Estee Lauder Companies’ fiscal third quarter earnings surpassed expectations, on the back of strong revenue from Asia and several beauty brands. For the three months ending in March, the skincare and cosmetics company’s diluted earnings came in at $1.51 per share, which beat analysts’ estimates of $1.30 per share.Total group sales increased +11% year-over-year to $3.74 billion – also higher than analysts’ estimates. For the full-year 2019, Estee Lauder predicted that its adjusted earnings would range between $5.15 and $5.19 per share, up from its February projection of $4.92 and $5.00 range. CEO Fabrizio Freda highlighted the Asia/Pacific region, the skin care brands, the Estee Lauder, La Mer and Tom Ford Beauty brands, and travel retail and global online channels as the main contributors to growth for the quarter.

Across the world, travelers identify the Marriott International (NASDAQ: MAR) name as a mark of quality and distinction.That reputation only improved when Marriott acquired Starwood Hotels & Resorts three years ago to become a colossus in the hotel industry. Read More...

Oil prices fell on Wednesday after a report showed a rise in U.S. crude inventories, but global markets remained tense amid an intensifying political crisis in Venezuela, tightening U.S. sanctions on Iran, and ongoing OPEC supply cuts. Read More...

Apple and Samsung reported slowing smartphone sales in the first quarter of this year, but Chinese tech giant Huawei is bucking the trend in a big way. Read More...

The Materials Select Sector SPDR (NYSE: XLB) is up 13.23% so far in 2019, but that places it in seventh place among the 10 select sectors SPDR ETFs.The tech sector has experienced a gain of 27.2% so far this year and that is the top performance of the group. Even though it has lagged so far this year, the XLB could be ready to make up some ground on the other sectors.

The chip sector has been one of the top performing industries since the Christmas low, but it suffered a setback last week when Intel reported earnings.The guidance, if it is accurate, would mean a year over year revenue decline for the first time since 2015. Intel dropped 8.99% on April 26 and the VanEck Vectors Semiconductor ETF (NYSE: SMH) fell 1.22% on the same day.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced a set of guidelines in early April aimed at “[providing] a framework for analyzing whether a digital asset has the characteristics of one particular type of security – an ‘investment contract.’” The move is the latest effort from the SEC to clarify and enforce the digital asset and initial coin offering landscape long characterized by legal gray areas and a wild west mentality – occasionally to the detriment of investors, who have fallen victim to fraud and other malfeasance. Prior legal rulings have found an investment contract to exist “when there is the investment of money in a common enterprise with a reasonable expectation of profits to be derived from the efforts of others.” Determining whether a digital asset falls into this category requires “[analyzing] the relevant transactions to determine if the federal securities laws apply” using a standard system for analysis called the Howey Test.This well-known methodology uses

Wells Fargo Securities’ Christopher Harvey no longer holds the distinction of Wall Street’s biggest bear. He’s now officially one of its biggest bulls. The firm’s head of equity strategy raised his S&P 500 year-end price target Tuesday to 3,088, a 16% jump above his prior forecast of 2,665.READ MORE...

Facebook-owned Instagram is going to test hiding “like” counts this week as a way to make “a less pressurized environment” on the app, Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri announced on Tuesday.READ MORE...

Amazon has been testing a new online service that matches truck drivers with shippers since last year, taking its first step into the lucrative online freight brokerage space, according to two people familiar with the service.READ MORE...

The S&P 500 reached an all-time high on Monday, but the session’s gains were kept in check as investors braced for a busy week including a flurry of corporate earnings reports, economic data and an announcement from the Federal Reserve.READ MORE..

President Donald Trump, in his most brazen attack yet on the Federal Reserve, called for the central bank on Tuesday to cut interest rates by 1 percentage point and to implement more money-printing quantitative easing.READ MORE...

Shopify’s first quarter earnings per share not only crushed analysts’ estimates, but also surged more than +100% from the year-ago period. The Canadian e-commerce company raked in 9 cents per share, compared with a loss of -5 cents estimated by analysts, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.The figure is more than double the year-ago quarter’s 4 cents. Revenue for the quarter came in at $320.5 million, beating estimates of $309.4 million.

