When you purchase a stock, do you use data to drive your decision? Have you ever looked at the fundamental analysis section of a stock's information and found yourself lost? In this article, we will put together some of the most important metrics and explain how to use them to make more informed decisions.
(CNN) -- Oil prices spiked to their highest levels since 2008 on fears that tensions with Iran have the potential to disrupt supplies through the Strait of Hormuz.
If one of your New Year's resolutions is to take control of your finances and put some of your savings to work, you might be considering using the stock market to do that. 2011 proved to be a tough year for even the best institutional investor and individual traders had an equally tough time navigating markets that saw a large amount of violent swings, both to the upside and the downside.
It is not unusual to hear a company's management speak about forecasts: "Our sales did not meet the forecasted numbers," or "we feel confident in the forecasted economic growth and expect to exceed our targets." In the end, all financial forecasts, whether about the specifics of a business, like sales growth, or predictions about the economy as a whole, are informed guesses. In this article, we'll look at some of the methods behind financial forecasts, as well as the actual process and some of the risks that crop up when we seek to predict the future.
Europe faces another year of dismal economic performance in 2012 that will weigh on global growth, but emerging markets and the United States should at least keep the world economy moving in the right direction.
EU members which use the euro have agreed to a tax and budget pact to tackle the eurozone's debt crisis.
Ratings agency Standard and Poor's has put almost all the eurozone including Germany and France on "credit watch" because of fears over the debt crisis.
When it comes to savings, no amount is too small. Microsaving is a growing part of the international movement of microfinance. The aim is to bring financial services to poor people.
The manufacturing sector has been one of the biggest drivers of China's economic growth.
Quite simply, there is a link between real economic activity and stock prices. But this link is sometimes tenuous, and it is just not true that when the economy is doing well, you can be sure that stocks will go up in an appropriate manner, and vice versa. The problem is that the factors driving stock prices are just too complex, fragmented and contradictory for a simple "up and down" correlation to apply.