Market sentiment is too pessimistic. It will be an interesting OE week with the Presidential Inauguration on 1/20.
As long as we see Obama admin decisive and direct actions taken to remedy economical and geopolitical issues, I believe that we are on the right track and we will see positive responses from many of us.
re Economic Challenges Facing President-Elect Obama
It is best to have definitive and swift actions taken against terrorism, Iran, eliminating prolific nuke development; and, for balancing trade deficit/budget deficit, etc. -- otherwise, we will waste energy to drag him and our nation down with massive misdirected effort and resources.
How to watch Obama's inauguration online By Stephanie Condon
(CNET) -- More than 2 million Americans lost their jobs last year, the stock market fell by almost 45 percent from its peak, and comparisons with the Great Depression are becoming disturbingly commonplace.
But that isn't stopping Washington from throwing a $160 million party, the most lavish ever, for Barack Obama's presidential inauguration on Tuesday.
Technology companies are joining the festivities by hosting a number of inaugural parties, and a collection of news and other Web sites are aiming to let anyone who can't be in the nation's capital--or who doesn't want to brave probably-freezing temperatures--follow along online.
Here's a partial list:
• The Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, which is in charge of all the inaugural activities at the Capitol, will stream the entire event at its Web site, complete with closed captioning. The site has a wealth of information about what happens on Inauguration Day, including a handful of inaugural videos dating back to President Dwight Eisenhower's 1957 swearing-in ceremony, as well as videos of presidential luncheons dating back to the inauguration of John Kennedy. (It also reveals, for those interested, the recipe for Obama's luncheon meal, which features a main course of pheasant and duck served with sour cherry chutney.)
• Our sister site CBS News will have day-long live coverage January 20 on TV and the Web, starting at 7 a.m. EDT. Katie Couric will also host a special Webcast that night with reporters and punditry, for which viewers can submit questions.
• CBS streaming coverage will also be Webcast on Joost's Everything Obama page, which also features interviews, campaign highlights, and satire clips.
• MSNBC will be live streaming the event on its home page and politics section, and visitors can embed the video into their own sites. Its inauguration page also features videos of inaugurations from decades past.
• Fox News will provide live streaming coverage via Hulu beginning at noon for about two hours. After the live stream, Hulu will provide on-demand access to the ceremony. The live stream is embeddable, as is an inauguration countdown from Hulu. The video site's Obama Presidency page also features related content like speeches, commentary, satire, and past inaugural speeches.
• C-SPAN will debut its Inauguration Hub on January 20, featuring an online "control room"--a multichannel grid designed by Mogulus with Webcasts of inauguration activities. Visitors will be able to choose from one of four live feeds featuring events like the swearing in at the Capitol, the parade, and a number of inaugural balls.
• CNN is partnering with Facebook to provide live streaming of the swearing in and Obama's speech. Viewers can "RSVP" for the event on Facebook, and as they watch, they will be able to provide status updates with their thoughts on the events. A Facebook window on the CNN.com Live channel will show viewers their friends' relevant status updates.
• Current TV and Twitter are teaming up, as they did during the election, to add real-time tweets to Current's broadcast and Webcast of the swearing in, which starts at 11:30 a.m. EDT and will be replayed throughout the day.
• The New York Times, the AP's online video network, and the Online NewsHour will also live stream inauguration coverage.
Once Obama is sworn in, he'll be party hopping through Washington that night. The Presidential Inauguration Committee has promised to Webcast some of the official inaugural balls--though there are plenty of unofficial parties, including some hosted by tech companies.
The Recording Industry Association of America is hosting a charity ball featuring the recording artist Rihanna and the actors David Arquette and Courteney Cox. The ball benefits the nonprofit Feeding America and is co-sponsored by Yahoo, Comcast, Oracle, AT&T, SoundExchange, Time Warner, News Corp., and a number of other companies.
Google is partnering with the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights to host "a break from traditional inaugural balls." Guests are encouraged to make donations--which Google will match--to organizations including the LCCR Education Fund, One Economy, the Sunlight Foundation, D.C. Central Kitchen, and Green For All.
The Huffington Post, the news aggregation and commentary site, is hosting a pre-inaugural ball Monday night with the Atlantic Philanthropies and the Musk Foundation, which supports research on renewable energy, human space exploration, and pediatrics. The event is also receiving sponsorship from MySpace, Comcast, the wind power company Vestas, and the nonprofit Global Green USA, among others.
The party, they say, is "to celebrate change in Washington, the rise of new media, and a renewed commitment to service and the environment," and features a performance by Will.i.am.
Plenty of other parties will be celebrating a renewed commitment to the environment, including the Green Inaugural Ball, chaired by Al Gore and hosted by a number of organizations like the American Council on Renewable Energy, the Energy Action Coalition, and the Vote Solar Initiative.
Certainly discovering 3 massive natural gas reservoirs will add some optimism as it helps the world economy as whole.
We heard bad sales report during holiday season, so, being pessimistic about Jan 08 earning reports, as I noted in Dec, is expected.
The Senate hearing on Geithner is not much of big expectation from my perspective since major economic policies are made by inter-related government and by the Fed.
Markets were consolidating in symmetrical formations after reversing at uptrend-break-target at DOW 8000 and SPX 817.
Considering how pessimistic markets were going into inauguration day and intraday 60min bouncing up, Markets will likely provide some optimism inauguration rally on 1/20 - however, a breaking above the symmetrical triangle formations should be a confirmation as we can see bad "Inaugural History" statistics.
