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"The borderline acrimonious columns on Reed Hastings and Netflix seem to be approaching their January levels. One only need scan the NFLX headlines for the past week for some samples of writers demonstrating their emotional involvement. I'm not going to focus on the personal jabs but when one single column contains "charade"... "dog & pony show" "glorified bootlegger" "that's typical Hastings"... "creepy" - to describe Hastings and/or Netflix - maybe someone is getting frustrated. To address the fundamental arguments in the..." (continued)

The Dow Jones Industrial Average reached a high last week of 14,684. Let’s consider the reasons for optimism and for pessimism about the stock market from here. REASONS THE MARKET MIGHT GO HIGHER: •The Fed is keeping interest rates so low that it is forcing investors to buy stocks (and real estate) to try to get a return on their money. The Fed has said that this will continue until the unemployment rate gets to around 6.5%, which could be many months from now in the best scenario. This intervention into the markets could theoretically overwhelm the negatives and propel...

Whether it’s because of product fatigue, a botched Maps application launch, or increased competition from rivals like Samsung (PINK:SSNLF) and Google (NASDAQ:GOOG), Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) has found it increasingly difficult to please its shareholders. Since hitting an all-time high of $702.10 in September, Apple shares have slid some 35%. The drop is worse when you consider that the Nasdaq (INDEX NASDAQ:.IXIC) has risen 2.32% while the Dow (INDEX DJX:.DJI) has gained almost 7% in the same time period. One USA Today columnist has even said that Apple’s reign over the tech world “may be over.” “[Apple’s] phone market, tablet market, and...

In October, we published two articles suggesting that there might be a stock market panic in October.  We were early.  Whether the delay in the potential market panic was due to organic reasons, such as the excitement leading up to the November election, or some other factor is beyond the scope of this article. On Thursday, November 8,  the lower trendline of the Orthodox Broadening Top was breached.  In addition, The Dow, Wilshire 5000, Nasdaq, Russell 2000, and S&P 500 all closed beneath their respective 200-day moving averages.  You might say that the stock market panic button is about to...

..."We’re all waiting on Spain now," said Bill Stone, chief investment strategist at PNC Asset Management Group, of persistent speculation over if and when the debt-strapped nation would ask for a financial bailout — a prerequisite for the European Central Bank to purchase its debt and help lower its borrowing costs... "We got a little help from earnings season so far,” added Stone... But Wall Street gains were limited, with October so far proving to be a lackluster month for U.S. equities... "In the U.S., there’s the fiscal cliff and election to deal with, and on the European side, they...

I bought 750 shares of Apple in April 2004 at $14/share. I now have 1,500 shares because it split in February 2005. Apple is now $620/share. Apple is now paying quarterly dividends of $2.65/share.

General Motors, the auto company that vice president Joe Biden likes to claim Obama saved singled-handedly during the virgin birth after which the One was swaddled in a manger, is facing a class action lawsuit for making “materially false and misleading” claims in the prospectus for the new issue of stock it offered as it moved out of bankruptcy in late fall 2010. A statement issued by the law firm representing the class “alleges that the defendants misrepresented and/or failed to disclose that: (1) GM was predicting revenue based on production rather than actual sales; (2) the Company falsely assured...

Remember that vaunted General Motors recovery ushered in by President Obama’s bold bailout program? Well, not so much. In June 2009, GM filed for Obama-managed bankruptcy, costing the taxpayer some $50 billion. The vast majority of that cash was never paid back by GM. In November 2010, GM issued a new initial public offering at a price of $33 per share. Today, GM stock is trading at approximately $19.36, down about 40% from its initial price. And the executive turmoil in the company is reaching fever pitch. Opel, a majority-owned subsidiary of GM, dumped CEO Karl-Friedrich Stracke about two weeks...

We have found the following stocks had unusual volume spikes on Thursday, June 28, 2012. Tenet Healthcare Corp. (NYSE:THC) had a 86.9% volume spike trading 40,717,900 shares. THC’s 30-day average volume is 5,335,410. Shares closed at $5.25 +6.71%. Tenet Healthcare Corporation is an investor-owned health care services company whose subsidiaries and affiliates mainly operate acute care hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers, diagnostic imaging centers and related health care facilities. Health Management Associates (NYSE:HMA) had a 86.1% volume spike trading 24,950,900 shares. HMA’s 30-day average volume is 3,461,860. Shares closed at $7.49 +11.79%. Health Management Associates, Inc and its subsidiariesprovide health care...

