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- For Teachers: Lessons on Business News
- For Teachers: Lessons on the Financial Sector and Liquidity
- For Teachers: Lessons on Oil and Gold
- For Teachers: Lessons on the Energy Sector
- For Teachers: Lessons on Gross Domestic Product
- For Teachers: Lessons on the Fed
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The Week in Review is provided by The Stock Market Game, which is a curriculum-based teaching tool that allows students to invest a hypothetical $100,000 online stock portfolio to learn about long-term saving and investing. The Stock Market Game Week in Review: Mar. 31-Apr. 4 April marks the beginning of earnings season in the financial world and there has been much talk on Wall Street that the credit crisis sparked by subprime loans may be drawing to a close. Optimism and pessimism along with fear and greed are the primary emotions among traders and this week the optimists seem to be winning. Evidence of this can be found in the Dow
, which had one of its better weeks in quite some time. The Dow even took a disturbing jobs report in stride last week when the government reported that the economy lost 80,000 jobs sending the unemployment rate up to 5.1%.
But don't count the pessimists out. They believe we are not at the end of the credit crisis and that there will be more pain to follow as companies report earnings, especially financial companies. More write-downs from banks and brokerages, the pessimists believe, could send this house-of-cards-rally crashing down.
There are many ways to engage your students during earnings season. One of them is to get them to listen to an earnings call, which most companies tape and make available on the Web. For example, Family Dollar FDO has its earnings call from Apr. 4 available on its Web site. You can find most earnings podcasts on company Web sites by looking for their Investor Relations, Media or News sections.
To find out when a company is reporting, you can use this earnings calendar or go to the company's Web site and look for the sections mentioned above, where there is usually a press release that lets people know when the company will report.
You can learn more about what to watch for during earnings season from this helpful collection of insightful articles.
April also marks the kick-off of Financial Literacy Month and participating in the Stock Market Game (SMG) is an excellent way to improve financial literacy. However, there are other fun programs and activities you may want to use in concert with the SMG and many of them can be found at the JumpStart Coalition for Financial Literacy. They have an excellent clearinghouse with a cornucopia of helpful material.
To learn more about The Stock Market Game, go to www.stockmarketgame.org.
Here's a look at recent business and economic reports. Plus, a reminder about the InvestWrite competition.
Need help making sense of the Bear Stearns deal and Visa's IPO? Here's a breakdown.
Here's a look at companies like Frontier Oil and Kinross Gold.
Amid the negative headlines, there are a few market bright spots. Here's a look at companies like First Solar and SunPower.
What can GDP data tell us about the country's economic health? Here's a look.
Here's a snapshot look at the U.S. Federal Reserve, GM, Research In Motion and Pacific Gas & Electric.
Yahoo! is among the most searched stocks on TheStreet.com. Here's what Cramer had to say about the stock recently.
Catch up on his thinking on the hottest topics of the past week.
Investors will have to deal with a Fed meeting and another flood of earnings and economic data.
Ensco International and Echelon have the potential to move higher in coming days.
See who made what calls.
The addition of video is helping telecom companies compete against cable and satellite companies.
The June West Texas Intermediate contract reflects selling pressure ahead of Tuesday's expiration. But stocks in the sector are generally trading higher.
See who made what calls.
Keep on top of the market and the critical information you need to make more profitable investing decisions.
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