Government data show Japan’s factory production fell in February in its first decline in three months, as demand for exports weakened.
The 1.2 percent decline in industrial output reported Friday was worse than expected.
The data show production was weaker in the transport equipment, electronics components and machinery industries. Output of cell phones, large passenger cars and liquid crystal devices fell.
Stock futures are falling as financial turmoil grips Spain and before a U.S. report that is expected to show a slight rise unemployment benefit applications.
Dow Jones industrial futures are down 26 points to 13,027 and the Standard & Poor’s 500 futures are down 3.3 points to 1,396.9. The Nasdaq composite futures are down 5.75 points to 2,762.25.
Protesters flooded the streets of Madrid on Thursday and there are clashes with police a day before massive spending cuts and tax hikes are expected to be revealed.
European markets are down with investors keeping an eye on events at home and in Asia, where Chinese economic indicators are compounding fears of a broader economic slowdown.
The U.S. Labor Department will release its latest unemployment claims numbers at 8:30 a.m. Eastern time.
Bentley Motors Ltd. and Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Ltd. are preparing to be occupied by India
The U.S. economy needs to grow more quickly if it is to produce enough jobs to bring down the unemployment rate further, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Monday.
Bernanke said the recent decline in jobless rate, which dropped from 9.1 percent last summer to 8.3 percent in February, was “somewhat out of sync” with the rather modest pace of economic growth.
U.S. gross domestic product grew 3 percent in the fourth quarter, but is expected to have slowed to just below 2 percent in the first three months of this year.
“Further significant improvements in the unemployment rate will likely require a more rapid expansion of production and demand from consumers and businesses, a process that can be supported by continued accommodative policies,” Bernanke told a gathering of the National Association for Business Economics paydayloan.
Bernanke reiterated his concern about long-term unemployment, but argued against the notion that much of the problem is due to structural factors that monetary policy could not address.
“The continued weakness in aggregate demand is likely the predominant factor. Consequently, the Federal Reserve’s accommodative monetary policies, by providing support for demand and for the recovery, should help, over time, to reduce long-term unemployment as well,” he said.
Hong Kong picks its new chief executive today, after a campaign marked by personal scandals, public discontent over a widening wealth gap and protests for greater democracy.
A 1,193-member committee of billionaires, including Hong Kong
ST. LOUIS • A developer is pouring $30 million into renovating a Cupples Station building downtown, while in the same complex of 19th-century warehouses a similar structure continues to sit empty and in danger of collapse.
It’s a tale of different buildings and different owners with starkly different approaches. Both buildings are within a city historic district and are on the National Register of Historic Places.
Cupples 9, a seven-story warehouse built in 1894, had been empty for years when an affiliate of the Koman Group, a Creve Coeur-based developer, bought the building out of foreclosure last spring. Clayco Inc. is Koman’s general contractor to restore the building’s red brick exterior and renovate the interior of heavy Douglas fir beams and columns as modern loft-style offices.
Koman already has two Cupples 9 tenants: Osborn & Barr, an agriculture-focused marketing firm, and Mackey Mitchell Architects, a St. Louis design firm founded in 1968.
Mackey Mitchell announced this week that it will leave its longtime home near Union Station and by late this year take over about half the fifth floor at Cupples 9, which is a block west of Busch Stadium.
The firm, begun in 1968 by Gene Mackey, plans to lease about 11,000 square feet of Cupples 9 space, about 4,000 square feet fewer than what it occupies now at Power House, an office building just south of Union Station. Mackey Mitchell designed that building, where it has rented space for 24 years.
Dan Mitchell, the firm’s president, said Mackey Mitchell plans to retain all 45 employees when it moves Cupples 9, which has 12-foot ceilings, large windows and exposed brick walls. The firm is planning “a more linear” seating arrangement to enhance employee communication, creativity and collaboration, Mitchell said.
“We’ll have a kind of bench-style configuration with more community space or team space dispersed through the studio,” he said.
