exxon

Given the sluggish recovery and a strapped consumer, you'd expect to see corporate America trudging along, not racing for glory. In fact, the Fortune 500 are thriving as a group.

There's a lot of overlap among the holdings of Morningstar's 26 highly rated funds, and these 10 stocks top the list. So if you want to follow the pros, consider these -- all of them mega-cap stocks and ultra-conservative buys.

It's been an exciting week on Wall Street. Not only did investors get a taste of how earnings are stacking up for companies like Apple and Chipotle, Zillow's stock really took off during its first day of trading. We asked Chris Hill from The Motley Fool what the numbers really mean.

This year's NFL championship will set records both for stadium attendance and for event fund-raising, and North Texas corporations haven't been shy to put out the welcome mat for their favored clients. How much will communities and local businesses score from the big game?

Let's say you love going to the beach, but it's been galling you lately to see those unsightly plastic shopping bags blowing around in the wind. A scuba diver friend tells you they get twined around coral reefs and eaten by endangered sea turtles mistaking them for jellyfish. Would it help if you...

Exxon Mobil's easily topped Wall Street forecasts in the second quarter, helped by a year-over-year jump in crude prices that allowed the world's largest publicly traded oil company to hike production. EPS hit $1.60, up from 81 cents a year ago.

What happens when companies pollute? Sometimes -- though not always -- they have to pay. BP's $20 billion fund to compensate for damages to the Gulf of Mexico ranks as the biggest environmental payout of all time. What other industrial giants make the list?

Oil giant Exxon reported a 38% increase in profits - its first year-over-year increase since logging an all-time record of $14.83 billion in the third quarter of 2008. Despite the jump, the results missed Wall Street estimates.

When energy giant Chevron (CVX) reports earnings Friday, they'll probably look a lot like fellow Dow component Exxon Mobil's (XOM) results Thursday. Earnings per share are expected to plunge more than 60 percent as the global recession took its toll on prices and demand. It's never ideal to mess...

With $357 billion worth of small investor money sitting in cash, Wednesday's Dow poke-through to 10,000 ought to bring a large shift of cash into stocks. The question is where investors ought to put it. While it may make sense to just buy stock index funds, there are going to be people who prefer...