Home Depot (HD) shares are on the move today after the Atlanta-based home improvement chain posted better-than-expected​ earnings, raised its dividend and announced a $17 billion share buyback.

Net income in the last quarter rose 32% to $1.02 billion, or 68 cents, versus $774 million, or 50 cents, a year earlier. Revenue surged 13.9% to $18.2 billion. Excluding one-time items, profit was 67 cents, topping the 64-cent consensus forecast of Wall Street analysts. The revenue figure also exceeded the $17.69 billion Wall Street estimate.
 
Wall Street isn't reacting to Home Depot's earnings forecast for the year of $3.37 per share, which lagged forecasts of $3.49. After all, rival Lowe's (LOW) also gave disappointing earnings guidance recently, but there are many reasons to be bullish on both stocks. 

Make no mistake, Tom Brady is still getting a huge amount of money.

But the sports world is buzzing because the 35-year-old New England Patriots quarterback is taking a major pay cut. The three-year contract extension he agreed to on Monday is reportedly worth about $27 million -- half as much as he was previously paid.

The going rate for star quarterbacks is much higher, The Associated Press reports. Drew Brees takes home a cool $20 million a year, while Peyton Manning gets about $18 million a year. 

"Bait" apps for mobile devices have become the bane of many parents' lives, with kids inadvertently racking up bills -- sometimes as high as thousands of dollars -- by playing supposedly "free" games such as TapFish and Smurfs' Village. 

But now, parents will get some relief, with news that Apple (AAPL) is settling a lawsuit over the games, which are downloaded for free but charge real money for buying in-game currency or virtual goods. 

The catch? Apple will offer a relatively paltry sum: a $5 iTunes credit to parents who claim a child purchased in-game items without their knowledge or permission, reports GigaOm. The settlement states that the "significant majority" of purchases were for less than $5.

The agreement, which still requires preliminary approval from a federal judge, doesn't state how much Apple will pay up.

 

JPMorgan Chase (JPM) expects to slash 19,000 jobs in its mortgage and community banking businesses. That makes Chief Executive Jamie Dimon the latest Wall Street honcho to announce cost-cutting measures as the economy continues its slow crawl out of the worst hole since the Great Depression.

As Bloomberg News and others have noted, Dimon said during the company's Investor Day on Tuesday that about 4,000 of these cuts will come this year. Overall, the layoffs would equal more than 7% of its staff of 295,000. According to Bloomberg, the banking giant will slash 13,000 to 15,000 mortgage jobs through 2014, and 3,000 to 4,000 jobs in community banking. Most will be eliminated through attrition. Ongoing hiring will offset the total over that time, with the net being around 4,000 fewer positions, according to a JPMorgan spokesperson. 

Losing weight is hard, but working for a weight-loss company might be even tougher. 

Weight Watchers (WTW) is coming under fire from some of its leaders, who accuse the company of paying them less than minimum wage, while celebrity spokeswomen earn millions. 

“We are professionals, we have to dress nice, but we are paid less than kids who work at McDonald’s," Tammy Williams, a leader in Texas, told The New York Times.

Weight Watchers pays its leaders an $18 base rate for running meetings. But according to some leaders, meetings can require as much as three hours of time, including setting up chairs and cleaning up, the Times notes.

 

The majority of American cities saw economic growth in 2011, due largely to increases in business services and manufacturing and stronger trade activity.

The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis says real gross domestic product -- that is, GDP adjusted for inflation -- increased in two-thirds of the nation's 366 metropolitan areas in 2011.

Houston's economy grew the fastest out of the nation's largest cities that year, according to The Houston Chronicle.

Here's the bureau's list of the top 10 fastest-growing economies in 2011, along with their economic growth from 2010.

These 10 metro areas also accounted for more than 38% of the overall U.S. metropolitan GDP:

 

Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) has made headlines in recent years for reasons that have nothing to do with technology. Now, some investors have had enough and want to replace some of the company's board.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Chairman Ray Lane and three other board members met Monday with 20 of the Palo Alto, Calif., company's biggest shareholders to address their concerns. 

The move, a month before the board stands for re-election, is unusual. First, the odds of any effort to unseat Lane and two other members succeeding are pretty slim. But HP's recent history is anything but typical, and the shareholders have some legitimate beefs.

Shares of HP have slumped nearly 60% over the past five years, even with their recent runup, as the company seemed to be a day late and a dollar short for most important technological trends. 

General Motors (GM) is betting that consumers have a need for speed of the Internet variety.

The largest U.S. automaker will start adding Internet service to its vehicles, offering 4G LTE access starting next year in conjunction with AT&T (T) through its OnStar feature. The offering will first be available in the U.S. and Canada on most 2015 Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac models.

Mary Chan, president of GM’s Global Connected Consumer, told Bloomberg News that the company was undertaking the largest 4G commercial deployment in the auto industry.

Detroit's GM is looking for whatever competitive edge it can get, particularly in North America where it expects to earn most of its profits as the European market continues to struggle.