Mark Fightmaster
- http://

Just as we are hearing that retailers had a great December, we get news from the Conference Board that U.S. consumer confidence dropped to 52.5 in December. Expectations had been for an increase to 56.9, making for quite a disparity between expectation and reality.

The director of the Conference Board's consumer research center, Lynn Franco, noted that "Consumers' assessment of the current state of the economy and labor market remains tepid, and their outlook remains cautious." Franco added that signs suggest continuing growth for the economy, "but that the pace of growth will remain moderate."

Pharmaceutical company MannKind (MNKD) shares have traded considerably higher this morning, gaining 9% shortly after the opening bell and trading in the upper $8 region. It appears that the rally was sparked by news that the U.S. Federal Drug Administration would not be able to complete a review of the company's inhaled insulin Afrezza by December 29.

The FDA added that it will need roughly four more weeks to complete the review. Back in July, the FDA accepted a resubmission on Afrezza and classified it a class 2 response.

We may soon see "one of the biggest advances in years in the technology that powers laptop and desktop computers," according to the Wall Street Journal, as chipmakers begin to merge microprocessors and graphics-processing units.

Microprocessors are described as "the calculating engines that run most PC software," while graphics-processing units "render images in video games and other programs." According to the report, Intel (INTC) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) are expected to make announcements about this move at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show.

Thursday morning, the Commerce Department announced that orders for U.S.-made durable goods dropped during November, falling 1.3% for the month. The drop was larger than the expected drop of 0.5%.

Taking transportation out of the picture, new orders increased by 2.4%, showing that the major drag on the data was transportation-equipment orders. Core durable-goods orders (which exclude defense and aircraft) increased 2.6%, a far better performance than the 3.6% decline in October. Analysts at Barclay's Capital called for a gain in core capital goods that reflect, "further expansion in the manufacturing sector."

Jo-Ann Stores (JAS) announced that it has definitively agreed to be acquired by an affiliate of Leonard Green & Partners. The acquisition carries a total price tag of $1.6 billion, or $61 per share, which is a hefty 34% premium to Wednesday's close. The merger has been approved by JAS's board of directors after receiving a recommendation of a special committee that was made of independent directors.

JAS chairman and CEO Darrell Webb noted, "We are excited about the prospect of working with Leonard Green & Partners as we further capitalize on opportunities to accelerate the expansion and upgrade of our stores and pursue market share gains. With the help of our talented and dedicated team, we will continue to offer our customers a superior shopping experience for all of their fabric and craft needs."

Tuesday, chipmaker Xilinx (XLNX) announced that it was cutting its current-quarter (third quarter) revenue forecast thanks to weaker-than-expected sales to some of its larger communications customers. This announcement comes during a series of quarters in which the company has seen record sales, thanks to rising demand stemming from a perceived economic rebound.

One analyst calls this news, "evidence of a cyclical inventory correction that we'd been expecting and have talked about previously." Nevertheless, the same analyst said that it could take longer than Xilinx had previously estimated for inventory to come back to better levels.

Hovnanian Enterprises (HOV) announced Tuesday that its fourth-quarter loss checked in at $1.68 per share ($132.1 million). While these results were better than a year ago when the company reported a loss of $3.21 per share ($250.8 million), the homebuilder fell short of the consensus estimate of a loss of 91 cents per share. Quarterly revenue checked in at $353 million, which is far worse than the $437.4 million a year earlier. The amount of contracts for homes fell 13%, coming in at 1,078 homes.

Japanese automaker Toyota (TM) announced that it has agreed to pay a record $32.4 million in further fines to the U.S. government to settle an investigation into the way it handled recent recalls.

The company's board of directors agreed to the fines Monday at its board meeting in Japan, and it will not admit to any violations of U.S. laws. Unfortunately for Toyota, this move will not exempt the company from potential civil and criminal penalties in private lawsuits and other federal investigations.

Urban Outfitters (URBN) was downgraded this morning from hold to buy at Brean Murray Carret & Co. The brokerage attributed the downgrade to "forced incremental discounting" at the firm's Anthropologie and Urban Outiftters chains, MarketWatch reported.

In addition, URBN is facing "materially difficult" comparisons during the first half of fiscal 2012. The analyst expects the company will remain under competitive and cost increase pressures despite its varied inventory, MarketWatch added. Wall Street Strategies also lowered URBN.

Perhaps it is the cynic in me, but I was not surprised to read this story about Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) from Bloomberg. The news outlet obtained an e-mail that was sent to Walmart managers instructing them to raise prices on an average of 1,800 types of toys per store. The managers were instructed to perform the price markups "as soon as possible" and were told that the price changes were "to better enable your store and the company to have a successful financial month."

Walmart stated that these price increases went into effect because temporary discounts on products (including toys) ended on November 30. Spokesman Ravi Jariwala, spokesman for Walmart, said in an e-mail, "Once a rollback ends, the item returns to its original everyday low price." That said, Eric Johnson director of the Center for Digital Strategies at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth noted that "In previous years Wal-Mart has come out and hammered everyone with unbelievably low toy prices ... They stepped away from that this year and after Thanksgiving their prices have crept back up."

Scanning over the news for FedEx (FDX) it seems that a decent amount of pundits would like to pin the potentially weak open on the delivery firm's weak second quarter earnings and revenue results. Let's dig into the report a bit and see if this blame is well placed.

The shipping company announced that its second-quarter profit dropped to 89 cents per share ($283 million) from last year's same-quarter earnings of $1.10 per share ($345 million). Taking charges out of the equation, FedEx earned $1.16 per share, short of the consensus estimate of $1.31 per share. Revenue came in at $9.63 billion, which is 12% better than the results from a year ago.