Stock futures edge up ahead of earnings, data

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stock index futures edged up on Thursday, helped by better-than-expected results from online marketplace eBay , ahead of a busy day of corporate earnings and economic data.

Among several financial companies due to release results, Bank of America reported its fourth-quarter profit fell from a year ago as it took more charges to clean up mortgage-related problems stemming from the financial crisis. Its shares slipped 0.5 percent to $11.72 in heavy premarket trading.

EBay's shares rose 3.2 percent to $54.60 in premarket trading, a day after it reported holiday quarter results that just beat Wall Street expectations. It gave a 2013 forecast that was within analysts' estimates.

Solid earnings from Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase on Wednesday helped lift estimates for S&P 500 corporate earnings slightly to a 2.2 percent gain, Thomson Reuters data showed.

But expectations have come down significantly from where they were in October. With investors anticipating a lackluster earnings season, the focus will be on the corporate earnings outlook for the months ahead, analysts said.

"That gives you a bigger picture of where the economy might be headed. I think you have to stitch together all the information and get a true picture of how robust the economies of the world are," said Kim Forrest, senior equity research analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group in Pittsburgh.

"We've all dismissed what's going to happen in this fourth quarter. Estimates are pretty low, the companies that can't step over the lower bar are probably going to get punished."

Shares of Boeing extended a recent slump after the United States and other countries grounded the new 787 Dreamliner following a second incident involving battery failure. Boeing was down 2.1 percent at $72.75.

S&P 500 futures rose 2.8 points and were above fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures gained 8 points, while Nasdaq 100 futures added 5.75 points.

Investors were looking to the release of a batch of economic data for fresh trading incentives; these include weekly first time claims for unemployment benefits, housing starts for December and manufacturing activity in the U.S. mid-Atlantic region for January.

Shares of Cisco Systems slipped 1.8 percent to $20.66 after JPMorgan cut its rating to "underweight" from "neutral," according to flyonthewall.com.

AT&T is considering buying a telecoms company in Europe to offset growth constraints in its home market, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing unnamed people familiar with the company's thinking.

(Editing by Bernadette Baum)

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Accumulating snow could fall across the Southeast

ATLANTA (AP) — Snow was expected to spread Thursday from Mississippi across northern Georgia and up to the Washington, D.C. area, the National Weather Service said. The winter blitz follows days of heavy rain across much of the Southeast.

Already, snow was falling in central Mississippi early Thursday, the weather service said. Meteorologist Alan Campbell in Jackson said the heaviest snow activity in Mississippi was along the Interstate 55 corridor.

Winter storm warnings were in effect for parts of Alabama, Georgia and North Carolina.

The snow was moving into Alabama after heavy rain led to some flooding. Some areas of Alabama had received as much as 6 inches of rain since Sunday.

In north Georgia, the heaviest snow was expected to fall in the mountains, with lighter amounts possible in parts of the Atlanta area.

Snow was also possible across much of North Carolina, with as much as 8 inches in the northwestern mountains.

About 1 to 3 inches of snow was expected in the Washington area and parts of central Maryland.

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Stock futures dip on growth concerns, bank earnings eyed

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stock index futures slipped on Wednesday, pressured by low growth expectations and ahead of earnings from major financials including Goldman Sachs.

JPMorgan Chase & Co reported an increase in fourth-quarter profits as the biggest U.S. bank made more home loans.

Shares of Dow component Boeing fell 4.2 percent in premarket trading on concerns about the safety of its Dreamliner passenger jets. Japan's two leading airlines grounded their fleets of 787s on Wednesday after one of the jets made an emergency landing.

A slow economic recovery in developed nations is holding back the global economy, the World Bank said on Tuesday, as it sharply cut its outlook for world growth in 2013. Global gross domestic product will rise 2.4 percent this year, the bank said, down from its June forecast that global growth would reach 3.0 percent in 2013.

S&P 500 futures fell 2 points and were below fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures fell 37 points, and Nasdaq 100 futures lost 1.5 points.

Talks to take Dell Inc private are at an advanced stage with at least four major banks lined up to provide financing, two sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters.

This earnings season the U.S. technology industry is in the unusual position of dragging corporate America down.

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

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Spanish cuts widen Europe’s north-south research divide

MADRID (Reuters) – Amanda Bolanos, a young Spanish scientist, knows she will not be coming home.

“Exiled in Cambodia” read the banner the molecular biologist carried at a protest in Madrid against government cutbacks. Back on leave from Phnom Penh, the 30-year-old researcher plans to head for Latin America if her present contract in Cambodia is not renewed. She sees little chance of finding work in Spain.

Bolanos and other scientists say sharp cuts in Spanish state spending on research and development, part of efforts to lower the national debt, leave them little choice but to go abroad. And they worry the cuts put Spain’s competitive future at risk.

“There are two problems,” said another demonstrator, Amaya Moro-Martin, 38, an astrophysicist with a prestigious Ramon y Cajal fellowship. “One is that there isn’t enough investment. The other is that the investment there is isn’t efficient.”

She returned to Spain after 11 years in the United States but Moro-Martin, who carried her infant daughter on the march, said there was no chance her contract in Spain would be renewed at the end of this year and she will probably go abroad again.

Spain’s modest place in the world of scientific research is far from new. Moro-Martin’s fellowship is named after one of just two Spaniards ever to win a Nobel science prize.

