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US stock market daily report (February 15, 2013, Friday)

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced on Friday suspicious defendants are being sued, by the name of GS&Co. which is a name Goldman Sachs (GS) uses for its options broker, bought 2,533 out-of-the-money June $65 calls of Heinz (HNZ) just a day before the deal was announced that Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) and 3G Capital were going to buy Heinz. There was no history of any prior trading of Heinz, from the account. The June $65 calls were not actively traded before the deal was announced with only only 14 calls purchased on February 12. The SEC received a court order freezing the account in Zurich, Switzerland. The SEC alleges options traders made a profit of more than $1.7 million based on insider information.

Social-networking site Facebook Inc. (FB) announced on Friday that the attack last month was a “a sophisticated attack” however, the company has “found no evidence that Facebook user data was compromised.” Facebook's security team said the attack happened after some employees went to a mobile developer’s website, which turned out to be compromised. "The compromised website hosted an exploit which then allowed malware to be installed on these employee laptops,” Facebook said. “The laptops were fully-patched and running up-to-date anti-virus software.” The post continued, “As soon as we discovered the presence of the malware, we remediated all infected machines, informed law enforcement, and began a significant investigation that continues to this day.” Facebook security team tracked “a suspicious domain,” which was then tracked to an employee’s laptop which was found to have “a malicious file.” The post from Facebook additionally said, “Facebook was not alone in this attack. It is clear that others were attacked and infiltrated recently as well.”

The New York Federal Reserve Bank reported on Friday that the Empire State manufacturing index moved into positive territory to 10.0 in February, for the first time since July. Key new orders sub-index jumped to 13.3 from negative 7.2. An index of expectations of activity six months ahead rose to its highest level since April.

The Federal Reserve reported industrial production slipped in January on declines in manufacturing and mining output. The final two months of last year were reported stronger than initially estimated. In January, the Fed reported that industrial production slipped 0.1% after gains of 0.4% in December and 1.4% in November. Capacity utilization reportedly fell in January to 79.1% from an upwardly revised 79.3% in December.

U.S. Department of the Treasury reported Treasury International Capital (TIC) data for December 2012 with the sum total in December of all net foreign acquisitions of long-term securities, short-term U.S. securities, and banking flows was a monthly net TIC inflow of $25.2 billion. Net foreign private inflows were $26.1 billion and net foreign official inflows were negative $0.9 billion. Net purchases were $76.5 billion with foreign residents increasing their holdings of long-term U.S. securities in December. Net purchases by private foreign investors were $67.3 billion, and net purchases by foreign official institutions were $9.1 billion. U.S. residents increased their holdings of long-term foreign securities, with net purchases of $12.3 billion. Net foreign purchases of long-term securities were $64.2 billion when taking into account transactions in both foreign and U.S. securities. Estimates of unrecorded principal payments to foreigners on U.S. asset-backed securities, the overall net foreign acquisition of long-term securities is estimated to have been $43.2 billion in December after including adjustments. Foreign residents decreased their holdings of U.S. Treasury bills by $11.9 billion. Foreign resident holdings of all dollar-denominated short-term U.S. securities and other custody liabilities decreased by $5.6 billion. Net dollar-denominated liabilities by banks to foreign residents decreased by $12.5 billion.

The University of Michigan-Thomson Reuters reported on Friday that consumer-sentiment gauge rose to a preliminary February reading of 76.3 striking the highest level since November.