s&p

Listeners of The 404 Show have plenty of financial questions, so we look to our resident expert Jill Schlesinger from "CBS MoneyWatch" to make sense of it all. From ETFs to IRAs and everything in between, Jill and Jeff navigate the choppy waters of personal finance. They'll also talk about Apple in great detail, and whether the company's sinking stock price is a sign of things to come.

Jill hits up The 404 Show every three weeks, so if you've got a question you want answered on the show, be sure to send a tweet or e-mail us! … Read more

Just when things couldn't get much worse for Nokia -- the mobile phone maker's credit rating is taking it on the chin.

Standard & Poor's today cut the rating for the Finnish mobile phone maker to junk, anticpating lower sales ahead.

Following a similar move by Fitch Ratings earlier this week, S&P cut Nokia's rating to BB+ from BBB-. BB+ is considered the highest speculative grade, "speculative" being another word for junk.

S&P said that the weaker rating reflects a lower estimate for sales from Nokia's Devices and Services … Read more

A week after downgrading Google's stock, Standard & Poor's reversed course, saying the stock price had fallen so much that it was now a more attractive buy.

Scott Kessler, head of technology sector equity research at S&P, wrote in a research note released today and cited by the Associated Press that he was upgrading the Web search giant's rating to "hold" from the "sell" rating he bestowed on the company's shares last week following Google's gutsy move to buy Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion. The acquisition will give … Read more

The internet's abuzz with Google's purchase of Motorola Mobility. Plus, the Droid Bionic gets upstaged by its successor and Ice Cream Sandwich leaks on this week's episode of Android Atlas Weekly.

News

Google to buy Motorola Mobility for $12.5B ]http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-20092362-94/google-to-buy-motorola-mobility-for-$12.5b/?tag=mncol;txt

Google: S&P Cuts Rating To Sell From Buy; Sees Risks In Deal http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2011/08/16/google-s-sees-risks-in-deal/

Will … Read more

We celebrate the patent wars with Zynga while Google's stock gets downgraded. TV Studios think its a good idea to pull back their content on the Web and if you've ever faked a phone call on your cell phone, you're not the only one.

In filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Netflix just released a graph that looks at how the company's stock has treated shareholders over the past five years.

The No. 1 video rental service compared its total cumulative stockholder return for the past five years with those from the Nasdaq Composite Index, the S&P 500 Index, and the S&P North American Technology Internet Index.

Simply said, Netflix tore it up. The company's shares jumped beyond $247 this week, setting an all-time high for the stock. After stomping brick-and-mortar rivals Blockbuster and Movie Gallery into … Read more

Financial services company Standard & Poor's announced changes yesterday to its S&P 500 stock market index, a widely respected compendium of large-cap U.S. public companies: Netflix is on the list for the first time. In the same announcement, rather poignantly, S&P announced that newspaper giant The New York Times Co. has been demoted to its index of mid-size companies (the MidCap 400), as has photography equipment manufacturer Eastman Kodak.

Previously, Netflix had been on the MidCap 400 list.

Netflix has had one heck of a year, nearly a decade after it first went public … Read more

Investors received another tool Monday designed to track green themes and greenbacks.

Standard & Poor's launched on Monday its S&P U.S. Carbon Efficient Index, designed to measure the performance of large-cap U.S. companies operating with a low carbon emissions footprint.

The index, which currently has 362 companies gleaned from the S&P 500, are selected using calculations from Trucost, an environmental data gathering organization.

David Blitzer, chairman of Standard & Poor's Index Services index committee, said in a statement, "Organizations around the world are paying greater attention to the impact of greenhouse … Read more

After a whiplash session on the markets a day earlier, investors were treated to another harrowing ride Tuesday, with the Dow Jones industrial average plunging more than 500 points.

The steep sell-off seems to be partly a reaction to comments from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who issued a warning Tuesday that the economic malaise could very well continue through the next year.

At the end of the trading day, the Dow closed down 508.39 points at 9,447.11, marking its fourth-consecutive day of losses and a second day where the Dow ended below the 10,000 mark. … Read more