Although stocks started off last week on a down note thanks to growing worries over Europe, markets staged a late session rally in Tuesday trading and carried this into Wednesday and Thursday as well. These gains came on hopes for government support for euro zone banks coupled with relatively solid data from American markets to boost sentiment across a number of industries. Then, on Friday, the employment figure showed a robust increase in nonfarm payrolls, as the consensus of a 65,000 increase was crushed by an actual figure of 103,000. Furthermore, investors also saw the overall unemployment rate edge down slightly to 9.1% while the average workweek also rose, finishing up at 34.3 hours. These bullish reports suggested to many that the economy might be able to avoid a double dip recession, at least for the time being. However, a report from Fitch, which downgraded Italy and Spain, sent markets tumbling and erased much of the optimism from the jobs report heading into the weekend
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The growth of the ETP lineup to 1,300 products and beyond has been fueled largely by the development–and success–of funds other than the “plain vanilla” offerings that offer exposure to well known stock and bond indexes. As the ETF industry has grown in size, it has also become more granular in nature; many of the [...]
UBS rolled out two new ETNs on Thursday, debuting products that offer exposure to Internet-related companies that have recently completed an initial public offering (IPO). The new ETRACS Internet IPO ETN (EIPO) is linked to the UBS Internet IPO Index, a benchmark that consists of companies that maintain operations focused on the Internet that have [...]
The Independence Day-shortened week was a tumultuous one for markets as stocks stayed flat for much of Tuesday and Wednesday only to soar higher in Thursday’s session on hopes of a jobs recovery. Unfortunately, this was quickly dispelled by a horrendous June jobs report which saw just 14,000 jobs created in the month, helping to push the national [...]
In the early days of the ETF industry most of the products were broad-based equity funds that offered exposure to domestic and international stock markets. But as ETFs have gained market share and become more popular with both buy-and-holders and more active traders, products have become increasingly specialized. Since the debut of the sector SPDRs [...]
Despite sub-par economic growth and a lack of jobs, equity markets have been surging over the past few months as investors have scooped up beaten down equities in hopes of riding the recent trend to robust gains. No more has this been true than in the technology sector where a variety of large companies seem [...]
Trading volumes have slumped on Wall Street in recent sessions, as most investors have waited anxiously for another earnings season to give the markets direction and offer an assessment of the recovery. This season got off to a hot start; aluminum manufacturer Alcoa and train operator CSX posted solid earnings, which helped to buoy the [...]
Microsoft reported solid earnings earlier today, sending shares more than 7% higher in early trading. Although sales were down more than 14% compared to last year and net profits fell more than 18%, investors were encouraged by strong early results for Windows 7 (which created $1.5 billion in deferred revenue from customers who bought a [...]
The sale of Skype that was rumored last week appears to be close to reality, as San Jose-based company eBay is poised to sell the company to a group of investors headed by private equity firm Silver Lake Partners. Under the terms of the deal, eBay will receive about $1.9 billion in cash and a [...]
News broke earlier today that Microsoft and Yahoo! have reached a major search engine deal that will allow Microsoft to become the search engine behind Yahoo!, which will become the worldwide exclusive relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertiser. The deal is obviously a blockbuster, one that both companies believe will change the [...]
