Airline Stocks Gain Strength: Wall Street Fake-Out or Real?

Thursday, April 11th, 2013
By Mitchell Clark, B.Comm. for Profit Confidential

The golden rule works.

In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, there is an Irish inn and pub called the ?County Clare.? I happened to be walking around looking for breakfast and checked it out.

I sat down, ate one of the best breakfasts ever, and then learned it was complimentary. I immediately said that I was not a guest. The answer? ?Don?t worry about it.?

Needless to say, I changed hotel reservations and was very happy about it.

On the stock market, Marriott Vacations Worldwide Corporation (NYSE/VAC) has been exceptionally strong over the last two years. The company?s earnings are expected to jump this year, along with the entire vacation/travel industry. Marriott?s stock chart is featured below:

Chart courtesy of www.StockCharts.com

Airline stocks are also doing exceptionally well on the stock market. Airline stocks experienced a powerful breakout recently, and Wall Street earnings estimates are increasing for these stocks.

One of the best-performing lodging companies on the stock market is Wyndham Worldwide Corporation (NYSE/WYN). The company operates several brands, including Ramada, Days Inn, Super 8, Howard Johnson, Microtel Inns & Suites, Wyndham Vacation Resorts, and Shell Vacations Club.

A number of lodging stocks have high price-to-earnings multiples, but Wyndham?s is more reasonable.

In its last earnings report, Wyndham beat the Street on both revenues and earnings. Fourth-quarter revenues grew nine percent to $1.1 billion, while earnings grew to $81.0 million, or $0.57 per diluted share, compared to earnings of $56.0 million, or $0.37 per diluted share, for the fourth quarter of 2011. Wyndham?s stock chart is featured below:

Chart courtesy of www.StockCharts.com

The fourth quarter of 2012 showed improvement in travel industry numbers. Whether this improvement is sustainable or not is a whole other question. (See ?Breakouts All Around; Final Countdown or the Beginning of a New Cycle??)

A number of Wall Street analysts are saying that airline stocks have a lot more room to move higher on the stock market. This is partly because of the exceptional underperformance of airline stocks and the pent-up demand to bring up their valuations.

Delta Air Lines, Inc. (NYSE/DAL) is up 50% on the stock market since last December,with trading volume recently spiking much higher. Of course, the most annoying airline for passengers is usually the most beneficial for investors.

On the stock market, priceline.com Incorporated (NASDAQ/PCLN) is now a Wall Street favorite. Last quarter, the company?s gross total bookings grew 33% to $6.6 billion, and earnings grew to $289 million, or $5.63 per diluted share, compared to $226 million, or $4.41 per diluted share, for the fourth quarter of 2011.

The company is predicting a very good first quarter with solid growth in gross total bookings and earnings. But priceline.com does a lot of business in Europe, and company management cited ongoing uncertainty in the eurozone for holding the company back.

Still, the company?s growth in the face of generally lackluster economic conditions is impressive.

First-quarter earnings season is here, and a great investor benchmark will be the results from the lodging and airline industries. These companies are good economic and stock market indicators.

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Source: http://www.profitconfidential.com/stock-market/airline-stocks-gain-strength-wall-street-fake-out-or-real/

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Despite tensions, NKorea readies for festivities

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) ? As the world watches to see what North Korea's next move will be in a high-stakes game of brinksmanship with the United States, residents of its capital aren't hunkering down in bunkers and preparing for the worst. Instead, they are out on the streets en masse getting ready for the birthday of national founder Kim Il Sung ? the biggest holiday of the year.

The festivities leading up to Kim's birthday come amid fears that North Korea may be planning to test launch a new missile in retaliation for what it claims are provocative war games by U.S. and South Korean troops just across the Korean border. Even at such a seemingly innocuous setting as a flower show in Kim's honor, North Korea's warning that it is prepared to strike back if pushed too far is on prominent display.

This year's exhibition of "Kimilsungia" flowers ? which North Koreans claim their scientists have bred into the most beautiful orchids in the world ? is built around mockups of red-tipped missiles, slogans hailing the military and reminders of the threats that North Koreans feel are all around them.