The Supreme Court’s stunning rejuvenation of the Obamacare mandate into a new tax didn’t leak to Washington D.C. insiders — but it appears that it may have leaked to yet-unknown Wall Street investors. In a brief 10-minute period starting at 9:32 a.m., the stock value of the nation’s largest hospital chain, HCA Holdings Inc., jumped from $26.81 per share to $27.53 as bidders bought several hundred thousand shares before the court made its announcement just after 10 a.m. The bidders who snatched up shares before the announcement made a gain of roughly $2 a share once the price rose again...

Wealth implosion: It's not just housing By Tami Luhby @CNNMoney June 19, 2012: 2:32 PM ET NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Americans' net worth collapsed in recent years, but don't blame the housing market for it all. A CNNMoney analysis of new Census Bureau data shows that if you strip out the effects of the housing collapse, median household net worth still fell by 25% between 2005 and 2010. The decline was driven largely by the plummeting stock market, which devastated Americans' portfolios and retirement accounts. Overall, median household net worth declined 35% to $66,740 in 2010. The median worth of...

The new General Motors will be turning three years old in early July. GM's rocky childhood has given evidence to what disadvantage small investors are at when it comes to making educated equity investment choices. Let's look at some of the lessons to be learned from one of history's largest busted IPOs (along with the recent Facebook debacle) and consider the current underreported risk factors. Let's start by realizing that the single best indicator of how "successful" and healthy a publicly traded company is would be the company's stock performance. Professional money managers and those that control the majority...

Are Stocks About to Repeat Their Summer Horror Show? Published: Sunday, 3 Jun 2012 | 7:19 PM ET By: Patti Domm CNBC Executive News Editor Like the third sequel to a summer horror movie, stocks are set up for another summer selloff amid fears that the U.S. economy will slide back into recession. “In the last two summers, the final nail in the equities coffin, the thing that pushed it was a double dip scare. We do think the market is going to increase expectations of that in the coming week,” said Barry Knapp, head of U.S. equity portfolio strategy...

A Senate panel is reviewing Facebook's high-profile stock offering last week amid allegations that the bank handling the IPO may have provided select clients with a negative assessment of the company. A Democratic aide to the Senate Banking Committee says the panel wants to learn more about the initial public offering. The committee seeks briefings with representatives of Facebook, regulatory agencies and others. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because the committee's planned inquiry hasn't been publicly announced. Regulators are examining whether Morgan Stanley, the lead underwriter for the IPO, selectively informed clients of an analyst's negative view of...

Short sellers desperate to bet against Facebook shortly after its debut on public markets are now getting their chance. Shares of the much-anticipated IPO have fallen sharply since they opened at $42.05 on Friday amid an initial flurry of trading problems at the Nasdaq and after news that top underwriters cut their revenue estimates just days before the offering. Yet, short sellers are still eager to bet against the stock given its lofty valuation.

And now comes some news about the Facebook IPO that buyers deserve to be outraged about. Reuters Alistair Barr is reporting that Facebook's lead underwriters Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, and Goldman Sachs, all cut their earnings forecasts for the company in the middle of the IPO roadshow. This by itself is highly unusual (I've never seen it during 20 years in and around the tech IPO business). But, just as important, news of the estimate cut was passed on only to a handful of big investor clients, not everyone else who was considering an investment in Facebook. This is a...

Stock futures hit after European electionsReuters – 1 hr 29 mins ago NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stock index futures fell after Greek voters trounced ruling parties in elections on Sunday, a result that put the country's future in the euro zone at risk, and as Socialist candidate Francois Hollande won the French presidency. S&P 500 futures were down 12.3 points at 1,350.20 at 7:35 p.m. EDT (2335 GMT), suggesting a fall of about 1 percent when the U.S. stock market opens on Monday.

Take a look at what happens with BofA stock starting with April 19th. The power of the Internet!

Eastman Kodak Co., a vanguard name in photography, finally filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Thursday following falling sales and rising speculation about its ability to stay afloat. The long-anticipated announcement came after weeks of early eulogies about the faded glory of the former trailblazer, once an American mainstay with products such Kodachrome photographic film and Instamatic cameras. But printed photos seem well on their way to becoming a hipster curiosity as digital technologies -- which originated at Kodak decades ago -- now dominate on smartphones and, to a shrinking degree, cameras. The company, which was also exposed to heavy foreign...

Notre Dame football legend "Rudy" charged in alleged pump-and-dump stock schemeUpdated: Friday, December 16, 2011, 4:36 PM Daniel Ruettiger, the former walk-on football player at the University of Notre Dame who inspired the 1993 film “Rudy,” agreed to pay $382,000 to resolve U.S. regulatory claims he defrauded investors in his sports-drink company by touting fake taste tests and sales. Ruettiger and 12 others generated more than $11 million in illicit profits by artificially pumping up the stock of Rudy Nutrition, the firm Ruettiger founded, the SEC said in a complaint filed today at U.S. District Court in Las Vegas. The...