Economic news and stock movers, Jan 29th

The S&P/Case Shiller composite index announced that home prices had their best yearly gain since 2006 on Tuesday morning. The index survey’s 20 metropolitan areas and showed there was a 0.6% gain in November that was on par with economists’ forecasts. For the year, prices were up 5.5%, which was the largest 12-month increase since August 2006. This is the 10^th straight month of gains for the index since 2006. Omair Sharif, a U.S. economist at RBS Securities, said “This is a continuing trend in place for the better part of a year. This is another indication that the housing rebound is fairly entrenched at this point.”

In economic news, the Conference Board has announced that this past January consumer confidence dropped to its lowest level since November 2011. The index fell to 58.6 in January from 66.7 in December. Conference Board economist Lynn Franco said that the tax increases were largely attributed to the decline. The survey was conducted on January 17, a time when people began noticing a decrease in their take home pay. Guy Lebas, chief fixed-income strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott LLC, said, “The thing that’s particularly troubling is the sizeable decline in expectations. As those expectations deteriorate, it doesn’t bode particularly well for day-to-day consumer spending.”

Despite Ford’s (F) better-than-expected 2012 profits, the company was trading down over 4.5% on Tuesday after the company warned of large losses in Europe. The company announced earnings of $5.66 billion in 2012, which is down $300 million from 2011. They also posted a loss of $1.75 billion in Europe. The company did post a record pretax profit of $8.3 billion in North America.

Harley Davidson’s (HOG) shares were trading slightly up on Tuesday as the company was down 33% from last year’s net income. Fourth-quarter net income came in at $70.6 million, or 31 cents per share. This is down from $105.7 million, or 24 cents per share a year earlier. Analysts had expected earnings of 32 cents per share.

Pfizer (PFE) reported fourth-quarter profits that quadrupled due to the $4.8 billion sale of its nutrition business. Net income came in at $6.32 billion, or 85 cents per share, which is up from $1.44 billion, or 19 cents per share, the year prior.

All the best,
Jack Aubrey