“Gains faded late as investors turned cautious before the Federal Reserve’s policy announcement and President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address on Wednesday,” Mikolajczak reports. “The Fed’s Open Market Committee began a two-day meeting on Tuesday against the backdrop of a Senate debate over Chairman Ben Bernanke’s reconfirmation. The meeting is expected to yield few policy shifts, with a Fed statement on the economy and interest rates expected on Wednesday.”
“The Senate is expected to vote this week on confirmation of Bernanke for a second term as Fed chairman. Some senators have said they will vote against the U.S. central bank chief because of the Fed’s handling of the financial crisis,” Mikolajczak reports. “U.S. stocks fell 5 percent in a three-day span to close out last week after the Obama administration proposed new restrictions on large banks.”
“After a lower open, stocks rose on data showing consumer confidence rose for a third straight month in January to its highest level since September 2008, easing concerns about individual spending,” Mikolajczak reports. “But the Dow Jones industrial average ended down 2.79 points, or 0.03 percent, to 10,194.07. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index fell 4.62 points, or 0.42 percent, to 1,092.16. The Nasdaq Composite Index dropped 7.07 points, or 0.32 percent, to 2,203.73.”
“Apple gained 1.5 percent to $205.94, a day after reporting strong quarterly results and on growing anticipation over its tablet product launch on Wednesday,” Mikolajczak reports. “The iPhone maker provided the biggest lift to the Nasdaq, followed by Microsoft Corp, up 0.7 percent to $29.50, which is scheduled to report results later this week.”
Mikolajczak reports, “Stocks opened lower on concerns about a Chinese government clampdown on bank lending. Banking sources said China’s central bank told some banks to increase their reserve ratios to curb excessive lending.”
Read more in the full article here.
Three things I can’t understand about Apple…Al Gore, their lean towards the left, and their very noticeable French influence…no offense…I just don’t get it…save the flames until tomorrow.
I wonder if MDN gets more advertising dollars on their recent dabble in politics than they do on the Apple and iPhone stuff.
For fsk sake MDN pull your Republican crap in. Wall Street is down because of many many things, not the least of which is thirty years of unfettered free market shenanigans under a failed ideology that has left the US middle class trying to sell off the family jewels (living standards, environmental laws, etc.,) as a government of the people, for the people, by the people has been reduced to a market place of used car salesmen and investment snake oil pundits.
Capital punishment needs to be reintroduced, if a corporation has the same rights as a person then we need to throw most of the SoB’s in the can and introduce “true” public ownership—nationalize crooked companies, starting with Microsoft but not ending there…
We all know that stocks are up up up since the male model was elected!
Shame MDN! don’t you read your own political FUD?
Lets face it guys, you collect Apple news, and do a good job at it, but your political stuff needs help…..
Yes, hard to understand why they’d have the first Congressman to understand the importance of the coming digital revolution back in the 80’s, or why a fan of Dylan who believes in changing the world for the better would be attracted to progressive politics. It is beyond understanding!!
It’s San Francisco’s culture — left-wing, creative, intellectual, pro-diversity, etc. Apple wouldn’t be Apple if it weren’t infused with these values.
MDN didn’t write this, Reuters did – including the headline.
If you have a problem with it, contact Reuters.
French influence? QTF?
@killbill… where exactly do they serve that koolaid ya been drinking?
@ theloniousMac
Don’t forget to say “..On Steroids”
“Gains faded late as investors turned cautious before the Federal Reserve’s policy announcement and President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address on Wednesday,”
Because, you see, this morning, investors had completely forgotten that the Fed meeting and the SotU were happening on Wednesday. It completely slipped their minds until they broke for lunch. When they all checked their Blackberries at Burger King, investors suddenly remembered these terrifying events were only a day away, and rushed sell everything they’d bought in the morning.
Not Obama card again MDN!!! Your cheap degenerated bias is ridiculously obvious.
It doesn’t take a genius to see that MDN posts this garbage in a specifically crafted way, ties it loosely with Apple, and offers virtually little or no “Take” just so they can bait us into a flame war over stuff that has nothing to do with Macs or Apple news. It’s a game, and you all fall for it! Just move on to the next article. There is nothing to see here.
@ conschmillo
You should cross-post your comment from Google Finance. Not that it would help.
Again, MDN didn’t write this, Reuters did – including the headline.
If you have a problem with it, contact Reuters.
Republicans: “We’ll tell whether you can marry someone of the same gender, whether you can gamble, whether you can get an abortion, whether you can possess or smoke marijuana, blah, blah, blah,” but spend your money however you please! How does the right wing so blatantly and paradoxically reconcile fiscal conservatism and Christian fundamentalism in its politics, especially when this reconciliation is a result of the arbitrary happenstance that northern Democrats spearheaded desegregation and caused a migratory shift of the Christian south to the Republican party? In other words, the right wing is some kind of social mutant filled with strange and self-contradictory creatures who are militant about causes they aren’t sure why they have.
By the way, MDN, have you read the latest cognitive research? The kind that suggests that people are actually fallible and adopt heuristics and biases when making financial decisions? A requirement of free markets is that agents are rational and self serving, but there’s little evidence that people are actually rational. Even the cool-headed Wall Street traders can screw up, hence last year’s crash! It’s OKAY to adjust your views. This knee jerk finger pointing crap has to stop though.
What a steaming pile of crap.
Some real facts…
• Apple’s intra-day high today was $213.71 at around 1pm, before falling away in a round of profit-taking.
• $213.71 is a mere 0.87% from Apple’s all-time high (215.59)
• Both the all-time closing high and intraday high were set a mere 14 trading days back on Jan 5.
• Back in the first half of 2006, in the time before the Obama administration (or even the Obama nomination) and before the 2006 mid-terms which led to the Republicans losing control of Congress, Apple fell from $85.59 on Jan 13 2006 to $50.67 on July 14 2006.
• This fall of 40.79% (from a lower base) was only marked by http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/10164/P0/
Strangely, there is no political comment or sub-text.
Draw your own conclusion.
@Once again
Yes and it belong on Reuters, not here.
@ Sam
You’re using too many big words and complex ideas. Are you trying to confuse the Rill Americans?
@ C1
Et tu parlez Français, aussi, mon petite choucroute?
C’est bien!
I hereby apologize to MDN because I am so stupid that I have no idea what quotation marks mean and I am unable to click a link to the source article. It’s really no wonder that I voted for Obama.
@ Sam
“Public opinion, I am sorry to say, will bear a great deal of nonsense. There is scarcely any absurdity so gross, whether in religion, politics, science or manners, which it will not bear.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Obama is nothing but a pure fsckup. Almost as bad as Jimmy Carter.
Again, MDN didn’t write this, Reuters did – including the headline.
Presumably, some men in black from Reuters came round to MDN’s offices (wherever that might be) and pointed a pistol at the office cat until MDN published the article?
No?
So MDN could have done the same critical analysis that I did in my post at 5:39pm and decided that the story had an unwarranted political slant that is inconsistent when compared to much more serious long-term falls in the past.
It took me 10 minutes and I wasn’t rushing.
@ Hm…
Watch your language.
@ C1
Привет, товарищ! Какой?