is attracting more business. in today's cover story, american airlines pilots putting on the pressure in contract talks, and it's now affecting flights across the country. what's clint doing back on the big screen? didn't he say he was done with acting? one of our topics in movies & money. and, if you find yourself wasting the day away on the internet, you're not alone. how to break your bad tech habits. first business starts right now. you're watching first business: financial news, analysis, and today's investment ideas.

i'm bill moller. angie miles is off. here's the first look for thursday, september 20th: the conventional wisdom is that republican presidents are better for wall street. hold on. fortune magazine looked at the numbers and it's a pretty close call. example - during george w. bush's terms, the market lost 25%. which president has had the best 1st term run? barack obama, when stocks exploded for a gain of 96%. attention holiday shoppers! the guys who unload ships may be going on strike. the contract for the more than 15,000 members of the international longshoremen's association runs out at the end of the month. holiday sales are so important, just the threat of a strike has retailers considering back-up plans. on the topic of the holidays, a big downgrade for the 3 top publicly traded toymakers, which sent shares of mattel, hasbro and jakks down. the worry: toy sales. they've been dropping all year, down more than what analyst sean mcgown thinks can be corrected by holiday sales.

an influential blog says zynga is losing another top executive - this time the chief security officer, who follows out the door the coo, cmo and cco - that's the chief creative officer. let's talk with our trader today. it's larry shover. he is chief investment officer at sfg alternatives. larry, a lot of talk about housing. a lot of good numbers, including several that came out yesterday. this is starting to look like a real play opportunity. > > you know, it might be. i think a lot of people are recommending housing stocks. let's keep in mind, we've fallen down a seven-year flight of steps in terms of housing, and so right now it seems like the housing market is stabilized. we're underestimating the tailwind that that could be for the market. > > i want to ask you about manufacturing. a lot of analysts have been looking at a lot of data, but you really feel that there are a couple of important indexes that will be a

very clear indicator as to a very important component of our economy. > > when you look at the economy, everything except for housing has been contracting. today we have the p.m.i.s coming out of china, europe, and the u.s. that's going to give us a very good indication of whether we're contracting or whether we're growing. i can't leverage the fact that the stock market will go one way or the other because of it, because it seems like we're all looking around that right now, but, the bigger picture is, if we're not growing the manufacturing base, are stock market cannot sustain itself for very long. > > all right. so, if there is a strong negative in these p.m.i.s, what should that tell you? that there might be a pullback in the overall stock markets? > > absolutely. i mean, at some point, people have to look around at what the governments and federal reserve is doing,

and look at the fact that, "hey, maybe we're contracting and not growing." we're not going in the right direction. so, thereby, we could see a very healthy stock market correction if the p.m.i.s are going the wrong way. > > all right, we'll learn soon enough. larry shover, thanks so much. > > you're welcome. more than 250 american airlines flights have been cancelled nationwide so far this week. a spokesman for the airline says it's due to a number of factors, including pilots calling in sick and filing more maintenance reports than usual. the cancellations come just days after american told pilots more flying jobs would be outsourced to other carriers, and a pilot retirement program would terminate in november. the pilots' union denies supporting the sickout that's stranded flight crew members and caused concern among some passengers who say they've experienced more delays than usual. "i arrived three hours late because of maintenance and minor problems." "this pilot work-action makes the issues for passengers hard to understand." amr, parent company of american airlines, is winding its way through bankruptcy protection, yet has not reached a deal on contract cuts with pilots. the airline wants to cut a billion dollars a year in labor costs. "well there's just real bad

feelings here." "this whole system tends to run late, so american will make good on rebooking you. it's not like a full-scale strike, but i'd still call ahead, for sure." pilots comprise the last majaor work group that has not agreed to contract concessions since the bankruptcy filing. their union is conducting a strike authorization vote. "i know that airlines are businesses and pilots are professionals who won't jeopardize passengers to make a point." > > are you discouraged from flying american during this? "no." for now, american plans to cut the number of its flights by one or two percent throuigh the end of october, at least partly due to staffing shortages. meanwhile, the head of the allied pilots association, keith wilson, told pilots he'll ask policymakers in washington

