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Caterpillar and McDonald's posted bottom line results that topped estimates, sending its shares higher. This is the busiest week of the earnings season, with approximately 180 S&P 500 components scheduled to report. Wall Street also set its sights on the Federal Reserve, as the central bank kicked off a two-day monetary policy meeting The S&P 500 hit a record high shortly after the open, with financials and energy rising more than 1 percent to lead advancers. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 77 points, with Caterpillar and McDonald's contributing the most gains. The Nasdaq composite lagged, trading 0.1 percent lower...

The Dow is the Kardashian of indexes — a celebrity benchmark, famous because it’s known rather than because of what it does. Every round number on the index hits the news cycle hard, largely because there is so little real news out there. In early November, nine straight down days on the S&P 500 the first nine-day losing streak in 36 years — as if that was somehow meaningful. Tuesday’s headlines included a 13-day winning streak for the Russell 2000, its longest win streak in more than 20 years. The Russell benchmark gained roughly 15% during that stretch — an...

The UK's decision to leave the European Union will lead to an economic crisis more severe than what the world faced in 2008, according to legendary investor Jim Rogers, chairman of Rogers Holdings. “This is going to be worse than any bear market you’ve seen in your lifetime,” he said on Yahoo finance’s “Market Movers” program Monday. “2008 was bad because of debt. The debt all over the world is much, much higher now. Stocks in the US, for instance, have been going sideways for 18 months to 24 months. That’s called a distribution by many people. When you have...

S&P Says China’s Banks Face Growing Risk From Bad Debt Problems in the real-estate sector are also a factor as ratings firm revises assessment to negative from stable By Mark Magnier Sept. 21, 2015 8:18 a.m. ET 0 COMMENTS BEIJING—In the latest sign of headwinds hitting the Chinese economy, a U.S. credit-rating firm said China’s banks face growing risk tied to rising bad loans and problems in its real-estate sector. Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services said Monday it had revised to negative from stable its assessment of the economic risks facing China’s banking industry, one of Beijing’s major levers as...

. . . Last year, the College Board, the nonprofit corporation that controls all the high-school Advanced Placement courses and exams, published new guidelines for the AP U.S. history test. They read like a left-wing dream. Obsession with identity, gender, class, crimes against the American Indian and the sins of capitalism suffused the proposed guidelines for teachers of AP American history. As of a few weeks ago, that tilt in the guidelines has vanished. The College Board’s rewritten 2015 teaching guidelines are almost a model of political fair-mindedness. This isn’t just an about-face. It is an important political event. The...

Apple just made $18 billion in 90 days, more than 435 firms in the S&P 500 each made – in total – since 2009 Submitted by WorkerAnt#11, on January 27th, 2015 Share0 Tweet0 0 Share0 Apple shares rose 45% over the past 12 months and grew 15% since $AAPL introduced the iPhone 6 NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Apple Inc. is set to report first-quarter earnings after the market closes on Tuesday. The Cupertino-based company has continued to impress Wall Street with stronger-than-expected sales of its higher-margin iPhone 6 Plus. Quarterly earnings per share and revenue estimates have risen an average...

In 2011, concerned about the growing debt crisis, Standard & Poor, the venerable credit rating firm, downgraded the U.S. bond rating for the first time from “Triple-A” to “AA-plus,” a move that sent shockwaves through the financial markets raising troubling questions about the government’s growing debt. The move hit a nerve with a White House gearing up for a massive re-election campaign. Then Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner called the Chairman of McGraw Hill, the owners of S&P, declaring that the government would hold S&P “accountable” and their conduct would be “looked at very carefully.” Geithner wasn’t bluffing. The Obama Administration...

S&P cuts Italy sovereign rating to BBB-, just above junk ROME Fri Dec 5, 2014 1:32pm EST Dec 5 (Reuters) - Standard & Poors on Friday cut Italy's sovereign credit rating from BBB to BBB-, just one notch above junk, citing the country's weak growth and poor competitiveness which undermine the sustainability of its huge public debt.

If the Obama administration used federal prosecutors to exact vengeance on Standard and Poor’s for downgrading the rating of federal debt, that would be a serious crime, an impeachable offense if it could be traced to the Attorney General or the President (not that anyone other than Democrats is interested in impeachment).  It would be evidence of thug government, where the rule of law has been replaced with the law of the jungle, using prosecutorial power as an instrument of political intimidation, as in Travis County, Texas. That’s why a recent court filing by Standard and Poor’s may lead to...

