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New York, NY, United States (AHN) – U.S. stocks cheered strong retail sales over the long Thanksgiving weekend and early forecasts of a strong showing for Cyber Monday with a strong rally.

With less than an hour in the trading day, stocks were off earlier highs but still boasted impressive gains. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 220 points, the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index added 27 points and the tech heavy NASDAQ jumped 70 points.

Retail sales broke records over the long holiday weekend and early estimates are the Cyber Monday sales are expected to climb 20 percent over last year.

The broad based rally included retailers, financials, and technology shares. Best Buy rose nearly 3 percent. Macy soared almost 5 percent and Apple was better by more than 3 percent.

Also giving stocks room to run was news out of Europe that progress was being made in the ever growing and lengthy euro zone sovereign debt crisis.

While some analysts called the rally a technical bounce and warn markets still face numerous risks, investors welcomed the much needed gains.

Commodities were also strong. Oil rose 88 cents to $97.71 a barrel. Gold closed solidly higher on bargain hunting, rising $29 to $1709 a troy ounce, and silver, the grey metal, closed up $1.08 an ounce to settle the day at $32.06.

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Washington, DC, United States (AHN) – Just days after the death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, the U.S. company has won a legal battle against Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC.

HTC had lodged a patent infringement complaint against Apple last year and sought a ban on import of Apple products.

However, the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) on Tuesday said in its verdict that the American company did not violate the rules – an announcement that prompted the fall of HTC shares to as much as 6 percent.

HTC had charged Apple violated its patents relating to data protection, contact information storage and power supply management.

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Athens, Greece (AHN) – Greece is teetering towards a default on its international loans, prompting Greek officials to seek the advice of European and International Monetary Fund officials to measures the financially challenged nation could do to speed up the release of its $11 billion anticipated aid.

The reply of European economic officials on Monday was that Athens must make deeper and faster budget cuts and economic reforms.

In the event of a Greek default, the ones to be hit hardest would be German banks Hypo Real Estate Holding and WestLB which jointly hold more than 50 percent of Greek debts held by Deutsche banks. Hypo has $12 billion (EUR 8.76 billion) and WestLB has $1.66 billion (EUR 1.21 billion).

In contrast Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank, the two largest lenders in Germany, hold only a total of $4.6 billion (EUR 3.35 billion) Greek debt.

A default would be the second burden for German taxpayers, who backed up Hypo and WestLB during the 2008 global financial crisis to prevent their collapse. Hypo and WestLB are now both state-owned banks.

Despite European leader’s attempt to convince the global markets that Greece and other eurozone nations hit by the debt contagion would not default, the markets are skeptical and hiked borrowing costs for governments and banks in the 17-nation one-currency zone.

To hold down interest rates pay by Italy, which was downgraded by Standard & Poor’s on Monday, and Spain, the European Central Bank purchased over $200 billion in government bonds.

The IMF mission head who visited Greece urged Athens on Monday to speed up its reforms. Although the bailout package previously released by the ECB and IMF to Greece was premised on reduction of state payroll and disposal of inefficient government-owned assets, the embattled Greek government has not delivered on its promise.

Fears of Greece having difficulty qualifying for another round of bailout caused major stock indices in Europe such as Germany’s DAX, France’s CAC and Euro Stoxx to close down by 3 percent on Monday.

The Dow Jones industrial average and S&P’s 500-stock index lost almost 1 percent on the same day.

With the growing fears of a default, Greek 10-year bonds are trading about 80 percent below face value.

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New York, NY, United States (AHN) – Markets were closed in the U.S. Monday as the nation celebrated Labor Day. But trading in European markets and gold were not on holiday, one falling and one rising on debt concerns and global demand.

Gold pricing exceeded $1,900 an ounce Monday in London as concerns persisted about slowing economic growth worldwide. Europe’s debt worries also spurred renewed demand for the yellow metal.

Foreign markets and overseas gold reacted to the weak U.S. jobs report on Friday that showed that no jobs were added in August. Already jittery markets looked anywhere for any sign of improvement, which have been and continue to be hard to find.

Gold is enjoying an 11-year bull run. It is the precious metal’s longest running streak since the 1920′s. For the year, the yellow metal is up 33 percent, outshining global equities, commodities and U.S. Treasuries.

U.S. stock markets will open for trading as usual on Tuesday and markets anxiously await President Obama’s address on Thursday night about jobs.

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New York, NY, United States (AHN) – The United States economy grew at a slow 1.9 percent pace during the first quarter of the year a slowdown in growth that Federal Reserve policy makers hope will only be a temporary.

In contrast, the economy grew at a more robust 3.1 percent rate in the previous quarter. Still the 1.9 percent figure was better than the 1.8 percent rise in gross domestic product predicted for the first quarter by government officials last month.

Real gross domestic product is the total output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the U.S.

“The increase in real GDP in the first quarter primarily reflected positive contributions from personal consumption expenditures (PCE), private inventory investment, exports, and nonresidential fixed investment that were partly offset by negative contributions from federal government spending and state and local government spending. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, increased,” the U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Economic Analysis said in a statement.

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A study from Experian found that 47 percent of strategic defaulters opened a new mortgage during the six months prior their defaults. “This behavior further supports the evidence that these mortgage defaulters were doing so strategically,” the report said. In addition, around nine-in-10 strategic defaulters remained current on other obligations as much as a year past the default.

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The conforming 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rose nearly 4 basis points this week. The 15-year mortgage was also higher. The increase in rates pulled new mortgage inquiries down 4 percent.

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Chicago, IL, United States (AHN) – The good news is that a lot of men who were laid off during the recession are back at work. But the downside is they are at jobs with leaner staffs, meaning many men are working longer hours away from their families.

CareerBuilder’s annual Father’s Day survey shows that the majority of participants who were laid off over the last 12 months are working again. But more than 20 percent of the respondents say they are working more than 50 hours a week, up from 19 percent last year.

Two in five men spend two hours or less with their children each day, and 16 percent say they spend one hour or less with their kids.

The survey also found more men are taking their work home with them.

“As companies downsized during the recession and work demands accelerated, we saw dads having a harder time finding balance between providing for their families financially and spending quality time with them,” Alex Green, general counsel for CareerBuilder, said in a statement.

A third of the men taking the survey said that work commitments are forcing them to miss significant events in their children’s lives.

Twenty one percent of the respondents say they feel their work has had a negative impact on their relationship with their children.

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New York, NY, United States (AHN) – Oil futures on Wednesday were slightly lower in trading because of concerns over the strength of the global economic recovery.

July contracts for oil were down on the New York Mercantile Exchange by 0.5 percent, or 45 cents, to $98.92 per barrel before dropping slightly more. But prices were still hovering around $98 per barrel in trading.

The drop followed a 2.1 percent rise Tuesday. Still, oil prices are about 28 percent higher than last year at this time.

In the meantime, August contracts for Brent oil were down by 1.1 percent, or $1.29, to $118.06 in early trading on London’s ICE futures exchange.

Meanwhile, natural gas prices are going up again and could double in price over the next few years to top $8 per million British thermal units.

Last week, prices rose to $4.80 per million British thermal units. However, analysts do not expect natural gas to rise to its 2008 peak price above $13 per million BTUs.

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Volume plummeted by 62 percent between the fourth-quarter 2010 and the first-quarter 2011 at Provident Funding Associates LP. In comparison, an analysis by MortgageDaily.com of first-quarter production indicated that fundings at all U.S. lenders were down just 34 percent. Deterioration at Provident was twice as bad as the industry as a whole.

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