Jay Yarow and Kamelia Angelova of Silicon Alley Insider Steve Ballmer became Microsoft’s Chief Executive Officer on January 14, 2000. Shortly after, the company’s stock nose dived as investors spanked all tech stocks. Since then though, Steve hasn’t been able to bring the stock back. It’s been virtually flat. Maybe Steve...

Jeff Clark, Senior Editor, Casey’s Gold & Resource Report As a self-professed gold bug, why would I possibly want my favorite investment to fall in value? Have the long hours finally caught up with me? Au contraire; my near-constant devotion to all things gold has only served to crystallize one of the things I really want out of this. Here’s...

Zero Hedge Complacency is back with concerns of an overvalued market promptly brushed under the carpet. The sharp downward market trend has reversed today, courtesy of VWAP algos and other low-volume gimmicks. The volume picture is the same we have seen time and time again- selling accelerates on catalysts, while the autopilot move is higher on marginal...

Dan Frommer of Business Insider Apple threw us a curveball today: The company reported results in GAAP format, reflecting an accounting change that means they no longer have to distribute iPhone revenue and earnings over 24 months. Unfortunately, that means Apple’s GAAP results don’t match up with non-GAAP estimates. As expected, the Mac...

Is AMZN a Buy Sell or Hold

The Market Ticker On January 5th the durables report for November was ‘released’. It showed a 0.2% increase.  I didn’t write on it at the time, as it didn’t appear to be particularly consequential.  The report, of course, came in the middle of the first-week January market rally. But now, in the dark of night, the number has...

Posted by Joshua M Brown, The Reformed Broker The Double Dippers got a shot of B12 last week right into the puffed out vein in their foreheads. Even the bulls gotta admit, their case has begun to look better based on this week’s nasty surprise on consumer delinquencies from Capital One ($COF) as well as the continuing jobless claims number. Charts...

Wall Street expects a “strong beat” from Apple today when it reports December quarter earnings. That’s because, just as always, Wall Street is setting a hurdle for Apple so low that it could trip on it. And then everyone gets excited because Apple “crushed” their models and destroyed its own guidance. (Guidance that, as...

The Reformed Broker Zero uptick whatsoever in employment, the dollar scraping the ground and a furor boiling over to the point where Democratic senators are losing in the Northeast. You know what that means, folks.  Obama’s about to nudge one or both of these guys to “spend more time with the family/pursue other interests.” The only...

(MarketWatch) – Sales of U.S. existing homes plunged 16.7% in December to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.45 million from 6.54 million in November as a popular tax credit was set to expire, a national real estate trade group estimated Monday. The 16.7% percentage decline from November to December was the largest on record, the National...

Joe Weisenthal of Business Insider Raymond James strategist has been warning of a dip in recent weeks, and it seems like he finally got what we expected last week. While he’s still generally bullish, he’s also telling investors not to rush into this dip: …for the first time since the March 2009 “lows” the S&P 500 (SPX/1091.76)...

Scott Redler of T3Live For the past year, we have been buying dips, buying bullish technical patterns, and shorting the extremely extended moves (remember the strategy of shorting the S&P every time we cleared new highs by about 20-40 handles? That was our only successful shorting strategy). Every time traders shorted a 4-5% pullin, they were...

The New York Times unearths more documents showing the lengths to which Tim Geithner’s New York Fed went to try to keep the AIG bailout and counterparty details secret. The Treasury’s response will no doubt be that Tim Geithner had no knowledge of any of these discussions. And he may not have have been involved in the discussions.  But...

Joe Weisenthal of Money Game After stretching itself in an epic, multi-year lending binge, the Bank of China is planning a big share sale to raise cash, deleverage, and up its reservers. The bank could raise up to $30 billion according to WSJ. This is a tricky moment for the Chinese financial system. Regulators, who finally appear to be getting serious...