And while state spending on R&D, even since the financial crisis hit, is comparable to that of wealthier EU governments such as Germany, private research by Spanish firms trails their northern rivals: current total national R&D spending is only about 1.4 percent of Spain’s GDP, half the level in Germany.

But what particularly worries Spanish scientists who fret for their jobs, and economists who see research spending as an engine of growth, is that far from redoubling efforts to catch up, Spain now risks falling even further behind its competitors.

The government chopped fully 25 percent off its research and development budget last year and will trim a further 7 percent in 2013, leaving it at under 6 billion euros ($ 8 billion). The German government, by contrast, is increasing spending on R&D by over 6 percent this year to close to 14 billion euros.

With an economy just over 40 percent the size of Germany’s, Madrid is still spending a comparable amount to Berlin, but the government’s critics fear it is not doing enough to make up for a historic lag in investment, especially by private firms.

An official at the Economy Ministry, which swallowed up the science ministry after conservative Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy took power a year ago, insisted the government was doing what it could: “In the current circumstances we are keeping the system going and preparing for the future, to guarantee that every euro spent is well invested,” the official said. “We have to create the best conditions possible so our scientists come back.”

Spain is not alone. As France, Britain, Germany and others in the north fund more research to fend off competition from Asia, Italy has also scaled back its government R&D budget, prompting Roberto Natalini, a mathematician at Italy’s National Research Council (CNR) to warn: “We will pay for this in the medium term, not immediately. We will lose our competitiveness.”

TWO-SPEED EUROPE

Without more private R&D spending, Spain, Italy and others in the south may continue to lag. But critics of government cuts say these risk creating a vicious circle, discouraging business:

“Public money attracts private sector money,” said biologist Antonio Baraber from Spain’s National Oncology Centre. “You can’t just hope people will invest if there’s no base.”

In 2010, OECD figures show, only 242 international patents were filed from Spain, compared to over 5,600 from Germany. Where the private sector accounts for over two thirds of total German R&D spending, in Spain it provides less than half.

All the more reason, Spain’s researchers say, for their government not to be cutting while competitors invest more:

“There’s a crisis everywhere but other countries aren’t cutting off the lifeline,” said Ester Artells, a 36-year-old Spanish biologist based at Marseille University in France.

The German government has raised its R&D budget by 6.3 percent this year and France is finding 1.2 percent more. After cutting back, Britain too is adding investment in science.

Venture capitalist Francisco Marin, whose Ambar fund invests in Spanish technology firms, said Madrid’s failure to catch up in generating ideas to drive new businesses was a big risk for a country where one worker in four is already out of a job:

“Employment and wealth come from the creation of new companies,” he said. “Existing companies don’t create employment, they keep it at the same level.”

Carlos Andradas, the mathematician who is president of the Spanish Confederation of Scientific Societies (COSCE), says it will take years, if not decades, to bridge the widening gap Spain has allowed to open up with its northern competitors.

“When you fall behind in a race, catching up is very hard,” Andradas said. “It will take a long time for Spain to catch up, starting from a position of insufficient development.”

Protesting astrophysicist Moyo-Martin believed her country had begun to improve its international performance in research in recent years, half a century after New York-based Severo Ochoa became the last Spaniard to win a Nobel science prize.

Now, however, it was back in a “very precarious position”, she said: “The problem is, what’s happening now isn’t reform – it’s just cuts.”

(Additional reporting by Naomi O’Leary in Rome and Gareth Jones and Michelle Martin in Berlin; Editing by Chris Wickham, Fiona Ortiz and Alastair Macdonald)

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Stock futures fall as earnings, data eyed

NEW YORK (Reuters) -

U.S. stock index futures slipped on Tuesday as investors faced what is expected to be a lackluster earnings season, while a batch of economic data was on tap for later in the morning, including retail sales and regional manufacturing.

Fiscal and monetary policy were also at the forefront of investors' minds. On Monday, President Barack Obama rejected any negotiations with Republicans over raising the U.S. borrowing limit. The United States could default on its debt if Congress does not increase the borrowing limit.

Speaking separately on Monday, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke urged lawmakers to raise the debt ceiling. The central bank chairman also gave a cautiously optimistic outlook for U.S. growth but no clear hints on when the Fed would curb its aggressive bond purchases.

Corporate earnings season picks up the pace this week and investors are bracing for disappointment. Analyst estimates for the quarter have fallen sharply since October. S&P 500 earnings growth is now seen up just 1.9 percent from a year ago, Thomson Reuters data showed.

Shares of Dell rose 3.8 percent to $12.76 in premarket trade the day after sources said the company is in talks with private equity firms on a potential buyout.

S&P 500 futures fell 4.8 points and were below fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures were down 16 points, and Nasdaq 100 futures lost 6.75 points.

Homebuilder Lennar reported profit that beat expectations amid a jump in new home orders.

Reports on U.S. retail sales and producer prices for December, as well as manufacturing activity in New York state for January were due at 8:30 am ET (1330 GMT). Business inventories for November will be released at 10:00 am ET.

(Reporting by Leah Schnurr; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

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Saturn Moon Titan May Have Ice Floating in Lakes

Chunks of hydrocarbon ice may float atop the lakes and seas of Saturn’s huge moon Titan, a new study reveals.

The presence of such ice floes in  the ethane and methane seas on Titan would make the moon an even more exciting target for astrobiologists, researchers said.

