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 The simplest way to benefit from a rising market is to buy an index fund. When you buy individual stocks, you can make...
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 Headlines moving the stock market in real time.
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 The Credit Suisse global strategy team's annual surprise predictions include a surge in U.S. stocks and a bursting of the Chinese bubble.
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 (Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc.'s price target was raised 24% at Morgan Stanley to a level below only one other Wall Street bank, the latest sign of ever-increasing confidence in the iPhone-maker.Morgan Stanley analyst Katy L. Huberty boosted her objective for the stock to $368 from $296, the second-highest among analysts followed by Bloomberg and implying upside of 17% for Apple shares from Thursday's near-record close.Apple shares rocketed 86% in 2019 and have extended those gains in 2020 after brokers including Credit Suisse and Argus Research raised their price targets. Optimism is increasing around the tech giant's performance over the holiday season ahead of first-quarter results due on Jan. 28.According to Huberty, who has an outperform recommendation on the stock, Apple should benefit from a potential reduction in the amount of time customers are taking to replace their smartphones. Features such as longer battery life and 5G technology will enable new functionality such as Augmented Reality, which along with "aggressive" iPhone trade-in offers imply that replacement cycles can't increase much further, she wrote in a note.But even as analysts have become more optimistic, with DA Davidson recently increasing its price target to a Street-high of $375, the average price target among analysts tracked by Bloomberg sees Apple declining 6.5% over the next 12 months from Thursday's close of $315.24.For IT hardware companies in general, Morgan Stanley sees challenges ahead in 2020 as a recovery in dem
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David Tepper is going to take his horse to the Old Town Road and ride till he can't no more.
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 Biopharmaceutical company Durect Corp.'s shares slid 12% in premarket trade Friday, after a U.S. Food and Drug Administration committee ended a meeting to review the company's Posimir treatment for post-surgical pain with a split vote, as six members voted to recommend the treatment and six voted against. The stock was halted all day Thursday, ahead of the meeting. "We are encouraged by the support from a number of the Committee members," Chief Executive James Brown said in a statement. "We continue to believe the data meets all of the regulatory requirements and that the weight of the evidence supports approval. We look forward to working with the agency as it completes its review of the POSIMIR application." The FDA is not obliged to take the recommendation of the committee, called the Anesthetic and Analgesic Drug Products Advisory Committee, although it often does. Durect shares have gained 322% in the last 12 months, while the S&P 500 has gained 26%.
Market Pulse Stories are Rapid-fire, short news bursts on stocks and markets as they move. Visit MarketWatch.com for more information on this news.
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 Markets ended 2019 with an overall gain of 29% on the S&P 500. It was a fine cap to end the year, but will it last? Not so sure; Wall Street is predicting a far more modest run in 2020, with the end-year targets averaging just a 2% gain.The outlook reflects relative risk assessment, rather than depression. With tensions rising in the Middle East, a US Presidential election just nine months away, 2020 is starting out with plenty of uncertainty on the horizon.That uncertainty has investors worried, and when investors get worried they look for a safety net in their investment strategy. It's a draw that naturally pulls them to dividend stocks. Dividend stocks don't offer the same high share appreciation as growth stocks, but they do offer a steady income stream. And when markets a volatile, a steady income stream is a hot commodity.Savita Subramanian, Bank of America's head of US equity and quantitative strategy, put this way in her ‘year ahead' outlook: "How to hedge against things going wrong? We now prefer utilities (pure domestic, stable earnings) over staples as a way to generate high dividend."Utilities - electricity, water, and the like - are strong option for dividends - their reliable cash flows make it easy for them to maintain the payouts. But you can drill down further, to a more basic level, because the utilities won't run without commodities. And that brings us to the energy companies.The energy industry has the hallmarks of a recession-proof stock, perfect for periods of volatility. It operates in an essential econom
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Shares of Qualcomm Inc. are up nearly 4% in Friday morning trading after Citi Research analyst Christopher Danely upgraded the stock to buy from neutral and upped his price target to $108 from $89. "We expect upside to both revenue and margins for Qualcomm going forward given share gains in 5G, higher [average selling prices], and increased royalty revenue," Danely wrote. While he's worried over the long run about declining royalty rates and Apple becoming more involved in its own chip process, he expects the 5G rush "will put these trends on hold for at least the next 12 months like in previous upgrade cycles." Shares have added 21% over the past three months, as the S&P 500 has risen 11%.
Market Pulse Stories are Rapid-fire, short news bursts on stocks and markets as they move. Visit MarketWatch.com for more information on this news.
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Shares of International Business Machines Corp. are off 0.8% in Friday morning trading after Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty downgraded the stock to equal weight from overweight. She wrote that Morgan Stanley's recent survey of chief information officers "provides new evidence of core IBM revenue declines, particularly in software and services." The downgrade comes as IBM is due to report fourth-quarter earnings Tuesday afternoon. Huberty expects the company to give a full-year earnings outlook on its conference call, and her earnings-per-share estimate of $12.80 for calendar 2020 is below the $13.28 FactSet consensus and would be flat with what analysts expect for calendar 2019. IBM shares have gained about 2% over the past three months, as the S&P 500 has added 11%.
Market Pulse Stories are Rapid-fire, short news bursts on stocks and markets as they move. Visit MarketWatch.com for more information on this news.
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Apple Inc. has acquired artificial-intelligence startup Xnor.ai for a price near $200 million, according to reports Wednesday. The acquisition, which was first reported by GeekWire, would give the smartphone giant access to low-power AI tools for image recognition in cameras. Apple didn't respond to MarketWatch's request for comment. Its stock closed down 0.4% in Wednesday's session but has been on a recent run. Shares have gained 54% over the past six months, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average has added 6.3%.
Market Pulse Stories are Rapid-fire, short news bursts on stocks and markets as they move. Visit MarketWatch.com for more information on this news.
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