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Top European Central Bank officials offered a skeptical appraisal of Europe’s latest plan to solve its debt crisis, suggesting that the central bank may be forced to maintain the emergency measures it has adopted to keep the problems from spreading.

The ECB purchased Spanish and Italian government bonds on Thursday, a trader said, hours after European leaders inked a three-pronged deal they hope will solve the region’s debt crisis through a mix of Greek debt restructuring, bank recapitalizations and leverage of Europe’s bailout fund to give it extra firepower. Details still need to be ironed out, which could take weeks.

Despite the show of support from the ECB, Italian government-bond yields fell only modestly Thursday, suggesting investors still have doubts about whether the package will ultimately work. Link

“Companies have recently raised prices for their external hard drives by 10-20%, amid speculation that recent flooding in Thailand might cause tight supply for HDDs and related components, according to industry sources… potential HDD and key component shortages might propel demand for solid state drives (SSD) in consumer PCs, the sources indicated.” Link

“Asustek Computer and Gigabyte Technology, facing weak market demand in Europe, the US and China, are expected to fail to achieve their motherboard shipment goals for 2011 and only ship 22 million and 17.5-18 million units, respectively, about one million units less than their original targets” Link

New ECB head: "The Eurosystem (of central banks) is determined, with its non-conventional measures, to prevent malfunctioning in the money and financial markets creating an obstacle to monetary transmission," he said in typically coded ECB language in a speech text released in Rome.” Link

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said that economic policy will be fine-tuned as needed and the industry ministry said it is studying “stimulative policies” for smaller companies as a global slowdown threatens growth. Link

AMD NVDA – “Since high-end discrete graphics cards are currently seeing weakening sales, while demand for mid-range and entry-level graphics cards is gradually being replaced by AMD and Intel’s GPU-integrated processors” Link

A common study habit—the all-nighter—is a bad idea. Although 60% of college students stay up all night at some point in school, the practice is linked to lower grades, says Pamela Thacher, an associate professor of psychology at St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y., based on a 2008 study of 120 students. It also impairs reasoning and memory for as long as four days. Link

MMM – “The business environment remains challenging, as the economic softening that we experienced late in the second quarter continued into the third,” said George W. Buckley, 3M chairman, president and chief executive officer. “While growth rates were good across much of our portfolio, LCD TV remained weak and momentum slowed in other parts of electronics following several quarters of very good growth. In addition, ongoing policy uncertainty and austerity are affecting growth in Western Europe, which reduced sales in the quarter. As is typical, we are seeing the impact of these changes earlier than most as our customers decrease production in order to lower their inventories. Conversely, we should benefit more quickly when those markets recover.”

"The quarter turned out to be a very different one than what we expected," 3M Chief Executive George Buckley told analysts on a conference call. "Cause No. 1 was worries about European sovereign debt and the European economy. Cause No. 2 was the rapid contraction of the electronics end markets."

MMM “Canary in coal mine about the economy?” Link

Notes from a session with Felix Zulauf. Link

A celebration of Steve’s life video. Link

Apple’s Jon Ive interview excerpts. Link

Barrons: Trouble at Fairholme. Crazy story how he hires a guy with no investment experience to be his #2. Link

More Jobs book excerpts. Link

DeMark on a SP500 bull-trap. Link

Fortune writer reminisces about Steve Jobs. Link

Eurozone Flash Manufacturing PMI 47.3 vs. 48.1 est. 48.5 prior
Eurozone Flash Services PMI 47.2 vs. 48.6 est. 48.8 prior

HSBC Flash Manufacturing PMI 51.1 vs. 49.9 prior Link

German October manufacturing PMI 48.9 vs. 50.0 est. 50.3 prior Link
German October services 52.1 vs. 49.7 est. 49.7 prior

France October Manufacturing PMI 49 vs 48 est. Services 46 vs. 50.5 est. Composite 46.8 vs. 50.2 est. Link

