Gallery: America's Most Popular Stores

Methodology: Using figures recently published by Placed Insights, 24/7 Wall St. compiled a list of the most visited stores in America. To assess how profitable and popular these stores were, we also consulted companies' financial statements. Same-store sales growth, systemwide sales growth, and other measures of store performance were provided by research firms RetailSails and Technomic. Stock prices are for the parent company that owns the store.

More from 24/7 Wall St.:
Seven Cars Most Likely to Be Dumped
Ten Cities with the Worst Traffic
Companies That Owe Employees a Raise

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Gallery: America's Most Profitable Products

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Gallery: The 8 Best Ways to Spot Counterfeit Money

• Americas Nine Most Damaged Brands
• Ten Cities Where Americans Dont Feel Safe
• Ten Companies Profiting Most from War

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Gallery: America's Nine Most Damaged Brands

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April 9 is Equal Pay Day, a holiday established in 1996 to highlight the earnings discrepancy between men and women in the United States. Across the country, women in full-time jobs make just 78.8 percent of what men in comparable positions make; Equal Pay Day marks how far into this year a woman would have to work to earn as much as a man did in 2012.

Don't look for the the wage gap to get smaller anytime soon. A new report from the Institute for Women's Policy Research predicts that it will take another 44 years, until 2057, for women's pay to equal that of men.

The wage gap is larger or smaller depending on where you are in the country. Women in the Provo-Orem, Utah, metro area make just 61.6 percent of what men make; in Los Angeles, by contrast, they take home 91.4 percent of the pay of their male peers.

That women's salaries are more in line with men's in some areas doesn't necessarily mean that women in those areas are doing well relative to women elsewhere. In eight of the 10 metros where wages are most equal, women's income lags the national median of $37,199. That's because many of those areas, like El Paso, Texas, have a higher concentration of low-wage jobs, which tend to pay women and men more equitably. "A low wage gap can just mean shared misery," noted Ariane Hegewisch, a study director for the institute.

Click through the gallery to see the cities with the smallest wage gap between men and women.

See also: The 10 Worst-Paying Cities for Women

Gallery: The 10 Best-Paying Cities for Women

More from 24/7 Wall St.:

• The Worst-Paying Cities for Women
• America's Happiest (and Most Miserable) States
• Seven Countries Sending the Most People to America

​Methodology: 24/7 Wall St. identified the metropolitan areas that have the smallest pay disparity between men and women by comparing the median earnings for the past 12 months of both men and women working full-time, year-round in the country's 100 largest metropolitan statistical areas. We also reviewed employment composition in different sectors and the wages for both men and women in each. All data was from the U.S. Census Bureau for 2011, the most recent period available.

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Gallery: Companies Paying The Most and Least Taxes

• Companies Paying the Most Taxes
• Companies Paying the Least in Taxes
• Banks Foreclosing on the Most Homes

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Here are today's five biggest gaining stocks at closing:

ARCA biopharma Inc. (NASDAQ: ABIO) is up 44.4% at $3.32.

Silver Spring Network Inc. (NYSE: SSNI) is up 29.4% at $22.00.

Quicksilver Resources Inc. (NYSE: KWK) is up 26.9% at $2.74.

Dynatronics Corp. (NASDAQ: DYNT) is up 19.4% at $2.81.

Men's Wearhouse Inc. (NYSE: MW) is up 18.5% at $34.46.

And here are today's five biggest losing stocks at closing:

VirnetX Holding Corp. (NYSEMKT: VHC) is down 28.9% at $25.35.

Superconductor Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ: SCON) is down 16.8% at $3.21.

Velti plc (NASDAQ: VELT) is down 16.4% at $2.01.

Ocean Power Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ: OPTT) is down 15.4% at $1.65.

Verso Paper Corp. (NYSE: VRS) is down 14.1% at $1.42.

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This weekend will bring the election of the next prime minister in Italy. Worrying about what is happening in Italy, Greece, Spain and the rest of the PIIGS feels "so-2012," but anyone who cares about the global economy has to care about this election.

Americans will have to expect is that a resolution and outcome may not come because there are four main candidates. That means that another group of coalitions will have to be formed, if it comes to that. Back to why you have to care ... We have taken figures from the CIA World Factbook for reference here:

• Population is almost 61.3 million.
• Italy is the third largest economy in Europe.
• Public debt has increased steadily and is now more than 126% of gross domestic product (GDP), ranking eighth in the world on that metric (Greece is third at 161.3% and Portugal is ninth at 119.7%).
• Italy's GDP growth (loss) in 2012 was -2.3% and its GDP is now 7% below its 2007 precrisis level.
• Unemployment now is projected to be 10.9%.
• GDP under a purchasing power parity for 2012 was put at about $1.834 trillion, which ranks as number 11 in the world.
• Some 17% of GDP is said to be the underground economy, although other sources over the years have had it being higher.
• Taxes are projected to be 48.3% of 2012 GDP and the budget deficit is 2.9% of GDP.
• External debt is listed as being some $2.46 trillion, ranked as ninth in the world.

