WINDING DOWN: After 58 years of selling music, Webster Records is pulling the plug.
The store at 117 West Lockwood Avenue in Webster Groves will shut its doors on Jan. 31, Bill Wondracek, a clerk, said today.
The store has mainly been reduced to selling rock ‘n’ roll CD’s to teens over the past few years, despite having a history of specializing in classical, jazz and pop music, much of it on vinyl, Wondracek added.
Jennifer Bellm has owned the shop for about five years. She was not available for comment.
Prior to that, it was owned by Dan Warner who sold it when he became part of the team that was involved in trying to revive the Switzer’s Licorice brand low rates payday advance.
Until the shop is shuttered, remaining inventory will be on sale, store manager Jim Lovins said in an email. Starting today it’s 30 percent off of retail and prices will be discounted through the month, he added.
Credit card rewards are the new social currency.
Citibank customers can now use Facebook to pool their rewards points online.
The bank on Tuesday launched a Facebook application that lets users team up to use their points, whether it’s for charity, a group gift or a personal goal. Citi says it’s the first bank to offer such a feature.
The app builds on a service Citi introduced last year that lets customers transfer points to one another on the bank’s homepage. After getting feedback, executives decided to expand the rewards sharing capability and offer it through social media.
“Now we’re delivering it to where customers are every day,” said Ralph Andretta, who heads Citi’s loyalty programs and co-branded cards.
Andretta noted that customers will have far more flexibility with their points, whether it’s to help a friend fly home from college or team up for a big-ticket reward. The company is giving away 2,500 free rewards points to each of the first 4,000 customers to sign up.
To get started, customers download the ThankYou Point Sharing App, which is linked on Citi’s Facebook page at http://www payday loan.facebook.com/citibank.
Customers can then start a rewards pool by naming a recipient and explaining its purpose. The recipient of the points maintains control of any contributions, so it’s best if you know and trust that person.
Pool recipients must be individuals and cannot be an organization, even if the intended goal is a charitable donation.
Users can promote their goals by sharing links on their Facebook pages or privately inviting other Citi customers to contribute. Donors can see the total number of points a cause has amassed.
The app can collect personal information from Facebook profiles. But Citi says it does not share any customer account information with Facebook.
The program isn’t only for credit card holders either. Citi checking account customers can also earn ThankYou points. Citi introduced its lineup of ThankYou credit cards last year.
Manufacturing in India and China improved in December, a sign the world
Manufacturing in India and China improved in December, a sign the world
The so-called January effect, in which small-cap stocks have tended to outperform large-cap stocks at the start of each year, is not evoking the same bold confidence that it has during more predictable market periods.
“Small-cap stocks do tend to benefit from the increased attention that investors pay to their stock portfolios at the beginning of each year,” acknowledged Tom Jacobs, lead adviser for Motley Fool Special Ops (a special situations and opportunistic value service) in Marfa, Texas. “Having said that, however, a number of factors such as Europe’s problems are really freaking out investors right now.”
For example, his current favorite small-cap stock, Canadian-based Primero Mining Corp. (PPP), is actually a play on precious metals. That company owns Mexico’s highly productive San Dimas gold and silver mine; its cash flow equals its market capitalization; it carries little debt; and it has stated its intention to expand its metals assets in the Americas.
Investor nervousness about stocks of all sizes has encouraged the managers of some of the better-performing small-cap portfolios to aggressively seek out stocks they consider currently undervalued.
“Investors should remember that, in an improving economic environment, small caps tend to outperform large-cap stocks,” said Matthew Hart, portfolio manager of the $1.1 billion Invesco Van Kampen Small Cap Growth Fund A (VASCX), which has a three-year annualized return of 13 percent.
But while small caps are capable of supplying high growth and high returns, the economic sensitivity of these companies can never be disregarded, Hart cautioned.
“Small-cap stocks still look good and their valuations are reasonable when compared to large-cap stocks,” said William McVail, portfolio manager of the Turner Small Cap Growth Fund (TSCEX), which has a three-year annualized return of 21 percent. “We like the energy sector and especially the natural gas plays.”
The small-cap choices they prefer feature unique characteristics.
One example owned by both Hart and McVail is Clean Harbors Inc. (CLH), one of the nation’s largest providers of environmental services. As the largest operator of non-nuclear hazardous waste disposal in North America, Clean Harbors serves more than 50,000 customers.
Strong financially with modest debt, Clean Harbors has the assets, facilities and expertise that are difficult for competitors to match. McVail considers Clean Harbors especially well-positioned to profit from hydraulic fracturing — the method by which natural gas is released from shale rock. That practice has evoked controversy as its environmental, health and safety impacts are debated.
Insight Capital Research and Management Inc. in Walnut Creek, Calif., also recommends Clean Harbors. Insight Capital’s CEO and CIO Jim Collins, a longtime small-cap expert, predicts that “2012 will be a stock picker’s market,” requiring “discipline and patience.” Health care, technology and energy are Collins’ favored small-cap themes for the year.
Collins’ two other favorite small-caps are unique: Questcor Pharmaceuticals (QCOR), which develops medications for central nervous system disorders such as epilepsy and multiple sclerosis, and Silicon Motion Technology Corp. (SIMO), which manufactures graphics, video and audio applications for products ranging from handheld devices to LCD products and whose clients include the likes of Hewlett-Packard and Intel.
