World markets stall ahead of U.S. jobs data

Workers of the Tokyo Stock Exchange react to the rise of the opening price at the first trading of the year on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in Tokyo on Jan. 4, 2013. / AP Photo/Koji Sasahara

FRANKFURT, Germany European stocks traded listlessly Friday as investors awaited key U.S. jobs data for a fresh reading on the health of the world's largest economy. Shares in Japan soared in the first trading there in 2013.

Investors in Japan were reacting to a weakening yen and Washington's temporary skirting of the so-called fiscal cliff in a catchup rally on the first trading day of the year in Tokyo.

But European and U.S. markets have already moved on from the New Year rally, with major indexes edging lower. Stocks were weighed down by news that some officials at the U.S. Federal Reserve favored ending extraordinary stimulus measures this year. Additionally, eurozone purchasing manager's surveys showed only small improvements in the struggling currency union's economy.

• Fed minutes show concerns over bond buying
• ADP survey: 215,000 private sector jobs added in Dec.

By midday in Europe, Britain's FTSE 100 was 0.1 percent lower at 6,042.95. Germany's DAX shed 0.2 percent at 7,741.23 and France's CAC-40 was 0.4 percent lower at 3,705.16. Wall Street looked set for a mixed open. Dow Jones futures fell 0.1 percent to 13,311 while S&P 500 futures rose a similarly tiny 0.03 percent to 1,454.

Japan's benchmark stock index soared on its first trading day of the new year Friday as investors belatedly joined the rally over the last-minute budget deal reached in Washington to avoid steep, automatic tax increases and spending cuts that would have taken effect Tuesday. The measure, however, was largely seen as crisis avoidance -- and puts off hard decisions about how to reduce government spending and deal with America's massive debt.

In Tokyo, the Nikkei 225 jumped 2.8 percent to 10,688.11, its highest closing in 22 months. Much of the enthusiasm for Japanese shares comes from the steadily weakening yen, a big help to Japanese companies that sell abroad.

Investors have high hopes that new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's policies, centered on loose monetary policy and public spending, will pull the world's third-largest economy out of the doldrums.

Export shares boomed. Suzuki Motor Corp. soared 7.9 percent, Nikon Corp. advanced 5.2 percent and Toyota Motor Corp. jumped 6.4 percent.

Elsewhere, however, investor fervor wilted. Hong Kong's Hang Seng index fell 0.3 percent to 23,331.09. South Korea's Kospi lost 0.4 percent to 2,011.94, while Australia's S&P/ASX 200 shed 0.4 percent to 4,723.80. China was mixed.

Wall Street stocks tumbled on Thursday after a transcript of the last meeting of the U.S. Federal Reserve unveiled a divided opinion among central bankers over how long the Fed should keep buying bonds to support the economy.

Investors awaited the U.S. monthly jobs report based on non-farm payrolls due later in the day. The figures often move markets because they are a key indicator for the health of the U.S. economy, which has struggled to accelerate in recent months.

Market expectations were that about 150,000 jobs were added, though the consensus reflects widely varying estimates due to uncertainty over how much the fiscal cliff debate may have weighed on job creation.

"A soft payrolls figure would probably be dismissed as distorted by the uncertainty of the cliff, but a strong figure would be less easy to dismiss and would probably provoke a bigger market reaction," said Adam Cole at RBC Capital Markets.

Benchmark oil for February delivery fell $1.24 cents to $91.68 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

In currencies, the euro fell 0.3 percent $1.3003. The dollar rose 1.1 percent against the Japanese yen to 88.22 yen.

[piausa]

There is a simple solution to poor US job creation. Show me a country with weak property rights and I'll show you a country with a weak economy and high unemployment. It's that simple.

Just because they call it "reform" doesn't mean it is.

"patent reform"...America Invents Act, vers 2.0, 3.0...

"This is not a patent reform bill" Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) complained, despite other democrats praising the overhaul. "This is a big corporation patent giveaway that tramples on the right of small inventors."

Senator Cantwell is right. All these bills do is legalize theft. Just because they call it "reform" doesn't mean it is. The paid puppets of banks, huge multinationals, and China continue to brain wash and bankrupt America.

They should have called these bills the America STOPS Inventing Act or ASIA, because that's where they're sending all our jobs.

The patent bill (vers 2, 3, etc) is nothing less than another monumental federal giveaway for banks, huge multinationals, and China and an off shoring job killing nightmare for America. Even the leading patent expert in China has stated the bill will help them steal our inventions. Congress passed it and Obama signed it. Who are they working for??

Patent reform is a fraud on America. Congress and Obama are both to blame. This bill will not do what they claim it will. What it will do is help large multinational corporations maintain their monopolies by robbing and destroying their small entity and startup competitors (so it will do exactly what the large multinationals paid for) and with them the jobs they would have created. The bill will make it harder and more expensive for small firms to get and enforce their patents. Without patents we cant get funded. In this way large firms are able to play king of the hill and keep their small competitors from reaching the top as they have. Yet small entities create the lion's share of new jobs. According to recent studies by the Kauffman Foundation and economists at the U.S. Census Bureau, "startups aren't everything when it comes to job growth. They're the only thing." This bill is a wholesale destroyer of US jobs. Those wishing to help fight this bill should contact us as below.

Small entities and inventors have been given far too little voice on this bill when one considers that they rely far more heavily on the patent system than do large firms who can control their markets by their size alone. The smaller the firm, the more they rely on patents -especially startups and individual inventors. Congress and Obama tinkering with patent law while gagging inventors is like a surgeon operating before examining the patient.

Those wishing to help fight big business giveaways and set America on a course for sustainable prosperity, not large corporation lobbied poverty, should contact us as below and join the fight as we are building a network of inventors and other stakeholders to lobby Congress to restore property rights for all patent owners -large and small.

Please see http://truereform.piausa.org/default.html for a different/opposing view on patent reform.
http://docs.piausa.org/