Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) released its earnings report for its second fiscal quarter after closing bell tonight, posting earnings of 19 cents per share on revenue of $23.18 billion. Analysts had been expecting losses of 13 cents per share on $22.39 billion in revenue, a 20% increase year over year. In the same quarter last year, Amazon…
Visa (V – Analyst Report) operates in the financial transaction services industry. Through its electronic payments system, it is able to facilitate global commerce. Shares of Visa went down 1% heading into its earnings report. This company has not seen any estimate revisions made for the third quarter in the last 60 days. …
The Chicago Fed’s National Activity Index, which we reported on earlier today, is based on 85 economic indicators drawn from four broad categories of data: Production and Income Employment, Unemployment, and Hours Personal Consumption and Housing Sales, Orders, and Inventories The complete list is available here in PDF format. In today’s Chicago Fed update, we learned that “three…
U.S. equities continue to trade like a risk-free money market. Over the past seven months, the range (from high to low) in the Dow Jones Industrial Average has been among the smallest in history. This behavior has been comforting to most investors as they tend to equate low volatility with low risk. Additionally, every time there…
Tens of thousands of investors read my commentary at popular financial portals. Some have been reading my articles for more than a decade. Others might have clicked on a social media “follow” link in the last month or the last last year. Ironically, few realize that I originally developed a front-n-center persona on national talk…
It’s that time of year again – a time for trying and reviewing, for testing and reporting, the best start-ups I’ve personally used in the past quarter. For my part, I’m trying at least one new platform, app, or SaaS application each week. I find most new technologies to be not only wildly unfaithful to…
Strength Of Steel Yesterday, I discussed the issues surrounding the Fed’s ongoing determination to hike interest rates despite evidence of a weakening economic environment. To wit: “The Federal Reserve raises interest rates to slow economic growth to keep an economy from overheating which would potentially lead to a sharp rise in inflationary pressures. Since commodities are…
Initial claims for unemployment compensation extended the string of record lows into its 22nd month this week. The mainstream media is reporting this as if the record low is something new. That’s because they look at the seasonally adjusted (SA) fictitious data only. The actual, not seasonally finagled number has been at a record low relative…
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Photo Credit: Thomas Hawk (Flickr) Question: Why are there so many mutual funds? Answer: mutual fund providers tend to make lots of money on each fund so they create more products to sell. The large number of mutual funds has little to do with serving your best interests. Below are three red flags you can…
