ChasingTheFlow

The Dow Jones industrial average, one of the most-watched markers of the financial world, closed above 10,000 points on Wednesday, a milestone of the stock market’s recovery from the depths of the financial crisis.

At the close, the Dow was up 144.8 points or 1.5 percent at 10,015.86. It had not closed above 10,000 since Oct. 3, 2008.

“The last time we saw 10,000 we were going the wrong way,” said Doreen Mogavero, president of the brokerage Mogavero, Lee & Company, who was on the trading floor Wednesday afternoon. “This is a little bit nicer feeling.”

Last October, the Dow fell below 10,000 as Washington rushed in to avoid an all-out collapse of the financial system.

But now, while the Dow has recovered 3,450 points since bottoming out in early March, it and other major stock indexes are still shadows of their former selves, meaning that many investors are a long way from whole.

The Dow is more than 4,000 points off its all-time highs, and broader measures of the market are down 30 percent from their peaks. And the companies that constitute the stock indexes are still grappling with shaky revenues, credit losses and huge uncertainties about the American economy’s long-term growth.

But on Wednesday, shares pushed higher after a major bank turned a $3.6 billion profit, earnings rose at a major computer-chip maker, and retail sales held up better than expected.

Investors went shopping on the reports, lifting stock markets from London to New York to Mexico City.

The broader Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was 1.75 percent or 18.83 points higher at 1,092.02, and the Nasdaq was up 1.5 percent or 32.34 points at 2,172.23.

The Dow first closed above 10,000 in March 1999. It retreated in the years after the dot-com bubble deflated, then retook 10,000 in late 2003 and peaked at 14,000 in October 2007.

Still, many investment specialists dismiss the significance of such big, round benchmark numbers, and say that no sophisticated investors or hedge funds make investment decisions based on whether a stock index’s total value can be measured in four or five digits.

“It’s psychological,” said Tom Fitzpatrick, chief technical analyst at Citigroup Capital Markets.

The major stock indexes have rebounded by 50 percent or more in a scorching rally that began in early March and galloped higher through the summer and early autumn, as the economy stabilized and once-bleeding companies began to report better profits and rising revenue.

That optimism got louder on Wednesday.

Investors rushed to take positions on companies and commodities that could benefit from a broad upturn in corporate profits and the global economy. Crude oil prices hit their highest levels since last October, topping $75 a barrel. Safety bets like the dollar and government bonds got creamed.

Financial stocks surged after JPMorgan Chase announced a third-quarter profit that trounced expectations. JPMorgan was the first major financial company to announce earnings, and the sight of rising revenues and stabilizing losses at one of Wall Street’s most powerful banks lifted expectations that the financial sector was back on its feet, a year after its near-implosion.

(Continue reading on The New York Times)

The choice of Barack Obama on Friday as the recipient of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, less than nine months into his eventful presidency, was an unexpected honor that elicited praise and puzzlement around the globe.

Normally the prize has been presented, even controversially, for accomplishment. This prize, to a 48-year-old freshman president, for “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” seemed a kind of prayer and encouragement by the Nobel committee for future endeavor and more consensual American leadership.

But the prize quickly loomed as a potential political liability — perhaps more burden than glory — for Mr. Obama. Republicans contended that he had won more for his star power and oratorical skills than for his actual achievements, and even some Democrats privately questioned whether he deserved it.

{Continue reading on The New York Times)

A little over ten days ago Apple launched a shiny new Apple and the Environment microsite showcasing the company’s commitment to greener production and business practise. So I thought it would be appropriate to take a leaf (pun intended) from Apple’s book and look at ways to be more energy efficient in my daily computing.

Mac OS X has some great power-saving features for MacBook users, but there are simple things you can do to squeeze those precious extra minutes of useful life out of your battery. And, to prove it to myself, I’m doing all of my writing today on my MacBook Pro in my garden, without the power cord. Oh yes, I’m living life on the edge, people!

Some of these tips are screamingly obvious; others contribute only modest energy savings. In aggregate, though, these tips can help you get significant life out of a single charge. So here they are, presented in no particular order of importance.

(Continue reading on The Apple Blog)

Few technologies last 30 years, let alone become more dominant with each passing one, but the x86 architecture has done just that.

In an industry known for its planned obsolescence, few technologies have lasted three decades and continue to grow more powerful with each passing year. The few that are out there, like DRAM and Motorola’s 68000 processor, are chip-based.

Add to that list the x86 architecture, which stands alone in the broader computer market now that Sun Microsystems’ Sparc processor is on life support. There have been many attempts to knock off the x86, from Sparc to HP’s PA-RISC to SGI’s MIPS to DEC’s Alpha. But resistance proved futile; many PA-RISC and Alpha engineers now work for Intel on the Itanium, which was also supposed to retire x86.

Meanwhile, the x86 keeps humming along; it now powers everything from the fastest supercomputers on Earth down to handheld music and Internet devices and PCs and servers in between. Soon it will be in phones. Name another architecture that spans eight-core processors to smart phones.

(Continue reading on InternetNews)

The hype cycle around wireless power has been gathering a charge ever since Intel wowed folks at its IDF conference last year with a demo of wireless charging. Then over the summer, a TED video surfaced with a similar demo, starring the CEO of WiTricity. And this week we saw Dell launch a notebook with wireless charging and Nokia join a new industry consortium dedicated to wireless power. But like other aspects of the wireless world, there are a lot of differences, issues and things that average outlet-avoiding consumer needs to know. Here they are:

(Continue reading on GigaOm)

Another little Snow Leopard hack has shown up at MacOSXHints that will go well with the eye candy freaks. If you’re ever Quick Look’ed a folder, you know how you wasted a precious keystroke to no use. Luckily there are Quick look plugins that put out a full list of folder contents for your viewing pleasure.

FreakTheClown over at MacOSXHints has found a tasty hack that embeds the content previews inside the folder preview, while animating them (Watch video). To get it working simply open up the Terminal app, and enter:

defaults write com.apple.finder QLEnableXRayFolders 1 && killall Dock

Change 1 to 0 if you want to revert back. Now watch as Quick Look generates cute content previews, and animates them if you stick around long enough. At this point of time I’m expecting someone to shout out “Vista had it first!”. Exactly. Vista comes with gimmicky stuff like this enabled by default, for all folders displayed in thumbnail view, and they even advertise it on the package. It’s part of the reason why Vista was such a resource hog, as it brought in gimmicky features to substandard hardware. I know, I had to defend the Mac camp! That said, I didn’t notice any lag on the system overall, and even Quick Look sprung out just as quickly (the previews were inserted in later).

(Via Mac OS X Hints and SmokingApples)