apple crumble
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Stocks continue to make extremely modest moves.
First the scoreboard:
Dow: 13,534, +27.5, +0.2 percent

S&P 500: 1,472, +1.6, +0.1 percent

NASDAQ: 3,110, -6.7, -0.2 percent
And now the top stories:
  • Shares of Apple fell 3 percent today.  This was also the first time the stock closed below $500 in a while.  The price move was also major drag on the stock market indices.  Apple continues to be slammed on reports of supply order reductions.  Nomura analysts Stuart Jeffrey and Woo Jin Ho reportedly slashed their price target on the stock to $530, which is obviously above today's closing price of $485.

  • Retail sales jumped 0.5 percent in December, which was much better than the 0.2 percent gain economists were looking for.  Excluding autos and gas, sales jumped 0.6 percent, which was also much stronger than expected.

  • The latest reading of producer prices showed that inflation remains low and slow. Prices fell 0.2 percent from November.  Economists were looking for a decline of 0.1 percent.  Excluding food and energy prices, prices climbed by just 0.1 percent, which was lower than the 0.2 percent climb forecasted.

  • On a year-over-year basis, producer prices were up 1.3 percent.  During the December meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, the Fed said that it would use unemployment rate and inflation rate thresholds to help guide monetary policy. The inflation rate threshold was 2.5 percent. This puts today's low PPI numbers into some context.

  • National home prices jumped 7.4 percent year-over-year in November, reported CoreLogic.  The was the biggest increase since May 2006.  “We still have a long way to go to return to 2005-2006 levels, but all signals currently point to a progressive stabilization of the housing market and the positive trend in home price appreciation to continue into 2013," said Anand Nallathambi, CEO of CoreLogic.