U.S. stocks ended mixed Wednesday after a late-session profit taking almost wiped off a 156-point rally in the Dow average that was fueled by the Fed’s encouraging assessment of the economy and its decision to keep interest rates low for an extended period.  The optimism was short-lived as investors appeared jittery ahead of the October jobs report on Friday. Fresh concerns over bank earnings resurfaced after the House of Representatives passed a bill curbing credit card rate increases.

After the house vote, financials slumped 1.5% and led the decliners among the S&P 500 industry groups.  Analyst Meredith Whitney noted the biggest U.S. banks may face declining values on home-loan bonds with government backing as the Fed moves towards ending its $1.25 trillion purchase program.  Whitney said bank earnings are far from approaching "normalcy," and will reflect regulatory changes for an extended period.  JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM) fell 1.2% to $42.21 and

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For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL – November 5, 2009 – Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: Time Warner Inc. (TWX), Fannie (FNM), Freddie (FRE), Citigroup (C) and Bank of America (BAC).

Get the most recent insight from Zacks Equity Research with the free Profit from the Pros newsletter: http://at.zacks.com/?id=5513

Here are highlights from Wednesday’s AnalystBlog:

Time Warner Tops Zacks Consensus

Despite tough macro-economic conditions, Time Warner Inc. (TWX), the global leader in media and entertainment businesses, reported better-than-expected third-quarter 2009 results that topped the Zacks Consensus Estimate.

The quarterly earnings of 61 cents a share beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 52 cents, but

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Dan Holland has just interviewed Wall Street chronicler Charlie Gasparino’s. The first few paragraphs of the interview that appeared on RealClearMarkets are published below.

There’s good reason to believe that Gasparino’s latest book, The Sellout, will become the definitive book on the current financial crisis and the events that led up to “The Great Recession.” Spanning three decades, The Sellout pulls no punches in chronicling the rise and fall of excessive Wall Street leverage and risk taking, as well as the cast of colorful characters that ultimately brought the US financial system to its knees. It will hit bookshelves tomorrow [Tuesday].

RealClearMarkets: You sat down recently with Wall Street legend Teddy Forstmann to discuss your new book and the genesis of the mess we now find ourselves in. Forstmann said it all began as a “cold” back in the 1970s and 1980s, and that since

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The Federal Reserve decided to keep the Federal Funds rate unchanged at the meeting it concluded today, as expected. Below is the current Fed Statement along with the one from their September meeting in paragraph-by-paragraph format, with my translation and commentary interspersed. As the graph below shows, the market is expecting the Fed to remain on hold, with Fed Funds between 0 and 25 basis points for an extended period. The graph shows the expected outcomes for the January meeting (before today’s announcement) from the Cleveland Fed. The market set the odds of anything other than standing pat at either today’s meeting or the December meeting effectively at zero. Reading off the chart, it looks like about a 95% probability of no action in January as well. I doubt we will see the Fed raise rates before the third quarter of 2010. The Fed is ...

Dr Stock Pick HOT News & Alerts!

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FREE Daily Stock Alerts From DrStockPick.com

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Friday October 30, 2009

DrStockPick.com Article

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Too big to fail, is still heavy in the derivative market, and primed for a gigantic collapse.

Congress needs a chimney sweep to clean the soot from the smoke they’ve been blowing. Our do nothing congress; well we can’t really say do nothing, they did bail out the banks, and they have raised more money for themselves this session from Insurance, health care and bank lobbyists than in any other one year period, and the year isn’t even over. Now they are spreading the word, the gospel of Obama, it’s time to

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• Sony (NYSE:SNE) said weak cell phone sales and lower PlayStation III console prices resulted in another quarterly loss.  The firm also said full-year prospects improved from the company's aggressive cost-cutting measures

• Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU) reported its twelfth straight quarterly loss of $269 million. The firm said it expects operating results to break even by yearend

• Duke Energy (NYSE:DUK) reported third quarter earnings one cent above Zacks estimates at 40 cents, as revenues of $3.4 billion were below Zacks estimates of $4.25 billion. The company noted, "Industry sales volumes continued to show signs of stabilization"

• ITT Industries (NYSE:ITT) reported third quarter beat Zacks estimates by 14 cents a share, coming in at $1.03 on inline revenues of $2.7 billion, down 6.3%

• Coventry Health Care (NYSE:CVH) reported its third quarter of 68 cents topped Zacks estimates by 14 cents, on inline revenues of $3.44 billion, up 17.7%

• Aon (NYSE:AOC), reported third quarter

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For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL – October 30, 2009 – Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: Bank of America (BAC), Citigroup (C), Motorola Inc. (MOT), China Mobile Ltd. (CHL) and Mylan, Inc. (MYL).

Get the most recent insight from Zacks Equity Research with the free Profit from the Pros newsletter: http://at.zacks.com/?id=5513

Here are highlights from Thursday’s AnalystBlog:

Contributions to GDP Growth

While residential investment is still near a record low share of the overall economy, I have serious questions about the sustainability of the increase. The extension and expansion of the the tax credit by Congress might keep things going for the next few quarters, but

...

Not all components of GDP are created equal. Some are very big, and others relatively small. Some tend to be very stable over time, and some tend to swing violently from quarter to quarter. The bigger and more volatile they are, the more they will impact the overall growth rate of GDP. Thus looking at just the percentage changes in the components does not tell the full story. Of the 3.5% total growth, how many points were added or subtracted by each part of the economy? The biggest part of the economy is the Consumer, or PCE -- overall it contributed 2.36 of the 3.50 points of total growth. In the second quarter it caused 0.62 of the 0.70 total decline in the 2Q. In the first quarter it actually offset 0.44 points of the 6.40 total decline. In other words, excluding the Consumer the economy would ...

This post provides links to a number of interesting articles I have read over the past few days that you may also enjoy.

• John Hussman (Hussman Funds): Rumors of the death of the credit crisis are greatly exaggerated, October 26, 2009. In recent months, I’ve strongly rejected the notion that the credit crisis has been conveniently placed behind us and that the U.S. is now in a typical post-war economic recovery (and can be approached as such from an investment perspective). This view continues to strike me as dangerous and even naïve.

• Dave Nadig (IndexUniverse.com): Nouriel Roubini - big crash coming, October 23, 2009. Roubini will be the keynote speaker at IndexUniverse’s upcoming “Inside Commodities” conference on November 4 at the New York Stock Exchange. IndexUniverse sat down with Dr. Roubini ahead of the conference to take his temperature

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American International Group Inc. (AIG) said on Friday that it is paying $12.1 million in retention awards to some of its top executives. The company took this decision after it got approval from U.S. pay czar Kenneth Feinberg, who is scrutinizing the pay practices of the seven companies including AIG that received the biggest federal aid.   Chief Financial Officer David Herzog received $1 million and Kristian Moor, Chief Executive of AIG's property-casualty division, received $1.6 million. Jay Wintrob, CEO of AIG's domestic life and retirement services also received a payment. The payments were promised in 2008 to retain key employees.   Previously, U.S. Treasury Department pressed AIG to reduce $198 million in scheduled retention payments after the government missed the opportunity to defend against controversial bonuses paid to AIG employees last year.  However, AIG is currently trying to repay $85 billion it had borrowed from the ...