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NEW YORK — The stock market ended its worst August since 2001 with meager gains Tuesday after minutes from the latest Federal Reserve meeting showed officials’ increasing concern about the economy.

Stock indexes gave up most of their gains in mid-afternoon after the release of minutes from the Fed’s Aug. 10 meeting. Fed officials said during their discussions that they recognized that the economy might need further stimulus beyond the purchases of government debt the central bank announced that day. Some of the officials acknowledged that economy had softened more than they had anticipated.

Full Story at money.cnn.com

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — If you needed any more proof that the economy is slowing down, look no further than how well McDonald’s stock is doing.

Shares of Mickey D’s are up 18% this year, putting the company neck and neck with DuPont (DD, Fortune 500) as the best-performing company in the Dow Jones industrial average. The stock is near a 52-week high, having gained nearly 6% just this month.

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McDonald’s (MCD, Fortune 500) is your classic consumer staples company that typically holds up better than sexier growth stocks during times of economic weakness.

Full Story at money.cnn.com

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Shares of Barnes & Noble soared 26% in after-hours trading Tuesday after the bookseller put itself on the block.

The board of directors believes Barnes & Noble shares are “significantly undervalued,” and has hired financial advisor Lazard to explore “strategic alternatives” that may include selling the company, Barnes & Noble said in a prepared statement.

Full Story at money.cnn.com

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Exxon Mobil Corp. reported quarterly earnings Thursday that easily beat analysts’ expectations on higher crude prices.

The world’s largest public energy company reported net income of $7.56 billion, or $1.60 a share, in the second quarter, up 91% from $3.95 billion, or 81 cents a share, in the same period in 2009.

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Analysts were expecting earnings of $1.46 a share, according to a survey by Thomson Financial.

Earnings for the first half of 2010, excluding special items, were $13.9 billion, up 60% over the first half of 2009.

Full Story at money.cnn.com

WASHINGTON (CNNMoney.com) — With one week down and one week to go on negotiations melding the two Wall Street reform bills, lawmakers have a lot of tough decisions ahead.

House and Senate negotiators had set a goal to finish work on reconciling the bills – aimed at preventing the next financial crisis – before President Obama heads to Canada on Friday for two major summits of world leaders.

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NEW YORK – Traders gave in to another case of last-hour anxiety Monday and drove stocks to their lowest level in seven months.

The Dow Jones industrial average, down just 42 points at 3:15 p.m., closed down 115, or 1.2 percent. That extended the Dow’s sharp drop from Friday, when it lost 323 in response to a disappointing May jobs report. Broader indexes had steeper percentage drops than the Dow on Monday

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President Barack Obama said Friday that regulatory authorities were probing one of the wildest trading days in Wall Street history that left investors, government officials and traders scratching around for a cause.

Bonus, given again. Why so much to handle money? What did he and all the others do to desire that big of a bonus? A lot of Americans do a good job every day and we are lucky we get paid. I didn’t understand why they have to get so much for a bonus.

Full Story at money.cnn.com

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Goldman Sachs stunned many in the Wall Street community Friday by awarding chief executive Lloyd Blankfein $9 million as his year-end bonus, far less than many were anticipating, and none of it in cash.

Following weeks of speculation about what the top executive at Wall Street’s leading investment bank would take home as his discretionary pay for 2009, the company revealed in a securities filing it was paying Blankfein 58,381 shares of company restricted stock.

Full Story at money.cnn.com

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin plan to sell off 5 million Google shares each over the next five years, a move that could see them surrender majority voting control over the company they created.

Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) has an unusual dual-stock structure. “Class A” shares are publicly traded on the Nasdaq exchange, while “Class B” shares are reserved for insiders and carry 10 times the voting power of other shares.

Full Story at money.cnn.com

Futures measure current index values against their perceived future performance and offer an indication of how markets may open when trading begins.

The blue-chip Dow closed at its highest point since Oct. 1, 2008 on Wednesday, as investors bounced back from a one-day selloff.

Economy: Investors will keep an eye on a report on retail sales due out at 8:30 a.m. ET. A weekly reading on initial jobless claims is also due out before U.S. markets open.

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LOS ANGELES – Moviegoers have shown a willingness to be entangled by Spider-Man’s web over and over again. Now, as Disney prepares to buy the comic-book powerhouse Marvel, it faces the question of whether fans will also get attached to characters as obscure as Ant-Man and Iron Fist.

The Walt Disney Co. is making a $4.2 billion bet that they will as it nears completion of its acquisition of Marvel Entertainment Inc. this week.

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NEW YORK – Citigroup Inc. said Wednesday it is selling a huge chunk of its stock at a steep discount to raise the cash it needs to repay bailout funds and free itself from government support.

But the government backed out of selling any of its 34 percent stake in the bank due to the tepid investor response and the weak price garnered by the $20.5 billion equity offering — described by Citigroup as the largest in history.