Michael Maslansky of Luntz, Maslansky Strategic Research just went on the air with me. His company polled 1,000 people online and asked them various questions about the Olympics. Here is the most important question. How much more or less likely are you to buy a product...    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

Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Ventura, CA, New York. For the past week, I’ve been traveling around the country and keeping an eye on consumers across America. Each region faces its own unique challenges with gas prices fluctuating from market to market and housing prices also shifting.   Read More

Carl Icahn and a possible proxy fight with Yahoo, the CEO of Liz Claiborne on the status of their turnaround and after hours action from Whole Foods, Applied Materials and more.   Read More

In this tough retail environment, the only trade is best of breed.   Read More

Ron Baron likes casinos and fancy clothes. The chairman and chief executive of Baron Capital joined CNBC's "Billionaire Summit" -- a select group of the world's most successful businesspeople -- to offer his investment outlook.    Read More

After we reported that Kobe Bryant had signed with Vitaminwater, we wanted to hear from the folks at Coca-Cola's Glaceau division as to why they decided to go after Bryant. It was intriguing because Coca-Cola was one of the companies that let Bryant's deal expire following his sexual assault charge about five years ago.   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

Some of the worst stocks are up Monday despite bad news. Are any of them worth buying?   Read More

Back in 1957, Disneyland opened up a Jetsons-esque "Home of the Future" featuring all sorts of far-out gadgets like microwaves (!) and giant TVs (!). Some of them became realities in every American home. Others, like the floating furniture, well... Now, Disney is taking a whole new approach to the idea. I got a sneak peak at Disneyland's "Innoventions Dream Home," which opens in Tomorrowland on June 16.   Read More