These are Friday morning’s top 10 analyst upgrades, downgrades, and initiations we have seen early this morning in Wall Street research calls: AFLAC (NYSE: AFL) Raised to Overweight at Morgan Stanley. Broadcom Corp. (NASDAQ: BRCM) Started as Outperform at BMO Capital Markets. Dillard’s ( ... Read more

Although Congress imposed certain compensation restrictions on financial institutions that got government aid through the Troubled Asset Relief Program, it left other options available to reward top executives for their service. A case in point is  Lincoln National Corp. , which took advantage ... Read more

The AP reports that South Korean auto groups claim that the Asian country exported 600,000 cars and light trucks to the US last year. Only 7,000 American autos were sold in South Korea during that period. The figures probably got more lopsided this year as Hyundai improved it sales in the US. The n ... Read more

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer told attendees at the company’s annual shareholder meeting that Windows 7 sales were astonishingly high. According to a Wall Street Journal account of the gathering, “Microsoft Corp. has sold twice as many copies of Windows 7 in its first few we ... Read more

The much-anticipated deal for Comcast (NASDAQ:CMCSA) to take control of the NBC Universal division of GE (NYSE:GE) may die next week . Vivendi, which owns 20% of NBCU, believes that the entertainment and news company is worth much more than GE does. According to the FT, “General Electric a ... Read more

A number of large Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) shareholders would like to see the firm’s profits in their pockets and not in the bank accounts of the Goldman partners. The Wall Street Journal reports that many institutions that hold Goldman shares are upset that the firm’s EPS will  be down ... Read more

There is a rumor that has been around Hollywood for decades that some of the greatest silent film comedy scripts were created by screen writers who would bribe wardens at a local insane asylum to allow a patient to sit in on their story meetings. Allegedly, some of the most hilarious moments in the ... Read more

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<p>Broad market indices gapped lower on the open and sold off sharply during the first hour of trading. The steep decline out of the gate put pressure on those who bought the recent breakout to new swing highs, as their positions were quickly taking on water. Though the ugly internals ... Read more