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Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Schacknow - TODAY'S PRIMER, April 10, 2012

Peter Schacknow, Senior Producer, CNBC Breaking News Desk

This morning’s collection of numbers from Wall Street is decidedly negative: the Dow and S&P 500 have lost ground for four straight sessions, with the Nasdaq down three of four days.

All three have their worst four-day losses since mid-December, and all are sitting at their lowest levels in about a month.

Investors are unlikely to find much market-moving information in this morning’s collection of economic data.

The National Federation of Independent Business is out with its monthly look at small business sentiment at 7:30am ET, while the government issues February wholesale trade figures at 10am ET.

Economists are looking for a 0.5% increase in wholesale inventories, following January’s 0.4% increase. The Labor Department is out with its monthly “JOLTS” survey – the measure of job opportunities and labor turnover – at 10am ET.

And the Treasury is scheduled to sell $32 billion in 3-year notes, with the results of that sale available shortly after 1pm ET.

Today marks the official beginning of earnings season, with Dow component Alcoa (AA) issuing its quarterly report after the closing bell.

Before that, we will get one report of note this morning, from supermarket chain Supervalu (SVU).

Vivus (VVUS) is a stock to watch today, after the FDA said it would take three more months to make an approval decision for the company’s obesity drug Qnexa.

That delay sent Vivus stock sharply lower in after-hours trading, and may also weigh on shares of Arena Pharmaceuticals (ARNA) and Orexigen (OREX), which have competing obesity treatments in the pipeline.

Oil services company Transocean (RIG) is in the news this morning, with CEO Steven Newman’s 2011 compensation reported to be up 57% to $9.9 million, despite a 45% drop in Transocean’s stock last year.

Sony (SNE) says it will likely report a record $6.4 billion loss for the just-ended fiscal year, which is double earlier forecasts.

That news comes a day after reports that it planned to cut 10,000 jobs, or 6% of its global workforce.

We’ll watch shares of mobile-phone carrier parents like Verizon (VZ), AT&T (T), and Sprint Nextel (S), on news that the carriers will create a mobile phone database to help prevent theft and reactivation of lost or stolen devices.

Chesapeake Energy (CHK) makes our watch list this morning, as it agrees to sell 58,400 acres of Oklahoma land to Exxon Mobil for $590 million.

Affymax (AFFY) has received a $50 million payment from partner Takeda Pharmaceutical, following FDA approval of the anemia drug Omontys.

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