- Stocks rebound nicely today after rough few weeks, validating research from UBS and JPMorgan, each saying they aren’t worried about the bull market’s sustainability, FT’s Alphaville blog says.
- Amazon gives in to rising e-book prices. But “bear in mind that publishers will actually make less money with the Apple pricing plan,” MediaMemo blogger Peter Kafka says.
- January was a tough month for risky assets as stocks, REITs and commodities all fell substantially while bonds generally held their own, James Picerno notes at The Capital Spectator. Doesn’t mean a new bear market is beginning, but it does show the days of “strong, sustained rallies in everything” are probably over. “The money game now appears destined for a more complicated era.”
- The once-robust charity sector hit with mergers, closings. “Hit by a drop in donations and government funding in the wake of a deep recession, nonprofits—from arts councils to food banks—are undergoing a painful restructuring, including mergers, acquisitions, collaborations, cutbacks and closings,” WSJ says.
- Insider buying picked up a bit last week. but the trend of low levels of buying and continued high selling remains intact, Pragmatic Capitalist says.
- Mark Cuban offers advice on a simple way to create jobs: reduce paperwork. Small businesses and entrepreneurs should spend less time and money on lawyers and accountants and “redirect that intellectual and financial capital to the core competencies of their business,” he says.
- DVD sales are collapsing, nearly as quickly as music sales did over the last decade,” Kafka says. Not good, especially since Hollywood studios are desperately looking for new revenue streams to replace the struggling DVD (hence their big push for a 3-D boom.)
- A $100 million bonus for Goldman Sachs (GS) CEO Lloyd Blankfein? Don’t count on it, Reuters blogger Felix Salmon notes. “It frankly boggles the imagination that he’s going to get anywhere near $100 million,” Salmon says. “Goldman knows that bonuses are a hot-button issue politically, and it’s going to keep them (relatively, by its standards) modest for 2009.”
- Toyota says it’s already begun shipping a fix to the gas pedal problem involved in the recall of millions of vehicles. Time’s John Curran highlights the “Toyota Stimulus.”
- Yahoo (YHOO) and AP reach new licensing agreement; web portal will continue hosting AP articles. “The agreement could help define a core issue facing news organizations: How to deal with the Internet portals that help distribute their material but that some publishers say unfairly profit from their work,” WSJ says.
