Blog Posts by Elizabeth Trotta

The 30-year mortgage rate averaged 3.88% for the week ending April 12, 2012, down from 3.98% last week, and the 15-year rate averaged a new all-time record low of 3.11%, according to data from Freddie Mac released on Thursday.

The drop, which was the third consecutive weekly decline, comes as long-term Treasury bond yields fell after a weaker than expected employment report for March, according to Frank Nothaft, vice president and chief economist, Freddie Mac.

[Click here for a look at mortgage rates in your area.]

The weekly data have become a checking in point for those looking to call a bottom in the great housing debate.  The Daily Ticker sums it up:

"Housing bulls point to a stabilization of prices in many metro areas,
overall sales at a 5-year high, a decline in the inventory of homes for
sale, fewer foreclosures and record levels of affordability ...

Bears note that national home
prices are still falling, albeit at a slower pace, while buying a home
is unthinkable for millions

Facebook announced Monday that it will buy Instagram, a popular mobile-only photo-sharing app, for $1 billion.

Instagram has garnered attention as its user base increased rapidly, from 1 million users in January 2011 to 15 million in December 2011, and 30 million users now, according to Business Insider. It marks Facebook's largest ever acquisition of a company or product by number of users.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a press release the
site is "committed to building and growing Instagram independently," adding that Facebook plans on preserving users' ability to post to other social networks, to opt out of sharing Instagrams on Facebook, and to have followers separate from a Facebook account.

The social network said it would use its engineering and infrastracture strength to help Instagram grow.

As Facebook seeks to get in on Instagram's buzz, some users may be less pleased. According to a recent poll, photo apps like Instagram are now the worst annoyance on Facebook,

Online deal giant Groupon is dealing with back-to-back pieces of negative attention after an earnings restatement and a report that the Security and Exchange Commission has launched a preliminary investigation into its financials.
 
According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, which cited one source, the SEC hasn't made a decision yet as to whether it will open a formal probe of Groupon.
 
This isn't the first time Groupon has raised eyebrows with regard to its first numbers. Before its November initial public offering, the company was forced to revise its revenue accounting in order to appease regulators.
 
But how bad are things for Groupon? It's still producing revenue, and again, the SEC's exploration hasn't been formalized, so let's not get ahead of ourselves. On the other hand, the company is still young, and while it has to please customers, one of its main goals should be to instill investor confidence in its business plan and management.
 
Last week, investors were shocked when

The Fantasy Finance game is just starting to heat up, and early leaders are starting to emerge with the first place investor having amassed more than $216,000. Among those standing out in these first few weeks is twenty seven-year old Gabriel Kim, the week-two winner. His portfolio returned a whopping 49.88% during the week.

Who is Gabriel Kim? A young, ambitious investor who isn't afraid to take chances and who faces challenges -- some specific to early investors and some universal.

Part of the beauty of Fantasy Finance is that you don't have to be a pro to participate or to win. Although Kim has followed the markets since he was young, he's only had the free capital to invest for the past two years. Now he makes about 5 to ten trades per month.

Ultimately, like many investors, Kim would like to live off of his investments. And for now, the early stages of working toward that goal involve taking risk.  "I haven't accumulated a lot of wealth at this point of my life so in order to turn

Electronics retailer Best Buy said Thursday it's closing 50 stores and cutting 400 employees as it wrangles with how best to proceed in an evolving market for its products.

Best Buy’s decision came as a surprise to NBG Productions analyst Brian Sozzi. But it could lead to “all sorts of buckets from which to extract cost savings, structural cost savings,” he writes.Best Buy workers help out customers at a Best Buy in Mountain View, Calif., Monday, Sept. 12, 2011. Best Buy Co. is closing 50 stores in the U.S. in fiscal 2013 and is looking to cut costs by $800 million by fiscal 2015. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)

Big Box Stores

Cost-cutting will likely be a key part of Best Buy’s reinvention as it gropes for direction and tries to distinguish its future from the past peril of its former competitors CompUSA, which liquidated and changed ownership in 2007, and Circuit City, which met its end in 2009.

The last-man-standing success aside, there’s ever-growing speculation that Best Buy now is serving too much as a showroom for its possibly toughest competitor yet, online retailer Amazon.com. The thought is that customers are perusing the aisles at Best Buy, trying out or considering games, cameras and phones, then buying them cheaper online, Read More »from Best Buy Closes Stores: Is Amazon to Blame?

The Mega Millions jackpot survived another drawing and is now at a record $500 million. If you, like millions of Americans, are planning on trying your luck, there are a few numbers to keep in mind.

 The first and arguably most important data point -- to keep your expectations, and perhaps delusions, in check -- is the odds. The odds of winning the Mega Millions jackpot ahead of the last drawing were estimated at about 1 in 176 million, according to lottery officials. And the odds of winning any Mega Millions prizes were about 1 in 40, perhaps a bit closer to your NCAA pool.

Luck, By the Numbers

Also interesting are the historically lucky and unlucky numbers. Bespoke Investment Group identified the Mega Millions numbers that have come up the most and least often in the 705 drawings leading up to last night. To win the jackpot, you've got to correctly guess all five regular numbers, which are drawn out of a set of balls numbered 1 through 56, and the Mega Ball, drawn from a

Love watching gross people with decomposing flesh and brain-eating tendencies stirred into a gruesome rampage? If so, you are part of a giant market for television series and video games. Now a new zombie market is shaping up, and it may shape you up too -- or inspire your next business venture.

Near (Un)Death Experience

The undead are buzzing in the UK. For $189, zombie enthusiasts can have a "full immersion" zombie experience in an abandoned shopping mall in Reading, Berkshire, in which they are briefed and armed (and trained) with airsoft weapons by the Police Special Zombie Bashing Unit. It’s their job to fix the unfolding undead apocalypse. The price also includes food, because as they note, getting off the couch and actually fighting zombies is hard work.

They aren’t the only ones capitalizing on the growing obsession with bringing the not-exactly-dead closer to life. “Zombies, Run!” an app developed by Six to Start, which funded its development through funding platform Kickstarter,

BATS Global Markets, a stock exchange that had just gone public, has taken the highly unusual step of withdrawing its initial public offering following a trading setback in the company's stock and in the shares of some of the companies that trade on its platform.

“Although our affected market has reopened, in the wake of today’s technical issues, which affected the trading of certain stocks, including that of BATS, we believe withdrawing the IPO is the appropriate action to take for our Company and our shareholders,” Joe Ratterman, chairman, president and CEO of BATS, said in a statement Friday.

As BATS noted, its shares weren't the only ones dealing with questionable trades. Investors waiting for the perfect time to bite into Apple (AAPL) may have thought they'd finally gotten it when the stock plunged 9%. But shares were halted after the unusual activity, which reportedly involved the erroneous trade of 100 shares, reminiscent of a "fat finger" mistake.

However, there ultimately