Eur/usd Trading |
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SerialHYIP |
Sep 14 2009, 08:07 AM
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QUOTE(godoftrading @ May 28 2008, 10:56 PM) What is the most active time for EUR/USD? For example, SP500 futures are most active from 9:30 am-10:30am and 3:00pm -4:00pm Eastern Time. Also, is there a major pair similar to the SP500 futures in terms of similarity in the most active times? Thanks in advance.
can you give me more
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Tanker |
Sep 30 2009, 02:18 PM
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hi all.news from cnn Wal-Mart's holiday bargain: 100 toys for $10 The big-box retailer looks to spur holiday sales with a list of 100 toys for $10 each. NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Wal-Mart is looking to jump-start holiday sales by expanding last year's $10 toy incentive tenfold, the company said Wednesday.
The world's largest retailer said it will offer 100 toys, from Barbies to Transformers, for $10 through the Christmas holiday. Last year, the program included only 10 toys.
The company decided to expand the $10 program and roll back prices "at a time when our customers were ready to make purchases," said Laura Phillips, Wal-Mart's vice president of toys, in a statement.
Wal-Mart said research has shown that 70% of its customers plan to start shopping for holiday items before Halloween.
More than half of Wal-Mart shoppers have already started budgeting for their holiday shopping, and nearly 40% say they are watching for deals, according to the company.
Hoping to attract shoppers. The incentive plan comes as retailers prepare for what is expected to be a lackluster holiday shopping season.
Holiday sales, which are largely driven by toy sales, can account for half of annual profit at many U.S. retailers.
Last year, toy sales declined 5% in the forth quarter, and 3% overall, generating $21.64 billion in 2008, versus $22.32 billion in 2007, according to market research company NDP Group Inc.
While Wal-Mart (WMT, Fortune 500) has weathered the recession better than its higher priced rivals as consumers hunt for bargains amid the weak economy, the discount retailer is not immune to the downturn in sales.
The Bentonville, Ark.-based company said last month that sales at stores open at least one year, a key measure of retail activity, fell 1.2% in the second-quarter versus the year before.
Wal-Mart's latest sales figures were considered worrisome by some analysts, who had expected same-store sales to rise 1% in the second quarter.
And with unemployment continuing to rise and household budgets still under pressure, many retailers are looking for ways to appeal to price-conscious shoppers, especially with the crucial holiday shopping season quickly approaching.
What's on the $10 list. Under the expanded $10 program, Wal-Mart will offer a "newly released toys, top brands and classic toys that shoppers seek out each holiday season."
Some of the toys are being introduced at $10, while others are being reduced by up to 50%, the company said.
The following is a partial list of the brands being offered: New Transformers Revenge of the Fallen Deluxe Action Figures Barbie Cut and Style Rapunzel Games such as Connect 4, Battleship, Monopoly, Trouble and Jenga Vtech Explore and Learn Helicopter Tonka Light and Sound vehicle assortment (firetruck, dumptruck, etc.) New Littlest Pet Shop Online Animals (virtual pet) or Littlest Pet Shop Playpack sets Clean-Up Pup Barbie Play Set and Mermaid Splash & Style Barbie New Play-Doh Burger Builder Set New Garanimals line Bath Boat (with squirter) and ABC 50 wood blocks kit Hot Wheels Trick Track LEGO Bionicle Legends set New Nerf-N-Force Sword My Little Pony So Soft Newborn Little Dreams Interactive Baby Doll
FDIC asks banks for help The agency raised its estimated bank failure tab and wants banks to kick in $45 billion to shore up the deposit insurance fund. NEW YORK (Fortune) -- The banking bust is getting mighty costly.
Bank regulators on Tuesday sharply raised their estimate of the cost of cleaning up after bank failures -- and proposed sending the industry a $45 billion tab to shore up the dwindling deposit insurance fund.
The staff of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said it expects expenses tied to failed banks to surge to $100 billion over five years -- up 43% from the agency's last estimate in May.
As a result of the rising costs and the pressures on the agency's cash position, the FDIC proposed that banks prepay their deposit insurance premiums for the next three years at the end of December.
The move would head off a cash crunch at the fund that stands behind consumers' bank deposits. Under FDIC guidelines, bankers and others will have a month to comment on the proposal before it becomes a rule.
The FDIC said the fund, under strain from 95 bank failures this year, will have a negative balance when the third quarter ends Wednesday and could run out of cash by the end of the first quarter next year. Over the past year, the deposit insurance fund balance has dropped to $10 billion from $45 billion.
As a result, there is a need for banks to pony up cash on hand now to support the fund, which supports more than $4 trillion in insured deposits.
The FDIC said the banks mostly will be able to make the payments out of reserves, so it won't unduly strain their finances or reduce lending.
"Our analysis suggests the industry can step up, so that's what we are asking them to do," said FDIC chief Sheila Bair.
The agency said the banking industry has "substantial liquidity," with some $1.3 trillion in liquid balances -- up 22% from a year ago.