“One of the most intriguing questions about these lakes and seas is whether they might host an exotic form of life,” study co-author Jonathan Lunine of Cornell University said in a statement. “And the formation of floating hydrocarbon ice will provide an opportunity for interesting chemistry along the boundary between liquid and solid, a boundary that may have been important in the origin of terrestrial life.”

Titan — Saturn’s largest moon, with a diameter of 3,200 miles (5,150 kilometers) — is the only body in our solar system apart from Earth known to host stable bodies of liquid on its surface. While Earth’s weather cycle is based on water, Titan’s involves hydrocarbons, with liquid ethane and methane falling as rain and pooling in large lakes and seas. [Amazing Photos of Titan]

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has spotted a huge network of these seas in Titan’s northern hemisphere, along with a handful in the moon’s southern reaches.

Cassini scientists had previously assumed that these seas would not have floating ice, since solid methane is denser than its liquid counterpart and should thus sink. But the new study suggests that things are not so simple.

The researchers created a model investigating how Titan’s seas interact with the moon’s nitrogen-rich atmosphere, creating pockets of varying composition and temperature.

The team determined that hydrocarbon ice should indeed float in the moon’s seas, as long as the temperature is just below methane’s freezing point — minus 297 degrees Fahrenheit, or minus 183 degrees Celsius — and the ice is at least 5 percent “air,” which is the average composition for young sea ice here on Earth.

This ice may be colorless, perhaps with a reddish-brown tint provided by Titan’s atmosphere, researchers said.

“We now know it’s possible to get methane-and-ethane-rich ice freezing over on Titan in thin blocks that congeal together as it gets colder — similar to what we see with Arctic sea ice at the onset of winter,” lead author Jason Hofgartner, also of Cornell, said in a statement. “We’ll want to take these conditions into consideration if we ever decide to explore the Titan surface some day.”

Floating sea ice could be a fleeting phenomenon on Titan, if it exists at all. If the temperature drops a few degrees, the ice will begin to sink, researchers said.

Cassini should be able to test the new model out, and soon. Titan’s northern spring is underway, meaning lakes and seas in the moon’s northern reaches are warming up.

As this happens, ice may rise to the top, creating a surface that appears brighter and more reflective to Cassini’s radar instrument. As the area continues to warm, the ice should melt, producing an entirely liquid surface that will look darker to Cassini, researchers said.

“Cassini’s extended stay in the Saturn system gives us an unprecedented opportunity to watch the effects of seasonal change at Titan,” Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement. “We’ll have an opportunity to see if the theories are right.”

The $ 3.2 billion Cassini mission, a joint effort of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency, launched in 1997 and arrived at Saturn in 2004. It will continue to observe the ringed planet and its many moons through at least 2017.

Follow SPACE.com on Twitter @Spacedotcom. We’re also on Facebook & Google+. 

Copyright 2013 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Stock futures mixed as investors eye earnings, Apple

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stock index futures were mixed on Monday as investors faced a busy week of corporate earnings results, while Apple fell on concerns of decreased demand.

Shares of Apple slid more than 3 percent in premarket trade after a report that the tech giant has cut orders for LCD screens and other parts for the iPhone 5 this quarter due to weak demand. The stock was down 3.5 percent at $502.02.

Earnings season picks up the pace this week with reports expected from companies including Goldman Sachs , Bank of America , Intel and General Electric . Overall earnings are expected to grow by just 1.9 percent in this reporting period, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Transocean Ltd has disclosed that billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn has acquired a 1.56 percent stake in the offshore rig contractor and is looking to increase that holding. Its shares rose 3.2 percent to $55.80.

S&P 500 futures fell 0.9 points and were below fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures added 3 points, and Nasdaq 100 futures fell 9.25 points.

Boeing could come under renewed pressure after Japan's transport ministry launched an investigation into what caused two fuel leaks on a 787 Dreamliner jet owned by Japan Airlines Co 9201.

United Parcel Service Inc said it would drop its 5.2 billion euro ($7 billion) bid for Dutch delivery firm TNT Express on the expectation of an EU veto.

The U.S. economy is expected to grow by 2.5 percent in 2013, improving to 3.5 percent growth in 2014, top Fed official Charles Evans said on Monday.

Investors will also be watching a speech from Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, who will be speaking on monetary policy , recovery from the global financial crisis and long-term challenges facing the American economy at 4 p.m. (2100 GMT)

(Reporting by Leah Schnurr; Editing by Theodore d'Afflisio)

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NH case against 2 big oil companies gets underway

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — The state of New Hampshire is launching its case against two major oil companies in what is expected to be the longest and most complex trial in state history.

The state’s lawyers say ExxonMobil and Citgo should pay more than $ 700 million in damages to monitor and clean up groundwater contamination caused by the gas additive MTBE — methyl tertiary butyl ether — now banned in New Hampshire.

Lawyers for the oil companies say they have cleaned up their own sites and that contamination elsewhere was caused by third parties not named in the suit.

The lawsuit — filed in 2003 — is the only one brought by a state to reach trial on the issue of MTBE groundwater contamination. Most of the other MTBE cases nationwide were brought by municipalities, water districts or individual well owners, and all but one was settled or dismissed.

The jury trial begins Monday and is expected to last four months. It is being held in a federal courtroom on loan to the state so as not to monopolize one of three courtrooms at Merrimack Superior Court.

