There wasn’t a lot of news today but investors were happy to take stocks to new year-to-date highs while waiting for the bulk of earnings announcements later in the week. The S&P 500 hit a

My wife cuts my hair. This is because I don’t have too much of it and it takes all of ten seconds to do it with a clipper. So I was getting a trim last night when she nicked my ear. Actually, t

All day and every day, some of the stock market's best and brightest traders and money managers share their ideas, insights and analysis in real-time on Minyanville's Buzz & Banter. Check out som

The story of today was the employment number and boy was it impressive. The Nonfarm payrolls came in at 247k vs. the previous expected 325k. Last night we discussed that Goldman Sachs (GS) upped its

Traveling for medical treatment dates back to the ancient Greeks, who believed that Asklepios, the god of healing, smiled upon people who went to Epidauria, the Lourdes of the Saronic Gulf.Health-car

On Thursday morning, I awoke to Intuitive Surgical (ISRG) launching like a space shuttle at Cape Canaveral. These are the moments of which investing dreams are made! Did I: a) Get lucky; b) Take a ra

Yesterday, we discussed the possibility of Caterpillar (CAT) having a positive effect on the market; today, it stole the show. The company reported better-than-expected earnings -- or so we thin

1) Non-TARP Lenders Battle Chrysler's "New Lease on Life"President Barack Obama last Thursday pledged to give Chrysler LLC "a new lease on life," by which he apparently meant ushe

Dear Professor Macke:There are thousands of people that die every year from flu. Most people think flu is an upset stomach. Real flu is lung- and fever-related. The media screaming and yelling has go

Today was a sleepy, uneventful trading session. The market had a ziz-zag trading pattern and seemed to search for a theme all day.Even though the S&P and DJIA closed higher on the day, weakn