The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) has fined Morgan Stanley $10M for compliance failures and anti-money laundering.The lapse impaired the firm's overall tracking of tens of billions of dollars of wire and foreign currency transfers, FINRA said. Those transactions included transfers to and from countries known for money laundering risk, FINRA said.

Apple’s latest line of iPhones is apparently attracting more consumers to switch from Android, compared to the previous year – according to a Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) report. The report found that 16% of iPhone buyers upgraded from an Android model during the 30-day period following the iPhone XR’s launch.The figure was 11% in case of the iPhone X’s release in November 2017. In the 30 days following its launch in October 2018, the lowest-priced new iPhone model XR contributed 32% of total iPhone sales in the U.S. (as found by CIRP).

In October, the All India Online Vendors Association (AIOVA) filed a petition with the anti-trust body Competition Commission of India (CCI) alleging that Amazon favors merchants that it partly owns, such as Cloudtail and Appario.The group filed a similar petition against Flipkart in May, alleging preferential treatment for select sellers. The new regulations also preclude any potential discrimination - as to whether a product purchased belongs to an affiliate of the online platform or not - in designing any cash back incentive offered to customers.

Retail sales during the holiday season clocked its fastest increase in six years. From November 1 through December 24, retail sales surged +5.1% from a year ago, according to Mastercard SpendingPulse. Shoppers spent more than $850 billion in the holidays. Online sales increased more than +19% compared to last year, according to Mastercard.On Wednesday, Amazon claimed to have raked in record sales during the holidays. However, spending at department stores fell 1.3% from last year, according to Mastercard.

 The Gap is shuttering its Fifth Avenue store in New York, as confirmed by the company. At the beginning of November, Gap had more than 1,000 stores around the world and nearly 800 stores in North America.The closing of the Fifth Avenue store, scheduled for January 20, is only a part of the planned closures of hundreds of Gap stores. According to Gap CEO Art Peck, closing stores could save Gap up to $100 million in profit. In its latest quarter, Gap's sales declined -7% compared to a year ago.

JC Penney’s stock price dropped almost below $1 on Wednesday – for the first time since 1929 when it began trading on a stock exchange. The department store chain has been incurring losses since 2010, and is currently knee-deep in $4 billion debt with a junk credit rating.JC Penney had a $151 million loss in its third quarter. The company is considering additional store closures. Its attempted turnaround strategies, such as selling appliances a few years ago, seems to have been unable to create the effect the firm is desperately in need of.

Amazon is adding a bunch of new cargo jets to its fleet to help it deliver more of its own packages.READ MORE...

McDonald's India, subsidiary of the Chicago-headquartered fast food giant - McDonald's Corp., finally reported net profit for the FY2017-18 after 22 years of business in India. According to its latest filings with the Registrar of Companies of India, the company reported a net profit of INR 65.2 lakhs (approx.The company further said in its filing that it has not only been able to stem further erosion of its net worth, its also been able to successfully reverse the trend of erosion through the infusion of fresh capital. Recording a y-o-y growth of ~8%, the company reported a total income of INR 119.60 crore earned mostly through royalty income.

Amazon claims to have experienced more items ordered during this year’s holiday season than ever before. The e-commerce giant mentioned that tens of millions of additional customers signed up for Amazon Prime free trials or paid memberships during the holiday season.FREE Same-Day, One-Day or Two-Day shipping, FREE two-hour delivery with Prime Now, and other shopping and entertainment benefits were among potential incentives to shoppers/subscribers. According to Amazon, consumers bought millions more of its own devices, like the Echo Dot and Fire TV Stick 4K - compared with last year.

Falling in tandem with the equities market, oil prices hit their lowest levels in nearly 18 months to trade at $42.53/bbl. Despite the production deal struck earlier in December between the OPEC and Russia, investors are increasingly seeking shelter in apparently safe-haven assets such as gold and government debt at the cost of risker ones like oil and stocks.crude futures ended Monday's session at $42.53 after falling 6.7% or $3.06, its lowest closing price since June 2017 and close to 2017’s lowest level of $42.05.

There's been little yuletide cheer for the retailers. The XRT retail ETF is down 17 percent this month, tracking for its worst December since its inception in 2006. One market watcher says indiscriminate selling may have unfairly taken retail down.READ MORE...

The oil market will be a tale of two halves in 2019, according to Wall Street forecasters. Oil analysts see prices recovering in the first six months of 2019, following a sell-off that has slashed the cost of crude by about 40 percent since October.But in the back half of the year, commodity watchers anticipate new headwinds for the oil market.

Apple stock price inched up +1.9%. Wednesday's rebound comes after the worst Christmas Eve plunge: the S&P 500 entered the bear territory on Monday.Monday’s sell-offs followed reports of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin holding calls with  major U.S. banks last weekend and issuing a statement saying, "The banks all confirmed ample liquidity is available for lending to consumer and business markets."

One industry analyst has sounded the alarm on Facebook, calling the company the "biggest concern" among the so-called FAANG stocks.READ MORE...

James Sucio resigned from NextEra Energy Partners' board. Sucio served as independent director of the NextEra Energy subsidiary's audit committee since last year.Bryne had also initially served for three years on the board of the general partner of NextEra Energy Partners. Parent company NextEra Energy ranks amongst the largest energy companies in the U.S. , and has revenues of over $17 billion (as of 2017).

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin made a precautionary call to six of the country's largest banks to avoid market fallout on Christmas Eve.Reports that President Trump was consulting advisers about whether he had authority to fire Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell was causing concern and Mnuchin was trying to get ahead of the news. In a statement he said: "We continue to see strong economic growth in the U.S. economy with robust activity from consumers and business.

Shares of the world’s largest sportswear company, Nike Inc., soared nearly 8% on Friday after the company reported quarterly earnings and revenue that beat analysts' expectations. The athletic apparel company reported an earnings of 52 cents per share compared to Wall Street’s expectation of 46 cents.In terms of revenue, the company reported a revenue of $9.37 billion against analyst expectations of $9.18 billion. Despite concerns surrounding the impact of the controversial ad campaign and the ongoing U.S.-China trade war, the company reported strong numbers along with an upbeat outlook and an expectation of higher revenue growth than previously planned. China recorded Nike's most robust growth during the quarter, with sales climbing 26% to $1.54 billion. According to the company, strong global sales and substantial improvement in the digital business is what helped it report such numbers.

American multinational oil giant, Exxon Mobil Corporation, on Thursday announced that the company has withdrawn its environmental assessment application for a $25-billion West Coast Canada LNG export facility. Exxon's exit from the West Coast LNG export industry, which at one time attracted more than 20 proposals, would mean apparent shelving of the WCC LNG project. The WCC LNG export project, located in British Columbia, was expected to produce ~15 million tons/year of LNG to serve Asian buyers, with plans to enhance production as much as 30 million tons/year. Exxon's decision to exit from the project, according to analysts, indicates that the company plans to enhance its focus on LNG projects with Qatar Petroleum and a proposed expansion of its chilled-gas operation in Papua New Guinea.

It may not be a lump of coal, but Williams Sonoma is dropping something else into Amazon's stocking for the holidays: a lawsuit. The San Francisco-based home furnishings company is suing the online retailer alleging "infringement and dilution" of the Williams-Sonoma (NYSE: WSM) brand.READ MORE...

Ford Motor Co (F.N) said Friday it is recalling 874,000 pickup trucks in North America with engine block heaters for fire risks.READ MORE...