"It is because we have a nuclear deterrent like nuclear weapons that we are able to live our normal lives and have a beautiful flower exhibition like this," said Kim Sung Sim, a Pyongyang greenhouse worker who contributed to the display, which opened Friday.

The escalation of tensions comes as North Korea is also celebrating a slew of anniversaries for its young leader, Kim Jong Un, who took power in December 2011 following the death of his father, longtime leader Kim Jong Il. He was named head of the Workers' Party a year ago Thursday, and marks his first year as head of the National Defense Commission, the top government body, on Saturday. The birthday of his grandfather, Kim Il Sung, on Monday is the most important of the national holidays designed to cement loyalty to the ruling Kim family.

Whether this year's celebrations will include a missile launch or some other action that could escalate the tensions remains to be seen.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who arrived in Seoul on Friday for talks with South Korean officials, warned the North not to test fire a missile.

"If Kim Jong Un decides to launch a missile, whether it's across the Sea of Japan or some other direction, he will be choosing willfully to ignore the entire international community," Kerry told reporters.

He said the test would be a "huge mistake" for Kim.

A senior U.S military official told reporters there was no sign of military movements in the North and no real prospect of war. He spoke on condition of anonymity, saying he wasn't authorized to speak publicly about military intelligence.

But that doesn't mean North Korea won't put on some sort of a military show.

During last year's celebrations, North Korea failed in an attempt to send a satellite into space aboard a long-range rocket. The U.S. and its allies criticized the launch as a covert test of ballistic missile technology. North Korea tried again in December and succeeded. That was followed by the country's third underground nuclear test on Feb. 12.

Officials in Seoul and Washington say Pyongyang appears to be preparing to test fire a medium-range missile designed to be capable of reaching Guam. Foreign experts have dubbed the missile the "Musudan" after the northeastern village where North Korea has a launch pad, and say it has a range of 3,500 kilometers (2,180 miles).

A medium- or long-range missile test would be particularly significant because North Korea may now be capable of arming a ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency concluded in an assessment revealed Thursday. Kerry refused to comment specifically Friday on that intelligence report, but said the North is still some time away from having a nuclear bomb that is "small, light and diversified."

South Korean officials have said they do not believe Pyongyang can place a nuclear warhead on a ballistic missile yet, but have put their military on high alert. Japan has also deployed PAC-3 missile interceptor units around Tokyo to protect its capital.

A Chinese city near the border with North Korea staged an air raid drill on Thursday amid the tensions, state media said. Authorities in Huichen, a city of 250,000 people in Jilin province, sounded alarms in residential areas and led participants to underground shelters, the China News Service reported.

It wasn't clear how long the drill had been planned or how many people took part. Calls to the city's spokesman and civil air defense office rang unanswered.

Kerry, who is also visiting China and Japan, is hoping to get Beijing to join the United States in pressuring Pyongyang.

China backed North Korea with troops during the 1950-53 Korean War and has been a major economic pipeline for the impoverished country. With little arable land, North Korea has struggled to feed its people, with two-thirds of the population of 24 million grappling with chronic food shortages, according to the World Food Program.

In Pyongyang on Friday, thousands of schoolchildren were amassed at Kim Il Sung Stadium for the induction of second-graders from around the country into the Korean Children's Union, one of the first steps into North Korea's political structure. They pledged to study hard and to build up strength to defend their nation. Retired military officers helped them tie on red scarves to complete the ritual.

"The U.S is our sworn enemy," said Ri So Hyang, a 13-year-old taking part in the ceremony. She said her brother had just enlisted. "I hope he'll fight well against the U.S. imperialists since I cannot."

Elsewhere around the city, workers tidied up buildings and roads alongside banners that read "Defend to the death" and called on citizens to become "human bombs" for leader Kim Jong Un.

Though few North Koreans have access to international media, and instead get their news from state media, they said they were aware of the tensions with the U.S.

