Investors get a reason to celebrate as the big businesses announce a repurchase of their own stock.

As the cash reserves are soaring high with funds, there has been an outbreak of share buyback announcements by several of the big businesses in the past few months. Some of the business honchos that have ventured in the field include Fortune 500 companies like Applied Materials, Qualcomm, DirecTV, The Gap, Lowe's and Philip Morris. All these companies have expressed interest in the repurchase of their own shares worth at least $1 billion.

PepsiCo is the one to enter the scene in the most recent times by announcing a buyback of up to $15 billion of its own shares. The biggest buyback announcement was made on Monday, 15th March. The news shot up the shares of Pepsi by 1.5% and that came as music to the ears of investors. This is so because, when a company is willing to invest in its own shares, it signifies confidence. Also, the announcements come with an increase in earnings per share for the investors.

The buyback announcements also signal a recovery from the trying times of recession. "We just walked through the valley of capital death where cash was king and debt was troubling. Dividend payments and share repurchases at many companies were cut back or shut off," said David Ikenberry, associate dean, College of Business at the University of Illinois.
Paul Nolte, Managing Director with Dearborn Partners, suggested that the impact could be gradual and minimal and advised to observe the shrinking pattern of shares to see if the buybacks would really be having an impact on earnings.

Facebook, for the very first time, topped Google for most traffic to a single site over a weeklong period. Google, in other words became the most visited U.S. web site last week. Though it is the most visited site, facebook till date; had never trampled Google over a full weeklong period.
The social networking site outshined Google to take the top position for the week that ended on March 13, says the web analysis firm Experian Hitwise. On this, Matt Tatham, the director of media relations at Hitwise said, “It shows content sharing has become a huge driving force online and people want information on friends they trust, versus the anonymity of a search engine. He also added that, "It's definitely a big moment for Facebook, even though they beat by a small margin; we've seen it coming for quite a long time.”
Google had however passed the another social networking site-Myspace.com, which certainly enjoyed supremacy on the social networking platform for several years until Facebook popped in and turned the utmost tide of populace towards it.

January 31, 2010 was the closing session of the World Economic Forum 2010 in Davos. The forum lead by leaders from across the world came together to discuss the importance of being responsible for the future. The forum discussed the measures that can be followed by government and industries towards sustainable recovery of global economy. The forum was also joined by global changemakers and young leaders.

Over 70 Global Agenda Council experts realized several key global issues that were discussed in the forum. The forum put forth the challenge to turn ideas and proposals into practice. Redesigning of 20th century institutions is required to meet the standards and demands of the 21st century. There is a need for new metrics that will integrate social goals and values. There is a need to protect the rights of people and the response of the world towards global systemic risks should be grounded in values.

30 January 2010 marked day 3 of the World economic forum 2010 in Davos. Gender agenda was the session that started the day. It was proposed that companies perform better if the female talent is equally integrated and that gender parity in the workforce was required.

The next important issue was to secure security of cyberspace as research suggests that a malicious software is introduced every 30 seconds. The session promoted the safety of government organizations, nation-states and companies which are constantly under the threat of hacking.

29 January 2010 marked day 3 of the World economic forum 2010 in Davos. The day started with focus on future prospective that raises questions the trust in financial as well as political establishment and the shift of power from east to west. A BBC survey showed that 75% people believe that recession is not yet over and the global recovery which is led by Asia.

People demand the government to provide as many resources, which were used in bank bailouts, to create employment opportunities. The next session was about redesigning capital markets.

28 January 2010 marked day 2 of the World economic forum 2010 in Davos. The day started with leadership attributes as to reading the minds of the leaders. The main session was regarding rebuilding the trust in business leadership as the economy is on the recovery path.

The key points in this session were to reflect the importance of trust in market economies. This issue was raised due to survey report which suggested that only 29% trust the information communicated by CEOs.

At the World Economic Forum 2010 in Davos, the main focus was to ensure rethinking, redesigning and rebuilding the fragile global economy and to rebuild prosperity.

On Wednesday 27 January the main agenda was the future of employment. The session aimed at improving the mobility of skilled workers, international standards of education and training, raising high school standards. This was due to the fact that there were 2.6 and 4 million jobs available in US and Europe respectively and is vacant due to shortage of skilled workers.

S&P 500 is an index that is owned and operated by a division of McGraw-Hill known as Standard & Poor's. S&P 500 is a free-float capitalization-weighted index. This is published since 1957 and consists of 500 large-cap common stocks actively traded in the United States. These stocks are only those which are largely held by public and which trade on either NASDAQ OMX or NYSE Euronext. S&P 500 is a part of S&P 1200 and S&P Global 1500 which are two larger indices.

The rules for selection for listing at S&P 500 are very similar to Dow 30. There are just 5 non-US companies included in the index. The companies which do not have enough liquidity or which are not publicly held are excluded or left out of the index. The index also leaves out the companies with extremely high stock price as they are difficult to trade. S&P 500, during trading sessions is updated every 15 seconds.