The US Commerce Department said retail sales rose 1.4% in October, surpassing the forecast 0.9% increase, but look for downbeat numbers when Sears Holdings (SHLD) reports third-quarter earnings Thurs

Frank Stronach, chairman and founder of Magna International (MGA), launched his empire by making 300,000 sun visor brackets for General Motors. The rest, as they say, is history.Nine years after the

Much like a graffiti tag, a computer hacker's calling card is of utmost importance. It should signify bold recklessness with an utter disdain for rules, borders, and authority. This badge of honor wi

There has been a lot of debate lately as to whether proposals such as health-care reform will turn America into a socialist state.Considering what I’ve learned in 35 years working for nonprofit

“The big-picture perspective is that things have improved. The question is, how sustainable is this growth going forward?”-- Jan Hatzius, chief US economist at Goldman Sachs (GS), on the

The Good: Labor Practices American Apparel (APP) has been lauded for its sweatshop free, “Made In Downtown L.A.” production, a soup-to-nuts system where everything from knitting and dyein

Risky assets remained in favor during the past week, generally helped along by fairly robust economic data and better-than-expected corporate earnings reports. A number of bourses, crude oil, inflati

What a difference a day makes. I’m not sure what happened, but the back pain I’ve been complaining about the last couple of days just up and disappeared. I feel like I grew an inch overni

After last week’s weakness, I’ve been cuing up potential shorts in the event we continue and actually follow through to the downside. As I scanned the sectors, one that jumped out was the

You can usually measure the cultural significance of a piece of architecture by how many times it’s been blown up in the movies. The Chrysler Building, for example, was struck by a meteor i