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Kinetic Concepts Inc. was the only local stock to have a positive day on the market Friday.

The company’s stock closed at $37.04, up 0.14 percent from the end-of-day trading on Aug. 6.

Fifteen local stocks declined in value at the close of trading on Thursday, compared to Aug. 5.

After a triple-digit drop early in the day as the market reacted to a disappointing jobs report, the Dow Jones Industrial Average recovered late in the session to close down just 21.42 points, or 0.2 percent, at 10,653.

Friday’s closing tally:

• Abraxas Petroleum Corp.’s (NASDAQ: AXAS) — $2.84, down 2.07 percent.

• Alamo Group Inc.’s (NYSE: ALG) — $24.33, down 0.69 percent.

• CC Media Holdings’ (Pink Sheets: CCMO) — $6.5, down 2.99 percent.

• Cullen/Frost Bankers Inc.’s (NYSE: CFR) — $54.33, down 1.88 percent.

• GlobalSCAPE Inc.’s (AMEX: GSB) — $2.81, down 1.40 percent.

• Harte-Hanks Inc.’s (NYSE: HHS) — $10.90, down 1.54 percent.

• Kinetic Concepts Inc.’s (NYSE: KCI) — $37.04, up 0.14 percent.

• NuStar Energy LP’s (NYSE: NS) — $59.77, down 0.25 percent.

• NuStar GP Holdings LLC’s (NYSE: NSH) — $30.42, down 1.07 percent.

• Pioneer Drilling Co.’s (AMEX: PDC) — $6.68, down 1.47 percent.

• Rackspace Hosting’s (NYSE: RAX) — $19.31, down 1.48 percent.

• Rush Enterprises’ (NASDAQ: RUSHA) — Class A stock closed at $14.56, down 0.88 percent.

• Rush Enterprises’ (NASDAQ: RUSHB) — Class B stock closed at $13.02, down 0.08 percent.

• Tesoro Corp.’s (NYSE: TSO) — $12.77, down 0.47 percent.

• U.S. Global Investors’ (NASDAQ: GROW) — $5.98, down 2.13 percent.

• Valero Energy Corp.’s (NYSE: VLO) — $18.06, down 1.37 percent.

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Former Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan believes Congress should let the tax cuts enacted by President George W. Bush expire for all Americans in order to address the widening deficit, according to a TV interview airing Friday.

"They should follow the law and let them lapse," Greenspan told Bloomberg TV’s Judy Woodruff.

The 2001 and 2003 tax cuts are due to expire at the end of the year. President Obama had promised to make them permanent for families making less than $250,000. (Read ‘Bush tax cuts up in the air’)

But faced with growing fiscal challenges, there’s debate in Washington about whether the country can afford to permanently extend the tax cuts.

Greenspan, who backed the tax cuts when they were enacted, told Woodruff that allowing the cuts to lapse "probably will" slow growth, but that the risk posed by doing nothing about the deficit is greater.

"I think we misunderstand the momentum of this deficit going forward," the former Fed chairman said in the interview. 

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Healthcare Trust of America Inc. bought a medical office building in Stockbridge, Ga., for $8.1 million.

Overlook at Eagle's Landing, in Henry County, is 100 percent occupied. It opened in 2004 and is less than one-half mile from the 215-bed Henry Medical Center.

Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Healthcare Trust also owns Southcrest Medical Plaza I and II in Stockbridge, Marietta Health Park in Riverdale, Fayette Medical Office in Fayetteville, and 4000 Shakerag Hill Road in Peachtree City payday loan online.

"This acquisition continues our Atlanta expansion focused in attractive sub-markets, bringing our total Atlanta portfolio to over a half million square feet while generating greater market presence for HTA with the region's health-care providers," said Mark D. Engstrom, executive vice president of acquisitions, in a statement.

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The outlook for the global refining and marketing sector has been upgraded to “stable” from “negative,” according to rating agency Moody’s Investors Service.

Though the agency expects conditions to remain difficult, margins for the sectors will average “significantly higher” over the next 12 to 18 months.

