Microsoft brings aboard Skype for $8.5 billion. With Skype, Microsoft is getting an established player in the increasingly competitive voice and video calling market. Skype has 170 million connected users and logged over 207 billion minutes of voice and video conversations in 2010.
The companies whose shares are moving in pre-market trade on Tuesday are: Dean Foods, InterContinental Hotels Group, Carnival Corp, Xerox Corp, Advanced Micro Devices, Medtronic, Barclays, Thompson Creek Metals, Dice Holdings and Archer Daniels Midland.
Investors around the world, more so the Chinese, are buying up gold assets to cover against rising inflation risk, macroeconomic uncertainties, a possible currency doom and the ever worsening U.S. debt scenario. The gargantuan demand from China can cause the yellow metal's prices to skyrocket, analysts feel. If the Chinese buying trend is ably supplemented with a fall in the value of dollar, this could result in a skyrocketing of prices.
Microsoft turned the tables on long-time Skype wooers Google and Facebook to reportedly land an $8.5 billion deal to buy the popular Voice over Internet Protocol service. The following are some key facts about Skype:
U.S. stocks moved higher on Monday as a bounce back in commodities lifted energy and materials shares, offsetting concerns about European debt.
John Bravata, the founder and chairman of BBC Equities, LLC, has been arrested at JFK International Airport and charged with wire fraud in connection with his solicitation of investor funds for BBC, which Bravata characterized as a real estate investment fund.
The Silver Price rallied to $38.00 at Monday's London Fix – rising over 11% from Friday lunchtime's Fix – before also slipping back to trade 26% below late April's 3-decade record.
Commodities plunged across the board last week. As a broad asset class, it hasn't dropped like that for quite some time.
World's first space tourism agency Space Adventures plans to offer the first trip around the moon as early as 2015, the company announced on Thursday.
Before this past week, the COT report and the high correlation among unrelated commodities already point to the financialization of commodities as a financial asset class.
Today’s release of April’s jobs data was a real game changer for investor psychology.
Silver Bullion rallied from a drop below $34 per ounce, the fifth daily plunge running and some 31% below last Thursday's new three-decade high. Dollar prices to Buy Gold whipped in a $10 range Friday morning in London, trading up to $1488 per ounce - some 5.5% below Monday's record-high spike- as European equities and global commodities stemmed their losses.
An unexpectedly strong report on U.S. payrolls propelled stocks higher on Friday one day after a sell-off, but investors were wary that the market's months-long rally may be near a peak.
The White House and Republicans agreed on Friday that jobs growth is not coming quickly enough despite the latest report showing that private sector jobs growth has continued to growth for the last 14 months.
The latest jobs report released Friday was welcome news but nowhere close to where it should be thanks to tax uncertainty and spending plans being put forward by Democrats in the White House and the Senate, House Speaker John Boehner said.
The top pre-market NASDAQ Stock Market gainers are: Sky-mobi, Limelight Networks, Rubicon Technology, Power-One, and Avanir Pharmaceuticals. The top pre-market NASDAQ Stock Market losers are: Obagi Medical Products, USA Technologies, Titan Machinery, priceline.com, and Vodafone Group.
A sharp overnight selloff in commodities petered out on Friday, led by a small pullback in silver, while Asian equities clawed back up from the day's lows as market players squared positions before U.S. payrolls data.
Oil prices rose by 1.3 percent on Friday as a weakened dollar sparked a rebound, but economic data expected during the US market hours could force the commodity south.
The silver price in US dollars experienced a very sharp fall back of over 30 percent within 4 days. The main trigger were extremely rare and aggressive margin hikes for COMEX futures, which helped to eliminate a large chunk of speculative positions on the metal.
Commodity prices fell once again, and Silver Bullion sank for the fourth day in succession, losing 22.5% against the Dollar since Thursday last week - the sharpest plunge since April 1987.
The top pre-market NASDAQ Stock Market gainers are: Kendle International, ZST Digital Networks, Hansen Medical, JDS Uniphase, Cbeyond, and ON Semiconductor. The top pre-market NASDAQ Stock Market losers are: Smith Micro Software, Sierra Wireless, Atmel, Aixtron, Mercadolibre, and ARM Holdings.
Jefferies & Co. initiated coverage of AsiaInfo-Linkage, Inc. (NASDAQ: ASIA) with a buy rating and a price target of $27, implying 41 percent upside.
