Dow Chemical Co. said Thursday it posted a loss in the fourth-quarter because of a one-time charge that caused it to pay higher taxes at its Brazilian operations.
Shares fell nearly 3 percent in trading before the opening bell.
The Midland, Mich. company, the nation’s largest chemical maker, reported a loss of $20 million, or 2 cents per share, compared with a year-ago profit of $426 million, or 37 cents per share. Excluding a charge of 27 cents per share, Dow would have earned 25 cents per share in the quarter.
Revenue rose 2 percent to $14.1 billion.
Results were below Wall Street’s expectations. Analysts polled by FactSet expected a profit, excluding items, of 31 cents per share on revenue of $14 Business Card Holders.18 billion.
Volume fell 3 percent in the quarter. Demand slipped as customers in North America, Europe and other regions worked through existing inventory instead of replenishing their stockpiles. Dow says it saw global economic “deterioration” in the period, with “considerable weakness” in Western Europe. Europe accounts for a quarter of the company’s sales.
Prices rose 5 percent, offsetting higher feedstock and energy costs.
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High unemployment has sent many Americans back to school, and they’re taking on big debt to finance their education.
Americans now owe more on in student loans, $750 billion, than on their credit cards.
Lenders are getting very worried about that. Sixty-seven percent of bank risk managers expect a rise in student loan delinquencies, according to a new survey for FICO, the credit scoring company, and the Professional Risk Managers Association. That number is 17 points higher than last summer.
You can find FICO’s press release here and the study here.
Education is usually an excellent investment — it improves your earnings for life. But it’s possible to end up worse off, not better.
Many for-profit private trade schools, the kind that advertise on afternoon TV, have online payday advance.stltoday.com/business/columns/jim-gallagher/students-should-look-at-loan-default-rates-to-judge-colleges/article_fa88b67f-51e7-5e16-b1ca-1688d2ee0a6c.html”> student loan default rates of over 20 percent. Those schools often charge outrageous tuition, and the high default rates indicate that many students are worse off for attending.
The best deals in vocational training are found at community colleges, where tuition is cheap.
Those looking for a bachelors degree should consider whether a high-tuition private university really delivers value that justifies its price. State universities are usually cheaper.
As with fast payday loans, this recently used to be the case, but competitive lenders and higher demand has taken this loan type to mainstay levels.
Volatile markets and shaky economic times have made Americans hungrier than ever for financial advice, and Larry Swedroe is happy to oblige.
It may not be the advice they expect, however. Rather than telling you how to react to the latest news out of Europe or Washington, Swedroe wants you to tune it out. Especially, he says, you should ignore the experts who predict that the news will be good or bad for the stock market.
He’s just published his 11th book on investing, but Swedroe is no market guru. If anything, he’s an anti-guru. By the time you read about an event, he says, its implications are already reflected in the price of everything from stocks to bonds to crude oil. No one prognosticator can know more than millions of market participants.
“When they’re right, they attribute it to their genius,” Swedroe says. “When they’re wrong, they blame bad luck. There are no clear crystal balls, only cloudy ones.”
In the new book, “Investment Mistakes Even Smart Investors Make,” Swedroe lists 77 common errors, several of which are especially dangerous during turbulent times. Being swayed by popular opinion is mistake No. 6, and paying attention to the experts is No. 10. If you try to time the market in any way, you’re guilty of No. 49.
Swedroe’s advice is so simple that it’s difficult for most people to follow. You should invest in low-cost index funds, diversify across asset classes and be cognizant of tax considerations.
“It’s not just buy and hold,” he explains. “It’s buy and hold, tax-manage, rebalance and if anything happens like a birth or death in the family or an inheritance, then revisit your investment plan. People think buy and hold means do nothing, and it’s more than that.”
Swedroe criticizes brokerage firms, mutual funds, hedge funds and even the financial media because he thinks they prey on investors’ weaknesses. Mistake No. 29, for example, is believing that actively managed funds can beat the market, and No personal loans for bad credit. 53 is working with a commission-based adviser.
Swedroe is research director at Clayton-based Buckingham Asset Management, which works on a fee-only basis and puts its clients’ $3.5 billion of assets into index-like funds.
The firm had just $11 million of assets when Swedroe joined in 1994, and his books have helped Buckingham grow. He insists, though, that they’re written to educate, not market a service.
Indeed, there’s no hard sell here. Swedroe says he’s happy if a do-it-yourself investor follows his methods, or even if a reader chooses a competing firm that embraces the same principles.
Swedroe’s books do get repetitive; “Rational Investing in Irrational Times,” published in 2002, was also organized as a collection of common mistakes. (Back then, he tallied only 52 errors.)
