Stocks, Stock Market | featured news

Congress should take steps to limit speculation in oil markets, which has boosted prices as much as 30 percent, a new report from the Democratic staff of a House of Representatives oversight committee said on Monday.

Jim Cramer got really angry on CNBC yesterday. The LinkedIn (LNKD) IPO got him in a tizzy. Why? Because he said that the underwriters for the offering (Morgan Stanley (MS), B of A Merrill (BAC), and JP Morgan Chase (JPM)) decided to play the old “dot com” games of only releasing an artificially small amount of shares on the market, in hopes of creating a feeding frenzy.

IntercontinentalExchange is broadening its ability to cancel some trades whenever prices of arabica-coffee futures spike.

Nasdaq and IntercontinentalExchange are withdrawing their proposed $11 billion bid for the parent of the New York Stock Exchange after recognizing they would not receive regulatory approval for the transaction.

Rex Tillerson, the boss of ExxonMobil admitted last week that the price of oil–based purely on supply and demand- should be in the $60 to $70 a barrel range. The reason it’s above $100 a barrel, Tillerson explained, is due to the oil majors using futures contracts to lock in current high prices, and speculation that is engineered by the high-frequency trading of quantitative hedge funds.

Oil prices tumbled nearly 5 percent on Wednesday, as easing supply concerns sent gasoline into a tailspin that briefly forced trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange to stop.

Nasdaq OMX and IntercontinentalExchange said they will take their bid for NYSE Euronext directly to shareholders after being rebuffed twice by the exchange.

Caterpillar drove the Dow Jones industrial average higher Friday after the company reported a huge gain in first-quarter earnings. The world's largest maker of mining and construction equipment rose 2.5 percent after its earnings increased more than five-fold. The company also raised its sales and profit forecast for the year.

U.S. stocks rose, sending the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index to its highest level since June 2008, as companies from United Parcel Service Inc. to Ford Motor Co. and 3M Co. beat analysts’ profit estimates.

Apple Inc's quarterly results again smashed Wall Street's expectations, fueled by record iPhone and Mac sales, offsetting lower-than-expected sales of its iPad tablet computer.