At the flower exhibition, a guide called the current political situation "complicated."

"I don't know whether there will be a missile launch test, but if we do I think it will be just for national defense," Kim Jong Gum said. "And I think there's no need for other countries to try to tell us what to do and what not to do."

___

Associated Press writers Jean H. Lee and Jon Chol Jin in Pyongyang; Bradley Klapper in Seoul, South Korea; and Kimberly Dozier and Robert Burns in Washington contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/despite-tensions-nkorea-readies-festivities-130956478.html

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Mental puzzles underlie music?s delight

Brain activity reflects how much people enjoy a particular new tune

By Meghan Rosen

Web edition: April 11, 2013

Enlarge

SOUNDS GOOD

Listening to new music sparks activity in brain regions that analyze sound (green), recognize patterns (blue), process emotions (red), and determine rewards (rainbow, at bottom). Activity in the nucleus accumbens (rainbow) could predict how much money people were willing to spend on a new song. This person (brain image shown) wanted to pay the maximum amount ? $2 ? for a song.

Credit: Courtesy of V. Salimpoor

Whether you?re rocking out to Britney Spears or soaking up Beethoven?s classics, you may be enjoying music because it stimulates a guessing game in your brain.

This mental puzzling explains why humans like music, a new study suggests. By looking at activity in just one part of the brain, researchers could predict roughly how much volunteers dug a new song.

When people hear a new tune they like, a clump of neurons deep within their brains bursts into excited activity, researchers report April 12 in Science. The blueberry-sized cluster of cells, called the nucleus accumbens, helps make predictions and sits smack-dab in the ?reward center? of the brain ? the part that floods with feel-good chemicals when people eat chocolate or have sex.

The berry-sized bit acts with three other regions in the brain to judge new jams, MRI scans showed. One region looks for patterns, another compares new songs to sounds heard before, and the third checks for emotional ties.

As our ears pick up the first strains of a new song, our brains hustle to make sense of the music and figure out what?s coming next, explains coauthor Valorie Salimpoor, who is now at the Baycrest Rotman Research Institute in Toronto. And when the brain?s predictions are right (or pleasantly surprising), people get a little jolt of pleasure.

All four brain regions work overtime when people listen to new songs they like, report the researchers, including Robert Zatorre of the Montreal Neurological Institute at McGill University

The links between the brain?s reward center and the three other areas explain how simple sounds strung together in complex patterns can give humans so much joy, Salimpoor says. Music theorists have speculated that new music might tickle people?s pleasure centers by engaging their minds in play. But until now, no one had matched up the theory to the neurobiology.

In the study, the researchers examined the brain activity of 19 people as they listened to short clips of new music in an MRI machine. At the end of each clip, volunteers could choose to buy songs they liked, using their own money. The researchers asked them how much they would be willing to pay, $0.99, $1.29 or $2, in a system similar to iTunes. If volunteers did not like a song, they could choose not to buy it.

Then researchers compared brain scans of participants who bid different amounts on songs. Amid the bustle of activity in the brain, the nucleus accumbens leapt to life when people heard songs they wanted to purchase. The more money people chose to spend, the livelier their nucleus accumbens was while listening.

Teaming neuroimaging with the iTunes-like system for buying music was ?a very clever idea,? says cognitive neuroscientist Aniruddh Patel of Tufts University in Medford, Mass. ?It?s a nice application of new technology to address an old theory in music cognition,? he says. And in fact, the new findings seem to fit well with the old theory, he says.

The results tap into the fundamental ways our brains deal with sound, says auditory neuroscientist Nina Kraus of Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. ?The implications are rather enormous,? she says. The work could help scientists better understand how humans decipher other complex sounds, such as speech.

Source: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/349594/title/Mental_puzzles_underlie_musics_delight

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PFT: Sherman: Half of NFL on Adderall? |? Really?

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The Vancouver Sun quoted Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman this week as saying that half the NFL takes Adderall. But Sherman says he was misquoted.