Pier Luigi Bersani is the leader of Italy's Democratic Party, and CNN said he is who most expect to become the next prime minister. CNN said, "He has pledged to keep outgoing premier Mario Monti's austerity reforms, but says stimulus is needed to boost the country's flagging economy."

Silvio Berlusconi is a billionaire campaigning to retake this position yet again. He has resigned before and has been in a sex scandal and tax fraud scandal.

Then there is the current and possibly outgoing Mario Monti, who has also held the office, and has been the chief austerity-ist of Italy. This effort was popular outside of Italy but internally let's say "not co much."

Giuseppe "Beppe" Grillo is a comedian that has sort of come up through the ranks with those disillusioned with all the parties in Italy. He represents a total wild card and he has been critical of austerity.

The long and short of the matter is that Italy's election matters. Most Americans do not care for the moment. That may change if austerity measures get back off track and if things in Italy turn for the worse all over again.

The phrase of "too big to fail" has been applied to the biggest banks in the world. As far as bailing out Italy in a manner, we have seen in Greece and elsewhere, the public needs to know that Italy is "too big to bail."

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Gallery: The 10 Most Valuable Actors of All Time

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Gallery: The 8 Retailers That Will Close the Most Stores in 2013

More from 24/7 Wall Street:

• The Worst Product Flops of 2012
• America's Best (and Worst) Online Retailers
• The 10 Most Hated Companies in America
• The 10 Most Counterfeited Products in America

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24/7 Wall St. tracks the spreads that corporations have to pay above Treasury rates to fund their cost of borrowing. This is one key barometer for measuring the market's risk tolerance at any given time. The problem is that junk bonds are starting to trade at yields that look less and less like "junk spreads" each day. Investors are chasing yields for higher income, but they are starting to take on more risk than they may understand. This is becoming extreme dividend investing.

Standard & Poor's shows a daily update on the speculative bond spreads, and the Speculative-Grade Composite has narrowed to 506 basis points. The spreads are becoming extremely tight, and we cannot help but wonder how much of a bubble is being formed here with tighter and tighter spreads. Investors are starting to take on significant risks that they might not fully grasp if anything unexpected arises in the economy.

The investment-grade composite spread remained flat at 179 basis points on Monday, while the junk-bond spread was two basis points tighter. For reference, the investment grade spread has been 200 basis points for a one-year average and 246 basis points over a five-year average. The junk spread of 506 basis points now compares to a one-year average of 629 basis points and a five-year average of 757 basis points.

Back in mid-January we struggled with valuations when the speculative bond spread was at 531 basis points. If investors keep chasing yield in this manner, the composite spread for junk bonds may dip under 500 basis points soon.

The SPDR Barclays High Yield Bond (NYSEMKT: JNK) exchange traded fund is at $41.27, only a bit above the January 11 price of $41.15, when we first cited the risks of a bubble. Its 52-week range is $37.51 to $41.43 and Yahoo! Finance shows this ETF still having a yield of 6.78%, but we would warn that its dividends tend to fluctuate from quarter to quarter.

There are two closed-end funds we track as well. BlackRock Corporate High Yield Fund V Inc. (NYSE: HYV) is at $13.10 (versus $12.92 on Jan. 11) against a 52-week range of $11.40 to $13.58. It comes with a dividend yield of almost 8.25%. Another fund we track is the Western Asset High Income Opportunity Fund Inc. (NYSE: HIO). Now near $6.61, its 52-week range is $4.72 to $6.84 and its dividend is roughly 7.5%.

Bubbles can inflate and inflate. If investors keep seeing the stock market rise they are likely to take on that much more risk. They just need to understand that a spread reversion to the one-year or five-year averages could bring on losses in the double-digits in their investment portfolios.

If rates continue to tick up, this can also hurt bond investment values. What if something creates a situation where spreads widen out and Treasury yields rise simultaneously? New junk bond investors are not prepared for that. Be advised that the smart money started chasing yields in the realm of junk bonds all the way back in early 2010 and into 2011 and 2012.

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In the world of corporate America, it's so hard to become a beloved Apple or Amazon, so easy to become a despised and maligned Enron.

After all, to be loved, a company has to do practically everything right. But to fall into the public's corporate naughty list, all a business has to do is make a few blunders that anger its customers, punish its shareholders, and abuse its employees.

When a company botches major product or service launches, when stock values plunge, when pink slips are handed out en masse, when mistreated workers pass on the unhappiness by providing poor customer service -- those are the conditions under which a company's brand can see its popularity plunge.