More than 50,000 exhibits have been marked and the witness list numbers 230.

It was clear from a pretrial conference Friday that jurors will be confronted with an alphabet soup of acronyms for various funds and agencies, will have to grapple with complex statistical analyses and will hear contradictory testimony by expert witnesses.

MTBE had been used in gasoline since the 1970s to increase octane and reduce smog-causing emissions. While it was credited with cutting air pollution, it was found in the late 1990s to contaminate drinking water when gasoline is spilled or leaks into surface or groundwater. New Hampshire banned its use in 2007.

Roughly 60 percent of New Hampshire’s population gets its drinking water from wells, which drives up the estimated cost to test and treat contaminated water sources.

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Wall Street Week Ahead: Attention turns to financial earnings

NEW YORK (Reuters) - After over a month of watching Capitol Hill and Pennsylvania Avenue, Wall Street can get back to what it knows best: Wall Street.

The first full week of earnings season is dominated by the financial sector - big investment banks and commercial banks - just as retail investors, free from the "fiscal cliff" worries, have started to get back into the markets.

Equities have risen in the new year, rallying after the initial resolution of the fiscal cliff in Washington on January 2. The S&P 500 on Friday closed its second straight week of gains, leaving it just fractionally off a five-year closing high hit on Thursday.

An array of financial companies - including Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase - will report on Wednesday. Bank of America and Citigroup will join on Thursday.

"The banks have a read on the economy, on the health of consumers, on the health of demand," said Quincy Krosby, market strategist at Prudential Financial in Newark, New Jersey.

"What we're looking for is demand. Demand from small business owners, from consumers."

EARNINGS AND ECONOMIC EXPECTATIONS

Investors were greeted with a slightly better-than-anticipated first week of earnings, but expectations were low and just a few companies reported results.

Fourth quarter earnings and revenues for S&P 500 companies are both expected to have grown by 1.9 percent in the past quarter, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Few large corporations have reported, with Wells Fargo the first bank out of the gate on Friday, posting a record profit. The bank, however, made fewer mortgage loans than in the third quarter and its shares were down 0.8 percent for the day.

The KBW bank index <.bkx>, a gauge of U.S. bank stocks, is up about 30 percent from a low hit in June, rising in six of the last eight months, including January.

Investors will continue to watch earnings on Friday, as General Electric will round out the week after Intel's report on Thursday.

HOUSING, INDUSTRIAL DATA ON TAP

Next week will also feature the release of a wide range of economic data.

Tuesday will see the release of retail sales numbers and the Empire State manufacturing index, followed by CPI data on Wednesday.

Investors and analysts will also focus on the housing starts numbers and the Philadelphia Federal Reserve factory activity index on Thursday. The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan consumer sentiment numbers are due on Friday.

Jim Paulsen, chief investment officer at Wells Capital Management in Minneapolis, said he expected to see housing numbers continue to climb.

"They won't be that surprising if they're good, they'll be rather eye-catching if they're not good," he said. "The underlying drive of the markets, I think, is economic data. That's been the catalyst."

POLITICAL ANXIETY

Worries about the protracted fiscal cliff negotiations drove the markets in the weeks before the ultimate January 2 resolution, but fear of the debt ceiling fight has yet to command investors' attention to the same extent.

The agreement was likely part of the reason for a rebound in flows to stocks. U.S.-based stock mutual funds gained $7.53 billion after the cliff resolution in the week ending January 9, the most in a week since May 2001, according to Thomson Reuters' Lipper.

Markets are unlikely to move on debt ceiling news unless prominent lawmakers signal that they are taking a surprising position in the debate.

The deal in Washington to avert the cliff set up another debt battle, which will play out in coming months alongside spending debates. But this alarm has been sounded before.

"The market will turn the corner on it when the debate heats up," Prudential Financial's Krosby said.

The CBOE Volatility index <.vix> a gauge of traders' anxiety, is off more than 25 percent so far this month and it recently hit its lowest since June 2007, before the recession began.

"The market doesn't react to the same news twice. It will have to be more brutal than the fiscal cliff," Krosby said. "The market has been conditioned that, at the end, they come up with an agreement."

(Reporting by Gabriel Debenedetti; editing by Rodrigo Campos)

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EPA issues Shell violation notices

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — The Environmental Protection Agency has issued Royal Dutch Shell PLC notices of air quality violations for emissions involving its Arctic drilling operation in 2012.

The EPA late Thursday issued the notices saying that Shell violated permits for nitrous oxides emissions coming from its drill rig and drill ship. The federal agency says Shell had multiple permit violations for each ship.

The two ships are the drill rig Kulluk, which recently grounded near Kodiak Island when it was being towed to Seattle for maintenance and broke free in a storm. The damaged drill rig has been refloated and taken to a sheltered harbor. The drill ship Noble Discoverer remains in Seward after the Coast Guard found safety problems.

Shell is trying to revise its air permit to operate in the Arctic.

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Wall Street Week Ahead: Attention turns to financial earnings

NEW YORK (Reuters) - After over a month of watching Capitol Hill and Pennsylvania Avenue, Wall Street can get back to what it knows best: Wall Street.

The first full week of earnings season is dominated by the financial sector - big investment banks and commercial banks - just as retail investors, free from the "fiscal cliff" worries, have started to get back into the markets.

Equities have risen in the new year, rallying after the initial resolution of the fiscal cliff in Washington on January 2. The S&P 500 on Friday closed its second straight week of gains, leaving it just fractionally off a five-year closing high hit on Thursday.

