The markets are trading in the red today, being pulled down by investor concern over the most recent data regarding the housing market. According to the Commerce Department this morning, September sales of new homes dropped by 3.6%. September's annual rate was 402,000 units, which was below the expected 440,000 annual units. The average price for a new home was also lower, falling 9.1 percent on a year-over-year basis to $204,800. On ...

The market ended the day in the red, but several companies went against the trend and rose to new 52 week highs today. Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) rose to a new 52 week high today of $125.68 and ended the session up 5.2% to 124.6399. The company is still riding high on last week's solid earnings report. The company was expected to show earnings of 33 cents per share, but came in ...

Google (NYSE: GOOG) has not confirmed the details just yet, but it appears all but certain that the search engine giant will be launching a music search next week that will allow users to search for music and gives the ability to download selected tracks. Music downloads has been a major driving force for Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) through its iTunes service, and Google is looking to grab a piece of that ...

The market closed in the red today, as poor earnings from General Electric (NYSE: GE) and Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) brought out the bears. The DOW closed the session down 0.67%, the NASDAQ ended the day down 0.76%, while the S&P slipped by 0.8%. General Electric started off the day off on a bad note when the company reported revenues that came up short of analyst estimates. GE was able to ...

A lot of big name stocks received upgrades and downgrades today. Here are a few such stocks: Analyst upgrades: Dick's Sporting Goods (NYSE: DKS) was upgraded today to Neutral from Underperform by Buckingham. State Street Corp (NYSE: STT) was upgraded by CLSA to Outperform from Underperform and the broker lifted its price target on the stock to $62 from $45. JP Morgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) received an upgrade today from Fox-Pitt to Outperform from ...

The DOW closed above the psychological 10,000 mark today for the first time in a year, and ended the day up 1.47% to 10,115.86. The first time that the DOW rose above the 10,000 mark was all the way back in 1999, and at that time investors celebrated, and drank champagne, but this time it was not so much a reason to celebrate as a reason to relax a bit, as ...

We have been hearing a lot of rumors that the recession is finally over, and we get another hint at this today with a new report that the majority of economists believe that the recession has ended but econonic recovery is going to be slow. According to a poll by National Association for Business Economics, 80% of economists that it polled stated that they believe the recession has ended and the ...

The DOW closed at its highest in a year, as the market had its best week in the past 2 months, and snapping a two week losing streak. For the week, the DOW was up 4%, with the Nasdaq and S&P both up an impressive 4.5%. We got a couple pieces of good news today. The Commerce Department noted that the trade deficit fell by 3.6%, and we also got news that ...

September turned out to be a really good month for American retailers, which on the whole posted better than expected sales numbers. Today's report shows that retailers saw an increase of 0.6% in sales for the month of September, which has led several retailers to trade up to new 52 week highs today. Granted, the monthly numbers are in comparison to last September when retailers really struggled, but still good news ...

Soft drink giant PepsiCo (PEP) will get its turn to impress Wall Street in the morning when it reports its third quarter earnings numbers. The last time that the company reported earnings was back on July 22 when it outpaced analyst estimates by 2 pennies with a reported $1.02 per share for its second quarter. Going into tomorrow's report analysts are looking for the company to show earnings of $1.02 per share. ...