Moody’s says distillate and gasoline inventories remain very high, though gasoline demand will be dogged by high unemployment, rising ethanol use, rising world refining capacity, and the economic slowing in major economies.

“In the absence of clear-cut strong demand and margin momentum for gasoline, distillate and crude oil price differentials, our stable outlook largely reflects that the mix of wider gasoline and distillate margins, and wider crude oil price differentials we’ve seen, supported by firming demand from industrial and freight transport will average out to support a stable outlook,” said Andrew Oram, vice president and senior credit officer with Moody’s corporate finance group payday loan lenders.

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IPhone seekers hoping to avoid days-long lines thought they’d have an ace in the hole: retail outlets other than Apple’s stores. Apple partner AT&T warned potential buyers that it wouldn’t have inventory for walk-in buyers until next week, but Wal-Mart, Best Buy and RadioShack all announced plans to have "limited" supplies available Thursday for shoppers who didn’t pre-order the iPhone 4.

That was the theory. The reality hasn’t played out so smoothly.

Wal-Marts around the country said that their iPhones were in short supply, and Twitter was ablaze with customers reporting from Wal-Mart stores that had just one or two of the devices in stock.

An Evansville, Ill., Wal-Mart said it had exactly one unreserved iPhone 4 available when it opened. But don’t race out the door: It’s already sold.

Only 1,500 of the 3,600 Wal-Mart stores in the United States are offering the phone on Thursday, according to company spokeswoman Ashley Hardie, though more stores will sell the phone after the launch day.

"They can’t get here soon enough!" Wal-Mart (WMT, Fortune 500) spokeswoman Melissa O’Brien added.

A spot check of two Best Buys and multiple RadioShack stores in New York City found no phones available for customers who hadn’t claimed them in advance.

But a few pockets of inventory emerged: A Best Buy on 62nd Street had a stash of 16 GB iPhone 4s available for sale mid-afternoon. Store employees wouldn’t say how many were left.

"Inventory remains constrained, and it is expected that many of the iPhones that Best Buy receives will go first to customers who reserved one during presale," Best Buy (BBY, Fortune 500) warned Wednesday in a statement. The company said availability would vary store by store, and that customers should call before heading out to pick up a phone.

To prevent long lines at Apple and AT&T stores — the only places to get the iPhone on the first day of sale in past years — Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) delivered devices to Best Buy, RadioShack and Wal-Mart stores across the country. But the inventory was not enough to meet the wild demand for the phone.

One RadioShack on 23rd Street in Manhattan said Apple had given it just eight iPhones — total. They were all reserved for pre-orders, but the store said that it would make them available to walk-ins at noon if they weren’t yet claimed.

Another RadioShack, on 57th Street, went through its scant inventory so fast it wasn’t able to fulfill all of its pre-orders. One block away, a RadioShack store that didn’t accept pre-orders — it stuck with first-come, first-served — sold out fast amid hectic demand.

Best Buy, which planned to have very limited iPhone stocks on hand, had no one in line at its Fifth Avenue outpost right before its opening.

But that was for the best, since that store didn’t have a single iPhone 4 on hand for walk-in customers, according to a manager preparing for an early open. Customers who pre-ordered through Best Buy would be able to pick up their phones at scheduled appointment times throughout the morning, he said.

RadioShack (RSH, Fortune 500) did not immediately return requests for comment.

AT&T (T, Fortune 500) announced last week that it won’t start selling the iPhone 4 to walk-in buyers until June 29, and it stuck by that statement Thursday morning. Customers who turned up seeking one were set away.

Daniel Karbowitz, 32, lost his iPhone 3G last week and hoped to replace it with the latest model. When the AT&T store broke the bad news, Karbowitz set out for the nearby Apple store.

"I’m not optimistic," he said. "I hope I can get one today, but Apple likes keeping a scarce supply of their newest products."

Demand for Apple’s new phone was 10 times higher than it was for the previous version, the iPhone 3GS, according to AT&T. Apples said it sold 600,000 devices on the first day of pre-sales.

