Market News

Alibaba Group's reported its fiscal fourth quarter earnings results on Thursday that saw the Chinese internet ecommerce giant top sales forecasts, showing year-on-year (y-o-y) revenues up 39%. But with its profits falling short of analysts’ and The Street’s expectations, the question remains is the stock a buy at below the $100 mark and at current levels?

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Expect the bull market to last another year because economic growth and earnings should pick up.

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With most of the big earnings and the April jobs report now behind, two key data reports dominate the coming week: Retail sales and the Producer Price Index. Those data, both scheduled for next Friday, could hold clues about consumer behavior.

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High yielding dividend stocks are an appetizing part of any portfolio and it's easy to see why. They act as risk moderators, balancing out a portfolio and amplifying gains over time. But stocks are a lot like the surface of a placid lake with torrential currents underneath that may not be obvious at a glance.

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It's time to get aggressive and optimistic. From mediocre outlooks and low expectations comes the investor drive to find hidden gems -- that is, independent, smaller companies and stocks that can rise to new heights in spite of the environment. All-time high stocks are showing the move is afoot.

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Online firms are offering student loan borrowers "relief." Don't believe them. You'll pay for a service that's free.

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VIX is a trademarked ticker symbol for the CBOE Volatility Index. It measures the predicted volatility of the stock market over a certain period in the future. According to Wikipedia, it was first developed and described by Menachem Brenner and Dan Galai in 1986. At that time, Professor Brenner, in addition to his work at New York University, participated alongside me as a market-maker on the floor of the New York Futures Exchange Trading Options on the New York Stock Exchange Index. Until today’s research for this article, I had no idea that Professor Brenner had first developed and described the index.

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The directors of a company tend to have a unique inside view into the business, so when directors make major buys, investors are wise to take notice. Presumably the only reason a director of a company would choose to take their hard-earned cash and use it to buy stock in the open market, is that they expect to make money — maybe they find the stock very undervalued, or maybe they see exciting progress within the company, or maybe both. So in this series we look at the largest insider buys by company directors over the trailing six month period, one of which was a total of $502.4K by Hanno C. Fiedler, Director at Ball Corp (NYSE: BLL).

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Many bulls will claim the large decline in share price when Mr. Papa resigned is an overreaction to the news. At the same time, they also argue that with a new CEO, Perrigo can get back to its successful ways prior to 2013. Unfortunately, these beliefs ignore the larger issues facing Perrigo, and assume that Mr. Papa left the company simply for monetary reasons.

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