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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...

I wrote Tuesday about the hypocrisy and perhaps vindictiveness of the Department of Justice’s lawsuit against ratings agency Standard & Poor’s for rating toxic mortgage-backed securities and their derivatives highly before the housing bubble popped. Apparently I wasn’t tough enough on … the DoJ. Bloomberg’s Jonathan Weil explains why the lawsuit isn’t just ill-considered, but downright silly: Oh, the poor suckers at Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp., fooled about the stench of their own garbage by those sneaky credit raters at Standard & Poor’s.The U.S. Justice Department made some peculiar allegations in its lawsuit this week against S&P...

Now, this is awkward. One agency of the federal government is suing a company for fraud while another agency continues to endorse it. On Monday in Los Angeles, the Department of Justice sued Standard & Poor's and its parent McGraw-Hill MHP -0.25% for $5 billion. The claim is that S&P committed civil fraud when it issued high credit ratings on mortgage-related securities prior to the financial crisis of 2008. Sixteen states and the District of Columbia have piled on the suit. No doubt investors who relied on the opinions of S&P and the other big credit-rating agencies, Moody's and Fitch,...

Standard & Poor's lowered its credit rating for Spain on Wednesday, in a move that could complicate Madrid's effort to avoid requesting a financial bailout. S&P cut Spain's long-term credit rating two notches to "BBB-" from "BBB+," the ratings agency said in a statement. It also lowered the nation's short-term rating and said the long-term outlook for Spain is negative, meaning it could lower the rate further. The move reflects the risk of "increasing social discontent" as the Spanish economy slips deeper into recession, according to S&P. It also warned of "rising tensions" between the central government and Spain's semi-autonomous...

TORONTO (Standard & Poor's) Aug. 5, 2011--Standard & Poor's Ratings Services said today that it lowered its long-term sovereign credit rating on the United States of America to 'AA+' from 'AAA'. ... We lowered our long-term rating on the U.S. because we believe that the prolonged controversy over raising the statutory debt ceiling and the related fiscal policy debate indicate that further near-term progress containing the growth in public spending, especially on entitlements, or on reaching an agreement on raising revenues is less likely than we previously assumed and will remain a contentious and fitful process. We also believe that...

The Best Economic Indicator In The World Continues To Be Dead On Joe Weisenthal Jul. 8, 2012, 7:15 AM We love it: Initial jobless claims vs. the S&P 500. The two lines continue to move very nicely with each other, even lately. Note that the chart isn't updated with Friday's S&P move, which was lower... The reason we like this chart is that for one thing, it's a pretty correlation. But beyond that, it's a reminder of what's driving this market. Fundamentals. There haven't been many periods where the two lines separated much, and where they did, it was always...

Goldman Sachs' (GS) analysts told investors to sell the S&P 500 (SPX) Thursday and boy did they ever. The S&P 500, which was already down 1%, dropped even further as Goldman's report bounced around email inboxes. Goldman's analysts said they could see the S&P 500 drop to 1,285, roughly 5% below its current levels. Heading into the close, the broad index was down more than 2% at 1,326. Analysts Noah Weisberger and Aleksandar Timcenko cited the sharp drop in the Philly Fed index Thursday as just another piece of evidence that the ephemeral recovery has lost steam. "We now think,...

Standard & Poor's downgraded Spain's credit rating by two notches on Thursday, the latest sign Europe's debt crisis is once again gathering force. S&P said the downgrade, from A to BBB+, "reflects our view of mounting risks to Spain's net general government debt as a share of GDP in light of the contracting economy."

France and Austria lost their triple-A credit ratings yesterday evening—an ill-starred Friday 13th January—as seven other eurozone countries were also downgraded by US-based credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s (S&P). The move was described by European leaders as “political” and “inconsistent”, and China claimed the move cast doubt on the credibility of credit ratings agencies. The two triple-A economies were nudged down one notch by S&P, to AA+, but retain top AAA rating from the other two main ratings agencies, Moody's and Fitch. Two notches were struck from the ratings of Italy (to BBB+), Spain (to A), Cyprus (to BB+)...

