Consumers less negative than data says: U.S. Commerce official

Charts are Bullish

Bigger network for Asia Media

Puchong: Asia Media Group Bhd, the country's largest transit-television network operator, plans to launch a terrestrial digital TV station by as early as the first quarter of next year, said its controlling stakeholder Datuk Ricky Wong Shee Kai.
"We have started testing works in Puchong and Shah Alam early this month, and have allocated as much as RM50 million in capital expenditure next year to help us with the launch in the Klang Valley," Wong told Business Times in an interview at his office.

Wong, who owns slightly more than 45 per cent of Asia Media, is also the chief executive officer of the company.
"A partial launch will be done in the first quarter, and by the second quarter, we should be in full swing," said Wong.

He said the first step in the plan to launch the terrestrial digital TV station is to launch the "out-of-home service".

"Out-of-home service means that people who use public transport such as the Rapid buses and the city's rail service will be able to watch live TV," said Wong.

Read more: Bigger network for Asia Media

Expect All-Time Market Highs in 2012

TimeCom as sole network provider for Scomi

KUALA LUMPUR: Scomi Group Bhd (Scomi), a global oilfield services, transport solutions and marine services provider, has appointed TIME dotcom Bhd as the sole network provider to meet its global connectivity needs across five countries.

The partnership includes the design, implementation and full management by TIME dotcom Bhd of Scomi's Private Data Network connecting Scomi's offices in India, Indonesia, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom and Malaysia.

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Dow closed at 11 397 down 247, but indicators point to an uptrend - Let's see! Dow R~11 640 KLCI R~1480

The Following Day

21 October 2011

 

P1 to offer fibre-powered broadband in 1Q12

KUALA LUMPUR: Green Packet Bhd’s wireless broadband arm, Packet One Networks (M) Sdn Bhd (P1), will begin offering fibre optic cable-powered high-speed broadband (HSBB) and possibly IPTV services by 1Q12, having sealed a 10-year wholesale agreement with Telekom Malaysia Bhd (TM).

“Along with [the] launch early next year, we [will] also look at providing IPTV and Video on Demand (VoD),” P1 CEO Michael Lai said at the signing ceremony between P1 and TM yesterday.

The agreement gives P1 access to some 1.3 million homes connected to TM’s HSBB network, alongside leading mobile phone operators Maxis Bhd and Celcom Axiata Bhd, which had earlier signed similar wholesale agreements with TM. These services will compete with TM’s own HSBB triple-play (broadband-home voice-IPTV) offering UniFi which has 142,000 customers as at mid-August, 30% of whom are active users of the IPTV service.

P1 currently offers wireless broadband services using its WiMAX network. Lai, who declined to reveal the value of the agreement, said P1 would need very little capital expenditure for the new service as it rides on TM’s infrastructure.

“There will be some allocation for operational expenditure, [which] we will reveal in the future [when it is ascertained],” he said.

The collaboration with P1 is TM’s third agreement with a local telco since it signed the public-private partnership agreement (PPP) with the government in 2008.

Zamzamzairani: The partnership will bring enormous benefits to all end users. Under the agreement, TM is to allow any MCMC-licensed service provider access to the HSBB network that is estimated to cost RM11.3 billion over 10 years for a fee.

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Wall St. gains on euro-fund optimism, Dow up on year

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks jumped 1 percent on Wednesday, pushing the Dow into positive territory for the year, as the euro-zone rescue fund was set to get approval from all EU members.

Momentum buying was partly in play, analysts said. The S&P 500 has gained 13.5 percent from the intraday low hit last week on Tuesday and was on track for its largest seven-day rally since March 2009.

"It feels as though the market is experiencing the possibility of a melt-up," said Hank Smith, chief investment officer of Haverford Trust Co. in Philadelphia.

"You've got a lot of money on the sidelines that just didn't want to take the risk of being invested. That could come back in."

Slovakian lawmakers struck a deal to ratify more powers for the euro zone's rescue fund, known as the EFSF, effectively ending a crisis that threatens the euro's survival and which has weighed on stocks and other risky assets for months.

Slovakia is the last country in the 17-member currency zone left to approve the revamped EFSF.

Bank shares led the advance again, with the KBW Bank Index (Philadelphia:^BKX) shot up 4.1 percent. Citigroup (NYSE:C) gained 6.2 percent to $29.54.

The Dow Jones industrial average (DJI:^DJI) was up 159.92 points, or 1.40 percent, at 11,576.22. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index (SNP:^GSPC) was up 18.51 points, or 1.55 percent, at 1,214.05. The Nasdaq Composite Index (Nasdaq:^IXIC) was up 31.46 points, or 1.22 percent, at 2,614.49.

The S&P 500 traded above 1,200 for the first time in three weeks, taking the benchmark near the upper end of a range it has been stuck at since early August.

