- Housing starts data offer mixed bag. “The good news is the excess housing inventory is being absorbed — a necessary step for housing (and the economy) to recover,” Calculated Risk says. “The bad news is economic growth will probably be sluggish — and unemployment elevated — until residential investment picks up.”
- Russell 2000 moves back above its 50-day moving average, while larger indexes still lagging, Bespoke Investment Group says. “Small caps will typically outperform in a rising market, and we’ve seen just that over the last few days.”
- Stimulus package celebrates one-year anniversary today. Obama defends the stimulus as he embarks on an effort to defend past and future economic programs, NYT reports.
- Fed officials last month were slightly more confident that the recovery was firming, WSJ reports. They also plotted an exit strategy that may include sales of the Fed’s mortgage holdings.
- Bloomberg details what Warren Buffett sold to buy Burlington Northern. (hat tip Abnormal Returns).
- Google (GOOG) might not be as immune to the weak economy as some think. Footnoted blogger Michelle Leder finds an interesting disclosure buried deep in GOOG’s 10-K filed late Friday: headcount actually shrunk last year for the first time since GOOG went public.
- Google got a bit too antsy with its Buzz launch, Michael Arrington writes. “The idea of jumpstarting the process and building the Google social graph right now was too tempting to Google, and they pressed too hard,” Arrington says. “Maybe some other company, seeing the results, will avoid this mistake in the future.”
- While we’re on the Google theme, when will the company actually make money off YouTube? MediaMemo blogger Peter Kafka weighs in, noting that time may come soon than later. “From the outside we can see indicators that the site is at least getting more serious about getting more ad dollars out of more videos.”
- Twitter’s growth continues. Site generated 73.5M unique visitors last month, up 8% from the 65.2M that visited in December 2009, Digital Daily blogger John Paczkowski reports, citing comScore data. “That’s an impressive spike and one that continues a three-month streak of gains that began last November, after a worrisome period of stagnancy between September and October,” he says.
- Tiger Woods will finally face the music as he plans a press conference for Friday.
