Tainted Alpha

Just to touch briefly yesterdays retail sales. The figure was -1.5%; 0.5% ex autos vs.  -2.1% and 0.3% consensus. Prior readings were 2.7% and 1.1%. Nothing to cheer here,  most important aspect for me is the consequences of government stimulus withdrawal. The additional demand just evaporates.

Major news today in Europe is Nokia disastrous earnings loss. Looks the danger of ending similar to Siemens mobile (bankruptcy) unit are mounting. Bloomberg story: Nokia Posts Third-Quarter Loss of 559 Million Euros. They definitively can’t cope with Apple; no one can.

An some disturbing forclosure activity for the end of the post. AP story via Yahoo! Finance: Foreclosures rise 5 percent from summer to fall.

Nokia (NOK), U.S. Housing, U.S. Retail Sales

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 15th, 2009 at 6:13 am and is filed under Markets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.