Harold Maass of The Week The Best of Today's Business

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Investors fret over spreading mortgage risk

Overseas stocks lost some ground early today after mortgage-market worries hammered Wall Street on Tuesday. (MarketWatch) The sell-off came as bellwether Countrywide Financial said that more homeowners with "prime" mortgages were falling behind in their payments -- a sign that the subprime-mortgage crisis may be spreading. "Countrywide is highlighting what is an industrywide problem," said analyst Christopher Brendler at Stifel Nicolaus. (The New York Times, free registration required) Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo predicted that the housing slump would last through 2008 and start recovering in 2009. (Los Angeles Times, free registration required)

Stocks point higher on Amazon windfall

U.S. stocks looked to regain some lost ground from yesterday's 226 point slide in the Dow, led by strong earnings from Amazon. (CNNMoney.com) Amazon reported that its second quarter profits more than tripled, sending its stock up 21 percent in after-hours trading. "They're in a sweet spot in terms of adding selection, adding convenience and lowering those prices, and I think it's starting to pay off for them," said McAdams Wright Ragen analyst Dan Geiman. (AP in Yahoo! Finance) Shares in Apple Inc., which sank 6.1 percent yesterday on lower-than-expected iPhone activation numbers, rose in early trading. Apple reports after the market closes today. (MarketWatch)

SEC weighs new shareholder rules

The Securities and Exchange Commission will vote today on two competing proposals that could rewrite how pubic companies elect their board of directors. The first proposal would allow shareholders who control 5 percent of a company to propose binding changes to the way boards are elected, opening the way for them to put competing slates of directors on ballots. The other would essentially enshrine the status quo, with shareholders having to use a proxy fight. The SEC could approve either measure, or put them up for public comment. (The New York Times, free registration required)

Flying the smoky skies

Bucking decades of health and aviation trends, German entrepreneur Alexander Schoppmann has started an airline that caters to mile-high smokers. The Duesseldorf-based airline -- Smoker's International Airways, or Smintair -- plans to offer smoking-permitted luxury flights to Asia as early as next year. The proposed flagship aircraft is a Boeing 747 with bars on both levels, ample room for the 138 passengers to drink, smoke, and gamble, and a high-power air circulation system. "Other airlines have lost every kind of sympathy for their passengers by leaps and bounds," says Schoppmann, a former stockbroker. "They treat them like cattle." (The Washington Post)

BEST COLUMNS OF THE DAY

Upgrade ratings agency requirements

What took the credit ratings agencies to long? says Joshua Rosner in The New York Times. After five months of subprime mortgage rumblings, Moody's and S&P's are only now starting to review and downgrade residential mortgage-back securities and CDOs. That's "too little, too late," especially given the central role the agencies play in the debt markets. The SEC, "working with Congress if necessary," should require ratings agencies to regularly reassess their ratings and enact consistent standards for analysts. Otherwise, the agencies will continue to "stand on the sidelines of the coming crisis, doing nothing until it's already happened."

Check your 'reference point,' but calmly

Market plunges like yesterday's make investors nervously check their "reference point," says Chuck Jaffe in MarketWatch. "Sometimes, that's a dangerous activity." By comparing the worth of your investment to what you paid for it -- the most common reference point -- you run the risk of making emotional, and financially unwise, decisions. For investors, "it is more important to understand yourself than to look at the break-even point." So diversify your portfolio, look at the broader picture, and plan for market downturns, rather than reacting "on pure fear."

GOOD DAY FOR: Black coffee, as Starbucks Coffee raised prices an average of 9 cents, citing rising dairy costs. Wholesale dairy prices rose almost 70 percent since last June. "There's a lot of milk in those lattes," points out CIBC World Markets analyst John Glass. (USA Today)

NOTED: MySpace reported that it had found and kicked out 29,000 sex offenders from the popular social networking site. In May, the site estimated that 7,000 offenders had profiles on the site. (Reuters in CNNMoney.com)

Peter Weber contributed to this report.