An array of financial companies - including Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase - will report on Wednesday. Bank of America and Citigroup will join on Thursday.

"The banks have a read on the economy, on the health of consumers, on the health of demand," said Quincy Krosby, market strategist at Prudential Financial in Newark, New Jersey.

"What we're looking for is demand. Demand from small business owners, from consumers."

EARNINGS AND ECONOMIC EXPECTATIONS

Investors were greeted with a slightly better-than-anticipated first week of earnings, but expectations were low and just a few companies reported results.

Fourth quarter earnings and revenues for S&P 500 companies are both expected to have grown by 1.9 percent in the past quarter, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Few large corporations have reported, with Wells Fargo the first bank out of the gate on Friday, posting a record profit. The bank, however, made fewer mortgage loans than in the third quarter and its shares were down 0.8 percent for the day.

The KBW bank index <.bkx>, a gauge of U.S. bank stocks, is up about 30 percent from a low hit in June, rising in six of the last eight months, including January.

Investors will continue to watch earnings on Friday, as General Electric will round out the week after Intel's report on Thursday.

HOUSING, INDUSTRIAL DATA ON TAP

Next week will also feature the release of a wide range of economic data.

Tuesday will see the release of retail sales numbers and the Empire State manufacturing index, followed by CPI data on Wednesday.

Investors and analysts will also focus on the housing starts numbers and the Philadelphia Federal Reserve factory activity index on Thursday. The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan consumer sentiment numbers are due on Friday.

Jim Paulsen, chief investment officer at Wells Capital Management in Minneapolis, said he expected to see housing numbers continue to climb.

"They won't be that surprising if they're good, they'll be rather eye-catching if they're not good," he said. "The underlying drive of the markets, I think, is economic data. That's been the catalyst."

POLITICAL ANXIETY

Worries about the protracted fiscal cliff negotiations drove the markets in the weeks before the ultimate January 2 resolution, but fear of the debt ceiling fight has yet to command investors' attention to the same extent.

The agreement was likely part of the reason for a rebound in flows to stocks. U.S.-based stock mutual funds gained $7.53 billion after the cliff resolution in the week ending January 9, the most in a week since May 2001, according to Thomson Reuters' Lipper.

Markets are unlikely to move on debt ceiling news unless prominent lawmakers signal that they are taking a surprising position in the debate.

The deal in Washington to avert the cliff set up another debt battle, which will play out in coming months alongside spending debates. But this alarm has been sounded before.

"The market will turn the corner on it when the debate heats up," Prudential Financial's Krosby said.

The CBOE Volatility index <.vix> a gauge of traders' anxiety, is off more than 25 percent so far this month and it recently hit its lowest since June 2007, before the recession began.

"The market doesn't react to the same news twice. It will have to be more brutal than the fiscal cliff," Krosby said. "The market has been conditioned that, at the end, they come up with an agreement."

(Reporting by Gabriel Debenedetti; editing by Rodrigo Campos)

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Stock futures flat ahead of Wells Fargo earnings

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stock index futures were little changed on Friday, a day after the S&P 500 hit a five-year high and ahead of earnings from Wells Fargo, the first big bank to report this season.

The Japanese government approved a massive $117 billion of spending to revive the economy in the biggest stimulus since the financial crisis, a move that boosted optimism about the global outlook.

Basic materials shares could be hurt after China's annual consumer inflation rate picked up to a seven-month high, narrowing the scope for the central bank to boost the economy by easing monetary policy.

S&P 500 futures dipped 1 point and were slightly below fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures fell 7 points, and Nasdaq 100 futures added 1 point.

American Express said it would cut about 5,400 jobs, or 8.5 percent of its workforce, as it restructures its business and pays legal bills.

Boeing's 787 Dreamliner jet suffered a cracked cockpit window and an oil leak on separate flights in Japan on Friday - the latest in a series of incidents to test confidence in the new aircraft. Shares fell 1.4 percent to $76 in premarket trading.

Best Buy shares fell 1.7 percent to $12.00 in premarket trading after it reported flat holiday sales at established U.S. stores.

The U.S. Commerce Department releases November international trade figures at 8:30 a.m. ET (1330 GMT). Economists in a Reuters poll expect a trade deficit of $41.3 billion in November against a gap of $42.24 billion in October.

At the same time, the Labor Department releases import-export prices for December. Economists forecast a 0.1 percent rise in imports and an unchanged reading for exports.

Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia President Charles Plosser speaks on the economic outlook before the New Jersey Economic Leadership Forum at 9:30 a.m. ET (1430 GMT).

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

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Chevron sees higher fourth-quarter profit as output rises

(Reuters) – Chevron Corp , the second-largest U.S. oil company, said on Thursday its fourth-quarter profit would be “notably higher” than the previous quarter as oil and gas output bounced back and it booked a $ 1.4 billion gain on an asset transaction.

Chevron is also preparing to bring its refinery in Richmond, California, back to full production this quarter, after the crude unit of the 245,000-barrels-per-day plant was badly damaged in an August fire.

The impact was clear as Chevron’s average U.S. refining input of 702,000 bpd in October and November was down 226,000 bpd from the second quarter – the last period when Richmond was fully running throughout. The San Francisco Chronicle said this week that Chevron aims to restart the crude unit in February.

