Consumer
Insurers Tremble with Florence on the Move

Insurers Tremble with Florence on the Move

Hurricane season has begun, and insurers are trembling. Florence is expected to hit the Carolinas on Friday. It's already a category 4 hurricane, which makes it unusually powerful for a storm moving that far north. Property and casualty (“P&C”) insurers like...

A Weak End to a Strong Season: Earnings This Week

A Weak End to a Strong Season: Earnings This Week

A good earnings season ended on a weak note, thanks to dinosaur consumer stocks. Traditional retailers and food stocks are down sharply as changes in the ecosystem continue to weigh on sentiment. Some beat estimates, others missed. Either way, investors looked for...

Big Caps on the Move: Scanning for Breakouts in the Dow

Big Caps on the Move: Scanning for Breakouts in the Dow

It's pretty quiet today as stocks drift aimlessly before Labor Day. Dog days of summer? More like the sloth days ... Still, some members of the Dow Jones Industrial Average are melting to new highs even as the broader market snoozes in the shade. Here's a quick tool...

Last Week Shows Records Were Made to Be Broken

Last Week Shows Records Were Made to Be Broken

As the saying goes: Records were made to be broken. Just take the market last week. The S&P 500's decade-long bull run surpassed the lifespan of its previous upward journey in the 1990s. Another record fell on Tuesday, when the Russell 2000 Index hit a new...

Calls Spike as Small Cap Goes Mobile: Options Recap

Calls Spike as Small Cap Goes Mobile: Options Recap

Last month, Market Insights highlighted a surging maker of smart-phone games. Yesterday, options traders lit up the name. Here's a breakdown of the large transactions detected in Glu Mobile (GLUU): A block of 5,500 September 5.50 calls was bought for $2.04. A block of...

Retail Revival Underway: Earnings This Week

Retail Revival Underway: Earnings This Week

Remember when everyone thought traditional retailers were going extinct? This week's earnings reports may have destroyed that narrative. "This is the healthiest environment I have ever seen," Target (TGT) CEO Brian Cornell told CNBC as his stock shot into record...

Tech and FANG Languish as Sentiment Shifts

Tech and FANG Languish as Sentiment Shifts

FANG seems to be losing its mojo along with the rest of tech as sentiment shifts in the market. FANG, if you don't know, stands for Facebook (FB), Amazon.com (AMZN), Netflix (NFLX) and Alphabet (GOOGL). This grouping accounted for a big chunk of the market's gains...

Turnarounds Get Rewarded: Earnings this Week

Turnarounds Get Rewarded: Earnings this Week

Investors like turnaround stories. That seems to be the message from the last week of corporate earnings. Consider two major retailers: Wal-Mart Stores (WMT) and Macy's (M). Both beat analysts' estimates, but moved in two very different directions. Why? It was all...

Retailers Blitz Higher Amid Earnings

Retailers Blitz Higher Amid Earnings

Forget about Turkey and tariffs. Bulls are flocking to U.S. retailers this week. Tapestry (TPR) and Advance Auto Parts (AAP) are leading the charge today. TPR, parent of Coach and Kate Spade, shot past estimates on strong hand-bag demand. The resulting 13 percent...

Turkish Turmoil Fuels the Volatility Machine

Turkish Turmoil Fuels the Volatility Machine

Bulls made money, bears made money. Turkey got slaughtered. That's pretty much what happened last week. The S&P 500 began with a steady climb on Monday and continued higher into Tuesday. That's when the bulls made money. On Wednesday and Thursday, the index...