More: Why you should resist buying Facebook on its first day of trading

More: Facebook IPO: How long will the euphoria last?

To rapturous applause from employees, Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg rang the bell to kick off trading on the Nasdaq market at the company’s Silicon Valley headquarters at 6:30 a.m. Pacific time.

Shares in Facebook begin publicly trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange for the first time Friday at 11:00 a.m., at an opening price of $38 US. Follow our live blog as The Star covers the social networking giant’s historic first trading day, including analysis and reaction.

Source

The Mortgage Bankers Association said Wednesday that the percentage of loans delinquent or already in the foreclosure process during the first quarter was 11.33%, the lowest level since 2008. That was a decrease of 1.2 percentage points from a quarter earlier and 0.98 percentage point below the rate 12 months earlier.

"Delinquencies are clearly continuing to improve," said Michael Fratantoni, the MBA’s vice president for research and economics.

Another hopeful sign is the falling percentage of borrowers who are just getting into trouble, ones who have missed one payment. That’s useful for predicting the more seriously delinquencies to come.

"Newer delinquencies, loans one payment past due as of March 31, are down to the lowest level since the middle of 2007, indicating fewer new problems we will need to deal with in the future," said Fratantoni.

These new delinquencies represented 3.1% of loans outstanding, according to Jay Brinkmann, the MBA’s chief economist. That matches the long-term historical average of 3.1% going back to the 1990s, he said.

"Basically, we’re back to normal on that count," he said.

One factor that has slowed the healing is the continued difficulty lenders face moving foreclosures through the pipeline, especially in states that involve the courts in the foreclosure process guaranteed online payday loans.

In the so-called judicial states, 6.9% of loans are in foreclosure inventory, loans that the banks have begun the legal process of foreclosing on but have not yet taken control of the property through a foreclosure sale.

In non-judicial states, where foreclosures are handled by trustees such as title companies, only 2.9% of loans are in foreclosure inventory.

The difference is mostly the speed that banks can move defaults through the system, said Brinkmann.

Bank of America offering up to $30,000 for short sales

One way banks have started to reduce foreclosures is that they are now encouraging short sales, the deals in which borrowers sell their homes for less than what the owe, leaving the banks to absorb the losses.

That can also move delinquent borrowers out of the homes more quickly.

Banks also know that short sales are less costly to them than foreclosures, in which expenses such as property taxes, insurance and maintenance can mount up. In addition, homes repossessed in foreclosures often come to the bank in poor condition, and they command lower prices, on average, than short sales.

The mortgage lenders now often pay large incentives to borrowers willing to cooperate in getting short sales done. For instance, Bank of America is offering some struggling homeowners payments of up to $30,000 if they sell their homes in a short sale and avoid ending up in foreclosure.  

Source

The Commerce Department says retail sales rose 0.1 percent April. Retail spending had risen 0.7 percent in March and 1 percent in February.

Some of the drop was the result of lower gas prices business cards design. But excluding gasoline station sales, retail sales rose just 0.2 percent. That means consumer spending, which accounts for 70 percent of economic activity, got off to a sluggish start for the April-June quarter.

Source

Originally conceived as a photo-sharing site, the year-old company became a Silicon Valley punchline after its disasterously overhyped launch. Major investors like Sequoia Capital and Bain Capital flung $41 million at the startup, only to see it implode within days of going live. Color’s top product executives quickly headed out the door.

Nguyen shrugged and pivoted. He’s got plenty of cash in the bank to experiment with, and no shortage of ideas guaranteed personal loan approval. The video market is exactly the kind of wide-open fiend that Nguyen, a serial entrepreneur who sold his last venture to Apple (, Fortune 500), loves to play in.

"We want to give people a glimpse of the future and deliver it as fast as possible," he says. 

Source

Chesapeake has been aggressively selling oil and gas assets, but its stock tumbled Friday after the company suggested that some of its planned sales could be delayed. Investors, who worried about a cash crunch if any sales were delayed or halted, sent Chesapeake’s stock down 13.8 percent to close at $14.81 on Friday.

But the Oklahoma City company’s shares climbed 3.7 percent to $15.35 in after-hours trading on news of the unsecured loan.

“This short-term loan from Goldman and Jefferies provides us with significant additional financial flexibility as we execute our asset sales during the remainder of 2012,” Chairman and CEO Aubrey McClendon said in a statement.

