Weekly Roundup: MarketWatch top 10 stories Feb. 6 - 10

Weekly Roundup FEBRUARY 10, 2012 MarketWatch top 10 stories Feb. 6 - 10 By MarketWatch NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — U.S. stocks closed out their first losing week of 2012 on Friday after the failure of Greek politicians to consummate their latest bailout agreement with creditors drove buyers to the sidelines, eschewing weekend risk exposure. The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended the week off 0.5%. The Nasdaq Composite slipped 0.06% for the week while the broader S&P 500 Index surrendered 0.2% over the last five days. Also please be sure to watch our Week Ahead videos.  Asia's week ahead: Japan GDP data  Europe week ahead: Greek vote, earnings  U.S. week ahead:Greece, housing data Greg Morcroft, assistant managing editor FBI releases file on Apple's Steve Jobs The FBI, noted for its dossiers on Martin Luther King, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson and countless others, released its file on late Apple Inc. (AAPL) co-founder Steve Jobs Thursday. The document is pretty benign, revealing only that he experimented with drugs during the early 1970s, and that the famously difficult Jobs wasn't always nice to everyone.In 1991, Jobs was being considered for a post on President George H.W. Bush's Export Council, an appointment that would not have required Senate confirmation. The FBI was asked to do a background check, the file said. A large number of people who worked with Jobs at the time or knew him in some other capacity were asked to comment on his character and suitability for a political position. Read more on MarketWatch about Steve Jobs's FBI dossier Dennis Gartman is 'wild-eyed bullish' on stocks The Dow Jones Industrial Average has added more than 2,000 points since its October 2011 lows, a 21% gain. The Standard & Poor's 500 index is up nearly 250 points from its lows at the same time, a 22.5% advance. The Nasdaq Composite index has hit 11-year highs. And Dennis Gartman is still "wild-eyed bullish" on stocks. If Gartman's right, then the big selloff last spring and summer that drove the S&P down to just below 1,100 on Oct. 3 will have been a great buying opportunity that just about everybody missed — and which many investors even fled. Read Howard Gold's interview with Dennis Gartman, on MarketWatch Greek uncertainty rises as Europe demands vote Global investor risk appetite weakened Friday as it became clear that final approval of a second Greek bailout necessary to avoid a messy default will be delayed until next week, after euro-zone finance ministers demanded the country's parliament first approve another round of deep cutbacks.Sentiment weakened further after news reports said the leader of Greece's small LAOS party, a junior partner in the country's three-party ruling coalition, said he couldn't back the additional austerity measures. Read MarketWatch coverage of latest setbacks on Greece's path to solvency Republican race thrown into chaos — again The odds of a knockdown, dragout fight at the Republican convention rose this week after Rick Santorum's surprising victories. Santorum, sagging in national polls and low on money, easily beat front-runner Mitt Romney in a Missouri primary and also won caucuses in Colorado and Minnesota. His sweep sapped Romney's momentum and raised the possibility that none of the four remaining candidates will win enough support to capture outright the presidential nomination before the party's convention in August. Read MarketWatch analysis of Rick Santorum's performance The insiders are selling heavily Corporate insiders are selling their companies' stock at a rate not seen since late last July.That's a scary parallel indeed, since that late-July spike in selling came just days before one of the more painful two-week periods in the stock market in years. On the theory that corporate insiders — officers, directors and largest shareholders — know more about their firms' prospects than do the rest of us, it can't be good news that they are selling at such a heavy pace. Read Mark Hulbert's commentary, on MarketWatch Commentary: Heritage Foundation is wrong about welfare state The Heritage Foundation is out with another one of its misleading reports about how big government is eroding our freedoms.The report — The 2012 Index of Dependency on Government — comes to the predictable conclusion that the nation is perilously close to "economic and social collapse" because too many of us are overly reliant upon the government for our survival. The report is alarmist in tone, but the actual data underlying the analysis don't support the doomsday rhetoric. Read Rex Nutting's commentary, on MarketWatch 5 stock pros confess their biggest market worries The headaches besetting globally oriented investment managers are constant, but the pain essentially has two sources: Slow economic growth and the European sovereign debt crisis. For a sense of how asset managers are coping with the current global investment climate and to understand their worst fears, MarketWatch spoke to five seasoned professionals who are based outside of the U.S., from London to Hong Kong, about their biggest stock-market worries. Here they are. Read MarketWatch Weekend Investor column Jobless claims in U.S. drop 15,000 to 358,000, at 4-year low The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits fell again last week, the government said Thursday, supplying further proof that the U.S. labor market continues to mend. Initial claims are a good indicator of whether layoffs are rising or falling. They've declined sharply since last summer, meaning that more people are finding work or fewer are losing their jobs. Jobless claims dropped by 15,000 to a seasonally adjusted 358,000 in the week ended Feb. 4, the Labor Department said. That's near a four-year low. Read MarketWatch coverage of U.S. jobless claims Americans still sold on homeownership Despite the beating that home prices have taken over the last five years, Americans are still optimistic about their own housing situation, a new poll shows.Seventy-eight percent of Americans identified as likely to vote in the 2012 presidential election said that owning their own home was one of the most important things in their lives, according to the survey by Lake Research Partners done for the National Association of Home Builders and presented Wednesday at the International Builders Show. Read MatrketWatch coverage of the homebuilder show Ready to bet on small-company growth stocks? It's beginning to look as if it might be time to make a big bet on small-company growth stocks.Yes, the economy is starting to show signs of improvement and, as most investors know, that's usually a good time to consider overweighting one's portfolio with stocks likely to benefit the most from an expansion. Small-company growth stocks are already on the rise. In fact, small-company growth stocks are already fifth-best-performing fund category among domestic stocks funds this year, rising nearly 12% through Feb. 3, according to Morningstar But analysts say it's not too late to take advantage of what could be a long-term investment trend. Read Bob Powell's "Your Portfolio" column, on MarketWatch Get the latest news on our mobile site: http://www.marketwatch.com/m MarketWatch has sent you this newsletter because you signed up to receive it. To ensure you receive this newsletter in the future, please add marketwatchmail.com to your list of approved senders. Sent to: kumaresan.selva.blogger@gmail.com Unsubscribe | Subscribe Copyright 2012 MarketWatch, Inc. All rights reserved. MarketWatch, the MarketWatch logo, and BigCharts are registered trademarks of MarketWatch, Inc. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy (updated 6/26/07). MarketWatch - Attn: Customer Service, 201 California St., San Francisco, CA 94111