Weekend Readings – Apple Beats Estimates + MORE Nov 1st

TOKYO – Nissan Motor Co., Japan’s second-biggest automaker, cut its earnings forecast Friday to reflect tougher than expected conditions in many markets and expensive recalls.
The company posted a 107.8 billion yen ($1.1 billion) net profit for the July-September quarter, a meagre 2 per cent increase from 105.7 billion yen a year earlier. Quarterly sales rose 16 per cent to 2.5 trillion yen ($25.4 billion).
“We had very costly recalls that hit our earnings,” Nissan President and Chief Executive Carlos Ghosn said in a video statement.
The company cut its profit forecast for the full fiscal year ending March by 15.5 per cent to 355 billion yen ($3.6 billion).
Nissan said last week it was recalling more than 188,000 Nissan and Infiniti SUVs worldwide to fix faulty brake control software that could increase the risk of a crash. In September, it recalled 908,900 vehicles around the world for defective accelerator sensors that could cause engines to stall.
Weaker than expected sales in Russia, Australia, Indonesia, Thailand and Brazil also took a toll, Ghosn said, though Nissan did well in China despite slowing growth in that market…

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TORONTO – Norbord Inc. (TSX:NBD) says it recorded $27 million in earnings during third quarter, or 50 cents per diluted share _ virtually unchanged from a gain of $27 million and 59 cents per share in the same quarter last year.
Earnings in the latest quarter include a $9 million one-time non-recurring income tax recovery.
In North America, Norbord says third quarter shipments of oriented strand board (OSB) rose 11 per cent year-over-year due to improved mill operating performance and the ramp-up of the Jefferson, Texas mill.
Norbord’s OSB mills produced at approximately 80% of installed capacity, compared to 75% in the prior quarter and 70% in the same quarter last year.
Excluding the two mothballed mills in Huguley, Ala., and Val-d’Or, Que., Norbord produced at approximately 100 per cent of capacity. It does not currently expect to restart its curtailed mills in 2014.
In Europe, panel shipments were flat year-over-year. Total shipments, including flat-pack furniture, were three per cent lower than the same quarter last year reflecting the usual summer slowdown…

http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/28/apples-q4-13-beats-with-37-5b-revenue-up-4-yy-7-5b-profit-and-8-26-eps/
General Readings
-Two giant investors at war on Twitter @ Bloomberg
-Are buybacks all good? @ MoneyBeat
Dividend/Passive Income Readings
-Death Bonds – A Spooky investment for Halloween @ TheDividendGuyBlog
Tech Stock Readings
-Tax loopholes closing could have major impacts on Tech stocks @ Bloomberg
-Big beat in earnings by Facebook ($FB) @ TechCrunch

http://www.thereformedbroker.com/2013/10/30/wolf-of-wall-street-trailer-2-hits/

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LONDON – Royal Bank of Scotland announced Friday it will segregate up to 39 billion pounds ($62 billion) of toxic assets to clean up its balance sheet in the aftermath of the financial crisis.
The taxpayer-owned bank’s decision comes with the support of the U.K government, which had reviewed the possibility of creating a separate entity to manage the assets. The government concluded that spinning off a so-called bad bank’ would do more harm than good, in part because it would distract management at a crucial moment.
Instead, RBS will create an “internal bad bank,” meaning it will segregate high-risk assets and manage them separately from the rest of the bank. The goal is to dispose of 55 per cent to 70 per cent of these assets by the end of 2016.
“While there is inevitable uncertainty associated with running down such assets, we have a clear aspiration to remove all these assets from the balance sheet in three years,” Chief Executive Ross McEwan said in a statement…