Chesapeake said late Friday that it plans to complete $9 billion to $11.5 billion in asset sales during the remainder of 2012 and will use part of the proceeds from those sales to pay back the loan. The company previously outlined plans to sell as much as $14 billion of assets this year.

Chesapeake anticipates closing on the sale of its Permian Basin property in Texas and its Mississippi Lime joint venture during the third quarter, saying it has received strong interest for both assets from potential buyers.

Chesapeake also said that it will use the loan’s net proceeds to repay borrowings under an existing revolving credit facility. The new facility expires on Dec. 2, 2017.

Shares of the company had drifted lower earlier on Friday after a published report said the company didn’t tell investors about $1.4 billion in liabilities.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Chesapeake has raised $6.4 billion since 2007 by signing oil and gas production deals with a number of banks. Those deals are essentially debts that Chesapeake must repay with oil and natural gas. The Journal said the full cost of meeting those obligations over the next 10 years wasn’t disclosed.

Chesapeake spokesman Michael Kehs disagreed. He said a portion of those liabilities were included in a May 1 regulatory filing as part of its operating costs for 2012. Kehs said the rest of the $1.4 billion is reflected in an estimate of future net revenue from Chesapeake’s oil and natural gas reserves, which the company put at $48 billion in a Feb. 29 regulatory filing.

A series of negative headlines have called Chesapeake’s leadership and oversight into question recently. During the past few weeks, news reports revealed that McClendon took out personal loans from a company while that company was planning to buy Chesapeake assets. Reuters also reported that McClendon ran a private hedge fund that made bets on the price of oil and natural gas _ commodities that Chesapeake produces.

Chesapeake has stripped McClendon of his board chairmanship. It’s also ending a program that allows McClendon to make personal investments in the company’s wells. On Friday, Chesapeake said McClendon received $108.6 million from January to April from sales of company well assets.

Source

The earnings beat Wall Street’s expectations. But its shares fell more than 4 percent in morning trading Wednesday as Macy’s failed to make a conforming boost in its earnings guidance for the year.

That spooked investors who are worried that consumer spending is slowing amid a choppy recovery.

Macy’s, which also operates the upscale Bloomingdale’s chain, said that its net income rose to $181 million, or 43 cents per share, for the three-month period ended April 28. That’s up from $131 million, or 30 cents per share, a year ago.

Revenue rose 4.3 percent to $6.14 billion from $5.89 billion a year ago.

Analysts surveyed by FactSet had expected earnings of 40 cents per share on revenue of $6.14 billion.

“The momentum in our business at Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s continued to build in the first quarter, with sales and earnings exceeding our expectations going into the year,” Terry J. Lundgren, Macy’s chairman, president and CEO, said in a statement. “The quarterly data clearly demonstrates the strength of our results as we continue to implement our strategies.”

Macy’s is the first in a series of major retailers reporting first-quarter results that should offer clues into consumer spending, which accounts for 70 percent of U.S. economic activity. Analysts will be carefully studying the reports because the economy is at a critical juncture.

A flurry of economic data has sparked worries over a spring slowdown for the third year in a row. Companies have slowed their hiring in March and April. The stock market has lost momentum as the European debt crisis accelerates. And housing remains weak. April’s sales reports from retailers, including from Macy’s, also showed a pullback from shoppers but warm weather and an early Easter helped to pull sales forward. Analysts believe that May results will offer more clarity on the consumers’ mindset.

Macy’s has been able to deftly navigate its way through the recession and a slow recovery by embracing its own initiatives. The chain has benefited from the strategy Lundgren conceived to tailor merchandise to local markets as consumer spending slowed down in 2007. A better trained sales force also helped. The company has also locked in exclusive brands including its Material Girl fashion collection, created by pop star Madonna and her daughter Lourdes, and Tommy Hilfiger sportswear.

Macy’s revenue at stores open at least a year climbed 4.4 percent for the quarter, though it had a weak finish to the period. The measure was up 1.2 percent for April. Rival Kohl’s posted a meager 0.2 percent increase for the quarter. J.C. Penney is expected to post a decline for that measure as it is in the midst of overhauling a new pricing strategy, launched Feb. 1. With the pricing strategy, Penney got rid of hundreds of sale events and instead is focusing on everyday prices and deeper promotions that last an entire month.

Investors were hoping that Macy’s would benefit from rival Penney’s period of transition since the new pricing will take time to resonate with shoppers, who are used to racks of discounts. Penney’s pricing strategy is part of an overall transformation spearheaded by its new CEO Ron Johnson.

