Market Talk

- Hewlett-Packard’s (HPQ) suit against former CEO Mark Hurd looks “very much like it was filed in a fit of passion after hearing that Hurd had signed on with Oracle,” Reuters blogger Felix Salmon says. “There’s no tactical or strategic rationale for this: it’s just petulance, really.”

- “Hurd’s knowledge of H-P’s server and data storage-systems business will undoubtedly come in handy at Oracle, which has been aggressively moving into that very space ever since its acquisition of Sun,” Digital Daily blogger John Paczkowski says. “In that sense, Hurd’s hiring is a real coup for Oracle. Who better to put the screws to a rival than a former CEO with a bone to pick?”

- There are currently 161 potential IPOs on file that are hoping to raise $56B. Staggering numbers but, as Josh Brown points out at The Reformed Broker, not necessarily as great as they appear. “Between LBO retreads and the previously bankrupt, it remains difficult to get excited about the initial public offering dealflow, robust as the pipeline seems to be in dollar terms on the surface.”

- Former OMB Director Peter Orszag makes his debut as a columnist for the New York Times by advocating an extension of the Bush-era tax cuts for two years for the middle class, and even for the upper class if that’s what’s needed to get a bill through Congress. “Higher taxes now would crimp consumer spending, further depressing the already inadequate demand.”

- The labor force had little to celebrate this Labor Day, Robert Reich says. Organized labor is down, and non-organzed labor is facing joblessness and underemployment. “Face it: The national economy isn’t escaping the gravitational pull of the Great Recession.”

- If the market has been overly bearish lately, paving the way for relief rallies and such, it’s not really showing. John Hussman notes the VIX, which remains in relatively placid territory. “It’s difficult to look at the evidence and conclude that investors are excessively bearish, much less terrified here.”

- FCIC hearings revealed how reliant Lehman was on daily, short-term funding to cover longer-term costs. “It was a recipe for disaster, a trailer park in search of a tornado,” Barry Ritholtz writes at The Big Picture.

- “The truth is that the trouble in housing is not, for the most part, a demand-side issue,” Ryan Avent writes. “The problem is the millions of homeowners stuck in houses they can’t afford to sell. These households represent a significant shadow supply of foreclosures-in-waiting. I agree that it would be silly for the administration to try to support housing prices by offering more goodies to potential homebuyers. But it doesn’t follow that letting prices go their own way will magically get housing markets moving again.”

- “Newspaper advertising revenues are on track this year to dive to a 25-year low of approximately $26.5 billion, or 47% of the record $49.4 billon in sales achieved by the industry as recently as 2005,” Alan Mutter notes.

- What’s up with Google’s logo today?

- Google (GOOG) dumped from China Unicom’s (CHU) Android devices. “An obvious and, I suppose, inevitable response to Google’s recent defiance of the Chinese government,” John Paczkowski says. “I imagine we’ll be hearing of a similar move by China Mobile in the near future.”

- “The mortgage mods and foreclosure abatement programs are really all about propping up insolvent banking institutions,” Barry Ritholtz writes. “These programs are another losing round of helping Wall Street at the expense of Main Street. It is the worst kind of trickle down economics that has been seen in decades.”

- Bernanke says record-low interest rates still needed to support the economy, but the central bank has to be ready to tighten credit when needed to prevent inflation. His comments helped propel stocks higher. Then ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet said IMF help for debt-strapped Greece would be bad, really bad, which helped push stocks way off the fresh highs they set earlier in the session.

- If you thought 2009 was bad for newspapers, 2010 may be even worse, Newsosaur blogger Alan Mutter says. “If the rate of decay continues to slow in 2010, the industry will shrink at a slower pace than it did last year. But it still will continue to shrink. And declining shrinkage should not be taken as a sign of health.”

- Venture-backed IPOs might be making a comeback. Four non-biotech venture-backed deals have occurred this year, and all have performed fairly well, Paul Kedrosky notes. “Admittedly, four data points aren’t yet much of a trend, but it’s worth pointing we are seeing the beginnings of a resurgence in the venture-backed IPO market in 2010.”

- It may be a lost decade for some buy-and-hold investors, but keep in mind “some investing rules never go out of style,” Tom Petruno writes. “Try to buy good businesses, try to get them when they’re relatively cheap, and don’t underestimate the power of dividend income over time. And the cardinal rule: Stay well-diversified.”

