Tough Talk on Syria Chills the Markets

The stock market sagged on Monday after the Obama administration ratcheted up its pressure against Syria.

Secretary of State John Kerry said there was “undeniable” evidence of a large-scale chemical weapons attack in Syria last week and suggested the administration was edging closer to a military response.

The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index slipped 6.72 points, or 0.4 percent, to close at 1,656.78. It was up 2 points just before Mr. Kerry began reading his statement.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 64.05 points, or 0.4 percent, to close at 14,946.46. The Nasdaq composite index slipped 0.2 of a point, to 3,657.57.

With four trading days left in August, the major indexes are on track to end the month with slight losses. So far this month, the Dow has fallen more than 3.5 percent. If that holds, it would be the Dow’s worst month since May 2012.

A handful of corporate deals helped give the market a lift early in the day.

Amgen, the biotech giant, surged $8.15, or 8 percent, to $113.75 following its announcement late Sunday that it plans to buy Onyx Pharmaceuticals for $10.4 billion in cash, or $125 a share. The acquisition would give Amgen three approved cancer treatments and several other potential drugs. Onyx rose $6.53, or 6 percent, to $123.49.

Shares of TMS International jumped $1.91, or 12 percent, to $17.48 after members of the Pritzker family agreed to buy the industrial company for about $690 million in cash, or $17.50 a share. The Pritzker family, one of America’s wealthiest, operates a global industrial conglomerate and founded the Hyatt hotel chain.

In economic news, the government reported that orders for long-lasting manufactured goods plunged 7.3 percent last month, the steepest drop in nearly a year. Demand for commercial aircraft sank, and businesses spent less on computers and electrical equipment. Excluding the transportation category, however, the index fell only 0.6 percent.

Jack Ablin, the chief investment officer at BMO Private Bank in Chicago, said investors would probably look past the one bad economic report because so many major events were coming up.

The Federal Reserve will start a two-day meeting Sept. 17 at which its policy makers will discuss gradually phasing out their economic stimulus program. After that, Germany holds national elections that could change how the euro zone handles rescue loans for troubled countries. Congress returns from its summer break next week and will take up a new budget before the fiscal year starts on Oct. 1.

“These issues are big enough to transcend daily data,” Mr. Ablin said.

Among the stocks on the move on Monday, Anadarko Petroleum climbed $1.22, or 1 percent, to $91.02. The oil and gas producer said late Sunday that it was selling part of its stake in a natural-gas site off the shores of Mozambique for $2.64 billion.

Tesla, the electric-car maker, climbed $2.38, or 1 percent, to $164.22, following reports that its Model S outsold Cadillac, Porsche, Jaguar and other brands in June in California.

In the bond market, interest rates eased. The price of the Treasury’s 10-year note rose 9/32, to 97 17/32, while its yield fell to 2.79 percent, from 2.82 percent late Friday.

Helen Thomas | 1920-2013: 50 Years of Tough Questions and ‘Thank You, Mr. President’

Her death was announced by the Gridiron Club, one of Washington’s leading news societies. Ms. Thomas was a past president of that organization.

Ms. Thomas covered every president from John F. Kennedy to Barack Obama for United Press International and, later, Hearst Newspapers. To her colleagues, she was the unofficial but undisputed head of the press corps — her status ratified by her signature line at the end of every White House news conference, “Thank you, Mr. President.”

Her blunt questions and sharp tone made her a familiar personality not only in the parochial world inside the Washington Beltway but also among television audiences across the country.

“Helen was a true pioneer, opening doors and breaking down barriers for generations of women in journalism,” President Obama said in a statement on Saturday. “She never failed to keep presidents — myself included — on their toes.” 

Presidents grew to respect, even to like, Ms. Thomas for her forthrightness and stamina, which sustained her well after the age at which most people had settled into retirement. President Bill Clinton gave her a cake on Aug. 4, 1997, her 77th birthday. Twelve years later, President Obama gave her cupcakes for her 89th. At his first news conference in February 2009, Mr. Obama called on her, saying: “Helen, I’m excited. This is my inaugural moment.”

But 16 months later, Ms. Thomas abruptly announced her retirement from Hearst amid an uproar over her assertion that Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and go back where they belonged, perhaps Germany or Poland. Her remarks, made almost offhandedly days earlier at a White House event, set off a storm when a videotape was posted.

In her retirement announcement, Ms. Thomas, whose parents immigrated to the United States from what is now Lebanon, said that she deeply regretted her remarks and that they did not reflect her “heartfelt belief” that peace would come to the Middle East only when all parties embraced “mutual respect and tolerance.”