Because the banks won't have to account for their payments to the FDIC all at once, the plan proposed Tuesday "will put the industry's liquid balances to good use in conserving capital and helping to maintain the capacity of banks to lend while they rebuild" the fund, the FDIC said.
The industry, which had been lobbying against another option open to the FDIC -- levying a so-called special assessment on banks, as it did earlier this year -- generally praised the prepayment decision.
"At this critical time, when the economy is just beginning its recovery, looking to options that are less pro-cyclical and that spread the cost over time is the right policy," the American Bankers Association said in a statement.
The FDIC said it wouldn't make any further special assessments on banks for the rest of the year, and ruled out raising the premiums it levies on banks till 2011.
Tuesday's proposal highlights how much money the banks have made over the past decade, while until recently contributing little to the insurance fund.
In the seven years leading up to the bloodbath of 2008, when banking industry profits tumbled 78% as the credit bubble collapsed, FDIC-insured commercial banks made an average pretax operating profit of $142 billion, according to agency data.
Over the same period, the industry paid out just $170 million a year, on average, in deposit insurance premiums, thanks largely to a 1996 law backed by the bankers' friends in Congress. In 2006, President Bush signed into law a measure that restored the FDIC's right to assess premiums on well-capitalized banks.
Since the markets melted down two summers ago, the FDIC has been playing catch-up. It booked $643 million in net assessments in 2007 and $3 billion last year -- and is on track to bring in some $17 billion over the course of 2009.
The FDIC does have some other options to shore up the fund. For instance, it could borrow cash from the Treasury Department.
The agency has a $100 billion standing credit line with Treasury -- and, thanks to a law passed this year, the authority to borrow as much as $500 billion through 2010 in an emergency.
But Bair has been reluctant to tap into this line of credit. She and other officials said Tuesday they prefer to leave the Treasury credit line untapped unless there is what they call an emergency situation -- such as the failure of a massive institution.
"I think that the American people would prefer to see an end to policies that look to the federal balance sheet as a remedy to every problem," Bair said. "That is especially the case with an industry that has the resources to deal with the problem."
Toys R Us to hire 35,000 seasonal workers For the third consecutive year, the toy retailer will bulk up hiring in advance of its busiest season. NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Ready or not, the holiday season is nearing, and Toys R Us is ringing in the busy shopping season by hiring 35,000 seasonal employees nationwide.
The toy giant, based in Wayne, N.J., has hired the same number of employees for the past two holiday seasons. Seasonal positions offer flexible work hours and range from management roles and sales associates to the back-of-the-house stock employees, Toys R Us said in a statement released early Wednesday morning.
Buy the toy retailer's move comes at a time when consumers aren't very confident in the economy, suggesting a discouraging outlook for retailers, who make more than half of their annual profit during the winter holidays.
Last year, U.S. retails sales of toys declined 5% in the forth quarter, and 3% overall, generating $21.64 billion in 2008, compared to $22.32 billion in 2007, according to market research company NDP Group Inc.
On the bright side, toys captured the largest share of total expenditure on kids ages 0-14 during the five weeks leading up to Christmas, according to the research group.
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Tanker |
Sep 30 2009, 04:07 PM
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Private sector still losing lots of jobs Payroll-processing firm says 254,000 jobs were lost in September, more than expected but down slightly from August. NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Private sector employment fell more than expected in September, but the pace of job losses continued to slow, according to a report released Wednesday.
Automatic Data Processing, a payroll-processing firm, said private-sector employers cut 254,000 jobs in September, down from a revised 277,000 in August. It was the smallest monthly total since July 2008.
The decline was greater than the 200,000 loss economists surveyed by Briefing.com had forecast. But the difference was "not statistically meaningful," according to Joel Prakken, an ADP spokesman and chairman of Macroeconomic Advisers, LLC.
"The pattern of improvement in headline number is undeniable at this point," Prakken said. Private sector payrolls will continue to decline at a slowing rate for the next few months before modest job growth resumes "in the first few months of 2010," he added.
Large businesses, those with 500 or more workers, let 61,000 workers go. Medium-sized businesses, with between 50 and 499 workers, shed 93,000 jobs. And small businesses, those with less than 50 workers, reduced payrolls by 100,000.
Small businesses held will continue to shed more workers than larger and medium-sized firms, Prakken said. That's because large businesses started shrinking payrolls earlier and therefore will recover sooner, he explained.
The goods-producing sector cut 151,000 jobs in September, while the service sector shed 103,000 jobs. Employment in the manufacturing sector dropped by 74,000 jobs.
The pattern of gradual improvement in the job market has been "fairly wide spread," Prakken said. But employment in the construction and manufacturing sectors will remain weaker than the service sector, he added.
Public sector employment, which ADP excludes from its report, is expected to decline significantly due to "pressure on states to cut costs and meet budgets," Prakken said.
ADP based its report on payroll data from about 500,000 employers across a broad range of industries.
The report is seen as a precursor to Friday's closely watched jobs report from the U.S. Labor Department.
That report is expected to show that the economy shed 180,000 jobs in September, down from the 216,000 reported for August, according to a consensus estimate of economists compiled by Briefing.com. The unemployment rate is predicted to rise to 9.8% from 9.7%.
