Warren Buffett has been a much more reserved lately, although not as much as the recent performance might dictate. In the latest Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK-A) annual report, he sounded like a former…
Fertilizer maker CF Industries Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: CF) this morning rejected a buyout offer from Canada’s Agrium, Inc. (NYSE: AGU). The stock and cash offer was valued at about $72/share of CF stock. Last…
For the past few months, the global crude oil benchmark, WTI, has been trading lower than other crude varieties. No longer. On Friday, WTI closed higher than Dated Brent, $45.52 vs. $44.85. The spread…
Arch Coal, Inc. (NYSE:ACI) plans to buy a coal mine in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin from Rio Tinto plc (NYSE:RTP) for $761 million. The Jacobs Ranch mine includes 381 million tons of coal reserves…
Piper Jaffray is upgrading Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) today from Neutral to Buy and boosting its price target from $55 to $81, saying “The Party Is Just Getting Started.” On the upgrade, Piper Jaffray senior…
Rite Aid Corp. (NYSE: RAD) may be hoping that its $0.22 share price won’t be as important down the road as it would have been when the NYSE was actively delisting companies because their…
Palm, Inc. (NASDAQ: PALM) stock is indicated lower on word from the company that it is exercising its right to re-market approximately 18.5 million common shares underlying 49% of the units of Series C…
Someone needs to tell McDonald’s (MCD) that there is a recession. The company posted remarkable same-store sales again in February. After making an adjustment for the different number of days in the month this…
John Tamny RealClearMarkets Banking giant JPMorgan Chase announced Feb. 23 that it would be cutting its quarterly dividend by 87% to a nickel per share. At face level, this sounds bad, but the savings…
We are seeing massive gap-ups this morning in stem cell stocks. President Obama is signing an executive order that will lift the Bush ban on funding of embryonic stem cell funding. What is interesting…
These are some of the top pre-market early bird analyst upgrades and downgrades from Wall Street this Monday morning: Amazon.com (AMZN) Raised to Buy at Piper Jaffray. Best Buy (BBY) Raised to Outperform at…
Merck (MRK) is merging with Schering-Plough (SGP) in a deal that the companies say is worth $41.1 billion. In reality, Merck is making an acquisition. Its shares will be the currency to compete the…
The US is calling for other nations to put more money into their credit and financial systems to help pull the world out of a deepening recession. One of the problems is that many…
Other companies that need federal bailouts should use the AIG (AIG) approach. It told the the government that if it did not get a large slug of money the global financial system would burn to the…
Economists and public officials need to be optimistic about the economy. It they are too dour, they just encourage the public to think that they should be replaced. Economists, after all, might be considered …
It is time for the Fortune 500 to go. It should not be published again after this year. The issue will be mailed to the magazine’s subscribers in about a month. The franchise has…
Over the last few weeks, the newspaper industry has entered a new period of decline. The parent of the papers in Philadelphia declared bankruptcy as did the Journal Register chain. The Rocky Mountain News…
According to Reuters, Japanese gloom deepened and the government encouraged more coordination with the US. Reuters reports that AIG (AIG) got billions of dollars from the government that it paid out to other firms.…
According to The Washington Post, a compensation research firm has calculated that the bear market has put a lot of CEO options underwater. The paper says that “As of late last year, nearly 99…
China can afford to play a long-term game in its competition with Western governments and the industries that are considered strategic to their economies. China has already put money into huge metals and mining…