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...

Unilever wants to buy GlaxoSmithKline’s Indian Consumer Healthcare business. Unilver will spend £3.1 billion ($3.9 billion) to merge its Indian unit, called Hindustan Unilever (HUL), with GSK Consumer Healthcare India.Unilever also plans to acquire GSK's business in India's neighboring country Bangladesh as well as nutrition brand rights for "certain other territories" at a price of £566 million ($723 million). The deal is awaiting approvals from the shareholders of Hindustan Unilever and GSK India, as well as from Indian regulators.

And now, U.S. President Donald Trump claims that Chinese President Xi Jinping might approve the acquisition, following Saturday's trade talks between the two leaders. Ever since its announcement in October 2016, the $44 billion proposed merger between Qualcomm and NXP got approvals from eight jurisdictions, but was awaiting China's decision.China, however, did not mention the Qualcomm-NXP deal in the official statement it released after the meeting with Trump. Even if there are hopes that China could reconsider the acquisition, question is - will NXP or Qualcomm or both be willing to pursue the merger again?

Historically, weather patterns have been the major driver behind price movement in the natural gas market.But with U.S. natural gas now being exported globally in the form LNG, there is a new variable adding potential volatility to the market. READ MORE...

American broadcasting giant Nexstar Media Group is set to overtake its arch rival, Sinclair Broadcast Group, (SBGI) which is currently the largest US local TV operator.Additionally, this deal would also give Nexstar access to the Food Network, where Tribune has a stake along with access to a number of websites which Tribune owns. 

Is the bull run finally coming to an end?Many investors think so, including Steve Cohen, the billionaire hedge fund manager who said last week that we're in a late market cycle and returns over the next two years won't look so good. READ MORE...  

This map shows the largest private employer in every state in the U.S., and Walmart is tops in an incredible 22 states.In total, the company employs 1.5 million Americans. READ MORE...

Hard drive manufacturer Western Digital (Nasdaq: WDC) has been trending lower for over eight months now and the stock has formed a trend channel around the cycles.After hitting that low in 2016, the stock rallied to the all-time in March. The fundamentals are a bit of a mixed picture for Western Digital.

The stock of insurance provider Progressive Corp. (NYSE: PGR) has doubled in price in the last two years.The gain is pretty impressive when you consider that the S&P 500 is only up 25% over the same time period. The stock has slipped in the last few weeks, which caused it to drop below the lower rail of a trend channel that seemed to be guiding the stock higher over the last few years.