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New figures from the Massachusetts Association of Realtors indicate that pending home and condo sales in Massachusetts are down for the fifth month in a row.

A pending sale indicates that the buyer and seller have agreed on the terms and signed a purchase and sale agreement, but the sale has not yet closed. Pending sales are considered an indicator of where the market is headed, because data on closed sales are several weeks old by the time they're recorded payday advance.

MAR reports that pending sales of single-family homes in September 2010 were down 19 percent from September 2009, while sales of condos were down 27 percent.

MAR blames the expiration of a federal tax credit for homebuyers, as well as ongoing concerns about the economy and unemployment, for the declines.

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Treasury yields recovered losses Friday, gaining momentum as stocks rallied and a better-than-expected manufacturing report eased economic jitters.

What yields are doing: The yield on the benchmark 10-year note rose to 2.6% from 2.55% late Thursday. Bond prices and yields move in opposite directions.

The yield on the 30-year bond edged up to 3.79% from 3.73%, and the 5-year note climbed to 1.35% from 1.31%. The 2-year note’s yield ticked up to 0.45% from 0.42% on Thursday.

What’s moving the market: Durable goods orders, a measure of manufacturing, slipped 1.3% in August after falling 0.7% in July, the government reported Friday.

While that was only slightly better than the 1.4% drop economists had forecast, the report also showed that orders excluding transportation climbed 2%, beating forecasts of a slight 0.6% rise.

Stocks spiked following the report, reducing the appeal of safe haven Treasurys and driving yields higher.

"We’re seeing some evidence beginning to emerge that the economy may have actually stopped falling and that we’re beginning to level off at a very modest growth rate," said Peter Cardillo, a chief market strategist at Avalon Partners.

The evidence was much needed because earlier this week the Federal Reserve expressed concern about deflation and a slowing recovery, saying that it is willing to take additional steps to support the economy if necessary payday loans guaranteed no fax.

Those steps could include buying Treasurys outright — a practice known as quantitative easing — if the economic recovery stalls. That goes a step further than the central bank’s previously announced plan to reinvest proceeds from its portfolio into Treasurys.

"They didn’t say they were going to actually do it, they said they were thinking about it," said Cardillo. "So now the question is do they pull the trigger and if so, when do they pull the trigger?"

To gauge when — and if — the trigger will be pulled, traders will be scrutinizing economic data released in the weeks leading up to the Fed’s next policy meeting, which begins Nov. 2.

"If economic numbers continue to come in a little better, the Fed may stay on the sidelines longer," said Cardillo. "And if it does stay on the sidelines, we could see a sell-off in Treasurys and see yields pop up."  

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In the future, you better go green if you want a federal contract.

The General Services Administration has recommended that federal agencies begin collecting greenhouse gas emissions data from their suppliers. This would be on a voluntary basis, at least at first. Eventually, however, agencies could give purchasing preferences to companies with low greenhouse gas emissions.

GSA’s report was in response to an executive order issued in 2009 by President Barack Obama, which directed agencies to make reductions of greenhouse gas emissions a priority. Besides making cuts in their own emissions, agencies also can encourage their suppliers to reduce their emissions.

Suppliers that do so “can gain a competitive advantage not only with their federal customers, but also with their commercial customers and the public, who are increasingly seeker ‘greener’ companies when making procurement decisions,” GSA’s report concluded instant payday loan.

The report acknowledged that small businesses may not have the resources to have their greenhouse gas emissions verified by third parties. The government can ease this burden by phasing in any greenhouse gas emissions reporting program and allowing small firms to use streamlined reporting tools, the report stated.

Meanwhile, Obama asked federal agencies to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions from indirect sources such as employee travel and commuting by 13 percent by 2020. This builds on an earlier directive for agencies to reduce their emissions from direct sources.

See www.whitehouse.gov.

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Vacancies at Kansas City-area shopping centers stayed above 12 percent in the second quarter, according to the Orange Report, a quarterly report issued by Lane4 Property Group Inc.

