| US stocks rebound, shake off recession talk
US STOCKS closed solidly in positive territory Wednesday as investors apparently shook off recession warnings as they awaited the start of the quarterly earnings season. The Dow Jones Industrial Average advanced 146.24 points (1.16 per cent) to 12,735.31 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite rose 34.04 points (1.39 per cent) to 2474.55, ending an eight-session losing streak. The broad-market Standard & Poor's 500 index added 18.94 points (1.36 per cent) at 1409.13, according to official final figures. The choppy rally on the major indexes followed Tuesday's pullback of an average two percent partly blamed on worries about the weakening US economy. "There is a sense that the sell-off is overdone and that there is very good value in a lot of stocks,'' said Dick Green at Briefing.com.
A fighting chance
From the skull on his shirt to his own gleaming noggin to the tattoo of a grinning demon on his enormous right biceps, John Rallo looks decidedly like someone you would never want to mess with.
And that's part of the truth of his existence. He's bounced drunks from local pubs, knocked out other dangerous men inside steel cages and even guarded rock star Tommy Lee on tour.
But listen to Rallo talk about the philosophy he imparts to his students at the Ground Control mixed martial arts gym in Canton, and you realize that there's more to his story.
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Home sales fall modestly
Tulsa wasn't immune to the effects of the national housing slump last year, but the drop was mild: 2007 area home sales declined just 5.1 percent from the year before.
An estimated 13,021 homes changed hands last year, compared with 13,722 in 2006, according to statistics from the Greater Tulsa Association of Realtors. Though the drop was the steepest this decade so far, sales remained well above 2001-2004 levels.
National home sales dropped 13 percent, the biggest plunge in a quarter-century and the second losing year in a row, the National Association of Realtors reported Wednesday.
Doug Horton, president of Northeast Oklahoma Real Estate Services, the multiple listing service that compiles home sales data, said the final tally was still strong.
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