One has to be struck by the recent slew of rating agency credit upgrades for European sovereign bonds. Since the start of the year, undaunted by the marked deterioration in European political and economic fundamentals, the rating agencies have sheepishly followed the market's more favorable attitude towards Europe by providing the European countries with improved bond ratings. This has to raise question anew as to whether the rating agencies serve any useful purpose. Similarly it has to raise questions as to whether the rating agencies continue to amplify market movements in a pro-cyclical manner. Since the start of the year,...

Coppock Market Message: Get Out And Stay Out - Check Back In Q1 2015 Tyler Durden 05/05/2014 12:44 -0400 Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog, This chart's value is in posing an if-then question: if today's S&P 500 follows these patterns, what will our reaction be? Longtime contributor B.C. recently submitted a chart that combines two interesting market tools: the Coppock Curve and historical analogies. Coppock called his technical invention the Very Long Term (VLT) Momentum indicator, and the so-called "killer wave" is a top followed by a second lower peak. This chart shows the Coppock Curve for the...

Cyprus and Russia - what's the difference (aside from the fact that the former was a money laundering offshore center of the latter until last year of course)? If you said one is a lackey to statist, selfish banker interests, and after having its economy thoroughly destroyed by the great doomed European sociopolitical (and pathological) experiment, came crawling back to its Eurozone masters, while the other couldn't care one bit about Pax Petrodollariana and the global central bank cabal, you are right. In which case it will also be clear why a few hours ago that joke of a...

Last month we wrote about the threatening phone call from then-Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner to the head of the parent company of Standard & Poor's after S&P downgraded the U.S. credit rating in 2011. Now we learn that Mr. Geithner placed the call to McGraw Hill Chairman and CEO Harold McGraw III just five minutes after leaving an Oval Office meeting with President Barack Obama. This detail, drawing on information contained in Mr. Geithner's public schedule, was included late yesterday in a filing by S&P in federal court in the Central District of California. The Department of Justice...

Standard & Poor’s cut Puerto Rico’s credit rating by one notch on Tuesday, becoming the first of the Wall Street credit ratings agencies to downgrade the debt to junk level. S&P lowered the commonwealth government’s general obligation rating to ‘BB+’ from ‘BBB-’. At the same time, it downgraded commonwealth appropriation secured debt and Employee Retirement System (ERS)debt to ‘BB’. All of S&P’ ratings remain on CreditWatch with negative implications. “My administration isn’t to blame for this. But it is my responsibility to get us out of it,” Gov. Alejandro García Padilla said during a hastily convened press conference at La...

European leaders meeting in Brussels for a summit on banking rules got some bad news this morning. The Standard and Poor's credit rating agency announced that it is stripping the entire European Union of its AAA rating.

The S&P 500 is once again close to a record high, as investors welcomed the withdrawal of Larry Summers from the race to become next chairman of the Federal Reserve. [SNIP] Investors are excited at the prospect of top contender Janet Yellen taking over from current Fed chairman Ben Bernanke, since she is widely expected to pursue a similar policy of stimulating the economy to bring the unemployment rate down. Yellen is currently the Fed's vice chair.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Dow and S&P 500 scaled fresh heights on Thursday, boosted by better than expected results from Morgan Stanley and United Health, while investors looked to a second day of congressional testimony by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. Shares of Morgan Stanley (MS) surged 4.1 percent to $27.64 after the bank reported stronger-than-expected adjusted quarterly profit as revenue grew in all its major businesses. A jump in shares of UnitedHealth (UNH.N) helped boost the Dow and other health insurers. UnitedHealth was up 5.7 percent at $70.03 after the company's results beat expectations, while the S&P health...

An unexpectedly strong U.S. jobs report pushed stock markets higher on Friday as investors welcomed signs that the world's largest economy is not slowing down as quickly as some had feared.

I was watching former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan on CNBC’s Closing Bell with Maria Bartiromo on Friday. Greenspan seemed to be saying that the stock market is what is important, not the underlying economy. Since the S&P 500 bottomed on 2009-07-07, it has risen from 881.03 to 1521.38 on Friday. That is a 73% increase. But please find the hidden economic recovery in the data supporting this miraculous stock market recovery. Industrial production in YoY terms is displaying a disturbing down trend in growth. U6 unemployment is shaped like a sea serpent and still remains at 14.4%, far too high...

Staring at a another debt ceiling crisis, the president's punishing the one credit rating agency that dared downgrade U.S. debt in the last crisis. And Wall Street analysts say the timing's no coincidence. Just weeks away from the next debt-limit showdown, the Justice Department filed a whopping $5 billion lawsuit against Standard & Poor's for alleged fraud. The case appears weak, but the message it sends S&P and the other independent rating agencies is clear: Don't downgrade anymore. "It's a foregone conclusion that no more downgrades will be coming," said Euro Pacific Capital CEO Peter Schiff. Curiously, Attorney General Eric...