"is this any way to run an airline?" pilots are expected to picket thursday at airports such as o'hare in chicago. plane orders are piling up in boeing's inbox, and a key union wants what it feels is its fair share of the company's success. the leaders of the union that represents engineers is directly telling its 23,000 members that it strongly recommends they reject the planemaker's contract offer, which includes higher pay but also the requirement that employees pay more for health insurance. boeing says the union is breaking faith with the company by going directly to its membership, creating an atmosphere of mistrust. the present contract runs out october 6th. across the globe, a territorial dispute between japan and china may start to have a larger effect on trade. protests have erupted in recent days over a chain of islands located between china and japan. japan's

government announced plans to buy the islands last week, while the chinese government argues they have long been part of china's territory. the dispute is threatening a shutdown of trade in the two eastern economies. major exports to japan include rare earth elements. those are the materials used by sony and samsung for consumer electronics, among a variety of other industrial uses. phillip streible of rjo futures tells first business the impact could be global. "china and japan are two major trading partners. they trade about $685 billion a year. so, with these types of products and these types of trades shut off, it could cause a ripple effect through the global economy." streible also notes the auto industry could feel the effect. any trade suspensions could hurt japan's auto exports to the chinese market, as well as cause decreased prices for certain industrial metals. china, a global leader in cheap labor, is losing ground to mexico. wages have been growing in both countries, but at a much faster rate in china. wage levels now are about equal, and within 3 years a mexican worker will be earning 2/3 less than a chinese worker. american companies see this trend and are already moving manufacturing plants from china to south of the border. cheaper labor, cheaper transportation and faster delivery all make

mexico attractive as a manufacturing center. mortgage rates are again hitting record lows. the 30-year fixed has fallen to around 3.51%, while the 15-year fixed sits at 2.93%. yet, in june, around 69% of american homeowners with a mortgage were paying a rate of 5% or higher, and about a third more than 6%. why aren't they refinancing? analysts cite among the reasons: cost, poor credit or not enough income. meanwhile, exisitng home sales rose to their highest level in nearly two years last month. housing stats were also up in august. the housing market may be improving, but a monthly report finds americans are feeling less secure with their household financial security. the bankrate financial security index dropped to a 9-month low. "we can chalk a lot of that up to a disappointing jobs report at the beginning of the month. it really took a toll about how people feel about their overall financial security, not just with regard to job security, but in other areas such as savings, debt, and their

overall financial situation as well." consumers are also begininng to worry about the consequences of the fiscal cliff if washington can't come to a solution. general mills is coasting on a smooth performance this past quarter, mostly due to yogurt sales overseas. profits rose 35% in the first quarter. general mills bought yoplait international this year to help refocus on healthy food. in the u.s., consumers are taking a bit longer to take to the yogurt trend. sales in its "yoplait greek" product are lagging. still, general mills stock climbed steadily in the last month as food prices rose. it was one big complicated deal involving a billionaire from thailand and the ownership of a giant asian beer asset. after a 2-month standoff, the thai tycoon stood aside, allowing heiniken to buy a controlling interest in asia pacific breweries for $4.5 billion. because of his stake in asia pacific's joint venture partner, the billionaire walked away $1.6 billion richer.

toys 'r' us is gearing up to reserve popular toys ahead of the holidays. the toy store will allow customers to reserve 50 toys on its "hot toy" list, which includes the leap-pad tablet, "one direction" band collector dolls, hot wheels, and teenage mutant ninja turtles toys. the reservation system will run through the end of october, and the toys must be reserved in stores. customers are required to put down 20% of the toys' cost. so who do you think makes the best burger now hold on, polling is closed. a survey company found boutiques did better than the big guys. more than 7,500 consumers ranked 5 guys burgers and fries as the best burger joint in america. it came in tops in food quality, taste, service, cleanliness and atmosphere. here's the rest of the top 5: in-n-out, fuddruckers, a&w and smashburger. bottom of the list? burger king, hardees, mcdonald's, jack in the box and dairy queen.

