Life Partners Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: LPHI) announced today that it had prevailed in a lawsuit brought by the Texas Attorney General claiming that the company’s life settlement (viatical) transactions were securities and seeking a…
flickr/incendiarymindOver the past three decades in the U.S., income from labor (wages, salaries, pensions, etc.) has been declining even as capital income (interest, dividends, investment returns, etc.) accounts for a greater share of total…
Citing high gasoline prices and soft housing and job markets, consulting firm Deloitte LLP forecasts that retail sales for the November through January holiday season will rise between 3.5% and 4% this year, compared…
In 2011, new car and light truck sales in the United States came in at about 13 million units sold. According to TrueCar.com, forecast sales for September put new light vehicle sales at a…
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released its weekly petroleum status report this morning. U.S. commercial crude inventories fell by 2.45 million barrels last week, bringing the total U.S. commercial crude inventory to 365.2…
The U.S. Census Bureau this morning released data on new single-family home sales for August. Economists had been expecting a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 380,000, and were disappointed by a reported increase to…
Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) recently claimed to be activating 1.3 million Android-based smartphones every day. All those phones need apps from Google’s Play (apps) store, and the company announced on its blog today that…
Short interest in the oil services companies has risen, while one of the two refiners on our list -- Phillips 66 -- posted a substantial drop in short interest. As crude prices decline, refiners…
We have tracked the key short interest changes as of August 31st in the following semiconductor leaders: Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC), Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NYSE: AMD), Micron Technology Inc. (NASDAQ: MU), SanDisk Corp.…
More solar makers saw short interest fall more than rise in the latest period. That could indicate that solar stocks are pretty much as low as they can get. One exception might be LDK,…
The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) released its weekly report on mortgage applications this morning, noting an increase of 2.8% in the group’s composite index compared with last week’s total. Applications for refinancing rose 3%…
The pain in Spain appears to be about to get worse. Yields on 10-year government bonds rose 22 points to 5.93%, following an announcement from the Catalonia region that a new election that is…
Jabil Circuit Inc. (NYSE: JBL) reported fiscal fourth quarter 2012 adjusted earnings per share (EPS) of $0.54 on revenue of $4.3 billion. In the same period a year ago, the electronics manufacturing company reported…
The three major U.S. stock indexes opened higher this morning but were unable to hold gains into the afternoon. In Europe this morning, a Spanish bond auction widened the spread between German and Spanish…
Peregrine Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: PPHM) fell about 80% yesterday after the company revealed that there were discrepancies in the data reported on the company’s Phase II trial of its lung-cancer drug bavituximab. That was…
From a mid-August peak of a record $8.49 a bushel, corn December futures have fallen to around $7.40 a bushel today. The spread between corn for December 2012 delivery and March 2013 delivery has…
The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) reported this morning that U.S. home prices rose 0.2% month-over-month in July, following a downward revision of the April housing price index to a gain of 0.6%. For…
Carnival Corp. (NYSE: CCL) reported fiscal third quarter 2012 adjusted earnings per share (EPS) of $1.53 on revenue of $4.68 billion. In the same period a year ago, the cruise line operator reported adjusted…
The S&P/Case-Shiller home price index for July rose sharply again compared with the June index, and house prices were higher on an annual basis as well. The 10-city composite showed that average home prices…
The contracting eurozone economy is getting worse, according to a report today from Standard & Poor’s. Here’s the general point: Recent economic indicators continue to paint a bleak picture for Europe. The data are…