market clues: the buy signals that money managers are tuning in to. in today's cover story, behind the investigation: what airline officials are saying about the tragic crash-landing of flight 214 in san francisco. plus, buyers from abroad and the role they play in america's housing recovery. and, a trader follows president obama's lead on investing in africa. first business starts now! you're watching first business: financial news, analysis, and today's investment ideas. good morning! it's tuesday, july 9. in today's first look: second-quarter earnings season starts with two companies topping expectations. both alcoa and wd40 turned in better-

than-predicted results - but alcoa's revenue fell short, and wd's forecast was shy. stocks rallied in anticipation of earnings. the dow gained 89, the nasdaq 6 and the s&p 8. gold added on $22 and oil lost 40 cents, ending around $103 per barrel. a much-anticipated vote happens today with fdic members potentially approving tougher rules on banks. barnes and noble ceo william lynch is resigning. shares fell 2% when the news broke after the close. lincoln ellis of strategic financial group joins us now for a look at the headline stories happening on the trading floor. good morning to you, lincoln. - good morning. - alcoa's earnings are out. does it set any kind of stage for corporate earnings this time around?

- tough to say from alcoa, really. they beat on the top- line, but the estimates have been continually ratcheted down - three times, actually - meaning only by a penny there. and they have been in the commodities space, so it's tough to tell. alcoa's never really a great barometer of earnings, but they did beat, so it's an upbeat start to the season. - how much is trading today going to hinge on what is happening with treasury yields? - treasury yield's a big, big issue this week. we have a 3-, 10-, and 30-year auction this week, and we get the fomc minutes. that should a produce a significant amount of volatility. we've been trading between 2.50% and 2.70% on that 10-year. which way yields go also portend the way that equity markets go. - is there anything investors should be doing now to prepare for tapering coming from the fed? - it's a little bit late on the fixed-income side, but i do think that people could look to be taking a little bit of money out of the developed economies, particularly the u.s., which has significantly outperformed the rest of the world, and look to re-allocate it in different

places around the globe. many places are undervalued, oversold. a little reallocation, perhaps, as we move into the third quarter. - we will be talking about those more later in the show. thank you for coming on today. - you bet. too low and too slow - in fact, only a little more than 2/3 the speed asiana flight 214 needed before it crashed while landing in san francisco after a 10-hour flight from seoul, south korea, last weekend. our cover story takes a look at the national transportation safety board's focus: who was in control of the airliner. asiana airlines says lee kang- kuk, a pilot with 43 hours of flying time in nine trips aboard a boeing triple-7, was landing the airliner for the first time in san francisco with 307 people aboard. "i think this exposes that foreign carriers are not living up to the standards that we expect." the airline says lee, an asiana pilot for nearly 20 years on smaller jets, was transitioning to fly triple-7s. in the right seat, "a deputy pilot," according to the airline, but one with more than 3,000 hours aboard triple 7s. pilots say

the so-called deputy should have been supervising. investigators are looking into why neither reacted quickly enough to avert the crash that killed two and injured 181 others. "in this case, the situation went way beyond the point at which someone should have stepped in." the recommended landing speed is 158 miles-per-hour, but after a 17-mile straight-in approach on a clear day over water, the plane was traveling at just 118 miles per hour three seconds before its tail struck the runway's seawall and broke off. "the guy in the right seat is really in command. he a lot of instructing time, and if this proves to be pilot error, you can't blame the left seat." the incident also renews debate over a projected shortage of commerical pilots and whether carriers outside the u.s. are rushing to put qualified pilots in the cockpit. "in some parts of the world, there's already a shortage of

qualified and responsible pilots." aviation consultants praised the quick evacuation from the burning plane and improved passenger seats, able to withstand 16 times the force of gravity. the previous standard was nine times, for planes built 15 years ago. meanwhile, asiana shares fell 5.75% at monday's close. another major crash, this one when an oil tanker derailed in quebec, canada, kills at least 5 people. dozens are still unaccounted for. after the train derailed several explosions leveled 30 buildings in the downtown area of lac megantic. the train was unmanned during the accident because it was during the middle of a shift change. an investigation continues. 10 people have also been killed in alaska after a small air taxi crashed southwest of anchorage. a new study finds that airport security may be worth the wait. a duke university study finds

that professional tsa screening agents are trained to be slow and precise when searching for weapons and bombs in luggage, while less experienced agents move quicker. the fast group completed screenings in 4 seconds with 82% accuracy. the tsa agents took 6 seconds, with 88% accuracy. new york's attorney general wants to end traders having access to early peeks at economic data. financial news provider thomson reuters is among the companies under investigation. the agency is suspending its early access of the university of michigan sentiment numbers to high- frequency traders. the survey was being released every other friday at 9:54:58 am to high- paying subscribers, 9:55:55 to regular subscribers, and 10:00 to the general public. it's not a huge difference, but in trader-world it can mean millions of dollars in profits by having an early clue into which direction the market is likely to move on the news. greece is back on the brink. the struggling nation has until july 19th to prove it's committed to job cuts and a new tax code, otherwise a much needed $3.2

