GOLDMAN SACHS

2011 was a great year to be an American corporation, as corporate profits rose and taxes fell.

The consensus among investment bankers and many traders is that gold prices will continue to climb in 2012.

Investors didn’t get rich owning generalized technology stocks but they fared well with some of the traditional winners with good management and proven technology.

Even after losing 27 percent of its value Tuesday, Sears Holdings Corp.'s (SHLD) share price is expected to plunge some more. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) reiterated its sell rating on Sears and cut its 12-month price target to $30 from $43.

Google+, Google’s challenge to Facebook, is adding 625,000 daily users and already may have as many as 62 million signed up, unofficial statistician Paul Allen claimed.

Rahul Gandhi may well succeed his mother Sonia Gandhi as head of the ruling Congress party. One of his challenges is to claim the anti-graft message of Anna Hazare.

The Carlyle Group has started fundraising for a new global financial services buyout fund that is seeking to top its previous $1.1 billion fund, which is now almost fully invested, a person familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.

Hackers affiliated with the Anonymous group said they are getting ready to publish emails stolen from private intelligence analysis firm Strategic Forecasting Inc, whose clients include the U.S. military, Wall Street banks and other corporations.

Morgan Stanley (MS) will axe 580 jobs in various sites in New York City due to economic reasons. The rolling layoffs began on Dec. 15 and the company has not identified a closing date, company filings with the New York Department of Labor showed Tuesday.

Digital goods are the fastest-growing category online this holiday, led by e-books, suggesting Amazon.com Inc's strategy of blanketing the world with cheap e-readers and tablet computers may be producing some early gains.

Goldman Sachs recovered quickly Thursday from a rumor that the company's corporate debt was being downgraded by Standard and Poor's, extending the day-long rally the firm's stock had been experiencing prior to the non-event.

According to Bloomberg, Goldman Sachs' corporate credit rating was downgraded to AA-, from A+

Occupy Wall Street registers as one of the biggest surprises of 2011. Despite constant criticisms that it lacked a concrete set of goals or demands, Occupy Wall Street's broad critique of economic injustice resonated with a country still grappling with the fallout from the financial crisis. A timeline of the movement.

Shares of troubled search engine and media developer Yahoo surged nearly 6 percent late Wednesday after a report the company may unload its stake in China’s Alibaba Group for about $17 billion.

Whether it involves embarrassing tweets, tone-deaf CEOs or even the disappearance of money, some oops moments need be relived just one more time.

U.S. stocks soared on Tuesday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) ended up 337 points, or 2.9 percent, to close at 12,103. The S&P 500 Index rose 36 points, or 3 percent, to 1,241, while the NASDAQ rose 80 points, or 3.2 percent, to 2,604.

At a time of daily stock-market seizures, weekly bank and sovereign debt downgrades and monthly central bank interventions, most people are seeing the glass half empty, and have forecasted bearish -- if not downright abysmal -- market conditions for next year. A look at some of the more salient predictions.

Ex-Citigroup chairman Sanford Weill has sold his penthouse at 15 Central Park West in Manhattan for $88 million, a new record for a single residential sale in the city.

In a bombshell research note that is making the rounds of Wall Street this morning, Glenn Schorr, the financial services sector analyst for Nomura, cut his estimate for Goldman's fourth-quarter earnings to $1 per share, half of his previous $2 prediction. That's less than half of what the consensus expectations are. Other bank estimates were also taken down.

Last week, investors could finally buy a share of Internet gaming site Zynga, which was priced Thursday at $10 a share in the company’s $1 billion initial public offering. What did they say about other IPOS as well as Facebook's for 2012?

A unique deal to protect part of the annual bonus pool at UBS Australia expires within weeks, say sources with direct knowledge of the matter, raising the prospect that the business may lose some top talent should it not be renewed.