Over nine years, corporate landlord WeWork has earned a reputation as the go-to shared office start-up with about 401,000 memberships spread out across 425 locations, and now the company has finally filed its IPO to head to the stock market.But WeWork's vision comes at a steep cost, as the company more doubled its losses to $1.9 billion last year, even though revenue doubled to $1.8 billion. To add to the worry, the biggest investor of WeWork, the Japanese technology conglomerate SoftBank with $2 billion put into the business, has opted not to buy a controlling stake in its business. To advance its services, the company has also bought Meetup, the service for bringing together aficionados of common interests like learning Dutch or knitting, in 2017.

System-wide ticketing shutdowns hit major US airlines earlier this week, but everything appears to be back on track now. The problem arose mainly over airlines’ online system of printing tickets and making reservations. But a source close to the matter confirmed that the problem has now been addressed and online booking and printing are back to normal. Some of the airlines affected by the outage include American Airlines (AAL), Alaska Air (ALK), WestJet (WJAFF), and JetBlue (JBLU). Both American Airlines and Alaska Air expressed regret on Twitter and also confirmed that the technical issue has been solved in the fastest amount of time possible, with no major impact on flights.

Computer hard drive maker, Western Digital, published quarterly report with estimate-missing earnings of $0.17 per share compared to the $3.63 per share a year ago.This could mean the shares may underperform in near future. Investors also need to be mindful of the material impact of industry, as Intel (INTC) also provided a disappointing guidance last week as memory chip pricing has stayed in its doldrums so far in 2019. While WDC is up more than 30% year-to-date, following the quarterly announcement it fell nearly 7% to $47 a share on Monday.

The 2017 boom vaulted digital currencies to prominence and garnered rare mainstream media coverage, while 2018’s bust cycle saw the allure of possibilities mostly wear off, replaced by doomsday predictions and death pronouncements. While crypto remains volatile, it is perhaps more firmly entrenched, and on a wider scale, than at any point in its history.On April 2, Brian Armstrong, the CEO of crypto exchange Coinbase, laid forth in a live AMA his blueprint to achieve that important milestone: reducing volatility while enhancing scalability and usability. Traditional investors find the inherent volatility of cryptocurrencies extremely off-putting.

Merck first quarter earnings surpassed analysts’ estimates, thanks in large part to its success in lung cancer treatment. For the three months ending in March, the pharma company’s GAAP earnings came in at $1.12 per share, beating the Street consensus estimates by seven cents.  Merck’s total revenues surged +8% year-over-year to $10.8 billion, on the back of a +55% sales growth of Keytruda lung cancer treatment. CEO Ken Frazier highlighted investments in research and development as one of the factors behind Merck’s strong quarter. Looking ahead, Merck lifted its full-year 2019 revenue outlook to a range of $43.9 to $45.1 billion, while forecasting GAAP earnings to  range between $4.02 and $4.12 per share. The company also revealed a global restructuring plan - which includes closing plants and slashing jobs - that is expected to get completed by 2023.

This comes on the heels of the electric car company's CEO Elon Musk reaching a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regarding the use of Twitter to disclose material information about the company. According to a 10-Q filing with the SEC published  Monday, Tesla indicated that its cash flow from operations should be adequate in meeting future expenses and near-term debt obligations, while adding that the company could seek alternative financing channels as well. For the first quarter, Tesla reported an adjusted loss of $2.90, compared to a FactSet consensus of an adjusted loss of $1.15 per share.Revenue of $4.54 billion, however, came in lower compared to a FactSet consensus of $5.42 billion. Tesla said that it anticipates a loss for the second quarter as well, but expects to earn a positive profit over the second half of the year.

General Electric said it increased profit and lost less cash than expected in the first quarter. Profit from continuing operations more than tripled as sales rose in GE’s aviation, oil and gas, and healthcare units.Negative cash flow from GE’s industrial business was $1.2 billion, much better than the $2.16-billion outflow that analysts were expecting.  On an adjusted basis, GE earned 14 cents per share.