The average vacancy rate for metropolitan-area shopping centers during the second quarter was 12.1 percent, just below the 12.2 percent vacancy rate recorded in the first quarter.

During the second quarter last year, the vacancy rate was 11.9 percent.

The reasons behind the steadying vacancy rates are twofold, said Britt Crum-Cano, director of research for Kansas City-based Lane4. During the recession, the weaker retailers went away, leaving the stronger retailers to survive.

Additionally, landlords now seem more willing to negotiate and work with their current tenants so as not to lose them.

“I think we have a lot of untraditional types of negotiations going on,” Crum-Cano said. “The landlords are working one-on-one with tenants, especially if they are having some financial difficulties.”

The report also showed that the average lease rate for shopping centers dropped from $13.23 a foot in the first quarter to $12.99 in the second quarter. But this year’s second-quarter figures were 1.5 percent higher than the $12.80 recorded in the second quarter of last year.

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Amazon shares plunged 13% in after-hours trading Thursday after the company’s second-quarter earnings came up far short of analyst expectations.

Amazon’s sales are still growing fast: The company had revenue of $6.6 billion in the quarter ended June 30, up 41% from a year ago. Amazon’s profit also rose, increasing 45% to $207 million.

But analysts hoped for better, and are keeping a close eye on Amazon’s bottom line to see if intensifying competitive pressures knock the e-commerce giant off its game.

Forced by Barnes & Noble (BN) into an e-reader price war, Amazon.com slashed the price of its flagship Kindle to $189 last month. It later cut its high-end Kindle DX price tag by more than $100, to $379. Meanwile, Apple’s (AAPL, Fortune 500) popular iPad — which can store thousands of e-books — could obliterate the entire stand-alone e-reader market within the next year or two No teletrack payday loans.

Amazon tried earlier this week to draw attention to its bright spots. The company announced that sales of e-books for its popular Kindle reader now outnumber Amazon’s sales of hardcover books. The company also said Kindle sales have picked up since last month’s price cut, though it once again refused to disclose how many Kindles it has actually sold.

Amazon (AMZN, Fortune 500) said it expects third-quarter revenue to come in between $6.9 billion and $7.63 billion in revenue this quarter, in line with analyst estimates. 

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Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Wednesday he has concerns about a signature piece of Senate Democrats’ Wall Street reform package that cracks down on complex financial products.

Bernanke wrote about the consequences from a congressional ban preventing banks from trading the complex financial products, called derivatives, in a letter to key lawmakers.

"Forcing these activities out of insured depository institutions would weaken both financial stability and strong prudential regulation of derivative activities," Bernanke wrote to an author of the measure, Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn.

Dodd worked with Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., on the measure, including the swaps ban, which ranks among the top hang-ups that could threaten final passage for the overall Wall Street reform bill.

Progress on the bill has been slow going, and the Senate will continue debating amendments at least through early next week, Dodd said Thursday.

The Fed chair’s concerns about the swaps ban are similar to those raised by other high profile regulators — former Fed chairman Paul Volcker and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair. They all stopped short of blasting the measure.

The tough crackdown in question is the brainchild of Sen. Lincoln, who is facing a contentious Democratic primary in Arkansas on Tuesday in her bid for re-election. The Senate isn’t expected to propose changes to the measure until after Tuesday, congressional aides and lobbyists say.

Congress generally wants to get tougher on derivatives, which are currently traded with no oversight and were a key reason for the taxpayer bailout of American International Group (AIG, Fortune 500). But lawmakers disagree about how much to regulate them.

The measure banning bank swaps goes farther than the so-called Volcker rule, named for the former Fed chief, that would only block some banks from doing such trades for their own purposes and accounts, called "proprietary trading."

The Lincoln proposal blocks banks from all derivatives if the banks want access to cheap emergency loans that the Federal Reserve can make as lender of last resort.

