Volume, however, was 19 percent lower than the same period one year ago. Refinancing was the key to volume with lower interest rates affecting the numbers.Mortgage interest rates are still 89 basis points higher than a year ago and home prices are still gaining, making home buying ever more expensive.

Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei, the world’s largest telecom equipment manufacturer and second-largest smartphone maker, has been arrested in Vancouver, Canada on suspicion she violated U.S. trade sanctions against Iran, as first reported by The Globe and Mail. READ MORE...

American International Group (AIG) is set back by an estimated $750 million to $800 million in catastrophe losses so far during the 2018 fourth quarter (excluding December), as revealed by CEO Brian Duperreault. Duperreault also indicated that Wildfires in California, net of reinsurance, will add between $150 million and $175 million to the insurance company's net pretax losses for the fourth quarter.He also mentioned AIG's Life and Retirement unit's earnings will decline for the second half of 2019, owing partly to investment in new business and "growth initiatives”. However, AIG expects to generate an overall 8% adjusted return on equity going into 2019, in part due to a slight underwriting profit in its general insurance unit - according to Duperreault.

Brands-owned pizza chain’s largest acquisition so far. David Gibbs, CFO of Yum!Yum’s other brands might also gain from the deal by getting access to QuikOrder’s  data on consumers. Data from QuikOrder could help Pizza Hut (and other brands of Yum) derive relevant insights into consumer preferences such as what they like to order or how often they use they the online platform to order – information that should come in handy for any restaurant/fast-food chain's marketing/sales strategies. Earlier this year, Yum invested in a 3% stake in online food-ordering company Grubhub.

Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo launched its autonomous taxi service in the Phoenix area on Wednesday. Named Waymo One, the taxi service with self-driving technology will be operating in a roughly 100-mile zone in the Phoenix suburbs of Chandler, Tempe, Mesa and Gilbert.There are plans to eventually transition the service into a fully driverless one. Riders can book a cab on the Waymo app, and will be able to see price estimates before they decide to confirm the trip.

Brazilian state-run oil company, Petroleo Brasileiro SA, commonly known as Petrobras, revealed that it plans to raise around $26.9 billion through asset sales and partnerships by 2023, as part of its new five-year business plan. Under this plan, the company intends to raise $84 billion in investments, while boosting investments on the front edge of anticipated production boom in Brazil. According to the company, it aims to make $84.1 billion in investments from 2019 to 2023, compared to its previous five-year investment plan of $74.5 billion from 2018 to 2022. The Company plans to put its fertilizer plants, liquefied petroleum gas unit and its biodiesel and ethanol businesses under the hammer. With Petrobras trying to stay on course for its effort to reduce one of the heftiest debt loads among oil companies worldwide - $88 billion in gross debt -- this divestment strategy can be highly beneficial for the company. Although this plan doesn’t seem contain any major surprise, i

Amidst the stock market’s continued downside volatility, utilities have emerged as the safe haven -- moving higher last week as the broader market felt intense selling pressure. On a 52-week intra-day high basis, six of the 11 S&P 500 sectors were mostly in a correction mode from their most recent highs -- but not Utilities. Larger-than-average dividend yields and steady revenue streams are arguably what helped Utilities gain investor favor in times of tumult.With investors worried about slowing global economic growth, trade woes with China, and a flattening yield curve, the relative safety of Utilities has gained more attention. A few stocks investors might consider if looking for Utilities plays are Entergy Corporation (ETR, +1.33%), Edison International (EIX, +1.28%) and Exelon Corporation (EXC, +1.01%).

Auto parts retailer AutoZone’s earnings and same-store sales exceeded expectations for the quarter ending November 17. Net income increased to $13.47 per share, from $10 a share of the year-ago period."Net income and diluted earnings per share benefited from a lower effective income tax rate, primarily due to tax reform," the company said in its earnings statement. Domestic same-store sales rose +2.7% in the quarter from the same period a year ago, beating analysts’ estimates of +2% increase.

Altered by Amazon’s (AMZN) foray into the grocery and convenience store business, incumbents like Kroger and Walgreens Boots Alliance had no options but to join hands in order stay ahead of the competition in an evolving consumer landscape. With Amazon stepping up its grocery and convenience store game in recent times, Kroger and Walgreens announced their partnership in October.Pharmacies and grocery stores have been searching for ways to beat out the competition, and this is what got these two companies together to stay ahead of the challenge thrown towards them by the Amazon's Whole Foods. In addition to selling Kroger’s branded products in stores, Walgreens will also allow customers to order online from the grocer and pick up the items at the pharmacy chain. Owing to early success of this pilot program, both companies announced a further expansion of the program on Tuesday.

Parcel delivery company United Parcel Service (NYSE: UPS) is currently in one of its busiest times of the year.During the holiday season, the company sees a big boost to package traffic due to the increase in sales from retailers and individuals shipping packages to their loved ones.