Mackey Mitchell chose Cupples 9 after examining numerous buildings downtown, in the Central West End and near St. Louis University before opting to remain downtown, said Mitchell, adding that the firm’s Power House lease expires next February.
Osborn & Barr, as Cupples 9’s anchor tenant, will occupy floors two through four.
Dan Farris, Koman’s senior investments manager, declined Thursday to discuss details of the Cupples 9 redevelopment. He said more information about the project will be announced in about two weeks.
A block west of Cupples 9 on Spruce Street is Cupples 7, which has experienced only decay since 2005, when developer McGowan/Walsh bought the building and announced plans to convert it to lofts and commercial space. The project never got off the ground.
Ballpark Lofts III LLC, the building’s current owner, applied last year for a demolition permit, which the city’s cultural resources officer, Betsy Bradley, denied. The city’s Preservation Board upheld Bradley’s decision. Pending in St. Louis Circuit Court is Ballpark Lofts’ appeal of the Preservation Board’s ruling. A hearing on the appeal is scheduled for Thursday.
Joining the appeal is Montgomery Bank, which lent Ballpark Lofts more than $1 million to buy Cupples 7. The loan is in default. The bank has an agreement with the St. Louis treasurer’s office, which would pay off the loan, then work out a payback agreement with Ballpark Lofts. Such a transaction would occur only if Cupples 7 is demolished first.
The treasurer owns a parking garage next to Cupples 7 and is concerned the garage would be damaged if the old warehouse collapses. Barricades the city put up around the building in September impedes access to the garage, the treasurer office’s lawyer has said.
Much of the building’s roof has collapsed and most of the interior is in ruins. A structural engineer hired by the owner told the Preservation Board last year the brick walls are unstable. Bracing the walls and “mothballing” the building for possible redevelopment later could cost $8 million to $10 million, officials said.
Osborn & Barr’s move to Cupples 9 will result in a two-floor vacancy at Cupples 8, another of the old warehouses that McGowan/Walsh renovated as offices and condos.
U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne will need to claw back about 5 billion pounds ($8 billion) a year, largely from the wealthy, to fund giveaways he
With more money sitting in their bank account than some companies are worth, Silicon Valley giant Apple finally decided it was time to pay a dividend.
Tim Cook, CEO of the maker of iPhones, iPads, iPods and Mac computers announced Monday the company would be using some of its $98 billion cash on hand to pay out a dividend for the first time since 1995, as well as buy back stock.
In an industry where paying out a dividend is sometimes seen as a sign that a company is past its innovative best, Cook insisted the $2.65 quarterly dividend will still leave plenty of cash for the company to develop new products, as well as giving it a war-chest to use for takeover opportunities.
As their first birthday nears, Scottrade is finally putting some marketing behind its young Focus Morningstar family of exchange-traded funds.
The big Town and Country-based online brokerage hopes to lift the pint-sized funds out of obscurity and send them tilting at Charles Schwab, Vanguard, iShares and other giants of the ETF trade.
Like traditional mutual funds, ETFs invest in a basket of stocks and other financial instruments. However, ETF shares are priced throughout the day and traded on stock exchanges like stocks; traditional mutual funds buy and redeem their shares through a mutual fund company, which prices the mutual fund shares once a day.
Scottrade is also joining the investment equivalent of an airline fare war, in which mushrooming competition is driving ETF expense ratios ever lower.
“It’s fair to call it a race to the bottom,” says Erik Liik, chief executive of Scottrade’s FocusShares unit, which runs the funds. “There’s been fee compression for the past five or six years.”
That’s good news for the investor, who pays those expenses. But it’s bad for the investment firms sponsoring the funds. They take their profits as a percentage of mutual fund assets, and that slice is getting slimmer.
Scottrade is banking on such cheapness to give it a leg up with investors. Its Focus Morningstar US Market ETF has an expense ratio of 0.05 percent, a quarter of the 0.2-percent bite taken by the iShares Dow Jones U.S. Index Fund. Both funds track the broad American stock market.