Sherman, who successfully appealed a four-game suspension for a positive Adderall test during the regular season, also said on NFL AM on Thursday morning that he has never taken the drug, which is commonly prescribed for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

?I didn?t say that,? Sherman said. ?It?s just another case of these writers trying to gain a little notoriety in an interview. What I said was, There?s a bunch of guys in the league on prescription for Adderall, so what ? you know, I?ve never seen people get prescribed a performance-enhancing drug, you know what I mean? So I don?t understand, you know, what everybody is so ? you know, they go so crazy about it when some of these guys test positive for it, but a bunch of guys have prescriptions for it, so it?s, like, you know, kind of misleading.?

So where did the ?half the league takes it? quote come from? Sherman said he didn?t say that.

?I didn?t say half, I said a bunch of guys, and then he went with whatever he went with, but that?s the way I put it,? Sherman said.

Sherman said he hasn?t used Adderall and isn?t sure why anyone would use it as a performance enhancer.

?I?m not sure. I?ve never taken it,? Sherman said. ?So I?m not sure. From what I?ve learned from this whole case and everything, it somehow, like, slows, slows it down, for people that are sped up, like, ADHD, apparently the guys are too sped up, and, you know, there are breaks in their attention, that the Adderall kind of bridges the breaks in their attention and allows them to stay focused on one thing at a time.?

Sherman added that he doesn?t care if his public comments hurt his reputation.

?I really don?t care either way to tell you the truth,? Sherman said. ?If it does, so be it, if it doesn?t, so be it.?

Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/04/10/richard-sherman-half-the-nfl-takes-adderall/related/

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Ondi Timoner Launches Kickstarter Campaign to Train Artists in ''Disruptive'' Technology

By Steve Pond

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Award-winning documentary director Ondi Timoner, whose films include the Sundance champs "Dig!" and "We Live in Public," is launching her first crowd-funding campaign to finance an extension of her A Total Disruption website, which chronicles innovators and entrepreneurs in the tech world.

"You can't just be an artist now," Timoner told TheWrap this week. "You have to be an artist-entrepreneur, and we want to set up a resource to show content creators how it can be done."

For the website, Timoner has produced more than 50 episodes dealing with innovators including Reddit's Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian, BitTorrent's Bram Cohen, LinkedIn's Reid Hoffman, Instagram's Kevin Systrom and musician Amanda Palmer, who will be the subject of a new series of episodes.

"We want to answer some basic questions," said Timoner. "How do you finance and distribute films and music and artwork? How do you collaborate? How do you use technology to directly connect with your fan base?"

Part of the reason for launching the website, she said, is because technology and culture move too fast for her to spend a long time doing interviews and collecting material, and then make a feature documentary about the subject.

"I can wait years and do a big movie, or I can film it and release it as I'm going," she said.

The Kickstarter campaign, which has a goal of $96,000, will help her finish episodes that have already been shot, as well as film new episodes chronicling innovators and entrenpreneurs in the tech world and the intersection of technology, art and entertainment.

The campaign will also fund putting Timoner's entire archive of 300 interviews online, in a searchable database and archive that can be used by content creators and others looking to explore the opportunities made possible by new technology.

The campaign will go live at 8 a.m. on Tuesday morning. Rewards for contributors will include Skype calls with selected entrepreneurs, original artwork from Shepard Fairey and the opportunity to join Timoner and Palmer for dinner and a shoot.

A Total Disruption grew out of the research Timoner did for the 2009 documentary "We Live in Public," which followed the eccentric dot-com millionaire Josh Harris and won the Grand Jury Prize.

Forced to distribute the film independently after companies became skittish in the wake of the '08 stock market crash, Timoner said she learned of the impact of online platforms and new technology in reaching an audience.

The archive will eventually be available for a small subscription fee, she said. A Total Disruption also plans to develop online courses for content creators looking to embrace the new paradigms.

"We have more power in our pockets than we had on all the computers in the world five years ago," she said. "The disruption is happening now, and it's happening in real time."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ondi-timoner-launches-kickstarter-campaign-train-artists-disruptive-194834454.html

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