CHESSNOID

I don’t follow the metals markets but Alcoa has missed their earnings reports.  After they announced this, the  numbers fell after hours.  This will not be a good start for tomorrow, but you never know.  Seems like bad news moves the markets up, and good news pushes the markets down. According to the Wall Street Journal:

Alcoa Inc.’s third-quarter net income dropped 52% amid weakening demand, and the company said it would curtail projects and suspend share repurchases to preserve captial.

“Given the sharp decline in metal prices and increasingly soft demand in our key markets, we are stopping all non-critical capital projects, making targeted reductions to match market conditions and are adjusting our manufacturing capacity to meet demand in rapidly changing upstream and downstream markets,” said President and Chief Executive Klaus Kleinfeld.

The largest U.S. aluminum producer reported net income of $268 million, or 33 cents a share, down from $555 million, or 63 cents a share, a year ago.

The latest results included a charge of four cents a share, which Alcoa disclosed last month. The company said it would lay off about 660 people by the end of the year at its Texas operations — essentially closing operations there — due to power-supply problems and decreasing demand for aluminum. The company said Tuesday it was halting production at the site.

This looks like more pressure on the Bernanke to lower our already low interest rates of 2% closer to 0%. That doesn’t leave much incentive to save money. I wonder if the stock markets will rally like the previous cuts or if this is already priced into the falling stock market. Ouch!