The Fairfield, Connecticut-based firm's EPS rose 15 percent to $0.39, easily topping expectations of $0.35.

Revenue finished flat year-over-year at $35 billion and surpassed the Wall Street consensus of $34.63 billion.

The move comes after Brazil's rate of inflation recently

A survey by Bank of America Merrill Lynch indicates just 13 percent of global investors had overweight allocations to emerging markets equities

That much has been well-documented in recent weeks. A 1.6 percent gain on Friday was still not enough to turn the iShares MSCI Brazil Capped Index Fund (NYSE: EWZ) positive for

Citigroup has slashed its year-end target for Brazil's benchmark Bovespa index to 65,000 from 70,000. The bank cited slack economic

And yes, Wednesday's declines come on the heels of the S&P 500 touching a new record high on Tuesday. So perhaps it is too early to get worked up about April being a bad month for stocks.

Historically, April is actually a good month for the

Recently, EWZ

That much is widely known. Put the term "leveraged ETF criticism" into Google and sit back as almost 68,000 results are returned in three tenths of

It is

Today’s tickers: GPS, USB, & PBR

GPS - Gap, Inc. – Shares in apparel retailer, Gap, Inc., were halted on Thursday morning after details regarding the company’s February same-store sales were mistakenly made available in a transcript posted on Seeking Alpha. The report was scheduled for release after the closing bell today. The stock traded up 4.2% to $35.90 before being halted with news pending. Prior to the halt, options traders snapped up weekly calls on GPS. The Mar. 08 ’13 $35 strike contracts saw the most volume, with upwards of 5,300 calls changing hands against open interest of just 348 lots. It looks like most of the calls were purchased around 10:05 a.m. ET this morning at an average premium of $0.25 apiece. Shares are once again trading, up 3.5% at $35.67 as of the time of this writing, and intraday gains on the back of Gap’s February comps data now finds the $35 strike calls changing hands at $0.86 apiece at 11:30 a.m. ET. Traders long the call options ahead of the trading halt have seen the value of those contracts more than triple this morning.

USB - U.S. Bancorp – Heavy trading traffic in U.S. Bancorp call options on Thursday morning may be the work of one or more strategists initiating bullish bets on the stock ahead of the release of the Federal Reserve’s stress test results after the close this afternoon. Shares in USB are up 0.75% on the day at $34.00 as of 11:45 a.m. ET in New York. The Mar. $35 strike calls traded upwards of 13,000 times against open interest of 8,022 contracts in the early going this morning, with much of the volume changing hands at a premium of $0.05 each. Traders buying the call options stand ready to profit at expiration next week should shares in U.S. Bancorp rally another 3.0% to top the average breakeven price of $35.05. USB was rated new ‘Buy’ with a 12-month target price of $42.00 at Rafferty Capital Markets on Tuesday.…

Index Technicals: The S&P 500 looks to break out over its 1,531 resistance today as its MACD attempts a bullish cross

Societe Generale noted, “After yesterday's close, Petrobras announced a 5% increase in Brazilian diesel prices received. While this readjustment does not include Brazilian state and federal taxes, this

Index Technicals: The S&P 500 looks to break out over its 1,531 resistance today as its MACD attempts a bullish cross on the

Index Technicals: The S&P 500 looks to break out over its 1,531 resistance today as its MACD attempts a bullish cross on

Leave it to savvy ETF sponsors to marry those acronyms: There are some ETFs

However, the funds that will be discussed here have another problem: Plenty of their components have recently fallen below their simple

The investment firm's use of ETFs dates back at least several years and HMC is also known for embracing an array of emerging markets

The filing, released Wednesday after