On the economic front, the National Association of Home Builders survey is reported Wednesday, and weekly jobless claims and housing starts are released Thursday. Weekly oil inventory data is reported Thursday this week.
Earnings Central
Banks, health care, tech and industrial companies all report in the four day week. J&J reports Tuesday, and Abbott Labs Wednesday. Financial firms State Street and TD Ameritrade report Tuesday, while Bank of New York and Key Corp report Thursday.
Tech giant IBM reports Tuesday; Apple reports Wednesday, and Google and Microsoft release earnings Thursday. United Technologies' reporting date is Wednesday and GE, the parent of CNBC, is on Friday.
Inaugural History
On 14 inauguration days when the Dow was trading, dating back to 1929, the market finished down nine times. The losses though were mostly minor and the average for the Dow on all of those days was negative 0.38. When Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, the Dow had one of its worst inauguration day performances, finishing 2.09 percent lower. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt began his second term in 1937, the Dow rose 1.05 percent, its best inauguration performance.
Week Ahead: Obama Rally or Earnings Distress? Posted By: Patti Domm | Executive Editor cnbc.com | 17 Jan 2009 | 12:12 PM ET
Stocks will struggle with a heavy dose of bad earnings news that could dash investor hopes for an Obama rally in the week ahead.
Companies reporting range from health care heavyweight Johnson and Johnson to IBM , Microsoft , United Technologies and General Electric .
Washington though will be the center of attention for part of the week, as Barack Obama is sworn in as President on Tuesday.
Focus will also be on the government's bail out of the financial system, following another week of drama in the banking sector which saw financial behemoth Citigroup split in two and Bank of America take more funds and a new government backstop. Government officials are now considering an "aggregator" bank to hold the bad assets on bank balance sheets.
The Senate hearing on Timothy Geithner's confirmation as Treasury Secretary will also be closely watched. While he is expected to be confirmed, the market could swoon if the allegations about his oversight on tax payments worsen or if he is rejected.
Traders have been hoping for a bounce around the inauguration Tuesday but new troubles in the banking sector pressured stocks in the past week. The stock market is closed Monday for the Martin Luther King holiday.
"The earnings are going to bad," said James Paulsen of Wells Capital Management. "I'm a little worried. If we got a few in a row that were much worse than expected that could bring a test of the lows."
Paulsen though said the arrival of the new Administration could bring some hopefulness to investors, even if short-lived. "A rousing Kennedy-like speech, the big crowds and unity in D.C., could give a sense of change and better expectations. At the margin, it could help," said Paulsen.
Kevin Ferry of Cronus Futures Management said he had expected stocks to sell off into next week and then rally. "The difference between today's close and yesterday's low we think is where the bottom is going to be fought," he said Friday. That would be a range between 813 on the S&P and 850.
"That would be a great place for the market to try to do an Obama rally," he said.
Fear of Financials
In the past week, the Dow fell 317 points, or another 3.7 percent to a level of 8281. The S&P was down 4.5 percent to 850, and the Nasdaq lost 2.7 percent to 1529.
Financials were the biggest losers, with the S&P financial sector down a whopping 16.5 percent. Industrials were the second worst performers, off 6.7 percent, and telecoms, down 5.7 percent. The best performing sector was health care, off 0.25 percent.
The fear is unlikely to fade much by the start of the week. U.K. banks were in the rumor mill Friday. A meeting between U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, his finance minister and the head of the Bank of England Friday Friday helped add to speculation that British authorities would take further extraordinary actions to force bank lending. There were news reports another meeting would be held by officials Sunday.
Credit Crunch
The closely watched London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor) rates have been a barometer for improvement in the credit markets.
This past week the steadily progressing downward move in the three-month Libor reversed slightly.
"Obviously it is consistent with the move down in financials," said Jim Caron, head of global interest-rate strategy at Morgan Stanley. "Let's not forget that three month Libor came in quite a bit more than most people had expected."
Caron said it is moving with market sentiment which switched from pessimism in November, to optimism in December and early January.
"We've now moved to realism, as I call it," he said.
The move higher in the Libor rate is temporary, and the government's back stops should help the banking sector continue to improve, he said.
"They are all sort of backed by the government right now so the interbank lending markets have now much more government sponsorship today than they did a year ago, and I think people are willing to lend money ... Libor has scope to fall more," Caron said.
On the economic front, the National Association of Home Builders survey is reported Wednesday, and weekly jobless claims and housing starts are released Thursday. Weekly oil inventory data is reported Thursday this week.
Earnings Central
Banks, health care, tech and industrial companies all report in the four day week. J&J reports Tuesday, and Abbott Labs Wednesday. Financial firms State Street and TD Ameritrade report Tuesday, while Bank of New York and Key Corp report Thursday. Tech giant IBM reports Tuesday; Apple reports Wednesday, and Google and Microsoft release earnings Thursday. United Technologies' reporting date is Wednesday and GE, the parent of CNBC, is on Friday.
Inaugural History
On 14 inauguration days when the Dow was trading, dating back to 1929, the market finished down nine times. The losses though were mostly minor and the average for the Dow on all of those days was negative 0.38. When Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, the Dow had one of its worst inauguration day performances, finishing 2.09 percent lower. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt began his second term in 1937, the Dow rose 1.05 percent, its best inauguration performance.
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