Daily News 01/28/2015

January 28, 2015

Wednesday – January 28

Apple reported quarterly earnings on Tuesday evening easily surpassing Wall Street estimates. The company reported that it sold 34,000 iPhones per hour, 24 hours a day in each and every day of the quarter! That’s a lot of hardware, which came to 74.5 million iPhones sold in the quarter. The iPhone maker reported that it made $18.04 billion in profits on $74.6 billion in revenues, both records for Apple. The next big rollout for Apple, the Apple Watch, will begin shipping out in April.

The investing world will be glued to their TV screens or portable news devices at 2:00 p.m. EST this afternoon when the Federal Reserve is scheduled to release it monetary policy statement. Most economists feel that there will be no change in the short term Fed Funds Rate, but the statement may reveal when interest rates may begin to rise. It is expected that the Fed Funds Rate will begin to rise sometime near June or the second half of 2015. However, there is a growing number of experts that feel that due to the current state of Europe, the somewhat radical new regime in Greece, the uncertainty surrounding the strong U.S. dollar and plunging oil prices–rates are not going higher anytime soon.

Prices at the pumps had fallen four consecutive months, but there was a slight uptick in prices to bring the national average price for a regular gallon of gasoline to $2.38 on Tuesday, up from $2.033 on Monday. And where prices are still very low, it was the first increase since September 25, reports motor club AAA. It was the longest streak of gas price declines on record. AAA went on to say that prices will gradually rise this spring due to seasonal demand and maintenance, but shouldn’t rise above $3 in 2015.