Archive
Americans’ Wish List of Priorities for the Next President
From Gallup:
Creating good jobs, reducing corruption in the federal government, and reducing the federal budget deficit score highest when Americans rate 12 issues as priorities for the next president to address. Americans assign much less importance to increasing taxes on wealthy Americans and dealing with environmental concerns.
Below are the results of two USA Today/Gallup polls conducted on July 19-22:
Takeaway from the polls: Obama and Romney supporters differ most on healthcare, dealing with environmental concerns, increasing taxes on the wealthy, and education. All of these are much higher priorities for Obama supporters than for Romney supporters. The deficit is the only issue that has a large party difference with Romney supporters saying it is more important.
Source: Americans Want Next President to Prioritize Jobs, Corruption (Gallop)
Hat Tip: The Big Picture
Olympic Medal Standings (7/29/2012)
As it stands, China is leading the Olympic medal count. For an interactive view of the standings, see NBC Olympics.
| Country | Medalists |  |
 |
 |
Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| See names | 6 | 4 | 2 | 12 | |
| See names | 3 | 4 | 3 | 10 | |
| See names | 2 | 3 | 2 | 7 | |
| See names | 2 | 1 | 2 | 5 | |
| See names | 0 | 2 | 3 | 5 |
Sunday’s Political Cartoon
I decided to add a new concept to FTG — every Sunday, I will post a political cartoon. I may still post other cartoons relating to politics or the economy on other days, but at a minimum, expect a weekly Sunday cartoon post.
Enjoy!
Credit: Dan Wasserman — Tribune Media Services
Source: U.S. News & World Report
Balooning Costs of American Health Care
Here is an interesting infographic from the Center For American Progress that details the ballooning costs of health care:
Source: America’s Health Care Costs Are Only Going To Get Worse [Infographic] (Business Insider)
Higher Highs, Higher Lows
Wall Street was on a tear today as the Dow closed up 187.
With that said, Josh Brown, a New York City-based investment advisor and author of The Reformed Broker blog, who earlier this month laid out his case for why he wanted to be long stocks for the second half, produced a chart indicating a pattern of higher highs, and higher lows for the market.
Here is what it looks like:
Facebook’s First Earnings Report: Mixed Results
With much anticipation, Facebook reported its first earnings report and shares plummeted to all-time lows in after hours trading after the company’s earnings report failed to wow investors. Highlighted below are the good and bad news from the report.
Good news, from CNNMoney:
Facebook is still posting strong growth. It generated $1.18 billion in second quarter revenues, up 32% from a year ago. While Facebook reported a net loss of $157 million due mainly to $1.3 billion in compensation expenses tied to stock-based compensation following the IPO, the company did generate a profit of 12 cents per share when excluding those costs.
Bad news, from DealBook:
The company said that its adjusted operating margin shrank nearly 10 percentage points, to 43 percent, from the same time a year ago. And its free cash flow fell more deeply into negative numbers, to negative $171 million, as the company invested more heavily in property and equipment.
Factor in the acquisition of businesses, like the purchase of Instagram, and Facebook’s free cash flow dropped even more, to negative $721 million.
The company also posted declines in growth rates for both its monthly average users and daily average users, trends that are best illustrated with charts.
* Now that Facebook shares have dropped below $24 in after hours trading, is this a buying opportunity or red flag to get out and stay out? I think there is still some room left for the stock to fall in the short-term, but I may become interested again if shares hit the $20-21 level.