France Composite PMI vs. France GDP Chart

Source: Markit

"If they are having a bad year in that returns are down but can explain it in a way that convinces us they haven’t lost their discipline, then we might give them a pass," said Sam Katzman, the chief investment officer of Constellation Wealth Advisors, which invests in hedge funds and has $4.5 billion under management. Constellation is likely to redeem from some managers who have underperformed this year, he said. "In times like these, investors will give you a chance if they understand your thought process and strategy," Ms. Tapia said. Link

60 Minutes video segment on Steve Jobs. Link

PBS video interview with Michael Lewis. Link

Charlie Rose interviews Ray Dalio, PM of largest hedge-fund in the world. Link

“Europe’s efforts to deliver a comprehensive plan to resolve the euro-zone debt crisis were in danger of unraveling Thursday as disagreement between Germany and France over virtually every point forced the 27-nation bloc to concede a much-anticipated summit of European Union leaders on Sunday won’t produce an agreement.” WSJ

“Federal Reserve officials are considering a new program of buying mortgage-backed securities to boost the ailing economy, though they appear unlikely to move swiftly in this direction..A new Fed mortgage-bond-buying program isn’t a certainty. If inflation doesn’t recede as many officials expect, or if the economy picks up with surprising vigor on its own, such a program might not win broad support inside the Fed.” WSJ

China – “private bosses are known for being savvy and resilient, many have turned from manufacturing – where labor and material costs are rising dramatically – to the much more lucrative business of speculating in the real estate market” Link

Tom DeMark uncertain about near-term SP500 direction. Link

Jim Chanos Presentation – Beware: The Global Value Trap. Link

David Pogue loves Dropbox. Link

60 Minutes: Steve Jobs biographer Link

STX on Thailand floods – “How bad is this situation for the computer industry? Extremely bad. Luczo, for one says this is a “much more significant” supply chain interruption for the technology business than anything that happened after the recent tsunami in Japan.” Link

Steve Jobs Bio excerpts:

His pre-Apple job as a technician at Atari paid $5 per hour. He saw a classified ad in the San Jose Mercury News, went to visit the company and informed them he wouldn’t leave unless they hired him.

Apple’s first president, Mike Scott, was hired mainly to manage Jobs, then 22. One of his first projects: getting Jobs to bathe more often. It didn’t really work.

Apple sued, and Jobs told Isaacson in an expletive-laced rant that Google’s actions amounted to "grand theft."

"I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong," Jobs said. "I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this." Link

Silver Lake, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, and Microsoft working on a Yahoo bid. WSJ

FCX – “Despite the strike, Grasberg has been operating at about 80% capacity, he said. "Our hope is that we get the strike resolved and we get everybody back to work," he said.” Freeport’s total copper production fell 8.7% in the quarter, while gold production dropped 22%. Molybdenum output increased 21%. WSJ

“main problem with aluminum is that energy accounts for 30% of smelting costs. In an era when global energy demand is climbing fast”

WDC call: “As a result of these activities, at this point in time, we estimate that our regular capacity and possibly our suppliers’ capacity will be significantly constrained for several quarters.”

Steve Eisman to start a new hedge-fund. Link

WSJ video interview of Joel Greenblatt Link

Semiaccurate says Nvidia Tegra slips Link

INTC – updated model Link

AAPL – updated model Link

According to a report by BAC published on Monday, the top 100 most shorted stocks were up 13.9% since the Oct. 3 low—outperforming the 100 least-shorted by 2.5 percentage points. Link

Top 20% of earners bear 68% of the federal tax burden. The bottom 20% bear <1% of the federal tax burden Link

FBHS – Bill Ackman’s long Fortune Brands Home & Security thesis. Link 

Dropbox $4 billion start-up story. Link

Market Folly’s Value Investing Congress Day 1 Notes Link

Talking tech valuations with Blackstone’s Eric McAlpine Link

Profile of Brazilian billionaire Jorge Paulo Lemann Link

With total assets under management of some $11 billion–making FX Concepts the world’s largest foreign-exchange fund manager–it is tricky to turn returns around, Taylor said. "When you have billions of dollars of positions, it takes us something like 10 days to turn it Link

The spot price of polysilicon, the raw material for most solar panels, fell 5.9 percent on an oversupply of the modules, according to data from EnergyTrend. Link

IBM Q3 2011 earnings: small revenue miss $26.2B vs. $26.25B est. Hardware miss 4% vs. 8.8% y/y. Services signings miss $12.3B vs. $12.5B est.

