your money to get a return. corporate profits are strong. companies have $1.7 trillion, a record amount of money in cash. they re not hiring us but they re keeping the money in the bank and stocks are at a fair value here. when you look at price to earnings ratios, we re right along the historic averages. record highs for prices but the value of stocks is still pretty fair. here s the case against buying stocks. europe is in a recession, that s a problem. washington, the debt theatrics there. if something goes wrong, you could see interest rates start to move higher and that could really hurt the stock market. the american consumer is strapped. how much longer can people with declining incomes go out there and keep spending so much money? and there s something in the markets called profit taking. when you look at a big rally like i just showed you those numbers, sometimes people take money off the table. there are hedge funds who are betting against the market here for all of those rea
at jpmorgan, $1.7 trillion, record amounts of cash, banks are not hiring as much but giving the money back to shareholders and making profits and keeping their cash and stocks at a fair value. you don t see stocks when you look at the price of the stock to the earnings of the company they re not necessarily overvalued so the bulls are saying that s why stocks keep going up. here is the case against stocks quickly, europe is in a recession, washington is in the throes of debt drama, strapped american consumers, and profit taking, up 14% in the past year i m taking some off the table. futures basically at this point pretty mixed, i think you ll get the direction from jobless claims in about 19 minutes. thanks. from drones to dinners we ll talk to congressman steny hoyer, he was at dinner last night with the president, talk about whether republicans and the president, can they ever come to see eye to eye any time soon?
involved in the massacre. they think that robert bales should be tried under afghan law. there s been an outpooring of support for muamba. he suffered a cardiac arrest during a match on saturday. doctors say he will remain under anesthesia for 24 hours. those are the headlines from cnn. i m monita rajpal. world business today starts right now. good morning. from cnn london, i m nina dos santos. and a good afternoon, from cnn hong kong. top stories for monday, march 19th. the head of the imf hails china s economic progress. but also that now is the time to do more. was it cutting debt or risking a recession? and it s a country that s abolished slavery only 30 years ago. but forced labor remains a fact of life. let s go straight to the stock market action here in europe. these markets have been opened for just over two minutes now. and this is where the leading indices are performing as they settle over the first few trades. one stock we re going to keep an eye on
london. here are the headlines. this just coming in. operations at the shipwrecked costa concordia is been temporarily halted because the ship is shifting. the captain is under house arrest as he awaits possible charges of manslaughter and abandoning ship. meanwhile, divers are working to remove a second data recorder from the abandoned ship. they recovered more bodies, bringing the death toll to 11. the arab league is set to end its mission this week, but anti-government protests show no sign of epding any time soon in syria. the government has rejected suggestions that arab league peacekeepers should be deployed to syria. in myanmar, some signs of political change. pro democracy leader aung san suu kyi is registered in parliament. she s running in a country that s still largely controlled by its military. those are the headlines from cnn, the world s news leader. i m zain verjee, and world business today starts now beginning with the coverage of a blackout to protest an
country. that follows a similar ruling in a french court last month. now looking at the big picture, south korea s weaker wan has benefited samsung. today, samsung s share price, however, fell by about 1.5%. but this is because of profit-taking. investors had actually already been expecting this good news out from samsung and that was already priced in. andrew? ramy, thanks very much for that. charles? now, on wall street, two of the big three u.s. stock markets are set to open slightly higher this friday. here is where we are at the moment. the s&p 500 tiptoeing down in terms of the future, very slightly. but gains of a fraction of a percent there foreseen both for the dow and nasdaq futures. again, i think what may work very well be encouraging numbers on the u.s. jobs market already in the price. now, move over compact city