“May that day come soon,” she said.

Ms. Thomas’s career bridged two eras, beginning during World War II when people got their news mostly from radio, newspapers and movie newsreels, and extending into the era of 24-hour information on cable television and the Internet. She resigned from U.P.I. on May 16, 2000, a day after it was taken over by an organization with links to the Unification Church.

Weeks later, Ms. Thomas was hired by Hearst to write a twice-weekly column on national issues. She spent the last 10 years of her working life there.

When Ms. Thomas took a job as a radio writer for United Press in 1943 (15 years before it merged with the International News Service to become U.P.I.), most female journalists wrote about social events and homemaking. The journalists who covered war, crime and politics, and congratulated one another over drinks at the press club were typically men.

She worked her way into full-time reporting and by the mid-1950s was covering federal agencies. She covered John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign in 1960, and when he won she became the first woman assigned to the White House full time by a news service.

Ms. Thomas was also the first woman to be elected an officer of the White House Correspondents’ Association and the first to serve as its president. In 1975, she became the first woman elected to the Gridiron Club, which for 90 years had been a men-only bastion of Washington journalists.

Ms. Thomas was known for her dawn-to-dark work hours, and she won her share of exclusives and near-exclusives. She was the only female print journalist to accompany President Richard M. Nixon on his breakthrough trip to China in 1972.

“Helen was a better reporter than she was a writer — but in her prime had more than her share of scoops the rest of us would try to match,” Mark Knoller, the longtime CBS News White House reporter, wrote in a Twitter message on Saturday morning.

And, he added, “Pity the poor WH press aide who would try to tell Helen, ‘You can’t stand there.’ ”

Mark Landler contributed reporting.

Helen Thomas | 1920-2013: 50 Years of Tough Questions and ‘Thank You, Mr. President’

Her death was announced by the Gridiron Club, one of Washington’s leading news societies. Ms. Thomas was a past president of that organization.

Ms. Thomas covered every president from John F. Kennedy to Barack Obama for United Press International and, later, Hearst Newspapers. To her colleagues, she was the unofficial but undisputed head of the press corps — her status ratified by her signature line at the end of every White House news conference, “Thank you, Mr. President.”

Her blunt questions and sharp tone made her a familiar personality not only in the parochial world inside the Washington Beltway but also among television audiences across the country.

“Helen was a true pioneer, opening doors and breaking down barriers for generations of women in journalism,” President Obama said in a statement on Saturday. “She never failed to keep presidents — myself included — on their toes.” 

Presidents grew to respect, even to like, Ms. Thomas for her forthrightness and stamina, which sustained her well after the age at which most people had settled into retirement. President Bill Clinton gave her a cake on Aug. 4, 1997, her 77th birthday. Twelve years later, President Obama gave her cupcakes for her 89th. At his first news conference in February 2009, Mr. Obama called on her, saying: “Helen, I’m excited. This is my inaugural moment.”

But 16 months later, Ms. Thomas abruptly announced her retirement from Hearst amid an uproar over her assertion that Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and go back where they belonged, perhaps Germany or Poland. Her remarks, made almost offhandedly days earlier at a White House event, set off a storm when a videotape was posted.

In her retirement announcement, Ms. Thomas, whose parents immigrated to the United States from what is now Lebanon, said that she deeply regretted her remarks and that they did not reflect her “heartfelt belief” that peace would come to the Middle East only when all parties embraced “mutual respect and tolerance.”

“May that day come soon,” she said.

Ms. Thomas’s career bridged two eras, beginning during World War II when people got their news mostly from radio, newspapers and movie newsreels, and extending into the era of 24-hour information on cable television and the Internet. She resigned from U.P.I. on May 16, 2000, a day after it was taken over by an organization with links to the Unification Church.

Weeks later, Ms. Thomas was hired by Hearst to write a twice-weekly column on national issues. She spent the last 10 years of her working life there.

When Ms. Thomas took a job as a radio writer for United Press in 1943 (15 years before it merged with the International News Service to become U.P.I.), most female journalists wrote about social events and homemaking. The journalists who covered war, crime and politics, and congratulated one another over drinks at the press club were typically men.

She worked her way into full-time reporting and by the mid-1950s was covering federal agencies. She covered John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign in 1960, and when he won she became the first woman assigned to the White House full time by a news service.

Ms. Thomas was also the first woman to be elected an officer of the White House Correspondents’ Association and the first to serve as its president. In 1975, she became the first woman elected to the Gridiron Club, which for 90 years had been a men-only bastion of Washington journalists.

