This current earnings season is shaping up to be a fine one, with most companies surpassing expectations. The outlook for the current quarter is not so encouraging. With a little less than half of the companies in the S&P 500 having reported their quarterly earnings, we’re starting to get a very good picture of how […]

Apple’s after-market earnings call did not paint a very rosy picture, and more disappointment is expected. How could its stock rise by 5% in after-market trading then? Apple’s shrinking revenues are no secret, both among analysts and even among many individual investors, who generally do not watch such things very closely. They may be aware […]

With the next Federal Reserve Open Market Committee meeting set to begin on Tuesday, investors anxiously wait, not for a hike or not, but for more information. Few people expect that the Fed will raise interest rates during the upcoming two-day Open Market Committee meeting scheduled to begin this Tuesday, but this one isn’t really […]

While IBM reported a second consecutive quarter with drops in revenue, it’s really all about beating expectations, and IBM clearly did that, pushing its stock further up. IBM released its 2018 Q4 numbers after the market closed on Tuesday, and while revenue decreased by 3.5% during the quarter, the overall message was a better one […]

Big U.S. banks used to hold the lion’s share of mortgages, but competition from online lenders such as Quicken have narrowed profit margins and changed the landscape. It’s now been over a decade since the housing bubble burst in 2007, causing a big spike in delinquency rates and forcing a lot of people to lose […]

While many marveled at the tremendous growth that we have seen in the Chinese economy in recent times, we knew that this sort of growth rate could not continue forever. We’re already seeing signs of concern here, where by any measure, we could call this a slowdown, a genuine one. One of the real key […]