Standard & Poor's has officially cut the long-term credit rating of France and eight other Eurozone nations. Italy, Portugal, Cyprus, and Spain saw two notch downgrades, while Austria, France, Malta, Slovakia, and Slovenia were dropped one level. The ratings agency reiterated its ratings on Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. Standard & Poor's has taken all 16 nations off of CreditWatch, which indicates a coming adjustment. However, the company has left 14 of the countries, including Italy and France, on negative outlook. Slovakia and Germany were the only two to move to stable outlooks. The move by...

Standard & Poor's will cut the credit ratings of Italy, Spain and Portugal by two notches and downgrade France and Austria by one notch, a French newspaper said Friday, without citing its sources. The newspaper, Les Echos, said that S&P would spare Germany, the Netherlands, Finland and Luxembourg in its long-awaited adjustment of euro zone sovereign ratings. It said the announcement would come at around 4:30 pm ET, after the US stock market has closed. "Remain alert tonight when U.S. markets close," one euro zone source told Reuters. US stocks slumped in reaction, though were well off their lows, while...

Ahead of a planned summit of European Union leaders, the credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s has put all 17 Euro nations on review for a credit downgrade, which means France and Germany could lose the pristine AAA ratings they presently enjoy, Bloomberg News is reporting. The euro area’s six AAA rated countries are among the nations to be placed on a negative outlook pending the result of a summit of European Union leaders on Dec. 9, the people said today on condition of anonymity because the decision has yet to be announced. The euro reversed its gains and U.S. Treasuries rose...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Another trading day and another low for Bank of America's stock. Shares of Bank of America dropped more than 3% Tuesday, hitting a new 52-week low of $5.03 -- its lowest level since March 12, 2009. After the close of trading Tuesday, Bank of America was one of 37 financial institutions downgraded by S&P. Beyond the S&P downgrade, trading could become even more complicated in Bank of America's stock, if it falls below $5. Under that threshold, many broker-dealers will not allow investors to buy or short a stock on margin, according to a spokesperson for...

FXstreet.com (Barcelona) - S&P rating agency has just downgraded 37 global banks. Goldman, BofA, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, BNY Mellon are amongst the cuts based on a new methodology. Japanese and UK banks cut or outlook lowered as well.

BANK DOWNGRADE RAMPAGE: Goldman, Bank Of America, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, And Citigroup Just Got Cut By S&P Simone Foxman Nov. 29, 2011, 4:48 PM Standard & Poor's ratings service just cut the ratings of Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup from A to A-, according to Bloomberg. Wells Fargo was also cut from AA- to A+. The agency gave both Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs have a negative outlook. Those cuts were part of more than 37 ratings reviewed by the agency. Bloomberg says those are dependent upon "criteria change[s]" that were published on November 9....

S&P says mistakenly announced French downgrade (AFP) – 7 hours ago PARIS — Ratings agency Standard and Poor's said Thursday that it had mistakenly announced to some clients a downgrade of France's top "AAA" credit rating, amid speculation of just such a move. "As a result of a technical error, a message was automatically disseminated today to some subscribers of S&P's Global Credit Portal suggesting that France's credit rating had been changed," S&P said in a statement. "This is not the case: the ratings on Republic of France remain 'AAA/A-1+' with a stable outlook and this incident is not related...

S&P Downgrades Spain One Notch, Citing Economic Woes OCTOBER 13, 2011, 7:13 P.M. ET DOW JONES NEWSWIRES Standard & Poor's Ratings Services on Thursday downgraded Spain a notch, citing increasingly unpredictable financing conditions that could squeeze a private sector already pressured by lackluster economic growth. The ratings cut is the latest blow to a large European sovereign's credit status after S&P last month downgraded Italy a notch, citing many of the same problems afflicting euro-zone economies. S&P expects the Spanish economy will grow at about 1% in real terms next year, a drop from the 1.5% pace it forecast in...