U.S. Stocks Advance; Apple Net Soars 78%

Arthi Gupta
21 Jul, 2010
New York City

U.S. stocks trade higher after Apple Inc. third quarter net soared 78%. U.S. Senate extends unemployment benefits. IBM completes acquisition of BigFix. BP agrees to sell North America and Egypt asset deals with Apache.

[R]9:35 AM New York – U.S. stocks trade higher after Apple Inc. third quarter net soared 78%. U.S. Senate extends unemployment benefits. IBM completes acquisition of BigFix. BP agrees to sell North America and Egypt asset deals with Apache.[/R]

U.S. and European markets rose after better-than-expected earnings from Apple. Mixed trends were seen in the Asian markets.

Apple Inc. third quarter profit jumped 78% from last year, driven by strong sales of Macintosh computers, iPhones and iPad multimedia devices.

The maker of personal computers and iPhones said third quarter revenues rose 62% to $15.7 billion from $9.7 billion a year ago. Net income in the quarter rose 78% to $3.25 billion or $3.51 per diluted share compared to net income of $1.83 billion or $2.01 per share a year ago.

The Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke''s will testify before the Senate Banking Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs to deliver the semi-annual Congressional testimony.

The International Monetary Fund stated in a report released on Tuesday that financial stability should be primarily addressed using a macroprudential framework based on robust rules. The IMF noted that the effective use of tools such as capital requirements and buffers, forward-looking loss provisioning, liquidity ratios, and prudent collateral valuation, could reduce systemic risk by mitigating procyclicality and the build-up of structural vulnerabilities.

IMF directors also agreed that price stability should remain the primary objective of monetary policy and emphasized the importance of preserving central banks'' hard-won credibility, which has been critical in anchoring inflation expectations. They noted, however, that increasing efforts should be made to monitor and assess systemic financial developments and risks.

The U.S. Senate passed a bill to extend unemployment benefits for millions of workers by a 60-40 vote on Tuesday. The bill extends the program retroactively through November 2010.

IBM announced that it completed the acquisition of BigFix, Inc., a privately-held company based in Emeryville, California. Financial details were not disclosed.

The closing comes less than three weeks after IBM''s July 1st announcement that it had entered into an agreement to acquire BigFix to accelerate its smart data center and security initiatives.

BP announced today that it entered into several agreements to sell upstream assets in the United States, Canada and Egypt to Apache Corporation. The deals, together worth a total of $7 billion, comprise BP’s Permian Basin assets in Texas and south-east New Mexico, US; its Western Canadian upstream gas assets; and the Western Desert business concessions and East Badr El-din exploration concession in Egypt.

The decision to make these divestments follows the announcement made by BP last month that it was increasing its target for divestments to $10 billion.

The Mortgage Bankers Association reported today that the Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume increased 7.6% on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier. On an unadjusted basis, the Index increased 19.5% compared with the previous week.

The Refinance Index increased 8.6% from the previous week and was at the peak since the week ending May 15, 2009. The refinance share of mortgage activity increased to 79.4% of total applications from 78.7% the previous week.