E-commerce giant -- and the second most valuable public company in Asia after Tencent -- Alibaba Group’s quarterly report confirmed record slow growth.Third-quarter revenue notched 117.28 billion yuan ($17.47 billion), compared with 83 billion yuan a year earlier — owing to the weakening impact of Chinese economy and a damaging Sino-U.S trade war.  Alibaba’s sales are often considered a benchmark to evaluate consumer spending across the world, and diminishing sales are concerning for  investors, as they are proof of the pressures the company is facing. However, net income rose 33% to 30.96 billion yuan, beating forecasts and sending Alibaba's stock up by about 1.6% in pre-market trade. Typically, Alibaba’s highest sales come from its biggest online sales event, "Singles' Day," that even surpasses the combined sales figure of U.S.’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales.

With global paying customers increasing by 26% y-o-y to more than 139 million -- coupled with a forecast-beating addition of 8.84 million subscribers during the quarter -- there is little room for doubt that the streaming giant is an ongoing success. Reasons for this booming number of subscribers? Netflix is known for the abundance and quality of content, and since its inception, the company has worked hard to analyze and interpret viewers’ demand patterns.To reach this spot, the company used data from review aggregation sites like the Rotten Tomatoes to understand people’s choices, and now Netflix boasts of 596 ‘certified fresh’ movies that give its content a richness unmatched by other streaming sites.  

It’s been nearly a century since any automaker was in a more enviable position than Tesla. Despite relatively disappointing fourth-quarter earnings that missed analysts’ estimates, Tesla finished 2018 with an astounding 83 percent share of the U.S. battery-electric vehicle market, CEO Elon Musk boasted on Wednesday.That hasn’t happened since the years following the start-up of Ford’s first moving assembly line. READ MORE...

Avon Products said that it plans to reduce its global workforce by 10% this year. The cosmetics and personal care company expects the employee retrenchment to save about $97 million (before taxes) by the end of this year."Decisions like these are always difficult, however, we must take the actions necessary to improve our operations and strengthen our ability to continue investing in our transformation initiatives and fuel our future growth”, said Jan Zijderveld, CEO of Avon. Avon is also cutting back on its Stock Keeping Units (or SKU codes) by a quarter to save on long-term costs. 

An official survey that has been withheld by the government shows India’s unemployment rate rose to its highest level in at least 45 years in 2017/18, the Business Standard newspaper reported on Thursday, delivering a blow to Prime Minister Narendra Modi months before a general election.READ MORE...

A large part of the sales growth can be attributed to the tech giant’s cloud computing business which grew +48% year-over-year to touch $9 billion in the quarter. Microsoft has been increasingly steering focus towards its commercial cloud segment Azure, which is apparently a strong competitor to Amazon Web Services.Microsoft recently announced a deal to become pharmacy retail company Walgreens' cloud provider, wherein it intends to improve data processing on customers' health conditions and therefore potentially enable pharmacists to offer better pharmacy/wellness solutions.

A recession in Italy and weak growth across Europe could force the European Central Bank to rule out interest rate hikes this year. Italy slipped into recession in the fourth quarter of 2018, according to data published Thursday.The countries using the euro currency collectively generated annual growth of just 1.2% during the final three months of the year, down from 1.6% in the previous quarter.

The policy rate is what banks charge each other for lending funds overnight. At the first Federal Open Market Committee meet of 2019, central bankers expressed caution amidst global economic uncertainties, such as trade tensions, potential headwinds from economic slowdowns in China and Europe, and the recent U.S. government shutdown.The U.S. domestic macroeconomic conditions seem sanguine through, with low unemployment and strong job gains.  Although the Fed had earlier expected two hikes for the policy rate for this year, it seems  that central bankers are now tilting more towards  a ‘wait-and-see’ mode. "The case for raising rates has weakened somewhat," said Fed chair Jerome Powell at a press conference following the committee's January rate-setting meeting.

Hackers and scandals could not stop Facebook from registering solid earnings last year. Touching a record $6.9 billion in the last three months of 2018, Facebook’s profit surged +61% from the year-ago period.Facebook also managed to make net additions to its daily userbase in apparently more saturated markets, Europe and North America. Facebook’s fundamentals in 2018 seem like a ray of hope for the company, as the year was also an extremely challenging one for it.

Unilever reported lower-than-expected sales growth in the fourth quarter, owing to weakness in Latin American markets. The consumer goods company’s underlying sales increased +2.9% year-over-year in the quarter , compared to consensus estimate of +3.5%. Net profit in full-year  was 9.8 billion euros ($11.21 billion), compared to 6.5 billion euros in 2017.  

Shares of Microsoft stock fell as much as 4 percent Wednesday after the company issued its fiscal second-quarter earnings report with slightly lower revenue than expected. Read More...  

Waugh is a distributor of various food products, including fresh and frozen seafood. As a company focused on marketing and distributing food products, Sysco could potentially expand its regional reach by adding Waugh Foods to its portfolio.Waugh offers nearly 600 seafood products, like battered shrimp, catfish fillets, halibut steaks, and salmon burgers. Other recent acquisitions made by Sysco include Kent Frozen Foods in the U.K, Doerle Food Service in Louisiana and HFM in Hawaii among others.

Homebuilder PulteGroup (NYSE: PHM) is set to release earnings on January 29, and the stock hit two layers of support ahead of the earnings report.The parallel upper rail connects the highs from October, November, and early January. The three lows that form the lower rail could also be called a Three Rising Valleys formation. The Tickeron AI Prediction tool generated a bullish signal three days ago and the signal came with a 75% confidence level.

Cyber-security firm FireEye (Nasdaq: FEYE) is set to report earnings on February 6, and the stock will face some resistance in the days leading up to the earnings report. Analysts expect the company to report earnings of $0.05 per share, and that would make the fourth quarter the second consecutive profitable quarter for the firm.The return on equity is -40%, the profit margin is -36%, and the operating margin is at -27%. Turning our attention to the daily chart for FireEye we see that the stock hit its 50-day moving average on Friday and has moved lower in each of the last two days.

Upscale jewelry retailer Tiffany and Co. (NYSE: TIF) has rallied with the overall market over the last month and that has brought the stock up to a couple of potential resistance points.The trend line is right around the $91 level currently and it looks poised to halt any attempt to breakout above the 50-day. The daily stochastic readings are hovering near overbought territory currently and that hasn’t been a good sign for the stock over the last six months. The Tickeron A.I.

Apple's revenue in China came in at $13.17 billion during the December quarter, a drop of nearly $5 billion from a year ago, when Apple reported $17.96 billion in China revenue.Apple's revenue is typically highest during this quarter, the first of its fiscal year. Read More...

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has been meeting with lawmakers at a faster clip than his two predecessors, a push that appears to be earning him allies as he navigates tricky monetary policy waters and vocal White House criticism.READ MORE...

The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq came under pressure from weakness in technology stocks ahead of Apple’s results on Tuesday, while a rebound in industrial stocks lifted the Dow.READ MORE...

WhatsApp is imposing stricter limits on how widely its users can share messages in a bid to crack down on the spread of false information. Following a six-month experiment in India, the messaging platform announced on Monday that it will restrict users globally to forwarding a message to only five chats at a time.READ MORE...

A newly discovered bug in Apple's FaceTime software lets Apple users listen in on the people they are calling, and even see through their front-facing camera, without them picking-up the call.READ MORE...