Placing Blame For India Blackout
The most recent part of the saga of the blackout that put 600 million people in India in darkness for a day is that the central government and the states have started to fight…
All Work
Douglas A. McIntyre
Small Business Lending Falters
The Thomson Reuters/PayNet Small Business Lending Index showed that small business borrowing dropped in June. The news service reported that its measure “sagged to 98.5 from 103.8 in May.” The number was the lowest…
July Stock Gains May Not Hold
As investors look back at July, they were heartened by the fact that the major U.S. indexes rose. The news was particularly satisfying because so many companies reported mediocre or poor earnings. Then there…
What’s Important in the Financial World (8/1/2012)
The Thomson Reuters/PayNet Small Business Lending Index showed that small business borrowing dropped in June. The news service reported that its measure “sagged to 98.5 from 103.8 in May.” The number was the lowest…
BMW Earnings: Investment Despite Economy
BMW continues to invest in people and technology, even in the face of trouble in its home market of Europe and concerns that the balance of the world’s large economies may have begun to…
How the Olympics Pushes Important News Off Front Pages
Wikimedia CommonsIf the Olympics were not occurring, news of a budget deal by Congress to extend the functioning of the federal government for another six months likely would lead the news. Or, perhaps news that…
Media Digest (8/1/2012) Reuters, WSJ, NYT, FT, Bloomberg
Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) shares reach an all-time low as doubts about its business model grow. (Reuters) China’s PMI for July falls. (Reuters) Home prices may have steadied, according to Case-Shiller data. (Reuters) Apple…
Nine Great American Companies That Will Never Recover
wikicommons / SkimstaMany American companies have been lauded for their rapid rise to greatness, a process that sometimes takes less than a decade. These firms become leaders in their industries, are renowned for innovation,…
More China PMI Trouble
Twice a month, economists hold their collective breath as China PMI data are issued. One set of numbers comes from huge bank HSBC (NYSE: HBC) and the other from the People’s Republic itself. The…
Take-Two (TTWO) Slaughtered After Poor Numbers
Shares of Take-Two Interactive (NASDAQ: TTWO) dove beneath their recent 52-week low of $8.65 after the firm reported abysmal earnings. After hours, Take-Two shares dropped 6% to $8.27 For the first quarter of fiscal…
The Top Ten Consumer Complaints
Auto, credit and debt, and home improvement continue to be the biggest sources of consumer complaints, three years running. According to a report released today, new issues like bed bugs and coupon fraud are…
Another Dendreon Price Target Cut
Canaccord Genuity provided 24/7 Wall St. with a research note on its downgrade of Dendreon (NASDAQ: DNDN): DNDN Target Cut Following Dendreon’s (DNDN) Q2 2012 results Canaccord Genuity biotechnology analyst Salveen Richter lowered her…
What Do India and Twitter Have in Common? Service Outages
Twitter and India may want to hire the same quality assurance outfit. According to Techcrunch, Twitter has 500 million users, of which the tech news site says 170 million are active. One of the…
Case-Shiller: Housing Down Year-Over-Year
Although housing prices rose month-over-month from April to May, they fell year-over-year, according to S&P/Case-Shiller. Data through May 2012 for the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices showed that average home prices increased by 2.2% in…
Today’s Best Market Rumors (7/31/2012) Alibaba Raises $8 Billion
Updated throughout the day on the 24/7 Wall St. Wire: Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) will launch the iPhone 5 at a September 12 meeting. (Reuters) Alibaba will raise $8 billion. (NYT) Douglas A. McIntyre
Horses Race for Coke CEO Job
A headline on the home page of Coke.com reads “Battle for Everything.” It is a promotion for a film that failed at the box office — “Battleship.” It could describe the match the Coca-Cola…
U.S. Post Office Ready to Collapse
The U.S. Postal System probably will default on about $5 billion owed to the Treasury as soon as this week. There are actually two payments, one of $5.5 billion due now and another in…
LinkedIn (LNKD) — the Greatest Stock in the World
CNNMoney has added its voice to the chorus that says that LinkedIn is the “only social network that matters.” Website Business Insider has made the same argument for months. Part of the assumption that LinkedIn…
What’s Important in the Financial World (7/31/2012)
This is what is important in the financial world on July 31, 2012.
Manchester United IPO and the Green Bay Packers
A number of valuation experts believe that the price of shares in the Manchester United (NASDAQ: MANU) initial public offering have been set far too high. The IPO has been described at the “next Facebook.” Word is that the…