Still, Macy’s only slightly increased its annual guidance for revenue at stores open at least a year. It now expects that figure to be up 3.7 percent, compared with its earlier guidance of 3.5 percent.

Macy’s reaffirmed its earnings guidance for the year of $3.25 to $3.30 per share. Analysts had expected $3.39 per share, according to FactSet.

Macy’s shares fell $1.60, or 4.1 percent, to $37.91 in morning trading. They peaked for the past year at $42.17 a week ago. They traded as low as $22.66 in mid-August.

Source

One of the region’s biggest casinos is about to get a new owner.

Penn National Gaming on Monday announced a deal to buy Harrah’s Maryland Heights Casino from Caesars Entertainment for $610 million. The purchase, expected to close by the end of the year, will give the fast-growing Pennsylvania gaming company a deeper foothold in the $1.1 billion St. Louis casino market, eight years after it bought locally based Argosy Gaming.

“The planned addition of Harrah’s St. Louis will further expand Penn National’s regional operating platform with a facility that is extremely well-positioned in a large metropolitan market,” said Penn CEO Peter Carlino.

The casino, which opened on the Missouri River in 1997, is the region’s second-busiest by revenue. Gamblers spent $268.4 million there last year, according to the Missouri Gaming Commission, down 1.2 percent from 2010.

It has a 500-room hotel, 4,600-car parking garage and 2,600 slot machines. But the property has seen relatively little investment in recent years, even as new rivals around the region have opened up and old ones have expanded.

Its parent company, Caesars, was acquired by private equity firms in 2008, and went public in February. Chief executive Gary Loveman has said he hoped to sell some properties to fund new projects.

“The sale of this property exemplifies our strategy to maximize returns from our mix of assets through investments in new markets as well as occasional divestitures,” he said. “We are committed to expanding our distribution network into growth markets that have the potential for high returns no fax payday loan.”

While Caesars is selling, Penn has been growing.

The company bought a casino in Las Vegas last year and has opened new properties in Maryland, Ohio and, just this February, Wyandotte County, Kansas. It has had a presence in the St. Louis market — owning the Argosy Alton — since buying Argosy Gaming in 2004 for $1.4 billion.

Having two casinos in the St. Louis market could help Penn save money on marketing and back office costs. But spokesman Joe Jaffoni said that synergy was not a major factor in the deal.

“(Maryland Heights) is just a good asset. It’s got a good long-term operating history,” he said. “It’s pretty much in the Penn National sweet spot.”

After the sale goes through, Penn will re-brand the casino to its “Hollywood” brand, which it uses at 11 other properties and “will invoke the glamour of 1930s art deco Hollywood.”

The deal will need approval by the Missouri Gaming Commission, which vets all casino-license holders in the state. Penn already owns a property in Kansas City, so that process may be quicker than if it were a new company to the state.

The casino employed nearly 1,900 people in 2010, according to Maryland Heights financial documents. There was no word Monday on how the sale might affect workers there.

Source

The United States generated just 115,000 jobs last month, well below expectations and the fewest since October. The unemployment rate fell to 8.1 percent, but for the wrong reason _ workers abandoned the labor force.

From December through February, employers added 252,000 jobs a month on average. But the figure dipped in March and dropped further in April, raising doubts about an economic recovery that can’t seem to reach escape velocity.

The report Friday by the Labor Department indicated “an economy that is losing momentum _ especially on the jobs front,” said Tom Porcelli, chief U.S. economist at RBC Capital Markets.

It also dealt a blow to President Barack Obama’s re-election prospects. His presumed Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, called the report “very disappointing.”

Romney said the country should be adding 500,000 jobs a month and said any unemployment rate above 4 percent is “not cause for celebration.” The rate has not been that low seen since the last days of the Clinton administration.

“We seem to be slowing down, not speeding up,” Romney said on Fox News Channel. “This is not progress.”

Obama, at a Virginia high school to promote a freeze on interest rates for student loans, focused on the six-month total of more than 1 million jobs created. But he said: “We’ve got to do more.”

The 8.1 percent unemployment rate is the lowest since January 2009, the month Obama was sworn in.

Still, the weak job growth caused stocks to fall sharply on Wall Street. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index lost 1.6 percent and closed its worst week of the year. The price of oil fell more than 4 percent because of fears of a slowing economy, which should mean lower gasoline prices soon.

