Profitshop

Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers was selected as the National Football League’s Most Valuable Player for the second time in his career following a season in which he led the league’s top-scoring offense while throwing 38 touchdown passes and only five interceptions. Rodgers, 31, had the NFL’s second-highest quarterback rating this season, completing almost 66 percent of his passes for 4,381 yards. He became just the second quarterback in NFL history to throw more than 35 touchdown passes with five interceptions or fewer. Rodgers was selected over Houston Texans end J.J. Watt, who was seeking to become the first defensive player to win the MVP award since Lawrence Taylor in 1986. Watt had 20 1/2 sacks, four forced fumbles, five fumble recoveries, one interception and scored five touchdowns, including three receiving. He was named the NFL’s Defensive Player of the Year. Rodgers, who also was voted the Associated Press NFL MVP after the 2011 season, led a Packers’ off

 U.S. drillers pulled 94 oil rigs out of fields in a single week, the biggest retreat to date, as crude prices capped the longest stretch of monthly declines since 2009. The oil rig count dropped to a three-year low of 1,223, Baker Hughes Inc. said on its website Friday. It was the biggest weekly decline since the Houston-based oil-field services company began collecting the data in 1987. The Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico, the country’s biggest oil field, was hit hardest, losing 25 rigs. Drillers are parking rigs as a global collapse in oil prices prompts producers to curb spending, service contractors to fire thousands and at least one oil-rich county in California to declare a fiscal emergency. Banks including Societe Generale SA have said prices may fall below $40 a barrel as global supplies surge and OPEC resists calls to curb output. “The risk is that we go into a $30- to $40-a-barrel range if the market is too impatient and doesn’t want to wait for lower rig cou

Citigroup Inc.’s loss on a surge in the Swiss franc this month was exacerbated by the bank’s decision to let protections against currency swings lapse a week earlier, according to people with knowledge of the situation. The bank didn’t renew derivatives trades that would have blunted the impact from Switzerland’s surprise move to let the franc rise, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing the strategy. The company’s losses exceeded $200 million in the hours after the announcement, before traders pared the deficit to closer to $150 million, the people said. The loss at Citigroup, which dethroned Deutsche Bank AG last year as the world’s biggest foreign-exchange dealer, illustrates the perils of unhedged trading in the currency markets. Citigroup has faced particular scrutiny of its ability to manage risks after soured mortgage holdings forced it to draw more taxpayer support than any U.S. bank during the financial crisis. Citigroup was exposed after selling

Mark Zuckerberg is spending faster to chase opportunities in messaging and mobile advertising as sales growth slows at Facebook Inc.’s main social-networking service. The company said on Wednesday that spending will jump 55 percent to 70 percent in 2015, narrower than the 50 percent to 75 percent range that it projected in October. Zuckerberg has said Facebook is investing in messaging, advertising across the Web, hiring and new technologies such as artificial intelligence. Total expenses in the fourth quarter soared 87 percent to $2.72 billion. That hit profit, with the Menlo Park, California-based company reporting an operating margin of 29 percent, compared with 44 percent a year earlier. Sales totaled $3.85 billion, up 49 percent and slower than the 63 percent growth in the fourth quarter of 2013. The spending resembles that of other Web companies including Google Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., which are also investing in ventures from drones to cloud computing that are outside of t

Asia’s wealthiest families are snapping up dollars as a haven from the volatility plaguing financial markets, providing another source of demand for the greenback. Rich individuals are chasing the greenback’s rally to a decade-high as the U.S. prepares to raise interest rates for the first time since 2006. Stamford Management Pte in Singapore, which oversees $200 million for Asia’s multi-millionaires, says about 90 percent of its holdings are now in the U.S. currency. SandAire Ltd. and Woodside Holdings Investment Management have boosted dollar assets to the maximum their rules allow. “The U.S. dollar has moved relatively quickly, and that left a lot of high-net-worths behind,” Jason Wang, Stamford’s Singapore-based chief executive officer, said Wednesday in an interview. “Non-professional investors are not usually the first movers or innovators of a major trend, so there’s still a lot of pent-up demand.” Markets are becoming more dangerous, particularly for smaller investors

 Six months ago, a degree in petroleum engineering was a ticket to a job with a six-figure salary. Now it’s looking like a path to the unemployment office. The oil crash that’s forcing companies to slash billions from their budgets and cut tens of thousands of workers is derailing an industry campaign to attract top college graduates. It comes at a time when the future of drilling is increasingly tied to new technology that lets companies pull more oil and natural gas from the ground, faster and cheaper. Young people who swarmed to newly designed energy programs at schools from Texas to California are now questioning whether they can count on crude for their future, according to interviews with students, counselors and company officials. “It’s time for me to do a reassessment of how I plan to begin my career,” said Vince Miller, a senior at Ohio State University studying chemical engineering and president of the school’s Society of Petroleum Engineers chapter. Miller spent th

