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News of a burst of hiring last month sent bond prices lower and the dollar higher in early trading on Friday, while the stock market opened lower. Apple rose 1 percent after it was announced that the company would be joining the Dow Jones industrial average, replacing AT&T. AT&T fell 1 percent. KEEPING SCORE The Dow fell 0.98 percent and the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was down 0.85 percent. The Nasdaq composite index dropped 0.60 percent. MORE JOBS United States employers extended a healthy streak of hiring in February by adding 295,000 jobs, the 12th straight monthly gain above...

Apple Inc. will join the Dow Jones Industrial Average on March 18, replacing AT&T Inc., in the first reshuffling since September 2013. Apple holds a market capitalization of about US$736 billion, making it the largest publicly traded company in the world. AT&T, by contrast, has a market value of US$176.5 billion. Shares of Apple were higher in early trading, gaining 1.3% to US$128.02, while AT&T’s shares fell 1.3% to US$33.55. The changes will push the number of technology-related companies in the 30-member gauge to six and boost their influence even more as the tech giant joins Microsoft Corp., Intel Corp.,...

* U.S. Stocks Close Higher *Nasdaq Composite Closes Above 5000 For First Time Since March 2000 *DJIA, S&P 500 End at Fresh Records The Nasdaq Composite climbed above the 5000-point level for the first time in almost 15 years on Monday, another milestone in the revival of an index that once was synonymous with dot-com excess but now reflects a broad swath of global technology, consumer, health-care and financial firms. The Nasdaq Composite, which tracks the prices of the 2,571 companies on the Nasdaq Stock Market, briefly topped 5000 at 10:30 a.m. EST. It was the first time the index...

Lumber Liquidators shares are getting smoked after a report aired on "60 Minutes" Sunday night that showed major issues at some of the company's factories in China. Near 11:15 a.m. ET on Monday, shares of the company were down more than 22%. In premarket trade Monday, shares of Lumber Liquidators — North America's largest specialty retailer of hardwood floor — were down as much as 24%. At the opening bell on Monday, shares of the company were halted, news pending. Just after 11:00 a.m. ET, the company released a statement regarding the "60 Minutes" report, saying the newsmagazine used an...

[excerpt from Stock-market crash of 2016: The countdown begins]Dow will drop 50% as market replays 2008, 2000 and 1929.  That will translate into the DJIA crashing from today’s 18,117 down 50% to about 9,000. Ouch, the Dow crashing all the way below 10,000. Unimaginable. Bulls will hate it. No wonder our brains tune out, turn off. Instead, we prefer the happy talk that will just keep coming out of Wall Street and Washington till the 2016 collapse. We’ll just keep denying reality ... till it’s too late, and we suffer another $10 trillion loss is on the books. Deja...

The market has started to spin its wheels and that makes people nervous. I will lay out the red flags. I am not talking about the $18 trillion in government debt, the Fed's balance sheet, or the ticking time bomb of pensions, but trends that could arguably derail the stock market rally.Earnings are beating lowered estimates, but are yielding less than the twenty-year average. Sure, stock yields are attractive versus bond yields, but are they good enough to justify higher share prices? Here is the rub: consensus on earnings points lower and lower for this year, but it should reverse and...

In 2006-2007 I called for a recession. We got a big one. I called for another one in 2011, as did the ECRI. That recession never happened. 50% is not a very good recession predicting track record except in comparison to consensus economic opinions that have never once in history predicted a recession. Consensus opinion is batting a perfect 0.00% Investigating the Record By the way, the ECRI was late in calling the recession of 2007. They still deny it. And questions regarding the 2001 recession and ECRI have still not been answered. I have talked about all of this...

A handful of billionaires are quietly dumping their American stocks . . . and fast. Warren Buffett, who has been a cheerleader for U.S. stocks for quite some time, is dumping shares at an alarming rate. He recently complained of “disappointing performance” in dyed-in-the-wool American companies like Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, and Kraft Foods. Buffett’s holding company, Berkshire Hathaway, has been drastically reducing his exposure to stocks that depend on consumer purchasing habits. Berkshire sold roughly 19 million shares of Johnson & Johnson, and reduced its overall stake in “consumer product stocks” by 21%. Berkshire Hathaway also sold...

The technology sector has been a hot topic for both bulls and bears, with the former seeing the sky as the limit for company valuations and the latter seeing a bubble set for a 2000-like bust. Following the infamous dot-com crash, the Nasdaq composite index fell from a peak of just over 5,000 to nearly 1,000 in about two years. It never exceeded 3,000 during the time leading up to the Great Recession. In early 2009, the Nasdaq began a relatively steady run to today, when it is again testing 5,000. So, whoÂ’s right, the bulls or the bears?...

U.S. stocks rose Tuesday, with the Dow and the S&P 500 settling at new records after Janet Yellen delivered her first day of testimony on Capitol Hill today, saying the central bank was preparing to consider rate hikes on a "meeting by meeting basis", with the timing dependent on economic data. At the closing bell in New York, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 93 points to settle at 18,210, while the Nasdaq climbed for its 10th straight session, rising by 7 points to end at 4,968. The S&P 500 gained 6 points to finish at 2,116. In her testimony...