Shares of the U.S. luxury home builder, Toll Brothers, slipped more that 5% on Tuesday after the company reported its first fall in quarterly orders in more than four years. Corroborating the weak state of the U.S. housing market, the Q4 result of the company is the latest evidence of slowing housing demand, hit by rising interest rates and higher home prices. After a pre-market fall of 4.2%, the shares further declined to 5.6% after the results indicated that demand would likely fall further in November. Sales of new U.S. single-family homes plunged to a more than 2-1/2-year low in October, due to sharp declines across regions. Toll Brothers, whose homes can cost upwards of $2 million, said orders (a key indicator of future revenue) dropped 13.3% to 1,715 units in the quarter ended Oct. 31, against the 6.5% rise expected by analysts. Orders fell most in California, Toll’s biggest market by revenue.This was the hardest hit where orders in general declined by 39.4% to 226

However, no decision has been reached yet on any transaction, according to Cronos. The announcement comes shortly after some reports in the media cited anonymous sources in suggesting that Altria might want to acquire Cronos. With Canada’s legalization of recreational use of marijuana, the Canadian cannabis industry is seeming to emerge as a lucrative opportunity for companies/investors.U.S. beverage company Constellation Brands Inc., for example, announced a $3.8 billion investment in Canada’s cannabis company Canopy Growth Corp. in August. With a declining trend in cigarette smoking among U.S. consumers, Altria might be looking at options to diversify its business, and the cannabis space could potentially be one of the options.

One of the world's largest producers and marketers of tobacco, cigarettes and related products, Altria Group has initiated talks with Canadian cannabis producer Cronos for a likely takeover, as it seeks to diversify its business beyond traditional tobacco smokers. According to Marijuana Business Daily, the total demand for marijuana including both legal and black-market sales is estimated to be around $52.5 billion, while the e-cigarette market is expected to grow to $6.6 billion in the US in 2018. Cigarette sales in the US are on a continuous decline over the last few years, largely owing to older smokers dying and very few young people taking up smoking.However, shares of Cronos rose as much as 23% as the news hit the market, pushing Cronos Group's market cap close to $2 billion. The news comes as Altria is also eyeing a significant minority stake in e-cigarette company, Juul, in-line with its diversification strategy.

Currently trading below $10 per share, Ford is already down around 25% for the year.However, it still remains a relatively profitable company with strong footing in some of the fastest-growing automotive segments. Unlike its U.S. rivals General Motors (GM) and Fiat-Chrysler (FCAU), who have managed to impress the industry and investors by evading bankruptcy, Ford is still in the middle of a turnaround. Virtually synonymous with the history of the automobile, Ford’s third-quarter earnings surpassed analyst’s expectations, but was still down compared to the same quarter in 2017. Although the automaker has performed pretty well in North America, it is still struggling in international businesses, especially in South America, China and Europe. The company now has segregated its China business from its Asia-Pacific counterpart and has hired an executive to run just that region, but Ford has so far been unable to match pace with the rapidly changing consumer tastes of the

The company, which distributes pharmaceutical products and provides healthcare technology, said that it will move 500 employees from San Francisco to elsewhere around the country and would retain 1,400 jobs in California. “We are excited to strengthen our presence in Texas and make Las Colinas our official global headquarters,” said John Hammergren, CEO of McKesson, in a statement.“Making this move will improve efficiency, collaboration and cost-competitiveness, while providing an exceptional work environment for our employees.” (as reported by San Francisco Chronicle). McKesson generated revenue of $198 billion last year, the sixth highest among U.S. public companies.

On Monday, Walmart announced that it will 'employ' robots to clean its stores. Expected to deploy 360 “Auto-C” robots at stores by January-end 2019, the retail giant looks like going big on technology to streamline operations."We're excited to work with Brain Corp in supporting our retail operations and providing our associates with a safe and reliable technology," said John Crecelius, Walmart's vice president of central operations.

President Donald Trump tweeted that China is willing to scrap tariffs on cars imported from the U.S. Following his agreement with Chinese President Xi Jinping  on Saturday to hold off on further tariffs for the time being, Trump posted a tweet saying China is ready to “reduce and remove” car tariffs.However, he did not mention by how much or when that would happen. Also, the Chinese government has not mentioned cutting car tariffs following the Trump-Xi meet in Buenos Aires. The tariff-slapping battle between the U.S. and China for a large part of 2018 has reportedly hurt profit margins and/or affected operations of major automakers like Ford, BMW and Daimler.

  There will be 2,300 Kroger products at 13 Walgreens stores to start off the collaboration's pilot by early 2019.The selection will be concentrated in dairy, meat, frozen and meal solutions. Customers will be able to order groceries on kroger.com for pickup at Walgreens. This might be seen as an innovative step  by a long-standing grocery company to up the game against fast growing e-commerce players like Amazon which are apparently trying to expand across every consumer retail category possible.

Qatar has been part of the OPEC council since 1961, but the country just announced its intent to leave on Monday. Should the severance move forward, Qatar would leave the cartel on January 1, 2019. According to Qatar's newly-appointed energy minister, Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi, Qatar’s decision to withdraw from the OPEC council mainly owed to the fact that it wanted to focus its efforts on plans to develop and increase its natural gas production from 77 million tonnes per year to 110 million tonnes in the coming years.Left with just 14 members now, the future of the OPEC is now exposed to systematic risk with the exit of Qatar. Though Qatar's exit was sudden and unexpected, at the end of the day it should not have a significant impact on the oil markets, as Qatar is not a major oil producer when compared to other OPEC members.

(Bloomberg) -- For more than 30 years, Intel Corp. has dominated chipmaking, producing the most important component in the bulk of the world’s computers.That run is now under threat from a company many Americans have never heard of. READ MORE...