The Star Online: Business
The Star Online: Business |
- Oil price stays around a four-month low
- Pandora's stock retreats to below IPO price
- US stocks higher on home building, jobs reports
| Oil price stays around a four-month low Posted: 16 Jun 2011 06:07 PM PDT NEW YORK (AP) - Oil stayed near a four-month low on Thursday as investors continued to worry about the European financial crisis. Benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude rose 14 cents to settle at $94.95 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. In London Brent crude rose $1.01 to settle at $114.02 per barrel on the ICE Futures exchange. Oil dropped more than 4 percent on Wednesday as Greece's financial troubles deepened. And worries about Europe's economy continued on Thursday. The fear is that a Greek default on its debt could seriously impact other European nations with debt problems, like Spain, Portugal and Ireland. Europe consumes about 18 percent of the world's oil, and oil demand would likely drop if Europe's economy stalls. "I don't think anyone is convinced this is going to go away overnight," PFGBest analyst Phil Flynn said. At the very least "the demand outlook is really murky," he said. Analyst and trader Stephen Schork said that the U.S. economy could struggle to grow if gasoline stays above $3.50 per gallon (92 cents a liter) and Brent crude climbs above $115 per barrel. Meanwhile, the International Energy Agency said Thursday that the world still has a cushion of surplus oil. It challenged assertions by investment bank Goldman Sachs that OPEC is producing about as much oil as possible. IEA said Saudi Arabia and other countries could crank up output by more than 4 million barrels per day. The Paris-based groups added that demand should rise this year to 89.3 million barrels per day, up 120,000 barrels per day from previous estimates. The U.S. Energy Information Administration said the nation's natural gas supplies grew by 69 billion cubic feet last week. The increase was within analysts' expectations. Levels are lower than average for this time of year. Natural gas lost 16.5 cents, about 3.6 percent, to settle at $4.412 per 1,000 cubic feet on the Nymex. In other Nymex trading for July contracts, heating oil added 1.9 cents to $3.0038 per gallon and gasoline futures gained 2.59 cents to settle at $2.9494 per gallon. Latest business news from AP-Wire Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by USA Best Price. |
| Pandora's stock retreats to below IPO price Posted: 16 Jun 2011 06:04 PM PDT SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Buyer's remorse already may be setting in for some investors in Internet radio station Pandora Media Inc. After intense demand drove up the price for Pandora's initial public offering of stock, the shares lost nearly a quarter of their value their second day of trading. Thursday's harsh reversal of fortune left Pandora's stock below its IPO price of $16. The shares fell $4.16, or 24 percent, to close at $13.26. The downturn indicates the earlier euphoria about Pandora Media may have been misguided. The excitement enabled Pandora Media's IPO to sell for twice as much as an $8 target price set two weeks ago. The misgivings are bad news for investors who paid as much as $26 on Pandora's first day of trading. But the circumspection is encouraging for those worried about an investment bubble forming around promising Internet services that have attracted large audiences. Pandora boasts 94 million users looking for a different kind of radio station. The company, based in Oakland, California, streams music over high-speed Internet connections and relies on computer formulas to tailor individual songs for listeners. The approach hasn't been profitable yet, one reason some analysts thought Pandora had been overvalued in its IPO. The company has lost a total of $92 million during its 11-year history. The problem: Pandora's main source of revenue, advertising, hasn't been growing fast enough to cover the royalties for playing music. Pandora's IPO came less than a month after the stock market debut of online professional networking service LinkedIn Corp. evoked memories of the dot-com boom in the late 1990s. LinkedIn's shares more than doubled on their first day of trading to give the company a market value of $9 billion. The stock has plunged nearly 28 percent since then, although it remains well above LinkedIn's IPO price of $45. LinkedIn shares shed $6.35, or 8.5 percent, Thursday to close at $68.27. Latest business news from AP-Wire Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by USA Best Price. |
| US stocks higher on home building, jobs reports Posted: 16 Jun 2011 06:03 PM PDT NEW YORK (AP) - Better-than-expected reports on home building and jobs pushed two of the three major stock indexes higher Thursday. The broader market ended mixed. The pace of new home construction quickened last month and the number of people who applied for unemployment benefits fell last week to 414,000, more of an improvement than economists expected. Weekly applications for unemployment have been over 400,000 since April, a rate that suggests job growth is still slow. Worries that Greece's debt troubles could spread continued to weigh on financial markets. The dollar and U.S government bonds rose as traders moved money into safer investments. The Dow Jones industrial average gained 64.25 points, or 0.5 percent, to close at 11,961.52. The Dow is now slightly higher for the week. The S&P 500 rose 2.22, or 0.2 percent, to 1,267.64. The Nasdaq composite lost 7.76, or 0.3 percent, to 2,623.70. The two are less than 1 percent lower this week. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 2.92 percent, the lowest since November, from 2.97 percent late Wednesday. Bond yields fall when prices rise. Home Depot Inc. rose 1.8 percent following the better than expected report on home construction and an upgrade by analysts. Kroger Co. rose 4.5 percent after the supermarket chain's earnings rose as shoppers paid more for groceries and gas. Winnebago Industries Inc. tumbled 20 percent after the motor home company said profits sank nearly 80 percent in its last quarter. Not all the economic news was positive. A survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia found that manufacturing slowed in that region, one day after a similar report found that manufacturing was slowing in the New York area. A series of weaker economic indicators over the past two months have led some analysts to trim their expectations for the year. Investors are now starting to expect negative economic news, said Uri Landesdman, president of Platinum Partners, an investment manager in New York. That dulls the impact of each downward sign, he said. "There's still a feeling out there that even though economic data has been incrementally terrible, businesses are still cooking," Landesman said. He also cautioned that the market could continue to slide until the next batch of corporate earnings reports, which start to come out in mid-July. Overseas markets dipped for a second day because of fears that Greece will be forced to default on its bonds, an event that could trigger another financial crisis. The Euro Stoxx 50, an index of blue chip companies in countries that use the euro, fell 0.5 percent. Benchmark indexes in Japan and China each closed with losses of more than 1.5 percent. U.S. stocks have fallen for six straight weeks because of rising concerns that the economy isn't as strong as previously thought. If the S&P 500 closes down this week, it would mark the longest losing streak since the index dropped for eight straight weeks in early 2001 as the dot-com bubble was imploding. High gas prices and a recession in Japan following its earthquake and nuclear disaster have combined to slow business and consumer spending. The S&P index is down nearly 7 percent since hitting its high for the year on April 29. Falling stocks outpaced rising ones by a small margin on the New York Stock Exchange. Consolidated trading volume was 4.1 billion shares. Latest business news from AP-Wire Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by USA Best Price. |
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