Good morning-
This is Mark Vickery, subbing for Sheraz Mian while he is away.
A handful of economic reports has just been released. The news is mixed overall with a slight downward bias, and futures are down modestly in response at this hour.
Retail sales were up 0.3% in January, down from the 0.5% expected and the adjusted December number, also 0.5%. You can blame the bad weather, but this is figure is still light, though it does remain in positive territory. December retail numbers are obviously much more important than January ones, though the December number had been ratcheted down 0.1%. This report counts auto sales as well, but even with autos stripped out the figure remained at 0.3%.
The Empire State Index, which tracks manufacturing results just for the state of New York, increased to 15.43 for its February period, up from 11.92 in January. The last time this number — which uses 0 as its dividing line between expansion and contraction — was this high was in June of 2010. So this is a bit of positive news.
Import prices hit 1.5% for January — up from 1.2% in December. For export prices, these jumped to 1.2% in January from 0.6% in December. The last time imports were above 1% for three straight months was back in June of 2008.
Elsewhere, Deutsche Borse and NYSE Euronext will announce plans of their pending merger. The German company would own 60% and NYSE 40%, and the exchange ratio is pegged at 0.47. Deutsche Borse will also claim 10 seats on the board of the new company. Will it at least still be called the NYSE?
After the closing bell today, Dell Inc. reports its fiscal 3rd quarter 2011 numbers. This will follow Dell’s impressive 40% positive earnings surprise in the previous quarter, and analysts have pushed up the consensus estimate to 37 cents per share in the past week.
Mark Vickery
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