VMW Q3 2011 earnings: in-line license revenue $444M

"We have seen a bit more scrutiny and higher levels of approval required. Particularly with larger deals where they would go for CFO and CEO approval, where in the past we may not have seen those approvals to be necessary," said VMWare Chief Financial Officer Mark Peeking. Link

CROX – fell 37% in after-hours trading as the company lowered its third quarter earnings and revenue guidance. The company said it now expects to post revenue of $273 to $275 million, versus its previous expectations for $280 million. EPS should come in at 31 to 33 cents, against previous guidance for 40 cents, the company said. Link

GS – “CEO and investor confidence as well as asset prices across markets were lower in the third quarter given the uncertain macroeconomic and market conditions.”

Who are the top 1%? Link

European bank with 53X leverage Link

Notes on David Einhorn’s GMCR Short Presentation Link Link2

Notes on Jim Chanos’ shorts Presentation Link Link2

Trading AAPL earnings Link

Under the scheme, the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) would promise investors who buy Spanish, Italian or other higher-risk euro zone debt at auction that it would cover a portion of any losses they made if the country were to default. Link

Moody’s warned on Monday it may slap a negative outlook on France’s Aaa credit rating in the next three months if the costs for helping to bail out banks and other euro zone members stretch its budget too much Link

Spain’s housing price index in the July to September period fell 5.5% from a year earlier—the fastest pace of decline since 2009 – WSJ

Speaking in Detroit, Charles Evans, the Chicago Fed’s dovish chief, said some temporary increase in inflation may be the price the nation must pay if Fed policy is to reduce joblessness. Link

Some hedge funds, for example, say they’re not trading as much until they know how much money their clients will withdraw at the end of October, a deadline some clients have to inform funds of intentions to redeem money at year-end. 

"Any reasonable sized selling is driving individual bond prices down quite a bit," says Jeffrey Kronthal, co-founder of hedge fund KLS Diversified in New York, who says bid-offer spreads in areas such as some residential and commercial mortgage-backed securities have more than doubled in the past month or so. "Really, no dealers are putting up capital. A lot of stuff just doesn’t trade." – WSJ

China’s economy grew 9.1 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier, the slowest pace since 2009. The gain was less than the median estimate of 9.3 percent in a Bloomberg News survey of 22 economists and followed a 9.5 percent increase in the previous three months. – Bloomberg

Seems like many investors are chasing performance
“We’re not having the same kind of recession as 2008, so we’re not going to have the same kind of drop in commodity prices,” said Brett Hammond, a senior economist with TIAA-CREF, a New York-based pension manager with $469 billion in assets. “Some of the air has come out of the bubble, but overall, I think there’s a lot more room for commodities to run.” Link

"There are so many people who were out of the market who are now saying, ‘Gee, I just missed a 10% move,’ " said Jenkins Marshall, managing director at Knight Capital, a trading firm in Jersey City, NJ. "And, ‘I can’t afford to miss the next 10% move.’ "

"You’ve got to put your money somewhere, and you’ve got to go with the U.S.," said Rick Fier, vice president of equity trading at Conifer Securities, with $12 billion under management. "After a week like this, people are starting to get scared that it’s like last year, where you get a rip-roaring rally in the fourth quarter that leaves you behind." Link

Bankers Balk at EU Push for Bigger Greek Losses Link

XLF – Barrons says buy the banks. Link

WFC – “The economic recovery has been more sluggish and uneven than anyone anticipated,” said Chairman and CEO John Stumpf.

AAPL – Colin Gillis at BGC downgrades Apple on potential iPhone and iPad sales weakness in the September quarter. Link

Germany shoots down “dreams” of swift Euro crisis solution. Link

SNDA – CEO makes a bid for Shanda for $41.35. Link

Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s general economic index rose to minus 8.5 from minus 8.8 in September. Economists projected an improvement to minus 4 Link

AllThingsD says Apple to announce iPhone 5 on October 4th. Link

RIMM cuts Playbook production lines. Link