billion bailout will not happen. demonstrators have been rallying in the streets of athens against budget cuts and layoffs. greece has been in a financial free-fall for the past few years. however, economists believe the bailout, along with reforms, could translate into economic growth in 2014. significant payouts following damaging floods in europe in june - but not as much as first predicted. insurers are expected to pay up to $4.5 billion, nearly half of previous estimates. sandbagging and other preventive measures by residents defrayed some of the cost. the czech republic, austria and poland were hit hardest by flooding. retailers are relenting to reforming safety standards in bangladesh. 70 retailers, such as h&m, zara, and abercrombie and fitch, are signing onto a plan that includes conducting regular garment factory inspections. it follows a tragic factory collapse in april that killed more than 1100 wd macy's did not join the initiative. on a related note, wal-mart's expansion into india

reportedly is hitting a snag and won't happen until 2016 at the earliest. with plenty of cash to spend, it's homebuyers from the outside of u.s. borders who are fueling the housing recovery. chinese and canadians, among others, are snapping up available properties, oftentimes luxury properties in sunbelt states. enrique teran sells real estate in miami, florida, and says the impact of foreign buyers can't be underestimated. "areas like texas, california, miami, tampa, you do see a great impact. new york, for example, has a great impact with foreign buyers in the market, and i would even tell you, as far as south florida comes to be, i've read numbers up to 50% of the house purchases were done by foreign investors." four states account for 58% of all sales to foreign buyers: florida at 23%, california with 17% and both arizona and texas with 9% each. a major shareholder in dell believes it's safer to sell the computer company to founder michael dell. he's offered to buy out and take the company

private for $13.65 per share. dell shares bounced 3% to close at $13.44 monday. billionaire investor carl ichan, the second largest shareholder in the company, is making a $14-per- share bid for dell. the company's shareholders' meeting is set for july 18th. a six-month fight has ended with clearwire shareholders giving the green light to sprint's takeover bid. the deal gives sprint valuable access to the frequencies that mobile devices use to connect to networks. once complete, sprint will have more spectrum than verizon and at&t. sprint is paying $5 per share. that puts clearwire's value at about $14 billion. in san francisco, it's a better commute to work today. unionized bay area rapid transit workers and management have reached a temporary agreement to keep the mass transit system running at least until august. the compromise will extend the

current contract for workers 30 days. during that time, negotiations will continue to resolve differences that remain. scotland yard is reportedly trying to get its hands on a recording that could prove media mogul rupert murdoch was lying about the scandal that brought down his "news of the world" newspaper - allegedly a recording during a meeting between murdoch and two dozen reporters and executives. murdoch says that paying police for stories was just a part of "the culture of fleet street." murdoch has maintained publicly that he knew nothing about payments for stories. british astronomers have an out-of-this-world idea! they set up a network of stargazers for an all-out effort to search for extraterrestrails. the academics believe by sharing information, they'll improve efforts to monitor outer space for signs of life. target says goodbye to its founder. douglas dayton, the man behind the retail giant, died on sunday after a battle with cancer. dayton was 88 years

old. llh afamily department sto. still to come, cough it up: why women are being asked to pay more in a growing insurance trend. that's later on. but first, future fears: what market behavior investors are bracing for in the second half of the year. stay with us.

we're back in the swing of earnings season. alcoa kicked it off, reporting in profits of 7 cents a share, beating wall street's lowered estimates by a penny. net income reached $76 million, which was up 25% from 2012. the company did fall short on revenue. alcoa's ceo predicts demand for aluminum will increase 7% this year, slightly higher from a year ago. shares rose 1% yesterday, closing below 8 dollars. consistent growth from corporate america and from the labor market could spur stocks higher. larry short, portfolio manager & executive director of private client group dwm securities inc., joins us via skype. good morning, and what are your thoughts on the second half of the year? - pleasure to be here. if you remember last year, we were talking about how i expected that after the u.s. presidential election, we would start to see the market move up, we would start to get long-term interest rates also starting to move up, which means that bond prices were going to start moving down. and indeed, that's the way that it's unfolded quite

nicely. so, the market has made a really nice run. i'd like to see it continue, but it all depends on the reaction that clients are going to have when they open their june statements. - what do you anticipate you'll hear from clients about their statements? - more than likely the calls are going to come from bond- holders first, because bonds have had such a terrific run for really the last 18 years. this fall that we've had recently has been very rare. we only had it happen in 1994, in 1999, and in 2004, where bonds have come off quite significantly. and that, particularly for investors these days, they're not used to seeing bonds fall. so, indeed, if they do start to call their advisers and then start to see that in fact the stock market has gone up, we could see what's called a great rotation, where money starts to move from the bond market into the stock market. - do you see signs of a summer rally? - it looks like the market wants to move back up into a nice summer rally here. again,