On the upstream side, Chevron’s average U.S. production of oil and gas from wells rose to 676,000 bpd in October and November, compared with a hurricane-depressed average of 637,000 bpd for the third quarter.

Worldwide, Chevron’s output reached its highest since mid-2011. The company produced the oil equivalent of 2.66 million bpd in the first two months of the quarter, up from an average 2.52 million in the third quarter – when it was curbed by maintenance in the UK and Kazakhstan.

Shares of Chevron rose 0.8 percent to $ 111.33 in after-hours trading, when the company’s quarterly interim update was released, after closing up 0.8 percent in the regular session.

Before the update, analysts had expected a net profit of $ 3.00 per share for the fourth quarter, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S, up from $ 2.57 in the third quarter and $ 2.58 in the fourth quarter a year before.

Chevron got no help from oil prices in the quarter, with an average Brent oil price of $ 110 per barrel that was basically the same as the previous quarter and up just $ 1 per barrel from a year before.

The $ 1.4 billion gain stemmed from a deal with Royal Dutch Shell Plc , announced in August, in which Shell swapped interests in two fields off Australia for Chevron’s holdings in the Browse liquefied natural gas project.

(Reporting by Braden Reddall in San Francisco; Editing by Gary Hill, Leslie Adler and David Gregorio)

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US STOCKS-Futures gain as China data points to growth

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stock index futures rose on Thursday, alongside other risk assets, as stronger-than-expected exports in China, the world's second-biggest economy, raised hopes for a more robust recovery in the global economy this year.

Data showed China's export growth rebounded sharply to a seven-month high in December, a strong finish to the year after seven straight quarters of slowdown, even as demand from Europe and the United States remained subdued.

Adding to the bullish sentiment, Spanish benchmark government bond yields fell below 5 percent to a 10-month low on the back of a strong bond auction that raised more than the target amount.

"The market's more positive and it owes a lot of that to the Chinese economic data," said Art Hogan, managing director of Lazard Capital Markets in New York, adding that the success of the Spanish auction was also of note.

S&P 500 futures rose 4.2 points and were above fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures rose 25 points, and Nasdaq 100 futures added 5 points.

Traders await the Labor Department release of first-time claims for jobless benefits for the latest week at 8:30 a.m. ET (1330 GMT). Economists in a Reuters survey forecast a total of 365,000 new filings compared with 372,000 in the prior week.

The Commerce Department releases wholesale inventories for November at 10:00 a.m. ET (1500 GMT). Economists expect inventories to rise 0.3 percent, against a 0.6 percent increase in October.

Several Federal Reserve speakers are due to speak Thursday, including Kansas City Fed President Esther George and St. Louis Fed President James Bullard. Market participants are likely to pay close attention to their remarks following indications, in the minutes of the latest Fed meeting, that the Fed may halt its highly simulative asset purchases this year. The program has been one of the pillars of the strength in the equity market.

Shares of upscale jeweler Tiffany dropped 8.5 percent to $57.90 in premarket trading after it said earnings for the year through January 31 will be at the lower end of its forecast.

Molycorp shares dropped 6.4 percent to $10.10 in premarket trading after the company said revenue and cash flow would be lower than expected this year due to lower rare-earth prices.

Duke Realty Corp stock fell 1.9 percent to $14.29 in premarket trading after the company announced late on Wednesday an offering of 30 million shares.

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos)

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Global shares buoyed by Alcoa earnings, dollar gains on yen

LONDON (Reuters) - World shares staged a modest recovery from two days of losses on Wednesday after aluminum giant Alcoa opened the U.S. earnings season with an optimistic outlook for world demand.

However, with European and British central banks due to hold policy meetings on Thursday, the same day Spain will test demand for its debt and China releases its latest trade data, investors were in a cautious mood.

Alcoa, the largest aluminum producer in the United States, rose 1.3 percent in after-hours trade after it reported a fourth-quarter profit in line with Wall Street expectations and revenues that beat forecasts.

The results lifted Asian stock markets and pushed Europe's FTSE Eurofirst 300 index <.fteu3> up around 0.2 percent in early trade, leaving the MSCI world equity index <.miwd00000pus> up 0.1 percent. London's FTSE 100 <.ftse>, Paris's CAC-40 <.fchi> and Frankfurt's DAX <.gdaxi> were flat to 0.2 percent higher.

U.S. stock futures were up 0.15 percent, suggesting a firmer start on Wall Street. <.l><.eu><.n/>

Corporate profits are expected to be higher than the third quarter's lackluster results, but analysts' estimates are down sharply from where they were in October.

"Expectations are quite low going into the earnings season as we saw a lot of downward guidance in the past few months. There is potential for an upside surprise to come through," said Robert Parkes, equity strategist at HSBC Securities.

SOVEREIGN DEBT TEST

In European fixed income markets German Bund prices dipped slightly as investors prepared for the government's auction of 5 billion euros' worth of new five-year bonds following successful debt sales in Austria, the Netherlands and Ireland on Tuesday.

Investors were also looking ahead to Spanish and Italian bond auctions on Thursday for the new year's first test of market appetite for peripheral euro zone debt.

The Spanish auction could also provide clues on the timing of a much anticipated request by Madrid for fresh financial aid from the ECB. [ID:nL5E9C46KK]

The dollar meanwhile climbed against the yen, moving back towards a 2-1/2 year high hit last week, on expectations of a much bolder monetary easing from the Bank of Japan at its next meeting later this month.

