Chip maker Qualcomm Inc. (NASDAQ: QCOM) posted a new 52-week (and more-than-10-year) high today of $67.00/share. The last time the stock was anywhere near that was early April of 2001. The company’s shares are…
The US Treasury reported this morning that it had sold the last of the $225 billion in mortgage-backed securities (MBS) that it purchased beginning in 2008 at the height of what appeared to be…
The Chicago Federal Reserve Bank today reported that its Midwest Manufacturing Index rose from 89 in December 2011 to 90.1 in January of 2012. The index posted a low of 68.3 in June of…
Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz, owners of Major League Baseball’s New York Mets, settled a lawsuit accusing them of benefiting from the Ponzi scheme run by Bernard Madoff. As jury selection began, representatives of…
Sales of the Kindle family of e-readers from Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) is “significantly weaker than expected” in the first quarter of 2012 according to an analyst at Pacific Crest. The analyst’s warning is…
Gallup’s unadjusted US unemployment rate for mid-March fell from 9.1% in mid-February to 8.6%. The official seasonally adjusted US unemployment rate for February is 8.3%. The Gallup survey also indicates that the number of…
In an interview with the Financial Times, Vagit Alekperov, CEO of Lukoil said that Russia’s policy of retaining all its rights to offshore development of what are believed to be vast reserves of oil…
Ceres Inc. (NASDAQ: CERE) develops and sells crops that are used to produce feedstocks for the US biofuel industry. The company’s customers include ethanol makers, farmers, utilities, and independent power producers. The company and…
Canadian-based drug company Cardiome Pharma Corp. (NASDAQ: CRME) announced this morning that Merck & Co. Inc. (NYSE: MRK) has cancelled further development of an oral version of a Cardiome drug being reviewed as a…
St. Jude Medical Inc. (NYSE: STJ) has settled a royalty dispute with medical device maker Kensey Nash Corp. (NASDAQ: KNSY) over a device that St. Jude licensed from Kensey in 1999. The settlement amount…
Drug maker Ampio Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: AMPE) reported this morning that clinical trials of the company’s Optina treatment for a type of macular disease have been successful: A preliminary assessment, of the primary end…
The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB)-Wells Fargo Housing Market Index for March came in at 28, unchanged from its revised reading for February. The index has increased for five consecutive months, and is…
Preliminary results of today’s auction on credit default swaps (CDS) on defaulted Greek debt indicate that CDS holders will receive 78.25 eurocents for each euro of face value. The auction has set the fair…
In remarks this morning to a business group on Long Island, New York Federal Reserve President William Dudley noted that while US economic growth had picked up in the fourth quarter of 2011, we’ve…
Oil & gas producer Hess Corp. (NYSE: HES) announced this morning that it has retained Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) to help the company explore the sale of its St. Lucia refined products…
US index futures are lower this morning as investors wait to hear what Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) plans to do with its $97 billion cash hoard. Apple shares are rising in the pre-market as…
QR Energy LP (NYSE: QRE) is an independent oil & gas producer that seeks out mature producing fields, buys them, and then tries to make them pay off either by lowering production costs or…
Solar panel maker LDK Solar Co. Ltd. (NYSE: LDK) has revised its fourth quarter 2011 forecast and announced its guidance for the company’s 2012 fiscal year. The company will announce fourth quarter and full-year…
The US Environmental Protection Agency has been testing homeowners’ wells around Dimock, Pennsylvania, trying to determine if the water has been polluted the hydraulic fracturing (fracking) process used to extract natural gas. The agency…
After a fairly wild ride, WTI crude oil futures for April delivery closed the week at $107.06/barrel, a drop of -0.3% from a week ago, but about 2% higher than where they started the…