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Monthly Archives: December 2011

Facebook and Amazon Audience Gain as Portals Falter

Posted: December 23, 2011 at 6:27 am

New Comscore data shows the extent to which Facebook and Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) have become internet destinations while portals Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) and Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) MSN lose ground. The ...
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What’s Important in the Financial World (12/23/2011) Payroll Taxes, AMR Bankruptcy

Posted: December 23, 2011 at 6:26 am

Markets rallied into the Christmas weekend. Perhaps the major U.S .indices will be well up for the year. Little is likely to happen between now and the new year to ...
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Google Comes to Mozilla’s Aid, but That May End

Posted: December 23, 2011 at 6:25 am

Is Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) just a good citizen, or is there a reason it supports nonprofit operation Mozilla, which operates the Firefox browser? Google has a browser of its own ...
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Media Digest (12/23/2011) Reuters, WSJ, NYT, Bloomberg

Posted: December 23, 2011 at 6:25 am

Congress makes a deal to keep payroll taxes low and unemployment benefits in place for two more months. (Reuters) The U.S. approves a Deutsche Boerse deal to merge with NYSE Euronext (NYSE: ...
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Housing Through Yet Another Set of Eyes

Posted: December 23, 2011 at 5:42 am

The housing market is down -- sales, prices, applications. And there is glut of research that shows how much and why. The Federal Housing Finance Agency said that in October prices fell ...
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The Worst Holidays Since the Great Depression

Posted: December 22, 2011 at 5:20 pm

Retail sales this holiday season are expected to rise 3.8% to a record of $469.1 billion, according to the National Retail Federation. While the increase is less than last year, ...
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24/7 Wall St. Closing Bell (POT, AGU, SKS, VVUS, MU, AM, CPY, NEOG, TIBX, BBBY, RAM, WCAA, ABIO, PHH, LRE)

Posted: December 22, 2011 at 4:07 pm

A downward revision to third-quarter GDP did not hold down early trading this morning as markets got off to a good start and remained in positive territory throughout the day. ...
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Best Buy Spoils Christmas For Customers, CEO Dunn Must Go

Posted: December 22, 2011 at 12:43 pm

The list of reasons that Best Buy's (NASDAQ: BBY) board should fire CEO Brian Dunn just got longer. A number of orders made by customers from bestbuy.com will not be ...
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Corn Crop Booms, Prices to Fall (ADM, VLO, HML, TSN, GIS, K)

Posted: December 22, 2011 at 11:38 am

Fears for a supply shortage of corn earlier this year led the world’s farmers to plant more of the crop on expectations of higher prices. Now that the crop is ...
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Small Caps With Over 50% Stock Upside in 2012 (PNK, CDXS, VVUS, SCMR)

Posted: December 22, 2011 at 11:18 am

Over the last week we have been reviewing some of the "Small Cap Stocking Stuffers" that features the top small cap ideas for 2012 from Credit Suisse.  After reviewing the ...
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Morning Movers (RAM, WCAA, AKAM, AM, ABIO, VVUS)

Posted: December 22, 2011 at 10:19 am

There are several stocks trading more heavily than usual this morning, and also experiencing large gains or drops in share prices. These include RAM Energy Resources Inc. (NASDAQ: RAM), WCA ...
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Leading Economic Indicators: Better or Less-Bad Economy

Posted: December 22, 2011 at 10:13 am

The Conference Board has released its Leading Economic Index for November showing a 0.5% rise 118.0.  This was above a 0.3% consensus reading and the 'leading' bias to this reports ...
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Korean Credit Ratings Safe After Kim Jong-Il Death (EWY, SKOR, KF, KEF, PKX, KEP, SKM)

Posted: December 22, 2011 at 9:33 am

If there was one issue which may have created uncertainty around the credit ratings of South Korea, it was the death of dictator Kim Jong-Il in North Korea.  We just recently ...
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Battle Lines Drawn Over Natural Gas Exports (DOW, DD, XOM, CHK, LNG)

Posted: December 22, 2011 at 8:44 am

Natural gas prices in the US rose to more than $4.80/thousand cubic feet (tcf) in June, and have trailed off to under $3.20/tcf today. In late 2005, natural gas spot ...
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Weekly Jobless Claims Maintain Good Stance Started The Prior Week

Posted: December 22, 2011 at 8:40 am

The Labor Department is out with another improvement in the weekly jobless claims.  Hopefully it is not just holiday related, but investors will likely take it either way.  This last ...
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