Each volume, though, adds new research and examples, and Swedroe says he’ll keep evangelizing as long as he can think of new ways to spread his message. He had thought “Investment Mistakes” might be his last book, but he’s now working on a shorter, breezier primer for people with brief attention spans.
Swedroe figures that his books have sold almost 200,000 copies combined, a respectable but not huge following.
What’s most rewarding, he says, is hearing from readers such as a doctor who used to day-trade and obsess over his investments. His wife was threatening to leave because he had little time for her or their small child. Reading a Swedroe book saved his marriage.
That’s why this anti-guru is so passionate about his message. It’s not just about money, he says, it’s about life.
Spain’s new conservative government is about to unveil its first austerity measures as it embarks on an urgent mission to energize an economy saddled with shrinking output, sky-high unemployment and mountains of debt.
Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is presiding over a Cabinet meeting Friday that will approve the first in what is expected to be a painful series of spending freezes or cuts and other reforms over the next few months.
Rajoy’s Popular Party won a sweeping victory in Nov. 20 elections over the discredited Socialists.
Like other troubled governments in Europe, Rajoy faces the delicate task of enacting growth-discouraging deficit reduction measures in a country whose economy is expected to contract in the last quarter of 2011 and the first of 2012.
Germany has reported another three deaths in its E. coli outbreak _ bringing the total to at least 47.
The Robert Koch Institute, Germany’s disease control center, said Monday that 46 deaths have now been reported in the country. One person has died in Sweden, and officials say one death in the U.S. may be linked to the outbreak.
The number of new infections has declined significantly over recent weeks but overall numbers are still rising _ due largely to delays in notification guaranteed payday loans.
The disease control center says 3,801 people have been reported sick in Germany. That includes 834 suffering from a complication that can lead to kidney failure.
A further 119 cases have been reported in 15 other countries.
The source has been traced to a sprout farm in northern Germany. It’s unclear how the sprouts were contaminated.
South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and other Republican governors are calling on the National Labor Relations Board to dismiss its complaint against Boeing.
Haley and 15 other GOP governors wrote to the board’s general counsel, Lafe Solomon, on Thursday saying the probe hamstrings governors who are trying to create jobs.
The letter was released Friday as the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing in North Charleston on the complaint.
The labor board alleges Boeing built an assembly line for its new 787 aircraft in South Carolina to avoid unionized workers in Washington state. Boeing has challenged the complaint, saying no union workers lost jobs.
Haley and Solomon are scheduled to testify during the hearing.
The first week of June brought a burst of blazing heat to the St. Louis area, with a daily heat index of about 100 degrees, according to the National Weather Service. And for those who earn their livings outside, the scorching conditions have fueled added caution.
“You got to work when you can,” said Mike Prouhet, a cement mason with J.L. Brown that contracts with St. Louis city, “but this kind of got us unexpected, in a hurry.”
It takes four to 14 days to become acclimated to the heat, so the first days of extreme heat are the most dangerous, when people should be careful not to overexert themselves, said Pam Walker, director of the St. Louis City Health Department.
Because only so much work can be done in the shade, area employers are taking extra precautions to protect employees from illness during the heat of summer.
Elizabeth Gotway, the public relations manager at Six Flags St. Louis, said the park circulated a trailer equipped with air conditioning around the park, rotated employees’ tasks between sunny and shady areas and provided sprayers so they could cool off. In addition, the park educates workers about staying hydrated and provides neck fans and water for free.
“You have to be vigilant because a lot of our employees are teens and they’re invincible,” Gotway said with a laugh.
Still, Gotway said, they normally do not have to take such precautions so early in the season.
The Missouri Department of Transportation educates its employees about avoiding stress from the sun, such as wearing light-colored and loose-fitting clothing and avoiding caffeine and alcohol, said Becky Allmeroth, a district engineer for MoDOT’s St. Louis region.
“We watch each other closely,” she said. “Working on roads in traffic is dangerous in and of itself, and it’s made more dangerous if someone shows signs of fatigue.”
MoDOT employees are taught to recognize the symptoms of heat exhaustion and how to take care of co-workers suffering from the heat, giving them breaks in shady areas.
MoDOT sometimes has its employees work an earlier, cooler shift to avoid too much heat exposure, Allmeroth said.
Jeremy Turner, owner and operator of Lawn Doctor, had a simple recommendation for working in the heat: Wear polyester. Turner has learned that lesson since he moved from work in kitchens and bathrooms to the outdoors in the spring of 2010, when he started his company. Lawn Doctor, based in Creve Coeur, specializes in fertilization and weed control. The company’s three employees maintain several hundred lawns in the area, he said low interest rate personal loans.
