Household Products

The stocks that may be in focus today are: Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE: HPQ) is buying Palm Inc (NASDAQ: PALM) for $1.2 billion. Under the deal, Palm shareholders will receive $5.70 in cash for each share. PALM’s stock last traded at $4.63, while HPQ closed at $53.28 yesterday. Wall Street...

If your goal is to generate income, you’ve spent a fair amount of time looking for dividend-paying stocks. It makes sense. There are plenty of solid companies on the market today with admirable histories of paying out dividends, and most investors have heard about these companies. We recently...

A strong report on new home sales and better-than-expected earnings from American Express sent stocks higher Friday and helped the Dow average register its 11th gain in the last 12 trading sessions.  On Friday, the Dow average rose 70 points, or about 0.6%, for its eighth straight weekly advance....

One third of the S&P 500 reports earnings this week, but the vast majority of the big market moving names have already reported.  The week will be dominated by the FOMC decision on Wednesday and what is expected to be another strong GDP report on Friday.  Let’s take a look at what’s on tap (in...

Three companies have come up on my radar that offer high dividend yields and have excellent fundamentals, but have been thrown on the bargain rack as of late. The first company is Kimberly-Clark Corporation (NYSE: KMB), the maker of Kleenex and Huggies diapers. On Thursday the company reported...

U.S. stocks ended a choppy session mixed Wednesday as traders appeared less enthusiastic to extend a rally that has put major indexes at multi-month highs.  Healthcare shares fell after a number of companies from the sector cut their earnings outlook, saying the U.S. healthcare overhaul will hurt...

Consumer products giant, and often misspelled, Procter & Gamble (PG) has raised it's dividend by 9.5%. Here is a glance at Procter's recent dividend history:2007 = $1.362008 = $1.552009 = $1.722010 = $1.89 (EST) This represents a compound annual growth rate of the dividend of almost 12%....

• IBM (NYSE:IBM) posted first quarter earnings of $1.97 versus $1.70 a year earlier on a 5% revenue increase to $22.9 billion, beating Zacks EPS estimates of $1.94 and revenue projections of $22.8 billion.  The firm also raised its full year guidance to at least $11.20 for the year, compared with...

Analysts at SunTrust downgrade Colgate (NYSE: CL) from "buy" to "neutral." Shares of CL declined 1.15% to $83.28 in the pre-market session. More Analyst Ratings here.

Here is our latest update on the stock trading technique called 'Buying Dividends'. This is the process of buying stocks before the ex dividend date and selling the stock shortly after the ex date at about the same price, yet still being entitled to the dividend. This technique generally works only...

Proctor & Gamble (NYSE: PG), provider of branded consumer packaged goods, is seeing heavy call activity today on the May $65 call strike. The option was purchased in one 11,904 contract block, on the offer, for $0.30. There was also some 1,000+ contract blocks traded before that, purchases on...

A.G. Lafley, former chief executive officer of Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG), has joined the prestigious private-equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice LLC. Clayton Dubilier has an impressive roster with names such as John Welch and Edward Liddy on its payroll. The private-equity firm owns...