Financial Market News

The New York Stock Exchange is shown, Monday, July 15, 2013 in New York. European stock markets were down Friday, July 25, 2014 while Asian markets took cheer from U.S. unemployment claims falling to an eight-year low.

These mutual funds go by a few names, and it doesn't help that some are inscrutable like "liquid alts," but they generally fall under an umbrella known as alternative mutual funds.

In this July 16, 2014 file photo, trader Benedict Willis uses his moblie phone as he works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

The Dow Jones industrial average lost 127 points, 0.8 percent, to 16,956. The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell eight points, or 0.4 percent, to 1,979.

Stocks are ending the week on a sour note, putting the S&P 500 in reverse on the road to 2,000.

If you took your U.S. dollars to Norway, that's how deep the exchange rate would set you back.

2. Sanctions talk: EU ambassadors meet for a second day running to talk about how to escalate sanctions on Russia over Ukraine.

Japan's Nikkei 225 gained 0.6 percent to 15,387.28 and South Korea's Kospi was up 0.3 percent to 2,036.20.

For a time on Thursday, a company based on sharing "likes" and photos was worth more than storied computer pioneer IBM.

New Zealand shares rose, paced by Xero after the cloud-based accounting software firm said it is mulling a New York listing where shares in Facebook and Apple have rebounded.

Investors reacted to quarterly results from companies across several industries, including Facebook, Ford and Caterpillar.

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced the settlement Thursday with the Wall Street bank.

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell to the lowest level in nearly 8-1/2 years last week, suggesting the labour market recovery was gaining traction.

The Toronto stock market was set for a sharply higher open Thursday amid encouraging Chinese and European manufacturing data and strong earnings reports.

Bulgarian lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to accept Prime Minister Plamen Oresharski's resignation on Thursday, paving the way for an interim government to take over in August and a snap election in early October.

The world's biggest manufacturer of cancer drugs, which reports earnings every six months, said it had 5.641 billion Swiss francs in net income from April to June, down from 6.047 billion francs in the comparable period of 2013.

After two days of jury selection, lawyers are poised to give opening statements in the trial of a Detroit-area man who opened his front door and shot an unarmed woman, killing her.

Global equity markets edged higher on Wednesday as a backdrop of solid corporate earnings buoyed risk appetite, but worries over the Middle East and Ukraine kept demand strong for safe-haven assets such as bonds.

"This was a market that was dead in the water," Judge Janet Hall told Litvak. "This was a market that existed because of taxpayer money and you were in effect taking advantage of it through fraud."

A federal judge has sentenced a former Wall Street trader to two years in prison for securities fraud, saying he took advantage of a government bailout program.