- Tepid revenue growth won’t placate market much longer. “If we don’t start seeing a pick-up in top-line growth this market is not going to be celebrating for long and the recent optimism in stocks will be proven wrong,” Pragmatic Capitalist says.

- Once again, another weak Treasury auction today. Hard to pinpoint exactly what’s causing it, “but something has changed this week in the US Treasury market and the cost of borrowing is going up as it is in Europe too,” Peter Boocvkar says.

- The Dow Jones Internet Index, which last got any press back when pets.com was still around, surpassed its pre-Lehman levels last summer, and is marching higher and now making a run at its highs from 2007, Bespoke notes.

- AAII’s sentiment survey shows percentage of respondents who expect the market to rise has dropped two weeks in a row, even as stocks keep setting fresh highs. “This is not typical,” Jason Goepfert writes.

Washington Post (WPO) is ending its hyperlocal news experiment, marking another blow to newspapers hoping to discover new business models amid a slowing advertising market and declining revenues.

WaPo will shut down LoudounExtra.com, a site that covered local news in Loudon County, Va., according to NYT’s Bits blog, as the publisher says it’s experiment wasn’t a “sustainable model.” Hyperlocal websites essentially give readers all the news and information they can imagine about their neighborhood and town.

From Bits:

The idea behind these sites is that while readers are abandoning major metro newspapers, they still care deeply about news that is happening down the street. Meanwhile, local businesses theoretically want to advertise to local readers, potentially offering a business model to pay for the local news.

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NY Times (NYT) already failed once trying to charge for online content. Now it looks like it’s going to try the same mistake again.

NY Observer has the details, but the Times is essentially considering two strategies: one is similar to the Financial Times in which a certain amount of content is free and everything after that limit requires a paid subscription. The second option leaves Web content free, but paid “members” are given access to merchandise, Times events and other goodies. From the Observer:

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Got to have a J-O-B if you wanna grow the econ-o-me.

We keep harping on the state of the job market, even as some of our bullish readers keep reminding us unemployment is a lagging indicator. Businesses are slow to start hiring new workers once a recovery is underway; they’ll wait to make sure it’s for real, so as not to get stuck with a bigger staff than they need.

We understand that, and we understand the notion that the stock market usually recovers before the economy as well, given that investors will start buying once they sense an economic upturn coming. But that doesn’t change the fact that the employment picture in this nation is getting worse daily, and the ramifications of that spread out in all directions.

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NY Times (NYT’) has told Boston Globe employees that it’s prepared to shut down the publication within a month unless it gets $20M in labor concessions.

But threats to shutter the publication seem “greatly exaggerated,” Alan Mutter writes at Reflections of a Newsosaur.  In fact, the real shock is that NYT wants only $20M in  concessions in order to help offset an expected $85M operating loss. “Given the magnitude of the projected deficit for 2009, the target is surprisingly low,” he says.  

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US stocks surge, even though the latest readings on GDP and the jobs market show an economy deeply in recession, as the market clearly thinks the worst is over, and is buying just about everything in sight.

DJIA jumps 175 (2.3%) to 7925; index is up 21% from its March 9 low, spurring many to call the bear market over. S&P 500 jumps 19 (2.3%) to 833, Nasdaq Comp gains 58 (3.8%) to 1587. Continue reading…

Former bond trader John Jansen says he’ll begin charging users in mid-April for some of the content on his blog, joining a growing list of financial bloggers and websites that aren’t giving away their goods for free anymore.

Bespoke Investment Group and Footnoted are a couple other examples of financial blogs offering premium content for a fee in conjunction with free material. Minyanville is also a financial website that offers several premium packages.

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Lots of chatter surrounding Sen. Benjamin Cardin’s (D-Maryland) bill that would restructure ailing newspaper companies into non-profits with a variety of tax breaks.

Cardin’s plan hasn’t yet attracted co-sponsors, but it has sparked the interest of many within the media, according to Reuters. The plan would give newspapers similar status to public broadcasting companies. They’d be able to report the news as they usually do, but would be restricted from making political endorsements.

Media observers, however, are skeptical such a plan would actually be in the newspaper industry’s best interests. Alan Mutter, managing partner of Tapit Partners and author of the Reflections of a Newsosaur blog, notes the St. Petersburg Times and Christian Science Monitor are two newspapers already owned by non-profits that are struggling.

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