled in 2009 after a 78 percent gain in oil prices improved the outlook for alternative fuels. Goldman Sachs JBWere Pty on Jan. 7 raised its spot price forecasts for thermal coal to $86 a metric ton on stronger demand from China and other buyers. Bumi shares have jumped 20 percent this week so far on better-than- expected earnings for the first nine months of 2009.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a7rlj6Fv88T0

The comeback quarter
The upcoming results season should show profit and sales growth returning
(MarketWatch) -- U.S. stock investors in the next week are likely to turn to earnings from Alcoa Inc., Intel Corp. and J.P. Morgan, bellwethers slated to usher in the fourth-quarter results season, for the corporate view on economic recovery.
They're expecting good tidings.The large, U.S.-based companies that make up the S&P 500 /quotes/comstock/21z!i1:in\x (SPX 1,145, +3.29, +0.29%) are collectively expected to show profit increases for the first time since the second quarter of 2007, breaking a string of nine quarterly profit declines.Alcoa and Intel kick off earnings season next week. Retail sales, CPI and the Fed's Beige Book are also on tap. MarketWatch's Stacey Delo reports.It's an eye-popping growth rate analysts are anticipating: Profit likely expanded 184% from the last dismal quarter of 2008, largely thanks to financial institutions swinging to profits from deep losses.Without financials, profit at Standard & Poor's 500 corporations would increase an estimated 8%, says Thomson Reuters.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-stocks-next-week-the-return-of-profit-growth-2010-01-09

Dollar seen strengthening in early 2010
(MarketWatch) -- After watching the U.S. dollar slide for most of the past year, many analysts expect it to strengthen in the first part of 2010 as the U.S. economy recovers faster than other in Japan and most of Europe.But beyond that, the longer-term outlook remains shakier. Much will depend on the shape of the economic recovery and what happens to the unprecedented stimulus measures by the Federal Reserve and the U.S. government."After a schizophrenic two years, the dollar has come full circle to pre-credit crisis levels," said Sal Guatieri, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets./quotes/comstock/11j!i:dxy0 DXY 77.50, +0.03, +0.04%. The financial system's near-collapse led to a 16% surge in the U.S. currency from October 2008 through March 2009, as investors sought the dollar's safety. And avoiding the abyss led to a nearly 17% slide from March to November of last year.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/dollar-seen-strengthening-in-early-2010-2010-01-09
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Five Themes for 2010
Morgan Stanley
1. A tale of two worlds. Growth in the emerging world becomes more balanced and will by far outpace growth in the advanced economies this year.
2. ‘BBB recovery' in the G10. We expect the recovery in the advanced economies to be creditless and jobless, making it bumpy, below-par and boring.
3. G3 growth differentiation. We see the US as the growth leader among the G3, the euro area to lag behind, and Japan to double-dip.
4. ‘AAA liquidity cycle' remains intact. Central banks will crawl rather than rush towards the exit, so global liquidity continues to be ample, abundant and augmenting.
5. Sovereign and inflation risks on the rise. The next crisis is likely to be a crisis of confidence in governments' and central banks' ability to shoulder the rising public sector debt burden without creating inflation.
Exit to exit
Last year was all about the exit from the Great Recession - and it worked courtesy of massive global policy stimulus, as expected. This year will be all about the exit from super-expansionary monetary policy. As we laid out in more detail in the final issue of The Global Monetary Analyst on December 16, we expect the major central banks to start exiting around the middle of this year.Yes, they will likely be cautious, gradual and transparent, but the prospect and process of withdrawal may have unintended consequences: We think that government bond markets will be the first victim. While the exit will be the dominant macro theme next year, we identify five important economic themes in our global economic outlook that should be highly relevant for investors in 2010.