Many consumers have decided that deals presented on CyberMonday will be around longer or start earlier than one day and therefore have delayed making an immediate purchase, according to released reports. As shoppers returned to work, stores saw a 8.5% increase in CyberMonday sales compared to the same day in 2013. This is down compared to the 20.6% jump that consumers saw in 2013 over the prior year. Some see this as a maturing of the shopping habits of consumers during the Christmas season.

Tech hungry investors should take a look at the robust TradeStation platform for their stock brokerage accounts. This trade platform offers 3rd party integration, tools that are very original, advanced monitoring, and great help support. The fees can get a little expense if you do not meet minimums, but overall a great platform/brokerage. At this time you can get 90 days of commission free trading when you sign-up.

Chipotle Mexican Grille Inc. which has outperformed all other members of the S&P 500 Restaurant Index so far, sees sales coming in soft next year. Growth has been near 15% for stores opened in the last year but going forward, the company predicts sales to grow closer to 5%. Analysts had thought a slow down in the 7.2% growth range was coming. So they did see this trend prior to the company discussing it today while reporting its most recent quarter.

The stock, ticker symbol CMG moved lower in after-hours trading. The stock has climbed 23% this year to date. Analyst are hoping the soft sales growth projection is the company being conservative at this time and the actual numbers will be better. Some till remain positive on the stock with Buy ratings. Strong growth in the past was attributed to the healthy nature of their meals and the ability of customers to customize their orders.

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Bill Gross, owner and co-chief investment officer for Pimco is in the  monthly Economical Times .  On this occasion he isn't attempting to clarify why increased rates of interest are ideal for investment and growth, but rather he's attempting to assist investors in deciding on foreign currency trading markets.  His point would be that the classic ideas of change rates do not make a difference very much nowadays, what is important will be the actions of core banking institutions with regards to quantitative easing.

Bill Gross is actually a bond industry celebrity: Following 4 decades of directing his way in the fixed income world and producing top-tier results for his shareholders, he continues to be Morningstar’s ruling “bond fund administrator of the decade.” The situation?

English: Co-founder of , at the Tech Crunch40 conference. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Marc Andreessen, a well-known venture capitalist from Silicon Valley, recently endured attacks from Carl Icahn. Due to a possible conflict of interest, Icahn asked Andreessen to step down from his respected position as one of EBay's board members.

In a strange turn of events, Icahn attempted to gain support for his nominees by encouraging fellow shareholders to take his side . He was concentrating his efforts on governing the corporate structure of EBay. In short, he is trying to convince this auction giant to spin off PayPal, their successful payments business.

Cliffs Of Moher #2 (Photo credit: Jim Moran)

Depending on which newspaper or alternate source of news one pursues they can and will find reports that negotiations regarding the fiscal cliff are going well and almost finalized or that they are a disaster and nothing positive is happening.

One of the consequences of these positive and negative reports is that the financial markets reflect the confusion and react in different ways that no person can accurately predict. This leaves millions of investors totally confused and deeply concerned of their investments and their futures. Trading the volatility index (VXX) is probably your best bet since all the uncertainty will cause it to rise. Just be careful for a deal to get done which will make the Index reverse course quickly.

qualcomm logo (Photo credit: momentimedia)

Qualcomm Shareholders

Qualcomm is in the lead position among Apple's market, but has become misplaced in the trundle of qualms around Apple's alleged ceasing of vendor orders.

Apple gadgets are not the only thing driving Qualcomm's wealth. Certainly the iPhone sales continue to be a key part of Qualcomm's enigma. But even so, Apple still sells iPads and iPhones.

Google 貼牌冰箱（Google Refrigerator） (Photo credit: Aray Chen)

Tax Avoidance By Google

In 2011, Google Inc. avoided some $2 billion of income tax payments by moving its revenues to a shell company in Bermuda. Google actually shifted almost $10 billion in profits from its overseas subsidiaries to Bermuda. Since Bermuda does not have corporate income taxes, Google benefited by cutting its tax rate by half.

However, this tax avoidance has not gone over well with Governments in both the United States and Europe, which are both struggling with huge deficits. Just recently, the governing body of the European Union requested its members to adopt rules for anti-abuse and to list tax havens for blacklisting.

(fear) the Fiscal Cliff... (Photo credit: MyEyeSees)

There is heavy debate about the fiscal cliff and how it will affect the nation's long term debt; and how fiscal policy will effect growth over the next months and years. The outcome of the fiscal cliff negotiations are directly related to the functionality of the current political leadership and the status of the economy in 2012. These two areas are very much connected since the fiscal policy in both the US and Europe has already caused a drag on economic growth. The slowdown is expected to be ongoing as policymakers work on addressing the long term debt burdens.

Michael Kors Store Opening (Photo credit: Urban Mixer)

Record Quarterly Earnings for Kors

For a week now, analysts have been banking on the strong earnings of fashion conglomerate Michael Kors Holdings Ltd. after the company announced that it once again achieved a strong Q2 fiscal finish. Kors surpassed expectations by more than twenty percent in earnings, and has been surprising Wall Street for the past four quarters. The Zacks top performer has a 78.6% year-to-date average.