Finance News

British house prices accelerated their decline in December, falling 15.9% from the year-earlier month, mortgage lender Nationwide reports Tuesday.

How well-positioned entrepreneurs plan to ride out tough times.

Here what the rumors say we can expect to be announced from Apple (AAPL) during Macworld 2009: A new 17-inch, unibody MacBook Pro with an irremovable battery. A (Product) red iPhone. New versions of iLife and iWork, but in the cloud. An updated Mac Mini. New displays. A 28-inch...

Outlays for construction projects in the United States fall a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 0.6% in November, undermined by a drop in outlays on home construction, government data show.

AT&T is running an ad here at Small Business Trends for their small business contest.  Since it is a contest in which you could win a slick new BlackBerry Bold — and get some recognition as a business owner — I thought I would call it out for those of you who read...

The headline news is that Steve Jobs is sick and that's why he isn't giving a keynote at Macworld. But the more interesting news behind the news is that -- despite its reputation -- a well-sourced online media outlet most people would call a blog got the story right and a...

Q. Were you wrong to be so bullish?

Despite some dire financial predictions for 2009, good news is in store for savvy consumers -- if you have good credit and are proactive at looking for banks' deals and perks.

START Over the first three quarters of 2008, Digg lost $2 million on revenues totaling $6.4 million. We think that's pathetic, but only because with 30 million monthly uniques and a raft of publishers surviving on its downstream traffic Digg shows us so much promise. So we at...

BusinessWeek's Steve Hamm declares the death of Silicon Valley, which he says has become a land of get-rich-quick dreamers with the attention span of gnats. One of Steve's first stops: A member of a dying breed known as Andy Grove. Dressed in a gray sweater with a BlackBerry...

From Clusterstock: Two of the sharpest minds in the Wall Street analysis and commentary business--Michael Lewis and David Einhorn--team up to provide a recap of our historic charge off the financial cliff. They also offer some solutions.

The first week of 2009 will be one of tech's busiest, including two trade shows, and investor conference, and an awards show. Stay tuned for complete coverage and analysis. On our agenda: Macworld Expo 2009 in San Francisco, where Apple (AAPL) will present for the last time. CEO...

Year 2008 has passed away, but recessionary data are still alive and kicking. The govenment this week is expected to report a loss of 500,000 jobs in December, which would mean that more than 2 million jobs were lost in 2008.

Forget Steve Jobs's health. The biggest problem for Apple (AAPL) heading into this year's Macworld is one shared with all the booth-operators at the Consumer's Electronic Show: Most US consumers plan to cut back on their high-tech pruchases this year. 51% of respondents plan to...

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- A hedge fund run by Renaissance Technologies has waived its management fees for 2009, according to a report in Monday's Wall Street Journal. The Renaissance Institutional Futures fund is waiving the 1% fixed management fee for 2009 after falling 12% in...

This year, we saw the first decline in online holiday sales since ComScore began monitoring them in 2001. The good news? We can blame the rich. Web metrics firm Hitwise says visits to luxury ecommerce sites from people with household incomes over $150,000 declined 12% this...

Microsoft (MSFT) is preparing to whack 15,000 people in two weeks, says Fudzilla, 17% of its global work force. A cut of this magnitude seems highly unlikely, although the targeted areas do make sense. Unless Microsoft's business has been absolutely crushed in the past two...

The Treasury Department injected $5 billion into GMAC, the automobile financing company, as part of a deal announced Monday night that will let GMAC convert itself into a bank holding company to reduce its borrowing costs and thus borrow money at low rates from the Federal...

Google recently released its annual rundown of popular searches for 2008 - what they call the "zeitgeist" list - and it's a reminder, once again, of how much we reveal about ourselves every time we type into a search bar.

One of the least explored personal sides to our new president is the amount of gasoline in his veins. We know all about his affection for the basketball court and his tendency every now and then to sneak out for a cigarette. But we've heard very little about what drove him to...

It's no secret that Google (GOOG) is hoping its Android operating system can be useful for more than just mobile phones. So it makes sense that Google would want to get Android on "netbook" laptops -- small, lo-fi computers that companies like Dell (DELL), HP (HPQ), Acer, and...

In its quest to organize all the world's information, Google (GOOG) has made enemies in the movie-making, publishing, TV, radio, advertising and tech industries. Now you can add carmakers -- specifically Germany's Porsche -- to the list. A Google Street View car photographing...

Lobbyist Vicki Iseman is mortified at the implication that she might have been cuddling with John McCain. So she wants $27 million from the New York Times (NYT) for quoting unidentified McCain aides as saying that she and the Senator had gotten improperly close. NYT: A...

