No exercise today as my back spasms haven't completely stopped. I was on a couple of heavy duty voltarins last night and that loosened things up. I was desperate to get out today, but probably wise to leave it. The rain has been light here making the road nice and slippery and clearly not the best surface for my bike. Here's what I wanted to do today:
Its 80k's from my place to Col Du Cou and back. I went up there last year from the other side of the mountain. JP tells me that the above is harder, but more fun. I guess all hill climbs are fun when you weigh in at 70kgs.
US earnings season kicked off today with expectations of a small shrinkage for the quarter. As usual the honor of first shot went to Alcoa which defied the analysts to beat estimates. EPS was expected to be negative 4 cents per share, so this positive 10 cps helped the stock run up 5%in after hours trading. What I'd highlight here was the company's comments ... "Strong productivity improvements across all businesses, higher realized prices for aluminum, and improved volume and mix" .... the big companies have all had this productivity boost since 2009. You can't keep patching balance sheets with productivity. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe with unemployment the way it is people will do anything to stay in work?
On a macro note Alcoa raised its 2012 global growth forecast for the aerospace market 3 percentage points to 14 percent and said it expects global growth in the automotive, commercial transportation, packaging, building and construction and industrial gas turbine markets. Mmm .... interesting theme this one, worth following what the defense companies and machinery makers say. I won't make any judgments yet as I'd like to see what global growth proxy Caterpillar is seeing.
Its 80k's from my place to Col Du Cou and back. I went up there last year from the other side of the mountain. JP tells me that the above is harder, but more fun. I guess all hill climbs are fun when you weigh in at 70kgs.
US earnings season kicked off today with expectations of a small shrinkage for the quarter. As usual the honor of first shot went to Alcoa which defied the analysts to beat estimates. EPS was expected to be negative 4 cents per share, so this positive 10 cps helped the stock run up 5%in after hours trading. What I'd highlight here was the company's comments ... "Strong productivity improvements across all businesses, higher realized prices for aluminum, and improved volume and mix" .... the big companies have all had this productivity boost since 2009. You can't keep patching balance sheets with productivity. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe with unemployment the way it is people will do anything to stay in work?
On a macro note Alcoa raised its 2012 global growth forecast for the aerospace market 3 percentage points to 14 percent and said it expects global growth in the automotive, commercial transportation, packaging, building and construction and industrial gas turbine markets. Mmm .... interesting theme this one, worth following what the defense companies and machinery makers say. I won't make any judgments yet as I'd like to see what global growth proxy Caterpillar is seeing.
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