Bernanke said in the letter that banks use derivatives to shed risk that can arise in deals they make over interest rates, currency and other credit risks.

"Use of derivatives by depository institutions to mitigate risks in the banking business also provides important protection to the deposit insurance fund and taxpayers as well as to the financial system more broadly," Bernanke wrote.

A House bill that passed in December would allow all banks to trade derivatives in a more transparent way. However that bill also allows some trades between some banks and certain companies, such as airlines, to continue without regulation.

But Senate Democrats are tougher on derivatives, in the aftermath of fraud charges that the Securities and Exchange Commission levied against Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500) for selling a complex mortgage-related derivative to investors while failing to tell them that a hedge fund was betting against the product.

When asked about negotiations on the derivatives piece on Thursday, Dodd said he understood that discussions were ongoing, but he wasn’t involved in them. 

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Rutgers announced Thursday that the new dean at Rutgers School of Business–Camden will be Jaishankar Ganesh.

Ganesh is associate dean for administration and executive education at the University of Central Florida’s College of Business Administration.

He will take over at Rutgers on Aug. 1 for Mitchell Koza, who is stepping down as dean after three years because he wanted to return to the faculty, a college spokesman said.

Rutgers said Ganesh’s “scholarship focuses on issues of marketing management and international marketing strategy, emphasizing such issues as customer satisfaction, retail patronage behavior, and the cross-national diffusion of products easy pay day loans.”

“Dr. Ganesh is an exceptional administrator and scholar, and an energetic visionary,” Rutgers President Richard L. McCormick said. “I am confident that he will help to advance the Rutgers School of Business–Camden to its rightful place as a premier center for education and business development in our region.”

Ganesh, 45, earned a Ph.D. in marketing and international business and an MBA from the University of Houston.

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Is it too early to call a GM turnaround?

Less than five months after emerging from bankruptcy protection in July, General Motors Co. last week reported a significant drop in losses, a stronger-than-expected balance sheet at this early stage in its recovery, and that it would start repaying loans received from Washington and Canada next month – five years ahead of schedule.

While it is still losing money in the core North American market, no global automaker is thriving in a U.S. market with a 10.2 per cent jobless rate.

Meanwhile, GM is turning an impressive profit in its Asia-Pacific and Latin American markets. Buick is something of a dead brand in North America, as GM design czar Bob Lutz acknowledged a few years ago. But in China and Japan, Buick is a sought-after status symbol.

GM is solidly entrenched in the rapidly-growing Chinese market, where it sold 478,000 vehicles in the third quarter – more than it sold in North America. And Chevrolet has made significant inroads in Russia, expected to be Europe’s fastest-growing market in the next few years, eclipsing Germany.

In the so-called BRIC nations – Brazil, Russia, India and China – GM has powered itself to a 13 per cent market share. Its volume and revenues are climbing in what collectively will be the planet’s highest-growth market in the decades to come.

GM’s steep losses earlier this decade in continental Europe have narrowed considerably over the summer. GM’s Opel brand benefited greatly from European "Cash for Clunkers" programs.

In an ironic twist, better-engineered GM models with curb appeal for Canada and the U.S. were in the pipeline when GM was hitting the wall last year. The government bailout has made it possible for GM to get those vehicles onto the market.

GM hits with auto critics and buyers include the Chevy Equinox SUV, the Chev Malibu, the Buick LaCrosse full-size sedan and the Chev Camaro retro muscle car assembled in Oshawa. The Chevy Cruze compact, due next fall, is GM’s make-or-break entry in what will be the fastest-growing market segment over the next few years.

Not being forced to sell Opel, which GM has owned since 1929, to a Magna-led consortium has been a blessing.

"It would have made everything a lot harder," said Mark Reuss, GM’s new head of global engineering, of the prospective loss of Opel. "I’m really happy that we’re keeping it."

Opel has been key to many of GM’s most promising current models.