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Consumer confidence hit a record low in December, according to the monthly Conference Board index reported Tuesday, as worries increased about current business and labor market conditions. The December consumer confidence index fell to 38 from a...

A reader from the securities industry tells us the reason Liberty Media- owner John Malone has been busy selling off nearly $18 million worth IAC (IACI) shares is that a Liberty Media (LINTA) company QVC is $5.2 billion in debt and "will come close to violating the 4.0 leverage...

After Dell founder Michael Dell rejoined the company in 2007, he hired fromer Solectron CEO Michael Cannon as president of global operations and former Oracle exec Mark Jarvis as chief marketing officer. $22.8 million in total compensation later, both Cannon and Jarvis will lose...

The online readership numbers of 8020 Media's two user-generated (and professionally edited) print magazines were off to a good start at 5 million pageviews a month. But the company's real business was print magazines, and those numbers apparently weren't good enough. Investor...

Rumors that Apple is about to introduce an iPhone nano continue to swirl. And they've gained some heft after one accessories manufacturer has actually started to sell cases for the yet-to-be-announced device.

A growing number of small-business owners are starting side businesses to stay afloat.

Verizon Wireless will overtake AT&T (T) as the biggest U.S. wireless carrier by Friday, the date that's scheduled to be the final closing date of its $28.1 billion acquisition of Alltel. With Alltel's 13 million subscribers, Verizon (VZ) will have more than 80 million subs. AT&T...

Fear of being alone, lack of money, and boredom are sending the recession-depressed online in search of their perfect mate. Not sure that's the right mindset for finding that special someone, but you never know.

The Internet is Israel's newest front in its military offensive against Hamas -- and not in the same way as when Russian partisans took down Georgian websites during the summer war over South Ossetia. Israel has launched a YouTube channel to try to win support for its attacks. ...

First-time applications for state unemployment benefits fall 94,000 to a seasonally adjusted 492,000 in the week ended Dec. 27, as the Labor Department cites seasonal volatility in explaining the surprising drop.

The gale of creative destruction continues...

When Facebook launched its platform in 2007, executives said it would become an "ecosystem" full of Web-based software applications that would make their creators money by solving user needs. Their advantage over the rest of the Internet would be connective tissue that Mark...

I’ve said before that I love a good graph joke, but I mostly do line graphs or the occasional bar graph. There’s a lot of opportunity to play visually with those. Pie graphs are harder because they’re always the same shape. You have your circle, the slices,...

While much of the focus of the past year was on the carnage in U.S. markets, the biggest hit to many investment portfolios came from international stock holdings.

The latest word on Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs' health: He's fine. That's what CNBC's Jim Goldman says, based on his Apple source. And that's what a frozen yogurt clerk says in Palo Alto. Assuming these experts are right, we're happy to hear it. But as we've said before, the idea...

John Malone's Liberty Media Corp sold about $17.5 million worth of IAC (IACI) stock in the past couple weeks. The WSJ noticed the transactions and offered these speculations about their cause: Malone could be selling IAC to offset a $1 billion windfall from Sprint Nextel....

Zune users are already calling it "Z2K9" -- according to multiple reports, 30GB Microsoft (MSFT) Zune models all over the world are failing. And all at the same time. We're still not sure just what the heck is going on here, we've never seen anything quite like it. A virus...

At a financial-planner conference earlier this year, I spotted a session called "ETFs: Are Your Clients Investing Without You?" I had to go. We advisers are well aware of the advantages of exchange-traded funds: broad diversification, low costs and a slim tax bill.

For children and adolescents, 2008 offered a mixed bag of health trends and developments that are poised to carry over into next year. Many of the changes focused on preventing serious diseases and disability later in life.

Viacom and Time Warner Cable are fighting over the renewal of Viacom's cable network fees. Specifically, Viacom wants TWC to pony up another 25 cents a month per sub, and TWC doesn't want to. So Viacom is threatening to pull Dora The Explorer, The Daily Show, MTV, et al, off Time...

New York Times (NYT) management is finally taking the steps necessary to try to save the company. Several years too late? Yes. But better late than never. First, the company announced plans to sell its headquarters, which should bring in $250 million. Then it began actively...

Yikes: Holiday e-commerce spending was even worse than projected. Research firm comScore says holiday e-commerce spending totaled $25.54 billion, down 3% year-over-year from $26.33 billion during a similar period last year. That's worse than the 0% year-over-year change comScore...