Retail Sales Fall 2.7% and Other Sobering Headlines

Some Economic and Earnings Headlines:

• Retail sales declined by 2.7% in December, the sixth consecutive drop.  
  
• Nortel Networks filed for bankruptcy protection.  To be honest, I'm surprised these guys have hung in there so long.  They seem to lose money every quarter.  Bank of New York Mellon was listed as the largest unsecured creditor in its role as trustee on more than $3.8 billion in notes.
• Deutsche Bank reported a whopping $6.3 billion loss in the fourth quarter.  The bank indicated that significant losses came from sales and trading, although they failed to indicate how much was from prop trading.  Of course, DB's "star" prop trader, Boaz Weinstein, left last week to start a hedge fund (good luck with that), so you had to think the news out of that department wasn't going to be good.  Nevertheless, the losses out of Deutsche Bank should put the fear of God into those hoping for signs of recovery out of the banking sector.
• Tiffany reported a 21% decline in holiday sales.  The company reduced its earnings forecast for the year.  Remarkably, even with the decline, consumers spend $687.4 million on jewelry at Tiffany between November 1 and December 31.  Somebody somewhere still allocates a portion of their money to purchasing jewels, which I suppose is a positive sign.  

Equity markets are in the red, having given back all of their gains since the start of the new year.  So much for that fabled January Effect.  Bad economic and earnings news has overcome any optimism that investors may have faced at the start of the year.