The U.S. currency was up 0.7 percent at 87.61 yen, above a near one-week low of 86.82 hit earlier in Tokyo.

"No one is going to want to be short yen going into the BOJ meeting," said Derek Halpenny, European head of FX research at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi.

Sources familiar with the BOJ's thinking told Reuters the central bank was likely to adopt a 2 percent inflation target at the meeting, double its current goal, and issue a statement with the government pledging to pursue bold monetary easing steps.

The BOJ will also consider easing monetary policy again this month, probably through a further increase in its 101 trillion yen ($1.2 trillion) asset buying and lending programme, the sources said.

The euro held steady against the dollar at $1.3080, with most analysts forecasting the European Central Bank will keep interest rates on hold on Thursday, though some believe rates will be cut later this year.

CHINA DEMAND EYED

Brent crude oil slipped around 0.3 percent to below $112 per barrel as the market awaited the latest trade data from China, the world's biggest energy consumer, due on Thursday.

"What we're seeing in the oil markets is the cautious sentiment playing up ahead of some key economic events this week," said Ker Chung Yang, senior investment analyst at Phillips Futures in Singapore.

However, iron ore jumped to its highest since October 2011, stretching a rally that has lifted prices by more than a third since December as China replenished stockpiles and as supply in the spot market remained limited.

Iron ore, a raw material used to make steel, has now risen 83 percent since falling to below $87 in September.

(Additional reporting by Nia Williams and Atul Prakash; Editing by Will Waterman)

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Star Hackers: Scientists Hold 1st Astronomy ‘Hack Day’

Astronomers have a “Big Data” problem. While telescopes around the world record reams of data every day, researchers struggle to manage this surplus of information. But there is a change brewing within the astronomy community, one where researchers  assume many different roles: astronomer, hacker and communicator.

DotAstronomy, a community that bridges the gap between science research and computer coding, hosted the first “Hack Day” exclusively for astronomy in the United States, last month at the Bit.ly headquarters in New York.

The Dec. 15 event was co-sponsored by Bit.ly and Harvard‘s Seamless Astronomy Group. Participants had a single day to tackle a problem within astronomy data. The day was split into three parts: presentations of tools that some participants have been working on, hack time, and presentations of the day’s accomplishments. 

Participants came from all over the tri-state area to learn from other astronomy hackers and work on joint projects. Most of them were either professors or graduate students from NYU, Harvard, Yale or CUNY, but there were others from non-astronomy backgrounds as well. 

Many of the tools presented were frameworks to make astronomy data more manageable, often with a heavy community and open-source aspect.

For example, there was Astropy, a community-driven astronomy package; Planethunters.org, where public online users can hunt for exoplanets; the yt-project, a community-driven platform that transforms data into breathtaking graphic models, to help researchers ask better questions from their data; and an API (an interface between a user and a site’s database) where you can easily look up any celestial object’s spectral data from archives of the Sloan Digital Survey.

Hacking and camaraderie

After the main presentations, everyone grabbed a quick lunch and circled the whiteboard to pitch their hacks. They then split into groups and started exchanging ideas, debugging, and scrawling flow charts or models. Practically all the participants were acquainted with Python computer coding, but still, the best hackers quickly stood out, and many clamored for their aid. [5 Threats That Keep Security Experts Up at Night]

Demitri Muna is one of those hackers. He runs an online forum and workshop called SciCoder, teaching scientists how to efficiently work in Python. Muna is working toward a SciCoder book, which will include a free PDF for the astronomy community.

Muna worked during the hack day with Kelle Cruz from the American Museum of Natural History department of astrophysics and others to create a “SQLite” database to store brown dwarf star data that they could distribute to members’ email accounts.

“Astronomers are dealing with an embarrassment of riches in the volume of data at our fingertips, but most still work with the same tools and file formats from 25-30 years ago,” Muna said. “These tools are increasingly unable to scale to handle the data we now have. I strongly feel that better, not just more, investment into software development needs to be made in our community.”

Different worlds

In our age of social media, it’s not just about getting the data, but making it fast and convenient to use. However, many of the online tools that house the necessary astronomy data are scattered in terms of compatibility, programming interface capability, naming conventions, units used, and descriptive data. Astronomers typically have to write the same code over and over again to customize it on a case-by-case basis.

“One problem is that every sub-community [in astronomy] handles data differently, and the tools they might use are different,” said Lia Corrales, a grad student at Columbia University. “I’m working to make cross-communication between different databases easier. I work with X-ray data. I’d like to put all of [the] data together, find all the quasars and say something about the dust around each one. I’ve wasted a lot of time in the past writing the cross-communicating code manually. I learned a lot from that experience but also to never do it again.” 

Adric Riedel, a researcher at the American Museum of Natural History, said that his current dataset was taken from the SuperCOSMOS Sky Survey, which was photographed in the 1950s; researchers are still getting new things out of it. “We need to work smarter and take advantage of tools that others have built.”

David Hogg, an astronomy and physics professor at NYU, worked on a paper predicting the distribution of stars that have transiting exoplanets based on data from NASA’s Kepler planet-hunting space telescope.

“Kepler has been very generous with their data and astronomers have just started asking questions about it,” he said. “We’re guessing [based on observations] that the numbers of one-, two-, and three-planet systems puts a strong constraint on the true numbers. What we really want to do has to be simplified if we are going to finish it in one day.” [Gallery: A World of Kepler Planets]

Unfortunately, the paper wasn’t completed by the end of the Hack Day, but his group put together a literature review and a graph to model the assumptions about the data.

