Smart Phones, Skittish Investors

Options traders have descended on the smart phone sector Tuesday, with heavy activity in Research in Motion, Nokia and Palm, following poor earnings by the latter, and news of an introduction of Nokia’s entrée into this market. Research in Motion’s options were the most actively traded. The stock was getting hit, down 7.5% after Palm reported less-than-stellar results for its most r...

Living and Dying by Hedging

The skyrocketing value of commodities sliced into profits at many a corporation in early 2008, as companies suddenly found raw materials costs had doubled or tripled. But anyone who responded to that by trying to hedge against a repeat of that is going to be hit again — this time on the way down. Already, several major corporations have taken hedging-related losses in the third quarter as...

3M’s Overseas Malaise

Multinational corporations, for several quarters, saw their earnings grow as a result of the weakness of the U.S. dollar. Since the dollar reversed course and began to strengthen in the mid-summer, this advantage has eroded. After reporting third-quarter earnings, the guidance issued by many multinational companies was based on certain assumptions of the dollar’s strength. Some of those c...

Fertilizer Stocks Having Trouble With Growth

Shares of fertilizer companies were the rage for a good part of 2008. Lately they’re just another kind of fertilizer. Those stocks are among the weaker names in the equity markets Tuesday, while the broader market recovers from Monday’s devastating selloff. The catalyst was bad news out of Mosaic Co., which said fiscal second-quarter phosphate sales dropped due to soft market condit...

Investors Brighten After Wrenching Sell-Off

After Monday’s meltdown, investors are tiptoeing back into futures Tuesday, suggesting an early rally for markets. Hopeful signs for restructuring plans from the nation’s automakers has buoyed shares of those stocks in premarket action in advance of their monthly sales reports, meanwhile. For about five days, it looked as if the market had developed a bit of a spine, but that proved...

Four at Four: Post-Thanksgiving Gut Punch

Can the market walk this one off? A pullback had to be expected after the S&P gained 19% in a brief five-session flurry beginning November 21, but this is more than was requested, and suggests, again, that investors had been riding a bear-market rally, one that was designed to suck in a handful of believers and blow them up, but good. Overseas markets, a terrible report from the Institute...

Video: Central Bank Watch

Simon Constable and David Gaffen wonder what the Bank of England, the ECB and the Bank of Japan have left in their box of tricks when they meet later this week. They also discuss the slew of economic data set to be published this week, most of it expected to be gloomy. <embed src="http://s.wsj.net/media/swf/main.swf" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" flashVars="videoGUID={5355B047-D5BF-46A4-8827-CE162C6FB01...

Retail Discounts Can Only Continue for So Long

The holiday shopping season kicked off with a better-than-expected Black Friday, but investors would be smart to remain cautious of the retail sector, despite the usual euphoria that surrounds these shares on an annual basis during this season. Friday’s data raised a bit of hope, as the National Retail Federation estimated shoppers spent an average of $372.57 over the weekend, up 7.2% ove...

Crowding Into Treasurys

Treasury bond yields have cascaded to new historic lows Monday, and strategists expect the persistent buying in government securities to continue even as the Treasury Department continues to flood the bond market with new sales. One would think that the additional supply would cause a bit of a “crowding-out” effect, causing yields to rise, but the market has not had a problem absorb...

Video-Game Shares Fall, Despite Sales

The prevailing thinking with regard to Black Friday was that retail spending was a bit stronger-than-expected, but mostly driven by massive sales that brought in consumers on Friday, and remained on the frugal side throughout the weekend. For the video-game makers, expectations were a bit higher: The industry has been less susceptible to the vagaries of the economy, though it is surely being te...