The original bid for Alitalia by Air France-KLM was based on an oil price of $86 a barrel, according to the Deputy CEO of Air France, in an interview on CNBC Europe. Those talks were shelved a month ago, but at $120 to $130, the Deputy CEO said that Air France-KLM would have to come up with a more "difficult and demanding" business plan.    Read More

Stocks may try to shake off losses Thursday, but spiking oil prices and a weak dollar could hold back efforts to rally.    Read More

It's not the easiest of times for the consumer, so why do the consumer numbers look so good? More importantly, why should an investor consider consumer discretionary stocks? Citigroup's Kimberly Greenberger has some answers and some recommendations.   Read More

Stronger retail sales than expected (ex-auto up 0.5 percent, the best showing since November) has caused an 8-point pop in futures. Elsewhere: 1) Hewlett-Packard's $12.6 b deal for Electronic Data systems ($25.00 a share) is a direct challenge to IBM.    Read More

Following are the day’s biggest winners and losers. Find out why shares of Alcoa and Blockbuster popped while Clearwire and Vimplecom dropped.   Read More

Wall Street has been busy figuring out where and when consumers will spend their rebate checks, even as the latest consumer sentiment numbers show U.S. consumers are more distressed than they've been since 1982.    Read More

The trading pattern remains the same: the market does not move up unless there is some outside piece of news. Today it is the better than expected CPI. Yesterday it was comments from Standard and Poor's and hopes for a government rescue of the mortgage market.    Read More

The U.S. dollar hit a new low as the Fed's Pianalto says the U.S. economy has stalled. Dollar weakness again helping oil. Jumbo mortgage lender Thornburg Mortgage TMA failed to meet a margin call of about $28 million which has triggered cross-defaults.   Read More

Find me an analyst or an investor who's excited about this week's same store sales results. Literally, the expectations are so low for this first month of the first quarter, that any indication of a rosier March may cause volatility around share prices when the nation's biggest stores report same store sales results for the month of February on this Thursday.    Read More

I've noted that when you are in this kind of uncertain market, everyone becomes a technician. There's a lot of attention now focused on tech stocks, now that both the NASDAQ and NASDAQ 100 have broken to 52-week lows.    Read More