The unanticipated demand crashed AT&T’s servers, and a number of customers were unable to pre-order the iPhone 4 last week. AT&T stopped accepting pre-orders after just one day. It’s waiting for Apple to restock its inventory.

Meanwhile, the iPhone’s availability — or unavailability — at other retail outlets did nothing to quell demand at Apple’s flagship store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Thousands lined up at the store Thursday morning, with many saying they came because they heard the phones would be in short supply.

With a line still out the door, the Apple store on 67th Street in Manhattan ran out of inventory mid-afternoon for customers who didn’t pre-order. Just after 2 p.m., the store closed down its walk-in line. Managers said they would take stock of their remaining supplies and see if the could re-open the queue later Thursday.  

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Tesla Motors Inc. has shown potential investors "freaking bad ass" plans for electric SUVs, cabriolets and vans to follow its planned sedan.

The potential new models are shown in a road show given by CEO Elon Musk leading up to the expected $185 million initial public offering by the company on June 29. Toyota Motor Corp. has pledged to buy another $50 million in Tesla stock after the IPO.

"Freaking bad ass" is how he describes the variations on the Model S sedan the Palo Alto expects to start making in 2012 at the former New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. plant in Fremont. To see the Tesla IPO presentation click here.

Unlike the company's only existing electric car that it has actually delivered, the Roadster, the sedan and other models shown in the road show would be completely built by Tesla. The sports car body and frame is now produced by Lotus, whose British factory is closing for renovations before Tesla can produce its sedan, causing a gap during which the company will be delivering no cars.

Tesla last week discussed in a blog posting how it plans to build the sedan at the NUMMI plant.

If the Toyota-Tesla partnership proceeds as outlined, the companies could also be producing electric vehicles together in Fremont, with speculation centering on an all-electric version of the hybrid Prius.

Toyota's announcement last week that it plans to restart a plant in Mississippi to build Corollas has fueled further speculation that hybrid Prius manufacturing could happen at the plant the Japanese auto maker abandoned in April. The Mississippi plant had once been touted for Prius production as well.

To read more of the Business Journal's in-depth coverage of Tesla, click here.

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The Business Response Team created by Mayor Karl Dean and the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce toured flood-damaged businesses Thursday to better understand their needs.

“We’re trying to determine how best we can get businesses helping businesses get back on their feet,” co-chairman Henry Hicks of Gray Line Tours said after a tour of Soundcheck, which provides storage and rehearsal space for musicians and was destroyed by flooding.

The team also met with representatives of Interior Design Services, which is located in the same warehouse facility on Cowan Street near the Cumberland River. Steve Meek, chief financial officer with IDS, said the company could use help figuring out how to insure the company’s space going forward. Soundcheck owner Ben Jumper said he is looking for help from the Mayor’s Office to get occupancy permits fast-tracked.

A separate group of representatives from the Business Response Team toured industrial businesses on Visco Drive. Businesses can visit nashvillebusinessrecovery.org, to inquire about assistance and to find out how to contribute to flood recovery efforts and share resources with businesses in need. See this story for more information.

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Regulators and Wall Street officials went through millions of trades one by one Friday and canceled thousands as they sought to explain a record plunge in the stock market, undo damage and keep it from happening again.

It wasn’t clear how long the laborious process would take or if it would even solve the mystery behind Thursday’s harrowing trading session that saw the Dow Jones industrial average fall hundreds of points and then recover, all in a matter of minutes. The chaotic slide — some stocks briefly fell to near zero — brought back memories of the darkest days of the financial crisis.

The Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission were investigating, but on the day after, there were more questions than answers:

— Did a single trader mistakenly punch the wrong number of shares when making a sell order, maybe mistyping "billion" instead of "million" and setting off a market-wide panic that at one point pulled the Dow down almost 1,000 points?

— Did high-speed computerized trading systems, supposed to make markets work smoothly, go haywire?

— Most important to anyone with money in the stock market: Could it happen again?

