Banking

Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC) was the top-performing Dow Jones Industrial Average stock in 2012. That performance was not with banking analyst Meredith Whitney cheering it along all the way. Ultimately, she did change her tune and called it a solid Buy in banking stocks. Meredith Whitney was...

Visa Inc. (NYSE: V) reported first-quarter fiscal 2013 results after the markets closed today. Adjusted earnings per share (EPS) were $1.93 on revenues of $2.85 billion. In the first quarter of 2011, the credit card issuer reported EPS of $1.49 on revenues of $2.55 billion. The Thomson Reuters...

A federal judge in Manhattan ruled yesterday that Flagstar Bancorp Inc. (NYSE: FBC) must pay $90.1 million to bond insurer Assured Guaranty Ltd. (NYSE: AGO) in a mortgage "putback" case. The amount may be relatively small, but the impact could be startlingly large. At issue was a claim by Assured...

Hackers have scored another victory in a series that has extended from Google Inc.'s (NASDAQ: GOOG) China site, to the New York Times Co. (NYSE: NYT) site, to The Wall Street Journal and to several government suppliers. The latest victim is the Federal Reserve. While it is not clear what hackers...

2013 is yet another year getting off to a great start for stocks, and Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK-A) is actually outperforming the broad stock market so far in 2013. As of Tuesday, the S&P 500-tracking SPDR S&P 500 (NYSEMKT: SPY) is up about 6% and the DJIA-tracking SPDR Dow Jones...

24/7 Wall St. is still a big fan of dividends. What is even better than a high dividend yield is when companies with solid dividends raise their dividend payouts. Dividend hikes have been noticeably slower after the fiscal cliff debate put many companies in a place where they decided to accelerate...

Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) is revisiting a blast from the past that never really took off due to the Internet and e-commerce still being in the infancy stage. The company has announced "another new way for app and game developers to make money on Kindle Fire" by introducing Amazon Coins. Amazon...

It's a personal finance rule of thumb: Have enough of an emergency savings cushion that you could get by without income for 3 months. But in this economy, who can save that much? You can -- and we've got 25 ways to help you find the extra cash to make it happen.

If the United States is lowering its projected borrowing needs for the quarterly forecasting, that is supposed to be a good thing. The United States is swimming in debt and Bill Gross of PIMCO just recently warned of something like a credit supernova ahead. The problem is that the lower borrowing...

The McGraw-Hill Companies (NYSE: MHP) is trying to defend itself against a suit coming from the Department of Justice that goes back to the ratings agency's involvement in helping to cause the great recession and the financial meltdown that came with it. The company's Standard & Poor's unit...

Smart personal finance rules dictate having an emergency savings fund set aside where you can access it fast. But do you really have to keep enough money for three to six months of expenses in a savings account where it earns almost no interest?

The Dow Jones Industrial Average has just seen a major move in January 2013, with gains of nearly 6%. That was even after two days of light profit taking at the end of the month. What investors just witnessed is a classic asset class rotation out of bonds and cash into stocks. Billions upon...

Bill Gross of PIMCO, aka the Bond King, probably got tired of having to fade the heat after his call about the death of the cult of equity. Bill Gross has been rather vocal about how investors have to expect low returns from stocks and bonds and how they need to invest in things that will either...

Nearly all of us have faced times when cash was tight. Really tight. Question is: What did you do? Which money-making strategies worked? Which didn't? Over the next few weeks, we'll look at the best and worst ways to make quick cash -- and we want to hear from you.

Today was far from a normal Fed-day as the FOMC announcement followed a GDP release that was negative for the first time in 13 consecutive quarters. Some things are the same and some things are different. As you have grown to expect at each and every single FOMC meeting, the Federal Reserve has no...

When well-known analysts make a major price call, investors and Wall St. usually listen. Outspoken bank analyst Richard Bove has done just that. The former Ladenburg Thalman and Rochdale securities analyst recently landed at Rafferty Capital Markets and has made some bold predictions in a fresh...

January has been one great month for equity investors. With the Dow Jones Industrial Average up about 6.5% and challenging 14,000 again, and the S&P up more than 5.5% back above 1,500, investors have to be wondering what more they should expect in 2013. Will the DJIA retake a new all-time high,...