The Buick LaCrosse, the first "agile" quasi-land yacht offered by Buick maybe since David Buick was still drawing breath, is a rebranded Opel Insignia, voted by auto critics the European Car of the Year. The Opel-designed Buick Regal for next fall will be the brand’s first credible sports sedan.

Opel styling and engineering are also behind the bestselling Malibu and the forthcoming Cruise. The dull, ultrasafe GM styling of previous decades has given way in GM’s most successful models to the pleasing angularity of Mercedes, BMW and Audi.

But of course there are lingering problems from the GM of old. Product is everything in GM’s bid for survival. But GM’s product line is spotty payday loans guaranteed no fax. One of the reasons the above models stand out is that too little of GM’s output has been overhauled. By contrast, Ford will have replaced its entire lineup by 2011. GM’s crosstown rival already has a jump on GM’s Cruise, for instance, with an all-new Focus and a critically acclaimed Fiesta coming soon.

The battleground for global automakers next century will be small cars boasting advanced fuel-economy technology. And here GM remains behind the curve, having unduly put most of its chips on an overhyped Chev Volt. The Volt’s technology isn’t proven, and it will bear too steep a sticker price for its small size. It also won’t reach the market until after an abundance of better-value rivals have hit the showrooms, including the Fiat small-car flagship 500 due in Chrysler showrooms next year.

GM needs to use its formidable, post-bankruptcy cash horde of $42.6 billion (U.S.) not on premature loan repayments, but on two things only: developing still more must-have products, and marketing the heck out of them.

To pick an example of sorry GM marketing, GM Oshawa is routinely at or near the top of the North American factory rankings in quality and productivity. GM could shoot a commercial around that. Buick, which commands a pathetic 3 per cent of the North American market, has been running a close second to Lexus in J.D. Power’s quality rankings for several years, with BMW and Porsche languishing in the middle of the pack.

Yet these winning attributes are GM’s little secret. GM, perhaps out of misplaced pride, is averse to sharing its compelling story with the buying public.

But the biggest worry is GM’s continued obsession with market share. Maintaining market share is pointless if, like GM in North America for the past decade, you’ve been losing money on almost every vehicle you make.

In announcing its financial results last Monday, GM bragged about reclaiming market share. What GM needs to do is emulate Ford’s discipline in aiming to make a profit on every single vehicle, even if that means surrendering market share. Apple made more money in the third quarter with 2.5 per cent of the global cellphone market than Nokia did with its 35-per-cent share.

Apple’s iPhone is a must-have product and with high profit margins to match. GM has hit that sweet spot with its Camaro, and must work to achieve that status for everything it puts on the market.

"GM’s old management often seemed eager to blame their problems on just about anything — the economy, exchange rates, gas prices – except the deficiencies in their product lineup," veteran auto observer John Rosevear wrote in response to last Monday’s good news out of Detroit headquarters. "Have they really transcended that mindset?"

A much smaller but assuredly successful new GM was the object of the exercise in Washington’s decision to provide GM a second chance. It’s not clear GM understands that.

Absent the dramatic culture change of which GM critics have always thought "the General" incapable, the firm’s nascent recovery will be short-lived.

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Funds specializing in niche assets such as art and wine, long the preserve of ultra-rich hobbyists, are seeing a spike in interest from more mainstream investors seeking an antidote to the complexity of hedge funds.

As economies recover, interest has revived among traditional wealthy clients, but managers also tell of growing interest from institutions who have tended to avoided such illiquid assets.. Some have become confident enough in the trend to launch new funds.

“Attitudes are starting to change and we’re talking to large institutions which have the ability to write some large, meaningful cheques,” said Geordie Manolas, managing director at First State Media Group, which runs a fund that invests in music publishing rights and recently bought the catalog of singer Sheryl Crow.

Solid returns throughout the crisis as other asset classes crashed, and a lengthening track record for some funds, are translating into increased acceptance among investors, though figures are difficult to come by.

