Market Currents

• Tuesday, October 20, 2009

• 09:00 AM Premarket gainers: MPS +22%. BPAX +11%. LXK +9%. IRE +8%. AAPL +6%. NVAX +5%. CAT +6%. UAUA +6%. MGM +5%. HGSI +5%. UNH +4%. BK +5%. PH +5%. AIB +4%. PSO +4%. BTU +4%.
  Losers: MI -8%. FRE -7%. BSX -7%. Comment!

• Saturday, August 22, 2009

• 17:35 PM Potential buyers for Dow Jones' (NWS) indexes business: McGraw-Hill's (MHP) Standard & Poor's, Russell Indexes, MSCI (MXB), Bloomberg, Pearson's (PSO) Financial Times and Thomson Reuters (TRIN). Comment!

• Monday, July 27, 2009

• 11:22 AM Notwithstanding all the bluster about moving to online texts and shrinking state budgets, Pearson's (PSO +11.3%) textbook division did just fine in H1, returning to a profit on steady sales growth, while the publisher even managed to boost its full-year outlook. Is Pearson being overly optimistic, or are politicians, despite their posturing, not that serious about cutting costs? Comment!

• Thursday, April 16, 2009

• 12:29 PM Chinese private education service provider New Oriental Education (EDU) takes a dive after CitronResearch says that based on Pearson's (PSO) $145M purchase yesterday of rival Wall Street English at a price-to-sales ratio of 2:1, shares of EDU ($47.60) may only be worth $14.25. EDU -5%. 1 Comment

• Monday, January 12, 2009

• 14:29 PM Financial Times (PSO) plans to let 80 staffers go. Comment!

• Wednesday, October 15, 2008

• 06:50 AM Annual profit at Financial Times publisher Pearson (PSO) will be at the top end of current market estimates if the dollar maintains its strength against the pound. The dollar has gained 16% against the pound since March. Comment!

• Sunday, June 29, 2008

• 16:18 PM Old media pain continues: according to Compete.com, Seeking Alpha now has more monthly users than Pearson's (PSO) FT.com. Comment!

• Friday, June 13, 2008

• 11:01 AM Who might buy Merrill's (MER) 20% stake in Bloomberg LLC, worth maybe $5-6B? SWFs, private-equity, media rivals (NWS, CNBE (GE), PSO). Most likely: The mayor himself. Comment!