The past few years have been tough times for retailer Sears Holding (SHLD). The company has been steadily losing customers to rivals Target (TGT) and Wal-Mart (WMT), and today announced that following a dismal holiday season, it has decided to close between 100 and 120 of its Sears and K-Mart stores. Critics of the company blame its recent weakness to the company not having invested in remodeling its stores and to ...

Before this afternoon, Apple Inc (AAPL) had reported better than expected earnings for 29 straight quarters, but it was unable to continue that trend when it reported a weaker than expected fourth quarter earnings report, sending shares sharply lower in after hours trading. Going into this afternoon's earnings report, Apple was expected to report earnings of $7.38 per share, but actual earnings came in well below what analysts were expecting to ...

Aluminum maker Alcoa (AA) kicked off the earnings season this afternoon, posting disappointing third quarter results. Going into this afternoon's earnings report, analysts had been expecting to see Alcoa post earnings of $0.22 per share, but were disappointed to see earnings come in under expectations at $0.15 per share. Despite missing its earnings estimate, the company was able to post better than expected revenues for the quarter of $6.4 billion, above the ...

The intense media hype leading up this past weekend's Hurricane Irene spread panic up the east coast, but luckily the damage was much less than had been anticipated, which was win-win situation for insurance companies. Insurance companies win on one hand because they will have to pay out less in damages than they had anticipated, but they also win because the media hype was enough to give them an opportunity to ...

Apple Inc. (AAPL) reported its fiscal second quarter earnings numbers this afternoon, and shattering analyst estimates on amazing iPhone sales. As we noted in our Apple earnings preview, Apple was expected to post quarterly earnings of $5.36 for its fiscal second quarter this afternoon. Actual earnings came in well above estimates at $6.40 per share. Revenues were also better than expected at $24.7 billion, while analysts were expecting $23.4 billion. The quarter earnings ...

Shares of auto retailer CarMax (KMX) are trading sharply lower today following this morning's fourth quarter earnings report. As we noted yesterday in our CarMax earnings preview, analysts were expecting to see the company post fourth quarter earnings this morning of $0.38 per share. Earnings were higher than expected, at $).39 per share, marking the 9th straight quarter of analyst beating earnings for the company. During the same period last year CarMax ...

JMFSP62GSPYJ Video game retailer GameStop (GME) is trading sharply higher today after the company posted strong numbers for its fourth quarter. GameStop had a very respectable 10% jump in sales, spurred by strong demand for hit titles such as Activision (ATVI)'s Call of Duty Black Ops. Going into this morning's earnings report, analysts had been expecting to see GameStop post earnings of $1.55 per share, but actual earnings came in slightly higher at ...

It was a positive day for the stock market, and despite global turmoil the overall markets all managed to post gains on the day. The DOW closed the session up 0.56%, the NASDAQ was up 0.54% and the S&P closed the day up 0.3%. Along with an overall up market, we also saw a couple big name stocks hit new 52 week highs during the day. Here are a couple of notable ...

Strong first quarter earnings from Caterpillar Inc. (CAT) have helped pushed the market higher to start off the week. Shares of Caterpillar are up 4.5% on the day to $71.91, up $3.13 following better than expected results this morning before the market opened. Analysts were forecasting $0.39 per share, and the company easily outpaced those estimates with a reported $0.50 per share. Revenues were a bit shy of analyst estimates, but the stock ...

Some big name stocks set new 52 week highs today. Here are some of the stocks that were able to set new highs to head into the weekend: Microsoft (MSFT) : Tech giant Microsoft set a new 52 week high today, trading up to $31.58 before closing the trading session down 1.4% on the day to $30.96, down $0.43. The company posted better than expected fiscal Q3 earnings last night following ...