ConocoPhillips, CME Group and Others Boosted Dividends

Energy exploration and production giant ConocoPhillips (ticker: COP) said it will pay an ordinary dividend of 46 cents a share and a second-quarter variable return of cash of 30 cents a share. That’s ...

Rising Battery Prices Add Uncertainty to Electric-Vehicle Costs

Surging prices for the metals that make up electric-vehicle batteries have ended a decadelong decline that brought the cost of EVs to within spitting distance of gasoline-powered vehicles. Newsletter ...

Knightscope Stock—Like Its Security Robots—Has Its Ups and Downs

Text size Knightscope’s robots—and shares—have had their ups and downs. Dreamstime Knightscope is a tiny firm that’s familiar to many investors, if only from news reports about its “autonomous securit...

Boston Beer Fell Flat on a Hard Seltzer Glut. Its Stock Is Now a Buy.

After an initial pop in hard-selzer demand during the pandemic, Boston Beer found itself with an unforeseen oversupply of Truly. Dreamstime Text size Hard seltzer proved to be a bubble that few brewer...

6 Stocks to Play the New U.S. Economic Reopening

UPS was a Covid beneficiary—until it wasn’t. Now, it again looks like a reopening play. Mario Tama/Getty Images Text size Covid cases are falling and the economy is about to reopen—again. Playing it, ...

Cryptos Could Be a ‘Speculative Mania,’ Economist Eswar Prasad Says

Discussions with central bankers at a conference a couple of years ago prompted economist Eswar Prasad to start writing what he anticipated would be a slim volume on how digital currencies could affec...

GE Stock Could Light Up Your Portfolio. Here’s Why.

Text size General Electric was once known as the company that brings good things to life—but so far this century, holding shares of the conglomerate has been a portfolio killer. That all may soon chan...

Wells Fargo Won an Investor Dispute. Judge Says It Gamed the System.

In 2017, Brian Leggett, a Wells Fargo customer, filed an arbitration claim against the bank and one of its financial advisors, accusing them of negligence and breach of fiduciary duty in how they hand...

Stocks’ Rally Looks Nice. Here’s Why You Should Put It on Ice

Text size Dreamstime For the stock market, this past week had the feel of steering out of a spin after hitting an ice patch—and driving away safely. Unfortunately, the road ahead may be even more trea...

How to Handle Taxes After AT&T’s Spinoff of WarnerMedia

Text size AT&T holders are due to receive about 0.24 share of Warner Bros. Discovery for each AT&T share. David Paul Morris/Bloomberg Income-oriented investors in AT&T face a choice when t...

The Jobs Report Reveals a Booming Labor Market. Here’s Where Interest Rates Are Headed.

Text size President Joe Biden speaking about the January jobs report. Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images Good news for Main Street, not so good news for Wall Street. Once again, a booming labor market is like...

Facebook Tumbled After Earnings. Now, Should You Buy or Sell Meta Stockk?

Challenges are rising for Meta Platforms—and they’re no longer just about Facebook’s legacy business. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Text size Suddenly, investors are giving Facebook a big thumbs down. ...

Tech Stocks to Buy After a Crazy Week of Earnings

Amazon stock was up almost 14% on Friday after the company reported solid earnings and said it was raising the price of its Prime membership for the first time since 2018. Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images...

AT&T Spent a Decade Buying Things. Now It’s Cleaning House.

Illustration by Elias Stein Text size AT&T cast light on its pending spinoff of WarnerMedia to Discovery this past week—a big step toward putting a decade of misguided mergers and acquisitions beh...

Costco Saw Another Strong Month of Sales. Why the Stock Didn’t Leap.

Text size A shopper in a Costco store Joe Raedle/Getty Images Costco ‘s sales rose nearly 16% in January from a year earlier, but the news failed to lift the stock even as Wall Street analysts offered...

Amazon May Have Saved the Stock Market. But It’s Looking Even Worse for Meta.

After Meta Platforms’ disastrous earnings outlook, the mood was pretty sour. And with investors weighing up the Federal Reserve’s future path for interest rates and the potential impact on valuations,...

