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If you ever traded baseball cards with a friend when you were a kid, you’re already familiar with the basic principle of a “like-kind exchange.” Perhaps your buddy really loved Jos

By JAMES B. STEWART As we sit down this week to give thanks, investors face a cornucopia of blessings. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and other economists have proclaimed the end of the worst recession since the Great Depression. The gross domestic product grew 2.8% in the third ...Read More

EDITED BY NIKKI WALLER Would you save more if you were nudged? A new study conducted by a group of economists found that simply texting people and reminding them to save money increased their savings-account balances by 6%. The study challenges the idea that people don’t save because ...Read More

In Pictures: 10 Ways Renters Get The Shaft The Robersons got taken.Last October, Angela Roberson and her husband, Jeff, had their sights on a three-bedroom, two bathroom home in northern Las Vegas. Short on funds and with spotty credit, the couple entered into a lease option contract. Lease ...Read More

Can you make the risk of stocks go away just by owning them long enough? Many investors still think so. “Over any 20-year period in history, in any market, an equity portfolio has outperformed a fixed-income portfolio,” one reader recently emailed me. “Warren Buffett believes in this rule ...Read More

HONG KONG — The Chinese consumer is under a lot of pressure. With spending sprees on cars, electronics, home appliances, real estate and meals out at restaurants, he and his 1.3 billion fellow citizens are expected to lift the global economy out of recession and help companies around ...Read More

By Ilaina Jonas NEW YORK (Reuters) - A fall of more than 10 percent in the average apartment price in Manhattan in the third quarter from a year earlier attracted buyers who pushed up the number of sales by over 45 percent in just one quarter, industry reports ...Read More

iShares Dow Jones U.S. Real Estate Index ( IYR - news - people ): The real estate exchange-traded fund has edged 2.5% lower Thursday to $42.44. Bearish plays in the November contract consisted of a 1,000 contract risk reversal wherein a trader sold 1,000 calls for $1.80 each ...Read More

By Clare Baldwin SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A community watchdog group expressed outrage and Wells Fargo said it was launching an investigation after a newspaper reported that a senior exec threw lavish parties at a beachfront Malibu house owned by the bank. “This is the ultimate example of ...Read More

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. reportedly has plans to sell the financial indexes business that came with its purchase of Dow Jones nearly two years ago. MSCI Inc. ( MXB - news - people ), a financial indexes company that was formerly part of investment bank Morgan Stanley ( ...Read More