Maybe the scariest part was that no one could unravel what happened. That left executives at the major stock exchanges pointing fingers at one another, and the public wondering if the hidden world of high-frequency, computerized trading that fed the panic posed a threat to their 401(k)s.

"It could be awhile before they figure it out because they have to sift through everything trade by trade," said San Diego State University finance professor Dan Seiver, who has followed the markets for 52 years no fax pay day loan. "And humans are a lot slower than machines."

Market officials worked to cancel thousands of "clearly erroneous" trades made during the plunge.

New York Stock Exchange Euronext CEO Duncan Niederauer told CNBC that his exchange canceled 4,000 trades.

How did it happen? Speculation on trading floors initially centered on a computerized selloff possibly caused by a typographical error. One theory was that a trader trying to sell millions of shares accidentally sold billions, which would have triggered a wave of automatic selling.

The SEC is poring through trading data containing millions of transactions to try to identify what might have caused the disruption, according to two people familiar with the matter. The two major markets, the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, were also examining audits of completed trades, according to the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.

At Nasdaq, Thursday’s plunge set off MarketWatch, an internal system that alerts regulators to problems. Regulators are still sifting through the data for irregularities. A Nasdaq spokesman declined to comment.

NYSE spokesman Raymond Pellecchia said the Big Board is working with regulators but declined to comment further.

"Right now, there is no way to know what is happening in this marketplace," Kaufman said.

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The National Federation of Independent Business is backing U.S. Sen. John McCain in his primary race against former Scottsdale Congressman J.D. Hayworth.

NFIB represents small businesses and tends to take a conservative stance on taxes and regulations.

NFIB likes McCain’s position on taxes and opposition to union-backed efforts to make it easier to organize.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Arizona Chamber of Commerce & Industry also backing McCain in the senate race.

“Small businesses are the engine and lifeblood of our economy, providing the vast majority of jobs and opportunities for people across Arizona, and I am proud to have the support of the NFIB,” said McCain in a statement. “I fight every day to get government out of the way of our dynamic private sector and get our economy moving again. I admire the important work of the NFIB, and look forward to partnering with them to ensure that our small businesses thrive and become engines for job creation once again.”

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Research in Motion posted a fiscal fourth-quarter profit and revenue that missed Wall Street expectations, but the BlackBerry maker’s forecast for the current quarter easily topped analysts’ estimates.

Shares of RIM (RIMM) plunged 5% in after-hours trading after the company reported a profit of $710.1 million, or $1.27 per share. Net income rose 37% compared with a year earlier, but analysts polled by Thomson Reuters were looking for earnings of $1.28 per share.

The Canadian company said it shipped 10.5 million devices and added 4.9 million users during the quarter, driving sales up 18% to $4.08 billion compared with a year earlier, but the figure was below analysts’ estimates of $4.31 billion.

Even as competition intensifies with Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500)’s iPhone and Google (GOOG, Fortune 500)’s Android-based phones, the company maintained its leading role in North America, where the BlackBerry continues to be the top selling smartphone.

And RIM chief executive Jim Balsillie said the company "made great strides in penetrating international markets."

Nearly half of the quarter’s revenue was supported by international sales, he said, and about 38% of new subscribers were from markets outside of North America.

"The fourth quarter results were softer than expected, but the company’s growth in international markets will be a major driver going forward and supports its first-quarter guidance," said Steven Li, analyst at Raymond James.

The company’s cheaper devices, such as the BlackBerry Curve 8520, are strong sellers abroad, but they push the company’s average selling price lower.

But with a new lineup of higher-priced products being introduced in the second half of the year, Balsillie said he is confident in the company’s future growth.

For the current quarter, RIM said it expects to add between 4.9 million and 5.2 million BlackBerry users, driving earning between $1.31 and $1.38 per share, above analysts’ outlook of $1.23. For the three months ended May 29, the company forecast revenue between $4.25 billion and $4.45 billion. Analysts are looking for $4.33 billion.

For the year ended Feb. 27, RIM reported a profit of $2.46 billion, or $4.31 per share, on revenue of $14.95 billion. 

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