Oppenheimer Holdings Inc. will pay $20 million to settle U.S. regulatory claims that it improperly sold billions of shares of penny stocks on behalf of customers. Oppenheimer admitted that it failed to report red flags that its client Gibraltar Global Securities, a Bahamas-based firm, was carrying out the transactions without being registered in the U.S., the Securities and Exchange Commission said in a statement. The firm acknowledged additional sales of penny stocks for a different customer that resulted in about $588,400 in commissions, according to the SEC. In a statement, Oppenheimer said it was pleased to resolve the claims, which involve activity from “years ago.” The SEC in April 2013 sued Gibraltar, saying the firm had been operating illegally in the U.S. since 2008. Gibraltar is fighting the claims in Manhattan federal court. The settlements made public Tuesday call for Oppenheimer to pay $10 million to settle the SEC case and another $10 million to resolve related

Juniper Networks Inc. forecast first-quarter sales higher than analysts’ estimates, a sign the network-equipment maker is weathering management changes and increased competition. The shares rose in extended trading. Sales will be $1.02 billion to $1.06 billion for the quarter, the Sunnyvale, California-based company said Tuesday in a statement. On average, analysts projected revenue of $1.02 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Earnings excluding some costs will be 28 cents to 32 cents a share, compared with an average analyst estimate of 30 cents. Fourth-quarter profit also beat estimates. “It looks good, certainly on the surface,” Erik Suppiger, an analyst at JMP Securities LLC, said in a telephone interview. “They have set some very low expectations.” Juniper has been working to find new growth, while also dealing with pressure to increase shareholder returns from activist investors led by Elliot Management Corp. A month after naming technology executive Shaygan

Bonds of Kaisa Group Holdings Ltd. (1638) rallied for a fourth day on speculation the local government is seeking buyers for the homebuilder after it missed a coupon payment. The company’s 8.875 percent notes due 2018 jumped 5.78 cents to 62.46 cents on the dollar as of 11:45 a.m. in Hong Kong, according to Bloomberg-compiled prices. Its 10.25 percent debt due 2020 advanced 5.96 cents to 62.22 cents on the dollar. The securities fell to record lows below 30 cents on Jan. 7. The rebound follows reports the Shenzhen local government is seeking new investors to take over the developer based in the southern Chinese city after founder and ex-chairman Kwok Ying Shing quit on Dec. 31. Kaisa is being probed over alleged links to Jiang Zunyu, the former security chief of Shenzhen taken into custody in a graft probe, two people familiar said. “The Kaisa situation took a major turn to the positive, with the expected government-orchestrated investment finally appearing to be in motion,” Owen G

You didn’t have to be a genius to make money in equities the last two years. Buy an index fund and let the bull market guide you to a 44 percent gain. Most money managers who actually pick stocks couldn’t match the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, let alone beat it. Thanks to three weeks of volatility, that’s beginning to change. This year, U.S. stocks have started to go their own ways, rather than move in lockstep with each other and with little swings, as they did in 2014. That’s good news for active managers, who’ve seen investors pull money for years in favor of low-cost index and exchange-traded funds. “That’s a better environment for the way that we think of the world,” said Doug Burtnick, a Philadelphia-based senior investment manager at Aberdeen Asset Management, which oversees $525 billion. “Managers who focus on discriminating among companies, and to the extent they tend to get the fundamentals right, should be rewarded more richly.” Three weeks into 2015, stocks are get

China’s benchmark money-market rate fell as the central bank added funds to the financial system, ensuring cash supply as demand spikes before the Lunar New Year holidays. The People’s Bank of China conducted 60 billion yuan ($9.6 billion) of reverse-repurchase operations Tuesday for seven and 28 days, keeping rates close to market levels. The monetary authority offered 30 billion yuan of 28-day contracts at 4.8 percent and a similar amount in seven-day reverse repos at 3.85 percent. China’s new year holidays start Feb. 18. “The central bank wants to ensure pre-holiday cash demand is met,” said Song Qiuhong, an analyst at Shunde Rural Commercial Bank Co. in Guangdong province. “The interest rate for 28-day repos was higher than expected, indicating the central bank may have the concern that significantly lowering the interest rate could accelerate capital outflows.” The seven-day repurchase rate, a gauge of interbank funding availability, fell two basis points to 3.87 percent as of