As we noted in our weekly preview, Alcoa Inc. (AA), kicked off the current earnings season this afternoon when it reported its third quarter earnings, and the company surprised the market by posting its first quarterly profit in a year. Over the past year, the company has put a lot of focus on cost cutting, and that strategy has definitely paid off. Going into this afternoon's earnings report analysts had been ...

The first quarter was a strange three months for the stock market. All the major indexes finished in the green to cap off a period that saw massive swings in both directions. The DOW lost about 25% between the second week of January and early March, but has made up a lot of lost ground over the past couple of weeks, as investors are starting to believe that the worst is ...

We saw some profit taking yesterday in the aftermath of the strong run the markets posted on Monday, but we got back on track today with some more positive gains for the major indexes. The DOW closed the day up 1.2%, while the NASDAQ put up a gain of 0.8% for the session. Helping the market out today was news that new home sales in February jumped by 4.7%. While the current ...

After yesterday's rally, and President Obama's speech last night, it would have been nice to see another strong day for the market, but that was not the case as sellers came back in and sent all the major markets lower in today's trading. As we know, the housing market has been a major drain on the overall economy, and the real estate market got some more bad news today as we ...

Friday was another sell off for the market, as investors continue to show fear ahead of a plan out of Washington on how to reverse the current recession that seems to be deepening with each passing day. The DOW was down 1.04% today, the NASDAQ traded 0.5% lower, and the S&P dropped another 1.0% in today's trading. For the week, the DOW dropped a total of 5.2%, and is sitting at lows ...

Alcoa (NYSE: AA) got the earnings season under way last night by reported weaker than expected earnings, but the company was able to top Wall Street's estimates for overall revenue. For its first quarter the company showed that earnings were $0.37 EPS on $7.4 Billion in revenues. This fell short of the $0.48 EPS that analysts had been expecting, but it did surpass the $7.2 Billion revenue figure that Wall Street ...