With consumer sentiment still weak, and concerns over the global economy weighing on everyone's mind, a lot of people have been worried that retailers are going to report weak sales numbers this holiday season. We will not know for sure just willing people have been to spend this holiday season, but the fact that FedEx (FDX) recently saw its busiest shipping day ever is a positive sign. The company reported that ...

The market is poised for another positive day as investors react to revised GDP numbers which show that the economy grew faster than previously thought at the end of last year. According to the Commerce Department, the economy grew at 3.1% during the fourth quarter, which is higher than analysts had been expecting to see. Going into today's report analysts had been expecting to see revised GDP output of 3.0%. Last month ...

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 ...

Gold is trading up nicely today. Gold prices have moved up $9.50 an ounce today to $1,114.0o an ounce. As the recession has hit the dollar hard, gold prices have been steadily moving higher, and it looks to close out the first quarter with its sixth consecutive quarterly gain. The dollar has been pretty weak, and continued to move lower today on news that the economy shed more jobs during March that ...

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 ...

Taking a look at futures trading this morning indicates that the market is going to get off to a tough start for the trading day of February. Investors continue to express concern that the stimulus package that was recently passed in the House is not going to get passed when the Senate gets its chance to vote on the new plan. There is still a good deal of concern over what ...