March 16, 2012

WEEKLY MARKET DIGEST: THE LOWEST INTEREST RATES IN A GENERATION MAY BE IN THE REAR VIEW MIRROR

(The Weekly Digest reproduces the morning capsules made available every morning before the market open in the Real Time Feeds to the paying subscribers.)

INFLATION DROPS

March 16, 2012

Core Consumer Price Index (CPI) drops to 0.1% from prior 0.2%. Consensus was 0.2%.

Stocks and bonds are taking encouragement from lower inflation data. Obviously this is not good for gold and silver, but our algorithms show that even after release of lower inflation numbers, mom and pop momo crowd continues to aggressively buy gold and silver.

As we have previously written, in our models core PPI gets a heavy weight, and core CPI gets low weight. … Please click here or the title below to read more.

March 16, 2012

NEW APPLE IPAD SEMICONDUCTOR INVESTMENT PLAYS

Apple (AAPL) has become one of the world’s largest buyers of semiconductors. Whenever a new Apple device is introduced, a race is on to tear down the device and find the origin of the components inside. This time the winner is iFixit. iFixit reports the following components inside the new iPad.

–Texas Instruments (TXN) CD3240 driver device

–Broadcom (BRCM) BCM4330 802.11a/b/g/n MAC/baseband/radio with integrated Bluetooth 4.0+HS and FM transceiver; 2 x 4Gb; BCM5974 microprocessor; BCM5973 I/O controller

–Elpida LP DDR2 = 1 GB DRAM in separate packages in a 64-bit configuration

–Fairchild Semiconductor International (FCS) FDMC 6683

–Apple 338S0987, Cirrus Logic (CRUS) Logic audio codec

–Qualcomm (QCOM) PM8028 Power Management IC; RTR8600 multi-band/mode RF transceiver for 3G and 4GLTE bands

–Toshiba Y0A0000 Memory MCP

–Triquint Semiconductor (TQNT)TQM7M5013quad-band linear power amplifier module

–Avago (AVGO) A5904

–Skyworks (SWKS) SKY77468-17 front-end module

Elpida has filed for bankruptcy. … Please click here or the title below to read more.

March 16, 2012

WATCH OUT APPLE ITV, CISCO GOING FOR THE KILL

“Imagine a world where finding, enjoying, storing and moving content is easy. Because TV should be easy.” You would think these are the words from an Apple (AAPL) ad for its much speculated upcoming iTV.

You could not be more wrong. With a little help from Cisco Systems (CSCO), soon every player in the TV market will genuinely be able to make such a claim.

Who would have thought that Cisco would go for the kill even before Apple gives birth to iTV?

Cisco has announced that it will pay about $5 billion to acquire a British software company NDS Group.… Please click here or the title below to read more.

March 16, 2012