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Tanker |
Sep 30 2009, 05:01 PM
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Bailout cop on the prowl for perps Neil Barofsky's job is to root out fraud in the $700 billion rescue program. So far, he has put only one bad guy behind bars. But he says: Stay tuned. WASHINGTON (CNNMoney.com) -- Bailout cop Neil Barofsky is on the lookout for scammers and thieves.
The special inspector general will soon release results of an audit of the money given to the nine largest banks, with a focus on the Bank of America-Merrill Lynch merger. He's also involved in a criminal investigation into that merger.
In addition, Barofsky is investigating a now-defunct Alabama bank that applied for but never received bailout funds under the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
In all, he has 35 ongoing criminal and civil investigations underway.
But if you measure an investigator's success by notches in his gunbelt, Barofsky has a ways to go. His biggest win came in August, when he helped put behind bars for 10 years an investment manager who conned investors into buying "TARP-backed securities."
Barofsky is not worried about counting wins. His team is going after complex cases like securities and accounting fraud, even if indictments are years away.
"The cases most important to our mission are those where we investigate those who try to steal money from Treasury," Barofsky said in an interview with CNNMoney.com. "But that means they're complex and take awhile."
And he has time for in-depth investigations. His office, which was established by the 2008 bailout law, exists as long as the Treasury Department still owns assets paid with TARP dollars. Even as new funding winds down next year, some TARP programs are expected to own assets for another 8 to 10 years. Investigating fraud
Barofsky is one of several watchdogs lurking over the $700 billion federal bailout program.
"At SigTARP, they really do carry a gun and a badge," said Elizabeth Warren, chairwoman of Congressional Oversight Panel, which also oversees the bailout. "They audit the books. They make sure that when a check has been made out to the First National Banks of Sallisaw, Oklahoma, that it really got cashed and the money went into that bank's coffers."
Warren's panel looks at policy and big picture questions about how taxpayer dollars are spent and whether they're helping the economy.
Barofsky's job is different. He focuses on fraud. Yet, he says the loose nature of the TARP law gives banks leeway in how they use the funds that wouldn't be considered fraud.
"They're so few conditions on how they can use the money," he said. "They could use it to support ACORN. They could use it to make a million-dollar contribution to the American Nazi Party or bet all the money on black."
Barofsky is looking beyond the banks that have received funding and is probing companies that may have lied on their bailout applications or used the TARP name to rip off consumers.
"If those numbers are cooked, then there's accounting fraud going on, and there is securities fraud going on, that's a large part of our work," he said. Dancing with Treasury
Barofsky, 39, a former federal prosecutor from New York, was tapped as bailout overseer by President George W. Bush last December.
His ultimate boss is President Obama, who has the power to dismiss him.
But, unlike most federal inspectors general, Barofsky reports to Congress and not the head of the agency he reviews. Treasury had challenged the question of who Barofsky reports to until dropping the issue in late August.
"You can never rest on your laurels," Barofsky said about his apparent victory in affirming his office's independence. "This challenge has been met and turned away, but we need to stay vigilant."
The question of SigTARP's independence was only the latest of several awkward moments between Treasury and SigTARP, although both sides maintain they have a cordial and professional relationship.
In July, Barofsky made headlines when he said that $23.7 trillion had been committed for all federal rescue programs. Republicans seized on the number and redoubled their criticisms of the TARP-keepers in the Obama administration.
Treasury officials said the figure was inflated. Indeed, Barofsky's calculation included several programs that the government is no longer on the hook for, as well as bailouts that banks paid back. But Barofsky stood by his figure.
A more nuanced punch, counter-punch happened again last week before the Senate Banking Committee over what Barofsky called Treasury's "great failing" -- its lack of transparency in how it's handling TARP.
Treasury's TARP chief, Herb Allison, told lawmakers that the department had implemented the "vast majority" of recommendations made by Barofsky and other watchdogs about reporting bank lending data and other activities.
Barofsky didn't see it that way. "With all due respect to Mr. Allison, the things that he's described and that they're doing falls far, far short of meeting this basic level of transparency," he said.
Treasury spokeswoman Meg Reilly said that when Treasury has declined to implement a SigTARP recommendation, it has nonetheless tried different ways to meet the recommendation's goal. What's next?
Barofsky's office has kicked into action. He has a staff of 86, on its way to 160. He has drawn investigators from the FBI, Secret Service, homeland security, energy and housing agencies. A team recently went to Texas for an audit on mortgage servicers.
More than half of its investigations come from tips from a telephone hotline, which has had 7,000 inquiries, or over the Internet. The office's Web site has gotten 26 million hits. The rest come from a combination of referrals from other agencies and follow-ups on reports in the news media and on blogs. In the meantime, he said his office is investigating fraud and scams. Earlier this year, it worked with the Federal Trade Commission to shut down an Internet company purporting to be the government Web site for a program to help modify home mortgages.
Barofsky said he expects his office to produce a "lot more activity" going after home mortgage modification fraud.
"We've got a pretty good number of investigations underway," he said.
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