Market Wrap: Obama's 'Decent' Proposal; Qnexa Gets FDA Panel Backing; Google, Apple Sign Privacy Deal

FREE Breaking News Alerts from StreetInsider.com!

VVUS Hot Sheet

Overall Analyst Rating:
NEUTRAL (

Market wrap-up for February 22nd

End of the Day: Dow Jones down 27.0 to 12,938.67; Nasdaq down 15.4 to 2,933.17; S&P 500 down 4.6 to 1,357.66

The following is a brief summary of events moving markets today:

"Who likes paying taxes? No one!" - Obama: Earlier Wednesday, President Obama proposed the lowering of the maximum rate employers will pay in federal taxes from the current 35 percent to a new 28 percent rate. Cuts would be even better for manufacturers.

The proposal will also taper off many of the more popular deductions that businesses take advantage of, which generally brings the overall rate down from 35 percent for most businesses.

In closing loopholes, one example deals with overseas operations. Under the proposal, companies within international operations would now face a minimum tax, something companies haven't had to deal with before. Typically, international branches would skirt paying U.S. tax should the profits be earned outside of the U.S. and never enter the U.S.
Wonder if this'll become more popular than Adderall on college campuses: Vivus' (Nasdaq: VVUS) Qnexa got backing from an FDA panel by a margin of 20 to 2 in favor. The drug was reviewed by the FDA's Endocrinologic and Metabolic Drugs Advisory Committee, a panel made up of non-FDA medical experts. Though the panel voted in favor of the drug, the FDA will need to approve it solely, but can take the panel's recommendation into consideration.

Vivus previously submitted two other weight loss drugs that the FDA rejected. The stock resumed trading up 91 percent after being halted throughout today's session.
H-P and Dell, like awesome twins separated at birth: PC makers are feeling the margin pinch. Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) reported mixed first-quarter fiscal 2012 after the market closed Wednesday, matching mixed results from peer Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) Tuesday night. Revs of $30.04 billion were light while pro forma EPS of 92 cents topped expectations. Looking ahead, H-P sees second-quarter earnings of 88 cents to 91 cents per share, lighter than expectations calling for 95 cents.

For more on H-P's quarter, click here.
Reason #923,284 of why making money is wrong, and the gov't hates it: U.S. regulators are out to get the man again. See, getting an education and learning to use tools to profit is a bad thing, and U.S. SEC Chair Mary Schapiro is out to stop it, starting with high-frequency traders.

Commenting on the move, Schapiro seemingly outlines the positives and negatives in one fell swoop, according to the WSJ: "A large portion of trading in the equities market has little to do with "the fundamentals of the company that's being traded" and more to do with "the minuscule aberrational price move" that computer-assisted traders with direct connections to the exchange can "jump on" in fractions of a second."

This "worry" comes from the same SEC Chair who wanted to sell a multi-billion bonus structure investigation into BofA (NYSE: BAC) back in 2009 for just $33 million. Just a reminder about that one.
Don't worry, you can browse freely now (*cough*): Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL), Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN), and a slew of other tech giants joined a privacy accord in California with Attorney General Kamala Harris. Harris said most consumers are unaware of what happens in the background when they download apps to their mobile devices, items such as tracking, exporting contact data, and so on.

Of course, in Google's case the accord is merely a formality.
Google is also making some pretty awesome goggles.