Market Talk

- More than 80% of companies that reported earnings have topped analysts’ estimates. But don’t get too giddy. “After all, ‘better than expected’ could simply reflect the low level of the underlying estimates and the strength of the actual data,” Pragmatic Capitalism says.

- Is fresh, massive stimulus via QE2 really necessary? The Reformed Broker blogger Josh Brown isn’t so sure. He notes companies continue to report decent earnings. And more disturbing is the fact that “outside of home prices, inflation is becoming more and more of a reality…The propping up of the dead and the dying via federal spending and zero percent rates is not warranted with markets and prices rebounding elsewhere.”

- On the other hand, the risks of not engaging in QE2 are too great, James Picerno writes at The Capital Spectator. “Calling on the Fed to stand pat risks repeating the mistakes of monetary history,” he says. “We have to deal with the pressing threats as they arrive, and worrying about runaway inflation today is
premature, and perhaps more than a little dangerous. The day for fighting that battle will come. But not now.”

- Credit Suisse notes much of the earnings season move for equities might be over, despite the fact that there’s plenty of reports still to come. “Our Portfolio Strategy team finds the bulk of the impact of earnings on market performance seems to occur in the first two weeks of earnings season, which ends today,” firm says, according to MarketBeat.

- As the reviews pour in regarding Windows Phone 7 devices, so far so good for Microsoft (MSFT). NYT’s Bits blog posts a roundup of reviews. The new lineup of phones are getting “overwhelmingly positive reactions,” blog says. “It’s still unclear if this will translate into sales or make it possible to attract customers away from existing platforms.”

- Hulu’s considering slashing price of Hulu Plus — its subscription service still in beta mode — to $4.95 per month from $9.95, MediaMemo blogger Peter Kafka reports, citing sources.

- Latest iPad rival hits the market. H-P releases its $800 touchscreen tablet computer.

- FCC weighs in on the Cablevision/News Corp dispute over Fox.

- Deal Journal’s Shira Ovide looks at the best and worst deal Apple ever made.

- WSJ profiles the state of Jay-Z’s empire, the rap monger who’s worth an estimated $450 million.

- Barry Ritholtz breaks down the pros and cons of today’s jobs report.

- It’s going to be hard to climb out of long-term jobless pit. Average length of time jobless folks have been out of work hit record-high 31.2 weeks last month. And the longer they stay unemployed “the worse their chances of finding work become – either because their skills become stale and dated, or because they are stigmatized by the giant hole in their resumes,” NYT’s Economix says.

- Job report’s a step in right direction, but doesn’t represent a “robust return to full employment,” Mark Thoma says. “My expectation is that job growth will be frustratingly slow, but just positive enough to keep our hopes alive.”

- Spike in involuntary part-timers puts damper on jobs report. Number of workers only able to find part-time jobs (or have had their hours cut for economic reasons) “increased sharply to 9.1 million in March,” Calculated Risk notes, from just under 8.8 million in February and 8.3 million in January.

- “What does seem clear is that the pace of net job creation is still well below the levels required to appreciably improve the unemployment rate or to make a sizable step toward regaining the eight million-plus jobs lost since the beginning of the recession,” David Altig writes at Atlanta Fed’s macroblog.

- “All in all, the [jobs] report appears to be of the ‘ugly Goldilocks’ sort – not too hot and not too cold, but just ugly enough under the surface to keep the liquidity pumps fully primed,” Pragmatic Capitalist says.

- Don’t count on lots of free TV on the iPad, Peter Kafka reports. Disney’s (DIS) ABC is the only one of the four major TV networks putting a decent amount of programming on the iPad in time for tomorrow’s launch.

- ISuppli expects Apple (AAPL) to ship 7.1M iPads this year, 14.4M in 2011 and 20.1M in 2012. “Suffice it to say, these scenarios are far more bullish than the ones we’ve heard to date,” Digital Daily blogger John Paczkowski says. “Which is ironic given that iSuppli describes them as ‘conservative.’”

- As sweet as the iPad looks, some question the device’s true purpose and whether it’s worth the price.

- Old media’s expecting too much from iPad, MarketWatch’s John Dvorak says.

The latest spat between Disney (DIS) and Cablevision (CVC) prompts some to wonder whether the cable industry will ever embrace an a la carte pricing structure.

The long-running feud between TV broadcasters and cable operators has intensified in recent months. Disney and Cablevision struck a deal last night to restore ABC’s feed to Cablevision subscribers just as the Academy Awards were kicking off. Same sort of dispute occurred a few months ago as talks between Time Warner Cable (TWC) and News Corp (NWS NWSA) went down to the wire, with News Corp threatening to pull access to the Fox network. But the two sides agreed to a last-minute deal on New Year’s Day. (News Corp owns Dow Jones Newswires, publisher of this blog.)

Other disputes haven’t ended without major disputes. The Food Network and HGTV – owned by Scripps Networks (SNI) – were blacked out on Cablevision for three weeks in January before the sides could reach a deal.

The longer these battles between broadcasters and cable operators last, the more likely consumer outrage will increase and FCC “will have the cause it seems to have wanted to require a la carte pricing for cable,” says CUNY journalism professor Jeff Jarvis.

A la carte pricing essentially allows consumers to pick and choose which stations they will pay for instead of paying higher rates for access to hundreds (if not thousands) of stations that most people don’t even watch.

“Then both broadcasters and cable operators and their parent companies will get their just desserts,” he writes. “I will not pay for 90% of the channels I am forced to pay for now. That will reduce revenue to cable. It will mean that many channels will no longer be subsidized. It will kill marginal channels.”

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