forbes is out with its list of america's richest people. returning to the top three spots are billionaires bill gates, warren buffett and larry ellison. charles and david koch of koch industries round out the top five. the 400 richest people on the list gained this year. net worth collectively was up by $1.7 trillion. billionaire mark zuckerberg retained a spot on the list; however, forbes notes that facebook's ceo lost the most on the list this year, about $8.1 billion to be exact. still to come, "finding nemo 3- d." what's with all the 3-d re- releases? is this a new profit niche for the studios? we'll talk about that in movies & money. first though, we love our technology, but you need to break those bad tech habits that cause you to waste so much time. how to search with a purpose - next.

ove our technology. admit it, it's so addictive. all this stuff is supposed to improve life, but does it really? don't we really need to break this addiction to always be checking news sites, emails and texts? jennifer jolly is a highly recharged technology lifestyle expert. she's also one of the editors at tecca.com. what's the matter with us?

> > we are tuned in and really tuned out. we're tuned into technology, we're tuned out of what's happening around us. one of the worst problems that we have is that we have these bad tech habits. just like biting our fingernails is a bad habit in the real world, we have these bad tech habits, and we need to fix them right now. > > i get on facebook, i just sit there scrolling away. it's such a waste of time. do we need to sort of change our habits of search? > > absolutely. we need to use modern technology to manage modern technology. one of the first habits that's the worst and the easiest to break his search insanity. the average person spends as much as 70 minutes, more than an hour a day, searching the internet, looking for that one little nugget of information that half the time you never end up finding in the first place. so the biggest way to fix this,

right now, is to just try a new search engine. right now there's an online tool, where you can pit the search results from bing against the search results from google. it's called bingiton.com. it's a challenge, kind of one of those pepsi blind taste tests. and people chose bing web search results nearly two-to-one over google in a recent study of this. so it's a really easy way to try something new and fix one of your worst tech habits like that. > > rather than just randomly roaming. now let me ask you about inboxes. my inbox is always screaming for attention. it's just jam-packed. > > e-mail landfill, right? it's overflowing and filled to the brim. so for that, i used a tool called sanebox. it sifts, sorts and stacks the relevant e-mails in your inbox. we get an average of 100 e-mails a day. we only deem about 42% of those important. less than half of them we feel are even important to open up. so, some kind of tool like sanebox really helps. sanebox says that so far they've saved customers 13 million minutes. that's about 35 years' worth of time. i've been using it for about two months. i cannot imagine life without it. > > all right, two good ideas for two bad habits to break. jennifer jolly, thank you so much. > > > thank you. still ahead - what's this? clint eastwood starring in another movie? i thought he was done with acting. i'll put that question to our regular movie critic next on first business.

that opening graphic means it's our regular movies and money segment on thursday. so, let's take a look quickly at the big moneymakers last week. two big movies, that was "resident evil," $21 million, and "finding nemo," the 3-d release, at almost $17 million. let's talk with our residents film critic, erik childress. that was kind of a surprise to me, or am i just mistaken? there have been

a lot of these 3-d releases, these re-releases of movies. are they really big moneymakers? > > they have been. just a year ago this time we had "the lion king" come out as sort of the first of these disney re- releases- > > that made a lot of money. > > it made $94 million. then they did "beauty and the beast" in january. only did half. did $47 million. and that's been sort of the ceiling that we've seen since "the lion king," right around $43 to $58 million. "titanic" did decent business here. it did a lot of money overseas. then the "star wars" movie, "the phantom menace," did about $43 million. so, this is right about in line with where these movies have come in. > > some people have said it's that good of a movie, the 3-d version. you really see it almost as a completely different look. > > that's what i've heard. the underwater vistas and whatnot sort of lend themselves to 3-d. the imax format has taken advantage of this over the years with live-action stuff. so, "finding nemo," the reviews have been very positive with the 3-d transition. > > talk about great reviews - "the master" is getting masterful reviews. i can't find it.

