welcome to the show today. the headlines today for the new year, in asia, the nikkei hits a high. in europe, nestle sells to novartis. in the u.s., fed chairman ben bernanke says poor oversight of mortgage lenders led to the housing bubble and not the fed housing rates. welcome to the show. welcome to 2010. good to see you all this morning. let s get straight into some data. we are told by the pundits that unemployment is a lagging indicator and that pmis are a forward looking indicator. let s get into pmis. new orders index 57.2 above expected 57. manufacturing pmi showing fastest growth since may 2008 over in germany. there s been a feeling for a long time there s a central core of europe doing well. the french december manufacturing input prices have blown away expectations at 59.9. the november figure is 54.7. that s the highest since september 2008. i m looking elsewhere at some of the other data. the overall figure slightly more tempered perhaps. the final manuf
it s bertha coombs. u.s. housing and the state of the american consumer will be under the incident investor spotlight today. and i m christine tan. in asia, honda profits nearly triple. and i m steve sedgwick. the bank shares tumble continuing the sell-off from ing from yesterday. hello. if you re joining us in the u.s. at this hour, welcome to the start of your business day on worldwide exchange. we re on an hour later this whole week due to the understand of daylight savings time in europe, a week ahead of the end of that here in the u.s. we will turn our clocks ahead this coming weekend on halloween eve. this morning here in the u.s., afternoon in asia, hello to you there, as well. we ve got the futures pretty much mixed. we ve got the dow futures above fair value by about 20 points or so. we ve got nasdaq futures slightly better and also s&p futures, as well, a little bit ahead of fair value. we re going to have just a bit of data today. we re going to see the cas
1933, 1938, both those times ended up giving up those gains at least temporarily. a lot of what s going on in the u.s. is a reaction to you can go straight off, up 100% in two years, overdue for some sort of correction. we had a mild correction last year, 15%. i wouldn t be surprised if this is another 10% 20-to-15% correction, certainly viable but it s a matter of having a plan not letting your emotions get the best of you. and that goes in both directions. we had people today champing at the bit to jump in and buy and people panicking and wanting to sell, we tell people, take a deep breath, execute your plan, don t react emotionally. ralph, if you were to look at businesses most directly threatened, obviously the electronics business is large out of japan, the auto industry is large. how much of those two industries and any others are have c
oil, gold, everybody become worth less, why? the fear trade, the risk-on trade, people have a tendency to panic when they don t know what s going on. you don t know how to discount the impact of a possible nuclear meltdown in japan. it s too random for anybody to figure out. we advise people, have a plan, execute it, the time to worry about where the exit roads not when the wings are falling off the plane but in advance. if you re reacting to this, you re making a bad decision. ralph, what is the greatest explicit economic ripple that you see coming out of the known disruptions in japan? the known liabilities? well, first of all i have about 30 family member there s. my wife s from fukushima and they ve been telling me plants in the area are all they are v. all fared fairly well. the infrastructure s destroyed. they can t get power into the buildings. the problem here is that the