Despite surging food prices, inflation was actually a bit lower in April than the 0.3% inflation that we saw back in March. According to the Labor Department, inflation moved up 0.2% in April, which was slightly under the 0.3% inflation in March. Analysts had been expecting to see inflation rise by 0.3% again in April. If you exclude food and energy costs, then you are left with a core inflation, which was ...

With all the concerns that we have been hearing about a possible recession this year, it was good to see that the U.S. economy did grow during the first quarter, even if it was just bit a small amount. According to a report from the Commerce Department today, the economy grew at 0.6% during the first quarter of the year. That is the same growth that we saw in the last ...

General Electric (GE) missed its first quarter estimates this morning. The mega conglomerate cited the slowing economy as the main factor, and that it virtually drained the company's financial services  business. The company reported EPS of 44 cents, which was well below the 51 cents that earnings tracker Thomson First Call analysts had been expecting to see. This is an 8% drop from the same period last year. Revenue was up a ...

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 ...

The past few weeks have pretty good for the stock market, even with recession fears looming, but what will happen should the market get really spooked and sell off like we saw earlier this year? I hear this question from a subscriber email, so I decided to offer up one way to set up a bullish trade that will still profit even in a down market. A great way ...

I have decided that starting this weekend I will start using Sunday's as a day to post some interesting blogs I run across online. Since I just decided this this weekend, the posts for today will be mostly articles over the past day or two, but starting next week I will begin collecting articles through the course of the week so I can list articles from the whole week. Here are ...

Gasoline prices moved up overnight to set a new record high last night... the second record high in as many days. According to AAA, the national average for a gallon of regular unleaded has now reached record levels of $3.303 for a gallon. The current price of gasoline has been rising in reaction to the recent run up of oil prices and the weak dollar, and resulted in a 22% jump ...

March was another tough month for employees, as recession fears in America led to 80,000 jobs being slashed across the country. Looking at total unemployment, the unemployment rate for the country rose from 4.8% up to 5.1%. This could be one of the biggest signals that the country has already been contracting. This is the highest rate that the country has seen since back in September 2005 when the country was ...

This morning we were seeing the markets in the red, but they were given a bit of relief following Fed Chaiman Ben Bernanke's testimony to Congress today. Ironically, it was Bernanke himself that had initially put the markets into the red when he stated that there was a decent chance that the U.S. economy would contract during the first half of this year. With all the recession rumors and fears floating ...

Consumer confidence has fallen to levels that we have not seen for nearly 35 years. According to the Confidence Board, consumer confidence in March has dropped to 64.5, a level not seen since the Nixon administration. There are three main factors contributing to the erosion of consumer confidence currently; falling stock prices, falling home values, and finally... the dollar setting record lows against the euro. It seems like everyday we turn ...