stocks Tegna Inc

Here's the question: your company has cut discretionary costs and has laid off a group of workers, but still needs to cut more. Your choice is between cutting pay and requiring a furlough. What's an executive to do?

Instead of asking what Warren Buffett has been buying, we should have been wondering what he's been selling.  Berkshire Hathaway's stock portfolio snapshot for the end of the fourth quarter reveals its holdings in Johnson and Johnson have been slashed by more than half.

Since the Super Bowl turned into the ad game, advertisers have become obsessed with scoring big on USA Today's Ad Meter. It is, after all, considered the gold standard of all advertising metrics.

Every year, the folks at America's Milk Processors do an ad with the Super Bowl stars and put it in USA Today . It's normally a good bit, with the players sporting those now familiar milk mustaches. But this year's ad clearly doesn't work.

At least six CEOs of publicly traded companies have been fired since the start of the New Year and we're only halfway through January. Experts say CEO firings double during bad times. And talk about bad times.

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway sharply increased its stake in ConocoPhillips this spring and summer, accumulating a total of 84 million shares as of the end of the third quarter on September 30, according to Berkshire's just-released quarterly portfolio filing with the SEC.

The final week of October promises to be volatile and even scary, but traders are holding out hope that it's the month where stocks finally hit bottom, even if it means another stinging downdraft before it's over.

Stocks will take their cue from credit markets in the week ahead and whether they are responding to any of the government's efforts to thaw the glacial credit freeze.

Earlier this week, we wrote about the highest yielding stocks on the Dow.  The S&P 500 also has some nice yielding stocks.  If you are worried about the financials being able to continue to pay thier big dividends (with Freddie Mac's big slide, its yield is now over 20%!), there are nearly 40 stocks on the S&P that are currently yielding 5% or more.  Here's a breakdown.

Medal Round - Day 5: Half way through the medal round, the playing field continues to shift.  The US' S&P 500 looks poised to stay on track for the gold, but the silver and bronze are up for grabs.