“From a marketing standpoint, that gives Scottrade something to talk about,” said Adam Bold, CEO of the Mutual Fund Store, an advisory service based near Kansas City. But such a tiny advantage probably won’t swing too many decisions, he said.
Today’s cut-rate funds are a far cry from the start of the ETF boom in the late 1990s, when some broad-market ETFs had expense ratios of 1.25 percent.
Tiny expense ratios make it hard for a fund sponsor to turn a profit. So, the goal is to grow funds large enough so that a thin slice of the assets equals a lot of money. At $100 million in total assets, the 15 Focus Morningstar funds are still tiny.
Scottrade is subsidizing the funds’ expenses, something common with startup ETFs. Officially, Scottrade promises to keep the subsidy going only through this year, although Liik says there are no plans to raise costs to investors later.
Hence the marketing campaign, which is timed for the funds’ March 30 birthday, when they will have a one-year record to show investors.
Scottrade is a giant of the discount brokerage business, with online trading, 500 offices nationwide and 1,000 independent investment advisors who place trades through Scottrade. The firm makes its living offering low-priced services, but little personalized investment advice.
Independent advisers are a main target of the new promotional push, since they can swing their affluent clients’ money toward Scottrade’s ETFs.
The company plans to advertise in investment magazines and websites, and to sponsor financial shows on cable TV no faxing payday loans. The company wouldn’t put a figure on its marketing budget.
“It’s open-ended,” said Liik.
The fate of ETFs can be fickle, and it’s hard to tell if the push will work, says Paul Baiocchi, an analyst at IndexUniverse, which tracks the ETF industry. “They can slog along and then something happens and before you know it, they can have $500 million in assets,” he said.
Nationally, the growth rate for ETFs would put rabbits to shame. There were 113 funds in 2002, compared to 1,155 this year. Twenty-one new ones were born in the month of January. All told, they hold $1.15 trillion in assets, according to the Investment Company Institute, the mutual fund trade association.
“There is an awful lot of product being created, probably more than needs to exist in the world,” said Bold. “At some point, we will have a shakeup, and some will go away.”
The last such shakeup happened after the crash of 2008. About 150 funds liquidated between 2008 and 2011, all while new funds were forming, according to the Institute.
ETF births tend to follow investing fads, says Bold. If dividend stocks, for instance, is doing well, new dividend ETFs will pop up.
“The vast majority of these are being created by the marketing departments, in exactly the way that Frito will bring out 10 new brands of Doritos hoping one will stick,” said Bold.
Unlike traditional mutual funds, ETFs don’t need a bureaucracy to handle share purchases and redemptions, so they can pass on some savings in the form of lower expense ratios for investors.
On the other hand, ETF investors pay commissions when they buy and sell shares. Scottrade, like some other brokerages, waives commissions on trades of its own name-brand ETFs.
There are other quirks to ETF investing. Some funds are small and thinly traded, and that can mean a wide spread between the bid and asked prices, raising the cost of trading.
The vast majority of ETFs track indexes, and there are lots and lots of indexes, which has led to a cottage industry of people selling ETF advice.
Scottrade follows indexes run by Morningstar, the well-regarded mutual fund analysis company in Chicago.
Some indexes are broad — tracking value stocks or growth, and companies big, small or in between. Even those tend to vary; for instance, some big-capitalization stock funds will track bigger companies than other big-cap funds.
Lots of funds track narrow sectors of the market, and they slice those sectors differently.
For instance, the Materials Select Sector SPDR has no coal investments. A competing basic materials fund, Dow Jones US Basic Materials ETF has coal stocks. By contrast, the Dow Jones fund has Monsanto as its second-largest holding, while the SPDR fund doesn’t own it, according to a Morningstar analysis.
The Reserve Bank of India
Powered by WordPress