Sept.13 WSJ By The Numbers - Revealing Stats and Leading Indicators

A compendium of revealing stats and the key leading economic and business indicators based on today's Wall Street Journal stories:

Wal-Mart, which accounts for at least 40% of sales on new-release DVDs, has expressed concerns about the prices the studios offer Apple for iTunes movies since they are cheaper than DVDs. Apple said it would sell new-release movies at $12.99 during a period of preorders running up to the release and in the first week of release, and $14.99 after that. (Apple Computer Aims to Take Over Your Living-Room TV - WSJ)

India's industrial production expanded 12.4% in July from a year earlier, its fastest monthly pace in a decade. India's industry is expected to grow more than 10% in the fiscal year that began April 1. (India's Output Growth Of 12.4% Exceeds Estimates - WSJ) 12.4%
India Indust. production
Some prominent hedge funds are falling behind as the  Merrill Lynch's hedge-fund index is up only about 4% through Aug. 28, compared with a 7.2% gain for the DJ World Index. Standard & Poor's 500-stock index gained 4.3%.  (Hedge Funds Miss Their Target - WSJ)
  • $6 billion Convexity Capital produced returns of roughly 1% so far this year
  • TPG-Axon, a $6 billion fund launched by Dinakar Singh,  was up 3% through August
4% 
Hedge-funds returns
ESPN averaged a network record of 12.6 million viewers for the first game of its Monday night. ESPN has a six-year $8.8 billion deal. 

NBC's NFL game on Sunday night attracted an average of 22.6 million viewers -- the best showing for a network prime-time football opener since Dennis Miller's ABC premiere in 2000. The network paid $3.6 billion for the next six years. (Football Bets by ESPN, NBC Score High Ratings in Debut - WSJ)

22.6 Million  
NFL Sunday Night
The Standard & Poor's 500 companies have had 17 consecutive quarters of double-digit operating profit growth. That's a record since S&P started tracking operating earnings in 1988. 

According to Federal Reserve data, more than 62% of U.S. banks' earning assets -- that is, their loans and investments -- are real-estate related. (On Hold for Five Years, 9/11 Drag May Begin to Emerge in Economy - WSJ)

17 Quarters 
S&P 500 profits
Fund Managers showed a modest move toward more bullish bets on emerging-market stocks, with 31% of portfolios aggressively or moderately overweight in the shares, compared with 29% in August. According a Merrill and Taylor Nelson Sofres survey responses from Sept. 1 to Sept. 7 from 222 mutual-fund managers, representing $678 billion in assets under management. (Emerging-Markets View Brightens - WSJ) 31% 
Bullish on Emerging Markets
Local and foreign direct commercial real-estate investment in the Asian-Pacific region surged 40% in the first half of 2006 to $43 billion, according to a report by real-estate advisory firm Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. U.S. investors funded almost 60% of the recent deals in Asia. (Money Floods Into Asian Real Estate - WSJ) $43 Billion  
Asia Real Esate

WSJ By The Numbers - Metrics 2.0

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