DrStockPick.com Stock Report!

Thursday July 30, 2009

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Waste Management, Inc. (NYSE:WMI) today announced financial results for its second quarter ended June 30, 2009. Net income(a) for the quarter was $247 million, or $0.50 per diluted share, compared with $318 million, or $0.64 per diluted share, for the second quarter of 2008. Revenues for the second quarter of 2009 were $2.95 billion compared with $3.49 billion for the same 2008 period. Only $186 million of the revenue decline, or 5.3% of revenue, was related to the impact of lower volumes in the solid waste collection and disposal business. The majority of the decline was due to commodity impacts related to recycling materials, fuel and energy sales,

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Barring some dramatic – and unforeseen – news this week, expect investors to tread water until Thursday, when the government is expected to release the results of the bank stress tests it conducted on the 19 largest U.S. banks.

The stress-test results are expected to show that the 19 banks may have to raise between $100 billion to $150 billion – or even more – in new capital. Investors will cause the shares of the strong players to zoom northward, and will likely savage the shares of the weakest players.

“I can’t think of a time since I’ve been watching banks when there’s been so much uncertainty about the true value of a key set of assets,” Douglas Elliott, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, told Reuters.

The U.S. bank stress tests have transfixed the world financial markets for weeks, exacerbating the ongoing financial crisis – worsening the U.S.

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This post is a guest contribution by Jay Bryson*, global economist of Wachovia.

The swine flu epidemic has become front page news this week. Mexico is the epicenter of the outbreak and thousands of cases have been reported in that country. However, scores of cases have been confirmed in the United States, and countries as far afield as Israel and New Zealand have hospitalized people with symptoms that resemble swine flu. Not only have the Mexican stock market and currency been hammered over the past few days, but financial markets in most other countries have been adversely affected as well.

The financial and economic costs of the epidemic will ultimately depend on its severity. The outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) that swept through Asia in the spring of 2003 is instructive. The SARS epidemic was deadly - nearly 800 people in

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First the Miserable Pacific Northwest Weather...and Now This!The Boeing Company (BA) released its annual orders and deliveries information last Thursday. Net orders (i.e., orders adjusted for current-year cancellations and conversions) for 2008 were 662 shipsets, consisting of 484 737s, 3 747s, 28 767s, 54 777s and 93 787s; during 2007, Boeing recorded net orders of 1,413 shipsets, consisting of 846 737s, 21 747s, 36 767s, 141 777s and 369 787s.Hence, net orders during 2008 were down more-than 53.1% from 2007. Even so, during 2008, Boeing booked 287 more orders than deliveries (2008 deliveries consisted of 290 737s, 14 747s, 10 767s, 61 777s and 0 787s, for a total of 375 shipsets); consequently, its commercial ship-set backlog continued to rise during 2008. But, alas, that does not bring good tidings!Boeing announced Friday that employment at its Commercial Airplanes business unit is expected ...

China’s economic growth rate slipped into single digits in the third quarter for the first time in at least four years under the impact of the global credit crisis and weakness in the domestic property sector. Annual gross domestic product growth slowed more sharply than expected to 9.0 per cent from 10.1 per cent in the second quarter, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Monday. It was not immediately possible to pinpoint when growth was last weaker because China does not publish new quarterly data when it revises its annual GDP figures. nor was it possible to precisely calibrate the speed of the slowdown since we do not have seasonally adjusted quarter on quarter data. China's economic expansion was the weakest since at least the second quarter of 2003, when growth slumped because of the severe acute respiratory syndrome, ...