Some of the slower job growth may be because an unusually warm winter allowed construction firms and other companies to add workers ahead of schedule in January and February, effectively stealing jobs from the spring.

The weaker job growth in March and April “looks like some weather payback,” said Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist at Capital Economics.

The balmy weather probably exaggerated job growth in the winter and makes it look small now, Ashworth said. He expects job creation to settle into a lackluster range between 175,000 and 200,000.

The economy may not be growing fast enough to produce anything stronger. Economists surveyed by The Associated Press expect the economy to grow 2.5 percent this year. That is consistent with monthly job growth of only about 135,000, according to calculations by Brad DeLong, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley.

That is barely enough to keep up with population growth not nearly enough to recover the jobs lost in the Great Recession quickly. At this year’s pace, it will take until May 2014 to restore employment to its 2008 peak of 138 million.

The United States has only recovered 3.8 million, or 43 percent, of the 8.8 million jobs lost between the peak, in February 2008, and January 2010.

David Boyce, 30, is one of those still looking for work. He lost his sales job two years ago and ran out of unemployment benefits in September. He and his wife, who is working reduced hours as a nanny, are struggling to get by.

“We lived off savings for a while,” he said. “And now we’re living off ramen noodles basically.”

April’s hiring slump was broad. Only two of 10 large categories tracked by the government, retailers and professional and business services, hired more workers in April than they did in March Low fee payday loans.

The categories of manufacturing and education and health services added the fewest jobs in five months. Hotels, restaurants and entertainment companies added the fewest in eight months.

Friday’s report noted that that the average hourly wage went up one penny in April. Over the past year, average pay has increased 1.8 percent, almost a full percentage point shy of the inflation rate, which means the average American isn’t keeping up with price increases.

Even April’s bright spot, the lower unemployment rate, fades on closer inspection.

The government only counts people as unemployed if they’re looking for work. And 340,000 Americans stopped looking and dropped out of the labor force in April, which is why the unemployment rate fell slightly. The dropouts mean just 63.6 percent of working-age Americans were working or looking for work, the lowest since 1981.

It has been almost three years since the Great Recession ended in June 2009. Economists say countries usually flounder for several years after a financial crisis like the one that hit the United States in 2008.

Damaged banks are reluctant to lend. Borrowers who took on too much debt in the good times change their ways, cut their spending and try to repair their finances. The economy grows slowly.

And after this financial crisis, the economy is trying to gather speed without two of the engines that usually help power economic recoveries: housing and government spending.

A housing collapse caused the crisis, and home construction isn’t doing much to lead the way out. Housing hasn’t contributed to economic growth since 2005, though a recent burst of apartment construction might change that this year.

Government hiring also normally boosts employment after a recession. Not this time. Cities, towns and counties, especially, have been cutting employment. Private employers have added jobs every month since February 2010, noted Gary Burtless, senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution. Over that same period, government payrolls have dropped by 500,000.

Local governments are beginning to recover some of the tax revenue lost in the recession and its aftermath. But government hiring hasn’t started yet: 15,000 government workers, most of them in local schools, lost their jobs in April.

The recovery has one thing going for it: Even meager gains in jobs will feed on themselves and create growth that eventually becomes self-sustaining. The hiring leads to spending, which stimulates demand and leads to more hiring, which leads to more spending. The country has created 1.5 million jobs in eight months.

The economists AP surveyed said they believe the economy has entered such a “virtuous cycle.” But they said they don’t expect unemployment to reach a healthy level _ below 6 percent _ until 2015 or later.

Until then, many companies are likely to behave like the North American division of Philips, the healthcare and consumer products company. It is hiring, but more slowly than in years past.

The company is trying to fill 400 jobs, including 127 in Cleveland, where it has a plant that makes medical imaging equipment. Things are improving, said Cynthia Burkhardt, the company’s vice president of talent acquisition. But “I wouldn’t say that we’re full steam ahead right now. Everyone’s cautious about the economy.”

Source

It’s the first time oil has dropped below $100 since February 13. Benchmark crude hit $99.99 in morning trading.

Prices are falling as Western nations plan talks with Iran over its nuclear program, easing fears of a protracted standoff in the Middle East.

Economists are also increasingly focused on weakening oil demand. American oil consumption has dropped 5.3 percent in the first quarter. World oil supplies are also growing.

Oil has crossed the $100 mark 21 times during the past year. It rose as high as $113.93 per barrel last April and fell as low as $75.67 per barrel on Oct. 4.

Source