24/7 Wall St. looked at all those angles and more in its analysis. Now, we bring you the result: the 10 most hated companies in America.

Gallery: The 10 Most Hated Companies in America

Methodology: 24/7 Wall St. editors reviewed a variety of metrics measuring customer satisfaction, stock performance, and employee satisfaction. This included total return to shareholders compared to the broader market and other companies in the same sector in the last year. We considered customer data from a number of sources, including Consumer Reports, the MSN Money/Zogby customer satisfaction poll, ForeSee's Holiday E-Retail Satisfaction Index, and the University of Michigan's American Customer Satisfaction Index. We also included employee satisfaction based on worker opinion scores recorded by Glassdoor. Finally, we considered management decisions made in the past year that hurt company image and brand value from marketing research firms BrandZ and Interbrand.

Several organizations might have made this list, but have had some good things go their way in recent months. Among them, Netflix (NFLX), which made our list last year thanks to several bad decisions that hurt the company's public relations in 2011, such as the increase in streaming fees, are well in the past. After a sharp drop in 2011, shares are finally recovering and are up more than 30% in the past three months.

It is worth noting that some of the companies on the list may have done very poorly by some measures but well by others. A few of the most hated companies have had good stock performances. Others may have satisfied customers. All of this was taken into account when the decisions for the final list were made.

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Gallery: 11 Famous Brands That Most Americans Don't Know

Methodology: To pick the most valuable brands that Americans have not heard of, 24/7 Wall St. relied on the BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands 2012. We ranked the brands that made the list based on gross domestic product of country of origin, and then picked the most valuable brands from the eleven largest countries based on that GDP measurement. In order to exclude well-known brands in America, those with very large market share in the U.S were excluded. That meant Toyota, BMW and Louis Vuitton did not make the cut.




More from 24/7 Wall St.

• America's Most Profitable Stores
• 10 Brands Losing the Most Value
• America's Most Expensive Neighborhoods
• America's Oldest Brands

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Then again, 24/7 Wall St. also missed the mark last year on a few companies. Notably, Kia, Moody's, BP, and Zales appear to be doing better than expected.

This year's brands in danger of extinction include many that have stood the test of time for decades. But in a world where a venerable car make like Pontiac or a magazine like House & Garden can vanish, no brand is safe from the perils of competition, new inventions, rising costs or poor management.

To compile its list, 24/7 Wall St. looks at seven broad risk factors:

Each of the 10 brands on the list suffer from one or more of these problems. Each of the 10 will be gone, based on our estimates, within 18 months.

Gallery: Brands That Will Disappear in 2013

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Gallery: The Worst Product Flops of 2012

• America's Disappearing Restaurant Chains
• Ten Brands That Will Disappear In 2013
• The Best and Worst Run States in America

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By Paul Ausick

IntercontinentalExchange Inc. (ICE) announced this morning that it has reached a definitive agreement to acquire NYSE Euronext Inc. (NYX) in a stock and cash transaction valued at $33.12 per NYSE Euronext share, a premium of nearly 38% to last night's closing price. The total value of the deal is $8.2 billion. About one-third of the merger offer is cash and the rest is ICE stock.

The transaction requires a lot of approvals, including from the European Commission (EC), which in February of this year rejected a $10 billion merger between NYSE Euronext and Germany's Deutsche Boerse A.G. That deal was killed because the EC said the combined company would have controlled more than 90% of all trading in European derivatives, effectively closing out any potential competition.

Similar mergers in the U.S. have beefed up both the CME Group Inc. (CME) and the Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. (NDAQ), but it is not unthinkable that the two might now have to consider their own merger. And certainly CBOE Holdings Inc. (CBOE) and its stable of valuable commodities options contracts also figure in the mix.

CME, which owns the Nymex, is by far the largest of the three, and the one that could face the most troubles from the NYSE-ICE tie-up. ICE's electronic trading of crude oil futures is particularly a threat to Nymex, and it will be more of a threat when Brent crude becomes the international benchmark, replacing WTI.

Shares of NYSE Euronext and ICE were halted in premarket trading this morning. NYSE Euronext closed at $24.05 last night, in a 52-week range of $22.25 to $31.25. Intercontinental shares closed at $128.31 last night, with a 52-week range of $110.67 to $142.75.

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Gallery: America's Disappearing Restaurant Chains

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Gallery: The Best and Worst Run States in America

• America's Poorest States
• Famous Brands Americans Don't Know
• The Best and Worst Run States in America

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Gallery: 2012 Election Winners and Losers: Coal, Dividends, Health Care, Utilities, Oil and More

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Gallery: States With the Highest (and Lowest) Taxes

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