Ms. Thomas was known for her dawn-to-dark work hours, and she won her share of exclusives and near-exclusives. She was the only female print journalist to accompany President Richard M. Nixon on his breakthrough trip to China in 1972.

“Helen was a better reporter than she was a writer — but in her prime had more than her share of scoops the rest of us would try to match,” Mark Knoller, the longtime CBS News White House reporter, wrote in a Twitter message on Saturday morning.

And, he added, “Pity the poor WH press aide who would try to tell Helen, ‘You can’t stand there.’ ”

Mark Landler contributed reporting.

Fundamentally: The Stock-and-Bond Mix Is Tough to Rebalance

PORTFOLIO rebalancing — periodically resetting a mix of stocks and bonds by taking profits from outperforming investments and buying cheaper, underperforming ones — has always posed a challenge.

Rebalance too often and you’ll sell profitable investments too soon and miss out on big gains. But wait too long and the market will alter your strategy and risk profile in ways you may never have intended.

If the stock market has been rising, for example, you may be holding way more stocks than you’re comfortable with. If the bond market has been climbing, you may have gone too far in the fixed-income direction, even though you want to own more stocks.

In some ways, today’s market has made rebalancing even trickier. Since the start of 2012, a basic stock fund that tracks the Standard & Poor’s 500 index has soared 29 percent, while a typical bond portfolio has returned less than 5 percent. Traditional rebalancing would dictate that investors sell some of their surging equities, thus keeping their portfolios from becoming too stock-heavy and risky. This would be a particularly important safeguard for investors if the bull market is nearing an end.

That money, then, would be used to bolster allocations to fixed-income investments. Yet market analysts note that with 10-year Treasury securities now yielding just 1.7 percent, bonds are about as richly priced as they’ve been in decades.

So should investors use discipline and stick with their plans, even if that means buying bonds they think are expensive? Or should they adhere to the lessons of the last decade by refusing to buy investments they consider overpriced? Just as there’s no right answer about how often to rebalance — studies are inconclusive about whether it’s better to do this quarterly or annually — financial planners and market analysts say that no single answer suits all investors.

Instead, there are several basic options.

The first strategy is to stay the course and rebalance if your portfolio is out of whack — just tweak the types of bonds you buy. Mark R. Freeman, chief investment officer at the Westwood Holdings Group, notes that the primary rationale for rebalancing is to manage the overall risk of a portfolio. Just because investors are wary of bonds is no reason to let their portfolios become overexposed to equities, which are likely to lose far more value than bonds in a market correction.

Harold R. Evensky, president of Evensky & Katz Wealth Management, agrees. “The idea is to maintain your investment policies, but to adjust to market conditions,” he said. “For instance, you could always shorten your duration,” he noted, meaning that you could rebalance into bond funds that invest specifically in short-term securities, which are less likely to lose value should interest rates rise and bond prices fall.

Judith B. Ward, a financial planner at T. Rowe Price, said picking and choosing where to redeploy that rebalanced money might be fine for experienced investors who closely tracked the markets and their portfolios. For less engaged investors, though, she said there was a simpler approach: rebalance now if it seems time to do so, but just make sure that the money going into fixed income is extremely well diversified across all major areas of the bond market.

“If you diversify, and have exposure to international and domestic bonds, government and corporate securities, and bonds of different durations,” Ms. Ward said, “your bond portfolio is probably not going to suffer as much as you might think in a worst-case scenario.”

But there’s a catch here, too.

Many people, particularly those who invest primarily in their 401(k) retirement plans, are likely to turn to a so-called total bond market index fund to diversify their fixed-income holdings.

“There is a perception out that there that if I own one of these index funds, I own the total bond market,” said Kathy A. Jones, a fixed-income strategist with the Schwab Center for Financial Research.

That’s not the case. Many bond funds mirror the Barclays U.S. Aggregate Bond index, which includes very little non-United States debt as well as relatively few high-yield or junk bonds. Around 75 percent of the index tracks government securities or other types of government-backed bonds. Less than 25 percent is in corporate bonds.

“At the end of the day,” Ms. Jones said, “these funds may own a lot of different bonds, but you don’t get much issuer diversification, and you’re getting that at very low yields.”

Because of this, says John C. Bogle, founder of the Vanguard Group, total bond indexes “are deeply flawed — and that’s coming from an indexer.”  He adds that individual investors should keep only about one-third of their bond stake in Treasuries and government debt, reflecting the market’s mix based on private investors such as pension and mutual funds.  

