• Stocks held their gains today, logging a fourth straight week of increases. The indexes moved higher on a pair of upbeat economic reports. Consumer sentiment improved to 83.7 in May according to the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan index. That's the highest level since July, 2007 and above expectations of 78. Separately, the Conference Board says leading indicators rose .6% in April to 95.0. That's the highest level in nearly five years and suggests a predicted slowdown in growth will not last long.

    JC Penney (JCP) closed the day down over 4% down. The company released earnings, or a lack of them, after yesterday's closing bell. It lost $1.58 a share, more than twice the amount a year ago. In addition, revenue fell to $2.64 billion, a drop of 16%. Some other fast facts for you: sales at stores open more than a year are down 17%; gross margins were 30.8%, down nearly 7%; and the company is still paying for its bungled overhaul, shelling out $72-million dollars in restructuring and management transition charges. Recently reinstated CEO Myron Ullman is asking for time and patience getting the store back on track. Ullman assumed the post again last month after the ouster of Ron Johnson.

    Dell's (DELL) quarterly earnings were similarly disastrous. The PC maker reported an 80% plunge in profits. Even when you exclude items the company fell far short on earnings posting 21-cents a share when the concensus was for 35-cents. Dell actually beat on revenues but gross margins shrank and operating expenses rose 12%. Despite the report, Dell's share price remained stable above $13. That's because company founder and current CEO Michael Dell wants to take the company private again for $13.65 a share. Activist investor Carl Icahn is still pushing a counter offer, and other hedge funds may be readying their own proposals.

    Shares of Nordstrom (JWN) dipped a little less than 1% today in the wake of its earnings report. The luxury retail chain had a rare miss for the quarter, making 73-cents a share on $2.75-billion. Nordstrom says sales of seasonal products have been down. The chain is also lowering its outlook for revenues, though it's maintaining expectations for earnings. So far this year Nordstrom pretty much performed in line with the market, rising about 14%.

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  • Yes, Despite the Student Loan “Crisis” College IS Worth It

    By The Daily Ticker | Daily Ticker – Fri, May 17, 2013 2:30 PM EDT

    In the United States, the college experience typically begins with an acceptance letter. And around four years later, for seniors like Reaz Khan who told us his story in the accompanying video, it ends with a very different type of mail...bills from student loan issuers.

    Related: Are Millennials a “Lost Generation”?

    Sixty percent of of college graduates are like Reaz and go into debt paying for college tuition. They borrow over $27,000 on average, according to student loan expert Mark Kantrowitz. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau found that amounts to a trillion dollars outstanding nationally.

    This has some wondering if a college education is even worth it? MIT economist Michael Greenstone has studied this. In the accompanying video he gives some insight into why he says the answer is yes.

    Related: Only 150 of 3500 U.S. Colleges Are Worth the Investment: Former Secretary of Education

    Here are some hard facts. The longer you stay in school, the more likely it is you’ll have a

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  • It's hard to believe but a year ago at this time everyone cared about Facebook (FB). The company was culturally relevant. The idea of owning the stock had investors giddy pre-IPO and miserable literally a day later. The only question was not if but how the geniuses at Facebook were going to make inroads into mobility while maximizing profits from conventional desktop users.

    As it turned out, Facebook's didn't have any real idea how to address mobile. What they've done is use the $16 billion of IPO proceeds to throw money into an abyss of laughably bad initiatives and promotional events designed to convince advertisers that users of Facebook mobile apps aren't turned off by product placements.

    To be fair every ad-based internet company on earth has the same problem. The others get a pass on their efforts to crack the code on "monetization" because they don't have much riding on mobile bets and haven't been as splashily inept in their efforts.

    In January FB hyped up what was supposed to be a game changing new pillar of their business model. The result was Graph Search. Suffice it to say Google (GOOG) remains the market leader in search.

    A month ago at another over-hyped event as Facebook unleashed Home. It was a product that was teased to be a Facebook Phone and turned out to be little more than an app that hijacked user's phones. To say customers disliked Home is to suggest they cared about it at all. Fewer than .1% of Facebook users have downloaded Home and the product is reportedly being overhauled.

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  • Rally Gives Investors a Great Year, in Just 6 Months

    By Michael Santoli | Michael Santoli – Fri, May 17, 2013 12:48 PM EDT

    Happy demi-anniversary, stock market rally. Will the honeymoon ever end?

    Six months ago, this "relentless rally" took off and it has so far delivered stock investors the kind of bounty that would make for a very good year in any age.

    The Standard & Poor’s 500 index bottomed at 1,353 on Nov. 15, as a sharp post-election selloff and policy panic were culminating, giving way to what has been a tireless climb that's confounded the cautious. The S&P 500 is up more than 22% since then, and up 13% so far in 2013, with healthcare, media and financial stocks leading the way — and without so much as a 4% pullback.

    It’s fair to say that not many saw it playing out quite this way. Two days after the market low was set, the Wall Street Journal published Learning To Love Volatility, an essay by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of “The Black Swan,” the best seller that detailed the world’s knack for delivering unforeseen shocks.

    Fair advice — at the time

    It seemed like fair advice at the time, with

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