BlackRock News

According to GuruFocus Insider Data , these are the largest insider buys during the past week: Bank of America Corp.

I don't know about guys who call the direction of the market over the short or medium term, but I have to admit he has been pretty accurate over the past few years.

The Standard & Poor's 500 Index's biggest rally to start a year since 1991 is coinciding with a 15 percent increase in President Barack Obama's re-election odds, showing growing investor confidence in the U.S. economy .

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke testifies before the Senate Budget Committee about the U.S. economy, labor market and tax policy.

Hedge funds increased bets on rising commodity prices to the highest since September on mounting confidence that growth in the U.S. will strengthen demand.

Seventeen of the raw materials tracked by the S&P GSCI gained this year, led by a 20 percent advance in silver.

Scottish Widows Investment Partnership bought shares of U.S. banks and consumer-related companies on signs the world's largest economy will sustain its recovery as Europe struggles to contain a debt crisis.

The market for U.S. Treasuries is embracing Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke's view that signs of improving growth mask threats to the nation's economy, keeping inflation in check.

Copper traders turned bullish for the first time in seven weeks on mounting confidence that global growth will strengthen, diminishing stockpiles after a year in which mine production fell by a record amount.

The 2bn bet on Irish debt led by US investment boss Michael Hasenstab begs the question: who else is taking punts on Ireland ? Legendary investors are speculating on our bonds, including Pimco's Bill Gross , Blackrock's Larry Fink and more.

Pacific Investment Management Co.'s Bill Gross increased his holdings of Treasuries to the highest level since July 2010, while billionaire investor Warren Buffett called them "dangerous." Gross boosted U.S. government and Treasury debt to 38 percent of assets in Pimco's $250.5 billion Total Return Fund, the world's biggest bond fund.

The interminable extension by the US Federal Reserve on the 0% rate into 2014 represents history in the making.

Unusual though it may seem, it really is about the time of year when the earliest of bloomers emerge.

Assets managed in Canadian exchange traded funds rose by 6.4 percent to C$45.3 billion in January as financial market growth and net inflows into both fixed-income and equity ETFs drove growth, according to a report released on Friday.

There's a juicy pile of something going on over on Maiden Lane . Once upon a time, Goldman Sachs murdered AIG and stuffed its corpse with tons of shall we say "troubled" residential mortgage-backed securities.

BlackRock Inc.'s Laurence D. Fink, who urged investors this week to put all their money in equities, said his call was aimed at getting cash back into the capital markets.

The Eastern European Trust Plc , the stock fund run by BlackRock Inc. that beat the regional index by 19 percentage points in the past three years, has cut holdings in Russia before presidential elections and is buying in Turkey.

Government spending and regulations will kill off any chances of stocks turning as bullish as many high-level market watchers are predicting, says David Rosenberg, chief economist at Gluskin Sheff.

The metal rose 15 percent to $8,734.75 a metric ton this year on the London Metal Exchange, the best start since 2009.

Warren Buffett, the billionaire chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., said low interest rates and inflation should dissuade investors from buying bonds and other holdings tied to currencies.