“I see the employment picture improving in 2012, and I believe we’re in the sixth or seventh inning of the bad housing environment,” said McVail of Turner Small Cap Growth. “For example, we have a portfolio holding in TrueBlue Inc. (TBI), a blue-collar staffing company in Tacoma, Wash., and any turn in the economy is going to be reflected in a company like this.”
TrueBlue, with most of its branch offices located in the U.S., primarily sends manual-labor temps to small and midsize businesses. With strong finances, no debt and plenty of cash, its business model and brand are well-respected.
The top portfolio holdings of Turner Small Cap Growth were recently Healthspring Inc., Taleo Corp. A, Genesee & Wyoming Inc., The Finish Line Inc., Clean Harbors Inc., Questcor Pharmaceuticals, SuccessFactors Inc., Cubist Pharmaceuticals, Northern Oil & Gas Inc. and WellCare Health Plans. This “no-load” (no sales charge) fund requires a $2,500 minimum initial investment.
While an economic upturn is still not a certainty, it would make a positive difference for small-cap stocks in 2012.
“The U.S. consumer is gradually improving, and the employment picture, while not great, is at least stabilizing,” says Hart of Invesco Van Kampen Small Cap Growth. “What we haven’t seen on the consumer side is wage growth and, once we start to see that, I think the picture will improve even more.”
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.
A long-awaited government report said design flaws and sloppy management caused a bullet train crash in July that killed 40 people and triggered a public outcry over the high cost and dangers of China’s showcase transportation system.
A former railway minister was among 54 officials found responsible for the crash, a Cabinet statement said Wednesday.
The crash report was highly anticipated by the public. Regulations required the government to release the report by Nov. 20. When that date passed, the government offered little explanation, drawing renewed criticism by state media, which have been unusually skeptical about the handling of the accident and the investigation.
The Cabinet statement cited “serious design flaws and major safety risks” and what it said were a string of errors in equipment procurement and management.
The report affirmed earlier government statements that a lightning strike caused one bullet train to stall and a sensor failure allowed a second train to keep moving on the same track and slam into it.
Among those singled out for blame was former Minister of Railways Liu Zhijun, who was the public face of efforts to build the bullet train and was detained in February amid a graft investigation. The Cabinet also cited the general manager of the company that manufactured the signal, who died of a heart attack while talking to investigators in August.
As Wall Street traders cheered positive jobs data on Thursday, they seemed to ignore layoffs and bonus cuts on their own trading floors that will hurt growth in the broader U.S. jobs market in the coming months, TrimTabs Chief Executive Charles Biderman said.
U.S. jobless claims dropped to a 3 1/2-year low last week, the Labor Department said on Thursday morning, sending major stock indexes higher. But more current indicators for jobs and wages show opposite trends, said Biderman, a Wall Street veteran who founded the investment research firm in 1990.
“The conventional wisdom on Wall Street is that the U.S. economy is picking up steam despite the turmoil in the rest of the world,” Biderman Said. “The key real-time indicators we track - wage and salary growth and online job demand - suggest Wall Street is wrong.”
In contrast to the positive jobless claims figure, a TrimTabs index showed that a rise in online job postings has slowed over the past month . The firm’s pay analysis showed that wages have fallen 1.2 percent over the past month, adjusting for taxes and inflation, a bigger drop than the 0.2 percent decline over the past three months.
Job cuts at big Wall Street banks including Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), Morgan Stanley (MS.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Bank of America-Merrill Lynch (BAC make quick cash.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) will only hurt job growth further , Biderman said, while dwindling bonus pools will add pressure to wage growth.
Large U.S. banks have outlined plans to lay off nearly 40,000 employees so far this year as a result of the European sovereign debt crisis and weak economic growth, according to a Reuters tally.
Reports from compensation consultants such as Johnson Associates and Options Group suggest that Wall Street bonuses may decline as much as 30 percent to 40 percent this year. That will only hurt U.S. wage growth more in the weeks ahead, Biderman said, since bonuses are typically paid from late December through early February.
The earnings report from Jefferies Group Inc (JEF.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) on Tuesday may offer clues to broader Wall Street trends. Jefferies’ fiscal year ends November 30, a month earlier than those of bigger rivals like Goldman and Morgan Stanley.
The investment bank laid off roughly 70 people in equities trading and cut overall compensation and benefits 24 percent during its fourth quarter. Chief Executive Rich Handler and a number of other senior executives also agreed to forgo bonuses for 2011.
“We recognize our shareholders had a tough year,” Handler said. “We’re shareholders and we’re getting zero bonus.”
Your phone bill can soar because of roaming charges when you take your mobile device with you on a trip.
Premium text message charges can also inflate your costs, especially if you don
Carmaker Volkswagen AG says net profit more than tripled in the second quarter on stronger sales in emerging markets and the United States, but warns that the outlook is difficult.
Net profit reached euro4.78 billion ($6.86 billion), far above the euro1.35 billion recorded in the same quarter a year ago.
Despite rising sales, the company fell just short of analyst estimates on some earnings figures, and chief executive Martin Winterkorn warned the months ahead would challenge the company payday loan lenders.
VW shares are trading down 6 percent.
Revenues rose 21.5 percent to euro40.3 billion. The company said Thursday that unit sales rose strongly in emerging markets such as Russia, Turkey, South Africa, China and Argentina. U.S. sales also rose.
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