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Apple could be working on its own augmented-reality technology, which would be a first for the company, according to Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster. Apple usually focuses on mainstream consumer products such as smartphones, tablets, and laptops. Munster has picked up on a few clues within the industry that indicate Apple could be working on some type of augmented reality device. For example, the company acquired a German augmented reality startup called Metaio earlier this year, which was reported back in May. Munster notes that Metaio owns 171 worldwide patents related to augmented reality technology, which would put Apple in 11th...

U.S. stocks rallied again Thursday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average closing at 16,654.77, up 369.26 points, as the Chinese government admitted intervening in foreign currency markets to prop up the value of the yuan. The communist government also admitted simultaneously intervening in the Chinese stock market to halt further declines. The average investor got a second breather this week as the Dow gained back Wednesday and Thursday the 1,000 points lost in opening trading Monday in a roller-coaster market that shows no signs of stabilizing. Market Watch reported the Treasury market, a comfortable haven for many nervous investors,...

If you can believe what some industry analysts have been saying, Apple should now be playing third fiddle in the smartphone wars. Android and Windows Phone would be ahead of iOS. Apple would, I suppose, be destined to fall back into niche status. Have you looked at the Windows Phone and BlackBerry market shares lately? Have you noticed how Microsoft is quickly unraveling the failed Nokia handset division purchase? Have you noticed how thousands of brand new Microsoft employees are being consigned to the unemployment lines? So do you believe those predictions? There’s one more. IDC, part of IDG, which...

Apple on Thursday sent out invitations to members of the media, making official its anticipated Sept. 9 event at San Francisco's Bill Graham Civic Auditorium. It's expected to showcase not only a next-generation "iPhone 6s" handset, but also a new Siri-enabled Apple TV set-top box. via CNBC. This year's event comes with the tagline "Hey Siri, give us a hint," likely alluding to the voice input expected to be a part of this year's revamped Apple TV. The new set-top box is also widely anticipated to feature a redesigned controller with touchpad, as well as a dedicated App Store for...

On Wednesday we witnessed the third largest single day point gain for the Dow Jones Industrial Average ever. That sounds like great news until you realize that the two largest were in October 2008 – right in the middle of the last financial crisis. This is a perfect example of what I wrote about yesterday. Every time the market crashes, there are huge up days, huge down days and giant waves of market momentum. Even though the Dow was up 619 points on Wednesday, overall we are still down more than 2,000 points from the peak of the market....

Oh yes, remember the banks cleaned up their balance sheets and closed all those pesky derivative trades.... Right? "NEW YORK – This spring, traders and analysts working deep in the global swaps markets began picking up peculiar readings: Hundreds of billions of dollars of trades by U.S. banks had seemingly vanished." “We saw strange things in the data,” said Chris Barnes, a former swaps trader now with ClarusFT, a London-based data firm." Except.... they didn't vanish. They went overseas, but are still there. Just remember, it was CDS and IR products that blew up the world last time, and you...

The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index and the Dow Jones industrial average closed up nearly 4 percent, with the Dow gaining more than 600 points.

Myles Udland August 26, 2015The rally stuck. After markets surged early on Wednesday, the market started to give up its gains and a replay of Tuesday's action — when the Dow gained more than 400 points but closed down 200 — seemed in the cards. But in the final hour of trading stocks rocketed higher, finishing near their highest levels of the day. On a points basis, this was third-largest daily gain for the Dow ever, while the S&P 500 had its best day since November 2011. But the main story of markets in recent weeks — which is that...

Bob BryanAugust 26, 2015The stock market has been on a wild ride the past few days, but if you look beyond that, the US economy is doing just fine. There are numerous explanations for the sell-off in the markets, but none of them are because of the American economy. Unemployment is still down around its pre-recession levels, the housing market is still improving with more being built and increasing values, consumer confidence is very healthy, and gross domestic product is still growing. None of that has changed. In trying to explain the chaos, most analysts have noted that, for the...

David Scutt, Business Insider Australia August 26, 2015Despite further monetary policy easing from the People's Bank of China and restrictions on some forms of futures trading, Chinese stocks fell yet again on Wednesday. Whatever word you choose to describe it — chaotic, wild, skittish, or others — the movements during the session were ridiculously rapid. Stocks opened higher, then tanked, then roared higher again before sliding into the close. It's truly head-spinning stuff, but increasingly familiar for those who have been watching closely. (snip)

China’s stuttering economy might come more strongly into view from the Rocky Mountains at this week’s Jackson Hole meeting of central bankers following the chaos in the stock markets. Many economists still expect the Federal Reserve to stay the course and start raising interest rates this year. Despite the wild see-sawing of US stocks after China’s “Black Monday” meltdown, the bet is on the central bank to move soon and start weaning the US off rates that have stayed near zero since 2008. The annual policy conference in the Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, starting onon Thursday, has traditionally...

