Alphabet Tops Apple in Total Value
San Francisco — Alphabet, Google’s new parent company, topped Apple as the world’s most valuable business in after-hours trading Monday after reporting surging earnings. Alphabet Inc. earned $4.9 billion in net income on revenue of $21.3 billion in the fourth quarter. If not for employee stock expenses and certain other items, Google said it would have earned $8.67 per share. That figure easily topped the average estimate of $8.10 per...
SEC Report Sheds Light on Stock Market’s August ‘Flash Crash’
Washington — When fears of a slowdown in China sent U.S. stocks plummeting in late August, some of the market mechanisms meant to protect investors during times of volatility may have triggered even greater losses among exchange-traded funds, market regulators said in a report released last week. Some investors were surprised during the early minutes of stock trading on Aug. 24 when they noticed that many ETFs became worth much less...
High Court Won’t Take Overturned Insider Trader Conviction
Washington — The Supreme Court said Monday it won’t hear the Obama administration’s appeal of a lower court ruling that made it tougher to prosecute people for trading on leaked inside information. The justices let stand a decision by the federal appeals court in New York last year that threw out insider trading convictions of two high-profile hedge fund managers. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the convictions of...
Gold Drops to 1-Month Low
Gold fell to a one-month low and trading volume declined as investors held off on making big moves before Federal Reserve policymakers meet this week. Gold is headed for a third straight annual loss as steady growth for U.S. jobs and the economy strengthened the dollar and bolstered the case for the Fed to raise interest rates for the first time since 2006. Futures trading was about 22 percent below the 100-day average on Friday, data...
Traders Recall ‘Rush’ and ‘Roar’ as Famed Futures Pits Set to Close
New York — Pete Meegan had every intention of going back to college, but then he got a summer job in the Chicago trading pits and fell in love with the “roar” of the floor, the excitement of “4,000 people yelling, ‘Buy! Buy! Buy!’ ” and decided no more classroom for him. That roar will soon go silent. Today, most futures pits in Chicago and New York, where frenzied buying and selling once helped set prices on cattle and corn,...
