Alibaba was recently featured as a hot IPO in the ecommerce area, but is now suffering with a slowdown in the always growing country of China. The site is trying to expand sales by finding new customers that want to tap into the expanding Chinese middle class. Another effort is to make the exchange more available in the countryside of China. The stock, traded on the NYSE, has fallen from its high and is now only 14% above its IPO pricing.

During the next 25 years, stock trading and investing is expected to change significantly and investing in Google is anticipated to be a big part of these changes. Another big change might be personal and useful trading advice from a digital avatar.

Although it sounds like science fiction, the concept of getting trading advice this way is expected to be part of daily life during the next two decades. These high tech advisors have several advantages, including the fact that they can process large volumes of data much more efficiently than a human can, and they can offer advice faster, based on the data.

SureTrader is one of the best available choices for penny stock trading over the short term. The company is based out of the Bahamas and works with US-based firms for transactions. The CEO of SureTrader recently addressed LiveStock on demand and spoke about the qualities that set the business apart from competitors.

The clients of SureTrader are not subject to the rules of pattern day trading and are able to trade as much or as little as they decide. They are not limited to only three trades within a normal five-day trading time frame.

Given the increase sales demands generated in part by features such as Amazon Prime, Amazon.com Inc. has recently announced plans to open a New Jersey fulfillment center.  As one of the top U.S. online retailers with growth projections continuing to increase, Amazon recently released holiday sales numbers that were more favorable than predicted and that generate a real need for increased production facilities for packing and shipping of merchandise.  In addition, Amazon announced that it plans to further expand its services in Canada by offering Amazon Prime services there in the near future, giving Canadian customers access to the same shipping savings options as U.S. customers.

Tesla stock (TSLA) has done well over the past three months and beaten the overall market this past year. Yet analyst at Baird felt the stock could improve an additional 30% this year while keeping their current rating of a buy on the stock. This relates to a move from the current $275/share to $335.

The shareholder meeting tomorrow is one thing the company feels could propel the stock higher. CEO Elon Musk tends to make big announcements about new products and company direction at this meetings. Last time Musk announced that he would stay at the helm of the company for at least 4 more years and spoke about the direction of the company towards automatic driving.

AOL is being acquired by Verizon in the mobile providers bid to disrupt the media world. Verizon is purchasing the media company for $4.4 billion in cash in hopes of becoming a major media and content player, not on the television but on the mobile phone. AOL's last merger did not go so well when they acquired Time Warner in hopes of getting distribution for its content and ad network. This time they are being acquired but the goal is the same.

Verizon is seeing subscriptions fall and while some business services and premium options are keeping the company profitable, they are hoping to keep their customer intact by adding these new content options. AOLs most notable content site is the Huffington Post but the company also has a very successful mobile advertising network.

Exxon Mobile Corp was the largest dividend payer in the S&P 500, paying out over $11.5 billion per year to stock holders. But with Apple increasing their dividend by 10% with their most recent earnings report, they will now be paying out over $12 billion yearly in dividends. This dividend raise was in addition to the companies large stock buyback program which is investing $140 billion in Apple stock.

The company has become a cash cow with the popularity of its phone and tablet products. Even with the large stock buyback and the huge dividend payouts, the company still has plenty of cash on hand to invest in research and development of new products.

Microsoft reported its 3rd quarter results tonight, beating analyst estimates with stronger sales in cloud services, tablets, and software. Windows sales were soft during the period. Revenue beat estimates at $21.7 million, an improvement of 6% when compared to the same quarter last year. Earnings beat by 10 cents, coming in at 61 cents a share.

Microsoft touted its cloud services as evidence that companies are moving away from server based technologies to its cloud products. Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO, also mentioned the upcoming Build developers conference as something we should look forward to, to see more cloud products from the company.

Millionaires have changed over the years and today you will find that 66% are female while 25% are non-white, this according to a new Fidelity study. The outlook found that there are 6 traits that make the millionaires (starting with only $250,000 in assets) standout from the crowd. To begin with they still have a lot of time before retirement, normally more than 25 years.

Declines in IBM offset some of the gains made by investors looking forward to the European Central Bank announcement Thursday, where the group is expected to purchase more bonds to stimulate the economy. The Euro Zone has had some economic troubles as of late and investors see the new stimulus as overdue. Asian stocks also moved higher later in the day after the US markets rose.