> > it hasn't opened in chicago yet. it only opened in 5 theaters across the country, and broke quite a record actually. the per-screen average of this thing was the second highest we've seen on a movie that's opened on only five theaters, and it's going to be interesting to see what the weinsteins do with this thing. they're going to have a more aggressive- > > that's the production company, the money behind the movie- > > the production company, the money behind the movie. they're going to have a more aggressive expansion this week. it's definitely going to be one of their oscar players this year, and we're going to see- i'll be very impressed if they can bring this, make this one of paul thomas anderson's higgest hits. $40 million for "there will be blood." if it can do that with a topic that is centered around cults and scientology - people are calling it the scientology movie - if it can do that kind of business, i'll be impressed. > > let's take a look quickly at some of the movies opening up this next weekend. here's clint eastwood again - "trouble with the curve," there's "dredd," "end of watch," and "house at the end of the street." "trouble with the curve," he was in "grand

torino," he had that starring role with an empty chair. i thought he wasn't supposed to be acting anymore. > > 2009, "grand torino" was supposed to be his swan song, and the director of this movie, "trouble with the curve," robert lorenz, frequent collaborator of eastwood's, so i think he might be doing him a favor. and the film, i think the film is probably going to lead the box office this week. eastwood is still out there. he's definitely in the news right now. so it will be interesting to see if people go for it to see what this movie is about. this movie is kind of the anti- "moneyball." it's a movie that is about baseball, but sort of dismisses that numbers aspect, which we like to talk about so much here. it's kind of like, "i hear the crack of the bat and i know that a baseball player is good." it's a bad movie. > > all right. erik childress, thanks so much. > > thank you. it's dark, gooey and stinky, but it might be the perfect add to your portfolio. we'll talk about what that is, next in chart talk.

this is a little thing that we call chart talk. let's talk now with matt shapiro of mws capital. matt, a lot of retail investors look at this market and they think, "it's so expensive right now, i'm not going anywhere near it." are there plays though they might consider? > > you've got to look harder, and you're right. many people feel the market is a little overbought. where do you get in? if the market's stops going down and actually goes up, you're going to have to buy anything you can kind of find and make some cents on weakness. the only thing we have going down right now is the price of crude oil. that's dropped, somehow, mysteriously, from $100 down to about $90 a barrel, and that's triggered other sales in commodity-related asset classes. > > that's at a six-week low. so, i feel that a lot of people aren't really sure why it dropped so much this week. > > exactly. it was initially triggered, people think, by a trader who had a large outstanding position in

expiring options contracts. when oil was $100, he had to sell a lot of them, and in today's electronic market, that took the price of oil down $5, which is an amazing electronic move at the time. and of course, these sensitive algorithms in this rapid-fire market will push down other commodities. but it's continued to fall since then, and my theory, bill, is basically that we've had a slight pause in economic output worldwide. we've had some earnings warnings from fedex and the like, and competition from natural gas and coal being really low. so, i think what you need to do is look for some of these major oil stocks if they can only come back down a little bit on this weakness in crude. > > all right. matt shapiro. thanks so much. > > you got it. that brings us to the close of first business. tomorrow, why fall is a great time to hit the mall for discounts. from all of us at first business, have a great day.

. an 11-year-old boy is shot while sleeping in his own home, we will tell you what family members are telling us. a car was exploded we will tell you how a potential disaster was averted. it is all ahead on the ktvu channel 2 morning news.

complete ktvu channel 2 morning news starts right now. good morning, thanks for joining us september 20th, thanks for joining us, let's go to steve paulson with a look at the weather. we have some chilly air nothing like what we saw last couple of days, here is sal. traffic is moving well around the bay area, the only crash we had was east on the avenue and traffic looks good from novato to san rafael. westbound 24 between walnut creek and oakland is a nice drive, let's go back to the desk. we