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Merrill Sells Stock to Raise $8.5 Billion in New Capital ... Traders Follow the Bouncing Banks ... Can the Dollar Keep Climbing? ... Alcatel-Lucent Lose CEO and Chairman ... A Technician's Analysis of Stocks, Crude Oil and the American Dollar ...

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TradingMarkets 5 Business Stories You Need to Know

Merrill Lynch's Big Mess - The Guardian

The Wall Street brokerage takes another step toward recovery through an $8.5 billion stock sale.

Merrill Lynch is the Featured Stock in our Up or Down Stock Contest. You have until 4 p.m. EST today to tell us whether you think Merrill Lynch will be Up or Down on Thursday. Click here to play our TradingMarkets Up or Down Stock Contest for your chance to win $1,000 a month by correctly guessing the direction of a stock!

Financial Stocks Strike Back - Wall Street Journal


Derided days ago as bouncing merely on the basis of short-covering, financial stocks led the markets higher again for a 200+ rally day in the Dow on Tuesday..

More Upside for the Greenback? - DailyFX


DailyFX chief strategist Kathy Lien weighs in on the likelihood of the U.S. dollar continuing its surprising, month-long advance in her latest column, "Dollar Rally Set to Continue."

The Alcatel-Lucent Breakdown - BusinessWeek

The departure of the joint venture's CEO and Chairman bodes ill for the telecom combination - at least in the near term.

Rising Dollar, Falling Crude - Financial Sense

The latest technical look at stocks, the U.S. dollar and crude oil, courtesy of Frank Barbera of The Gold Stock Technician, in his column, "Assessing the Calm."

For more stories as they happen, go to our Breaking News section.

TradingMarkets 7 Stocks You Need to Know for Today

Here are 7 stocks for traders for today from TradingMarkets.com:

• Starbucks ( SBUX | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) announced that it would be eliminating nearly 1,000 jobs and closing stores internationally in a bid to cut costs.
  
  
  
  
  
  


• Reporting earnings today before the market opens, Garmin ( GRMN | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) is expected to announce EPS of $1.00.
  
  
  
  
  


• Falling prices for crude oil encouraged further selling in oil-related shares such as Apache ( APA | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating), which was lower on Tuesday.
  
  
  
  
  


• Comcast ( CMSCA | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) is expected to report earnings per share of $0.23 when the company announces earnings today before the bell.
  
  
  
  
  


• Increased pricing power helped U.S. Steel ( X | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) report earnings yesterday that surpassed analyst expectations. The stock ended up, by more than 14%.
  
  
  
  
  


• Analysts are expecting EPS of $0.24 when Allied Waste ( AW | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) reports earnings Wednesday after the market closes.
  
  
  
  
  


• Selling $8.5 billion in new shares and dumping billions in mortgage-related securities, Merrill Lynch ( MER | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) continued its efforts to shore up its capital base.
  
  
  

For a list of today's highest PowerRating stocks, click here.

TradingMarkets 5 PowerRatings Stocks for Today

TradingMarkets Making Great Traders

Gary Kaltbaum's Weekly Conference Call Today! - TradingMarkets

Are you a member of Gary's Gallery? Join Fox Business guest commentator and long-time TradingMarkets contributor Gary Kaltbaum in his weekly Conference Call today at 1 p.m. Eastern at TradingMarkets.com. Come see the markets the way a pro sees the markets. Click the headline above to register for this free event.

Leave It to the Government - Really? - TradingMarkets

And if you haven't seen Gary Kaltbaum's latest column, "Leave it to the Government - Really?", then click the headline above to read Gary's latest take on the ongoing heavy hand of the federal government when it comes to the financial markets.

Part-Time Work Earns Full-Time Pay - TradingMarkets

TradingMarkets Select Contributor Austin Passamonte shows traders that there is an important difference between working smart and merely working hard when it comes to improving trading performance.

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