Blog Posts by Morgan Korn

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI) and S&P 500 Index (GSPC) are starting Wednesday at new record highs. Tuesday’s close marked the Dow’s 19th consecutive session of positive gains.

“It’s hard to say [Tuesday’s trend] is just a fluke and statistical noise,” says Yahoo! Finance’s Mike Santoli. This bull market has been “incredibly well behaved and methodical.”

Related: Give the Market the Benefit of the Doubt” and Invest in Stocks: Barry Ritholtz

The Dow and S&P are both up 17% year-to-date. The constant rotation into U.S. stocks has propelled markets higher but the steady climb in equities has also been unusual, notes Santoli. “It’s almost too calm and unflappable.”

What could cause a selloff in equities this week are comments by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, who will be speaking to the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, his first testimony since February, later this morning. Bernanke will give his latest read on the economy but few expect him to reveal the central bank’s timetable

UPDATE: According to CNBC, the vote to split the CEO and chairman roles was defeated in a narrow vote. More updates to come.

JPMorgan (JPM) shareholders will reveal their true opinions of CEO and Chairman Jamie Dimon on Tuesday, but it won’t be the first time.

At the bank’s annual shareholder meeting last year, 40% of shareholders voted to strip Dimon of his chairman role. They’ll gather today in Tampa, FL to cast ballots on four separate proposals, the biggest one being Dimon’s future at the firm.

AFSCME, a union group, the New York City Comptroller's Office and other fund managers have been lobbying shareholders to split the position. Andrew Ross Sorkin, co-host of CNBC’s “Squawk Box” and editor of The New York Times’ DealBook blog, says Tuesday’s vote to break up the CEO and chairman titles will be “tight” but it may not be in shareholders’ best interest to relieve Dimon of his chairmanship duties.

“If you’re a long-term shareholder in JPMorgan you want Jamie to be there for at

Is air coming out of the precious metal commodities bubble? Silver’s sharp slide early Monday could be proof that the bull market in gold and silver has reached its limit. Silver fell nearly 9% in the first 10 minutes of Asian trading to $20.30 an ounce — its lowest level since September 2010. Silver’s stumble also brought down the price of gold; the yellow metal hit a one-month low of $1,338.10 an ounce and extended its slump for an eighth straight day. Gold has fallen more than 7% in May.

Related: Jim Rogers on Gold: Continues to Have a Long Overdue Correction

Silver’s selloff has a lot to do with the rise in the yen, says The Daily Ticker’s Aaron Task. The yen strengthened against the U.S. Dollar after a report by the Japanese government’s Cabinet Office said Japan's economy is gradually recovering after an upturn in exports and factory output. Hedge funds and other institutional investors are reducing their positions in silver and buying the yen to cover their losses, notes Task.

J.C. Penney (JCP), the beleaguered department store chain, reported a net loss of $348 million, or $1.58 per share, for the first quarter, more than double its loss from the same quarter last year. Total sales were down 16.4% to $2.67 billion and the company’s gross profit margin fell nearly 7 percentage points to 30.8% of sales.

Penney CEO Myron Ullman, who returned to the company after his successor Ron Johnson was fired in April, said he will reverse some of the controversial decisions that Johnson implemented during his 17-month tenure. Penney’s will reinstitute its promotions and bring back popular labels like St. John's Bay, he said. Ullman also warned analysts on Thursday that his fixes would not return the company to profitability overnight as Penney was emerging from an “abyss.”

Johnson, the Apple retail guru who was paid millions to revamp the retailer, had eliminated discounts and coupons and built upscale pop-up shops in Penney's 300 stores. Penney’s shoppers rebuffed the

Thursday’s economic data was mixed: weekly jobless claims unexpectedly rose while housing starts in April unexpectedly fell. The Labor Department reported that the number of people who applied for new unemployment benefits jumped 32% to 360,000 in the week ending May 11, the highest level in a month and a half. But the average of new claims over the past month remained near a five-year low.

Construction on new homes in April fell 16.5% -- the lowest level since November – to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 853,000, according to the Department of Commerce. April housing starts were 13.1% above the April 2012 rate of 754,000.

The number that most economists were watching was Thursday’s CPI report. Consumer prices slipped 0.4% in April because of a sharp decrease (8.1%) in gasoline prices. Food prices rose 0.2%. CPI increased 1.1% over the last 12 months, the smallest 12-month increase since November 2010. Core CPI – which excludes volatile items like food and energy – inched up

Can a dating Web site help you find a job? EHarmony thinks so. The Santa Monica-based online dating site has plans to launch a career service by the second half of next year.

EHarmony may have success matching single men and women – an average of 542 eHarmony members are married every day in the U.S. according to a 2009 survey by Harris Interactive – but finding the perfect employer/employee combination could prove to be a lot more difficult. The dating site faces stiff competition from industry stalwarts like Monster.com, Career Builder, LinkedIn (LKND), Indeed.com and Mediabistro among others.

Related: EHarmony CEO: What 'Really Damaged Our Company'

"We don’t see a company in the jobs market that is providing an 'eHarmony-like' matching service," writes Grant Langston, vice president of Customer Experience at eHarmony, in an email.

EHarmony could be a game changer for employees if its career services help individuals figure out their dream jobs, says The Daily Ticker’s Henry Blodget

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI) is on track to extend its Tuesday winning streak to 18: Blue chips were up 93 points to 15,185 in recent trading.

Seth Masters, chief investment officer at Bernstein Global Wealth Management, which has over $450 billion in assets under management, reiterates his call that the Dow would hit 20,000 by the end of this decade. Masters first made the case for Dow 20,000 last July during an interview with The Daily Ticker. Investors and market watchers are no longer dismissing these optimistic projections: the Dow has already gained more than 17% in less than 12 months and needs to rise another 32% to hit the 20,000 target. A 32% increase seems downright reasonable over a seven-year span (barring no major market crash).

Related: Dow 20,000 Is Coming in 2014 or early 2015: James Altucher

Markets are breaking their record highs at an accelerated pace yet many retail investors are still sitting on the sidelines. As Masters points out in a recent client

The major U.S. stock market averages are starting the week in record territory after the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI) and S&P 500 Index (GSPC) closed at new record highs last Friday. Last week marked the third-straight week of gains for the markets. The Dow and S&P have gained more than 14% year-to-date.

The Federal Reserve’s aggressive stimulus measures have been largely credited for the meteoric rise in stocks. Last September the Fed announced it would expand its bond-buying program to a tune of $85 billion a month ($40 billion in mortgage-backed securities and $45 billion in longer-term Treasury securities).This unprecedented move by the Fed, along with the central bank’s decision to keep lending rates near zero until the jobless rate falls to 6.5%, has been the Fed’s antidote to sluggish economic growth.

The results have been mixed: equities are trading at record levels while growth limps along. The U.S. economy grew at a 2.5% annual rate in the first quarter of last year