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Posted
May 05 2009, 04:43 PM
by
Charley Blaine
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Starbucks (SBUX) has been hurting. It built way too many stores. Costs were getting out of control. And sales couldn't keep up because, well, there were too many stores.
Then, consumers, squeezed by the recession, began to look for less-pricey alternatives.
A perfect opportunity for a competitor with financial muscle eager to build new audiences -- say, McDonald's (MCD) -- to slip in under the radar. Whoever said business was about nice people being nice?
Now what has been a relatively modest battle is turning into a real war.
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Posted
Nov 20 2008, 04:46 AM
by
Charley Blaine
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Note: This post has been updated to account for Thursday's close.
I was fairly sure a couple of weeks ago that the market was putting in a bottom. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index told me so.
I was so confident that a bottom was forming that I even commissioned a graphic showing why. Now, I'm worried about how far much farther the market could fall. The S&P 500 tells me so.
Here's why.
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Posted
Apr 16 2009, 10:20 AM
by
Minyanville
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Forget stocks and bonds, the real money's in guns.
The Wall Street Journal reports artillery enthusiasts are stocking up on guns and ammo, not necessarily ahead of widespread civil unrest resulting from our ongoing economic swoon, but as an investment. These trigger-happy speculators are betting President Obama will institute a ban on assault rifles, which would crimp supply and send prices, well, shooting up.
For it's part, the Obama administration says it has no plans to enact such legislation and supports the Second Amendment right to bear arms.
During the federal ban on semiautomatic weapons from 1994-2004, prices soared. Recent buying has reached almost a frenzied pitch, creating backlogs for popular models and enabling resellers to list certain guns well above suggested retail prices. AK-47s doubled in price between September 2008 and the end of last year.
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Posted
May 06 2009, 10:36 AM
by
Minyanville
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Do words have meaning?
In March, American International Group (AIG) said it paid approximately $120 million in bonuses to about 6,000 workers. The company now says it paid close to $454 million. That's 278.3% more than it initially disclosed.
But AIG tells Politico, a Web site covering Washington, that it responded accurately to the questions as asked.
A pettifogger’s delight? Or sloppy reporting?
Nick Ashooh, AIG spokesman, says the $454 million total “reflects all types of variable compensation across all our businesses.” The $120 million figure included only bonuses paid to top executives at corporate headquarters and others in its major businesses around the world. He says the higher total includes the previously disclosed $120 million.
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Posted
Oct 12 2009, 10:20 AM
by
Minyanville
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
This article is written by Minyanville's Carol Kopp
There’s a truism among investors that you should invest in what you know, understand, and like. It’s a commonsense strategy: You spot something new. It’s special. It’s useful or innovative. It’s cool and affordable. Let me buy some of that!
The response to that can be summed up in just two words: Krispy Kreme (KKD).
Krispy Kreme had been a popular doughnut chain in the South since 1937, but remained unknown to the rest of us until about 1996. That’s when the first Krispy Kreme popped up in New York City, on West 23rd Street.
Believe it or not, the town went nuts.
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Posted
Mar 13 2009, 08:38 AM
by
Charley Blaine
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Before CNBC's "Mad Money" Jim Cramer went on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" Thursday night, he pounded on pie dough with a roller during a visit with domestic diva Martha Stewart.
"Daily Show" host Jon Stewart got into fighting trim with pop quizzes on the definitions of various financial terms, like price-earnings ratios and Tier 1 Capital.
But when Cramer actually appeared on the show, he was as gentle as, well, a kitten.
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Posted
Sep 29 2008, 06:36 PM
by
admin
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
This post is by MSN Money columnist Michael Brush:
Unless you’ve been in the markets for over two decades, you’ve never seen anything like the one-day wipeout that took major indices down a gut wrenching 9% Monday. The last time things got this ugly was during the market crash on Oct. 19, 1987.
So like a lot of people, you may be dazed and confused -- and wondering what to do with your stock portfolio or even your money in the bank.
Seasoned money managers and market experts I spoke with after the close Monday expect a financial rescue plan to be approved by the end of the week. Between now and then
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Posted
Sep 14 2008, 07:03 PM
by
Charley Blaine
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Get ready for one of the wildest and most difficult days for the financial markets since the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and possibly since the October 1987 market crash.
Stocks were expected to sell off sharply because two of Wall Street's most prominent investment banks look to disappear soon and the world's largest insurance company was struggling to survive.
Efforts to sell investment bank Lehman Bros., one of the oldest and largest investment houses on Wall Street, collapsed after a weekend of talks, and Lehman Bros. said late Sunday it would filed for bankruptcy protection
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Posted
May 14 2009, 08:18 AM
by
Andrew Rosenbaum
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
What happened to our economic recovery? Recovery was supposed to be right around the corner, right?
The Federal Reserve and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner keep telling us that things will definitely get better soon -- the Fed says growth should start in the third quarter of this year.
But the most important indicators of that recovery are going in the wrong direction. Retail sales are down. The housing market is stagnant. Mortgage rates have moved higher.
Where are those "green shoots" of recovery that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is always talking about? Have they gone brown?
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Posted
Jan 28 2009, 07:10 AM
by
Minyanville
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Now may be the time to quit smoking. And drinking. Gambling, too.
As a way to shore up their decimated budgets, many state governments are playing vice cop, hiking "sin taxes" on the traditional American pastimes listed above. Sin taxes are nothing new -- consider Prohibition as the ultimate example -- but there's another round of them on the way.
A unique dynamic is at play: People turn to their vices for comfort during dire economic times -- and yet, in such times, states balance their budgets on the backs of smokers and drinkers (which is a considerable portion of this country).
And states are not the only ones getting in on the act.
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