Investing in art has precedents for institutions: the British Rail Pension Fund achieved 11 percent annualized returns on art assets from the late 1970s until the late 1990s, but most existing funds are less than 10 years old.

The Fine Art Group, established in 2001, recently bought a work by David Hockney for around $850,000 and has notched up an average annualized return on assets sold at its funds of 30 percent.

On the back of this, institutional investors now make up around 20 percent of the assets and the group is targeting $100 million for a new venture by year-end, according to Philip Hoffman, chief executive payday loan.

“The institutions wanted to see a five-year track record and properly structured teams,” he said, adding that money invested in art funds would be around $350 million by year-end, up from around $200 million at the beginning of the year.

Another relative veteran investing in fine wines, The Wine Investment Fund which dates back to 2003, paid out an annualized return of 13 percent in the five years to August 2009.

Andrew della Casa, director and co-founder of The Wine Investment Fund, said the proportion of institutional investors in the fund is around one-third and rising.

The trend marks a significant shift in attitude. A common perk offered by art funds is to loan paintings, sometimes valued in millions, to investors to hang in their homes - a feature frowned upon by cost-conscious institutions unhappy with additional insurance charges.

HEDGE FUND BACKLASH

The performance of some of the funds contrasts with that of hedge fund industry which suffered its worst year on record in 2008, when the average hedge fund lost 20 percent.

Bernard Duffy, managing director at Emotional Assets Management and Research said the sector is also benefiting from a backlash against hedge funds’ sometimes impenetrable complexity.

“These are tangible assets. You can touch them, you can feel them,” he said. 

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Gold received a lukewarm reception a day after racing to a record high, with consumers in Asia more likely to be cashing in than panic buying.

Profit taking — read selling — replaced gold purchases that in New York and across Europe on Tuesday had swept spot bullion through the March 2008 record to hit $1,043.45 an ounce.

“It is simple, buy low and sell high — I am making a 10 percent profit already so I am selling,” said Nguyen Duc Hung while waiting to sell five taels of gold at a shop on Hanoi’s Ha Trung street. Hung said he bought the gold in early July.

To date, there have been no reports of gold hoarders burying stashes in secret spots as was the case in 1980, when gold zoomed above $800 an ounce for the first time, or about double today’s level when adjusted for inflation.

Gold was last quoted at $1,042.20 an ounce, just shy of Tuesday’s peak.

“Today’s been like any other day,” said David Carr, of KJC Coins Australia in Sydney. “No one’s coming in to sell gold because the price jumped overnight, it’s more wait and see, business as usual.”

The Australian outback gold mining town of Kalgoorlie, home to a nearly Times Square-sized electronic ticker tape broadcasting up-to-the-minute bullion prices, also was quiet.

“There’s nothing going on that’s out of the ordinary,” said John Horner, editor of the Kalgoorlie Miner newspaper.

In Tokyo, gold’s ascent barely caused a flutter.

“Both buyers and sellers are coming to the shop today, they are more or less evenly balanced,” said Osamu Ikeda, general manager at Tanaka Kikinzoku Kogyo, Japan’s biggest bullion retailer.

With Chinese markets closed for a week-long holiday, Japanese investment sentiment was center stage in Asia.

“Importantly, gold does not appear to be finding support from Tokyo, the key region in our time zone,” said Nigel Moffatt, head of treasury for Australia’s Perth Mint.

In India, where consumer demand typically peaks next week for the Dhanteras and Diwali festivals, the strong rupee kept the local price of gold under the psychological level of 16,000 rupees ($342) per 10 grams.

“Buying was very strong in the last couple of weeks, but it has been affected now even though the rupee has given a good cap to local prices,” said Pinakin Vyas, assistant vice president treasury at IndusInd Bank, a private bank in Mumbai that imports gold to sell to local traders and jewelers.

“Investors will not buy at these levels though need-based buying from jewelers will continue. People will wait for some time and then come back to the market.” 

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