If the index is able to stay above resistance at 1,215, that would be seen as a bullish signal, analysts said.

Among earnings, PepsiCo Inc (NYSE:PEP) rose 3.7 percent to $63.19 after it reported slightly better-than-expected earnings and affirmed its full-year target. But Alcoa Inc (NYSE:AA) fell 2.5 percent to $10.04 and ranked as one of the biggest drags on the Dow, a day after reporting results.

(Reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; Additional reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Jan Paschal)

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Note: Downward trend channel broken upwards!!

Stocks End Near Session Highs, Dow Soars 300

Stocks surged in the final minutes of trading to close at session highs Monday, led by banks, amid optimism that France and Germany's pledge would help resolve the euro zone debt crisis and rescue the region's struggling financials.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average logged its best five-day point gain since Dec. 2008, led by BofA [BAC 6.28 0.38 (+6.44%) ] and JPMorgan [JPM 32.30 1.60 (+5.21%) ]. The Dow has rallied over 1,000 points from last Tuesday's intraday low of 10404.49.

The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq also ended sharply higher. Both major indexes are on pace for their best month this year. The CBOE Volatility Index, widely considered the best gauge of fear in the market, traded below 34.

All 10 S&P sectors finished firmly in the black, led by banks and energy.

Over the weekend, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy promised to present a plan before a G20 summit early next month to shore up euro zone banks, settle the Greek debt crisis and help growth in Europe.

“The optimism is amazing to me—I don’t think any market participant is saying things are fixed in Europe, but what they’re hoping is that by the time Europe starts to resurface again in a few months from now, there will be traction in our economy that will be enough of a positive to wipe out the negative there,” Jim Iuorio of TJM Institutional Services told CNBC.

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Chart Watchers See Upbeat Turn

In recent years, they have sounded the alarm over everything from "death crosses" to "Hindenburg omens," warning of a dire future for the stock market.

Now, several of Wall Street's technical analysts—the stock-market geeks who scour charts for patterns and clues to future market moves—have some good news for the bulls.

They say trading in the past few days suggests the U.S. market may have reached a bottom early last week, and that stocks are destined to move higher.

They point to the moves on Tuesday in particular, when major stock indexes were lower for much of the day before ...

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Week Ahead: U.S. corporate earnings to be weak, says analyst

Weekly Recap - Week ending 07-Oct-11

Failure to sustain a rebound from midday losses left stocks to roll into the red during the final hour. They still made it out with week 2% higher than where they started.

The major equity averages lacked direction this morning, even though premarket participants had cheered the September jobs report. Nonfarm payrolls grew by 103,000, up from an upwardly revised 57,000 in August. However, the upside surprise is mostly due to the end of a strike at Verizon. Excluding those workers, payrolls increased by 58,000, which is on par with the 60,000 new jobs that had been generally expected among economists polled by Briefing.com. Meanwhile, private payrolls increased by 137,000, which came on top of the upwardly revised 42,000 jobs that were added during the prior month. An increase of 83,000 had been broadly expected.

The number of people entering the workforce was roughly the same as the number of workers who found jobs in September, so the unemployment rate remained at 9.1%, which is exactly what had been expected. However, job gains were mostly part-time, resulting in an increase in underemployment that took the "real" unemployment rate up to 16.5% from 16.2% in the prior month.

Even though the payrolls report proved better-than-expected, stocks lacked leadership at the open of trade. That made it difficult for the major equity averages to extend their streak of gains to a fourth straight session. The listlessness of early trade left stocks to slide into negative territory. Selling intensified in response to news that analysts at Fitch cut their ratings on Italy and Spain. At its low, the stock market was down more than 1%.

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U.S. stocks rise on Europe and claims data

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — U.S. stocks climbed Thursday for a third day, sending the Dow industrials back above 11,000, as Europe stepped up efforts to bolster its banks and jobless claims rose less than feared, supporting hopes for Friday’s monthly jobs report.

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Late surge erases earlier losses on Wall Street

NEW YORK (AP) -- A late afternoon surge capped another wild day on Wall Street Tuesday and prevented the S&P 500 stock index from entering a bear market. Stocks jumped on reports that European officials were working to prop up the region's struggling banks.

The Dow Jones industrial average was down nearly 200 points with 40 minutes of trading left. It closed up 153.

Indexes opened sharply lower as traders worried that the government of Greece could be closer to defaulting on its debt. They pared their losses at midday after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told a Congressional panel that the central bank could take more steps to stimulate the economy, then slumped again in the afternoon.

At 3:25 p.m., the market began rising quickly after news outlets reported that European financial ministers were working on a way to coordinate their efforts to support European banks, as they did during the financial crisis in 2008. Worries that European and perhaps U.S. banks could get hammered by a Greek default have been a major concern among investors.

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World stocks post worst quarter in 3 years