bp

The main question going in to Tuesday's trading session was whethere the Fed will decide to scale back its $85 billion monthly bond buying program. A budget deal in Congress and solid economic data make the case that tapering will begin sooner rather than later. Major indices were virtually...

The earnings crunch rolls on. This week's highlights include quarterly reports from the two biggest companies by market capitalization, Apple and Exxon Mobil, which are expect to post declining earnings. Per-share earnings from General Motors are expected to be the same as a year ago, and...

Roughly one year ago, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) CEO Tim Cook apologized for replacing Google Maps (NASDAQ: GOOG) with its own app. Known simply as Maps, the app proved to be more problematic than anyone could have ever anticipated. "At Apple, we strive to make world-class products that deliver the...

Labor Day marks the unofficial end of summer. Week-long vacations are done, weekend trips to the lake are winding down, and for sports fanatics, here comes football season. But there’s a lot of science behind Labor Day. Consumers spend in very predictable ways making this weekend a key revenue...

BP (NYSE: BP) is getting frustrated, and it shows. The company has spent a lot of time in the courts lately, but its most recent filing came Monday when it asked the courts to lift an EPA ban on bidding for government contracts. As it stands, BP is unable to bid on any government contracts. The...

According to Reuters, BP (NYSE: BP) has asked a U.S. judge to halt payments from its Gulf oil spill settlement fund until misconduct investigations are complete. Even to a lot of Gulf Coast residents, the 2010 oil spill that ruined much of the Gulf Coast line and killed off fisheries and...

The recent sell off in the equity market created some attractive buy levels in some of the high yielding dividend stocks. We ran a screen that looked at larger cap. companies yielding at least five percent that are heavily traded. We also looked for charts that had seem a recent sell off but...

The National Association of Publicly Traded Partnerships (NAPTP) is holding its investor conference this week. And there is more to cheer about this year, now that master limited partnerships (MLPs) are up 22.6 percent so far this year. MLPs underperformed the broader markets last year. Among the...

Insiders may sell shares for any number of reasons, but conventional wisdom is that insiders really only buy shares of a company for one reason -- they believe the stock price will move higher and they want to profit from it. Pullbacks and sell-offs provide a perfect opportunity for investors who...

Insiders may sell shares for any number of reasons, but conventional wisdom is that insiders really only buy shares of a company for one reason -- they believe the stock price will move higher and they want to profit from it. Pullbacks and sell-offs provide a perfect opportunity for investors who...

Dow Jones Industrial Average companies Chevron (NYSE: CVX), Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM), IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) are about due to boost their payouts, according to a report on CNBC. These blue chips have significant cash hoards, buy back shares and are doing well now, as...

A recent report in MarketWatch claimed that if Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) doesn’t change its ideas towards dividends or buybacks, or finds something else to do with its cash, by the end of 2013 it could reach $170 billion. According to Moody’s, “Unless Apple changes its philosophy towards liquidity/...

Insiders may sell shares for any number of reasons, but there is really only one reason insiders buy shares of a company -- they believe the stock price will move higher and they want to profit from it. Pullbacks and sell-offs provide a perfect opportunity for investors who have faith in a...

Insiders may sell shares for any number of reasons, but there is really only one reason insiders buy shares of a company -- they believe the stock price will move higher and they want to profit from it. Pullbacks and sell-offs provide a perfect opportunity for investors who have faith in a...

This weekend in Barron's online: a rebound in the housing markets, the prospects for Tesoro, Kyocera and Southwest Airlines, and a review of the Oliver Stone film Arbitrage. Cover Story "Happy at Last" by Jonathan R. Laing. After a six-year decline that wiped out some $7 trillion in household...