At the beginning of this week oil prices have been near their record but the price of gas has continued to fall for the second week in a row now. This is very uncharacteristic of these 2 to move in opposite directions like this and yet the price of gas will more than likely continue to decline even further. Continue Reading »
ExxonMobil is the world’s largest publicly traded oil company. They have said that their second-quarter profit fell 1% from a year ago due to lower natural gas prices. However, their net income of $10.26 billion was the fourth-largest quarterly profit ever recorded by a publicly traded U.S. company. Continue Reading »
McDonald’s has just posted its second-ever loss, the other which happened 5 years ago in 2002 because of a drawn-out sales slump. This time the loss cost $711.7 million, or 60 cents per share. The loss was due to a hefty one-time charge. Continue Reading »
In June a lot of consumers did not spend money on cars, furniture or building supplies and thus sales declined very sharply. Other retail sales also fell 0.4%, which was worse than the 0.2% rise that was expected. Over all this was the sharpest amount in almost 2 years. Continue Reading »
A British newspaper just reported that Ford Motor Company is preparing to sell Volvo. This is according to unnamed sources in London. The source also says that Ford made this decision within the past 2 weeks. However, the timing of the sale had yet to be decided. As such, no bank has yet been appointed to handle the transaction, which could be worth $8 billion - $2 billion more than what they had paid Sweden’s Volvo AB for it. Continue Reading »
While horror stories about high-yield bonds may be in the headlines these days, you should not get rid of these funds quite yet. The worries about hedge fund meltdowns and too many of them in existence as well as the history of tight spreads is not going to take down these high yield bonds. Continue Reading »
Natural resources stocks have continued their winning streak throughout the second quarter. As such, mutual funds that invest in them have been pushed to double-digit gains. Continue Reading »
Last week the yield on the 10-year Treasury bond spiked above 5% and bond prices slumped even further. For this reason it is a good idea to invest in short-term bond funds now. On the other hand, you should wait for a while before locking in your mortgage. Continue Reading »