Market Talk

- With today marking the anniversary of Lehman’s bankruptcy filing, the trajectory of the stock market during the past two years has been one wild ride. Bespoke Investment Group notes consumer discretionary and technology are the only two sectors trading above pre-Lehman levels. And while financials have rallied 140% off March 2009 bottom, they still need to gain another 43% “before they can put the pain of the financial crisis behind them,” firm says. Overall, S&P 500 remains 12% lower than it was two years ago.

- “Businesses aren’t hiring because of poor sales, period, end of story,” Paul Krugman writes on his blog. “And the best thing government could do to help business would be to spend more, increasing demand. The fact that it’s not going to happen doesn’t change the fact that it’s the simple truth.”

- Twitter’s revamped website has one main focus: Encourage users to spend more time on Twitter.com where the company will show more adds, MediaMemo blogger Peter Kafka says. But Twitter executives say the changes reflect how they want the site to be viewed as a “consumption environment.” “Which is another way of saying that Twitter is a media company,” Kafka adds. “It gives you cool stuff to look at, you pay attention to what it shows you, and it rents out some of your attention to advertisers.”

- Facebook and Microsoft (MSFT) are deep in talks about significantly expanding the search relationship the companies have shared for many years, Kara Swisher reports at All Things D. Broader agreement could include Bing mining anonymized data of consumer usage from Facebook’s “Like” buttons. “Such information might yield a treasure trove of insight for both search users and advertisers.

- Cisco (CSCO) announcing it will begin paying a dividend garnered much positive attention, which surprised Chad Brand, founder and president of Peridot Capita, who called it “unimpressive and unimportant.” “For the investment strategists who claim that income-oriented investors will now all of the sudden flock to Cisco shares, they are clearly overstating the situation,” he writes.

- Eli Lilly (LLY) hops into social media pond, launching corporate blog called LillyPad and accompanying Twitter feed. LLY says blog will address public policy issues, corporate responsibility and advocacy efforts. LLY joins other drug makers including J&J (JNJ) and Glaxo (GSK) that have started corporate blogs. Drug companies have approached social media gingerly, though, because they face strict regulations about what they can say about their drugs.

- Google’s (GOOG) long-awaited music service may soon be a reality, reports music website Billboard. Billboard claims GOOG is circulating a proposal to record labels touting an iTunes-esque music service. Key features apparently include a $25-a-year subscription fee, cloud-based storage and a social networking feature. Unlike Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes, which only offers users short previews of tracks prior to purchase, GOOG apparently wants to offer one full-track stream per song for free.

- Mike Shedlock is skeptical of rebounding retail sales. “I don’t buy it. If retail sales were back to within 4.3% of the pre-recession peak, sales tax collections would be back towards the pre-recession peak, if not exceeding the pre-recession peak.”

- Cash for clunkers revisited. And the verdict? It was one big clunker.

- Details emerge of Horace Mann Educators (HMN) CEO’s DUI arrest. “The chief executive of a midsize insurance company who is in a county jail in Florida on drunken driving charges had “difficulty standing,” was “swaying in all directions” and later fell to the ground as police investigated the May 29 car crash that led to his arrest, according to police records,” WSJ reports.

- A total of 130 companies in S&P 500, or 26% of the index, hit 52-week highs yesterday, while no companies hit fresh lows, Bespoke says. “While net new highs had been struggling to expand in recent months, today’s reading marks a new bull market high.”

- Sirius XM (SIRI) gets a delisting notice from Nasdaq. “An ominous threat, but one not likely to be carried out,” Digital Daily blogger John Paczkowski says, noting Sirius is appealing the notice and seeking an extension from Nasdaq. “Frankly, with over 3.7 billion shares outstanding, there’s little reason to fear Sirius will be booted from Nasdaq.”

- Can’t sugarcoat it: The aughts were awful. Atlanta Fed’s macroblog looks at trough-to-trough periods based on real GDP growth, and determines 2002-09 period was one of the worst since 1930s. “No other previous period comes close.”

- What exactly does the VIX tell us? FT Alphaville weighs in on the debate.

- Weekly jobless claims and consumer prices data suggest “the heavy lifting of rebuilding the economy is upon us,” James Picerno says.

- “Congress did not need to deregulate Wall Street – they only had to defund the SEC – which is what effectively happened,” Barry Ritholtz writes. “Hence, the chief cop on the Wall Street beat was outgunned, overmatched, undermanned and out-lawyered by the industry they were supposed to be regulating. How can that possibly have been any good for investors?”

- HTC has flimsy defense against Apple, John Paczkowski says. Its main argument: it’s been making smartphones longer than Apple. “While it’s certainly possible that might be the case, it’s hard to accept that argument without a list of patents to back it up. Harder still, when HTC says nothing about its legal strategy for dealing with Apple’s assault.”

- More bailed out banks failed to pay a quarterly dividend to the government in February. The number hit 82 last month, up from 55 in November 2009.

- Apple’s (AAPL) already pre-sold hundreds of thousands of iPads in anticipation of April’s official release, WSJ reports.

- First upset of the NCAA Tournament’s already in. No. 11 Old Dominion defeats No. 6 Notre Dame in the opening round.