Mid-Week News to Watch

I download articles into my computer and have the computer read them to me as I get ready for work in the morning. I am going to start posting the articles I feel are noteworthy at least once a week.

1. Richard Fisher, President of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank, said Wednesday that the first "green shoots" of recovery can be seen in the U.S. economy, Dow Jones Newswires reported. (Mr. Fisher has been a person I have listened to and agreed with, for the 11 years I have watched him.)
2. U.S Wholesale inventories in February fell by the most ever even as sales rose modestly, according to a report that suggested businesses were getting control of their stocks of goods. (This is important because wholesale inventories have to dry up before factories will be forced to gear up.)
3. The commission is expected to unveil the proposal to reinstate the "uptick" rule, that was repealed in the summer of 2007. The rule had been in effect since the early 1930s and was long considered a "circuit-breaker" and/or "tap on the brake" when markets started falling too fast, like last fall. It had kept hedge funds from piling on and causing excessive market sell offs. The SEC will vote Wednesday on which type of rule they intend to propose. (We really need this back, write your Congressperson and Senators.)
   
4. Discounter Family Dollar Stores shares jumped 4.8%, after it said Wednesday that its second-quarter profits rose 33%. (We are starting to get some good quarterly reports, but the majority are still very bad. This is, usually, the sign that we are trying to bottom.)
5. Preliminary figures showed auto sales in China reached about 1.03 million in exceeding U.S. auto sales for the third month in a row, accounting for 90% of all auto sales. (Now you know why we want to invest in China first when we go back into our investments.)

Note: Past returns are no guarantee of future returns. These are simply the things I found most interesting while starting my day from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m., that my computer read to me.