The buyers are back in town. Bullish sentiment among investors rose to 40% from 21% in the first week of July, according to the latest survey from the American Association of Individual Investors, while 33% of respondents were bearish, down from 57% earlier in the month.
Sam and Charles Wyly, Dallas billionaire investors known for their support of conservative candidates and causes, made $550 million in undisclosed profits through 13 years of insider trading, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit filed Thursday.
In a 78-page complaint filed in a Manhattan federal court in New York, the SEC said the Wylys held and traded tens of millions of shares in companies on whose boards they served and "defrauded the investing public" by misrepresenting their ownership and trading of those stocks.
Standard & Poor's depositary receipt exchange traded funds , or SPDR ETFs, began trading on the American Stock Exchange in 1993, when they were first issued by State Street Global Advisors' investment management group.
Stocks fell Thursday as investors took a dim view of the latest report on unemployment and warily waited for the government's reading on second-quarter gross domestic product.
Shares of U.S. financial companies reversed to mild losses Thursday but the sector was still buoyed by Ameriprise Financial Inc.'s gains on solid earnings.