Lee Bailes, the CEO of Guier Fence, said that in addition to starting earlier, working later and allowing more breaks in the afternoons, he has hired additional employees to ease the workload.
Guier Fence, which is based in the Kansas City area and has been in business for more than 30 years, has franchises throughout the state. The St. Louis office, operated by Derek and Kelley Burt, contracts with two or three regular installers and takes on additional workers as necessary.
Yet sticking to what’s recommended is not so easy, he says.
“Most (of my employees) handle it well,” Bailes said. “They enjoy working outside and with their hands, and know that the heat just comes with it.”
Bailes says he heard complaints, especially during the first few days of the heat wave when workers hadn’t yet figured out how to deal with high temperatures.
Bob Frederic, president of St. Louis-based Frederic Roofing, said his company had been starting jobs earlier in the day, getting under way as early as 6 a.m. He issues the same warnings about clothing and watching coworkers but said they couldn’t work eight hours a day. Frederic, whose company employs 60 people, said they stopped working about noon on hot days.
“It’s a tough time of year for the roofing industry,” said Frederic, who has been roofing for 30 years. “It’s not that we don’t have the work, it’s a matter of getting it done.”
Adding to Frederic’s frustration is the fact that spring was so wet. Now, with the heat, it has hard to make up days lost to spring rains. His company has scheduled work for Saturdays, but Frederic said that he hesitated to do so too often because “even with shorter hours, (in this heat) you need a two-day weekend to recoup.”
Frederic said that he hoped the temperatures wouldn’t remain so high for the rest of the summer but that “the good news is that after it has been 98 and 100 degrees, 90 will feel a lot better, like winter.”
Julie Phillipson, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in St. Louis, added to the optimism.
“An extremely warm start to June doesn’t necessarily mean the summer will be extremely hot,” she said.
The temperature projections for the summer months have a 33 to 40 percent chance of being below normal, though this may mean periods of extreme heat are followed by cold periods, Phillipson said.
Stocks lost some of their early gains and turned mixed Monday despite the death of Osama bin Laden, several strong earnings reports and a major drug industry acquisition.
The Dow Jones industrial average rose 27 points, or 0.2 percent, to 12,839 in afternoon trading. It had been up as many as 65 points earlier in the day.
President Barack Obama said late Sunday that bin Laden, the al-Qaida chief who masterminded the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, had been killed by American forces in Pakistan. That helped to raise investors’ confidence when the market opened.
“It’s a feel-good item,” said Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at Standard & Poor’s. “It gives closure to a lot people.”
But Silverblatt, like many analysts, cautioned that the news would likely result in only a short-term gain for the market. Most traders were instead focused on earnings and economic news. So far, strong earnings results over the last two weeks helped the Standard & Poor’s 500 reach its highest levels since the financial crisis, closing at 1363.61 on Friday.
Dish Network Corp., Chrysler Group LLC and Humana Inc. all reported strong earnings. Dish Network’s first-quarter net income more than doubled, in part, because of a patent settlement with TiVo Inc. Its stock rose 16 percent.
Humana’s profit rose 22 percent. The company benefited from more people enrolling in its Medicare plans. Its stock was flat.
Chrysler reported its first profit since leaving bankruptcy two years ago thanks to growing sales.
Whole Foods Market Inc. fell 4 percent, though, after a Jefferies analyst downgraded the company and said sales could stagnate as shoppers feel the pinch of higher gas prices.
In corporate news, Israeli drug maker Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. said it would buy Cephalon Inc. for $81.50 per share, or $6.8 billion. Cephalon’s key drugs include the sleep disorder treatment Provigil and the cancer drug Treanda. Cephalon’s shares rose 4 percent.
The S&P 500 index rose a point, or 0.1 percent, to 1,365. It had been up 7 points earlier. The Nasdaq composite index fell 2 points, or 0.1 percent, to 2,871.
Bond prices rose, sending yields lower. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 3.28 percent from 3.29 percent late Friday. The dollar fell 0.2 percent against an index of six other heavily traded currencies.
The Institute of Supply Management reported that manufacturing activity increased for the 21st month in April, though at a slightly slower pace than the month before. This was expected by economists. The Commerce Department also reported that builders started work on more projects in March after three straight monthly declines in construction spending.
Nuclear safety officials say the first radiation measurements taken inside two reactor buildings at Japan’s crisis-stricken nuclear plant show a harsh environment but not one that will be impossible for humans to work in.
Nuclear safety agency official Hidehiko Nishiyama said Monday the measurements taken by two robots sent in to units 1 and 3 of the tsunami-wrecked Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant mean that workers trying to restore plant systems will only be able to stay for short intervals inside the reactor buildings.
He said the radiation would not delay progress toward achieving a cold shutdown of the plant within nine months.
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