Investors might consider keeping half their money in a total bond market fund, he said, while shifting the other half to an intermediate corporate bond fund. By doing so, investors would end up with an overall strategy that’s about two-thirds in corporate debt and one-third in government securities.

As far as rebalancing goes, Mr. Bogle notes that there is another option: hold off. “Rebalancing is something I don’t think anybody should follow slavishly,” he said.

To be sure, annual rebalancing can keep a portfolio from veering drastically off course over time. For instance, heading into the 2008 market plunge, more than one out of five 401(k) investors aged 56 to 65 held more than 90 percent of their retirement accounts in stocks. Presumably, many got to that risky allocation by failing to rebalance.

But Mr. Bogle says that over very long periods, rebalancing doesn’t necessarily pay off, because investors are constantly selling out of higher-performing assets.

A compromise is to set basic thresholds. Rather than automatically rebalancing each year, investors can just establish a range — say, of five percentage points or more around their allocation target. So you don’t have to rebalance back to, say, 60 percent stocks until that weighting hits 65 percent or even higher.

At the least, he said, “Don’t say, ‘Oh my God,’ I’m up to 60.4 percent stocks and I want to stay at 60.’ ”

Paul J. Lim is a senior editor at Money magazine. E-mail: fund@nytimes.com.

The iEconomy: As Boom Lures App Creators, Tough Part Is Making a Living

But they did not actually have jobs at Apple. It was freelance work that came with nothing in the way of a regular income, health insurance or retirement plan. Instead, the Grimeses tried to prepare by willingly, even eagerly, throwing overboard just about everything they could.

They sold one of their cars, gave some possessions to relatives and sold others in a yard sale, rented out their six-bedroom house and stayed with family for a while. They even cashed in Mr. Grimes’s 401(k).

“We didn’t lose any sleep over it,” said Mr. Grimes, 32. “I’ll retire when I die.”

The couple’s chosen field is so new it did not even exist a few years ago: writing software applications for mobile devices like the iPhone or iPad. Even as unemployment remained stubbornly high and the economy struggled to emerge from the recession’s shadow, the ranks of computer software engineers, including app writers, increased nearly 8 percent in 2010 to more than a million, according to the latest available government data for that category. These software engineers now outnumber farmers and have almost caught up with lawyers.

Much as the Web set off the dot-com boom 15 years ago, apps have inspired a new class of entrepreneurs. These innovators have turned cellphones and tablets into tools for discovering, organizing and controlling the world, spawning a multibillion-dollar industry virtually overnight. The iPhone and iPad have about 700,000 apps, from Instagram to Angry Birds.

Yet with the American economy yielding few good opportunities in recent years, there is debate about how real, and lasting, the rise in app employment might be.

Despite the rumors of hordes of hip programmers starting million-dollar businesses from their kitchen tables, only a small minority of developers actually make a living by creating their own apps, according to surveys and experts. The Grimeses began their venture with high hopes, but their apps, most of them for toddlers, did not come quickly enough or sell fast enough.

And programming is not a skill that just anyone can learn. While people already employed in tech jobs have added app writing to their résumés, the profession offers few options to most unemployed, underemployed and discouraged workers.

One success story is Ethan Nicholas, who earned more than $1 million in 2009 after writing a game for the iPhone. But he says the app writing world has experienced tectonic shifts since then.

“Can someone drop everything and start writing apps? Sure,” said Mr. Nicholas, 34, who quit his job to write apps after iShoot, an artillery game, became a sensation. “Can they start writing good apps? Not often, no. I got lucky with iShoot, because back then a decent app could still be successful. But competition is fierce nowadays, and decent isn’t good enough.”

The boom in apps comes as economists are debating the changing nature of work, which technology is reshaping at an accelerating speed. The upheaval, in some ways echoing the mechanization of agriculture a century ago, began its latest turbulent phase with the migration of tech manufacturing to places like China. Now service and even white-collar jobs, like file clerks and data entry specialists or office support staff and mechanical drafters, are disappearing.

“Technology is always destroying jobs and always creating jobs, but in recent years the destruction has been happening faster than the creation,” said Erik Brynjolfsson, an economist and director of the M.I.T. Center for Digital Business.

Still, the digital transition is creating enormous wealth and opportunity. Four of the most valuable American companies — Apple, Google, Microsoft and I.B.M. — are rooted in technology. And it was Apple, more than any other company, that set off the app revolution with the iPhone and iPad. Since Apple unleashed the world’s freelance coders to build applications four years ago, it has paid them more than $6.5 billion in royalties.