Forget About Inflation. Contrarians Expect a Recession and a Drop in Bond Yields.

“Something that everyone knows isn’t worth knowing,” as the famed financier Bernard Baruch once observed. And so I was reminded by a long discourse in the New York Times this past week on why bond yie...

Bitcoin Might Be Rallying but a ‘Crypto Winter’ Could Freeze Nvidia’s Stock

Text size Dreamstime Bitcoin and other cryptos bounced sharply on Friday with the world’s largest digital currency rallying above $40,000 for the first time in two weeks. But one analyst is warning of...

Cathie Wood Is Sticking With ARK’s “Super Growth” Stocks–and Avoiding the FAANGs

Opinions on Cathie Wood run strong. “She knows nothing more than anyone else,” one reader all-capped me in an email this past week. I think value investors have been waiting so long for a momentum-sto...

CEO of Self-Driving-Car Firm Luminar Buys Stock

Text size A vehicle with Luminar LiDAR Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty Images Luminar Technologies stock has been slumping, and founder and CEO Austin Russell scooped up the cheaper shares. Luminar (ticke...

Unity Software Stock Rises as 2022 Revenue Forecast Tops Estimates

Text size Dreamstime Unity Software stock traded higher Friday after the fourth-quarter adjusted loss at the videogame developer tools maker was narrower than Wall Street expected and the company issu...

Clorox Stock Falls Sharply as Rising Costs Hit Margins

Text size A bottle of Clorox bleach in Culver City, California Chris Delmas/AFP via Getty Images Shares of Clorox were falling sharply Friday after the maker of disinfectant wipes and other cleaning p...

Ford Stock Falls After Earnings. What Wall Street Thinks.

Text size Ford’s Maverick in hybrid form, with 37 mpg combined. Ford photo Ford’s fourth-quarter earnings, reported Thursday evening, came in a little light and financial guidance for 2022 didn’...

Rivian Rescued Amazon Earnings—but Not Ford’s. Here’s Why.

Text size Courtesy of Rivian Amazon.com ‘s huge earnings beat was huge, but it wasn’t driven by consumer shopping or its cloud business. It was mostly driven by gains from its holdings of Rivian Autom...

Why Medicare Surcharges Can Shock Retirees

I would like to see you write, and warn your readers, about Medicare surcharges. I was insufficiently aware of the impacts. Perhaps you can cushion the shock for others. “Shock,” often, is the right w...

AT&T’s Dividend Cut Puts It in an Unenviable Club

A company cutting its dividend after a spinoff is uncommon, but not unprecedented. The longer-term outcomes can vary markedly. AT&T (ticker: T) joined this club on Tuesday, when it said it expects...

California, Florida, and Inflation Are Sinking Solar

Text size Ethan Miller/Getty Images The solar power industry is destined to grow many times over in the coming decades, and several companies will undoubtedly become behemoths. But the current picture...

How Rivian Rescued Amazon Earnings–But Not Ford

Text size Courtesy of Rivian Amazon.com ‘s huge earnings beat was mostly driven by gains from its holdings of Rivian Automotive stock. Ford Motor owns Rivian stock too. Like Amazon , it reported bette...

Amazon Stock Soars on Good Enough Earnings. The Price of Prime Is Going Up.

Amazon . com reported strong fourth-quarter results on Thursday, driven by strong growth in both its AWS cloud unit and its growing advertising business. The results could be a relief to some investor...

Snap and Pinterest Sink After Meta’s Big Miss. Both Report Earnings Thursday.

Text size nikkimeel/Dreamstime Shares of Snap and Pinterest and pretty much all social media stocks were falling sharply Thursday after Meta Platforms , the parent of Facebook, reported weaker-than-ex...

Why the Winners and Losers of Meta’s Earnings Will Become Clearer Today

Facebook ‘s parent company is definitely one of the most unfriended on Wall Street right now. Meta Platforms (ticker: FB), which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, is seeing its stock go into fre...