With the Federal Reserve printing trillions upon trillions of dollars to keep the economic system afloat, many investors and financial pundits have surmised that the fundamental economic problems facing the United States during the crash of 2008 have been resolved. Stocks are, after all, at historic highs. But the insiders know different. And if there’s any single person out there who understands U.S. monetary policy and its long-term effects on domestic and global affairs it’s former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan. As the head of the world’s most powerful central bank for nearly two decades he’s privy to the insider...

[excerpt from Yahoo Finance: What to watch next week: TGT, HD, M, HPQ, GDP and Greece] Next week will be a busy week on Wall Street with a raft of big earnings reports including Target (TGT), Macy’s (M), Home Depot (HD) and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) to name just a few. Investors will also have a lot of economic data and geopolitics to digest this coming week and in the weeks that follow. The Commerce Department will release the latest reading on third quarter Gross Domestic Product. Yahoo Finance’s Rick Newman thinks investors will be watching that report closely, as well...

[excerpt from Yahoo Finance]   NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks are poised for more upward momentum even as uncertainty over oil prices and Greek debt negotiations keeps the market on tenterhooks, analysts say.Strong fourth-quarter U.S. company earnings and signs of an overall improving economy, alongside what appears to be the start of a bottoming in crude oil prices, have given equities support.After starting 2015 with its sharpest monthly drop in a year and a spike in volatility, the benchmark S&P 500 (.SPX) hit an intraday record on Friday while the Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI) reached its highest point...

1. Stocks break through key technical levels. 2. Rallies have less energy. 3. Investors focus on prices. 4. Sideways movement. 5. Sentiment shifts. 6. Panic selling. 7. Bears gain respect. If you’ve been paying attention to the market, you know there are other subtle clues a bear market is getting closer. Many in the media are obsessed with bear market definitions (i.e. 20% downturn), but protecting your investments should be your first priority.

[excerpt from NASDAQ Weekly Market Wrap: February 6, 2015 ] The fifth full trading week of 2015 comes to a close with the Dow Jones, S&P 500 and NASDAQ composite all lower in afternoon trading on Friday. Most actively traded stocks include Bank of America (BAC) up 3.5%, Twitter (TWTR) higher by 15.9%, Frontier Communications (FTR) up 3%, and Sirius XM Holdings up 1.1%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite are all significantly higher in the last five days of trading. Crude oil futures are higher this week, trading at $51.83 per barrel on...

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Another day, another wild move in commodity futures. Oil was the headliner on Thursday as a rebound in crude sparked a rally among equities. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 1.2%, erasing the year's losses while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq each added 1%. Last week's wild and volatile trading seemed a thing of the past as stocks climbed through the day without the swings that have characterized much of trading so far this year. The Volatility S&P 500, a gauge of market fear, lost 7.3% to 16.99. But today's relatively focused market doesn't preclude the...

Early last year, the Center for Freedom and Prosperity released this video, narrated by yours truly, making the case that the United States and other nations should shift from a tax-and-transfer entitlement scheme to a system of personal retirement accounts.Some left wingers criticized the idea, saying the big drop in the stock market in 2008-2009 is proof that personal retirement accounts are too risky.You won’t be surprised to learn, though, that they are wrong. It is true that retirement income fluctuates with a system of personal accounts, but that simply means that it is difficult to predict how much...

European shares closed near a seven-year high on Tuesday and Greek banking stocks soared after the country's new government softened calls for writing down its debt. Athens proposed ending a standoff with its creditors by swapping the debt for growth-linked bonds. The proposals contrast with the government's strident vows last week to ditch the austerity conditions imposed under its existing bailout. Athens' benchmark index ATG ended 11.3 percent higher, the biggest one-day percentage gain since August 2011. The country's banking index surged nearly 18 percent. National Bank of Greece, Alpha Bank and Eurobank rose by 13.9 to 20.8 percent. "Greek...

This featured fund is broader than some of those covered previously in our current series about the world’s largest exchange-traded funds (ETFs). The market’s fourth-largest ETF is simply one to invest in when you think times are good and things are looking up across the board in the United States: Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI). VTI is less discriminatory than the other U.S. funds we have examined, since it tracks an index that includes nearly every stock in the U.S. market that is open to investment. The fund’s holdings run the gamut from large to small and value- to...

Yesterday we commented on the outsized macro impact that one company already excerts on the world, when we reported that in the fourth quarter, a whopping 60% of retail sales growth was due to the launch of Apple's iPhone 6 in the fall of 2014, and the surge of Chinese tourists who tok advantage of Hong Kong's lower prices and earlier release. So how about the micro level? For the answer we present the chart below. Behold: the AAPL effect, which demonstrates that what until AAPL's release was shaping up to be a flat Q4 earnings season for the...