Archive | September, 2012

Why Short Sellers Were Wrong About Yelp

It was no surprise that traders bet against Yelp, Inc. in the days before the company released 52 million shares of stock. Just two weeks earlier, Facebook, Inc. stock fell to a record low as insiders dumped shares after the company’s first lockup period expired. Other tech companies like Groupon, Inc. and Angie’s List, Inc. […]

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Hot Stocks: The QE3 Movers and Shakers

Last week was eventful for the U.S. stock markets with the U.S. Federal Reserve announcing yet another Quantitative Easing program, the third in the series, which Wall Street calls QE3. Fed chief Ben Bernanke vowed the investors by continuing the QE, this time deciding to buy up to $40 million of mortgage backed securities every month […]

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DJIA drops Kraft Foods for UnitedHealth Group

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) will drop Kraft Foods Inc. (NASDAQ:KFT) as of Sept. 21—replacing it with UnitedHealth Group, Inc. (NYSE:UNH), it was announced Friday morning.  Kraft Foods Inc.’s decision to split into two public companies–a North American grocery business and an international snack company called Mondelēz International, Inc.–makes the company less representative of the […]

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Technology Stocks to Watch on Wednesday: MSFT, NOK, ORCL, and FB

Not to be outdone by Apple’s update of its much anticipated iPhone 5 announcement, some other technology companies including Microsoft/Nokia and Google, which will both unveil their latest product, are expected to be actively traded in Wednesday’s session. Microsoft [NYSE: MSFT] and Nokia [Nasdaq: NOK] are said to host an event at 10 a.m. ET […]

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U.S. Stocks Limp Along

U.S. stocks hobbled along midday Wednesday on hopes that the European Central Bank will hammer out a debt-buying scheme for its cash-starved economies. Grim August manufacturing, combined with dismal Chinese production and reduced factory activity have buffeted bourses worldwide. The downswing sparked hopes the ECB will somehow reign in wincingly high borrowing costs and the […]

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Explain to me: High-frequency trading

Dark pools. Collateral-easing. Exchange-traded funds. FICO. Securitize. Liquidity… ah, the list goes on. The ratio of people who understand how Wall Street works to people who don’t understand how Wall Street works is probably something like 1:1,000. Higher, maybe? Probably. That’s why I worship news sites like Planet Money and projects like The Crisis of […]

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