the odds are in favor of doing that. it's certainly not something that's definite, but we do anticipate that the markets will be higher come early august than they are now. that being said, we always go into that worrisome period in september / october. 17 out of 20 years, the markets tend to be lower in september and october than they are in june and early july, and we think that would set up for the next run, running into 2014. - one last question: where are you putting your money? - definitely eyeing commodities in general, the reason being that indeed if we do have some improvement in the u.s. economy, japan starting to pick up, growth happening in china, maybe not as much as we'd like, but still some decent growth happening, auto sales picking up nicely, at some point here, commodities have got to start

participating. - thank you, and again, that's larry short. thank you for your time. - my pleasure. still to come, why women are expected to pay more for certain insurance plans. that's right after the break.

women will soon pay top-dollar for long-term insurance. in some states, the ladies will have to outspend men by at least 40%. liz digani of ubs long- term insurance division is here this morning. good morning to you. you're bringing us the break-down on this story. - yes.

- why is it that women are paying more than men? - across the board we are seeing long-term care premiums go up. - for everyone. - for everyone, really. but specifically for women, it comes down to two factors: first of all, women are outliving men; and secondly, women tend to require more care, especially in nursing homes. a lot of times when men will fall sick, women will be the ones who stay at home and take care of their spouse. and when they get sick themselves, there's no one there to take care of them, so they actually have to go into nursing homes. - how soon will these policy rates increase? - they have already started increasing and have some differention between male and female prices. but i think it's going to become more common across the board. - what role do insurers play in this? - insurers, and beyond that, financial professionals, have a huge role in this. beyond just recommending the best policy for the individual, they really have to talk to the person, find out what's in their best

interest, before just making a recommendation that they buy a long-term care policy. they really need to get to know the person and make the best recommendation possible. - is there any way around these escalating prices, especially for women? - there are different types of policies that are out there where they might not see as big of an impact in the policies. for example, in the hybrid long- term care space, were the products are life insurance- based, there might be a little bit more wiggle room with those products. but otherwise, no. - what would you do? you're a woman, some day you'll face this as well. what would to do? you're in the business? - i would say the earlier you start to plan, the better. so, the sooner you can sit down with a financial planner who can get to know you and yo nds and really make the best recommendation, not just push a product on you, the earlier you can start planning, the better. - liz digani of ubs. thanks for coming in. - thank you so much for having me. still to come, the obama administration is betting big on africa. up next, a possible way to profit on that play is coming up in chart talk.

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matt shapiro, president of mws capital, joins us now. he is following that old adage, "buy low, sell high," by looking for opportunities overseas. good morning to you. - good morning, angie. - which countries would you prefer to invest in at this time? - you know, the whole question of foreign investing is on people's minds, because honestly these developing markets have not done very well. emerging markets funds are down for the year, the etfs aren't doing well... the whole premise of foreign investing is you're supposed to have a diversifying asset. but, something that doesn't make money and is just as risky doesn't help you. so where i'm looking is in those frontier markets, but there's very tough investor choices, especially the middle east and africa. that's the one region of the world where i think the

premise of investing overseas, that you can make some money in a developing region and also diversify risk away from big u.s. and european markets, that's where it has the promise. but, there's not a lot of fund choices, there's just two or three. - tougher to find than the china, european, or brazilian plays. so, how do you go about scouting these out? i'm sure you do your homework here. - you have to do some research. the biggest one is templeton developing markets, run by mark mobius, who's well-known as an intrepid foreign investor. he's done this for quite a number of years. t. rowe price has one, and fidelity has a developing country fund as well. but a lot of them actually have a lot of assets in russia. so you've got to be careful. it's tough to really find that pure play africa and middle east fund. - something that could work in your favor is if somebody perhaps wanted to buy a portion in a 401k, just a slice - and of course we know president obama is putting more money into africa, so i see where you're going with this. do you see these as long-term plays, matt? - absolutely long-term. i'm

very attracted. i think obama really showed the promise of investing in that region. but there's just not a lot of investment vehicles out there. so it's kind of coming into the talk and becoming popularized a little bit. so i think by the end of the year, there's going to be a little bit better investment vehicles that aren't those traditional emerging markets. brazil has done so poorly - five-year low - they really haven't done the job of helping your portfolio. so i hope in this region, we can finally get the results. - always good to be ahead of the curve. thank you, matt. - you're welcome. that's it for now. coming up tomorrow - with the bulk of corporate earnings set to soon roll out, the the director of research from zacks.com will be here with his predictions on the best and worst performing sectors. from all of us at first businesss, thank you for making us a part of your day!

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