We have compiled several options chains we are watching today now that the DEC-2009 PUTS/CALLS have expired on Friday. Much of this likely options roll-outs continuing, but we are seeing some unusual…
Brand measurement is a popular exercise. Several major business magazines run brand value lists. The annual Brand Z and Interbrand lists always get heavy press coverage. Companies are concerned about their rankings…
Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) may have found a new friend. Standard & Poor’s has come out late in the day with a research note with “positive” credit implications for Jeff Bezos and…
Douglas A. McIntyre The fun part of the holiday season that involves getting things on sale may be ending. Retailers have managed their inventories better than they did last year. Large stores will not be stuck…
Some of the largest websites in the country had extraordinary swings in their audiences in 2009. Many of the most well-known web destinations lost large portions of their traffic Based on data from…
Reuters: Citigroup (NYSE:C) and Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) will pay back TARP funds. Reuters: Kraft (NYSE:KFT) says it will be disciplined in its Cadbury (NYSE:CBY) buyout effort. Reuters: Some of AIG’s (NYSE:AIG) top staff…
The Top Fifty websites based on their percent of US online visits from January to November 2009 are dominated by search and e-mail. The top dozen sites according to data from Hitwise include…
M&A activity picked up in the second half of 2009 as the market moved up and access to capital for big companies improved. Corporate debt offerings soared and banks began to make…
There are many key movers in day trader alert stocks this morning on news events. We have covered each story with a link to more detail and analysis over at VSInvestor.com: Amazon.com,…
The second half of December is supposed to be when trading volume starts slowing down. That does not look to be the case for this coming week, and this list of the unusual suspects is…
Short sellers sharply increased their gamble that financial stocks would fall based on short selling data from NYSE and Nasdaq on the last day of November. Shorts pushed into Citigroup (NYSE:C), increasing…
There was a rumor, unconfirmed by Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), that Jeff Bezos’ company would open stores in the UK. It would follow Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) into the world of the mall…
Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) has opened scores of retail stores and by almost any measure they have been a success. Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) is opening retail locations to sell its hardware and software. It is…
This was a wild week, and perhaps a disappointment that the news did not propel stocks even higher. There were many key movers though, and we have a very active panel of…
The video game sector is not improving with the economy. It seems to not even be getting ‘less-bad’ with the other sectors that are looking ‘less-bad’ compared to earlier months. Last night’s…