Myles Udland August 26, 2015 For the second day in a row, US stock futures are surging. Near 7:15 a.m. ET, Dow futures were up 300 points, S&P 500 futures were up 39 points, and Nasdaq futures were up 84 points. Wednesday morning's rally in US futures follows an ugly day on Tuesday, which saw stocks rally sharply early in the day before a huge sell-off in the final hour of trading. All told, the Dow fell more than 600 points from its peak on Tuesday to the market close. On Tuesday, all three major US indexes closed in the...

If you want to understand what’s going on in the stock market and what you should do with your own investments, don’t assume the past three trading days have been rational. And don’t talk about a market “correction.” Doing that will rot your brain. And don’t panic. Although this is an ugly market, this isn’t anything like the 2008-09 meltdown that wiped out millions of homeowners’ equity and put the world’s financial markets at risk. This is a stock market decline that, as we’ll see in a bit, has a serious impact on only a relatively small number of Americans....

David Scutt, Business Insider Australia August 26, 2015Chinese stocks have finished Thursday’s morning session sharply higher. At the mid-session the benchmark Shanghai Composite index is up by 1.55% following three days of savage losses. Despite the gain, the index is still down 15.26% for the week. All sectors are currently trading higher with industrials, up 2.8%, topping the list. (snip)

Summary Apple's much rumored electric vehicle may use fuel cell technology from U.K. startup Intelligent Energy. Intelligent Energy's technology doesn't require high pressure hydrogen storage and can be refueled by swapping out self-contained modules. Apple may already have exclusive rights to the technology, and use this as leverage to partner with an auto manufacturer such as BMW. By now, the weight of the evidence that Apple is working on a car has become overwhelming, but an announcement out of the UK of a hydrogen fuel cell powered iPhone may shed the most light yet on Apple's automobile project. The technology...

Best Buy CEO Hubert Joly said Apple Watch is off to a strong start and announced steps to deepen the tech giant’s presence in the retailer’s stores. Best Buy continued its remarkable turnaround last quarter, with a big assist from Apple. The largest U.S. electronics retailer reported a rise in domestic comparable sales of 3.8% for the second quarter, well ahead of Wall Street’s expectations, and posted a better than expected profit. While Best Buy has helped its cause by cutting costs and adding floor space to growing categories like smart homes, home theaters, and shops-within-a-shop for top brands, it...

Stock markets around the world have been posting big losses for the last few days. The route was especially rough this morning, with the DOW Jones at one point falling 1,000 points in less than an hour. At the heart of the current slide is an issue which could impact many tech companies: economic weakness in China. Two weeks ago China's government made an aggressive move to devalue its currency. This followed several weeks of tumult in the Chinese stock market, during which the government had also interceded with force. Taken together, investors saw a Chinese market where growth was flagging. That...

Silicon Valley venture capitalist Peter Thiel is famously outspoken and sharp-tongued, and on CNBC on Wednesday he did not disappoint. In a "Squawk Box" interview.Thiel trashed Twitter, Uber and Apple, among others, "Twitter is hard to evaluate. They have a lot of potential. It's a horribly mismanaged company—probably a lot of pot-smoking going on there. But it's such a solid franchise it may even work with all that," the co-founder of PayPal and early Facebook investor said.

A Nevada based company is suing Apple for patent infringement. The company alleges that Apple's 2-step Apple ID verification system/process violates their patent. Verify Smart Corp. alleges that Apple makes, uses, tests, markets and sells or otherwise provides a system and method for enabling a user to authenticate their identity when initiating an electronic transaction, using a one-time pass-code sent to the user's mobile phone (hereinafter "Apple two-step verification"). They further claim that Apple's two-step verification system is designed to enable secure transactions for their customers. Verify alleges, that Apple's two-step verification infringes claims 2 and 5 of their...

There is so much to admire about Apple. They make superb, beautiful products. Their amazing comeback story is unparalleled in corporate history. Steve Jobs has become something akin to a modern-day patron saint of the tech industry. Tim Cook is, rightly, enormously respected.So why do I think they represent so much of what’s wrong with the tech world?It’s because they have, I think, an almost Shakespearean tragic flaw: their obsession with centralized corporate control of the devices they sell. Apple sells fantastic hardware, and excellent software … and tries to maintain an iron-fisted grip on both, throughout their lifespan. Even...