Hack Day results

Chris Beaumont, a graduate student from Harvard, worked on a project to speed up plots and models in Python. He used OpenGL, a platform used for 3D game graphics, to leverage its processing power and resolution. The results shown, at the end of Hack Day, were quite amazing. He’s now planning to create full-featured code for others to use.

And Megan Schwamb, who is part of the Planethunters.org team, created a new API for the site that retrieves data about possible planets orbiting binary stars.

One the most unconventional hacks attempted to take down and expose the flaws of MAST (Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes), carried out by Micha Gorelick, a data scientist at Bit.ly.

Gorelick found that when MAST data parameters are entered to find celestial objects, the program didn’t check what type of data was being requested. This could lead to the ability of hackers to insert their own database commands to manipulate the catalog. Afterward, he contacted the folks at MAST, and they are currently addressing the issue.

Overall, the Hack Day was a success, according to those involved, not only because of the projects completed, but because of the discussions and information sharing that the event sparked.

Follow SPACE.com on Twitter @Spacedotcom. We’re also on Facebook & Google+. 

Copyright 2013 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Stock futures flat ahead of earnings season start

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stock index futures were little changed in low volume on Tuesday ahead of the unofficial start of an earnings season expected to show sluggish corporate growth.

Profits in the fourth quarter were expected to top lackluster results in the previous quarter, but analysts' current estimates are down sharply from where they were in October. Fourth-quarter earnings are expected to grow by 2.8 percent, according to Thomson Reuters data.

S&P 500 futures were up 0.2 point and slightly below fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures were unchanged, and Nasdaq 100 futures were also flat.

Shares of Yum Brands Inc fell 5 percent to $64.50 in light premarket trading a day after the KFC parent warned sales in China, its top market, shrank more than expected in the fourth quarter.

ConAgra Foods Inc priced a public offering of 8.1 million common shares at $29.75 per share, the foodmaker said on Monday. ConAgra closed at $30.17 during regular Monday trading.

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)

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Gas prices increasing in New Hampshire

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Gas prices are increasing in New Hampshire.

The average retail price for a gallon of gas rose 2.2 cents in the past week, to $ 3.41.

The national average is $ 3.26 a gallon.

The website Gasbuddy.com says prices in New Hampshire were 6.7 cents per gallon higher than the same day a year ago, and 1.2 cents per gallon lower than a month ago.

The national average is 6.8 cents per gallon lower than a year ago, and 9.3 cents per gallon lower than a month ago.

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Stock futures slip after stocks hit five-year high

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stock index futures fell on Monday, with markets expected to consolidate after the S&P 500 index closed at a five-year high on Friday.

Last week was the best for U.S. stocks in more than a year as a budget deal and economic data boosted investor confidence.

Financial shares will be in focus a day after global regulators gave banks four more years and greater flexibility to build up cash buffers, scaling back moves that aimed to help prevent another financial crisis.

By spurring credit, the easing of the bank rule may help support growth, boosting investments in equities and other risk assets.

S&P 500 futures dipped 1.3 points and were below fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures fell 13 points, and Nasdaq 100 futures added 1 point.

Walt Disney Co started an internal cost cutting review several weeks ago that may include layoffs at its studio and other units, three people with knowledge of the effort told Reuters.

Video-streaming service Netflix Inc said it will carry previous seasons of some popular shows produced by Time Warner's Warner Bros Television.

Major U.S. technology companies could miss estimates for fourth-quarter earnings as budget worries likely led some corporate clients to tighten their belts last month.

Amazon shares rose 2.3 percent in premarket trading after Morgan Stanley raised is rating on the stock to "overweight" from "equal weight."

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

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California storm bringing round of odd weather

The latest winter storm to move into California brought some odd weather to the region, including thunderstorms in Northern California and snow in the mountains of Southern California, forecasters said.

Thunderstorms were in the forecast Sunday for the San Mateo and Monterey County coasts, with lightning strikes reported early Sunday, the National Weather Service reported Sunday.

Snow was also expected in some of the higher elevations of the Santa Lucia Mountains, a mountain range that runs from Monterey County south to San Luis Obispo.

In Southern California, the storm dropped snow as low as 3,500 feet early Sunday, and winds with gusts topping out at 50 mph were expected in some mountain areas and in the foothills of the San Gabriel Valley. The storm could dump up to four inches of snow before moving out Southern California Monday morning, forecasters said.

Along the beaches, officials were warning about dangerous rip currents and waves as high as 15 feet from Big Sur south to Point Conception in Santa Barbara County.

A high surf advisory was in effect through Monday night for the area.

In the Sierra Nevada, forecasters said snow showers were expected throughout Sunday, with the heaviest snow falling in Mono County, where up to five inches was expected to accumulate.

Near Lake Tahoe, ski resorts in the area were expected see about two inches of new snow, on top of the one or two inches of snow that fell Saturday and early Sunday.

Officials said Sunday that tire chains were required on all vehicles except four-wheel drives on Highway 50 over Echo Summit and on Highway 88 over Carson Pass.

Tire chains or snow tires were also required on a 75-mile section of Highway 395 along the eastern Sierra between Bridgeport and Carson City, Nev.

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