| Market Summary |
Three weeks have passed since 2007 rolled around, and investors are still trying to figure out if the markets are in for a good year, or if they are about to take a turn south. Markets closed to mixed results Friday, with the S&P 500 (up 0.29%) and Nasdaq (up 0.33%) showing signs of life, but with the Dow Jones remaining flat for most of the trading day. Uncertainty surrounding earnings may have given investors a reason to remain cautious, though sometimes even good news doesn't come unpunished. IBM (IBM: Charts, News, Offers) announced that its 4Q profit was better than previously expected, but found that investors weren't quite as excited about the news. Shares of Big Blue fell 3.3% to $96.17. Shares of General Electric (GE: Charts, News, Offers) tumbled 2.8% after releasing a less-than-stellar 1Q forecast. The wintry weather brought one good piece of news, at least for energy stockholders. Shares of ExxonMobil (XOM: Charts, News, Offers) heated up to $73.53, a jump of 2.2%.
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| Market News |
General Electric Co. (GE: Charts, News, Offers) said Friday its fourth-quarter profit more than doubled as its NBC television network showed signs of a turnaround and its global sales of gas turbines, health care equipment, financial services and aircraft engines grew strongly. (Source: Yahoo! Finance) Full Story
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Pfizer (PFE: Charts, News, Offers) is the top seller of pharmaceuticals in the U.S. and the world, but there's a drawback to its massive size and scale -- a pronounced lack of efficiency.
For many years, Pfizer has been about big, from making giant acquisitions like Warner-Lambert and Pharmacia to marketing Lipitor, the world's best-selling drug. Now it's time for another big move, only this time it's a downsizing. (Source: The Street) Full Story
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Kick yourself - hard - if you didn't buy that $990 Westinghouse 37-inch, 1080p LCD TV back in December. Unfortunately, industry watchers say this year's Super Bowl TV deals probably won't be as juicy as those holiday blowout bargains.
Since Super Bowl is the most-watched television event of the year, it's regularly a big driver of new television purchases, according to the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA). (Source: CNN Money) Full Story
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| Market Analysis |
As stocks struggled through an ugly bear market a few years back, something wonderful happened to serve the cause of investors.
The Smart Money declared that assets of all types -- bonds and money markets as well as stocks -- were embarking on a new era of low returns stretching out as far as the eye could see. (Source: Bloomberg) Full Story
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Even by the standards of a wild and woolly industry, the oil market has been amazingly chaotic. After hitting an an all-time high of $77 last summer, the price of crude has plunged to near $52 a barrel. (On Jan. 18, after this story went to press, crude oil dropped below $50 a barrel in trading at the New York Mercantile Exchange, before settling at $50.50.) (Source: Business Week) Full Story
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It's been a year since companies have been required to report the cost of employee stock options as an expense--dinging their profits as much as, in Agilent Technologies' (A: Charts, News, Offers) case, 54%. Now there's a new way, and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is blessing it: use the market to price the option, and hope the results will be a lower expense. (Source: Forbes) Full Story
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