Microsoft report lifts Asian friday markets
Asian markets ended the week up helped by the Microsoft report coming in at 51 cents per share which is better than analyst projections at 46 cents per share. Sales amounted to 16 billion dollars.
High demand for computers and Microsoft products fuels the good figures but Microsoft still battles for a foothold in the online search market. The current involvement with Yahoo has still to produce results, something that may improve Microsoft´s standing even further by end of 2010.
On the other end we find Amazon who reports a severe profit hit as expenses rise by 40%.
Obama turns Wall Street reform bill into law
US President Obama signed the Wall Street reform bill into law on Wednesday. The Wall Street reform now provides regulators with a effective waeapon against the biggest financial groups that may jeopardize the inner workings of our financial systems. These systems loose their true responsiveness when affected by concentrated financial power. In short, the current financial system can be, and is being, manipulated.
What President Obama has now put into place establishes the right of regulators to affect and stop for example massive mergers. During the ceremony in Washington, President Obama said: “Because of this law, the American people will never again be asked to foot the bill for Wall Street’s mistakes. There will be no more taxpayer-funded bailouts. Period.”
It is about time this kind of instrument is installed in the US – many nations in Europe have had similar financial and legislative tools in place for a long time. This has of course not stopped the whole of EU from being hijacked by faltering nations and in effect, the EU taxpayer is footing the extensive bailouts within their community. However, keep in mind that these bailouts do not have much to do with the machinery of stock trading, such as the Wall Street problem.
Considering the global impact that Dow Jones Industrial and the other US markets have, we hope the Wall Street Reform bill now in effect will curb at least the most offensive Wall Street manipulations.
Here´s the official Wall Street reform presentation video
How will the markets react? Whichever way they go, this has already been discounted, and will not be the fundamental reason for movement.
Bernanke calls financial future unclear
Wednesday: In a testimony to Congress, Ben Bernanke said that “the economic outlook remains unusually uncertain”. If you had any doubts that the “recovery” is not doing well, the Fed Chairman with this and other signal mantains a unusually cautious tone regarding the state of the economic recovery process.
Dow Jones took a marked turn down and once again, the magic 10,000 is under threat. Those who follow our Twitter channel will hopefully have benefitted from our tweet Monday on playing the futures.
Follow Asia closely the rest of the week. Our position is further turbulence coming up.
Weak Dow opening on mixed global markets?
Last week limped along as per our expectations but seems to have surprised quite a lot of traders. Once again, we hover dangerously around the 10.000 mark with weak reports coming in somewhat under projected results.
On Monday Asia continued backtracking while European markets a couple of hours into trading are treading water around the flatline mark, some slightly up.
With the disappointing numbers from BAC, GE and Citigroup, China continuing to slow down and the EU woes of membership credits still clouding the skies.. the coming weeks may be very turbulent. Good openings for the short traders.
If the US continues to go sideways, China may see fit to further downgrade the US credit rating. Sound too harsh? Time will tell.
